Hmm, looks like that Tempest gig is taking place the week the kids are on Spring Break (the holiday formerly known as Easter Vacation), so I may be out of town visiting relatives instead of swilling beer and listening to live and loud Celtic Rock.

Fans of Doug "Duke" Erikson, Butch Vig, Dave Benton, et al, must check out the new Spooner Fan website put together by Bob Bartel, the Madison band's manager in the late 70's and early 80's. Many pictures, lotsa good information and some full-length mp3's of Spooner rarities for your pleasure. It would take me paragraphs to describe my reaction to seeing this stuff. Nostalgia just scratches the surface. Those shots of Doug and the boys playing (the outdoor gigs especially) made me ache to be twenty again. In 1976, of course. Yeah, could happen. Well, I guess I'll have to settle for cranking "Johnny Stood Up" one more time...

The "Further Clues" link to the left will indirectly connect you to the Spooner and Fire Town page I slapped up on Angelfire a while ago. (Pity they don't permit remote linking of images since it looks like ranchoweb is going the way of boomspeed. That is, they're going out of the free webspace business. Gee, you'd think there'd be all kinds of money to be made providing free services on the internet...)

Phrase Of The Day: "Pheasant Plucking Music"

Yow, I've been added to the roster of Blogcritics, so I guess I oughta write up some stuff instead of just commenting on other peoples' posts... Passing along the news of the upcoming Pearls Before Swine Box Set on Water Records should be first. An Amazon link is even available. Then into the Useless Information archive...

Murphy & I decided to spring for King Crimson tickets, back at the Modjeska again, same as Y2K. Since the 21st Century Schizoid Band hasn't added the USA to its tour itinerary as yet...

And Tempest is coming to some bar in Racine, of all places. The previous time we saw them, it was at Alverno College - a local Catholic women's school - in the basement of a dorm. A fun, interesting and weird evening that was, something like 20 years since I'd last hung out in the basement of a dorm. Really good music, though, very hot electric Celtic folk stuff, electric mandolin, fiddle with a rock and roll spirit that reminded me of the Fairport Convention and Steeleye Span of the early 70's. With a little Tull as well.

I'm trying to decide whether to spend the bucks to go see King Crimson when they visit Milwaukee again next month. Murphy and I went to see them last time they were at the Modjeska, and it was a fine concert. (We previously saw KC at the PAC with Mark-Almond opening in 1974...) But they have so many CD's available at their website that I'd like to order! Such is life.

I need to save up for the four CD Pearls Before Swine box set, too... Called Jewels Were The Stars after a line in "Rocket Man", it's said to contain the albums These Things Too, The Use of Ashes, City of Gold and Beautiful Lies You Could Live In. I'm a tremendous fan of Tom Rapp's music, but if these discs don't overflow with bonus tracks, I'm going to have real problems parting with $60 for that amount of music. Maybe I should try selling some of my spare vinyl copies of these on eBay...

UPDATE There's a total of 21 songs on those four albums not already included on Constructive Melancholy. Awaiting information as to the set's contents...

To clarify, I like Jimmie Rodgers, Hank Williams, Bob Wills, Lefty Frizell, Merle Haggard, Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, Kinky Friedman, Buffalo Springfield, Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Grateful Dead, Byrds, Flying Burrito Bros, Poco, Pure Prairie League, Manassas, Eagles, Randy Travis, Hal Ketchum, Dwight Yoakam, Steve Earle, Lyle Lovett, Townes Van Zandt, John Prine, Emmylou Harris, Iris Dement, Gillian Welch, Alison Krauss, Uncle Tupelo, Whiskeytown, Derailers... This is not a complete or exhaustive list, obviously. (Not everything by all these people is of uniformly high quality, but the same would be true of my list of Rock Heroes.)

But I wouldn't know Travis Tritt or Faith Hill if they got stuck between my toes. About once a year I tune in a Country radio staion for about 30 seconds. And I saw too much Hee-Haw as a kid to be able to stomach Buck Owens or Roy Clark, as much admirable music as they may have recorded somewhere along the way. The fact that Chris Hillman and Herb Pedersen do appreciate the Bakersfield Sound is good enough for me.

I don't like country music, but I don't mean to denigrate those who do. And for the people who like country music, denigrate means 'put down'
--Bob Newhart

(Thanks to Snargle!)

Myself, I do like country music, but I certainly understand why other folks don't. Early exposure to Johnny Cash and Lefty Frizell gave me a frame of reference when I discovered Buffalo Springfield, Poco, Sweetheart Of The Rodeo, the Flying Burrito Brothers, etc... The country-rock of the seventies led indirectly to the alt-country of the nineties, and for a brief time there in the eighties, it seemed like mainstream Nashville might embrace some quality singer-songwriters. Turns out to be not quite the case, but guys like Randy Travis, Dwight Yoakam and Steve Earle still manage to make a living and get new music released on a regular basis. Johnny Cash and Willie Nelson probably have more credibility with the alternative rock crowd than Nashville these days. The folk and bluegrass branches seem pretty vibrant lately, too. Country radio sucks, but so does Pop and Rock radio. And ninety per cent of everything is trash, so discovering hidden gems can be challenging if you don't have a map. Heck, there might be some hip-hop or electronica I'd like if I heard it, but I don't have any interest in the search. (OTOH, it may be that I'm too far outside the target demographic for those styles for this to be true...)

Close to a month with no blogging... Life goes on. Wednesday woulda been Aunt Margaret's 95th birthday. Abe Lincoln and one of my nephews (Terry, I think) share the date. And today, yes, Saint Valentine's Day, so I think I'll leave work early and pick up a bouquet of Krispy Kreme doughjobs on the way home...

There is much to say, but little time to say it in. Busy at work, but customer orders are still slow in coming...

The last of my dad's siblings died last Friday. Aunt Margaret was less than a month shy of her 95th birthday.

"A major problem with cooking a golden goose, repeatedly over many years, is that one day it might no longer lay golden eggs. But perhaps this is not a prime concern for battery farmers." - Robert Fripp - Wednesday 8th January 2003

Battery Farmers? Sounds like a great name for my new math-rock / ambient-drone / spazz-jazz / jam-band / psychedelic-folk / new-wave / sew-age / roots-rock / drip-hop combo...

For no good reason, apart from the fact that I've been trimming and arranging this playlist over the last few days, here's 4 hours, 3 minutes and 29 seconds of the music I've been marinating in over the last month or so... Not as schizo as ever, but it does cover a few bases...

Moody Blues - Never Comes The Day
The Rolling Stones - She Smiled Sweetly
Pearls Before Swine - Uncle John
Serge Gainsbourg - L'abominable Strip-tease
John Cale - Dead Or Alive
Nick Cave - By The Time I Get To Phoenix
R.L. Burnside - Hard Time Killing Floor
Professor Longhair - Ball The Wall
Armegeddon - Buzzard
Abba - Ring Ring Swedish Version
Jeff Lynne & Roy Wood - Me And You
Ace Kefford Stand - Gravy Booby Jamm
Acid Gallery - Dance Around The Maypole
Roy Wood - Polythene Pam
Beatles - Magical Mystery Tour - Flying
Nice - Get To You
Beatles - Across The Universe
Arthur Prysock - EbbTide
Dr Hook - Who If Not You
Captain Sensible - Wot
Sharks - Doctor Love
Clash - Police and Thieves
Go-Betweens - By Chance
Go-Betweens - Part Company
Matching Mole - Beer As In Braindeer
Matching Mole - Instant Pussy
Roto Rooter Good Time Christmas Band - 21st Century Schizoid Man & Bubbles In The Wine
Giles Giles & Fripp - Tremelo Study in A major
Sharks - Snakes And Swallowtails
Steamhammer - Junior's Wailing
Surfaris - Hey Joe Where Are You Going
Tee Set - She Likes Weeds
Suzanne Vega & John Cale - So Long Marianne
White Willow - Anamnesis
Kate Rusby & Kathryn Roberts - Queen & Soldier
Armageddon - Silver Tightrope
Toto - Africa
Buffalo Springfield - Sad Memory
Chris Hillman - Tomorrow Is A Long Time
Sam Bush - Big Mon
Shane MacGowan - Mama Lou
Kate Rusby - Our Town
Chris Hillman - Morning Sky
Lucinda Williams - Still I Long For Your Kiss
Flatlanders - Tonight I Think I'm Gonna Go D
Kate Rusby - Dark Eyed Sailor
White Willow - Elvenking
Jimmie Dale Gilmore - One Endless Night
Sharks - World Park Junkies
Spooner - Cruel School
Abba - What About Livingstone
Hot Tuna - Hit Single # 1
Sharks - Driving Sideways
This Mortal Coil - Kanga Roo
Spooner - Eyes Of The World
Standells - Hey Joe, Where You Gonna Go
Human Beinz - Pied Piper
Spooner - Tomorrow Never Comes
Tom Rapp - After The Gold Rush
White Willow - Snowfall
Spooner - Wildest Dreams
Tom Rapp - Blind

Happy New Year!

Been mostly offline for the last two weeks, so I'm just catching up on a few blogs and comics before getting into the Seriously Productive part of my day...

Finally nabbed Harold And Maude from the library last week. A classic cult movie. Perhaps not as great as it may have seemed in memory, but I was watching it by myself (snoozing Lora by my side) and the state of the art in black humor has advanced somewhat in the last 32 years... I did enjoy it though, especially the Cat Stevens songs on the soundtrack. I may have to CD-R Tea For The Tillerman and Mona Bone Jakon soon. Probably Teaser And The Firecat to complete the triptych, as well... "How Can I Tell You?" indeed...

Had a lot of time off work and rested up pretty good over the holidays. Quite busy, though, lotsa parties, multitudes of Gluckstein relatives in town, lots of good food and drink. Won another darn radio contest (Forgotten Oldie = "Concrete And Clay" by Unit Four Plus Two), but the prize was a pair of New Years Eve tickets to see the Harlem Globetrotters, so we never went to pick them up and went to see The Two (not "Twin"!) Towers instead. Then back home to watch Red Green and Fawlty Towers. Lit some sparklers and bottle rockets with the boyz, woke up Lora at midnight and we all went to our beds, saving the champagne for the next day.

I should make entries here more often if I'm going to type so many irrelevant details. So it goes. And now there's several hot projects which should command my attention...