Believe it or not, I actually have to pay money to operate this blog. But I do it gladly so that you, the few, the proud, the dubbatrubba blog faithful, can get your semi-weekly dose of semi-coherent ramblings. You’re welcome (not sure if I should punctuate this with a question mark or an exclamation point…maybe I’ll do both)?!
The company from which I bought the dubbatrubba.com domain (surprisingly, there was no bidding war…) is always trying to sell “extras” to me. Their latest pitch gave me pause:
Whoa, I can actually get rubbadubba.com too? I’m thinking I should lock it down, and corner the market on goofy names. Perhaps later I can sell rubbadubba.com at a profit to Three Men In A Tub, LLC.
But what really got me was the fact that “dubbatrubba.com” isn’t considered a premium domain, yet “batrepellant.com” is.
Guess I’ll have to spend the weekend figuring out other ways to “monetize” my site.
You can be a corporate drone and still find a means of artistic expression (like a blog, maybe?). And you can be a real estate agent and still rock… just like Bill Janovitz, the lead singer of Buffalo Tom.
Back in the 90s, he and his bandmates Chris Colbourn and Tom Maginnis released several albums on a major label, and toured the world.
But things have changed.
First came love, then came marriage, then came a baby in a baby carriage… and Bill needed to provide a bit more stability to his family than the rock and roll lifestyle could offer. So he became a real estate agent.
“Now it’s more about getting up and wearing a decent collared shirt”
You can listen to Bill talk about his day job in this Public Radio International interview.
As Bill’s real estate bio states, he and his bandmates “still play and record music to this day.” Indeed they do… and they do it quite well. Here’s a great video for a song from their new album:
Thank you Bill for so poignantly profiling middle-age malaise in your music… and for setting such a good example for other family-centered folks.
Ain’t it funny how time slips away. And ain’t it funny how some isolated, seemingly trivial incidents from your childhood get lodged in your brain for decades?
In December of 1976, I was a wee lad of 11. And even in the three-network universe of my youth, pretty much anyone with a pulse could get a TV special or even a summer replacement series (looking at you, Shields & Yarnell). In that fateful winter month of our country’s bicentennial year (remember the red, white and blue fire hydrants?), skinny, buck-toothed magician Doug Henning appeared in his second TV special, the appropriately titled “Doug Henning’s World of Magic II.”
Michael “Little House on the Prairie” Landon was the guest host (Doug wasn’t much of an emcee.) And one of the guests was fellow magician/illusionist Ricky Jay, who passed away a couple of weeks ago. It’s been 42 years since that show aired, but I vividly remember the segment with Ricky throwing playing cards into the audience.
My siblings and I were so enamored with that trick (and Ricky’s showmanship) that we tried to replicate it… with absolutely zero success. But the concept of throwing playing cards seemed so weird that it became a running gag for us. In the ensuing weeks and months, we’d pick up a playing card, shout “Ricky Jay!” and throw it to the four winds… or at each other.
(It goes without saying that in the ensuing weeks and months, we could no longer play traditional card games because we managed to lose several cards from every deck we owned thanks to our Ricky Jay impersonations.)
Yes, we were easily amused… and maybe that’s the point. Throwing cards seems so tame (or, to use the current parlance “lame”) in a post-Jackass, Red Bull Stunt Team, Call of Duty, VR goggles world. But making your own fun can be the most fun of all. It’s the most memorable too… I guarantee you that if I picked up a playing card in front of my siblings and shouted “Ricky Jay!” it would still coax a smile out of them, four decades later. And that’s pure magic in my book.
P.S. Ricky Jay was quite the Renaissance man – in addition to being a master magician, he was also an accomplished author, actor and businessman (he and his business partner created the wheelchair that made Gary Sinise look like a double amputee in Forrest Gump). Check out his obit from the New York Times and the trailer of his documentary below.
Oops, I did it again… I went and saw Richard Thompson live in concert again last night.
I’ve posted about him before. And I’m going to do it again, because he’s so doggone good. Nay, great. Last night it was the Richard Thompson Electric Trio, featuring RT, a bassist and a drummer (and occasionally Richard’s guitar tech on guitar, making it, as Richard said, “a very large ‘trio'”). They absolutely rocked the Southgate House – a former church… saints be praised!
To see a man who is 69 years old (and has been in the business 50 years) absolutely shredding on guitar is life-affirming to a middle-aged dude like me. Although it’s a double-edged sword – a couple of friends of mine who are in local bands (Wussy and Pike 27) were in the audience, and they joked about donating their instruments to needy kids after seeing Richard Thompson because they realized they’ll never be as good. But there’s no shame in that; millions of performers aren’t fit to carry his guitar pick. He’s a quadruple threat, as I mentioned in my previous post (with a few updates):
The show was a typical RT show… which is to say, amazing. I don’t think you’ll find his rare combination of talents in too many folks:
virtuoso guitarist – I’d put him up against any teenage phenom.
phenomenal voice – so strong, even at age 69.
fantastic songwriter – great, sometimes twisted lyrics and wonderful melodies. It’s no wonder his tunes have been covered by the likes of R.E.M., Elvis Costello, Bob Mould, Bonnie Raitt, Reckless Kelly, The Neville Brothers, Marshall Crenshaw and Dinosaur Jr. (that’s a festival lineup I’d like to see).
entertaining stage presence – that droll British wit is always in evidence.
The Electrio Trio was fantastic (you can catch their entire Shrewsbury Folk Festival performance from a few months ago here). The songs from Richard’s latest album 13 Rivers are a great addition to his oeuvre. Back catalog highlights for me were “Wall of Death” and “Tear Stained Letter.” But late in the show Richard played back to back acoustic numbers that are utterly brilliant: “Beeswing” and “Dimming of the Day.”
Most artists would kill for just one song as good as those. But for Richard the Great, they’re just par for the course. I still have goosebumps.
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