Calexico has been around a long time, working the fringes. Principals Joey Burns and John Convertino are probably better known for playing on other people’s albums. But here’s the lead track from their new release “Edge of the Sun.” So good…
And the official video is… well… a bit out-there.
A few notes about music (see what I did there?):
NPR is streaming the new release from the band Dawes, called All Your Favorite Bands. Highly recommended. Dawes features brothers Taylor and Griffin Goldsmith. Here’s the lead track, it’s a fun video too.
Waxahatchee is the stage name of Katie Crutchfield. Waxahatchee is fantastic. The touring band also features Katie’s twin sister Allison.
I wrote a post about Brandi Carlile a few months ago, but her album The Firewatcher’s Daughter is out now. Here she is with her band (including identical twins Tim and Phil Hanseroth) on Conan doing a song from the new album.
Last night I saw a free outdoor concert with Surfer Blood as the headliner. Their new album is called 1000 Palms. There are no siblings in the band. But they put on a great show and deserve some love too. Especially since their guitarist is battling cancer.
Sorry David Bowie, but I no longer qualify as one of the “Young Americans”… and since you did that song on the Dick Cavett Show, neither do you.
Yesterday I had to renew my annual membership at my local rec center, and because I’m now 50, I get a discounted rate. The $10 in savings doesn’t come close to making up for the humiliation of hearing the teenager behind the counter chirping “you get a senior discount!”
Funny thing is, they originally had an incorrect date of birth for me – 4/15/75 – so they thought I was 40, not 50. Must be that Grecian Formula that I’ve been using.
I’m OK with being 50 though. Heck, I have another decade and a half to go before I’m officially part of “Older Americans Month” (which is every May for Americans who are 65 or older). Not that there’s anything wrong with growing old… it certainly beats the alternative. However, listening to this gorgeous Courtney Barnett song about growing up and growing old will make you want to stop the clock.
Alright, enough of this newfangled blogging business. I’m going to have some prunes, watch “Murder, She Wrote” and take a nap. Get off my lawn!
Blues legend B.B. King passed away earlier this week. I had the privilege of seeing him in concert three different times. Once was about 30 years ago at a club in Cincinnati. Another time was 20+ years ago at a theater in L.A. with two other blues forefathers, Albert King and Bobby “Blue” Bland. And I saw B.B. for the last time just a summer ago, when he opened for Peter Frampton. I must admit that when I saw him last summer, it saddened me a bit, because B.B. was nothing at all like the musician I saw at that club in Cincinnati. He was merely a shell of his old self, a former great just playing out the string, like Willie Mays for the New York Mets in ’72. As Willie himself said, “”growing old is just a helpless hurt.”
But then I remembered that B.B. was 88 years old last summer. Mick Jagger and Keith Richards are the elder statesmen of rock and roll, but they’re 18 years younger than B.B. I don’t think Mick will still be strutting the stage like a proud peacock in 2033. Rather than be saddened by B.B. diminished skills, I should’ve been thrilled that he was still doing what he loved. R.I.P. B.B.
NPR had a nice story this week about how flexi-discs are making a comeback of sorts. To the uninitiated (i.e. pretty much anyone under the age of 40), flexi-discs were the cheapest, flimsiest 45rpm singles you could ever find. (Don’t know what a 45rpm single is? Get off my lawn!) Back in the 60s and 70s, they were usually freebies with the purchase of a magazine or a box of cereal or detergent. You often had to cut them out because they were printed right onto the product package.
To me, flexi-discs have never fallen out of favor, ever since I got one on the back of a box of Super Sugar Crisp cereal back in the 70s.
That’s right, I said Super Sugar Crisp… not the watered down name they changed it to when sugar became Public Enemy #1 to health experts. I have to admit it was a genius marketing move. Sugar was a no-no, so they changed the cereal’s name to Super Golden Crisp… and kept all the sugar in it. Brilliant!
I got the “Sugar Bears” flexi-disc; better taste in cereals might’ve resulted in better taste in music. The Monkees were on a cereal box flexi.
The Jackson 5 was on one!
Then again, so was my older sister’s teen idol crush, Bobby Sherman.
So maybe I was better off with Sugar Bear and his band after all.
Every week, LinkedIn sends me an email with “jobs you may be interested in.” Check out the sweet gig that was at the top of my list this week – a wedding DJ/MC in Davenport, Iowa.
Now granted, I did work at radio stations as a DJ for several years, but radio DJ and wedding DJ are miles apart. Radio DJs are totally cool, and wedding DJs are totally cheesy. Suggesting I might be interested in a wedding DJ gig is like suggesting that Michelangelo might be interested in a job as a house painter. (I’m really not that vain, just engaging in a bit of hyperbole.)
But maybe I should apply. I’ll send them an audition tape with me saying “OK, Quad Cities, please welcome for the very first time, Mr. and Mrs. Radar O’Reilly” and “Who’s ready to do the Cha-Cha Slide?” I have no idea how much it pays but I’m pretty sure I’d be eating cake every weekend.
Guess I should’ve stayed in radio, then I could’ve turned out like these super suave disc jockeys from WIXY-1260:
Pretty sure that’s Rob “Meathead” Reiner holding the basketball.
Rock on!
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