//music video

Squeeze's "Tempted" is one of my favorite songs of all time. I never get tired of hearing it, watching the video and the girls who don't do anything but dance awkwardly with no bras on. I also never get tired of salivating over his Prophet 5 keyboard. Take a minute to watch the video, so good.

Off to watch the Oscars. I would really rather watch just about anything else, but my friends are providing wine and pizza.

//photo

The Argument.

There's nothing like some vigorous junk clearing, personal history visiting real old fashioned ORGANIZING to get the spirits away from staring at (two) computer screens all day.

Anyone want some worth records, a broken suitcase, or my spare game of Rummikub?

//mp3

I've been reading Waylon's autobiography "Waylon: An Autobiography" for a week and a half or so now, and although I've been a Waylon fan for quite awhile it was really re-hearing this week's MP3 of the week "Are You Sure Hank Done It This Way?" while watching the actually pretty good film Crazy Heart about a month ago.

What a song. The beat itself is worth the price of admission, and every time Waylon gets to the line "Well I've seen the world with a five piece-piece band looking at the backside of me" I get the chills. I really do, no lie.

Anyways, this is what Waylon has to say about the song in the book:

Driving to Hillbilly Central one morning during the Dreaming My Dream sessions, I was thinking about Hank's influence and the example he'd set for us, both good and bad. I grabbed an envelope from the seat and started writing, one hand on the wheel, the other balancing pencil and paper on my knee. When I got to the studio, we immediately recorded it�me and Richie managed to turn the beat completely around�and I read it off the envelope. Two weeks later, our bus driver, Billy, came to me and asked if he could have the envelope with the original lyrics. he'd found it on my music stand. I looked at it,a nd I swear I couldn't read a word. It was just scribbling.

Lord it's the same old tune, fiddle and guitar
Where do we take it from here?
Rhinestone suits and big shiny cars, Lord
It's been the same way for years.
We need a change.
Somebody told me, when I came to Nashville
Son, you finally got it made
Old Hank made it here, and we're all sure that youw ill
But I don't think Hank done it this way
I don't think Hank done it this way
Ten years on the road pickin' one-night stands
Speeding my young life away.
Tell me one more time just so's I understand
Are you sure Hank done it this way
Did old Hank really do it this way
Lord I've seen the world with a five-piece band
Looking at the back side of me
Singing my songs, one of his now and then
But I don't think Hank done 'em this way
I don't think Hank done 'em this way

With its relentless four-on-the-floor rhythm, phased guitars, and eerie drones, "Hank" didn't sound like a standard country record. There was no clear-cut verse and chrous, no fiddle middle break, no bridge, nothing but an endless bakc-and-forth seesaw between two chords. Jack mixed the guitars together so they sounded like one huge instrument, matching their equalization settings so you couldn't tell where one blended into the other.

It felt like a different music, and Outlaw awas as good a description as any. We mostly though it was funny; Tompall immediately made up Outlaw Membership certificates and handed them out to select visitors at Hillbilly Central.

I can listen to this song a thousand times and never get tired of it. I sure wish Waylon was still around.

//talktalk

I haven't added a new blog to the links in a long while, instead I've just watched as more and more of my regular reads disappeard. But today, welcome Korovieva.

//video

//MP3

//photo

fight sports, breaking, weapon

making' pozole

I thought about food at work a lot today, which means things like making the bed and doing laundry and working are in trouble when I get home. I tend to choose recipes on a whim, as long as they don't seem too difficult or too involved, and tonight I am attempting to make red pozole, which may be a stretch because I've never even EATEN pozole before much less cooked it.

I guess that means I am not quite certain how it's supposed to taste, but I hope that if it tastes good that means I succeeded.

I have been in a big iPod on random kick lately, and tonight it's working out rather well. of Montreal, R.E.M., Fugazi, Waylon, Yeah Yeah Yeahs etc etc. Rock on.

This is what my afternoon looked like, between holding baby Io, multi-frisbee catch, wine chugging, baggo, salami eating, brie nomming, and chat chat chatting. What a glorious day in the Easy Bay.

My trip to Los Angeles on Wednesday was actually pretty fun, educational, and I was able to get around town a bunch and be social. The tasting was on the 4th floor of the big mall that surrounds the Kodak theater right smack dab at Hollywood & Highland. Tourist central for sure. If you've seen the movie Confessions Of A Superhero that's right where I was. All those people out front dressed up as all sorts of crazy characters. It was kind of sad, really, 'cause there weren't that many tourists around.

Raining again, makes me sort of miss the 68 degrees and sunshine of LA, but at the same time all this water is going to end up in Lake Shasta which means the summertime should be super awesome.

So, I am taking a last minute trip to Los Angeles tomorrow to taste 2007 Bordeaux for work. I love these jetsetting adventures, and although the last minute plane ticket is costing me a bit, it's worth it for me to bop around California doing the things I love. I am also greatly looking forward to dinner with my brother and his wife as he just got back from the Sundance film festival and has stories to share.

It's kind of crazy for me to think my brother is doing music for movies and is getting things like full page credits on feature length films that are shown to thousands of people at film festivals. And by crazy, I mean crazy awesome. I am super ridiculously proud of him.

Today I was pretty low at work, so I spent all the money I wasn't making selling wine on lots of concert tickets. Justin Townes Earle, Drive-By Truckers, & The National are all coming to down, not to mention Pavement in Berkeley. I now have at least ones how a month through June, so it feels good to be back on track.

I also bought tickets to a movie about Drive-By Truckers called The Secret To A Happy Ending at Noisepop 2010. It is weird that I doubt if I am going to any Noisepop shows this year (I've been attending, or playing at, off and on since 1997) but I am going to a movie. A movie about a band. Instead of seeing a band. That is just fucked up.

And I close with again how awesome it is to see the few tour dates the National are doing spread out all over the world, and my town, OAKLAND CALIFORNIA is one of the cities. Not San Francisco. Love.

NEW READING. Time to turn off the computer and sit with a book.

sonoma county.

Off for a weekend in Sonoma county, driving around in the cool weather looking at all the greenery, eating, drinking, and spending the night in Petaluma.

I leave you with a new MP3 of the week a day early, a new track from Drive-By Truckers! NEW RECORD SOON YAY!

Highlights!

Saturday: Dinner with MRA at Jon's Street Eats. Mac n' cheese, salad, white bean bruschetta. All nomtaculous.

Sunday: Sitting on the side of a big mountain in the snow with Mitch & Simon, syncing up the new Hot Chip record on our iPods, taking shots of cognac, and then snowboarding down the mountain while dancing. Hot times.

Monday: Went and saw Crazy Heart and was impressed and re-chilled by Waylon's "Are You Sure Hank Done It This Way." Song gives me the crazy chills.

Tuesday-Thursday: Eating cuties. You know what I mean.

Labels: citrus, crazy heart, cuties, good times, movies, snowboarding, weekends

Labels: 1997, ladies and gentlemen we are floating in space, las vegas, lyrics, rad shit, spirituazlied

Spent the afternoon shopping with some dudes for new snowboard gear. It is weird for me to think that, here I am at 33 years old still wearing the same overall style snow pants that my dad handed down to me when I was like, 16. That shit is just ridiculous, so I bought me some BRAND NEW PANTS today. Also some new snowboarding boots so I don't have to deal with the rental shop anymore. And a snowboarding belt (did you know these existed? I did not, but I figured since the pants had belt loops...) to go with my new pants. Then I got some new socks too for the hell of it.

We are taking the sleepy/party bus up to Sugarbowl tomorrow, which should be Good Times except it leaves at 5AM, so I have to try and put myself to bed early tonight. Of course, it's already 7 and I have dinner and a cocktail party to attend to tonight, so good luck doing that.

Next Stop, TahBro.

Labels: activities, shopping, shredding, snowboarding, tahbro, tahoe

Striking out on all the new music I got yesterday. Thee Silver Mt. Zion Ensemble Orchestra etc etc etc? DELETE. The Submarine's Honeysuckle Weeks? Nope, not for me.

Take three.

Kronenbourg 1664 for dinner.

When I first started getting Backstreets, the Springsteen fanzine, I was perplexed at how someone could like The Wild, The Innocent, & The E Street Shuffle so much. Now it's one of my favorites, and although I can admit that the cheesiness of "Sandy" or the weirdness of "Wild Billy's Circus Story" would make people question my taste, I think most of this album is sold and light-years different than anything else on this record. If you don't believe me, there's only one thing to do. And that's listen.

Labels: albums, bruce springsteen, ranking stuff, the boss

I can measure good days since 1997 as the days I get to hear a new record from Spoon. They're one of those solid bands who always put out great music and who do it with a sense of regularity that makes you feel as if they'll always be around. I am enjoying Transference so far.

Having MRA's coworker and her husband over for dinner tonight, and our new mattress got delivered today, so the house is in clean working order and will soon smell of mac n' cheese, roasted kale, and Pinot Noir. See ya' later weekend. Monday is up next.

Labels: ALF, dinner, new recfords, spoon, wine

chorizo y papas sope @ tacubaya *stock photo

Woke up today with a date with Miss Rodeo America to buy a mattress. So, we went to one mattress place, laid on one mattress, and purchased said mattress. It might not be the best thing we could have found, but it is worlds better than our current sleeping situation and we really are no fuss no muss shoppers. The only bummer is that it is not getting delivered until tomorrow so we have one last night on the old bed we found on Craigslist in like 2004. Excitement!

Afterward we went to 4th street to get brunch at Tacubaya and to pick up our yearly Mexican calendar. Their chorizo sope always makes my day and it had been awhile, so it was good to get back on board. I think the whole thing has given us a hankering for pupusas, so I think tonight we're going to head to SF to fill the pupusa hole. Nom nom nom nomnomnom.

Labels: berkeley, food, mattresses, shopping, sopes, tacubaya

Now, I'm not one to watch a lot of live performances online 'cause they usually sound like subpar versions of the live songs and lack anything fun to watch. This is different. THEY KILL IT LIVE ON LETTERMAN. Vampire Weekend blitz through "Cousins" and I love the added animal noises at the beginning. Makes me sad I'll be missing their show here in Oakland later this year.

Now I guess by posting this I'm part of the internet hype leading to the release of Contra, but at least this time they deserve it. Wow.

Labels: live music, vampire weekend, videos

LOOK I AM A BIG BOY! Finally got to extend my desktop so that my home setup matches my work setup. I can actually kind of surprised that something actually worked between me and computers.

Thinking about maybe blogging but perhaps I will just go to sleep and instead DREAM about blogging.

So, I had my first cup of regular coffee yesterday in over a year and a half. I was very excited, so I went back to the old neighborhood and had a small drip cup of Timor Organic from Cole coffee. As I watched the coffee drip drip drip into the cup I got even more excited, that is until some random hipster guy (this is the place we DID used to call the "cool kids cafe") walks up and says to the girl behind the counter "Can you actually brew it twice and pour it back through the grounds?" So she does.

The problem was, she did that with MY cup of coffee. When he realized what he'd done (hmmm...I had the SMALL Timor Organic, you had the LARGE Celebes or something or other, don't you think you could have noted that difference?) he sheepishly apologized and they had to make me a new cup.

The coffee was good, but not OH MY GOD HOW HAVE I BEEN MISSING THIS GOOD, and I actually really enjoyed the high buzz and jitters it gave me. Espresso is definitely much mellower, but I was pretty into the feeling this gave me. So, today I had a second cup. So far so good.

lake berryessa.

I am listening to my old band's first EP for the first time since, probably 2004. When I got my new iPod and dumped my entire MP3 collection there, it showed up.

Hey, this is still pretty good.

YO.

the columbia hotel, london

Slowish day at work today, so I've been poking around on Google Maps UK looking at places I went 5 years ago, thinking about how fast the time has flown, and sort of missing out on the excitement of 2004 and 2005. I traveled a lot in those years, and honestly, I really miss it. I love my house, the kitties, MRA, being married, my wine job, softball, and all my friends, but there comes a time every day where I find I'm either looking at my computer screen at work again and feeling like I was just here, or when I'm waking up in the morning feeling as if I just woke up yesterday morning. Glory days syndrome I guess? Anyways. Softball game tonight, but I'm sitting out and will focus my efforts on coaching third base. Saturday we're going to Santa Cruz for the day and I'm really looking forward to taking some backroads to avoid the traffic that will probably descend on the beaches from San Jose. Another thing worth mentioning, I'm been super into last.fm for the past six months or so. I'm at almost 20,000 plays, which doesn't include anything listened to before November or so. That's a lot of songs!

...and we're back.

Last friday I went to update the 7" Recording Project, and the domain was gone. I couldn't connect to the FTP site, and the pages were all gone. In their place were spammy placeholders, so I contacted Register.com to see what was going on.

Turned out, my domain had expired. The one I've had for over ten years, and instead of notifying me so I could renew it, they let it expire and put it straight up for auction.

$119 later and some back and forth with Register.com and Snapnames, we're back up!

That was really annoying, I swear I won't let it happen again. I'll get back to the music soon.

(This is the first in a series of posts where I digitize my 7" collection and talk about those records. Some of them rule, some suck. We'll deal with it together. Okay?)

One Man Running Stress 7" Kirbdog Records #006 01. Here By The Shore 02. Albegra 03. Windfall 04. Johnny Come Lately 05. Trustfund Junkie 06. Termaline

I really don't remember where I got this record, but I know I paid $3.50 for it. One Man Running were a pretty rad Lookout! records era pop-punk band from Arcata, and they may or may not have members of Fifteen in them. I may have picked up this record in Orange County, either in Laguna or Huntington Beach the year afer I graduated from High School when I went down there for a couple weeks to hang out with my ex-girlfriend, watch people play volleyball, be punk, and sell chocolate dipped strawberries on the side from the store she worked at to fund trips up to Los Angeles.

Purchased: 1994? Maybe in Orange County, but not at Amoeba in Berkeley
Cost: $3.50
Notable because: These songs are so short, they were great to put in the last couple minutes on mixtapes.
Like it now?: You know, it's OK. This is a great snapshot of early 1990's California pop-punk, that tie that runs from Berkeley to Santa Rosa and then up to Arcata and Eureka. There were zillion bands who sounded just like this, and a zillion Very Small Records compilations you could har them on. You know, even Billie Joe met his wife in Arcata...

I bought this portable USB turntable on Woot, and it arrived today! Now all I want to do is go home in the rain and digitize my 7" collection. This is exciting.

I'm going to start posting MP3s of my collection here. Stay tuned!