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5 Herons! Quick update - I was just listening to Lynn Callihan's latest album Pondering a Thought, frying up some potatoes, grinding coffee beans, and I looked out my kitchen door window to see gigantic prehistoric-looking birds with long pointed beaks and huge wingspans flying toward me! They went over my meadow, then I ran to the front window and watched them fly out over the oak, spruce, and hemlock forest across the road. What a sight!
posted by cat mcconnell 8:55 AM
the Argument at the MetLast night Liv and I went to the Argument's CD release party for Recess Serenade. We had a great time. The show was at the Met theater in downtown Morgantown. This was the first I'd been in the theater since the renovation. It's substantially complete, the seats are back in, etc. It's a great place to see a live performance. They've been showing movies there, too. I saw Paul, my old bandmate, working security. I also saw Mike, my board member. And several of the usual suspects, though the show was largely populated with highschool and college age kids.
Listening to: Axiom of Choice by Niya Yesh Reading: still Speaker Weather: 51, rainy, foggy The band's new tunes are much more concentrated pop efforts (though it's hard to compare after only hearing the songs once live, when I've heard those old tunes gazillions of times live, recorded live, and studio). They seem to have shifted their writing away from the more complex, epic kind of tunes, which packed a lot of musical ideas into each tune. It was almost like they've learned that you don't have to cram every cool new riff and change you can think of right now into the tune at hand. Rather, you can take each one and examine it separately in it's own tune. The outcome is a bouquet of distinct tunes instead of one exotic and complex flower of a song.
It reminds of a friend from my grade school days, when she said "I just realized that Juanita and Fatman in the Bathtub are the same song." That first batch of Argument tunes were beautiful babies that probably each took a long time to labor. They had such varied sections strung together that if you heard a snippet on the radio, and later heard another snippet of the same song later, you might have a Juanita/Fatman experience, not realizing they were the same song. Those songs were also often very arrangement-driven, with plenty of cool little riffs, backups, and other devices keeping them interesting on subsequent listenings.
The new tunes have a much more pop-radio quality about them - a 3 ot 5 second snippet taken from anywhere in the song would leave no question as to which song it is. These tunes likewise show them exploring how to push that hallmark of pop music - repetition - farther within each tune. I think the trick of successful pop music is to find that point of maximum repetition of hooky stuff, but weave in just enough contrast to keep it from being monotonous. And of course, keep it around 3 minutes or less. The new song Everyone's Selling Something is definitely an exercise in finding that balance point. I think you can see the beginnings of this focused pop-songwriting approach in Soaked, one of their first songs after that first batch of songs that got recorded onto several disks, consummated in Your New Favorite Band.
They've certainly retained, and probably enhanced, that youthful and playfully-immature flavor that the youngsters who populate their shows love, both in their new songs and in their live performance style. The occasional dirty word, songs about girlfriends and ex-girlfriends, the unexpected covers (last night we were treated to Sweet Caroline [yes, mom, Neil Diamond] and Here I Go Again by Whitesnake [I have the vinyl]). There's just something quietly funny about all these teenage girls joyfully singing along (every word) with Inflatable Amy. And these guys have also held on to those trademark Beatlesque subdominant minors and tight 4 part vocals with added 6ths, two of the things that make pop music great. The Beatles introduced borrowed chords to rock and pop, and that is definitely a trait well worth imitating.
But to step back a bit from the details, these guys are just great performers and players, and they dish out some of the best live 4 part vocals around. Matt is the real rockstar, from my perspective. He's a clean tasty guitarplayer, a real master of his sound. His SG had that tightly-concentrated humbucker sound that is deeply satisfying when played as well as Matt does. I missed the more complex and notey stuff from their early days (ala Ernestine Jackson), but was certainly not disappointed by his ever-solid rhythm playing and tasteful riffs and (few) leads. Chris is a great drummer, cute, looks like he's having fun, and delivers dead-on high back-up vocals. Brent is right there, the bassplayer that rarely steps out front in the mix, which is what makes him such a fine player. These two are the perfect rhythm section foundation for the cute and fun frontman Scott. Scott's vocals are the star of the show, and even when he can't quite reach the note, he's adorable. His keyboards were more integrated in to the overall sound this time, maybe partly a function of the Met mix, but the new tunes don't seem quite as piano-oriented as the old stuff. Scott is an effervescent young host, though he seemed somewhat more humble than I remember. Great writer, great frontman, keeps a good flow to the show.
The opening act was Bleu. And this really tells the tale on how the Argument is exploring the repetition factor. Very much a master of pushing the repetition just up to the point you want to yank it, this was a one-man guitar/singer show who made copious use of live loops. Fucking fantastic pipes on this guy. Bodacious mutton chops, too. This cat is a truly unusual, yet very accessible performer. He guitar was in some drop D open tuning (DADGAD maybe?) throughout, and he did the old Dolly Parton thing of just moving one or two chord forms up and down the neck. But the guitar is a prop for this cat, he starts the first loop of the show, in fact the first "note" of the show, with just beating quarter notes on the top of the guitar with his fists. Loop. Then add a bass riff. Loop. Then add a high riff, loop, add a third, loop. Then the main event, SING. Huge range to the high end, luscious tone. He reminded me of Jian from Moxy Fruvous, even looked a bit Persian. The songs were great, definitely not 3 chord fare, cool changes, interesting lyrics, hooky melodies, well-placed kicks, pleasant melodies, max repetition to make them memorable, but not to the point of tedium. He's had several songs in Hollywood movies, will probably have plenty more, very easy to listen to.
posted by cat mcconnell 8:28 AM
Monday, March 22, 2004
10 hawks and 3 gigahertzDude! You got a HP! I drove to Charleston today for a meeting, can't tell you about what or I'd have to kill ya. On my way home I stop at Circuit City (drooling). I plunk down a pile of credit card and buy me a spanky new HP pavilion a450n. That would be P4 3gighertz with hyperthreading, 512 DDR ram, slots for all the solid state storage media, firewire, USB's in the front and the back, ditto with the audio ins and outs, DVD writer, yada yada yada. And it's so freakin quiet I can't hear it. Major improvment from my old box, which you had to yell over. Plus I think the video controller on the mother board was shot, suddenly I couldn't get more than 16 colors, reinstalled video drivers repeatedly, uninstalled and reinstalled the card, which appeared, bla bla bla. So now I buy a new motherboard, processor, power supply for that box and let liv have it at her dad's. Oh, and I stole the network card out of it for this one.
Listening to: my new silent puter Reading: still Speaker, and it's getting good Weather: 20, no stars I saw 10 hawks today along 79. No joke. Quite a record. I see at least one maybe two or three every trip, I basically spend the drive looking for them. Like sentinels every 20 miles or so, I saw them sitting in trees today. I also saw a turkey roosting. And several geese. A shitload of deer. And a silver jaguar. Heh heh, the car.
posted by cat mcconnell 9:49 PM
Saturday, March 20, 2004
a fine 69Happy spring! It was a hard frosty 28 this morning when I woke up, and less than 4 hours later it was 58. Now it's 69 on this first day of spring. I saw the spring's first coltsfoot today along the Brewer Road on my way to motown. Liv's having her belated birthday party right now, the first one that's not all female. Alas, the all-girl days are over.
Listening to: robins in my field Reading: still Speaker Weather: 69, cloudy
posted by cat mcconnell 6:16 PM
Midnight at the Oasis and one-nightersI watched the wonderful film Lost in Translation last night. Bill Murray's character Bob has a one-nighter with a lounge singer. In she shower she's singing Midnight at the Oasis. I had to laugh.
Listening to: NPR Weekend Edition Reading: still Speaker Weather: 34, sunny 15 years ago (almost), May 15th, 1989, I met Larry, Olivia's dad. My duo partner Tommy T and I played a show at Philip Barbour highschool, where Larry was a teacher. That night we stayed with Mark, the band director. Larry came over to party with us, which we did till the wee hours. Larry and I hooked up, and slept in the living room for a few hours. But it's a school night, so both Mark and Larry have to get up early and go to work. Larry and I wake up to Mark in the shower singing Midnight at the Oasis at the top of his still-drunk lungs. He flies out of the bathroom like Groucho Marx saying "who's up for a breakfast bonghit?"
posted by cat mcconnell 8:11 AM
Thursday, March 18, 2004
my enigmatic Boy George connectionLiv slept 14 hours last night, I let her skip school, and she slept some more. Hopefully her sleeping body is kicking some pathogen ass or something. Anywho, we're lying on the bed watching whatever morning show crap is on, and it's The View. Don't get me started. But I digress, sorta. Boy George is a guest on the show. They show a clip from Barbwa's 15 yr old interview with him in his heyday (yo, fashion police, exhibit A), and then she asks him an updated version of the same question: So who'd ya rather do, J Ho or Ben Affleck? And he's like, why do I get those two for choices? and then. . .
Listening to: the birdies Reading: still Speaker Weather: 39, mostly cloudy he says, and I paraphrase, know who I think is a mad hottie? Dermot Mulroney. I'm like GET THE FUCK OUT! Dermot, for those who don't know, is a hollywood actor in a shitload of film including My Best Friend's Wedding, Young Guns, Thing Called Love, About Schmidt, etc. He's also a cello player who grew up in Alexandria VA near me. We knew each other from competitions and we also studied with the same teacher, Loren Stephenson from the Nat'l Symphony. He also went to summer camp at WVU the same summers I did.
True story: The last night of camp, my roommate had already gone home. My next door neighbor (we stayed at Towers) was Becky somebody, a redhead. I didn't have an alarm clock, and her roommate was also gone, so I crashed in her room. I go to sleep and get awoken moments later when Dermot comes out of the closet (so to speak), and says "go back to sleep, K?" Right. So I try to go back to sleep while he and Becky are getting it on in the bed about 6 feet away. Then click click, lights come on, "this is a basic roomcheck" says the evil whoever, and Dermot says "this is a basic bust." He gets dressed and is escorted out of the room.
Now wouldn't that have been a better story if Becky had been Boy George? or Girl Becky?
posted by cat mcconnell 12:38 PM
Monday, March 15, 2004
My CD CollectionI used this cool software to catalog my CD's. Check out the website it exported for me. I need to figure out how to change the template before it exports the site, it's a very drab template. But check out all the navigation and track info and whatnot. It's hard to say how long it took to input the data, I spent a good 4 hours on it the first weekend, and I've spent 20 minutes here and there since then to finish it up. I used a combination of downloading from the freedb database, and inserting CD's into the drive and letting the program pull the info out for me. I got lazy on finding the cover art on the compilations. Also, the genres and categories are not my choices, I generally left whatever was in the database, if anything, and didn't even pay attention to what it said, usually.
Listening to: Champagne Jam by Atlanta Rhythm Section Reading: still Speaker Weather: 53, sunny Damn, this ARS greatest hits is a great album. I never had any of their albums before, I just bought this one from an Amazon partner for something like 8 bucks including shipping. I can see why people run their credit cards up bad on the net, it's hard to say no to incredibly cheap CD prices like that. This one was brand spanky ass new, too.
Liv's having her belated birthday party this weekend. She postponed it because she wanted to be out of the threat of tons of snow, sounds like the joke's on her. It's supposed to snow tomorrow morning up to 6 inches here in P County. Oh, the irony.
I've been tempted to wear a Tshirt saying "I make $41,000 a year" lately. All over the news has been the Wyoming County senior center director who makes an obscene $301,000 a year. He is director of both the county senior program and a homecare agency, both of which are funded almost exclusively with government grants. In case you were wondering, Wyoming county is one of WV's most rural and most poverty-stricken areas. Even a for-profit CEO in Wyo county who made that much would seem quite greedy, but this is outrageous. His homecare workers probably make $6 an hour. And they clean up actual shit. Unreal.
posted by cat mcconnell 5:13 PM
Sunday, March 14, 2004
bye NougatI packed up Nougat in a cat carrier yesterday and sent to live at Larry's amongst the many kitties and other critters. She and Kit Kat never got along, and Kit Kat is my main feline. Nougat is destined to remain an outdoor kitty, and feeding her outside attracts too many other creatures on my porch here. She'll have a happy hunting life out at Larry's, with plenty of delicious rodents to play with and eat, I think. A natural life with litters of kittens, too. Bla bla bla, I miss her already. :(
Listening to: October Road by JT Reading: still Speaker Weather: 37, overcast Nice weekend so far, and continued likelihood of niceness for what's left of it. Archie's with Dan, Linde, and Gail on Friday was cool. It's a bit smokey and loud there, though, maybe we'll try another spot next month. We ran in to Bus there, and he's having a little birthday shindig and hootenanny at 3 Ways in Kingwood on the 20th. I think Mike Morningstar is playing that night at the Black Bear. Dilemma. Or bar hop.
Last night Andrew McKnight played the coffeehouse at Monroe's, very good show. He is in the studio working on his 4th album now, and he played several of those tunes, as well as his older stuff. I thought several of the newbies were good songs, and enjoyable to listen to. Some demonstrated a nice evolution in his guitarplaying, which has tended in the past to fall into a somewhat limited number of strum patterns in a limited number of keys (varied by capo placement). One notable tune was fingerpicked and had a few augmented and diminished chords, and a decidedly straight-up American jazz blues feel to it. His excellent vocals were strong and pleasant, and he does that cute little Elvis guitar neck-bend at the end of some tunes, by which Olivia was thoroughly entertained (especially when he followed it up with the obligatory "thank you, thank you very much"). Nice mix of new and old tunes, upbeat and ballad, good dynamic control. I also got a seat right up front, so I got the added bonus of hearing plenty of the ambient sound.
The title cut of the new CD, however, did not favorably impress me. Perhaps it was because the lengthy explanation he gave before the tune which led me to believe it would have some exotic African elements that I did not hear. The chorus melody could have just as easily been Celtic-based Appalachian as the East African he said he was going for (the last tetrachord of a descending major scale with upper neighboring tone ornaments on each note). Think Blackberry Blossom straight rather than swing. Anyway, that part of the show reinforced my belief in letting the song speak for itself, don't give too much talking intro. I think the folk-Nazi signature of playing the opening riff continuously while talking in that sing-songy voice (which is hard to avoid while trying to simultaneously play) is not only cheesy, but can lead the listener to unsatisfied expectation. End of lecture.
High wind advisory today, gusts up to 50mph. Larry and Spring and Olivia and I are going to the Haymond Community Center roast beef dinner this afternoon. I'm putting up another bluebird house on the fence post out my living room and computer room windows. I've seen a pair of bluebirds around here lately, hopefully looking for a place to nest, and I'd be happy to close that real estate transaction.
posted by cat mcconnell 8:36 AM
Friday, March 12, 2004
the jailcell decor jokes are just writing themselvesI heard a rumor that Martha Stewart might be heading for a little correctional stint at Alderson prison here in WV. I'm feeling special. Maybe she can help Squeaky, heaven knows that girl needs a makeover. Full body cavity search, it's a good thing? Seriously, sucks to be Martha, I figure. Even if it's the Park Hotel, the door goes CLANG when they shut it.
Listening to: Long Train Running from Best of Doobies Vol I Reading: still Speaker for the Dead Weather: 24, partly cloudy Next track Takin It To the Streets. What a great song.
Tonight beer with my buds, tomorrow night Andrew McKnight at the coffeehouse at Monroe's in Kingwood. I might drag my ass to a CLE tomorrow morning from 9 to noon, because I need a couple more ethics credits before we have to report in June. And this is a freebie. Well, free as in no cash required, you have to donate pro bono hours instead.
I want to go back to school. I need a sugar daddy, I'm become hopelessly addicted to things like paying my mortgage, electricity, driving a car, etc. But wouldn't it be fun to get an MSW? Or something. I'm crispy in my job, time to shake it up a little.
posted by cat mcconnell 7:24 AM
Sunday, March 07, 2004
we gonna party like ishaburfdayHappy Birthday to me! Even Yahoo wished me a happy one. It was kinda interesting, in addition to the usual card from mom, calls from a few friends, and whatnot, I got emails from several people on the FruheadDotCom website. It's a fan site for Moxy Fruvous. When you register (which I did about 5 years ago) it asks your bday, then on the front page it lists all the nicknames of registered folks celebrating birthdays today. Then you can just click the names and send them birthday wishes if you like, and some cool people did. The irony of it all is that Moxy Fruvous has effectively been broken up since 2000, yet the fan site is still going pretty strong.
Listening to: internet radio Reading: Speaker for the Dead by OS Card Weather: 52, partly sunny
posted by cat mcconnell 12:33 PM
Saturday, March 06, 2004
Kids, Dogs, and Guys in ClogsYesterday was a rather remarkable Friday. It was damn near 80 degrees, if not actually 80, and still only the first week of March. It was too nice not to be outside, and too hot to stay in the office, so I took a 3 hour lunch with Daria at the Blue Moose. We both had the veggie gyros and salad, quite delicious. Chris Stewart stopped in to take a break from his sweaty bike ride, so we 3 sat and chatted. It was nice. Then I made my way back to the office, got some good work done, then headed over to Robert and Leslie's.
Listening to: NPR Weekend Edition Reading: Rules for Radicals by Saul Alinsky Weather: Overcast, 55 Robert and Leslie are Gail's neighbors who just had a baby, Benjamin. So cute. We had a great supper together, Gail grilled kebobs with quinoa and dilled cukes. We ate out on the porch, I drank a few Coronas. Robert is producing a concert at the Met theatre to benefit several local citizen environmental organizations, it's called the Mon-Earth Benefit Concert. His original motivation was to support the opposition to the Longview power plant, but the Met people preferred to avoid controversy, so a broad-based enviro mission seemed like an easier way to get started. Hopefully it will become a big annual event. He's having 4 acts from the folk circuit. It's on April 21st, a wednesday.
Check out this cool cat that was coming around my house a few weeks ago. (I made this with Photoshop 6 from a photograph I took.) He and his long-haired orange buddy were sniffing around Nougat, the fluffy stray who has lived on my porch for over a year. Nougat appeared as a tiny wild kitten, and wouldn't come in the house or get near us, but it was so cold and snowy, I fed her on my porch. She had a litter of kittens last spring. The 2 survivors went to my mom. Now it's time for Nougat to either visit Dr. Snippy, or move to Larry's wild kitty haven, where kittens are a good thing.
So anyway, back to yesterday. After dinner Gail and I went to the Black Bear to see Lowdown. Humorously, we weren't really sure who they were, but somebody in the band whom I can't remember told me about the gig and I put it in my calendar some time ago. Well, it was only 9ish, and usually bands do an acoustic set first, then full band at 10. There was only one acoustic guitar player singing when we arrived. He was pretty good, fingerstyle blues with a grass flavor. But it was noisy and somehow not cool, so we split. Back to Leftover, we headed to the Friday Night Jam Gang's get together at Jay's house.
We kinda crashed, I didn't know anybody there, but we've both both on this listserv for a while, and the invite seemed like an open one. Gail actually knew the host and several of the pickers. OK, I actually peripherally knew a few of the folks, but they were mostly kind strangers to me. It was interesting, hence the title of this post. Nice covered porch for smokers and physics grad students, complete with an old wooden school desk where I was invited to carve my name. Which I, of course, did. Tiny little living room crammed with a variety of pickers, mosty guitars, a couple of mandos, a banjo. The musical fare was mostly of the jam-along 3 chord variety, with a nice flow of people passing the lead. One drunken woman asked me for some heroin, that was novel. All in all a lovely scene, but I was shagged from the long week, and headed home just before I became a pumpkin.
posted by cat mcconnell 8:52 AM