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This makes me happy. Especially the dude in the middle, who so clearly must have been born last.
I was listening to Shiner’s fantastic Lula this afternoon and was wondering again, for about the fortieth time, how this band was not huge. This record is just non-stop stellar. Massive and moving. So under-appreciated. Such a great record.
I usually don’t get all sentimental about gear. Especially this particular piece of gear, to which I had only a fleeting attachment, and whatever attachment I had in this case fell far short of an out-and-out love affair. It was a tool; I used it to get signal from my guitars and mics into my Mac. Guitars, I love. Even mics, I love. The M-Audio Fast Track Pro was like the New Jersey Turnpike: I love a trip to New York, and the Turnpike is the thing that gets me there. I love recording music on my computer, and my Fast Track is - was - the thing that allowed me to do it.
My friend, my tool, my Turnpike: my Fast Track has disappeared.
I’ve been irritated about it for over a year. Back when we re-did the second floor of the house, I cleared out my “music room” and put everything into a paper bag for safe keeping. I understand that “paper bag” and “safekeeping” usually don’t appear in the same sentence, but in this case, all I was looking to do was transport my gear away from construction and over to my brother-in-law’s house for a couple of months. Construction crews came and went, my gear departed and returned, and the paper bag served its purpose just fine.
Except, when the bag came back, the patch cables, mic stands, mics - even the manual and driver software -were there, and the Fast Track was not.
Devastated, I sent a photo of my lost little pal to my brother-in-law, to see if perhaps it had fallen out somewhere and taken up residence in his basement. I dug through guitar cases, boxes full of CDs, even the open back of my Fender Super Reverb, thinking that I had cleverly chosen a special spot for the Fast Track, refusing, in my packing frenzy, to believe that a paper bag was adequate enough accommodation for such a valued piece of gear. How could I have been so clever as to hide it from myself?
What this means is that for over a year, I have been stubbornly refusing to admit that he’s gone, and stubbornly refusing to write anything more than guitar parts that I record into the voice memo app of my iPhone. And for a year, that’s been good enough. I never really had an outlet for the songs, anyway, as The Blames always managed to find a reason not to rehearse, play a show, or make a record. Recording with my Fast Track was a fleeting pleasure; I got what I got out of it, and when it was gone, it was gone.
Only now, I seem to have reunited for some rock with my old band, and all signs seem to be pointing toward new uses of my missing Fast Track. If only I could find the damn thing.
Since we’re going to be on the show in a few days, I’ve been poring over other bands playing on the Fallon show, and was lucky enough to stumble across this, a very recent performance (last Saturday) of “(I Don’t Want to Go to) Chelsea” backed by The Roots. Great arrangement (even with the unlikely sousaphone) and Costello looks and sounds as good as ever (although he’s looking more and more like Joe Strummer the older he gets).
Web Exclusive! Elvis Costello Performs “(I Don’t Want to Go to) Chelsea” - Jimmy Fallon’s Video Blog
When the French give the Belgians a cheese award, you gotta pay attention. Gotta get a hook up with this Achelse Blauwe… Catharinadal | eerlijke kaas
Self-serving? I have no idea what you’re talking about. I voted for “Various Artists.” But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t vote for Jawbox. I think we win a turkey or something if we can take out Ike Reilly.
Amazon.com: Laptop Steering Wheel Desk: Electronics
Look at this product and then read the user reviews if you want to laugh and laugh and laugh. And laugh.
Dining alone. It seemed like a great idea at the time. But apparently, Texas, or at least this part of Austin, scorns sidewalks. So I offroaded here, dodging traffic and tree roots in the gloom (they also scorn streetlights) on the ten-minute walk down Arboretum Boulevard to the … What is this place? It’s neither a strip mall nor an office park. In the mid-November darkness, it’s a neon sign on the opposite side of a parking lot. But it’s noisy and warm. The football game about which I care nothing is on the silent flat screen above the bar, and large tables of mostly women, blonde and Texan, chatter against the noise in way that allows me only to hear accents, not words. The ceiling here is immense, vaulted and barn-like, with exposed trusses and faux-rustic knotty pine, amplifying the voices into a babble of volume, a violence of talk. Across the room, another solo diner, a woman, fifties and alone, rifles through the sweetener boat, clearly missing something. A desperate, failed attempt to flag down the busboy: “Sir, Sir, SIR!” yields nothing. Maybe “hermano” would have worked. The toddler at the next table staggers like a frat boy at a kegger, coughing loudly on my shoe. “Remember how we taught you to cover your mouth?” No, he doesn’t. Neither do I. Neither do I.
Push, Push … struggle!
I love Jaz Coleman. There were those who dared to think that Jaz and Killing Joke had lost their edge by the time Night Time came out in 1985. The sound may have matured, but the intensity is only barely dialed back half a notch from the first four records. For my money, this particular track pushes the aggression past where many of the songs on Fire Dances ended up. And what a riff.
Killing Joke - Eighties (via CarolineRecords)
A couple days late for ghost notes, but they’re no less fun than they would have been on Halloween. Purdie’s a master. And he’s clearly enjoying himself.
