« March 2007 | Home | May 2007 »
A year ago today we were sitting in a lawyer's office in downtown Boston closing on our first condo. One year later, we're loving the joys of being homeowners, including replacing a sewer pipe, painting rooms, planting herbs outside, and building new shelves. We wouldn't trade it for anything, and unlike many of the gadgets in my life, I don't feel any need to upgrade. At least until the iCondo is available.
Jerad posted this in Nuttin Much | Comments (1)
Just some links today.
Pop Songs 07 will certainly become a regular read of mine. The author is going to write something about every R.E.M. song, or at least all album tracks and significant b-sides and unreleased stuff. There's already enough there, at least one song from every album, to keep you busy reading for a while. The comments and discussion that each post starts are also quite interesting. I just wish I would've thought of this first. What a great idea.
I want this lamp for my new orange study. Maybe I could use this idea to put all of our photos up on the wall in that room, too.
Here is Stylus's best one-hit-wonders. I'm not sure how "Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm" was left off of there. I remember that song being huge.
As a Googleophile I've naturally fallen in love with Google Browser Sync and Google Reader, but they really have made my web browsing more enjoyable and much much easier. With GBS, my Firefox window has all of the same tabs and bookmarks at home as it does at work. If I see something during the day that I want to wait to read or watch that night at home, I just leave the tab open and come back to it later. Google Reader is just an RSS reader, but it integrates so well into my tabs and web browsing habits that I've dumped my other readers to exclusively use this one. Now my first tab is always Gmail, and the second is always Google Reader. If you're not reading your blogs, news pages, and Best of Craigslist using an RSS reader yet, you're wasting a whole lot of time.
I have a good weekend ahead of me - Modest Mouse (with Johnny Marr!!) on Friday night, Spoon at the MFA on Saturday, and a yard sale either Saturday or Sunday, depending on when it decides to rain. Come buy my stuff.
Update: Someone was inspired by the site at the top of this post and is doing the song-by-song blog thing with the Talking Heads. J2, when are you going to start yours on Radiohead?
Jerad posted this in Music | Comments (4)
A couple of weeks ago I had the pleasure of seeing my boyhood hero (it's trite but true) speak at Salem State College. Cal Ripken was there as the first in SSC's 2007 Speaker Series. I grew up in Pennsylvania, but Baltimore was still the closest MLB team, and Cal was always my favorite player. I was lucky enough to get a ticket to see him in his 2131st consecutive game, breaking Lou Gehrig's consecutive games streak record. No matter what other baseball games I might ever go to, I know that none of them will be as great as that one was. Unfortunately, his Baseball Hall of Fame induction is happening in Cooperstown on the same day that I have tickets to see the Police at Fenway Park, so I think I'm going to have to skip the NY trip.
Anyhow, at SSC he talked about "The Ripken Way," including the eight traits that someone would need if they were to ever break his streak. He was quite interesting and humorous, although I think that the highlight for most was the Q&A at the end. The last two questions were from two of the kids in the audience; the final one really stumped him - "Should I be a shortstop or a catcher?"
Jerad posted this in Baseball | Comments (0)
If you've somehow never heard The Stone Roses' "I Am the Resurrection," get yourself over to Information Leafblower right now and listen. That's an order. The first three or four minutes of the proper song would make it a classic if that's all that there was, but then that's followed with five minutes of the best guitar solo ever. John Squier covers so much ground in those five minutes that anyone with any respect for the guitar will be left mouth hanging wide open. This isn't your father's classic rock solo.
Jerad posted this in Music | Comments (0)
Warning: clicking on this link could result in humming, banging your head against a wall, complete lack of productivity, or just hating me (don't shoot the messenger!)
Jerad posted this in Music | Comments (0)
Sorry to anyone who tried to check out their favorite Driveblind.net posts over the past 24 hours. It looks like I forgot to renew my domain in time, but as you can see we're back in business. I won't let it happen again.
If anyone knows anything about building guitars, let me know below. I'm starting my first project, which will be building a Jaguar/Jazzmaster hybrid, mostly from Warmoth parts. I'm trying to decide if the three-piece vs. one-piece body will make any difference, other than in price. I'm sure that I'll talk more about this project as things move along. Right now I'm starting to get the hardware and electronics together. I think that it's going to end up as a Jaguar-style body and neck (24" scale) with Jazzmaster pickups and electronics. I might add some of my own flourishes, too, like a Jonny Greenwood-style momentary cut switch.
Jerad posted this in Website | Comments (0)
On Friday night I went to TT the Bear's to see Robyn Hitchcock and the Venus 3. The pedigree of the band is pretty good and diverse; the Venus 3 includes three guys who between them have been in The Minus 5, Young Fresh Fellows, Tuatara, Ministry, and of course R.E.M. In fact, they're actually one half of what is R.E.M's touring band now. It's always great to see Peter Buck, who must be one of the Hardest Working Men in Rock and Roll, in a small club. This is the second time that I've had the pleasure of doing this in Boston, the other time being when I saw Tuatara, Wayward Shamans, and Minus 5 at the Paradise a few years back.
The show started off with just Robyn, and the other band members joined one by one over the next couple of songs. Peter was content to stand back out of the spotlight next to the drum kit, which made getting good pictures of him pretty difficult. He played an Epiphone semi-hollow 12-string for most of the set, while Scott McCaughey played the Rickenbacker bass on the opposite side of Robyn. Robyn was of course as entertaining and weird as ever. His stories and introductions were fun, as always. The band played a good mix of Robyn's older stuff and the new songs from Ole! Tarantula. I was very excited when I recognized Peter's opening riff to "Madonna of the Wasps," probably my favorite Hitchcock song (and that probably because of Peter's involvement on it.) Near the end of the set Peter picked up his trusty Rickenbacker and they turned things up a little. At that point they played one of my live favorites, "Brenda's Iron Sledge," which led into a great encore of covers. They ended up playing three covers in a row, all from Robyn's '60s idols. First, they did a ripping version of Dylan's "Ballad of a Thin Man," which rocked even if they still haven't quite figured out the bridge (I have a bootleg from a few months ago where you can hear someone - maybe Peter - exclaim at the end that it's "the only Dylan song with a fucking bridge"). Next, they went into the Beatles' "She Said, She Said," and then topped things off with Pink Floyd/Syd Barrett's "See Emily Play." We noticed at least two people in the audience wearing Syd t-shirts, so the crowd was certainly happy.
After the show, I skipped out without heading over to the merch stand, which I assume would have been manned by Robyn, Peter, Scott, and Bill (Reiflin, the drummer). I've met all except Bill before, so I don't feel too bad about it. I've been searching all over for a recording of the show, but even though the three or four shows before this one were bootlegged and distributed, this one hasn't shown up yet. I'll keep checking there for a little while.
My Flickr pictures of Robyn and Peter.
Finally, happy R.E.M. day. Tonight, 27 years ago, the band played their first gig at the old church in Athens, GA. Go ahead, pull out one of those old records and enjoy. I'll leave you with this performance of "So. Central Rain" on Letterman, their first TV performance. When they played this in 1983, it was still "too new to be named." Check out the shy, hiding Michael Stipe. You won't see that any more.
Jerad posted this in Live | Comments (0)
www.flickr.com
|
