Summer’s end’s around the bend, just flyin’? Nope. It flew right past us at 12:50 a.m. Mountain time and here we sit, sipping coffee as we slip-slide straight into fall.
Speaking of falls, we have a Noo Joisey senator being indicted (again) on federal corruption charges; MAGA cultists in the House of Reprehensibles making a meal (more of an amuse-bouche, really) of Squeaker Charlie McCarthy’s withered testicles; and at least one Supreme Court justice with all the ethical bona fides of a hyena on a gutpile.
I’d like to assign blame for all these shenanigans, but it’s a beautiful day and there are bicycles around here that need riding. So I’ll just observe that if we keep locking our mutts in the national pantry, we are liable to keep finding ourselves light on pork come suppertime.
Pogo was right.
Mad Blog Media 
I knew that song was coming. Well played Patrick. There are guitars around here just waiting to be tickled, and I have a jam session this afternoon. All of this just suits me right down to the ground!
Pat O’Brien
Aha … I become predictable in my old age. At least I didn’t repeat “Equinoxious” this time around, eh?
Prine could write happy, sad, and everything in between, couldn’t he?
It was fine to see during that hourlong retrospective how gently his musical collaborators treated him in his final years, taking care not to step on his increasingly weaker vocals. They’d just take a step or two backward and let him warm his old bones in the spotlight.
Good on you for planning a weekend jam. I broke out the Roadhouse last night and flailed away at a couple of my favorite Prine tunes. I didn’t overdo it, of course; one must consider the cat, the houseplants, and the neighbors.
Only the song link was predictable. “Equi-knocks” and “Squeaker Charlie McCarthy” are golden. Prine was one of a kind. Songs from real life, as Bonnie said, was what he wrote, except for the occasional fun and whimsical tunes like “In Spite Of Ourselves” or “Please Don’t Bury Me” or “Let’s Talk Dirty In Hawaiian.
Pat O’Brien
I love “Please Don’t Bury Me” and “Illegal Smile.” Also, “Come Back to Us Barbara Lewis Hare Krishna Beauregard,” which was widely panned despite having Steve Goodman on guitar, Bonnie Raitt on vocals, and Steve Cropper producing. It’s a fun one to play, too.
We were just talking about how many of us really miss liner notes. Doing those deep dives into a song or an album, connecting the dots, Seeing who played with whom and when, and what was going on in their lives when that happened
iOS 17 does a pretty good job bringing that back
https://www.macrumors.com/guide/ios-17-music-app/
Song Credits
Tapping on the three-dot icon next to a song that is playing or in a playlist shows song credits. The credits show the performing artists, composition artists, and those who were involved in production and engineering.
I know this is a first world problem, and we know that Apple sucks at search, but I wish the new liner notes were hyperlinked to a database of all musicians
Because it says James Brown played the organ on
Come Back To Us?
But you can’t click his name to find out if that’s the James Brown.
“ we know that Apple sucks at search …”
One of my favorite examples:
A look at liner notes:
Liner notes were the shit, especially if they included lyrics, which you really needed with some musicians.
“Was that ‘kiss the sky’ or ‘kiss this guy?””
Some Tom Waits numbers often required the use of Mister Spock’s Universal Translator.
One of the top-five liner notes of all time has to be Thomas McGuane’s addendum to Jimmy Buffett’s “A White Sport Coat and a Pink Crustacean.” Vintage Captain Berserko, that was. Seek it out with all possible speed. If you can’t find it I’ll reproduce it, IP piracy be damned. Half of the parties involved are dead.
Seems like lately, once a week I heard a song that really made me wish I knew more about it.
The other day, I noticed Brandi Carlyle on the Ted Lasso soundtrack. Looked like it had album art, but there wasn’t an actual album. Found something that said that this was a Burt Baccarat style cover of a song from The Wiz, recorded at Rick Rubin’s studio, for Ted Lasso. That’s a lot of fire power for a throwaway mood music piece in a dramedy.
https://music.apple.com/us/album/home/1688465499?i=1688465503
You captured an element of melancholy and remembrance for most of us who stumble in to this saloon. Fall is approaching, the year has been reasonably good, but we are touched with the recollection of the world’s issues of the past couple of years. I don’t think the hard part about ageing is the affects on the body, but on the affects to our spirit realizing that although we are still around, a lot of out great memories are not. Thanks for tapping on the bar and waking us up a little bit. In the mean time can you pour me another pint?
“Ain’t it funny, how time slips away?” as Willie Nelson sang. Seems like we were just moving the Geezer Rides up a half hour because it was too bloody hot to wait until 9 a.m. to start, and suddenly this past Wednesday we were rolling out with arm and knee warmers.
But I won’t miss the heat, if it stays gone. I will miss John Prine. But we still have Willie, and Mel Brooks, too.
As for pints, the pub is a little light on the good stuff. I can offer a nice faux IPA. …
Y’all are still here, so I’m assuming none of you got raptured.
Unless, like Eddie Murphy’s karate man, you rapture on the inside?
First day of fall and a melancholy song. Seems appropriate. I opened my email yesterday and found out that my dissertation advisor, who was in the late fall of his years, had been recovering from surgery when he got the latest brand of Covid. Dead within 24 hours. One of his other grad students who had married his daughter send out the word on the modern version of the coconut wireless the following day. So those scenes of gravestones, well…we never know when the Grim Reaper will catch our own wheel.
That old guy put up with me when I spent far more time fighting the devils in my head than doing the work I was supposed to be doing but he didn’t cut his losses. I guess that is why I always had a soft spot in my head for grad students who had their own demons to conquer.
Happy fall, everyone.
Sorry to hear that, Khal. It’s a reminder that The Bug is still very much among us, and will be even more so as cooler weather and holiday festivities put more people indoors and on airplanes. I know several people who’ve caught a version of it recently on vacations abroad, at reunions, etc. So far they’ve all pulled through.
But we’re at a time in our lives when we’ll be saying “Adios” more than “Bienvenidos,” que no? I guess we should start practicing our “Lo siento muchos.”
Wish I had some pictures of Gil from Back in the Day. One of our other Geology professors was Bill Meyers, brother of Jim Meyers from up around Steamboat. At the time, Jim was a USCF national champ in his age group and Bill’s son Karlin was on the Stony Brook intercollegiate bike racing team. Karlin got his old man Bill on bikes and I joined them, eventually Bill and I buying those 1985 Cannondale boneshakers. Then Gil felt left out and got a really nice Bianchi racing bike and it was off to the Sunday Morning Races on eastern Long Island. There was a great out and back from Stony Brook/Port Jefferson out to the North Fork around Mattituck and we did that on most weekends.
Gil kept riding until he was sufficiently elderly to be worried about crashing or being hit, and the roads were getting too busy and dangerous with suburban development. Bill eventually retired from the department, moved out west to join Jim and went on to be a USCF national champ in his own right. Been an interesting ride.
Here is Bill Meyers, on page 8
Click to access 2._0_GEO_NEWSLETTER_FINAL_2.28.11.pdf
Ah yes, “We have met the enemy and he is us.”
Hey Mr O’G, with all due respect, please leave off the “Noo Joisey” knocks, will ya? Attack the dirty pol, but not the state – my Blue heaven. Thanks.
(aka NJgreyhead)
A t’ousan’ I’m-sorries, Eric. Right you are. As a Bibleburger I used to get irked when the Boulderites would look at me with compassion and say, “How can you bear it, living DOWN THERE?”
“Easy,” I’d reply. “Great road rides, solid mountain biking, a couple bike shops I’ve dealt with since the Eighties, a lower cost of living, an airport I could bike to if the need arose, and a homeowners association whose sole purpose is to throw an annual block party.”
They were afeared that if they ever crossed the Palmer Divide they’d get bitten by a born-again and turn into a Klansman, I guess. Meanwhile I got to do weekly road rides on the 1986 world-championship course at the Air Force Academy and shred the gnar on Captain Jacks and the Chutes.