Category: Music that doesn’t suck

R.I.P., Jimmy Buffett

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 20 Comments
I think we’re all bohos on this bus.

“Some of it’s magic, some of it’s tragic,

But I had a good life all the way.” — Jimmy Buffett, “He Went to Paris”

Jimmy Buffett always seemed to be having more fun than the rest of us.

And not just because he got stupid rich — Forbes estimates his total net worth at a billion smackers, which ain’t sponge cake — off restaurants and real estate. No, sir.

Dude hung out with all the right (wrong) people. Jerry Jeff Walker. Steve Goodman. Jim Harrison. Thomas McGuane, who wrote the liner notes for “A White Sport Coat and a Pink Crustacean,” married Buffett’s sister, Laurie, and is the only survivor of this august cluster of poets, musicians, and miscreants.

Buffett died yesterday at 76, “surrounded by his family, friends, music and dogs,” according to a statement on his website and social media. “He lived his life like a song till the very last breath and will be missed beyond measure by so many.”

My friend Hal Walter and I were fans, declaring occasional Parrot Shirt Days in his honor when we were on the copy desk at The Pueblo Chieftain back in the Eighties. Hal actually tried to get him to speak at commencement when he escaped journalism school at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

I still love listening to “A White Sport Coat.” I have it on right now as I sip my morning coffee, and just played along (inexpertly) to “Why Don’t We Get Drunk?” That one is credited to “Marvin Gardens,” which was Buffett on maracas and beer cans.

The 1977 tune “Margaritaville” was his signature tune and biggest hit. But I always preferred “Death of an Unpopular Poet,” which Buffett clearly was not. I mean, he even had a species of Florida Keys cryptofauna named after him.

Many a margarita will be hoisted to mark his sailing away. Some for breakfast, I expect. Lots of vitamin C in those limes.

R.I.P., Tony Bennett

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 9 Comments

Like Old Blue Eyes, a friend and mentor who called him “the best singer in the business,” Tony Bennett did it his way.

He died Friday in Manhattan at age 96.

But Bennett went down swinging. Despite a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease in 2016, he kept performing and recording. His last public performance was in August 2021, when he sang with Lady Gaga at Radio City Music Hall.

And he got a top-notch sendoff from The New York Times. His very fine obit in that august publication comes to us via the retired obituary writer Bruce Weber, cross-country cyclist and author of “Life is a Wheel: Love, Death, Etc., and a Bike Ride Across America.”

For what it’s worth

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 24 Comments
Looks like the tree’s bringing the heat.

Some like it hot, they say.

Not me, Bubba.

There are moments when the summertime heat feels almost bearable. Say, when there are no pressing matters and a pool sits nearby. There is an iced beverage sweating in a tall glass and a broad umbrella throwing a soupçon of shade. Someone else is picking up the tabs.

But even then. …

When I was a kid on Randolph AFB the San Antonio summers were murderous. Crouch under the Fedders window unit and play board games or haunt the officers’ club pool like a toasty ghost.

Tucson? Don’t get me started. I drove a 1974 Datsun pickup with no air conditioning, and my guest-house rental (also sans a/c) was a long, slow-rolling, late-afternoon drive from The Arizona Daily Star, where I labored in dubious battle with Young Republicans and old fascists.

Mostly I passed my days at the pool there, too. Not at the Star; at the University of Arizona, where the coeds weren’t yelling at me all the time unless they caught me drooling.

Now here I am in The Duck! City, where everything I do makes life hotter and the windows of opportunity are quickly closed and curtained against the sun.

Cycling. Running. Cooking. Especially cooking. Sometimes I feel as though it’s me browning in the skillet.

Not an early riser by nature, I find myself compelled to rush through the morning’s rituals so I can get out and back in while Tōnatiuh is still warming up in the bullpen.

Coffee. The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian, the Albuquerque Journal. More coffee, with toast this time. The litter box. Not for me, for Miss Mia, who has already been in there a time or two while I was ethering my sputtering carburetor. Then the baño for me.

A bite of breakfast — yogurt with granola, oatmeal with nuts and dried fruit, a mandarine, or some combination of these. No tea, it’s already too hot, and we don’t want to overclock the old CPU. Dole out some water to the parched foliage.

And then — hey, what’s that sound, everybody look, what’s going down? — it’s raining. Not for long, not in any quantity (0.01 inch), and it evaporates from the chip-seal in the cul-de-sac before the echo of the raindrops fades.

But still. Music to the ears. Maybe I’ll have that cup of tea after all.

Hey, cool.

Shakedown Trail

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 17 Comments
Don’t tell the industry, but a fella can still ride a 28-year-old MTB
if he wants to.

I’m not quite certain what (or if) I was thinking yesterday.

The bike docs at Two Wheel Drive had rung me up Tuesday afternoon to say my 1995 DBR Axis TT was out of headset surgery and doing nicely, but I couldn’t get down there to collect it before closing time.

TWD doesn’t open until 10 a.m., so I thought I’d go for a 45-minute trail run Wednesday morning before motoring down to fetch the bike. Sweat a little rather than a lot, don’t you know.

The scene of the crime … er, the morning trail run.

These things I did, then had a medium-heavy bite of lunch.

Sensible so far, yeah?

Don’t worry. It never lasts.

Weather conditions be damned, I just can’t not ride a new/recently repaired bike.

So I kitted up and rolled out to the Elena Gallegos for a short shakedown cruise that wound up being about 90 minutes.

It was toasty out there — just shy of 90 degrees — but bearable. And anyway, I barely noticed because I was having so much fun riding this 28-year-old mountain bike.

Don’t tell The Industry, but you can still mine a few giggles from a made-in-USA titanium MTB with a Tange steel fork, triple crank, eight-speed XT, V-brakes, flat bar, Grip Shift twisties, 26-inch wheels with 2.0 rubber, and a creaky old 1954 MeatSack® motor that couldn’t pass an emissions check in Mexico City no matter how much mordida you paid.

It’s frisky and maneuverable and weighs just under 24 pounds with a saddlebag holding two spare tubes, tire irons, and a minitool. The flat bar, V-brakes and plumpish tires let me roll over a few items I have to dodge on a drop-bar ’cross bike with cantis and 32mm knobbies. And the smaller wheels put me a little closer to the ground for purposes of falling off onto sharp rocks and spiky foliage.

I managed to keep the greasy side down yesterday through an abundance of caution and the avoidance of all truly technical sections, though I sampled a few rocky bits in the name of Science.

Mostly I was just noodling along, enjoying my little trip down Memory Lane, recalling the Good Old Days® when a rigid 26-incher with an eight-speed triple and 2.0 tires was as good as it got.

• Editor’s note: “Shakedown Street” is, of course, a tune and an album by the Grateful Dead, produced by Lowell “Little Feat” George. My favorite underground cartoonist — Gilbert Shelton (“Wonder Wart-Hog,” “The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers”) — did the album cover art.  Last, but not least, a resounding “Damn The Man!” goes out to the Save the Elena Gallegos rebels, who gave a righteous beatdown to an ill-considered plan to install an unnecessary and unwanted “visitors center” — the thin edge of a development wedge — in our little piece of paradise. Don’t tell me this town ain’t got no heart.