Category: Music that doesn’t suck

Good times, bad times

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 14 Comments

The wind woke me at midnight, a reminder that despite the warnings from the National Weather Service I had neglected to take down the wind chimes and hummingbird feeders and store the patio furniture’s cushions in their plastic footlocker.

But I’m a light sleeper, and thought drowsily, “Oh, well. How bad could it be?” And rolled over and went back to sleep.

Pretty bad, as it turns out.

About three hours later it sounded like God thought He was John Bonham and our house was His drum kit and it was time to perform “Moby Dick.” The long version.

Well. When God wants to rock out, you gotta get up and dance.

We figured that if the thundering blew us out of a sound sleep, it was probably scaring the bejaysis out of Miss Mia Sopaipilla, who overnights in the half-bath, where a goodly wind can set the fan vent a-flapping like a hi-hat cymbal.

Naturally, she couldn’t have cared less. Nothing scares Miss Mia. But she was delighted to find out that we had suddenly become lovers of the wee small hours like her and immediately set about performing her morning rituals, albeit a few hours early.

Outside, the cushions were up against a wall — we got lucky, the worst of the wind was coming from the south, or else they’d have been spotted flying in formation over the San Luis Valley — but the backyard trees lost a few limbs and our young pistache was bobbing and weaving like a stoner in the front row at Madison Square Garden in 1973.

So I stabilized it with a couple rubber bungee straps, stuffed the cushions in their footlocker, and collected the hummingbird feeders. Then Herself and I stumbled back to bed.

This dude got blown away last year.

Well, that pissed off Miss Mia, who hates a party-pooper the way Clarence Thomas hates feeling a little light in the wallet pocket. And for the next couple of hours she shared her feelings with us at some volume, sounding like Robert Plant wearing pants three sizes too small, until we finally said to hell with it and got up for good.

It was then that I noticed the wind had peeled the outer layer off our “Save the Elena Gallegos” yard sign to reveal a campaign pitch for Khalid Emshadi, a Republican candidate for the state House of Representatives, who got blown away last year by incumbent Democrat Elizabeth Thomson.

No such thing as an ill wind, I guess.

¡Que viva Puebla!

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 19 Comments
We’ve got visitors.

It’s Cinco de Mayo, which is not the Mexican Fourth of July, though Americans treat it as comparable, even adding it to their National What the Hell Let’s Drink & Drive Party Calendar.

The neighbors, the ones with the kids, have decided to throw a fiesta in the cul-de-sac this year, possibly because an uncle from Colorado was coming down to do the Turquoise Trail Burro Race at Cerrillos.

• Read “The Treasure of the Sierra Mojada,” in which I recount my own experience as a burro racer.

The uncle got here yesterday and his burros were quite the draw for our sleepy little ’hood.

My man Hal Walter will not be participating in tomorrow’s race at Cerrillos — he will drive pretty much anywhere at the drop of a sombrero, and will drop it himself if need be.

But he is busy retrieving his son Harrison from Colorado Mountain College this weekend; the kid just finished his first year of postsecondary education and will be spending the summer at the family’s Crusty County rancheroo.

This evening, Hal and Harrison will be motoring from Leadville back to Weirdcliffe, the uncle and the burros will return to the cul-de-sac, and we’ll have some quality neighbor time and medium-light refreshments to commemorate the ass-whuppin’ that General Ignacio Zaragoza and his troops laid on the French at the Battle of Puebla on May 5, 1862.

One time, one night in America.

Good Friday?

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 17 Comments
Elena Gallegos gets a water feature.

Good Friday? I wouldn’t know. It’s too early for a proper review.

Yesterday was a pretty good Thursday, though.

The weather shifted gears a bit, and I was able to give the trees a sip of water and get myself out for 90 minutes of sun worship on the foothills trails.

The Co-Motion Divide Rohloff is a great bike for this sort of thing if you’re not in a rush, which I never am. It goes about 32 pounds with all its bells and whistles, which include drop bars, a rigid steel frameset, and a pair of hefty 50mm Donnelly X’Plor MSO tires.

The cool spring having left me low on mileage and high on a whiter shade of pale, I wasn’t exactly skipping the light fandango in the Elena Gallegos Open Space. At times, especially on the hills, it felt like I was towing a Burley trailer containing 16 vestal virgins, a waiter, and his tray.

A mountain biker yielding trail on a climb shouted, “Hey, gravel bikes!” as I lumbered up. No, it’s a touring bike, I mumbled to myself, and there’s only one of us, shortly before a dude on an actual gravel bike passed me so fast the waiter couldn’t take his drink order.

Speaking of drinks, while railing the corners down Trail 342 bound for 203A, I abruptly found myself facing a water crossing. We’ve been in The Duck! City for nearly nine years now and I don’t think I’ve ever seen water running in this little arroyo.

So, yeah. A good Thursday, for sure. But a good Friday? Don’t ask Herself. Someone buggered something down to the Death Star and she had to go down there, on a day off, to boot a server in the slats.

R.I.P., Keith Reid

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 6 Comments

Keith Reid, the lyricist behind Procol Harum’s legendary “A Whiter Shade of Pale,” has gone west. He was 76.

I would’ve written “has left the stage,” but Reid was apparently never on it. He was “a full-time non-performing member” of the band, according to The Guardian.

That doesn’t mean Reid wasn’t carrying his share of the load. He wrote almost all of Procol Harum’s lyrics throughout nine albums, from 1967 through ’77, and then a couple more albums’ worth for good measure in 1991 and 2003.

In an interview with Uncut magazine cited in American Songwriter, Reid addressed the song’s origin and meaning.

“I had the phrase ‘a whiter shade of pale,’ that was the start, and I knew it was a song,” he said. “It’s like a jigsaw where you’ve got one piece, then you make up all the others to fit in. I was trying to conjure a mood as much as tell a straightforward, girl-leaves-boy story. With the ceiling flying away and room humming harder, I wanted to paint an image of a scene.”

In the 1991 film “The Commitments,” Jimmy Rabbitte derides Reid’s work on “Whiter Shade” as the “poxiest bleedin’ lyrics ever written.” But I notice he knew them so well he could correct Steven Clifford when the pianist misquotes the first line.

Me, I loved those lyrics, and the organ riffs nicked from Bach, too. So I tip me cap to Reid, who joins his old bandmate, lead singer Gary Brooker — who wrote the music for “Whiter Shade” — in that ever-growing jam band in the sky.

Extra credit listening

• “A Salty Dog.”

• “Conquistador.”