Category: Music that doesn’t suck

Friday mornin’ comin’ down

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 11 Comments
Leaving on a jet plane. Not Herself, but it will do
for purposes of illustration.

Herself is out of town, and Miss Mia and I are out of sorts.

Ours is a fragile ecosystem, especially Miss Mia’s little corner of it. You give her output, she’ll give you input, and plenty of it, especially if she catches you napping on the job.

“Meeeeeeeeeeeeeeowwwwwwww!”

“Hold my calls, stand by, and await further instructions.”

As Nick Nolte told Frank McRae in “48 Hrs,” “Yeah, I hear you, your voice carries.”

When we’re fully staffed, Herself takes the early shift. She gets up at stupid-thirty, feeds and waters and amuses Her Majesty, and then goes about her business while Miss Mia takes a nap.

I get the second shift, which starts a couple hours later. I feed and water and amuse Her Majesty, and then go about my business while Miss Mia takes a nap.

Then we tag team the rest of the day, which is mostly a breeze because hey, she’s a cat. Miss Mia requires about 20 hours of beauty sleep per diem.

But if one of us goes somewhere for a few days, it’s Katie bar the door. Double shifts, weird hours, and negative performance reviews. My first writeup came around 3 this morning.

“Meeeeeeeeeeeeeeowwwwwwww!”

It’s gonna be a long shift in the barrel. “Yeah, I hear you, your voice carries.”

R.I.P., David Lindley

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 13 Comments

David Lindley has taken his act on the road for the final time.

Damn, but that dude could play. And play anything with strings, with anyone who was up for it, according to his obit in The New York Times.

His collaborators included Jackson Browne, Bob Dylan, Dolly Parton, Warren Zevon, Ry Cooder, Iggy Pop, Graham Nash, and David Crosby. And that’s just the shortlist.

Writes Alex Williams:

Ever on the hunt for new sounds and textures, Mr. Lindley had “no idea” how many instruments he could play, as he told Acoustic Guitar magazine in 2000. But throughout his career he showed a knack for wringing emotion not only from the violin, mandolin, banjo, dulcimer and autoharp, but also from the Indian tanpura, the Middle Eastern oud and the Turkish saz.

That’s a dude you want on your album. He could probably play Celtic harp, rusty bedsprings or a chain-link fence if you needed it.

My people and me, we mostly knew Lindley from his work with Browne on albums like “For Everyman” and “Running on Empty.”

That first album was a who’s who of the musical world when it came out in 1973. Hear that raging piano in the background of “Red Neck Friend?” That would be Rockaday Johnnie, a.k.a. Elton John. Also in the mix on “For Everyman” — Crosby, Joni Mitchell, Sneaky Pete Kleinow, Jim Keltner, Don Henley, Glenn Frey, and Bonnie Raitt.

Our musical world is running a little closer to empty without Lindley, but that big band in the Next World just keeps on filling up.

R.I.P., Wayne Shorter

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 3 Comments

Wayne Shorter has moved on to that Big Stage in the Sky.

The tenor saxophonist and composer was 89.

Dude played with everyone. I first heard him with Weather Report, then Steely Dan. He played with Carlos Santana and Joni Mitchell, Miles Davis and Art Blakey.

And he kept his ears, eyes and mind wide open. Writes Nate Chinen in The New York Times:

A lifelong fan of comic books and science fiction, he kept a shelf crowded with action figures and wore T-shirts emblazoned with the Superman “S” logo.

Throughout his career he refused to hew too closely to any tradition except that of fearless expedition. “The word ‘jazz,’ to me,” he liked to say, “only means ‘I dare you.’”

While we’re talking jazz, David A. Graham at The Atlantic — who also has some thoughts about Shorter — reminds me that it’s the centenary of another great tenor saxophonist, Dexter Gordon, who likewise had a habit of stretching himself.

Writes Graham:

He came to greatest popular notice when, in 1986, he starred in the jazz-themed film “Round Midnight.” It was his first and last starring role, and he was nominated for an Oscar for best actor. But the best Dex is blowing Dex. Take his classic “Go” for a spin.

Here’s “Cheesecake,” from that album:

Every time I hear a horn played like this, I wish I’d gotten in line a little quicker when they were passing out the instruments in music class back in seventh grade.

I wanted to try clarinet, but they were all full up, so I went with flute. Flute’s fun, but man, it’s not the sax.

Cold blow and the rainy night

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 15 Comments

In comments Pat O’B reminds us that Sprinter, Wing, or Wang, whatever you call it, is not done with us quite yet.

The forecast for the Greater Duck! City Metropolitan Area calls for a rough aul’ day in the barrel, starting right about now and lasting until 2 a.m. tomorrow. From the National Weather Service:

Southwest winds 30 to 50 mph with gusts of 60 to 75 mph expected. … Damaging winds will blow down trees and power lines. Damage may occur to mobile homes, roofs, sheds, barns, outbuildings, and fences. Widespread power outages are expected.

Oof. Batten down the hatches, mateys.

We’re semiprepared for Apocalypse Junior.

The lanterns are charged, and the headlamps and flashlights all have fresh batteries, with a candle lantern in reserve.

Jugs of filtered water abound, and a few days of nonperishable edibles are close at hand, so we won’t have to eat the neighbors. Yet.

The ovens will be out of commission, but we have a gas cooktop, and a two-burner Coleman for backup.

Staying warm might be an issue — we have a Mr. Heater Portable Buddy and two fireplaces, but have never used either of them. We could end up warmer than we like (on fire) or colder (dead). Thus, the three-season sleeping bags in reserve.

We have battery banks for our iPhones, for all the good that will do us, because our cul-de-sac is a sinkhole that cellular signals float past unmolested unless the phones can mooch off the wifi.

Finally, my main MacBook Pro is plugged into an APC battery backup. This is likewise useless since without power the Innertubes will deflate, and trying to use the iPhone as a hotspot (see “cellular signals,” above) is the hee, and also the haw.

At least I can take copious notes on the End Times. I hope the alien archaeologists who stumble upon my chronicle are fluent in Snark.

• Musical note: The headline is taken from the Planxty tune of the same name. They know something about the shite weather in the auld sod, so they do.

Up on the roof

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 12 Comments
On the roof, the only place I know,
where you just have to wish to make it so.

Every day you are above the sod is a good one.

I was a little further above the sod than is my custom this morning, filling up four 39-gallon Hefty bags with the pine needles carpeting the northernmost corner of our roof.

Ordinarily this would give me some worthy topic for complaint (“Flat roofs are stupid,” and so on). But we don’t live in Turkey, or Syria, so we still have our stupid flat roof intact above our heads instead of in pieces smack dab on top of them.

Plus, we had a roofer take a look-see up there the other day, and he said he thought we didn’t need a completely new roof, just a few precautionary touchups here and there. And maybe someone should rake up that shaggy carpet of pine needles on the north side, he mused.

This roofer worked for the company that installed our roof back in 2007, and shortly thereafter launched his own operation with a lot of the same people from the previous outfit, which is no longer with us (due to personal matters rather than personnel matters).

So we’re inclined toward optimism, which regular visitors know is not Your Humble Narrator’s natural state of being.

Below the roof, down there where the sod lies, a landscaper whose work we have admired has had a walkaround — like the roofer, The Big Boss Man of his outfit — and one of his people just popped by to take some measurements. So we’re expecting a design proposal and cost estimate directly.

Maybe, just maybe, since it seems we might not have to put a new bonnet on El Rancho Pendejo, we can afford to have its grass skirt hemmed. Use a little less of our imaginary Colorado River water. Encourage the lawn-gobbling deer to browse elsewhere, which would endear us to our gardening neighbors.

Flat roofs are stupid, though. Just sayin’.