Ari's getting married in two months, and he and I did a bachelor tour this weekend... We saw Stone Temple Pilots at two festivals, the first on Saturday night in downtown Kansas City and the second on the outskirts of St. Louis. The shows were great, and we had a good time. STP is clearly back in form and enjoying themselves after nearly six years apart.
Scott Weiland was clearly going for a Jack-Nicholson-as-the-Joker look...
They played the same setlist twice:
Big Empty
Wicked Garden
Big Bang Baby
Vasoline
Lady Picture Show
Lounge Fly
Crackerman
Sour Girl
Creep
Plush
Interstate Love Song
Coma
Down
Sin
Some jam I didn't recognize that sounded like a James Brown tune
Sex Type Thing
Trippin' on a Hole in a Paper Heart
Dead & Bloated
Good setlist, but no real surprises. Greatest hits, basically.
Great show in Virginia! It was downpouring torrentially all night, and people were turned away from the show because the roads were so bad, but we made it in. Good setlist -- they played the entire new album.
Here's a clip I shot (my first YouTube!) of them performing Jigsaw Falling Into Place (someone posted a full version here:
I'm in NYC today, home tonight, NYC again Monday, NYC again next Thursday, and then I head out West on Memorial Day. (Whew!)
STP played together for the first time in over five years last night, and they're starting a 65-show tour before recording a new album. It made my summer, and on top of the Radiohead and Pearl Jam are touring.
Earlier this week, I was in a restaurant in the City and heard a Kayne West song
that sampled the Steely Dan line from Kid Charlemagne, "Did you realize, that you were a champion in their eyes..."
Is nothing sacred anymore? Steely Dan as a rap sample? Though I guess I heard a rap song sample Black Cow some time about ten years ago...
Also, in a sign that I'm old, I have to admit that it was the first time I'd even heard a Kanye West song!
In another sign that I'm getting old (aside from the back pain and the fact that my masseusse told me today that I might be on my way to something called Frozen Shoulder if I'm not careful), it hit me this week that the first time I heard Dave Matthews Band was fifteen years ago! Jesus, I'm geriatric.
Albany, NY -- Ten Years in the Landfill in the Sky
Today, May 29th, marks ten years since Jeff Buckley died. Though he only released one album, Grace, before he died, it was totally evident that he had a great career ahead of him. He was one of the best vocalists of the last 30 years.
I recently discovered Songs for My Sweetheart the Drunk, the double-album he released posthumously. It's really good, particularly the first disc -- the second was unfinished. Particularly worth checking out is the first track, The Sky is a Landfill, but the second disc has one gem -- the incomplete I Know We Could be So Happy, which features Jeff filling in the percussion track by tapping his fingers on a mic. Somehow, it works.
Albany, NY -- Brownie, You're Doin' a Heck of a Job
More from CableMonkey in Louisiana:
I just went around to a few of the stores here in the local area I live in. Most of the gas stations are currently out of gas. The local Pilot station has the low and high grade gas, but no mid grade. A no-brand gas station had nothing but the high grade. I think I saw cars at the Exxon station on the south side of town, but I didn't go there. Every Citgo station I saw was out of gas. The Exxon station in Start, Louisiana only had diesel.
I actually live just east of Monroe. I've heard reports from West Monroe that there is gas there at many locations. I have heard nothing from Monroe itself.
As for food, everything seems to be fine. Rumors are still going around like crazy and its hard to distinguish between false and real information.
Michael Brown, the blithering idiot in charge of FEMA - a job he trained for by running something called the International Arabian Horse Association - admitted he didn't know until Thursday that there were 15,000 desperate, dehydrated, hungry, angry, dying victims of Katrina in the New Orleans Convention Center.
Was he sacked instantly? No, our tone-deaf president hailed him in Mobile, Ala., yesterday: "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job."
It would be one thing if President Bush and his inner circle - Dick Cheney was vacationing in Wyoming; Condi Rice was shoe shopping at Ferragamo's on Fifth Avenue and attended "Spamalot" before bloggers chased her back to Washington; and Andy Card was off in Maine - lacked empathy but could get the job done.
But it is a chilling lack of empathy combined with a stunning lack of efficiency that could make this administration implode.
At Alternet, Jordan Flaherty discusses the race and class implications of the relief efforts in New Orleans:
Long before Katrina, New Orleans was hit by a hurricane of poverty, racism, disinvestment, deindustrialization and corruption. Simply repairing the damage from this pre-Katrina hurricane will take billions.
The New York Times reviews Green Day's tour -- I'm going to see them for the third time on the tour in Hartford on Friday. They're great, and American Idiot is a seminal album in punk history, but they unfortunately have been playing the same setlist, night in and night out. I'm really going to see Jimmy Eat World, whom I saw in Columbus last November and who put on one hell of a show.
Time to watch last night's Real Time with Bill Maher. One of the guests is Bradley Whitford, who when not playing bass with Aerosmith, stars as Josh Lyman on the West Wing. Man, I can't wait for new episodes of that.
I am completely swamped with work, needing to put in several more hours tonight to meet an AM deadline, but I didn't want to go a whole day without posting.
Looks like we took some relief too soon; Hurricane Katrina may very well be the biggest humanitarian disaster this country has seen since the Great Depression. I wish that I could show more empathy for the victims, but this is simply beyond anything I can comprehend... My heart is sick, but not as sick as it should be for the people, towns, and cities that have been devastated.
I've been listening today to an album I've been trying to get my hands on for over a year, Genesis's Archive 1967-1975. It's great... especially a live version of the epic Supper's Ready. Genesis's music from the 1970s is unknown to most, but I highly recommend it.
In his column this week, Frank Rich explains the importance of Cindy Sheehan's campaign and gives us a sneak preview of the Bush administration's Iraq War marketing efforts: "The marketing campaign will crescendo in two weeks, on the anniversary of 9/11, when a Defense Department "Freedom Walk" will trek from the site of the Pentagon attack through Arlington National Cemetery to a country music concert on the Mall. There the false linkage of Iraq to 9/11 will be hammered in once more, this time with a beat: Clint Black will sing 'I Raq and Roll,' a ditty whose lyrics focus on Saddam, not the Islamic radicals who actually attacked America. Lest any propaganda opportunity be missed, Arlington's gravestones are being branded with the Pentagon's slogans for military campaigns, like Operation Iraqi Freedom, The Associated Press reported last week - a historic first. If only the administration had thought of doing the same on the fallen's coffins, it might have allowed photographs." Simply Orwellian, no?
I am really enjoying my new Ovation LX roundback acoustic-electric. Here's a podcast of my first recording, a cover of Nirvana's All Apologies. I just learned this one this weekend.
This evening, I'll be going to a wedding for old high school friends who have been dating since about the eighth grade. Many of the guests will be high school classmates whom I have not seen in years. Needless to say, I'm not all that excited, but hope to enjoy myself anyway. I've never been to a real wedding before, and I hope to take some photos of this one for my site.
Why on earth should evolution be "on the defensive?" There are no "both sides" (Bush) to this argument. I guess it's because evolution's opposition is more or less bulletproof. People have faith have that faith even in the face of new facts. It's what they've been instructed to do. It's wrong, but it's so difficult to solve. It's one of the reasons man invented religion -- once you have people believing "no matter what," you can get people to do anything.
Iraq's Kurds are considering dropping their demands for the right to secede from Iraq. I doubt they will give that up, as it's what they want more than anything else, but if they do, it's a tremendous gain for us and the country of Iraq. Speaking of Iraq, did anyone watch last night's season premiere of Real Time with Bill Maher? Bill seems to have changed his tune a bit... as last season drew to a close, he began to say that the Bush administration might be getting it right... democracy was starting to appear in the Middle East. Well, what a difference a summer can make!
And from today's LA Times, a piece on aging rock stars going on tour. I'm bummed I wasn't able to see Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers this summer, but couldn't get tickets. There's a guy who's still making good music today; his last album, The Last DJ, may have been his best. and the one before, Echo, was nearly as good. And in not-so-feel-good old rockstar news, the members of Our Lady Peace, who are opening for the Stones in Canada, are upset with the Stones because the Stones won't give them tickets for their families. Tickets are running $200 a piece. And to think we complained ten years ago that Eagles tickets were $67...
While on my journey to pick up my prepaid cell phone (more on this in a bit), I headed over to Division St., which is apparently the area of southeastern Portland that Elliott Smith used to haunt. It's in an area that's mostly industrial (photo, photo, photo), and I wasn't inclined to spend much time there. Suddenly, the bleakness of some of his early music seemed to make a lot of sense.
According to sweetadeline.net it's been announced that the upcoming artsy-looking Sony flick Thumbsucker will feature three Elliott songs -- among others, the movie starts Vincent D'Onofrio, Keanu Reeves, and Vince Vaughn. And from the trailer, I have absolutely NO idea what the movie is about.
I didn't write any music in Portland, as I'd hoped, so for the heck of it, I'm going to post one more recording I've done of one of his songs. It's an acoustic version of his song "Cupid's Trick", done last year around this time.
I always love Frank Rich, who's been on vacation the last couple of weeks. He states in his latest piece that someone needs to tell President Bush that the war in Iraq is over, but I think that Dubya is already aware of that, because he appears ready to move on. We know what "all options are on the table" means when it comes to Iran... it's a matter of time before the Cindy Sheehans of Operation Iranian Democracy are marching in front of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. War sucks, and there may be no song that illustrates its pain and senselessness better than Billy Joel's Goodnight Saigon.
It was a night for the old men to shine in the majors tonight. 43-year-old Roger Clemens threw a two-hitter over eight shutout innings, and still drew a no-decision to the Pirates. His ERA stands at 1.32, and yet he's only won 11 games halfway through August -- has a pitcher ever gotten less run support from his team?
Roger is a veritable tyke next to Julio Franco, who, at 10 days shy of his 47th birthday, hit his 9th home run of the season. If he hits another homer next week or later, he will become the oldest player to hit a round-tripper in the bigs. He's showing few signs of slowing down -- he's hitting .292 this season, just a few ticks off of his career average.
A lot of John Mayer's music doesn't quite do it for me, but I've heard a song of his over and over in passing lately that I can't identify but sounds pretty good. I think it's a new single. Does anyone know anything about this? If so, send me an e-mail. And congrats to him on his Song of the Year Grammy for "Daughters." That song isn't my cup of tea, but check out the song "Clarity" on the same album, Heavier Things. It's an amazing song, and his great website features streaming audio of several songs on that CD, including "Clarity."
I went to Best Buy just southeast of Portland today to pick up a Virgin Mobile prepay phone to temporarily replace my Blackberry. I paid $80 for a basic phone and 300 minutes, which should cover me for the next five days. $80 is reasonable enough to me, but as I reviewed the pay plans, it occurred to me that this is just another way in which ironically, the poor pay more than the better-to-do for the same services. For instance, if someone uses 10 minutes each day for a month on a normal plan, he'll pay $40 and still have minute to spare. However, if that same person gets a prepaid phone, he'll pay $75. The materials included with the prepaid phone were pretty misleading -- their example shows what one will pay if he uses 112 minutes in a month, but how many people only average 4 minutes per day on their phones? I easily break 1,000 minutes every month. Virgin Mobile clearly targets lower-income individuals, as well -- nearly all of the images on their packaging and website feature younger and minority individuals.
If you need my temporary phone number to reach me this week, send me an e-mail.
I'm still sitting in my hotel room hoping to sort out my phone situation. Verizon kept advising me to come into the store in Albany (like I'm going to fly back 3000 miles) to take care of this, and so I sent my sister in to take care of it. Unfortunately, they still can't have me anything any earlier than Tuesday, and couldn't even guarantee that. My sister's being extremely helpful and offered to FedEx me my grandmother's cell phone for me to use for the week. Unfortunately, FedEx told me that to have it by tomorrow, I'd have to pay over three hundred dollars, so that's out. A reader suggested to me that I get a prepaid phone, so I'm about to go out and do this. I can't believe that this has consumed 5 hours of the last day of my vacation and counting.
While spending the last few hours sitting in my hotel room, I learned St. Ide's Heaven, the Elliott Smith song I mentioned yesterday, on the guitar. I recorded it in CoolEdit and packaged it into a Podcast. I'm not a particularly good singer, but I'm better than this recording would indicate -- it's done in my "I don't really know the lyrics and am reading them off of a webpage" voice. It was also recorded on my new Washburn Rover travel guitar, which is taking some getting used to but so much better than a Backpacker. Take a listen.
I'm really happy to keep opening my homepage to Yahoo! News and finding a new story about Cindy Sheehan's protest. This is real news... it's not Tom Cruise, it's not a runaway bride, it's not the latest OJ interview. Cindy Sheehan is not just an average protester, and she must be heard.
So, I left Lake Moses to do the last 100 miles to Spokane. Seems pretty crazy that I can do all of this driving without any company, but I do it all the time -- how? Well, I've created this pretty high tolerance for driving as long as long as there's something good on the radio. My definition of "something good" has broadened significantly -- I've developed a Christianity fetish lately... it just sort of fascinates me. I just wrapped up Dante's Purgatorio on the plane (which, just like Inferno, I would not have been able to follow without Robert and Jean Hollander's amazing translation and commentary), and it's pretty hard to keep up with medieval poetry if you don't know much about the New Testament. Christian radio can be a lot of fun to listen to. They can fit Jesus into everything (see Crown Financial Ministries), and before today, I'd never heard the word "prayerfully." I'd listened to a piece on dieting for God, and the diet turned out to be Kashrut!
One of the things that makes Christian radio so much fun to listen to is their incessant bashing of liberals and liberalism. Case in point: on USA Radio yesterday, I was listening to a preacher who called himself Dr. McGee. His daily sermon cited the NT to relate how St. John didn't want Christians cavorting with liberals (the "dangerous jungle of liberalism") or "extremist" conservatives. I thought that he might be a little balanced because of his talk of the latter, but it turned out that his definition of an extremist conservative was anyone who bashed him. His example was another preacher accused him of associating with a Catholic bishop -- he'd never do that. (EDIT -- Apparently he's been dead for 20 years but his show is still broadcast on Christian radio).
I finally managed to catch a Fresh Air piece I've been hoping to hear for over a week; an interview with '50s teen icon Paul Anka. Mr. Anka has recently released an album called "Rock Swings" (LINK), a full CD of swing covers 80s and 90s rock songs. Very odd to hear his version of "Smells Like Teen Spirit" alongside the original.
Spokane turned out to be beautiful; architecturally its downtown reminds me of an live version of Springfield, MA (which comes across as a ghost town to me), and much of it is centered on the Spokane River (photo, photo, photo). -- shows what a city can do with a river if it doesn't place an interstate highway within a couple hundred yards of it. Did you know Gonzaga was here? Neither did I (photo, photo).
On the recommendation of a couple of people working at my hotel, I had dinner at C.I. Shenanigan's (photo) -- a seafood chain based in Spokane and Tacoma which brews its own beer. At first, I tried a blond and a Yellowjacket summer brew (photo) -- the yellowjacket was better, but the Bighorn Amber, which I had next, was best of all. The menu was great, and I had pepper calamari (photo) and a spinach salad. Places on the east coast should have pepper calamari! My waiter told me that he was a rare liberal in a red area -- he was part of a militarily transplanted family from Norfolk, VA. I sat next to a couple of Bush voters who have been living in Spokane for 8 years -- the wife seemed ambivalent about having voted for Bush, but the husband said repeatedly, "I voted for him five times -- in the last election!" Oh, and here's a rare photo of me on my own vacation.
As it turns out, South Dakota is just too far, so my itinerary is getting a bit more set.
I'm having lunch in a restaurant called Michael's (photo) on Moses Lake, WA, a resort/farming town 150 miles or so east of Seattle and 100 miles west of Spokane. I decided during the course of the drive to start this blog, because I just found myself thinking way too much and needing an outlet. Everybody knows very well how much I like to whine continuously about work, but that's only because my brain never stops and my job is always on my mind. I'm finding that getting away from work hasn't stopped my brain, but it's changed what I'm thinking about. It's very, very different, and I think I'm going to have fun sharing it.
I really enjoyed the drive to Moses Lake. Going through the Cascades Mountains (photo, photo, photo), which are about 30 miles to the east of Seattle was an experience. Seattle gets neither too hot or too cold... it doesn't reach 80 that often in the summer, but it also doesn't get below 40 much in the winter. Once you go over the mountains, that changes significantly. It was around 70 degrees most of the drive from Seattle to the Cascades, courtesy of the dashboard thermometer in my rented Chrysler Sebring convertible (whee! -- photo). It suddenly plunged about 10 degrees in 5 minutes on the western side of the mountains. But as soon as I reached the other side, the mercury rose considerably -- it went from 60 degrees to about 95 in the inside of two hours! The photos I took of the mountains turned out surprisingly well, considering that all of the photography was done with one hand at about 75 miles per hour while trying not to let the camera blow away in the wind (for all of you who have driven with me, you realize that I was probably writing e-mail on my Blackberry with the other hand). The fun thing about the "high speed photography" in the mountains was that the picturesque scenery made me a much better shot -- even if I missed what I was trying to photograph, whatever I ended up capturing was beautiful, too... at least to the extent of my photographic skills, which are roughly nil. For all of the things I'm good at, I have no clue how to use a camera.
The mountains were so amazing, and I just kept ruminating about how anyone could consider harming such a landscape through deforestation and pollution, but on the east side of the mountains, I was pretty infuriated by the vast collection of tree stumps I saw by a lake (photo). It also occurred to me during the course of the drive how great it would be to be able to drive through these pristine areas without causing any damage myself, as I always feel a bit guilty about how much driving I do while using up precious oil and producing carbon emissions in its place. Of course, the Bush administration and Congress don't care much about that, as can be found in our corporate-profit-fattening energy bill.
As I found myself saying over and over in phone conversations during the course of the drive, after passing the mountains and heading east, the next couple hundred miles were like nothing I'd experienced before. Hundreds of miles of farms, little civilization otherwise. I'd never seen a live irrigation system before, and perhaps neither have you, but now you have (photo). I passed through a five-mile stretch of peppermint fields, whose aroma was strong and sweet. I hadn't expected to, but I also passed The Gorge Amphitheatre, which hosts a bunch of great shows (including the DMB "Live at the Gorge" album). Also saw a town name that only I would find funny -- "George, Washington".
I had a nice lunch at Michael's, talking to a bartender named Debby who served me a pretty yummy seafood alfredo. Debby told me that Spokane is a "very cool city." I don't know if I believe her, but I hope so. She didn't have a lot to say, but gave me free rein on the bar TV, which I tuned to ESPN, where I saw a racing program called the "Top Alcohol Dragster" race. Isn't there something very, very wrong with that? Behind me at the bar were two women who seemed out of place here; more suited for a guest appearance as Aunt Yetta's sisters on The Nanny than in middle-of-nowhere, WA. It was also pretty amusing to overhear the Kiwanis Club of Moses Lake singing their anthem in a nearby meeting room, which was more or less untelligible.
I thought a lot about how my trip will proceed. I have a strong desire, for no reason, to add South Dakota to the list of destinations, but was told earlier that it's probably too far. I'll check later. After leaving the restaurant, I took a few photos of Moses Lake (photo, photo), and then stopped for a fillup (when was the last time you saw a pump like this? -- photo).
By the way, the CD that got me through the ride was Cream's "Goodbye." (their last album). A couple of choice tracks are "Badge" (written with the late George Harrison) and "Doing the Scrapyard Thing," which has the irreverence of a mid-era Beatles track.
I'm starting this page as nothing but a blog, because it's sort of spur-of the moment, and heck, everybody's got a blog these days. By the way, if you don't like the design of this site, I'd like to see what you can do with just two hours and a couple of beers ;)
A blog which covers the life, thoughts, and writings of Jason Brzoska. Among the topics discussed: politics (poverty, health care, war, terrorism, foreign policy), the state of the Jewish community, and the City of Albany, New York.
