this.fm life

I just took the plunge and joined last.fm, in case anyone wants to see what I'm currently listeners, or any fellow last.fmers want to add me friend. There's also a fancy plugin on the right-hand side of this blog to track my listening habits. I don't listen to a lot of music on the computer, but it's nice to track my most listened to artists and tracks for the times I do.

Looking below the Last played and blogroll to the bottom right, I'm noticing a disturbing trend in the three months I've been doing this blog. 26 posts in January, 25 posts in February, and 24 posts in March. At this rate, I'll be down to one post a month in a couple of years!

FOMM: Mitch Madness II

Continuing with last Friday's Mitch Easter extravaganza, here are a few more tracks from Two Dozen Easter Eggs. I just witnessed two fabulous shows by Mitch and his band the last two nights, at Amoeba Music and the Rickshaw Stop. His setlist was a 50/50 mix of tracks from his new album Dynamico and Let's Active songs from the "renaissance era", selected heavily from the Cypress LP. Old favorites like "Flags For Everything", "Ornamental" and "Waters Part" (yeah!) match up well with new favorites like "1.5 Way Street","I Want a New Scene", and "Timewarping" -- it was hard to tell the new songs from the old ones. Unfortunately I didn't record the shows, and my photos (taken on my cheap camera phone) didn't turn out very well, so my only recollection of these shows is my rapidly fading memory.

I also talked briefly with Mitch and his lovely bassist/wife Shalini. He drove all the way to California for the two shows in SF, one in Sacramento tonight, and one in LA tomorrow. It was also fun talking to Mitch about his glorious past. It's kind of like talking to God (if you can imagine telling God that you really like that Someloves record He produced back in 1990!).

Even though Mitch made his name back in the early 80s as the poster boy for the "new American rock underground ", he's also worked with a few less-heralded international (i.e. foreign) artists like the Someloves. Here are a few sample tracks, some (DM3, Hummingbirds) that I've posted previously and others that I haven't. The first four songs are by Australian artists, revolving around two songwriters (Darryl Mather and Dom Mariani). Mather and Mariani were both in the Someloves, Mariani formed the DM3, and the Orange Humble Band was essentially "Darryl Mather and friends". From talking to Mitch, I found out that the Someloves LP (which I always thought sounded like it was mastered at a slightly wrong speed) was recently reissued with the original recording speed restored on a CD called Don't Talk About Us, and that the Orange Humble Band cost $200K to make, which came entirely out of Darryl Mather's pocket.

1. The Hummingbirds - Word Gets Around
   (from Love Buzz)
2. The Someloves - I Didn't Mean It
   (from Something Or Other)
3. The DM3 - 1x2x Devastated
   (from One Time, Two Times, Three Red Light)
4. Orange Humble Band - Fanclub Requiem
   (from Assorted Creams)
5. Duffy - London Girls
   (from Duffy)

"London Girls" is from Stephen (f.k.a Tin Tin) Duffy's 1995 self-titled Duffy album. During the mid-90s, while his band the Lilac Time were on hiatus, Duffy flew to NC to add backing vocals to the Velvet Crush's Teenage Symphonies to God (produced by Mitch), and stayed around to make a solo album, with the Velvet Crush as his backing band and Mitch Easter behind the boards. This unlikely combination resulted in one of my favorite records of that decade, with the best parts of UK Britpop and yankee/rebel power pop all in one place.

Don't clog up the bases, kids

I guess Dusty Baker is ESPN's newest baseball analyst. A quote from his debut, courtesy of Firejoemorgan.com

(David Wright) stole 20 bases last year, so you don't have to worry about him clogging up the bases at the top of the order

Google "Dusty+clogging up the bases" for enlightenment. As a manager, Dusty Baker hated "clogging up the bases". Unfortunately the main purpose of the game of baseball is to get guys on base (aka "clog up the bases"), so Dusty wasn't a very good (in-game ed.)manager. And now he's a not-very-good announcer. And baseball's loss is ESPN's gain.

Speaking of David Wright, the Mets are putting the choice of his at-bat theme music to the fans. Unfortunately the selections are kind of lame. What about "Shake Some Action"? He has the same name as the former Flamin' Groovies drummer!

Update: Bradl one reader took issue with my Dusty dissing, and he put together a great show with Mitch Easter last night so I'm (temporarily) recanting my assessment.
Dusty Baker is a managerial genius!

Time Will Show The Wiser

I'm on a Joe Boyd jag since picking up his autobiography and its companion CD last week, so here's an early 1968 performance of the first song on the first Fairport Convention album (Emmit Rhodes' "Time Will Show The Wiser") .


Dig the guitar playing of a very young Richard Thompson and the Marty & Grace vocal interplay between Iain Matthews and Judy Dyble. Take time to ridicule the AMG review of this song that misidentifies the male vocalist as Ashley Hutchings (he's the bass player).
This song rocks heartily!

They're only sticks and balls

I thought Americans took their sports too seriously, but after seeing my Indian and Pakistani co-workers describe their "national humiliation" when their countries were eliminated from the Super 8's in the 2007 Cricket World Cup, we've got nothing on the Asian subcontinent. These countries take their cricket seriously!

Last weekend, India lost to Bangladesh and Pakistan lost to Ireland, which is apparently like the Yankees and Red Sox losing to 1AA college teams. In India, no one has escaped the blame for their disappointing performance: the manager, the players, the sponsors, the media, even Indira Ghandi (if she hadn't given Bangladesh their freedom in 1971, they wouldn't have been able to defeat India in cricket 36 years later).

India's fortune lives and dies with their national cricket side, and their eastern neighbor Pakistan takes the sport even more seriously. After their loss to Ireland on St. Patrick's Day, their coach was found dead in his hotel room, in an apparent homicide. Shades of Andres Escobar. Referring to a sporting event as a "life or death" situation seems even more ridiculous when someone actually dies for losing a silly game. Only life and death are "life or death" situations!

No more chances to get it half right

In honor of the late Calvert de Forest (aka Larry "Bud" Melman) who passed away this week at the age of 85, here's this bit from the "Ask Mr. Melman" on David Letterman's late night show, sometime in the late 1980s.

Audience Member: Mr. Melman, who do you think will win the upcoming NCAA basketball championship?
Mr. Melman: BASKETBALL?? WHO THE HELL CARES?


FINAL BRACKETOLOGY UPDATE
Final Four: Wisconsin, Kansas, North Carolina, Ohio State
Finals: Kansas, North Carolina
Winner: North Carolina

My brother picked all final four teams correctly. Luckily we're just competing for pride!

Some people only dream of this in a song

I've done my share of traveling to see bands, but I can't imagine going all the way to New Zealand, like Ian Robertson did to see Sneaky Feelings.

For those who don't know Ian, he's the guitarist for the Bye Bye Blackbirds who's been playing with Bradley (the unnamed "bandmate" the article credits for introducing Ian to Sneaky Feelings) since their days in Belle da Gama and Yuji Oniki's band. And for those who don't know Sneaky Feelings, they were a New Zealand band from the 1980s who took their name from an Elvis Costello song and their sound from his pub rock forefathers Nick Lowe and Graham Parker. They were a bit out of step with the other bands on the Flying Nun label, mostly unknown outside of NZ, and broke up right before the other Dunedin bands started gaining fame and notoriety. They reformed this year to play the Dunedin Heritage Festival and Ian Robertson flew all the way to Dunedin to see them. Which I think is very cool.