Triple Play!

Someone I know (my brother) had an extra ticket to last night's Giants game againt the Padres, so I decided to go, even though I'm not much of a Giants fan, and I'm still recovering from my trip so my schedule isn't back to normal yet.

Jon Miller always says everytime you head to the ballpark, you're liable to see something you've never seen before. Last night in the top of the 8th with Keichii Yabu Padres runners on first and second, we saw this.

An around the horn 5-4-3 triple play! The Giants ended up losing 7-3 in 13 innings, and I didn't stay to the bitter end, but I witnessed my first triple play ever, at any level of baseball. And that's what keeps you coming back!

Garage '66

1966 Plymouth Babararacucudada

After throwing together a muxtape of some of Scott Miller's favorite songs of 1966 the other day, I've decided to update my own muxtape of 1966 songs. Scott describes "Wild Thing" as "the first and best garage rock tune", so I decided to focus on garage rock (which was called "punk" before punk became something else a decade later). Here is a mix of a dozen proto-punk Nuggets or Pebbles from 1966.

Garage '66
1. "All Tomorrow's Parties (single mix)" - The Velvet Underground
They don't have garages in Manhattan, so the Velvets were more like a "loft band". This was a pre-release single for the Velvet Underground & Nico album.

2. "Train Kept a Rollin'" - Brave New World
I have this on a Mojo compilation called Instant Garage. BNW were from the Northwest, and this raved up Yardbirds track sounds like a rolling train!

3. "Misty Lane" - The Chocolate Watchband
The Watchband were one third of the South Bay garage trinity (with the Count Five and the Syndicate of Sound). This was their small regional hit that should have been a huge national hit.

4. "Devil With A Blue Dress On" - Mitch Ryder & the Detroit Wheels
I had to include the "Detroit Wheels" on a "garage rock" mix. This was a huge national hit, a medley with "Good Golly Miss Molly" that made it to the top five.

5. "Psychotic Reaction" - The Count Five
Another third of the South Bay garage trinity. This should have followed the Chocolate Watchband track, but I wanted to have the Count Five as track #5.

6. "Too Much To Dream" - The Electric Prunes
I've muxtaped this one before. And will do so again.

7. "Seven and Seven Is" - Love
Like having the Count Five at #5, I had to have "Seven and Seven Is" at #7. The b-side of this single was "No. Fourteen", helping to teach the kids arithmetic.

8. "I'm Not Like Everybody Else" - The Kinks
This song, one of the four or five best Kinks songs ever, was the b-side to "Sunny Afternoon", and one of the staples of teenage garage bands of the era.

9. "Talk Talk" - The Music Machine
Everything that's great about "sixties punk" distilled down to two minutes (1:56).

10. "Little Black Egg" - The Nightcrawlers
Another holdover from my last muxtape.

11. "Pushin' Too Hard" - The Seeds
I think this song may contain the best guitar solo ever. Yes, better than "Louie, Louie".

12. "Gloria" - The Shadows of Knight
This was one of the anthems of my college (in Peoria, IL) where we used to sing the song as "P-E-O-R-I-A".

Mes que una camisa

The U.S. dollar is historically weak against the pound and the Euro, which makes it tough for American tourists in Europe. Other than food, drink, lodging, and transport, I tried to keep my expenses to a minimum. The only items I came home with that I didn't leave home with were a couple of books I bought in London and a FC Barcelona soccer jersey from the club store at Camp Nou Stadium.


One problem with buying European soccer memorabilia, like NASCAR merchandise, is that almost all the clubs have a shirt sponsor, so you're paying money to turn yourself into a walking billboard. The nice thing about buying a Barça jersey is they're adorned with a UNICEF logo paid by the team to benefit children in "the developing world", so you're turning yourself into a walking billboard for a worthy cause.

The jersey I got was from the clearance rack, featuring the name and number of a player who's set to retire (#16 for Brazilian fullback Sylvinho) so I didn't contribute many Euros to UNICEF, but can still feel that I'm helping children in the developing world when I wear the shirt. It may even keep trick-or-treaters from asking me for spare change if I wear it on Halloween, since I gave at the office!

Where were you in 1966?

There's a new variation of "ask Scott" on the Loud Family site called "Music—What Happened?" where Scott selects and describes songs from a requested year between 1957-2006 that would constitute his time-capsule CD.

The first year in the series is 1966 and I was commissioned (and by "commissioned" I mean "asked") to put together a muxtape of some of the tracks. Scott's 1966 time capsule CD has 22 tracks, ten more than muxtape allows, so my list excised the better-known B-bands (like the Beatles, the Beach Boys, the Byrds, Bob Dylan, and the Bowling Stones) and focused on the lesser-known tracks that Scott selected. Here are the results.

Music What Happened? - 1966
1. "Batman Theme" - Neal Hefti
2. "Solitary Man" - Neil Diamond
3. "Big Fat Silver Aeroplane" - Roy Harper
4. "Shapes Of Things" - The Yardbirds
5. "For Emily, Wherever I May Find Her" - Simon & Garfunkel
6. "Summer In The City" - The Lovin' Spoonful
7. "Remember You" - The Zombies
8. "Georgy Girl" - The Seekers
9. "Walk Away Renee" - The Left Banke
10. "Making Time" - The Creation
11. "Season Of The Witch" - Donovan
12. "(I'm Not Your) Steppin' Stone" - The Monkees

I think 1966 may have been the best year, not just for pop music, but for pop culture in general. The list of the top 100 hits of the year shows a few duds (like "Ballad Of The Green Berets"as the top song of the year?) but at least 70-75% of the songs are stone cold classics that still sound as great 42 years later.

On the TV, 1966 was the debut of "Batman", "Star Trek", "The Monkees", "Mission Impossible" and "How The Grinch Stole Christmas". In sports, 1966 was the year of the first Super Bowl, the year Texas Western upset Kentucky in the NCAA finals, and the year Frank Robinson won the triple crown for the Orioles, (who swept the Dodgers in the Series). At the movies, 1966 was "Farenheit 451", "Fantastic Voyage", and lots of other movies that don't start with F, but I don't know much about movies.

Fotos y Recuerdos

I've uploaded a batch of photos from my trip to my flickr page where interested parties can view them. Unfortunately I'm not much of a photographer even with the best equipment, and didn't borrow my brother's higher end digital camera for this trip, so I was stuck with my own cheapie camera.

Also, I forgot to bring my camera lots of places where I should have, so I didn't get that many photos this time. I forgot to take my camera for my first day driving through France, and in Barcelona, I took the camera on my tour of Camp Nou stadium and Las Ramblas, but forgot to bring it the following day when I rented a bike and rode up the beach. I didn't want to lug the camera on my bike, which was probably for the best, because it would have been a bit awkward to be riding through acres of beaches full of topless sunbathers while carrying a camera!

Things I missed while I was gone: The A's swept the Red Sox this weekend, including a one-hitter by Justin Duchscherer on Sunday. And Hillary Clinton didn't get eliminated from the Democratic race, but did invoke RFK in '68 (again) to explain why she's still in the race. Plus I missed one week and one day of work, but I can't really say I missed that, Bob. I missed a lot of meetings, but there were still more meetings to attend when I headed back to work today.

Home again

I made it back home today after today's ten hour "white-eye" from London to SFO, which combined with the one hour train rides to and from each airport makes for a really long day. On a long haul flight from East to West, the plane never leaves daylight which makes it hard to get sleep. If you're going the other way across the country or the ocean, there's a definite darkness, which makes it easier to sleep. If you're going the other way, it seems like you're perpetually in the middle of the afternoon.

I didn't get one wink of sleep on the plane, but I made the most of the Virgin Atlantic in-flight entertainment (watching three movies and two TV serieses) and finished reading Nick Hornby's Slam, which is supposed to be a "young adult" novel, but I liked it a lot more than The Long Way Down. Which I liked a whole lot more than How To Be Good, but both of which I liked less than Hornby's previous novels.

For my last night in London, I went to see Adem Ihan at the Union Chapel in Islington, just up the road from Emirates Stadium where Nick Hornby's favorite team Arsenal play their home games. This show was suggested by a London friend whose tastes in music deviate quite a bit from my own, but she offered to pick up a ticket for me if I was interested, so I decided to give it a go. Union Chapel is an operational church with wonderful acoustics, and a amazing venue for live music.

I'm still not sold enough on Adem (who performs under his first name only) to pick up one of his CDs, but the show was worth the tube ride to Islington. I saw as many shows in 10 days in Europe as I've seen in the last four months in San Francisco. The combination of early start times and easy access makes it a lot easier for to go out than it is when I'm at home.

If shows here started at a reasonable hour and were more accessible by public transport, I'd see many more Bay Area shows than I do now.

Look that up in your Frank and Walters

To answer Sue's question from the last entry, I wasn't able to watch the Eurovision finals last night, because I'm staying at the super frugal easyHotel in South Kensington where you can get a cozy (i.e. really small!) room with a flat screen for about £30 a night, but a remote for the TV costs £5 more per night. I had to read on the internet that the Russian entry ended up winning (Eurovision is so rigged in the favour of Eastern Europe, so even the UK betting shops weren't taking odds on it!), and decided to hit the town, since there are many better things to do in London than watch the telly.



For my night on the town, I went to see the Frank and Walters (who I saw last October in Dublin) at the Luminaire (where I saw School of Language and The Week That Was last Friday). The F&W are an Irish Britpop (Celtpop?) band from Cork, Ireland who have been dubbed "the happiest band in the world". Lead vocalist Paul Linehan formed the band with his brother Niall in the early 90s (which probably gave their roadie Noel Gallagher the idea to start a band with his brother.. make of that what you will) and they've been legends of sorts ever since.

The gig I saw in Dublin was on a Wednesday night at a student union but this was Saturday night at a pub on Kilburn High Road so it was a much more raucus affair. I've downloaded most of the F&W albums from emusic, but there is still a lot of their catalog that's unknown to me, but the people in the audience knew all the words to all the songs and kept the chant "we are, we are, we are we are we are the Frank and Walters!" going between songs. The band has a distinct sound that's sort of like the Smiths meet the Pogues, and play a lot of unique cover tunes in their own style. Last night it was "Pop Muzik" and "Funky Cold Medina". You haven't lived a full life until you've seen a crowd of drunken paddys rapping along to Tone Loc!

This is my last night in London, and then back home tomorrow. It's raining right now, but hopefully it will clear up later so I can play outside. Otherwise it's a day of visiting museums. There are a bunch of cool and free museums in London, but I think they mostly exist so tourists will have something to do on a rainy day. I've visited London on enough rainy days that I've managed to see most of the museums: The British Museum, The Victoria & Albert, the National History. The only one remaining is the Science Museum, so I think that's on the docket if the weather doesn't clear up!