friday random elevenish: “gigs and putting out work fires” edition
Work was kinda busy this week, continuing to put out fires, which is kinda what I do now. No worries; they keep on paying me, I keep on logging in. That big problem requirement has been successfully pushed off my plate to be dealt with by folks who are authorized to spend the money, but that just makes room for a few more problem requirements to be dealt with by the guy who solves the problems…
But, as of around 2:30 today, I logged off until Tuesday, because Thursday night I played a pretty successful set at Dancing Kilt, my local watering hole, where I tend to be once or twice a week anyway, but every few months they’re nice enough to have me come in to share some tunes. It took me a few songs to find my groove, but overall, things went really well. I tried some new things, and those things mostly worked (I still need a little work on my emergency kazoo business), I had some good friends show up to support me, and I got paid and had my bar tab covered for the evening (a couple of pints of Turoń, the Polish style smoked wheat beer, my new favorite), which is always nice.
It feels good to get paid to make music at my local; I’ll take it.
Friday, after a few local responsibilities, the lovely spouse and I will be heading south to Charlotte for ConCarolinas, which I haven’t been to in a year or three, but we’re hitting this year to visit some friends and not be on the hook for anything, because I’m not a guest! The plan is to just hang out with folks, enjoy some music and entertainment, probably buy some books, and probably drink too much….
Which, y’know, is perfectly cromulent.
It’s also likely I’m going to be coming home with a banjo a friend of mine no longer needs, which is fine, because of course I need to learn to play another stringed instrument…
Anyway, that’s the plan for the next little while. In the meantime, here are some tunes randomly kicked out of a playlist I built to pump through the P.A. between sets. It’s mostly cool ’90s stuff I listened to at the time, plus a few Replacements tunes I wasn’t cool enough to listen to when they were actually active in the late ’80s:
- “Falling for the First Time” – Barenaked Ladies
- “This Tornado Loves You” – Neko Case
- “Blood Makes Noise” – Suzanne Vega
- “Pump It Up” – Elvis Costello & The Attractions
- “Love Like We Do” – Edie Brickell & New Bohemians
- “Closer To Fine” – Indigo Girls
- “Supernova” – Liz Phair
- “Birdhouse In Your Soul” – They Might Be Giants
- “Angeline Is Coming Home” – The Badlees
- “Alex Chilton” – The Replacements
- “Dyslexic Heart” – Paul Westerberg
- “Minneapolis” – that dog.
- “A Common Disaster” – Cowboy Junkies
- “8 Miles Down” – Big Back Forty
