This past Saturday morning, before heading out on adventures, I checked in, as I do, on social media, and found myself tagged by a friend with this:

Day X of 10 of my all-time favorite albums. 10 days. What really made an impact and is still on your rotation list, even if only now and then. Post the cover, no need to explain, and nominate a person each day to do the same. Nominated by XXXXXX, I now nominate XXXXXXX

I felt the need to explain:

Day Six: Replacements – “Let It Be” (1984)

my “cut out racks” review from a few years ago

Like I’ve said multiple times, I missed out on the ‘Mats when they were actually active. Of all the records, this is the one that seems to capture what I like about the band the most – they’ve still got that energetic, raw edge to them, but Westerberg’s songwriting is just starting to come into its own, before it starts to dominate (not that that’s a bad thing, except that as Paul got more serious, the rest of the band fell to the wayside, leading to the end). I love the jangly over-chorused guitars, I love the reverbed vocals buried in the mix. I wish I wasn’t so stuck in the hair metal hole at the time and discovered this then – I might have grown up a bit more quickly. Not that I’m complaining about where I eventually ended up, but that’s just one more reason why I should’ve gotten over my fear and asked out the cool alternative girl in english class who loved MTV’s 120 minutes in high school…

This past Saturday morning, before heading out on adventures, I checked in, as I do, on social media, and found myself tagged by a friend with this:

I felt the need to explain:

Day Five: Queen: Greatest Hits (1981)

A friend gave me a dubbed copy of this on cassette at some point in middle school; I don’t remember quite when, or who it was (or maybe I just left a tape in the car for more than about a fortnight), but I was hooked. As a relatively new guitar player at the time, Brian May’s precision and tone drew me right in, Freddie Mercury’s fearlessness in his vocals and performance caught me. The variety and scope of the thing was like nothing I’d heard before.

During the Queen resurgence in the early 90s with Freddie’s death in ’91 and Wayne’s World‘s iconic use of “Bohemian Rhapsody” in ’92, I was ready to jump right back on, and evangelize the newbies, dropping knowledge about things like the weirdness of “Bicycle Race” and (the unfortunately not on this record) “Hammer to Fall”.

I expect another release of this one and yet another Queen resurgence any time now, given the upcoming release of Bohemian Rhapsody, the Freddie Mercury biopic whose trailer dropped yesterday.

This past Saturday morning, before heading out on adventures, I checked in, as I do, on social media, and found myself tagged by a friend with this:

I felt the need to explain:

Day Four: “Weird Al” Yankovic: In 3-D (1984)

Interestingly, I don’t actually own a physical copy of this one anymore, though a digital version does exist in my archive somewhere. This one holds the distinction of being, while not the first record I ever bought with my own money, the first one that was ever purchased expressly for me, as I asked for it as a birthday gift after hearing “Eat It” on the radio and finding it life-changing. I listened to it on my crappy little mono tape player non-stop, and from there, it was a rapid progression toward listening to Dr. Demento on Sunday nights in bed on headphones to playing music to joining filk circles, meeting some of my heroes and becoming a minimally well known geek musician myself as part of The Blibbering Humdingers to recording that Avengers parody of the Jim Carroll Band’s “People Who Died” two weeks ago on a lark.

You Could say this one was influential.

The “Eat It” video was a masterpiece, though I think my favorite tunes are “Midnight Star” and “Nature Trail To Hell (in 3D!)”, and remember lip syncing in my living room to “Theme from Rocky XIII (The Rye or the Kaiser)” more than once.

This past Saturday morning, before heading out on adventures, I checked in, as I do, on social media, and found myself tagged by a friend with this:

Day X of 10 of my all-time favorite albums. 10 days. What really made an impact and is still on your rotation list, even if only now and then. Post the cover, no need to explain, and nominate a person each day to do the same. Nominated by XXXXXX, I now nominate XXXXXXX

This sort of thing, of course, is exactly the kind of thing that gets my brain churning. Music, if you know me, for me, is a very big deal. While I followed the rules over on social media, I’m reserving the right to extend my remarks over here, because this is my space, and I can do what I want. I’m a little behind, but I’ll catch up as time allows. Not in any particular order, though here we go.

Day Three: Alanis Morrissette: Jagged Little Pill (1995)

As with the previous records, I reviewed this one here previously, back in December 2011. However, I’m not going to quote that one directly; I spent most of that capsule review talking about the 90s/00s female rock scene, namechecking Liz Phair and Sheryl Crow. I’d say that that those comments still stand. The social media discussion this prompted this morning, however, is interesting in the sense of how these records tie into times in your life, and how music helped us cope, and ties into memories at least as well as scents do. This record, at the time, was HUGE and unescapable; my friends who were of a certain late GenX age at the time, really latched on to this one. Stories of breakups and freshman dorms and all that stuff. When this came out in ’95, I was in a pretty good place, mostly, so the anger of “You Oughta Know” didn’t resonate as much, though I appreciated it. For me, the tune was “Head Over Feet”, which is all about falling in love with your best friend, which , at the time, I had most certainly done.

Saturday morning, before heading out on adventures, I checked in, as I do, on social media, and find myself tagged by a friend with this:

Day X of 10 of my all-time favorite albums. 10 days. What really made an impact and is still on your rotation list, even if only now and then. Post the cover, no need to explain, and nominate a person each day to do the same. Nominated by XXXXXX, I now nominate XXXXXXX

This sort of thing, of course, is exactly the kind of thing that gets my brain churning. Music, if you know me, for me, is a very big deal. While I followed the rules over on social media, I’m reserving the right to extend my remarks over here, because this is my space, and I can do what I want. I’m a little behind, but I’ll catch up as time allows. Not in any particular order, though here we go.

Day Two: Barenaked Ladies: Maybe You Should Drive (1994)

As with the previous record, I reviewed this one here previously, back in September 2011. At the time, I said:

…When I imagine what “Barenaked Ladies” sounds like, I hear this record: “Alternative Girlfriend.” “Life In A Nutshell.” “Am I The Only One.” The vocal harmonies. The percussive acoustic guitars. The all-Creegan rhythm section. As much as I grew to like Kevin Hearn in the band, there’s just something about Andy Creegan’s piano, and the way it meshed perfectly with Jim’s upright bass that’s been missing in the band’s output since.

Yeah. I came to BNL, via one of my lovely wife’s college housemates toward the end of this record’s run, right before Born on A Pirate Ship came out. She was a little more into Gordon, but this one broke through the whimsy a bit and brought a kind of songwriting maturity that wasn’t as represented on that one. I really, really dug it, and in spite of the success that came later (post “One Week”), I love this one as a neat little discovery of some small Canadian band no one ever heard of doing great quirky pop. This experience also got me into a period of trading bootleg tapes of live shows on early internet boards, which was a neat experience, and one that’s pretty much been entirely overcome by technology here in the future.

Saturday morning, before heading out on adventures, I checked in, as I do, on social media, and found myself tagged by a friend with this:

Day X of 10 of my all-time favorite albums. 10 days. What really made an impact and is still on your rotation list, even if only now and then. Post the cover, no need to explain, and nominate a person each day to do the same. Nominated by XXXXXX, I now nominate XXXXXXX

This sort of thing, of course, is exactly the kind of thing that gets my brain churning. Music, if you know me, for me, is a very big deal. While I followed the rules over on social media, I’m reserving the right to extend my remarks over here, because this is my space, and I can do what I want. I’m a little behind, but I’ll catch up as time allows. Not in any particular order, though here we go.

Day One: The Clarks: Let It Go (2000)

I first caught these guys shortly after their previous record, Someday Maybe came out while they were exchanging headlining slots with The Badlees depending on which side of the Pennsylvania pop vs soda line they were playing on. I reviewed it in this space back in 2011 as part of the cut out racks series I had going for a while. A the time, I said this:

“It doesn’t matter that it was recorded in by a regional bar band from Pittsburgh on an indie label that didn’t get much play outside the rust belt northeast; in my not entirely humble opinion, it really ought to go down as one of the great modern rock records.”

That’s still true, though the title track (as I did not realize) got several bits of national exposure; in the 2001 film Summer Catch (which apparently no one saw) and as the closing credits music for the E! program “The Anna Nicole Show” (which I know I didn’t watch). This one’s just got a great tone and rock and roll vibe to it – “Better off Without You” just catches the turn-of-the-millenium zeitgeist for me. Bright and optimistic-sounding, even if the song’s about a break-up. This one never leaves my car USB drive (since I don’t have a CD player anymore).

This weekend got weird. I think I may have just had too many adventures in the last couple of days.

Friday night was pizza (which was good, but didn’t agree with me), followed by Infinity War, which was about what I expected. I thought it was good, certainly, but, probably by design, it never gave the audience a chance to breathe and spend time with the characters. It also kind of really cheesed off my two oldest kids, and set the waterworks going with the youngest.

At least this generation has it’s Transformers: The Movie now.

Saturday was a really hot day at the VA Rennaissance Faire, which is always a good time, especially when we get to spend time with friends we don’t see nearly as often anymore, which we did this time. It was, however, ridiculously hot, and I was getting a bit punchy as I’d aready had quite a few adventures over the previous few days, and the household is readjusting, somewhat stressfully, to the addition of twenty percent more person, so I was not my best.

Neither was my lovely spouse, who the heat, combined with some other stuff she’s dealing with, knocked her down completely.

Sunday was when my frustration really came to a head – the house is cluttered, everybody’s being difficult and not feeling their best, and my pot, as they say, was bubbling over. After popping a bit, I threw the bike on the back of the car, and rode ten miles in less than 40 minutes on the trail. Let’s just say I had some frustration to get out.

I felt a little better afterward, and took the time to help the kid knock out a pretty good Mothers’ Day dinner, and watched Friday’s Agents of SHIELD on hulu – this season hasn’t been amazing (last year was better), but the way it’s finally gone full over-the-top batshit comic book and synching up parallel to the events of Infinity War, I’m really looking forward to how they tie things up next week.

I also got tagged on the social media meme that’s going around about your 10 favorite/influential albums on Saturday morning (via Annie from the Maidens). the whole idea of just posting the cover and not commenting is kind of anathema to me, but I’m gonna follow the rules over there; I may just knock out some posts over here to extend remarks and comments (besides the discussions that I’ve seen happening in the comments). We’ll see, this Desert Island Discs thing really deserves expansion (hence the existence of a regular program on BBC Radio 4), so you’ll probably see some of that going forward.

Well, it’s Friday. Finally.

My work week wasn’t the worst, all told – I’ve left the office feeling better than when I arrived most days (a pattern I hope holds for today, because I really didn’t want to get out of bed). I’ve solved some problems, moved some others, and haven’t had anything else huge come up in terms of scheduling or development that’s the fault of my team – any delays coming in are somebody else’s fault, which is, I guess, the best you can hope for.

Otherwise, I got one nice ride in so far (the bike feels like new after the tune-up), and hope to get at least one more in, depending on weather and schedules, saw some great live music with my lovely spouse, and made a pretty decent curry the other night.

And tonight it’s NY style pizza and, finally, Infinity War.

Oh, I’ll also be at the Va Ren Faire with family and friends on Saturday – should be a gorgeous day. Looking forward to catching a performance from Scales and Crosstones, the other project my con friend Saber (of the Misbehavin’ Maidens) is part of, as well as partaking of the usual Faire tomfoolerly.

That’s pretty much the view from here. I’m keeping an eye on the weather for today to see if I’m gonna get a bike ride in after work; we had some nice storms yesterday, but if the sun’s out, the trail won’t be overly muddy by the time I’m free of the shackles of the timeclock.

Anyway, here’s some music for everyone – very modern indie this week; first time I’ve heard most of these bands, honestly – though the Secret Sisters’ influence is creeping in, as I’ve added them to my mix after being so damned impressed the other night.

1. “The Middle” – Jimmy Eat World
2. “What Do I Have To Do” – The Donnas
3. “May 1st” – Beach Fossils
4. “White Flag” – Joseph
5. “Cave” – Future Islands
6. “Little Again” – The Secret Sisters
7. “All The Way Thru” – JD Samson & MEN
8. “20 Years” – The Civil Wars
9. “I Hate Myself for Lovin’ You” – Joan Jett
10. “C’mon” – Go Betty Go
11. “Havamal” – Falkenbach

Wednesday at work was a pretty awful one. My calendar was full of all my favorites: the data trading partners who like to shout,not listen, and not read the test reports we give them even a year later, the annual “remind the lawyer about last year’s conversation that answered all his questions about this acquisition in process” meeting, and setting expecations with people who volunteered me for things that aren’t technically possible while I was out dying of the flu.

Recognizing this (and not having won the member ticket drawing from wnrn), I went ahead and set myself a little reward – I grabbed a couple of last minute tickets to Brandi Carlile show at Maymont that evening, so my lovely wife and I could have a date night.

Having set this little reward for myself, I wrapped the day having set some expectations, talked the lawyer down, and maybe made some folks listen and understand a bit better. I had a nice conversation with some former co-workers while delivering some equipment I had idling in my building to somebody who could make better use of it, and also picked up my bike from the shop, properly tuned for the season, and with a new bottom bracket installed, effectively removing that annoying click.

I felt better when I left work than when I arrived.

After an always great meal at Carytown Burgers and Fries, we settled in on the lawn, having taken part in the expected local “find parking, then work your way through the ticket line so you can buy tickets to exchange for beer and wine” ritual (they had a nice Stone Brewing IPA on tap), and waited for the show, surrounded by a very diverse, and way more polite than usual RVA concert crowd.

And two minutes into the opening act’s set (which started fifteen minutes ahead of schedule), Colleen and I fell in love with The Secret Sisters, a great folk/americana duo you need to check out immediately (I will be buying all the records in short order). I also learned some neat performance tricks about acoustic guitar dynamics and clever stage banter. Seriously, check them out – why not start with the video for “He’s Fine”?

In between sets, I saw two giggling, sweaty people come out of a port-o-john together, sporting a certain glow. I did not use that particular piece of equipment, but admired these folks for their dogged persistence.

Brandi Carlile was awesome as expected – I’d never seen her live before, but regularly dipping my feet into the pool of alt-country, folk, and americana, I knew exactly what I was getting into. Great stuff, mostly material from her latest record By The Way I Forgive You. A really nice time.

That was my evening, going to a live show on a Wednesday night isn’t my usual thing, but then, anymore, going to a live show where I’m not on the bill somewhere hasn’t been my style for a while. It was nice. Paid for it a bit on Thursday morning (remember, I get up around 5am to start my work day early). That said, I might do it again in a couple of weeks, as St. Vincent is coming to town, and Annie Clark put out one of my favorite records last year, Masseduction, and will probably be worth the heavy eyes the next morning.

I am contemplating.

I did something sort of nice for me yesterday. I took the afternoon off for myself and just wandered about a bit. Did a Pokemon EX raid, picked the bones of the closing Toys R Us (and found something awesome), and just kind of enjoyed the quiet.

It was the right thing to do for me. For some reason, stress and anxiety have been ramping up the last couple of days. There’s some work stuff (but there’s always work stuff), and the house now has twenty percent more human in it (by consciousness if not volume), which in general is a good thing, but still a change. My bike’s in the shop until at least Wednesday afternoon, so my usual pressure release valve is unavailable (not that the weather’s really cooperating), and I’m kind of floating a bit.

I do, however, have something to feel good about. A friend (who I’d lost a bit of touch with in recent years) reached out looking for help in dealing with a significant loss in his life. Something very similar to something I’ve gone through myself. We talked. I think he felt better afterward.

That said, as good as I feel about helping someone else and sharing my experience and energy to help them through something (and I do feel *very* good about it), I’m feeling a little extra drained today.

Still worth it.