dan jones: daily records

Tommy Keene @ Sam Bond's Garage 1/27/12

2012-01-28T09:29:00.000-08:00

blanket forts, tee pee hits, and shows on the calendar

2012-01-25T22:59:00.000-08:00


					A number of upcoming shows posted here. CD release shows for The Golden Motors in Eugene and Portland--but wait, aren't they all cd release shows? Look in my garage, man, every DAY is cd release day. Crimony! I could play blanket fort all day out there using cd inventory. Over the past week, swimming laps has overtaken running, and I am digging it. It's a totally different feel, and when you follow up with a ten minute sauna, that's just the best. Going to the Downtown Athletic Club is kind of like going to a nice hotel for an hour. I like how they have old John Cheever books in the lobby. It's a different kind of hang. My Kindle cover came in the mail today. It was thirty four bucks and not the handsome leather book-like item I thought it would be. But I like cardboard and polyester veneer well enough, if I'm in the right chair, with brandy and a cigar. I am 97% through Don Quixote. It has taken me almost exactly a month--sometimes a labor, but mostly a good long immersion in an amazing book. It's getting melancholy in the last chapters. Don Quixote is going to give pastoral life a try--I don't really see it working out. And joining AARP isn't on the table either. Now I'm torn--I have a big pile of actual books I could read but then I could just download the Iggy Pop bio and go to town on that. Nile Rodgers has one that looks cool, too. This blog will reach 10,000 hits in a day or so. That seems like a milestone, but then many of the hits are aimed at a blog entry in which I posted a picture of a tee-pee. Apparently there are not many accurate tee-pee photos out there, so when people google "picture of tee pee," my blog comes up. This particular indigenous residence was in the back yard of a house party gig in Salem. It was kind of a punk rock, K-Records type tee pee. This record is on heavy rotation at DJ HQ:

new show on the calendar

2012-01-23T07:56:00.000-08:00

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 4

COZMIC (EUGENE)

BREATHE OWL BREATHE

PURPLE SPARROWS

DAN JONES (SOLO)

8:30

199 West 8th Avenue

Buddha Board Drawing

2012-01-22T13:36:00.000-08:00

camera photos of a golden motors photo shoot

2012-01-20T08:18:00.000-08:00

Last night The Golden Motors went over to Claire Flint Last's Paper Moon Photo Studio and had our pictures taken. Andrew Lathrop also took some vid for a "Kickball Queen" video. Plus we practiced three or four new songs. Claire's got a cool set up. Look for a kickball-related casting call soon.

I've been on Twitter for about a week. I like posts that are pithy and personal, by people I know, like Ed Cole's post about riding in the rain this week and being "all wet all the time." I've turned off most reposting. I like social media but like it most when people say something real, that isn't complainy or trivial, that has some real creativity in it. Scott McClean's Facebook posts in the last month have been a creative blast. But nine re-posted Smiths videos isn't a data stream I need to be part of.

On a more serious note, I wonder how often people take it seriously when someone's Facebook posts suggest the possibility of despair, clinical psychological difficulty, or potential self-harm. After seeing the Eugene community (and a friend's long term extended family) touched again by suicide, I think we should all take what people have to say on social media sites more seriously, and with more assertive compassion. There's a sense that we are all dicking around on these sites, that it's not real--that we're all out on a digital stroll picking and choosing what we want to focus on. Most of it being trivial diversion (reposted Smiths videos.) But for a generation of kids who may only know how to communicate via text, Facebook, and Twitter, a statement of resignation or despair or disorder might mean something REAL.

Tendinitis of the thumbs from teenage texting is, well, really funny. Facebook pages that turn into memorial walls are not. And it's on adults to figure out the difference.

Dan_Jones_Music on Twitter

2012-01-17T08:00:00.000-08:00

I started a Twitter account. Follow here. Is it okay to post complete sentences on Twitter?

MyAbacus, Everything's Explodin', and The Bathroom Fan

2012-01-15T10:31:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I updated The Golden Motors Myspace page after a LONG time away from it. Myspace is a weird phenomenon. Complaining about it is sort of dumb; after all, it is free, and it worked for a long time, and there's no such thing as a free lunch, and the only thing we can truly count on is change. So really, if you don't take the Myspace super-fuckover as a primer for both old-fashioned common sense and basic Buddhism, then you're missing an opportunity. (I have been reading Don Quixote on my Kindle for three weeks, so this kind of thinking comes easily to me right now.)

Interfacing with Myspace again was not as bad as it was two years ago, when the whole thing seemed to have been taken over by Lindsey Lohan's publicist and Triple X dancers who wanted to "friend" my indie rock band. Still, it was not real functional. Trying to set up an "event" without a place to input the date was odd. (I think this may be because it's synced with my Reverb Nation site, which they make the default calendar manager without telling anyone.) HTML boxes sometimes open for editing, sometimes not. In neither case could I get them to really work. No matter how many times I tried to delete a random URL coughed up by my Reverb Nation site as an "update status" to my Myspace page, it stayed up there. Stuff like that drives me nuts.

Over two or three years, the site became far more complicated, then less complicated, but not at all zippy. Now it seems to be working okay as an industry-standard portal site to a band's website and as a music player--which quite often does not work. Most people complain that Myspace makes their computer act like it has eaten two large stuff-crust pepperoni and mushroom pizzas from Pizza Hut. (Perhaps it also works as a site that reminds users they need to buy this year's "faster" PC and "faster" internet connection.)

At any rate, if Kleenex and Stouffer's Cheesy Pizza Bread wants to pay Myspace to host ads on a semi-functional page that links to my web site, then Uncle Wiggly will tell you the story of the peppermint waterfall and the umbrella with the licorice handle. And that's all I know.

And did I mention that I have posted a new song off The Golden Motors new album at that Myspace page?

I'm also getting into a new area of mid-tech for English majors: digital conversion of vinyl album sides. If you've ever tried to convert an entire vinyl album to digital, you know that locating track markers is kind of a bitch. I'll be danged if I know which song is which on my Vivian Girls record; I think some of the tracks are actually two songs in my Itunes playlist of the vinyl conversion. Sorting that out takes time. And if you're an adult, and need to replace the exhaust fan in the bathroom and go to Winco for deli meat, you don't have time to do this for 900 records, even if some of them are Husker Du bootlegs. So, as I write this, I am dumping a side of the second Flaming Lips album into Garageband with a touch of compression and reverb, and will send that to Itunes as is. When I listen to it, I'll listen to the whole side--just like I would with a record. No randomizing the playlist on Itunes; no grabbing a song to include in a mix cd. It's more like a cassette. A cassette I can listen to on the Google cloud while riding my bike.

Finally, we went out to The Mac Store yesterday to check out MacBook Pros. Rationalizing the need for a 15" or 17" model and then researching the pros-and-cons was a necessary part of the process. If I were a graphic designer or working music studio engineer, I'd get the 15" or the 17", but since my heaviest useage is recording crap-ass drums with one mic on Garageband, I think I'll go for the 13". It will still be 100 times better than my old G4 tower, which makes weird sounds not unlike the bathroom fan I just replaced.

Eric's Artworx + Track Slog

2012-01-07T10:34:00.000-08:00

We now have an orginal Eric Sutton at our house, and on the cover of The Golden Motors cd. Eric has a show up in Eugene. I missed the opening last night because I had a gig with Peter Wilde and Jenny Gutierrez at Cozmic Pizza...the revamp of that venue is great. We had a good time playing in the round. And just around the corner, Eric sold a bunch of paintings and had a great opening.

Gallery 760
“It’s Not That Unusual, No Matter What They Say”
work by Peter Herley, Tony Brown, Ron Omin & Eric Sutton
760 Willamette

After a grubbin' holiday season, I am back in the swing of things at the track. Here's today's I-Shuffle playlist:

Quicksilver Messenger Service: Edward The Mad Shirt Grinder
The Posies: Flavor Of The Month
Neil Diamond: Evermore
The English Beat: Too Nice To Talk To
The National: Sorrow
Young Fresh Fellows: Lamp Industries
No Age: Life Prowler
Metheny Meldhau: Don't Wait
Sonic Youth: Eric's Trip
Elliot Smith: Ballad of Big Nothing
Nick Lowe: Shame On The Rain
The Red Elvises: Jerry's Got The Squeezepipe
Mark Knopfler: Sucker Row
Neil Diamond: Song Sung Blue
Jay Reatard: Before I Was Caught
No Age: Depletion
The Replacements: Achin' To Be
Nick Lowe: Indian Queens
The Budos Band: Sing A Simple Song
John Lennon and Yoko Ono: I Don't Wanna Face It
The Vaselines: No Hope
Lou Reed: Crazy Feeling

Don Quixote, Smoked Feta, and a Totally Chill Weekend

2012-01-03T08:10:00.000-08:00

For the second year we went to Ashland for New Year's Eve. It's the off-season there, so you can get affordable rooms at The Columbia Hotel and take advantage of all the great restaurants nearby. Bloomsbury Books is a few doors down, and a new addition on the block is The Ashland Record Coop, whose vinyl selection is pretty kick butt. I picked up Belize Boil Up from the Numero Group label--they put out beautifully packaged archival obscuro street level stuff.

With books and records on one side of the block and a movie theatre down the block the other way, we were set. (Saw The Descendants, real good.) Did a lot of reading, had a great meal at Lark's, and good meals at Smithfields and Thai Pepper. We had a salad with blood orange vinaigrette and smoked feta at Larks that really started off my New Year right. It's fun to eat something that makes you ask how did they think of that? Yet it's so solidly excellent and good to eat that you don't feel subject to someone's chef school experiment. We ended the weekend with breakfast at The Morning Glory. Their breakfast kung fu cannot be touched by any venue in Eugene.

My Kindle tells me I am 38% through Don Quixote. I play with the font, make it smaller, then bigger--but any way you slice it, Don Quixote is a long book. There's an ocean of writing about it. And nothing's worse than fake scholarship in a blog. But I'll risk some off-the-cuff scholarship to say that it seems like almost a creative miracle that Cervantes sourced the inner authority to write the way he did, essentially inventing the novel as a form. It's like Leaves of Grass--where did this come from? Aliens? LSD in the rye bread? There's an inspiration in it, something cosmic, something pyschological--it's way out there.

At Bloomsbury Books I picked up a few actual bound and paginated pulp-based culture artifacts: a memoir by Michael Caine, another by Alan Arkin, the first Jo Nesbo novel featuring his protaganist Harry Hole, and the David Byrne biking memoir. Last year at the same store on the same weekend I picked up David Thomson's film compendium, Have You Seen...? and one year later, I am still in the "A" section...sure loved Atlantic City.

The Golden Motors cd release party in Eugene is 2/25 at Sam Bond's with none other than Mr. Casey Neill and his Norway Rats. That will be real fun.

Gutenberg Touch

2011-12-26T08:09:00.000-08:00

We had an excellent Christmas weekend. No one at our house got a Gutenberg printing press, but I did get a Kindle Touch, which might be the techno-historical inverse...or next step...or...anyway, I'll have to think that one through. I do know that I love it.

My first download was Don Quixote, for free, from Amazon. I've been wanting to read it for a long time. I like the interface, particularly for a book that is, in any print edition, quite a brick. This is easy to read. The screen tells me I am 9% done, which is different from having two inches of musty paperback to go. It's light, so I won't be getting reader's elbow the way I did when I read The Stand, unabridged. The feature I LOVE is the onboard dictionary. Highlight a word and--boom--the definition pops up. Word nerds gotta love that.

When we were in Olvera this Fall, there was a statue of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza at the foot of our street, pretty much hidden in shade. I said hi most days as I walked past. Olvera is mentioned in passing, when the seedy hotel owner brags about his travels and the trouble he's been in, by way of qualifying himself to knight Don Quixote and thereby get him out of his hair. So the landscape we were in blooms again in this book--it's December in the valley but I can feel the dry heat in Olvera...

The Golden Motors played a fun gig Thursday--we really jammed and I was proud of my guys and the show we put on. Pretty tight. Pretty loose. Jivan subbed for Mike and nailed it.

***

today's bike commute playlist:

joanna newsome: this side of the blue

david sylvian: pollen path

lester young: 3 little words

neil diamond: captain sunshine

tom waits: missing my son

One Smoke-Free Year: check.

2011-12-23T10:46:00.000-08:00

     Today is my one-year anniversary of quitting smoking. I didn’t smoke much, maybe a pack a week at most, if I was smoking at all. Once in a decade, I’d hit two packs a week, then back off. Months or even the better part of a year might go by without cigs. Typically I’d relapse while driving home after a show in another town, and knock out half a pack--really get the groove back in a big way. The butts would sizzle in the dregs of a Diet Coke, a Twizzlers wrapper floating on the draft from a half-open window. I’d crank something loud and rockin’ with the wind rushing and smoke streaming behind me on the highway, thinking of all the ways I’d spend the 19 dollars I made playing some music. In the morning I’d find the hole burned in my shirt from a fallen spark.

     Smoking started at college in Iowa City, late at night, when I was working on a paper or a story. Well, no, it started in college, late at night, when I was on an underage bender in a basement bar, veering into deeper rumination and depression, but also loving my pals and having a college good time. Then I took the habit home. I had my own ashtray, the kind you find in a cheap motel. Tres cool. Different things are definitely cool, now. I’d like to teleport back, intervene, and detour around all the stressors and insecurities and personal suffering and the choices I made. People self-medicate for various understandable reasons. But I can only welcome young Hemingway Jones into my life and retrieve lost time that way. Welcome aboard, bud--you’re not the first dreamer to fall off the turnip truck and have your ass kicked by life.

     But wait, there’s more. Smoking good tobacco is, literally, a gas, and it’s fun, it’s a kick, it’s naughty--what a buzz. Maybe you should try it. Sexy French actors and actresses in classic art films do it all the time. Intellectuals and statesmen are famous for it, plus cowboys, soldiers in movies; people in prison use cigs as currency because they got nothin’ to lose. I might have one again sometime, if I find myself in an early Louis Malle with Jeanne Moreau, or if the Republicans steal another election and start a new pipeline procurement war. Maybe I’ll snag one just because--sometime. Smoking clears the mind and makes the breath visible for a few fleeting minutes. It’s pretend cool and pretend meditation for English majors. As a habit, it also messes up our brains. And the things are made to be addictive, there’s proof! I.E. old guys who smoke through their tracheotomies when a sympathetic family member smuggles a pack of Dorals into Sacred Heart Hospital.

     The quitting moment, if there is such a thing, arrived on December 23, 2010. I had a show with my band and I was sick--a phlegmy, dizzy front guy with a fever and a chest-ripping, spine-bending cough. Plus it was the holidays--stress levels up. I’d been fighting a cold all week, but had continued to light up. On the deck. In the side yard. Behind the garage. Smoking always appeals to me more when it’s cold and damp--a light against the darkness and chill. And smoking appeals to everybody more when they’re stressed. And generates more stress. So I went ahead and smoked myself into the annual bronchitis that hits me between mid-December and mid-January. Since The Willamette Valley is basically the front end of a big cataclysmic dam-break, it’s kind of a soup spoon-shaped holding tank full of fog, pollen, wet, damp, wood smoke, cheap incense, and wised-up former commune members. The indiginous folks called it “the valley of sickness” and tended to live in the hills. Salaries here remain generally low and housing prices high because it’s also “a great place to live.” And it’s a perfect place to catch a winter cold that lasts six weeks, especially if you are a smoker.

     Sometimes in life you just have to say fuck it. And sometimes, you have to say fuck this. That night, I stood on stage and decided I was done with this phase of less-than-healthy choices. (Everybody has two or three such phases kind of overlapping, right?) December 23 is also the anniversary of the deaths of two of my heroes: D. Boon and Joe Strummer. I may have even announced this from the stage, after hawking a big green loogie. Since I was about fourteen, I’ve always wanted to be like them, with or without a guitar in my hand. (Only scratching the surface here, of my hero worship of various people--now there’s a habit to break.) Being dead is where I draw the line.
      Flaunting death is what makes smoking cool, in some ways. That’s the American Spirit. Mmmm, nothing like a steely, existential cigarette after dinner, or right before an argument with your mate. Let me dance with death for a few minutes here, honey, and then let’s try to have a productive conversation. Quick to anger, prone to brooding and intense introspection? Control issues? Try messing up pretty much every system in your body with mini fight-or-flight episodes, courtesy of a drug that’s supposedly harder to kick than heroin. Not prone to anxiety? Here kid, try one-a these. They go great with Raymond Carver stories.

     After quitting in fits and stars for twenty-odd years, this time it wasn’t hard. There were no back and forth battles. I was just fed up with it. Forty-one is just too old to be that dumb; I’ll be dumb in new ways. Isn’t that how it usually goes? Two months later, I laced up a new pair of tennies, and ran three quarters of a mile at Margaret Bailes Johnson track. If most of us have a sleepy, TV-distracted night watchman who monitors our bodily systems until something really weird/scary happens, mine was looking for a lost rolodex that might have the number of someone to call about this odd thing happening--running. “Uh, there’s alot of huffing and puffing coming from section 2, floor 19--men’s sweaters...what should I do?...” (This is the same night watchman who reads Captain America while eating an entire Red Baron pizza retrofit with extra canadien bacon in ten minutes flat. He would be played by Ned Beatty or John Candy.)
     The next night I ran a mile. Then I ran too many nights in a row and my left knee hurt. (Alot of people advise against running because it is “hard on your knees and back,” but I’m guessing the negative data for this conclusion comes from folks who are overweight, who ran too much, too soon, and too often.) After learning the hard way that you need to leave some recovery time, I now average about three workouts a week, at 4.5 miles, still going real slow. The other night I ran at 8:30, only an hour after a sizeable plate of chicken, rice, and broccoli. Spinning the new Tommy Keene. It was 33 degrees, foggy, and by the time I was done, I had ice on the cable of my Ipod’s earbuds. The miles took about 15 minutes each. It sucked. No, it sucked--as we used to say in high school--major donkey. (But the slower I went the more I got to listen to the new Tommy Keene.)

I love running--I love listening to music on my Ipod and not having anybody bug me. It’s the workout equivalent of a long anonymous layover in the Denver airport, just you and a good book. When there is soccer, lacrosse, football, ultimate frisbee, or rugby on the field, I just put my hood up like Obi Wan and plod it out, embarassed that people on the field are doing an actual sport while I am running slower than my girlfriend walks. My best miles have been 12 and half minutes. It goes up and down, and I don’t really mind. I wouldn’t have hit the track with a bunch of tar in my lungs, so each lap confirms that I quit and keeps me motivated to stay away from those gross things. Running after smoking would hurt--and I do not like pain. And I run slow because running fast hurts, and parts of me start to bounce independent of my forward motion. Intersecting, hierarchical tiers of pain avoidance, like a schematic from Tron--is that how I quit smoking? Whatever it was, I’m glad to say that on this day one year ago, I QUIT.

The Tin Can Phone, Chiefs, Bagel Dogs, and Blurb Salad

2011-12-18T19:32:00.000-08:00

Today while keeping my eye on the super slow smart-phone "gamecast" of the Chiefs upset win today, I shaped up press bits for the The Golden Motors one-sheet. (Claire Flint is helping us pull it all together. Thanks Claire! Our power lunch at Bagel Sphere was like a 2-person underground communist party scene from Reds, but they did not have bagel dogs in Reds.) The official cd release in Eugene is 2/25 at Sam Bond's. The "street release" date is March 1. Anybody who wants a review copy, get on the tin-can phone and let me know. It's got an extra long string.

Anyway, thanks to everyone who put in a good word over the years.

And thanks to The Chiefs for an inspiring turnaround--whoah. That rocked.

the good word about singer-songwriter dan jones, his bands, and his amazing discography

The Golden Motors is exactly what you’d play at a raving party. Jones is likely in his 40s but he dresses and performs like he’s 18 and his new rock band just made it on the cover of Rolling Stone and their music is burning up the airwaves, primed for world domination. And what’s enjoyable about Jones is his keen ability to know when less is more and when it’s okay to slow down the pace of a song. In that respect, Jones is an artist, not just a rock star. (Andrew Fickes, gig write-up, northwestindiemusic.com, 8/23/11)

The music contained in the grooves of this four-song EP is driven by a throwback innocence and energy that rummages through the vintage closet of ’60s pop. Jones kicks off side one with “Don’t Be Afraid of Love,” a three-chord rocker that channels early Who, and Wilde’s flipside opener, “Two People in Love,” is a laid-back ballad that floats on a swell of Hammond organ and pedal steel. Long live DIY and the crackle of static. (Rick Levin reviews Dan Jones and Peter Wilde’s My Name Is John Smith e.p. in The Eugene Weekly, 10/28/10)

When the lyrics start to go all metaphorical in the middle of Dan Jones and the Squids new album, Totally Human, and you hear lines like, "Sometimes I feel just like a gremlin on the wing of our love" or "I think we saw the rapture, but it went as far as it could go," you know you've entered true Squid territory. (Chuck Adams reviews Totally Human in The Eugene Weekly, 5/31/07)

A repetitive Jiminy Cricket has been following me around pointing out my foibles. When I stopped by Jones' garage for a recent rehearsal on a hot May evening, "Being Difficult" was one of the first songs Jones and the Squids launched into. "Being difficult/ Like a knob that won't turn," Jones sang, his band sweating and periodically requesting ice cream, "Like a vine that won't wind." I felt downright guilty until I focused on what I decided the point of the song was: Being difficult is "totally human." And it's that line, taken from the most infectious song on the album, that seems to validate all of our petty existences. (Serena Markstrom, Eugene Register-Guard Ticket cover story for release of Totally Human, June 2007)

Eugene staple Dan Jones delivers something like a more mature, less crazy Daniel Johnston vibe and keeps it rockin' thanks to the lo-fi fuzz of able backers The Squids.(Amy McCullough, show preview The Willamette Week, March 12, 2008)

What are my first impressions of Dan Jones’ music? Strongly influenced by REM, Robyn Hitchcock and The Who, does that suggest Guided By Voices to you? Perhaps. In fact, there is a very strong 80s alt-rock sound here. I mean, please also include Dream Syndicate, the Minutemen, Sonic Youth and the Replacements into the mix. Make no mistake, though, Dan Jones delivers where it matters – great rock music, whatever the genre. (Kevin Mathews reviews Get Sounds Now at powerofpop.com, 10/22/06)

Clocking in at slightly more than half an hour, Dan Jones' Get Sounds Now is a whirlwind of raw rock and roll color. Sounding like The Who fronted by an unpretentious, tuneful Lou Reed, Jones bashes out his short tunes with equal parts fire and tenderness. Get Sounds Now has the magical, inexplicable appeal of an album that gets you through. (Jon Itkin reviews Get Sounds Now in The Oregon Voice, Fall 2005)

Billy Barnett, owner of Eugene's Gung-Ho (where One Man Submarine was recorded and mixed) says of Jones' songs, "They tend to be musically straightforward, unpretentious, melodic; lyrically smart and thoughtful; and the angst and angles within the storylines come across with a wry humor and sympathy...never the urgent, needy, in your face variety." (Josh Sommer, Get Sounds Now show preview,The Portland Oregonian A & E, 7/8/05)

One Man Submarine is the real deal, 12 unforgettable tracks whose instantly hummable melodies will stick in your brain like gum under a desk long after you’ve wrested the CD from your player (good luck on that, by the way). Jones’ plaintive, well-worn voice is the ideal instrument to deliver his whimsical, detail-rich story songs, in which getting your PHD in post-war pornography theory, driving a Chinese car, and living in a town called Penitentiary are all possibilities. If Jones ever wearies of music-making, a long career in short story and novel-writing awaits. (Walker Grey, NWradio.com, 2003) reviews One Man Submarine at

Smash your head on the acoustic punk rock. Diehard fans of Dan Jones' debut, For Your Radio may miss the days when the Eugene singer-songwriter would ply his Cormac McCarthy-inspired stories with simply an acoustic guitar. But considering that this working-stiff-songsmith as always had a jones for rocked-up stuff like The Who, Husker Du, and Guided By Voices, it's little wonder that Jones eventually turned to electric guitar. (Kim Chun, show preview, The Portland Mercury, 4/29/04)

More open sky and underwater than just "Americana," this sophomore release from a late blooming master songwriter is blissfully washed in fragile acoustic and jangle Pop guitars, building and leaning, cutting loose with Punk Rock riffs and -- when you least expect it -- roaring walls of humming waves. Deliciously melding influences like Roger Miller, Lou Reed, Hüsker Dü, The Meat Puppets and Steve Earle, Jones' wit and chops are electric, haunting, spontaneous, and fun. (John James reviews reviews One Man Submarine in Positively Yeah Yeah Yeah, 2003)

For Your Radio is lyrically driven, storytelling folk music at its finest. With a warm, undistilled voice, Jones walks his way through a kaleidoscope of adolescent memories, revisiting the basketball court, the local grocery store, a freshly fertilized front lawn and other suburban touchstones. Jones album, with its collection of childhood tall tales and remembrances, is reminiscent of a shoe box full of old photographs. The images are there, incomplete and unsorted, and the fragments come together to form an incomplete, but somehow vivid, story. (Lewis Taylor, show preview, Eugene Register Guard, 2000)

Any given verse of his songs packs more wit than a roomful of singer-songwriters could must in a month of open mics. (Jeff Rosenberg, show preview, The Willamette Week, 2000)

For Your Radio exemplifies why local music fans should welcome back this prodigal son with open arms. Name-dropping certain sports stars, hitting the road with a "skanky hardcore band," and threatening to open a keg of whupass, Jones isn't the stereotypical sensitive-guy folk singer. Jones juggles witticisms with truly touching tales of longing and emptiness, setting both to gently rolling country melodies and spare descending scales. If his Acoustic Grudge Matches were actual competitions, Jones wouldn't have much to worry about--it's difficult to imagine a contender besting For Your Radio. (Kansas City Pitch, 2000)

Dan Jones lovely new tape For Your Radio opens with a trio of post-adolescent boy-meets-girl songs that feel like plot summations of movies such as Say Anything...all first love and fear of the future and small-town anxiousness rolled into one poignant moment. (Mare Wakefield, show preview, The Eugene Weekly, 1999)

French Classics and Foam Tomahawks

2011-12-11T08:54:00.001-08:00

Loved this movie. Just incredible. Often in top ten greatest films of all time. And as I watched it, I thought, Tom Waits would have a good time turning this into an opera.

The Chiefs have the Jets today, with Tyler Palko under center. I've been following the Chiefs a little more since I discovered this world news app for my phone that takes me to the KC Star sports articles (along with reviews of Korean taco carts in the L.A. Times.) Palko is getting beat up something fierce for blowing massive chunks in his first three starts--in which he took more snaps than he had in his first three seasons. KC fans seem particularly rabid and short-sighted and perhaps sexually frustrated. They write death threats to bad placekickers, as well as good placekickers who miss kicks in the snow. They make what they think are ominous Native American warrior sounds while brandishing foam tomahawks. Yet, I still like the Chiefs. If, as an eight year-old, you pretend to be Steve Fuller, skidding around a half-frozen yard, chucking a sodden nerf football, you are committed to being a Chiefs fan. That's how it works. The red, the white, the gold--those become your colors. Me and Davis Hadden doing our Ted McKnight cuts in the slush.

introducing...the new golden motors cd...

2011-12-10T08:51:00.001-08:00

I'm well into this one--I like it. A random Border's score...before Borders ate the big 'un. I'll really miss the random Border's scores. But books will keep on keepin' on because people need good stories almost as much as food, spring training, and fermented beverages.

And here it is, The Golden Motors cd, art by Eric Sutton, layout by Dave Snider, music by The Golden Motors. Very proud of all of our efforts to cough up this rock and roll fuzzball!

Well, we're down in the bottom of the winter trough here in the Valley--about ten days til the Solstice. It was too cold to hit the garage studio this last week and for about three days I went without my full spectrum light, which is right here on the countertop blasting me while I doodle, scribble, and strum. And after going those three days, I felt like I had neoprene wrapped around my brain. Must highly recommend the light treatment for foggy valley dwellers.

Track Attack Ipod Shuffle

2011-12-04T11:48:00.001-08:00

I-Shuffle 4.5 miles list....not the best/not the worst run ever....

Saccarine Trust/I Have...
Fucked Up/Ship of Fools
Danny Barnes/Bone
Laura Nyro/Lu
Lester Young/Four O'Clock Drag
Laura Nyro/Blowing Away
Mike Watt/Finger-Pointing Man
Off!/Broken
Judas Pries/Metal Gods
Metheny Meldau/Fear and Trembling
Pretty Lights/?
Bettye LaVette/Joy
Imogen Heap/I Am In Love With You
No Age/Glitter
Robert Pollard w/ Doug Gillard/ Do Something Real
Pat Metheny/Inori
Nick Lowe/Indian Queens
The Fall/Weather Report 2
Fucked Up/Lights Go Up
Sonic Youth/Poison Arrow
Young Fresh Fellows/Let The Good Times Crawl

This was a powerful documentary about Tibet: Cry Of The Snow Lion

Smell-0-Matic Amazon Kindle with USB Musty Paperback Odorizer.

2011-12-03T11:14:00.001-08:00

I’m digging this Ken Bruen book, Ammunition, that I found at Parnassus Books in McMinnville. It really crackles along, hard-boiled for sure, good one-liners, and for all of its short chapters and abrupt edits, full of enough this-aint-gonna-end-well subplots for a six-hundred pager. If Albert Ayler honked a nasty solo over a slow Booker T. groove that might describe it. It’s the feeling that the world imagined here is complete, while what you get is a perfect fragment of it. And no one holds your hand—you don’t wanna live here anyway. This clips along, you can knock it out in a couple hours. The compression blooms, the exposed wires crackle.

Yet another reason to buy books, and discover new writers, by their covers, browsing in a store where you can smell actual papery pulpy mold. Now there’s an idea: Smell-0-Matic Amazon Kindle with USB Musty Paperback Odorizer.

This weekend is a three-party tour. Last night we celebrated my lovely lady and best pal with a few good folks, a two table antipasto array, and lasagna two ways. Then his-and-her holiday work parties tonight and tomorrow night. Only gotta get through one white elephant gift exchange, thank our lucky stars.

New Title Added to The Daily Records Store

2011-11-28T12:23:00.001-08:00

Me and Pete Wilde's record My Name Is John Smith is now available in digital format at CD Baby. Vinyl copies will be available through CD Baby shortly.

Power Pop, Polish Flicks, and a Salute to Guitar Castle

2011-11-25T17:56:00.001-08:00

&lt;p&gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;a href="http://danjones1.bandcamp.com/track/wtf-guitar-castles-gone"&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;WTF (Guitar Castle's Gone) by Dan Jones&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&lt;/p&gt;
A Black Friday song? Didn't think of it that way, but here it is, posted on Black Friday. I was super bummed when I heard about Guitar Castle closing up in Salem. Another one-man garage demo that's not gonna win any awards for engineering or production values. Much respect to Tim Knight.

Liked this film alot--Ashes and Diamonds. A war story set in Poland just after the end of World War II.

Multiple spins of the new Tommy Keene. He is coming to Eugene in September.

Pulitzer-Wurlitzer Syndrome

2011-11-23T16:23:00.001-08:00

Steve Traylor loaned me this one and I started it in one of those kind of rundown phases where it's hard for me to track compound sentences. So I kept konking out, because I needed sleep more than prize-winning literature. I aspired to Pulitzer-grade reading habits but had a Wurlitzer playing really slow roller-rink music where my frontal brain should have been. Now that I am more alert, I am loving this book. We moved one of our chairs--an Ikea chair that has been on the chopping block in our home furnishing scheme for some time now--over into a corner between my cds and records. So in this new cozy media nest I lean back under a paper lantern lamp and dig in. It's raining like crazy, and cold. I may blast through the last 200 pages tonight. It's a book that does somersaults of creativity.

At the track I've topped out distance-wise at 4.5 miles, and am pushing the pace a little each time. I have run shorter distances at a faster pace, but started the 4.5 loop with 16 minutes miles, feeling like a bipedal walrus in a Chiefs sweatshirt...now have the time down to 13'30 per mile. Shoes are pretty toasted after about nine months of steady use. But my knees and back feel fine and I haven't done anything dumb to injure myself or push it into the pain-and-discouragement zone. Like I need to sprint. I have a car.

WORDLE

2011-11-19T16:10:00.000-08:00

Snider turned me on to Wordle. This is a wordle built from this blog.

Jeanne Moreau, Cold Leeks, and Twinkle Lights

2011-11-18T16:44:00.000-08:00

Shot-for-shot, frame-for-frame, with a soundtrack by Miles Davis, this is the grooviest movie I've seen in a long time. Elevator To The Gallows, directed by Louis Malle.

Winter is here in the Willamette Valley and there are gutters at our house plugged up with leaves and leeks in the garden that need to be dug up, roasted, and included in a potato soup. I am probably going to make the soup first.

The Golden Motors clustered around a space heater for practice last night and knocked around a demo, "It's Twinkle Time," my attempt at a New York Dolls song about twinkle lights, proactive efforts to manage seasonal affective disorder, and the spirit of holiday giving when there is water in your galoshes.

&lt;p&gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;a href="http://danjones1.bandcamp.com/track/its-twinkle-time"&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;It's Twinkle Time by Dan Jones&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&lt;/p&gt;

track attack + midweek gigs + electric football metaphors

2011-11-14T22:02:00.001-08:00

Good track sesh tonight--a cold, dark evening when I wasn't too psyched to be hitting it. I went the kind of standard 4.5 miles and took 9 minutes off my time. From slowwww to not as slow. I guess I wanted to get it done with, sweat alot, and get home to eat terriyaki pork and cabbage. Paid bills, listened to some cd's I bought yesterday. Apparently the corporate end of the industry made some kind of announcement about no longer pressing cds with major releases. I have to admit, buying a fourteen dollar cd I'm going to put on my Ipod feels dumb sometimes. I listen in the car but I'm a pretty avid bike commuter. It's mainly when I'm driving to shows that I spin the plastic sound frisbees. I'm kind of ready to go with the change.

Speaking of which, I will be joined by Mike Last and Tom Nunes wednesday night at McMennamin's Wilsonville Pub, south of Portland, for a two-hour acoustic review, trio style with my buds. There will be beer there, and enormous cheeseburgers. I'm digging this stripped down thing while The Golden Motors make their big racket and roar on other nights. Tomorrow night in Eugene, I'll be joining Jesse Meade at Cornucopia to sing and play some. Jesse's been hitting it hard like a maniac in Eugene and invited me to play and I said YEAH.

It's like they used to say about the electric football quarterback--he was triple threat: passed, ran, and kicked. Except most of the time he'd flick that little foam football into a fern or into the furriest parts of a sleeping dog's hindquarters. DOZER!

Here's the I-jog Shuffle Playlist.

Daniel Lanois/Two Worlds
Alex De Grassi/Luther's Lullaby
Bettye LaVette/Outside Woman
Marnie Stern/Vibrational Match
Reptile House/Mrs Rain
Tommy Keene/Mr. Roland
The Psychedelic Furs/Yes I Do
Mark Knopfler/Back to Tupelo
Pat Metheny/Tears Inside
The Go-Betweens/Here Comes A City
Lester Young/Countless Blues #2
Tom Waits/Altar Boy
Mike Watt/Hammering Castle Bird Man
The Fireman/Light From Your Lighthouse
Elliot Smith/In The Lost and Found
Bettye LaVette/Here I Am
Tommy Keene/Warren In The 60s
Marnie Stern/The Weight of a Rock
John Lennon/Mother
Hope Sandoval/Bavarian Fruit Bread
Nick Lowe/Checkout Time
The English Beat/The Limits We Set
The Fall/Bury Pts. 1 + 3

Season 5 of Lost and a Big Bowl of Chex Mix

2011-11-10T18:24:00.001-08:00

I'm still in the "A" section of David Thomson's film compendium Have You Seen...we're well into season 5 of Lost, or I might be into the B's. I had a creative writing teacher in college who had a theory that any story that is off track will feature an aside or non sequitur or "tell" (as in poker). A character will say "where are we going with this?" or the plot will take a pointless detour to a funhouse, when the writer is really intent on not having fun as a writer. And in the funhouse, the character says "where are we going with this?" and perhaps that is where the story should start. Something like that. Anyways, Lost has whole episodes like that, if not major segments of seasons. Basically when you introduce time travel into a storyline built on techno paranoia, hothouse sociology, hunky guys, and tits, you've got a big bowl of chex mix with a hole in the bottom. But it is still fun. About nineteen people have recommended Breaking Bad in the last month, so that may be next.

So, when not watching Lost, I follow through on my other ridiculous plan (along with the Ridiculous Pushup Plan) of watching every film in Thomson's book. Every film I haven't see already, that is. This week it was the French Resistance film Army of Shadows. It's a non-action war film, about the the Resistance in France. Next up, the technically innovative early sound picture, Applause.

McMennamin's weekend + The Ridiculous Pushup Plan

2011-11-07T07:42:00.000-08:00

Back in Eugene after the mini McTourlet to Edgefield & Hotel Oregon. Very appreciative that McMennamin’s put us up and gave me a couple corners in which to sing and play. Highlights: the heated pool at the Edgefield spa. That beats driving home in the middle of the night, drinking Diet Pepsi to stay awake, for sure. Kicking around McMinnville was fun too. I found the Scott McCaughey LP “My Chartreuse Opinion” at Ranch Records, and ran into my book-merchant friend Dennis. Has a new store in McMinnville called Parnassus Books, with his partner Lucy, after closing up shop in Springfield last year.

I sent the Golden Motors' cd off to be duplicated, through Nettleingham Audio. Thanks to Kevin for always having it totally together, on both the mastering and duplication side. And thanks to Dave Snider for the cool art, and Eric Sutton for the groovy cover drawing, and for Jason and Pia for seeing the recording through.

Good news from Royals camp: Alex Gordon wins a Gold Glove for his first year in a new position. That's pretty inspiring.

I've hit the 4.5 mile mark at the track lately. It's taking me a good long time; cutting back to 3.5 once last week took literally two minutes off my time for each mile. I guess I saddle up for the slow haul...
my Big Dan's Ridiculous Pushup Plan is going well. I started doing ten pushups and crunches a day, and add one to the daily set, per week. I'm up to 24, which means in one year, I'll be doing 77 pushups a day. In ten years, I'll be doing 545 pushups a day. In thirty years, I'll be 72 years old, and doing 1,585 pushups a day! It's good to have a game plan.

Neptune-on-Eugene 2011

2011-11-02T07:24:00.000-07:00

Poseidon w/ Dolly Parton wig and t-shirt half-toga.

The Underlings at Sam Bond's

Costume inspiration record from the original duct-tape masters, The Flaming Lips.

Dave Peterson rocks it at Sam Bond's


The season of blood sugar demons is upon us.

Halloween weekend was pretty fun. Mike and I did our acoustic duo Porch Fest gig for a few neighbors drifting by. Sean Peterson was playing bass in a jazz combo across the street. The gig at Sam Bond's was fun too. Poseidon wafted waves of uncured spraypaint throughout the club. Listening to The Flaming Lips garage-era jams, cutting up strips of garbage bag to make fake seaweed, constructing a driftnet cape full of debris--good times.

This week I have a couple of solo shows at McMennamin's joints--Edgefield on Thursday 11/3, Hotel Oregon (McMinnville) on Friday 11/4. A little getaway for me and T.

Golden Motors cd heading to duplication in the next week. I do believe it is a smokin' doozy of a record.

Porch Fest + Sam Bond's on Saturday 10/29

2011-10-28T08:11:00.000-07:00

Our buddy Nate invited me to take part in his inaugural Porch Fest this Saturday--six porches clustered around Monroe Park in Eugene, sort of a circuit strum-a-thon. I'll be getting to Monroe Park at 12:45 and meeting up with Mike Last and other skulking, slightly anti-social pro-hootenany types. From there we will be assigned our porch, which will be our venue from one til three. Not sure who the other porch jammers will be, but I think this sounds fun, it's all ages, and an alternative to those of you who can't see us headline at Sam Bond's later that night. (W/ Underlings & Boats.)

Tracy and I went to June for dinner night before last--it was good. The first time we went to June they seemed a little undone by success and not quite together, but this was right on. The warm goat cheese salad was fantastic, and sitting by the fire place on a chilly autumn night was perfect.

tire tree + bike commute shuffle playlist

2011-10-27T16:30:00.000-07:00

jj johnson: what is this thing called love
daniel lanois: telco
jeremy enigk: return of the frog queen
daniel lanois: oaxaca
hope sandoval & the warm invention: drop
laura nyro: and when i die

Bike Path Funnies + IPod Commute Shuffle

2011-10-26T12:33:00.000-07:00

sonic youth: kissability
tom waits: army ants
sonic youth: walkin' blue
bob dylan: god knows
john lennon: one day (at a time)
gregg allman: i believe i'll go back home
the national: anybody's ghost

BLTNT! POW!

2011-10-25T07:32:00.000-07:00

     Sunday we did some shopping and whatnot and ended up going to Dickie Jo's for lunch. I'm not a big fan of retro diners. Having grown up going to Winstead's in Kansas City, I can't really buy in to a place because they've put up some black and white photos from 1953. In this doubting spirit, I took a left turn on the hamburger menu at Dickie Jo's and got a BLT.

     It was one righteous BLT.

     Some BLT's have so little bacon on them that if you take a strategically misplaced bite, you can pull all the bacon out, and you're left with a lettuce and tomato sandwich. You order a BLT knowing that it will only be a sad rumor of the kind you'd make at home. But this bomber was like a Webster's College Dictionary sawed in half, and had a stout layer of peppery, smoky bacon, not just two strips of el cheapo stuff cut in half to form a lame 4x layer. This was a guess-I'll-skip-dinner, kick-ass BLT. My doubts about Dickie Jo's retro vibe were kung fu'd right in the breadbasket.

     Also, my fourteen laps at the track last night were super BLT-fueled and the not-suffering kind of laps.

     The Golden Motors are playing at Sam Bond's on Saturday 10/29 w/ The Underlings (my unmastered burn of their new album is rocking!) and a Kill Rock Stars band from Winnepeg called Boats. I think it will be a fun time.

     I am learning more and more about Blogger, after years of maintaining a layout even more rudimentary than this one. The line between website and blog has pretty much been erased by all the different functions and features of Blogger (and I can only assume, other common blog hosting sites.)   Learning this in public has probably been clunky in some ways.

2011-10-22T14:29:00.000-07:00

Really enjoyed the Replacements documentary Color Me Obsessed. Ed Cole and I had a whole bunch of candy and soda and had a good time. The renovated Bijou is really sharp.

I also watched You, The Living, a Swedish movie that came out a couple years ago. It was comprised of 50 vignettes, some wickedly laugh-but-not-outloud funny; the truly dreary bits set up the laughs. I took in the better part of it in kind of a burned out state and wondered if I was just being a bummer art movie addict. But I think it's one that one would be worth watching again. Afterwards I read up on it some and learned that the entire thing was constructed on soundstages--fifty settings, fifty scenes, truly a massive undertaking for something very modest in many ways. (Comparisons made in write-ups to Synecdoche, New York.) Unique--I can't think of another movie like it, that I have seen. Here's an Ebert spiel on it.

Very sad about our town losing J.P. from Whopner County All-Stars. Thinking of his family and friends and close community.

Creeping Tendrils Literary Review

2011-10-21T08:25:00.000-07:00

I finished The Ruins by Scott Smith and the nasturteums started to drag it away. This always happens when I finish a book. This one was remarkable for its sustained tension--unrelieved stress and improvised coping under bizarre circumstances. I expected more B-movie shocks, but really it was more like a play on one set, with personalities interacting and the mystery remaining mostly opaque and creepy. Whew. Couldn't put it down, but am ready to read a cooking magazine or something.Gig at Territorial was fun last night--three piece acoustic style. Not something we practiced more than once, but we pulled it off and had a good time. Nice to play in a new room, very comfy, good pinot noir, and I am grateful as always for friends new and old who showed up and made it a good time. At the end of the night we plugged my acoustic into Dan's p.a. head and it sounded awesome, after getting a cloudy, limited, kind of yucko sound out of my Ampeg. Gotta keep fine-tuning that stuff. The sonics of acoustic shows take way more work than setting up as a garage band.

2011-10-20T10:07:00.001-07:00

Here's a new version of CD Baby webstore, now featuring One Man Submarine. One Man Sub is out of print. We'll have to get to work on that!

Dinner + music

2011-10-19T20:42:00.001-07:00

2011-10-19T12:16:00.000-07:00

Here's a groovy poster for our show tomorrow by Claire Flint Last. Thanks Claire!

Goodbye Ken and Aimee--happy for ya!

2011-10-16T20:53:00.000-07:00

Last night we said goodbye (for now) to our friends Ken and Aimee, who are starting a long road trip and will end up eventually in Chattanooga. It's hard to see them go, but these days I am happy for anyone who leaves Eugene. I'm curious about what they'll find. They did alot of cool stuff and made their contribution as artists, business people, and teachers. When they had their store, Letterhead, downtown, it was always such a refreshing, worldly blast of style, a real escape from the Eugene thing--and it didn't require a trip out to Oakway. When voters chose not to support development down there, I was happy for all of the flies in the nut butter buckets at Rainbow Fog Natural Foods, but not for Ken and Aimee.

One of my favorite memories of our friendship is watching film noir all day, one Christmas about ten years ago. This Gun For Hire, bouche de noelle, lots of red wine. That was a good one.

One of the things I'd miss about Eugene is The Bijou. We went there and saw Restless today. It was a sweet film--bittersweet. At first the quirky-cutesy morbidity vibe of it was bugging the crap out of me. I'd had a double americano and my toes were tapping and I was drumming on my knee, more in the mood to see The Thing, or a Metallica concert, I guess. It took me a while, but I opened up to it. The audience was in good hands. Emerging to a beautiful autumn day, things had slowed down and I was in a different place altogether. Hey, Eugene is a nice place to live. Pretty much everyone I know who loves it and stays here reserves the right to love it with maximum ambivalence.

We had a fun acoustic Golden Motors Acoustic Three practice yesterday. We're gonna play as a trio at Territorial Winery on 3rd street. Dan is playing his upright electric bass, I'm playing acoustic, Mike is playing snare and hi-hat. 7:00, 10/20. See you there.

Unilateral Spontaneous Record Store Day

2011-10-15T13:09:00.001-07:00

Yesterday the sun was shining bright after much gray and rain and that always makes me want to hit the record store. I am hitting the track here in a bit with the new Fucked Up double slab. And Nick Lowe and John Doe have both been putting out killer diller after killer diller, no filler.

Daily Records digi store

2011-10-13T17:31:00.000-07:00

Here's a nifty widget provided by CD Baby. My Name Is John Smith and the new Golden Motors will be up there soon...One Man Submarine remains under the auspices of Leisure King Productions. You can find that on CD Baby too along with probably dozens of cds by guys named Dan Jones from all over the planet. We're all good at being ourselves: singers with a plain, common name. But I'm the only Daniel Sherman Jones IV that I know of.

Full Moon Fever at Timmy Boyden's House

2011-10-12T12:44:00.001-07:00

Tim Boyden's Full Moon Fever

Last night I went to Timmy Boyden's house for the full moon and sat by the firepit, listened to him read Wendell Berry poems, and toasted marshmallows. Excellent Tuesday night! Tim and I worked together for about ten years at Northwest Door and Sash. He moved on to building art furniture full time and has been kicking butt with Splinters, his woodworkers collective. (Look for them in a new gallery downtown this Fall.) A master dumpster diver, he's the only artist I know who has made a chair out of bowling balls and high-heeled shoes. I am looking forward to seeing and sitting in his latest, The Baseball Chair, featuring Reynold Rydberg's old mitt.

Before that I did 13 laps in the outside lane at Margaret Bailes Johnson track, circling a deadly serious pee-wee football game. Here is the slow-jog Ipod shuffle:

Posies/The Glitter Prize
Dum Dum Girls/Baby Don't Go
Jay Farrar/Hanging On To You
Bad Brains/Attitude
Sonic Youth/Candle
Red Kross/Burn-Out
Lou Reed/Nowhere At All
Greg Brown/Lovingest One
Freedy Johnston/What You Cannot See, You Cannot Fight
The Pedaljets/Mrs. Green
The Red Elvises/Siberia
Laura Nyro/I Met Him On a Sunday
Ornette Coleman/Song X
The Baseball Project/Twilight of My Career
Zombi/Cetus
Reptile House/Keel Haul Love
Mike Watt/Thistle-Headed Man
Laura Nyro/The Confession
Casey Neill and The Norway Rats/Guttered
Lou Reed/Nobody's Business
Mark Knopfler/Standup Guy

I have to say, when The Red Elvises singing about Siberia are the soundtrack as you circle a pee-wee football game, that's a multi-cultural jolt.

Hats off to the Republican half of the U.S. Senate for the continued commitment to obstruction, denial, and corporate greed. It's the best of times, it's the worst of times, and that's not the half of it.

Late bloomer!

2011-10-08T15:22:00.001-07:00

I planted a bunch of bulbs around Buddy's grave, and one of them managed to pop up here in early October.

Some tomatoes ripening too, and a surprise batch of habanero. Hold on lil' peppers!

I ran four miles today, kind of an easy go this time. Other days....not so much. Feeling the difference--it has been about 8 months of track time for me.

DAN AND JIVAN PLAYING "JOY" IN A TOTALLY NEW WAY. I LOVE THIS MAN JIVAN. AND HE MADE THIS BORROWED TOM SOUND LIKE A PSYCHEDELIC TABLA.

Last night's show at Luckey's was pretty fun, though it would have been funner with Casey and his band. Casey got food poisoning or some kind of stomach tsunami and couldn't make it, so it ended up being a whole helluvalot of Dan Jones songs, and very few rotten vegetables were thrown. Two sets solo--one acoustic and one electric--and a set with The Golden Motors. I tried out a couple new songs and generally gave a long overview of five records in three hours that would have impressed my mom. The Motors set was loose, and very late, and alot of fun. Dan's amp blew up first thing, so he was running direct, and everyone was pretty punchy and kickin' out the jams.

2011-10-06T07:26:00.000-07:00

This has been on steady rotation in the squid tank. Dreamy, smart, homespun guitar music from David Kilgour of The Clean.

I picked three semi-ripe tomatoes from the garden last night and put them in a bowl near the gas heater to see if they'll ripen up. We'll see what happens. I'd like to make a simple tomato salad like we had in Olvera: sliced tomatoes, olive oil, salt and pepper.

Golden Motors, Casey Neill, Dan solo

2011-10-04T07:26:00.000-07:00

This Friday 10/7, my band and I have a show with Casey Neill at Luckey's Club Cigar Store in Eugene. I'll be opening the show solo, then Casey Neill and The Norway Rats will play, and then, once Dan hustles over from the WOW Hall and his Daddies gig, and Mike hustles over from Cornucopea and his Stagger and Sway Gig, The Golden Motors will assemble and rock the wee hours at Luckey's. Glad to be playing a gig with Casey.

Overall, I am pulling for The Brewers in post-season. The Braun-Fielder combo is an historic one, and the Brewers are an emerging franchise, just like my Royals will be emerging in the coming years. KC's current manager Ned Yost was a big part of their development, and former Royal Zach Greinke is a big part of their success year.

It's still weird being back from Europe and straight into the rain and cold.

Back in the valley.

2011-10-03T12:55:00.000-07:00

Enjoying this book....

We turned the heater on yesterday, our first full day back from Spain. The annual ritual of scorching dust in the furnace and the gurgle of downspouts overwhelmed with the first big rain was not quite what I was looking forward to about coming home. I'm thinking horse pills of vitamin D, ASAP. And Lorca poems next to the full spectrum lamp.

Today is day 2--some jet lag backlash but overall getting back on west coast USA time. Weird to be having large cups of brewed coffee again (one of which, in my fog, I spilled all over my desk). Weird also to have a yard that is as big as some of the small parks we saw. I miss seeing old guys lined up three and four on benches on the square, pretending not to notice the young guys hot-rodding on their scooters and motorcycles.

back in the USA

2011-10-02T02:17:00.000-07:00

That was one long travel day: Paris to DC to San Fran. And it is good to be home. It's raining and there are a handful of half-ripe tomatoes. The volunteer nasturteum army and the snapdragons and leeks are still going. I checked with a flashlight. The dogs are happy to see us. Dozer very wiggly, like a puppy, even though she is eight years old.

On the plane, I came close to finishing the authorized Willie Mays bio by James Hirsch, but the last twenty pages in confluence with the last landing of our trip had me pretty blue. Three things stand out about Willie, that I never knew. First, he always looked for mentors, and was gracious to them. Second, the only we he could get any down time was to check into hospitals for exhaustion. This reminded me of Neil Young's epileptic fits early in his career--just blowing it out, full bore, day after day. I was also not aware of the controversy around his ethic of quiet, one-on-one personal community service versus political statements and activism. Many black players criticized, especially Jackie Robinson. But MLK said to Mays, "you make it easier for me to do my job." Really appreciating this book.

Have not thought much about music, did not much listen to music, for two whole weeks, other than a sweet impromptu jam session with a new Olvera friend named Steve Gould. (Well, how can you not have "Spanish Bombs" pop into your head once every so often, in Andalucia?) He brought a pair of guitars down to the bar and we felt our way through a few things. Then he started pulling out about half the songs from Steve Earle's record Exit 0 and we had a good time. (Steve G also does great Adrian Legg style finger-picking instrumentals and spot-on Sting numbers.) Tried to remember "Copperhead Road," "The Devil's Right Hand," and "Valentine's Day." There was one summer where I listened to Exit 0 and Copper Blue, alternating, for about three months straight. One of those summers when you coulda gone under. And there was another reason it was very special: each time I visited a cathedral in France and Spain I would think of Joe Carioti. And "Someday" was a song we both loved and would sing and play together. So when Steve pulled out that one, I was really touched.

We met so many fun, gracious, interesting people, and that only scratches the surface. Eduardo took us to his olive groves; Antonio had us laughing constantly...and then there was the guy who looked like a classic rock bass player from the UK. He approached our group and tugged on my facial hair one night, maybe because I was saying to a fellow rock and roll geek that Live at Leeds was the best rock record ever. That was super weird and funny, and my instinct for politeness took over my instinct to ask him what the hell was going on. Either he was hitting on me or taking the piss outta me, or both.

2011-10-01T02:33:00.000-07:00

A quick note from the airport in Paris...our journey home is about to start, after one last night in Paris, where we stayed at a hotel in Montmartre. What a fantastic trip we had, meeting many kind and friendly people, and seeing so many new landscapes. Yesterday, we road the Via Verde bike trail--a repurposed railway line (just like the Promenade Plantees in Paris) through olive and goat country, plugging away on the way back on our rental bikes. Pounded by the sun but delighted, riding through many train tunnels...to the endangered buzzard observatory...just one delight on a great trip. xo dj & tvv

A day left in Olvera

2011-09-28T10:15:00.000-07:00

     Out visit to Olvera is coming to an end--it went so fast. Today we climbed to the top of the moorish castle next to the great cathedral on the highest point in town (not far from our favorite hang, Valentino's). I had expected the castle to be more in ruin, but all sorts of passageways, parapets, chambers, stairways, and walkways are still intact. It was very much like the kind of castle I would draw as a child--you know, a good place for sword fights and for lofting up deadly waves of arrows. Maybe swinging from a rope by one arm and lopping off ten heads in one swipe with the other. It made me wonder what the exact means of defense actually was.
     An impression, or maybe a kind of trance-feeling, that I had the first couple of days, was that we are on an island. At night, the lights of one or two towns in an otherwise dark expanse of rolling mountains, is not so unlike the lights of a boat or two out on the water, or a lighthouse. That feeling was essentially shattered by a trip into Seville yesterday that I wish we had handled a different way. Into a major city for only a few hours, without GPS or maps, straight to the biggest tourist attraction, and a restaurant that charged for bread and listed "paella for two only" as 20 euro, then charging 40...tons of stress finding our way home at night. Yet, when we emerged from the labyrinth of t-shirt shops, we found lovely quiet spots and had a nice walk through the main park.
     Seville was lovely, but my head was in a different place, up on the square by the church where we sat briefly under a tree with an elderly woman in a wheelchair whose house was next door...to the cathedral. When a kindly woman says via con dios in that setting, it is very sweet. The whole city is built into and onto the rock--the rock of the church and the rock of the mountain. Another impression, while napping on the sofa: sleeping safely on the shoulders of that great rock. But it's travel, so you can't hold on--go to Seville, get skull-fucked, it's all in a day. Anyhoo, back in town today, we visited the castle, then drove to a lake nearby and took a swim and read our books, befriended by yet another burr-covered dog who sat under our table in a pile of almond shells.
     Driving is a trip. Every time we get in the rental car and come to a roundabout, it's a roll of the dice. Verbal directions often don't include the city or town that identifies the road. Numbering seems somewhat casual. The arrow pointing to the road to Seville has about nineteen towns on it, and so when you are told to take the road to Pruna, well, let's just say GPS is something we'll be getting with the next rental car. Just not enough time to get totally familiar with the roads. And I'm not so hot at that anyway.
     Another impression: this place isn't that different from a town of 9,000 in central Missouri. Couple of main roads in and out. An agrarian economy. We're in Spain, yes, but we're also in the country. Like the RV man says in Eugene, eggs are cheaper in the country. So we eat well and things are slow and everything is cool. Lorca street and Cervantes street are up the hill, yet it could just as well be Grant Wood country in Iowa, on our way to Solon Beef Days. And I love it.
I'm going out to pub tonight to strum a song or two with a new acquaintence, Steve. Crap, I don't know any Beatles. Mostly I know my oddball songs.

my clark's are toast

2011-09-23T10:19:00.000-07:00

     Today was another rambling day in Paris, this time in the 12em arrondisement, just next door to our place in Le Marais. Yesterday I pretty well maxed out on the bustle and density of our neighborhood and the adjacent 3em. My destination was The Louvre, but the crowds there were so dense, too much like an episode from World War Z. Tourist zombies! Everywhere! Attends! Je suis un touriste aussi! Je suis un zombie? Oui, je suis un zombie. I felt...depressed. So, I hid out for half an hour in the Jardin de Tuileries, under a long row of chestnut trees, sitting on one of the green chairs that are everywhere there.
     I haven't smelled dry fallen leaves in a long time. Where I come from, leaves turn into mush. Occasional leaf-pile jumping in Eugene is possible but it is more likely you will scrape or shovel leaves, or just let them melt into the ground. If you do jump on a leaf pile, you may land on a recent UO graduate who is trying to stay warm until financial aid checks for grad school arrive. The smell of dry chestnut leaves is calming--a midwestern smell, in Paris--and reading about Willie Mays' rookie season was a brief respite from hoof and tourist syndrome. Then back into the fray.
     We walked for maybe half an hour after our rendezvous, to Les Jardins Des Plantes. That's more than a stroll, at rush hour. The Clark's I bought for Amsterdam in 2009 are like Frankenstein clunkers, all beat to hell. I am due a new pair... Then a brief trip to our old street near L'Arene de Lutece, a second century dirt floor arena where gladiators used to fight, and later, folks put on plays and other performances. Now old men play boules and kids play soccer and high school kids bring their beer and bottles of wine to sit in the stone bleachers late in the afternoon. One of my favorite places here, and worth the long walk. Lovely memory of Vietnamese takeout lunch at L'Arene, and the world-class jazz and blues record shop on the corner, where I bought a copy of Ornette Coleman's Dancing In Your Head.

     Today I said non to the urban jostle and discovered on my battered map Le Promenade Plantée, a repurposed railway line, now an elevated garden walkway, that cuts across the bottom of the 12em down to Le Jardin de Reiully. Perfect for brain recallibration. I had a simple lunch from a grocery store at the park and konked out for half an hour. Outdoor napping in a foreign country was not on my bucket list, but I recommend you put it on yours.
     From there I walked to the Cinematéque Francaise, a national film center with a museum, library, and screening rooms. This to me was good travelling, some wandering, some map work, with adjustments made for discoveries of particular things; and little or no shopping. I looked into and rotated a real zoetrope, and saw all of the early incarnations of toys and multi-image projection devices that led to the modern movie camera. Super cool, my kind of museum. Overhead 2-way screens, showing seminal, innovative early films, reflected in display glass and interacting nicely with all the posters and props and other screens at play. There were projections illuminating the floor in places--magic time, and not a granite bust in sight. Wanted to stay and see a movie!
     Then a short trip through the Jardin Itzhak Rabin and back to the Promenade de Plantée, which ends up behind the Opera De Paris Bastille, around the corner from our apartment. Travel legs recovered. And just the smallest glimpse of my french language neurons firing again. And tomorrow we EZ Jet to Spain, where new kinds of magic await.
     Overall, travel is a chance to get through some of my shyness and timidity (when not playing a guitar in front of people), and learn again and again that it's okay to fumble and feel your way through it. I came close to avoiding the film museum because the interaction with buying a ticket was bound to be goofy; what if it was free, and I tried to pay? What if it was not free and I tried to wander in without paying? What if it was all in French? (They provided cool English audio guide handsets w/ numbers corresponding to displays.) What if I knocked over a prop from Metropolis? None of these things happened. (But a couple of them did yesterday.)I use my map all the time, and haven't been lost except on a late night fallafel run in the 3em, when I ignored Tracy's sense of direction. And I did finally go running--eleven laps around the interior perimeter of Place Des Vosges. I attracted the attention of locals when I was passed by a bust of Victor Hugo.That has not happened to any of the peppy Parisian joggers.

droid polaroids & snapshots from Paris, 9/22

2011-09-22T01:47:00.000-07:00

Paris 9/20 and 9/21

2011-09-21T12:26:00.000-07:00

While it is true we are in Paris, it is also true that we are on vacation, so for these first couple of full days we have slept in. My plan to get up this morning at 8 and go to Place de Vosges for a run? Didn`t work out. Yesterday was kind of a nice fusty day for us, with stops at La Musee de Victor Hugo and La Musee Carnavalet, plus lots of meandering. I almost bought a copy of Les Miserables at Shakespeare and Company but decided a brick-shaped book was not going to be fun to pack home. I finished World War Z: An Oral History of The Zombie War, by Max Brooks this morning. The chapter near the end about clearing the tunnels and catacombs of Paris was super creepy and, looking out my window, super local. Loved that book! Looking forward to whatever the follow-up is.

We finished the day yesterday at a bistro called Le Coude Fou. Our waiter was mr. put-upon impatient guy when asked for a legume-related vocabulary tune-up--I could not remember what les courgettes were. Hey man, it`s like the Jam says: that's entertainment. What I didn`t catch was a central vocabulary checkpoint in my order; braised joue de boeuf. It was kind of a bulbous cut, but tender, and I didn`t think it was too funky based on my midwest pot roast experience. The fatty parts had sort of melted into the texture or grain of the meat. There were some moments of gooey gel-ishness. No biggie, just figured they`d braised this thing slowly and to the melty max. The polenta was tasty. I woke up wondering about the cut and looked it up. I had ordered something I would have totally wussed out on had I known: beef cheeks. I was retroactively proud of my unintentional culinary envelope-push. And it tasted pretty good.

Tracy's work took her to the 13e today, so I tagged along and had a super ramble back home, to Place Joan D'Arc, down to a big park on Rue de Choissy, then to Chinatown, and back up Rue D'Italienne to Place D'Italienne, the neighborhood's big central roundabout. The 13e was a more low-key hood, I liked it. Working people, more ethnic diversity. Then I headed up Rue de L'Hospital past Le Jardin Des Plants, stopping at a cafe for a double espresso and a chapter of the new Willie Mays bio. Awesome day.

Paris Day 1.4

2011-09-20T03:49:00.000-07:00

Paris 2011

Fresh out of the gate and on the way to baggage claim, we followed an older lady down a walkway between the ascending and descending escalators. The first commercial signage we ran into was just overhead for her and about chest high for me. Thus began a weird version of the limbo with a full escalator of people laughing alongside us until we ran into a concrete abutment and had to toss carry-on bags to strangers and hump over the moving rubber rail of the walkway. The man who helped me turned to his wife laughing and said, not unkindly, a slang word that I wish I could remember. It wasn't boubule ("fatso") but maybe a variation meaning approximately "like Greg Luzinski" or "large but agile." He explained it to me and said it was complimentary. It would require an overly complex cynicism to think it was not.

Tracy found us a truly charming studio in The Marais, a short walk from Place Des Vosges. We walked a wide loop through jet lag, on a pleasant late summer day with a touch of autumn--a day I'd rather experience here than at home, where nine months of cool, wet weather are about to set in until mid-June of next year. September in Paris--mercurial sun and shade. After a short nap, we checked out the Italian restaurant literally next door, a place called Rusti. One young man was running the front, expediting, and serving, and doing a cheerful, heroic job of it. The food was good. The movie poster on the back of my menu was right on: La Dolce Vita.

I also want Mr. and Mrs. Random to know: we brought space money to share, so make a wish.

green tomatoes, red telecasters, and poppers

2011-09-15T08:14:00.000-07:00

Seattle Baseball Weekend w/ Rick and Jackie

I took my old Mexican Telecaster to Rick Kneale this week. The tone pot went spontaneously kaput when I pulled it out of the case at Darrell’s, up in Seattle. I really should have taken a photo of Rick holding one of his rad custom guitars, but since he so improved the playability of this MexiTel, I took this one. I think it might be the only guitar in the world with both Iggy Pop and Princess Leah on it.

Out in the back yard, our un-pruned, untended peach tree has ONE large end-of-summer yellow-orange orb isolated on a far branch. That’s the kind of summer it has been. Short but glorious, within quirky limits. We also have about fifty pounds of green tomatoes that I’m hoping will turn red while we are on vacation, but I have my doubts. I’m told green tomato chutney is an option. It would be five-year supply. That bed is kind of tucked in the far corner of the yard and doesn’t get quite as much sun as it could. The big garden excitement at this point is a crop of leeks I planted six weeks ago, per the advice of our default garden/yard mentor, Mike, whose Fox Hollow Nursery is next to the Dairy Mart on 29th and Friendly. It’s a dense little grotto of diversity, exotica, and good quality information next to the place you get your newspaper, half and half, and Rolos.

I should be brushing up on my francais for vacation, especially since my Spanish is at the “hola” level. Paris for almost a week, and then Olvera, Spain for another 6 days. This trip has been on the books for a few months now, but I haven’t bothered to process it, staying in the foreground of life mostly, which at times is like running a gauntlet of soggy nerfballs. The laugh track is on, so it's no problem.

I buzzed up to Seattle last weekend and saw the Royals/Mariners game with Rick Deiss and his girlfriend Jackie. Twenty years I have lived in Eugene and that’s the first MLB trip for me—so much fun. Our next plan is to check out the EMP. I want to see The Flaming Lips van.

Even at twenty + games under, The Royals are alot of fun this year, and getting better. Luke Hochevar has had a great second half and seems to be getting through the bumps in the middle innings that were derailing him in the first half. The 1-5 spots in the lineup are all hitting at least .275 w/ close to 20 homers each. Alex Gordon has really caught fire, leading the league in doubles and outfield assists. The way he transitioned into left field and the lead-off spot, becoming so good at it, so fast, is inspiring. I'm still Royals-centric, and not really a baseball expert, but it seems like a matter of lowering the team ERA a run or so while this dynamite offense starts to pummel the crap out of opposing pitchers in 2012. Probably the funnest part has been watching the outfielders nail runners. Melky Cabrera doubled up a guy at first at the game I saw in Seattle. I hopped up like a crazy person and shouted BOOM!!!! GOT HIM!!! It was kind of embarassing.

I have listened to many hours of games at this point and wonder: when did pop-ups become "poppers"? All the announcers say "poppers" now, and so I imagine Billy Butler lofting a deep-fried jalapeno pepper full of cream cheese into shallow right field. Gorman Thomas never hit "poppers." Roger Maris never hit "poppers." What is up with this linguistic shift?

I’m working on a Kickstarter proposal for the Golden Motors record, which is all ready to press up. Having had the experience of releasing records DIY with most of the energy and money going into the production and duplication, I wanted to slow down this time and think through a different approach.

Music-wise I've been listening to the most recent Meat Puppets alot, the most recent Posies, and various others things on my laps at track. I have an unmastered copy of the new Underlings that is smokin'! I am bummed that I missed the Off! show in Portland. That is not fair. Not fair at all.

Noon Hour Slow Jog with The Thin White Duke

2011-09-04T20:40:00.000-07:00

Bare Wires @ Sam Bond's 9/2/11

We had a pretty fun show friday night w/ Bare Wires and The Stagger and Sway. Bare Wires were cool, kind of reminded me of the first Redd Kross record crossed with nasty-twangy Billy Childish and something like Southern garage soul music. Who-y and Ramones-y, yes, but more going on than homage. Mathew was a really nice cat too. Butthole Surfers were across town and so was Red Fang, so I'd say there was some serious free market competition going down for your alternative guitar rock dollar. We played well and encored with a couple of oldies Brian Patrick came up to play bass on. "My Banana" and "Airport City." I had plugged into Scott's Marshall so I was running stereo in power trio format playing hella loud for this off the cuff musical spoonful of beans flipped at the wall of the cafeteria. Not too many hours later I was serving up lemonade at The Saturday Market and tearing into a warm parmesan brioche from Palace Bakery. I.E. I have a damn cool life, all in all.

I charged out into the noon hour sun today for a run to shake off the slugs and it was good. The I-shuffle mix was thusly suchly this:

Laura Nyro: To A Child
The Replacements: Kiss Me On The Bus
Ornette Coleman: Antiques
David Bowie: Looking For Water
The Budos Band: King Charles
Mark Knopfler: Boom, Like That
No Age: Inflorescence
Ornette Coleman: Turnaround
Los Lobos: I Wan’na Be Like You
John Lennon: Nutopian International Anthem
Marnie Stern: The Weight of A Rock
Volcano Suns: 1999 (live)
Imogen Heap: The Walk
Lone Pigeon: Oh Catharine
DJ Rekha: Gur Nalon IshgMitha
Redd Kross: Solid Gold
Jay Farrar and Benjamin Gibbard: Big Sur
The Surfaris: Surfer Joe
New Order: World in Motion
The Others: Second Sky

I love David Bowie's records so much--finding the glam classics on cassette was one of the great identity-shifting adventures of my early adolescence. The George Brett posters came down, the druggy transvestite rock posters went up, and by association I learned about Lou Reed, The Stooges, and The Clash. I count the show I saw on Sound And Vision tour w/ Adrian Belew on guitar as one of the greatest rock shows I've ever seen. I have kept up with most every record in the last twenty years. Reality is the one newest to my ears,which means I'm like 7 years behind on this one, duh, and every time it comes on the Pod, I think "hmmm, what is this? This is great. When did I put this on my Itunes, and what the heck is it? Is this indie rock from Brooklyn?" Then he sings and it's all aces.

Bare Wires - Dancing On A Dime

2011-08-29T23:01:00.000-07:00

STOKED TO BE PLAYING A GOLDEN MOTORS GIG WITH THESE FELLOWS ON 9/2 AT SAM BOND'S!

To Seattle and Back

2011-08-23T22:26:00.001-07:00

The Golden Motors show in Seattle got a nice write-up on Northwest Indie Music.

We had a nice trip up there, got up to the city by 6:30 and hit a Mexican joint called Todo Mexican. Todo was good eats; thank you Yelp app. There were three bay leaves in my burrito--that has to be a record. We got ourselves set up by nine, but by this time bass-man Dan was not feeling so good; something had set off his food allergies and he was in for a full-night hellride of hurling and hurting and suffering hard, and finally a trip to the ER at 8:00 the next morning. I am in awe of his commitment to playing his instrument and holding up his end because he played hard and killed everything and was sick as a dog. Chris Ross sat in on ax fiddle and added alot of lovely texture and harmonic color to the set. Mike rocked it on the kit. Practice does not make perfect, and who would want to be perfect, but we get together, we take the time, and it counts. I was real happy with how we drove to another town and nailed it. Next up: The Eugene Celebration.

Darrell's was probably the oldest joint in a ten block stretch, kind of an old man bar vibe crossed with good people who like good music with guitars and whatnot. I stood in the parking lot beweeen bands, after checking on Dan, and listened to Sonic Youth on the jukebox--"Bull in the Heather." We're all looking for a little haven for what we love--weird underground music from whatever era, non-specifically, and Darrell's is one of those. The Sterling Loons played a cool set of psychedelic pop, kind of Pink Floyd/early Who/Byrds/Kinks, maybe some Bevis Frond and Soft Boys feel sneaking in there, a trippy band with good players and good record out that we listened to on the way home, twice. (It's on Kool Kat label.) Red Jacket Mine played a tight three-piece set, no pedal steel/guitar player, just Lincoln slashing and picking clean lines, very exposed--very brave, no fuzz bogarts or noise. All new songs, alot of soul vibe to many of them. New platter on the way.

For the second gig in row the song that people commented on was "Building An Ark," one that almost fell out of our set--and one that is twice as fast live as it is on the upcoming record. It's nice, in the blur and distraction of modern life, for even one person to take note and remark that a song is a hit in their world. We also played the two songs off the My Name Is John Smith e.p. That was new. We had a couple Squid tunes worked up but left them out.

Home by 5:30 so Mike could play a neighborhood block party with his band The Stagger and Sway. I didn't feel tired until late Monday.

Ipod Shuffle, 15 laps w/ track cat

2011-08-17T07:18:00.000-07:00

I added a lap last night and was tailed by a cat I'll call Nike The Track Cat. One guy did intense sprints on the field and was a blur of elbows and knees, shadow-boxing in the endzone at the end of each. A trio of large ladies were walking and talking. And an enormous oblong nectarine moon rose above the ridge during Daniel Lanois' song "Todos Santos." Dropped me down a level to a desert floor under the local water table. And later it occurred to me, I'm running three 5 K's a week, why not run a real one? The Beatles "It's All Too Much" kicked things off--a song of a certain kind of melodic noisiness that is very low-fi, not that different from a Swell Maps number. One of my favorites, a real freak out.

The Beatles: It's All Too Much
Freedy Johnston: Lonely Penny
The Takeovers: Fairly Blacking Out
Volcano Suns: Sea Cruise
The Replacements: Skyway
Los Lobos: River of Fools
Tinariwen: Desert Wind
New Order: Touched By The Hand of God
Los Lobos: When The Circus Comes
John Lennon: Out of The Blue
Bettye LaVette: You'll Never Change
Redd Kross: Burnout
Casey Neill & The Norway Rats: Idyll
Overpass: Manhattan (Beach)
Ornette Coleman Trio: Riddle
Casey Neilll & The Norway Rats: Guttered
Daniel Lanois: Todos Santos
Jay Farrar: Jam
JJ Johnson: Audobon
The Jesus Lizard: Elegy
Bob Dylan: TV Talkin' Song
Chic: When You Love Someone
Laura Nyro: And When I Die (live)
The Fireman: Is This Love

Jogging Slow to Chic's Greatest Hits

2011-08-13T09:42:00.000-07:00

It has been a good few weeks for running, feeling stronger and more resilient from plugging away around the four-mile mark two or three times a week, and not feeling quite as doggy doing it. Warm evenings, warm light at dusk. It's summer. I know there are alot of approaches to it--I see people sprinting, then walking; sprinting, then jogging. Occasionally someone runs quite a few laps at a fast pace that I am kind of envious of. (This is alot like feeling insecure about someone who can rip off alot more notes in a guitar solo than I can.) But I like to go for more distance and maybe get a tick faster every couple months or something, I dunno.

Last night's run was remarkable because it came two hours after a direct collision between me and a Red Baron pizza, which I won, in some respects, while reading The Power of One. I thought it would make running hard, but it was totally fine. Chic began and ended the playlist:

Don't be a drag
Participate
Clams on the half shell
And roller-skates.

Chic: My Feet Keep Dancing
Mike Watt: Funnel-Capped Man
Grateful Dead: Around and Around
Kid Cudi: Pursuit of Happiness
The Magnetic Fields: Drive On, Driver
Lester Young: I Want A Little Girl
Celtic Frost: Journey Into Fear
Off!: Upside Down
Cesar Rojas: Little Heaven
Pat Metheny: Inori
Overpass: Slohand Pachuco
Los Lobos: Dream In Blue
Volcano Suns: The Central
Steve Wynn & The Miracle Three: Consider The Source
Tommy Keene: Underworld
Keene Brothers: Death of The Party
Los Lobos: Evangeline
Cesar Rosas: Angelito
The Fireman: Light From Your Lighthouse
Casey Neilll & The Norway Rats: Radio Montana
Chic: Good Times

I downloaded a cool app for my Droid called Retro Camera and took these shots on my bike commute this week. I ride along the slough for alot of my commute--herons are always fun to see. Once this one got my attention I stopped long enough to notice some cool graffiti and interesting floating flora.

Short playlist from a shorter, maybe faster, run...

2011-07-30T20:39:00.000-07:00

I'm not one to let the exercise get in the way of dinner, so I made it a short run tonight, 2 + miles at a quicker pace than the usual. I must have upped the pace because I sweated alot more, breathed alot harder, and was on the verge of a stitch in my gut off and on. Still, I got passed by a dandelion fluff ball on the wind. Still sweating an hour later after cranking some Descendents Enjoy! while I took a shower. Summer is here. Now we are going to June, or if it is too busy, The Rabbit.

I watched the rest of Andrei Rubelev last night and today. It was an amazing film.

Today at Saturday Market someone asked me if I was glad I didn't live in Kansas City with the heat and humidity there. I said, "well, no, I miss it." And he pursued that line, saying "that miserable heat and all those Tea Party wingnuts!" And I said "that's a reduction of Kansas City I don't agree with in the least." And he got pissed off and stomped away, saying he'd lived there for 40 years and he oughtta know. I sure miss KC.

The Fireman: Lifelong Passion
Fucked Up: The Black Hats
Cocteau Twins and Harold Budd: She Will Destroy You
Loose Fur: Carnival Knowledge
Lester Young: Way Down Yonder in New Orleans
Joanna Newsom: Sprout and the Bean
Kid Cudi: Up Up and Away
John Lennon: Meat City
The Pedaljets: Small Towns
Imogen Heap: Loose Ends
Judas Priest: Metal Gods
Kid Cuti: Solo Dolo
Red Kross: Burn-Out
Mudhoney: Have to Laugh

2011-07-29T12:36:00.000-07:00

Yesterday after work I had my hand fully inside the Ruffles bag and was about to break my commitment to another two weeks of no between-meals foraging or junk food, but bam, some kind of late-blooming impulse control kicked in. I watched half an hour of Andrei Rublev, a three and half hour Tarkovsky film about a 15th century icon painter and then went to the Margaret Bailes Johnson track, where I put on a show of such doggedly slow running that stars appeared in the sky and the moon rose and fell while indolent neighbor children pointed and laughed and shot bottle rockets in my general direction. The first no-junkfood period earned me a set of totally boss Royals coffee cups. The second two-week period includes pushups as part of the plan (not many, but good ones) and the carrot on the stick is the new Bob Mould autobiography. (Schematic drawings of the compressors used on Zen Arcade? Nerds assemble.) Andrei Rublev immediately grabbed me. A 3.5 hour movie about a 15th century Russian icon painter pulled me in? Yes. After all, I used to read Chekhov stories instead of dating. Unrequited love was more literary.

The art work for The Golden Motors cd is done and the masters sound good. Kevin Nettleingham put some sparkle dust on it and I really dug seeing his new studio. Eric Sutton did some drawings, Claire Flint contributed a live band photo, and Dave Snider pulled it all together in his typically deft and stylish and colorful way. I appreciate all the energetic artists in my friends circle and how generous they have been to help me put a face on the music. Daily Records Catalog #0007 rocks really hard and I'm proud of it.

Despite their crappy record, The Royals are still alot of fun to watch, and with Butler and Hosmer bringing the long ball more and more, their fragile starting rotation isn't quite the liability that it was two months ago. If a starter can get it to the fifth or sixth inning without leaving hisr ass on the mound good things can happen. When Moustakas starts to hit this is going to be a formidable lineup. Two days until the trade deadline--not wanting to see Francoeur or Cabrera go. Kyle Davies baffled Boston and KC fans with a dynamite start on Monday. And the bullpen held Boston for seven scoreless innings--this is a fun team if you take it one game at a time.

Ipod playlist from a particularly long, slow jog

2011-07-27T12:04:00.000-07:00

ornette coleman: doughnuts (live in Stockholm)
slayer: expendable youth
tommy keene: highwire days
pat metheny: night becomes you (live in tokyo)
nikki sudden: death is hanging over me
overpass: parachutes
david sylvian: pollen path
nikki sudden: the last bandit
magnetic fields: 3-way
pedal jets: stipple county
daniel lanois: two worlds
fucked up: no epiphany
kid cudi: trapped in my mind
airport 5: total exposure
circus devils: festival of death
pedal jets: looking out my window
pete townshend: white city
jesus lizard: low rider

I picked up The Overpass cd at the Mike Watt show. Overpass is 3/5's of the band Slovenly and features the guitar awesomeness of Tom Watson. This session at the track was remarkably slow and did not hit stride until about lap 11. Often people come and go while I'm running, and run alot faster than I do. But I'm the only plodder doing 14 laps.

Long Slow Run Ipod Playlist

2011-07-17T07:52:00.000-07:00

This one was weird because when I started it was misty and kind of cold, sort of Scottish summer, but halfway through, the sun came out, steam began rising from the artificial turf on the field, and suddenly I was in Savannah, Georgia wishing I had a sun hat.

Neil Diamond: Create Me
John Lennon: Well Well Well
John Doe: Repeat Performance
J.J. Johnson: Bee Jay
Eddie Money: Baby Hold On
Zero Boys: Bloods Good
The National: Conversation 16
Fucked Up: For My Friends
Redd Kross: Self Respect
Grateful Dead: Looks Like Rain (11/5/77)
Tommy Keene: Turning On Blue
J. Mascis: Make It Alright
Alex De Grassi: Luther's Lullaby
Fucked Up: Days of Last
Marnie Stern: Grapefruit
Kid Cudi: The End
Cocteau Twins and Harold Budd: Ooze Out and Away, Onehow
Kid Cudi: REVOFEV

The only Marnie Stern album I have is "In Advance of the Broken Arm." There's nothing really like it...I mean, in my limited view of metal math rock art skronk hammer-on indie good time music. It's the little pop melodies that emerge from the shred that make it a wild kind of music.

Today I am heading up to Nettleingham Audio in Vancouver to have the Golden Motors project mastered. Huzzah.

4.1 mile run Ipod Shuffle Soundtrack

2011-07-14T22:13:00.000-07:00

LSR (Long Slow Run)
Thursday, July 14, 2011

Thin Lizzy: Johnny
The Vivian Girls: I Have No Fun
David Kilgour and the Heavy Eights: Pop Song
Freedy Johnston: The Kind of Love We're In
Zero Boys: Positive Change
Cocteau Twins and Harold Budd: Sea, Swallow Me
J.J. Johnson: Mad Bebop
Bettye LaVette: Choices
Jackie Mittoo: Freak Out
Laura Nyro: Wedding Bell Blues
Bettye LaVette: Soul Tambourine
Leeway: Marathon
The Go-Betweens: Clouds
Nikki Sudden: Empire Blues
Keene Brothers: Island of Lost Lucys
Steve Wynn and The Miracle 3: Ribbons and Chains
Kid Cudi: Don't Play This Song
Saccharine Trust: Success and Failure
The Replacements: Within Your Reach
Black Francis: Miriam and Florian
Leeway: Unexpected
The Clash: Know Your Rights
Laura Nyro: New York Tendaberry
Neil Diamond: Evermore
Kid Cudi: Ghost
Alex De Grassi: Blood and Jasmine

From all these songs, the record that is most whoppin' me is Bettye LaVette's Scene of The Crime. Which led me to her take on The Who. Wow....

Antonioni, Hot Peppers, and Wallander

2011-07-13T22:57:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I picked up a couple of price-reduced pepper plants at Fred Meyer. Not sure planting tomatoes and peppers in mid-July is gonna make for anything other than pretty plants and something for me to check on. I clustered some snapdragons and pansies and herbs around them just to make sure something is going on in that garden bed. I'm hoping we get a good stretch of sun here in July and August. This Spr'ummer (April-to-early-July) was a straight shot of March in misty Wales.

Spinning the new Gregg Allman and the new Mark Knopfler--both deep, unpretentious, soulful records flowed my way from friends. Awesome.

I created a Facebook page for Dan Jones and The Squids, and one for The Golden Motors. Be sure to LIKE us! Squids shows in Portland and Seattle late this summer. The Golden Motors are playing the Whiteaker Street Fair and The Eugene Celebration. Lining up some McMennamin's solo gigs for October.

I finshed the latest Henning Mankell novel in the Inspector Wallender series, The Troubled Man. Not like any of the others, with a breathtaking ending that I won't give away. Next up: The Power of One by Bryce Courtenay. I liked the first two chapters alot.

I'm still in the "A" section of Have You Seen... by David Thomson. This is kind of a ridiculous assignment I've given myself--to watch every movie in this book that I haven't seen already! Probably a ten year project. I currently have an early Antonioni film called Le Amiche, one that predates his classics. I like not knowing what the next movie will be, and knowing that it will be an interesting choice, if not necessarily something I like.

Running-wise I'm up to four miles, two to three times a week. I know three is better. Mike Last tells me he had a trainer who called these LSR's. Long Slow Runs. I get alot of Ipod time to keep up with all the trending and taste-making. It's so awesome when Off! songs come on.

Black Boots

2011-07-04T16:28:00.000-07:00

Black Boots by Dan Jones

After 4-tracking on a Porta II for ten years and then graduating to Garageband, I finally got a decent condenser mic, a Rode NT1A w/ a pop screen that isn't a pair of nylons stretched over a coat hanger. Not sure how this helped the proceedings, but this is my first go with it.

The Golden Motors have a couple fun gigs coming up: The Sam Bond's Garage Anniversary on 7/23, and The Eugene Celebration on 7/27. I'm also playing an acoustic show w/ Peter Wilde at The Oregon Country Fair on 7/10.

I'm in the home stretch on The Troubled Man, by Henning Mankell.

Music-wise I'm sure into the new J. Mascis acoustic record...and Tracy gave me a recent Pollard, "Space City Kicks" on pink vinyl. Also digging random Grateful Dead live tapes, the new Greg Brown, Danny Barnes' Pizza Box and the Tommy Keene anthology Tommy Keene You Hear Me. The new Meat Puppets is awesome music for puttering around the mini-ranchette, too.

Soaking a Pot Overnight, For Joey

2011-06-24T22:36:00.000-07:00

Soaking a Pot Overnight: A Remembrance of Joe Carioti:

I’ll start with something funny, like the time our boss wrote in the kitchen crew journal: “Soaking a pot overnight doesn’t do a goddamn thing.” Shit, lady, that’s what my mom always did. How was I supposed to know anything kitchen-related other than what my mom taught me? I was twenty-two, in a steep post-college depression. I’d earned a degree in English and had learned nothing about pot-scrubbing. Joe Carioti had worked a lot in kitchens. He soaked burnt pots too. Everyone did. Notes like that at five in the morning were so rude, such openly awful behavior from a hungover grouch. But we laughed it off, and it became our anti-motto.

One of the things Joe and I got into was James Lee Burke novels. We’ve both read them all. In his last email he wrote that he’d applied for a job and that he had “dry-gulched one of Clete’s bail skippers.” Burke’s characters Cletus Purcell and Dave Robicheaux formed some of the geography or the code of our conversations. I think Joe was saying his bad boy was still pretty much in charge but his intentions were good, like Clete’s. I gave him a copy of Burke’s novel Rain Gods when he was staying at Royal Avenue Shelter Care, and he tore through it. Maybe it was the last book he read.

Royal Avenue is a shelter for folks in crisis. Three squares, a clean room, a place to rest, make phone calls and fill out forms and applications if you are motivated, even while life plus your own bad choices are kicking you square in the face. The staff there liked Joe and liked that he had a support team, people calling and visiting. We wanted to be sure that they saw it, too. People with a team have a better shot. I’m grateful to that place because I got to have a lucid conversation with Joey there. I met him out there on Hiway 99 with our friend Steve. We had teriyaki at food cart across the street. I even earned a new rude nickname: Double Meat, because I got extra chicken. Steve was nudging, nudging—goals, think goals—what are you goals today—did you make a list? Steve and Eilleen got up close to Joe in the last weeks, so fearless and giving, almost every day. They demolished my entire library of Buddhist books with their relaxed, intimate way of being present with Joe.

The big goal was to get Joe onto the Oregon Health Plan, so he could detox and go into residential treatment. He knew he was too far gone for anything but residential, but it also scared him, so he would fudge around that, maybe not get the paperwork quite right. Moments of fussiness made it clear he wasn’t quite committed, head on. I ragged on him to go to 12-step meetings. He hated them, but he went, at the Catholic church near the library. He had thirty days to wait to find out about OHP…on a waiting list for housing, a waiting list for a place to park his trailer. It was cross-your-fingers time for Joe and his support team--Steve, Eilleen, Russ, Eric, Dena, plus lots of other people doing what they could.

I didn’t do much of the time-consuming, social service work for Joe. Steve and Eileen did. It’s a full time job, and it’s not by the book. You have to press hard, ask questions, find the opportunities. There’s luck and relationship-building involved. Advocating for someone in Joe’s position is more like petitioning the Catholic church to make your aunt a saint. It’s a long shot. Your aunt WAS a saint. So was mine. (Aunt Shirley--paid me two dollars to kiss her goodbye once.) But there’s only so much room at the inn, especially for someone ambivalent about getting in.

I’ve been listening to a lot of Greg Brown because Joe and I shared that, and sitting in the front room with “The Live One” was the first thing to get through the shock and fatigue, down into the loss and old memories below doing normal stuff. “Brand New Dodge,” “One More Goodnight Kiss,” “Boomtown.” I was wanting to write Greg a devil-may-care email and ask him to sing a song for Joe because I told Joe I’d take him to the concert at The Shed in October. I wanted Joe to see something on the horizon that would be nothing but delight and music and goodness for his soul. Not some white boy like me bugging him to go to NA, AA, and whatever other A’s there are. I wanted him to feel surrounded by that spooky baritone and hear the stories. I told him he was my date and to put it on his Google calendar.

Joe wrote back and said he wanted to go to The 19^th Street Cafe for fries and malt vinegar before the show because we saw Greg Brown there once, before a concert at Agate Hall, writing in his journal at a table by himself. We were eating fries and malt vinegar and drinking pints. That was a big deal, because Greg Brown was doing the kind of thing we did but felt embarrassed about: writing alone in a café. Greg Brown, a solitary nerd? That was hardcore.

One time I went out to Joe and Michelle’s farmhouse on the ridge and we tried to cook a goose. I think maybe Michelle had a women’s group or something and so we were having boys’ group of two. Joe stuffed it with hazelnuts and dried cherries, we drank some beer, listened to Tom T. Hall. (One late message from Joe was him singing a verse of “Turn It On, Turn It On, Turn It On.”) We were in our mid-to-late twenties. We had time, we were making time—hanging out. Precious time. The goose was greasy and tough and I don’t think we quite got it right but it felt like a Jim Harrison thing to do. I may have gone to Wendy’s on the way home.

That farmhouse, that land up on the long, wooded ridge outside of town—Joe went there for whatever resembled security, at the end. Homeless no more, he had a little trailer, and a lot of good memories of good years there. I was scared about him going up there to die, haunted, alone, and lost. His old landlord said he could stay there for six weeks. And he did die there. He had books by Michael Connelly and James Lee Burke and Gabriel Garcia Marquez on a shelf above his bed. And his meds and his vodka in plastic bottles and his Noodles In a Cup. He had a Bi-Mart tarp and his coat and sweater were hung on pole. There was an old wooden chair in tall grass. I figure he took some sun there.

I know Joe’s soul was good and the trees were dark and quiet up there and there’s some comfort in that, but I’m also scared that he was scared to the point of crazy, and out of it. That’s hard to shake, the isolation of it, and the huge tree that spanned the driveway, crushing the top of one of the outbuildings. In the first days after he was gone I hoped that his soul would find its way out of those woods--that he would feel all the people crying in town, that he’d come down off the ridge. Then again, if his soul is dark and earthy and old, maybe up there in the trees is where he wants to be. When I went up with Steve and Eilleen I got angry, then subdued, nauseated, then angry again. Then I just tuned in to Joe trying his best. It is a senseless loss, a failure of community. We’re all in this together but people slip off to the margins when there really are no margins. It’s just too fucked up to think about, most of the time. Not having money is no reason to go without necessary medical care.

Another time, I made him and his then-girlfriend Amelia spanish rice casserole,

in my first apartment on 13^th, next to Andy’s Guitar Shop (gone) and Pipin’ Hot Bakery (gone.) I went to therapy twice a week for a while when I lived there. The hippie kids upstairs had pachouli-and-incense sex all the time, probably more in one week than I had known in my entire nerdular life. She looked like Joni Mitchell, he looked like Cat Stevens. I took them cookies once, but I think they were getting it on, or doing the kind of yoga that was almost like, or preliminary to, getting it on. I read Neruda and Robert Bly before going in to work alongside Joe, usually around 6 a.m. (Whoever got there first made a brain-crushing pot of melita drip coffee.) Lonely, reading love poems while the neighbors made love upstairs. Joe has always remembered the spanish rice. That was the year he gave me a mix tape “24 and So Much More.” Neil Young, David Crosby, stuff like that.

Somebody partied with Joe the night he died, and I’ve wanted to yell at them and think of life-direction-changing things to say. They also found him dead the next day. So if the direction of their life doesn’t change, then there’s nothing for it. There are cold territories of spiritual self-abandonment that people get stuck in, like partying with someone dancing with death, on methodone, the week he gets his prescription filled. Maybe Joe lived there, part of the time. Maybe they went back for more of what he had and found him. There aren’t many books you read in college about that. The books that claim to be about such things are usually for vicarious kicks.

One time in the kitchen where we worked I split out my pants doing air guitar kicks to Glass Houses-era Billy Joel and Joe never laughed at anything quite like that. We were making big batches of potato salad and udon tofu noodle. He used to come in and say about the kitchen what his mom used to say about his room when he was growing up—“smells like feet and ass in here!” When Joe was really laughing he would put his head on the prep table and his shoulders would shake. He used to laugh when I was nervous talking to girls and making jokes. He would laugh at my jokes twice as hard as he needed to but there was something in the way he laughed that made me feel okay. The jokes were funny but I was trying too hard by telling them to girls who didn’t laugh.

I sat on a porch swing with Joe at a party before I got up the guts to sing for the first time in semi-public, a Buck Owens song with a living room bluegrass combo. “Love’s Gonna Live Here.” Joe said I looked real scared, then sort of glazed over and just started sawing like crazy on the guitar. Joe was a sharp flat-picker. One thing about the gout was that it made his hands swell up and hurt so bad, he couldn’t play guitar. I remember when he bought a new Laravie at Musician’s Friend. That was a sweet ax. He played it at the Oregon Country Fair with our friend Matt in their combo, Broken Homestead.

Joe had a lot of support, and the good choices were there for him to make at the end. I think he knew he was loved, and he had clean clothes, and food, and encouragement. But he was really sick. And he would lie, cover up, and that made me mad and I would retreat to some sort of lofty place where I hang out when things are bothering me. My therapist told me the joke, how do you know an addict is lying? His mouth is moving. That’s sort of the baseline you have to deal with, and remember you’re not a babysitter or rescuer or anything. I think maybe he knew how to say what particular people needed to hear. He was the baby of the family, like me, and that’s what you learn to do.

Joe called me at 6:30 a.m. a couple days before he died. He needed a ride, he was walking into town because he left his wallet somewhere, and I made the choice to let that slide. I called him later, said I’d meet him for lunch or at the library where he hung out a lot. Phone tag with Joe was funny—sober on the voicemail, then blotto if he managed to pick up later, quoting Cletus Purcell lines and Steve Earle songs. That made me mad sometimes—MY precious time, MY precious lunch hour, ME being lied to. I can be such an asshole sometimes. Joe said “I love you Danny” at the end of every pretty much every e-mail and voicemail. And that’s what I needed to hear, and he knew it. But it wasn’t a lie, it was true.

When Joe got married and had kids, we didn’t see each other as much, and our friendship became more about oblique voicemails full of one-liners only we understood. (“Soaking a pot overnight doesn’t do a goddamn thing.” Click.) Later, I would drop off books at the store where he worked and we’d chat. I got into music, was always chasing that around. I heard fragents about his descent into addiction, his bouts with debilitating gout, no doubt exacerbated or brought on by drinking and a crappy diet, in one of those obvious cycles that isn’t obvious to the person suffering. Six years ago he was hospitalized for it, and the death dance with prescribed oxycodone began. That was probably the beginning of the long, bad trip.

Michelle said once that Joe said on his birthday “I don’t care about a big party, I want to go to Wonderland with Danny and play video games.” We used to play that arcade football game where you can easily pinch the hell out of your hand on the rollerball controller. But you gotta roll that thing hard to advance the guy down the field. Anyway, I’m proud of that being Joe’s birthday wish more than a lot of stuff I am supposed to be proud of. I think we did that for one of his birthdays. And when Joe was deep in the weeds Michelle would tell him to call me. But he didn’t. Or maybe he did, but I was busy. What does that word mean, “busy”?

I’m also glad that I sent Joe a couple in your face emails about pulling his head out of his ass and getting into treatment. I called some of our old friends too. But I wish I had been better at showing up when I was scared of his lack of control; using, being fucked up; lying, being at the library, high. That scared me. Now I think, who cares? I could have had one more moment with my friend and we could have discussed, again, who is gonna play Dave Robicheaux and Clete Purcell in the movie?

Hollywood made a movie, and Clete wasn’t in it. Joe never saw it. A James Lee Burke movie without Clete is about the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard of. Like a Don Quixote without Sancho Panza. Still, it was okay. Tommy Lee Jones was great. But without Clete he was in a weird vacuum. My vote is for John Goodman. The pork pie hat, the Budweiser shorts. I can see it.

Maybe we were just two knuckleheads with low self-esteem, but I always felt loved and accepted and entertained and inspired by Joe, and his Facebook memorial page is full of posts by people saying the same thing. I was an intellectual kid from the suburbs of KC. He was an Italian-American, upstate New York farm kid whose dad once caught him trying to smoke dried strawberry leaves. I liked to watch him dancing and levitating and transcending during a good Dead tape, knife in hand, chunking up red potatoes. Wearing those kind of baggy Guatamalan hippy parachute pants and a Scrap Iron Gym hat. If he had a good tape on, he was on his way for a while. I like the Dead now, like how warty and unpredictably good and bad their music can be; I couldn’t deal with it then. I sort tolerated it. Joe was okay with Husker Du. He didn’t mind that I liked the hard stuff. I was pretty snobby. Joe never was.

Nostalgia is a way of backing into the future, and no one wants to do that, but it is how my days roll right now, coming back to the precious present without Joe in it. I did the dumbest stuff—poured turkey drippings through the top of my Chuck Taylor pulling a hotel pan out of the oven. We laughed, I peeled off my sock, put my foot in the prep sink and ran cold water on it. Or maybe that was him. I can’t remember now, like one of those family stories where you can’t remember who did what.

Up on the ridge, Steve and Eilleen and I cleaned trash out of the trailer. Well, Eilleen did and we helped, because Steve and I were pretty befuddled. Joe’s last stand was okay, and people should know that. Joe had twinkle lights and books, some instant food, spaghetti, a hot plate. The house where his first baby was born was pretty much abandoned but there was power, snaking over in an orange cord to Joe’s temporary home. Inside the house the floor was buckling and warping from the heat and cold but I could remember warm gatherings, food piling up on the counters and a fire in the stove. Big youthful gatherings of people who tended to feel like orphans on major holidays.

I took one thing from Joey’s trailer--a battered, unplayable cassette tape. Greg Brown “In The Dark With You” on side A and The Freewheelin’ Dylan on side B. There are chunks missing from the plastic and the tape is loosely spooled inside the casing where it broke. Everyone should have the full picture of Joe--his music, his big heart, his sense of humor, his Sicilian disgust for anything foo-foo, and his secret love of things foo-foo. It’s encouraging to see Joe memorialized on Facebook by people from his hometown, even grade-school friends. I especially like the posts by someone calling herself Myrtle Lifeson. “Myrtle” because Joe spontaneously gave her that nickname in grade school, and “Lifeson” because Joe introduced her to her personal gurus in the band Rush and the mind-expanding genius of their guitarist, Alex Lifeson.

I had a total space trucker dream with Joe last week--he had written "I love you Danny" on a child's drawing of the universe...but when I looked closer it WAS the universe and the words were stars and comet trails and fiery space dust. Still, I'm mad at Joe and pissed off at something vague I’ll call “the system” (which only gets crappier as Republican cynicism about the human commons gets more and more prevalent. Catalyzing insecurity and greed.) Alot of us on “the Joe team” are like burnt pots, right now, soaking overnight. Which sort of helps, a little bit. It does, along with songs and stories and, by now, hundreds of Facebook posts for Papa Joe and his family.

2011-06-12T19:42:00.000-07:00

Today Steve Traylor and I went out to the Boot Sale across from Autzen Stadium--Boot as in British English for garage [loyal reader Kate tells me "boot" means trunk, not garage]....a mobile garage sale, not exactly a flea market. I found a David Sylvian cd, "Dead Bees on a Cake" and some classic country 7" box sets. The Sons of the Pioneers on teal vinyl singles? What? Woo hoo. Tom Heinl and Scott K will have to hit that for Bingo prizes. They'll be in the parking lot next to juvie center and across from Autzen every Sunday this (not) summer (yet).

Then I came home to mow the yard. The mower, which I'd had tuned up and repaired for $80, wouldn't start. But The Royals clobbered the Angels 9 to 0, so I let it go after ALOT of cussing, and threw it back into the back of the truck after tinkering with it a little bit. Mike Moustakas came up this week--things are looking good. Escobar's defense is spectacular and he had two hits today too. Lots of good innings from the bullpen. Starting pitching is still real rough, but we've had some "quality starts" this week. I think that means, at this point, not getting shelled in the third inning or melting down after six. The Royals drafted Bubba Starling too, a guy whose parents gave him a quality baseball name at an early age. The MLB draft never used to get much press. It seems to these days.

My Droid has had a serious MLB workout this (not) summer (yet). I follow KC close and tend to turn on Pittsburgh games when KC isn't on. If you follow one team closely you eventually get a tour of the whole league.

My dear friend Joe Carioti died a week ago Friday. I have written alot about it and hope to share but it's still a big hurt and a big blob of text on the page. Joe was a sweet, funny, talented, soulful, loving man. A loving father, a good friend to many, many people. Big soulful man, so many people hurting right now. It's Sunday, it's raining like crazy, again, and Joey Goat-0 is making buffalo hot wings in Heaven.

What Was On My Ipod shuffle at the track yesterday

2011-06-03T08:02:00.000-07:00

John Doe/Twin Brother
Minor Threat/Salad Days
Bill Fox/Appalachian Death Sigh
Television/Days
The English Beat/Monkey Murders
Tommy Keene/Astronomy
Iggy Pop/King of the Dogs
Laura Nyro/Wedding Bell Blues
Circus Devils/Her Noise
Steve Wynn and the Miracle Three/On the Mend
Nikki Sudden/Wedding Dress
Ian Hunter/God (Take 1)
The Upsetters/Patience
Fucked Up/Year of the Pig
Saccharine Trust/I Have...
Fucked Up/Anorak City
Laura Nyro/Lite A Flame
Nikki Sudden/Misty Roads
Thurston Moore/American Coffin
Bruce Springstreet/One Way Street
Grateful Dead/Might As Well

Arthur Russell, All That Jazz, and Improv Tacos

2011-05-17T21:13:00.000-07:00

The World of Arthur Russell and tacos on a Tuesday night. These were improv tacos--Costco smoked pulled pork from the freezer, some leftover sweet potato, feta, and cilantro. Something else was needed to take this over the top, maybe cotija and some citrus, or sweet peppers to give it some life. Peppery slaw of some kind. I made do. Kind of dark--like our May weather. Sweet potatoes popular at our house lately. There are records I listen to ALOT more than this Arthur Russell, but it's one of those that is fantastic and perfect when I'm in the mood. In a sort of avant disco glitzy sexy art music sort of way. If you haven't seen the Arthur Russell documentary Wild Combination, it's great.

I watched All That Jazz this week. It came up in the David Thomson book and I wasn't too psyched; I thought I was in for some middle-brow show-biz dancing cinema glam, when in fact it would go nice on a triple bill with The Wrestler and The Black Swan. The Fellini tone of the second half was crass and kooky, and a wild departure from the party hard/work harder storyline that's up front. Jessica Lange as an angel of death--who knew? When I was six or seven and saw King Kong (with Jeff Bridges) I took a dirt clod and wrote "I love Jessica Lange" on the concrete foundation of our house. She never called me, never drove by when I was waiting for the bus at the end of our long gravel driveway. It was one of those Christmas weekend movie outings with alot of family home. I remember my brother-in-law Jay cackling about "Kong Breath," when Jessica Lange's feathery hair was blown back by the big guy's super-alpha-boyfriend exhalations. I've always liked that version of King Kong. "Kong breath" is still part of the family lexicon.

I also liked Harry Brown, in which a lonesome, aging-gracefully Michael Caine character whups the crap out of a gang of thugs who are terrorizing a housing development. Comparisons made to Deathwish, Gran Torino, Prime Suspect...reviews were good, not great. I was taken by it though. Perfect pitch in every melancholy scene from a soulful actor.

Through The Children's Gate by Adam Gopnik. I liked this alot, and his Paris book is up next, if I don't slip a James W. Hall in between. I guess that would be like dj'ing Leon Russell between two Bill Evans numbers, or something like that.

And finally, would you let this man mix your record? I would! In fact, we did! The Golden Motors new platter is sounding hot, and this photo from La Margarita Express in Salem, Oregon is proof! Thanks Tom Nunes! Check out "Kickball Queen" now!

my movie month, in posters

2011-05-05T13:32:00.000-07:00

2011-05-03T07:43:00.000-07:00

I finished Heat and wanted to revisit because I think I dismissed it as a high-testosterone foody dude book, which wasn’t fair, and I don’t want to go back and edit my dumb-in-public blog. To make up for my narrow commentary I went to Market of Choice and got a slab of cheap beef back ribs for ten bucks and tried to cook the shit outta them in chianti. I learned alot about patience this time around--five hours was not enough, nothing was falling apart, but I started in the afternoon rather than in the morning, or overnight. There were nibbles in there that suggested potential, but I just didn’t stick it out. I even had a misguided health kick moment and poured off the liquids because I didn’t want to deal with pouring off the pure liquified fat hanging out on top. Even so, alot of the fat had not rendered off, and it was still kind of gnarly, like an old dictator who started meditation too late. I think that on Saturday, before we take off to Saturday Market, I will pop the same set up in the oven and let it cook all day at a slightly higher temp.

On the side I had a white bean tapanade with orange zest and rosemary, that was right good.

The second half of the book, which does not concern intense apprenticeship in a hot NYC kitchen, concerns intense apprenticeship in a rustic Italian butcher shop. The bit about Tuscan “brown food” made me wonder, is that what was going on when we went to Sfizio and things seemed flat, on purpose? Because most of the stuff we get there is great (we’ve gone four times now) but occasionally we’ll get something that’s kind of Methodist Fellowship Hall potluck-y. Fennel and sausage and clam pasta w/ breadcrumbs--sounded good, but was a large pile of beige casserole. It wasn’t something I liked, but now I think I might understand it, or have an inkling about what the menu is up to. As for the crispy pork chop w/ lemon on a pile of arugula, I want that again.

2011-05-01T12:44:00.000-07:00

It’s a lovely day in the valley today, finally, after so many weeks of rain every day. And it has been a busy time, first with Snider’s birthday jams (huge, a veritable festival—Red Fang at Luckey’s!) and then with mixing the Golden Motors record on weekends, and having an amazing gig with Mike Watt and The Missingmen. (Little bit of nail-biting before that, to be sure.) That was an amazing show (their 49^th show out of 51 in a row?). They played the new record straight through without pause, and it was really one of the most astonishing things I've seen. Like a book of knots condensed into a punk opera. A punk opera inspired by a Bosch painting! And the record is great too. I got mine on vinyl w/ a download. The best format.

Anyhoo, this is a day to do pretty much nothing and watch the breeze move through the trees. Lazy—that’s what I’m talking about. Catch the last half of the Royals/Twins and see if they can sweep after a winless road trip to Texas and Cleveland.

Yesterday I took a long hill walk with Mike Grossman and his dogs Lucy and Bobo, that was a good ramble. I’ve been staying on top of the running routine but that is most often solitary. I had one 5.4 mile run (slower than some folks power walk) but am clocking in lately around 3.5, two or three times a week. This has been great. Glad to have that track near our house, donated largely by Nike, made of recycled running shoes! Cushy. Something going on there pretty much every day. It's a neighborhood asset. "Rocking + walking = less mind-squawking."

The mixes Tom Nunes is doing of the record are really sounding great, and I can’t wait for people to hear them. I played a solo gig at Christo's up there in Salem a couple weeks ago, here's a song from that show. They have, as far as I can tell, the best pizza in the valley.

&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;a href="http://danjones1.bandcamp.com/track/saggy-pants-live-at-christos"&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;Saggy Pants (Live at Christo's) by Dan Jones&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;

Check out music from The Golden Motors

2011-04-23T16:00:00.001-07:00

2011-04-20T20:32:00.000-07:00

I don't have an exhaustive record collection or piles of obscure 7" vinyl like cool people do, but this one was a game changer for a bunch of dudes in Liberty, Missouri back in the Reagan era. (Chris Gile tells me Reptile House played the last Foolkiller show in KC, and that he bought this record there.) It is back in print, for an affordable four bucks. It was clear right away with a song like "Keel-Haul Love" that RH was not some oompah-four-four hardcore band, and that Daniel Higgs was a real writer of songs from an eerie and particular point of view. (See umpteen awesome Lungfish records for confirmation of that, full of street-level pre-Biblical poetry and wide-open weird vocality.)

The first couple weeks of the baseball season has been pretty fun. The Royals are doing okay, though every single win has been a reach-for-the-Tums kind of thing. Tonight was horrible, and the WTF! texts were flying between me and my nephew Graham. He was at the K last night for the win. Tonight we transitioned from five innings of a no-hitter to a two-balk meltdown and four-run implosion. First instance of I'm-turning-this-shit-OFF! this year. I jumped over to the end of the Reds-Diamondbacks game.

It's hard for me to generate any feeling for the Diamondbacks. But I'm a grownup baseball fan now, not just a battered Royals fan. I told myself when this season started that I would enjoy all the teams, all the games, all the good plays, all the emerging stars, and try to be as open to the game at 42 as I was at 10. I know the rhythm of an average Royals season. The first six weeks are like having a ten-year old case of plantars warts go into remission. (Awesome, I can play whiffleball!) Then the warts come back and all you want to do is lay down in a cot in the basement, where it's cool and dark.

I'm reading Heat by Bill Buford. This is a fun book, especially if you're into reading about the athleticism and intensity of high-end kitchen culture, and the kind of skin-toughening apprenticeships and team dynamics that make the culture run. (On my end, the romance of adrenalized multi-tasking has pretty much run its course. If I make something other than a salad with grilled chicken I feel studly.)

So, as I wind up my blog tonight, I see that Jeff Francoeur smacked a two-run homer in the ninth, but it was not enough...and the last droning chords of "Sleestak Weather" wind down on my Itunes. Life's pretty good. I'm glad Graham went to the K last night instead of tonight. I am the proud uncle of two nephews (Alex and Graham) who root for The Royals while even my parents seem to have leaned toward the Cardinals, after relocating to central Mo.

And Watt is coming to Eugene a week from tomorrow and The Golden Motors are playing the gig too. That's alright!

MLB Moustache Wars

2011-04-13T07:32:00.000-07:00

I watched as much baseball as I could growing up, without cable tv, the web, or portable devices of any kind, other than the chunky cordless phone my mom used to answer upside down without hitting the button, so that it would ring in her ear. In all that time, from about 1975 to 1985, I never heard an announcer mention pitch counts. Luis Tiant started the game of the week on NBC and if he was good, went seven or so and passed it off to Tom Burgmeier; if Luis was really on, finished the game. The Royals announcers never talked about Dennis Leonard’s pitch count. He finished alot of games, if I remember right. No one averaging five innings a start would have been allowed to wear a moustache as radical as Leonard’s.

Now, if Billy Butler has a good at bat, part of the story is how he raised the pitcher’s count for that inning to 19. Tigers announcers also need you to know that Justin Verlander wants his coaches to know he can go as high as 120 or 130 pitches if necessary, and finish the ball game. I suppose this new culture of statistics is good, in that it is protective of the health of the pitchers. It’s also about the anxiety of mediocre starting pitching, and the the increased use of pitching by committee--starters, middle men, set up men, and closers. Monday’s Verlander-Ogando duel was old school fun. Two great pitchers (one established and one emerging) mowing dudes down. The game took about two hours and fifteen minutes.

Another development: health care ads seem to get more airplay than Miller Lite commercials these days and tend to feature music that sounds like Coldplay’s hit song with the misty arpeggiated piano riff. Millions of people in this country know they are on the edge of financial ruin if they have the audacity or bad luck to have an accident or get seriously ill. The commercials seem to be saying ”trust us” but a twelve-pack of Miller Lite per day may be the proper response to this social dysfunction. Especially in Milwaukee, where the health care commercials are bracketed by sausage and bratwurst commercials. Beer, sausage, and low co-pays for non-smokers. If you’d told me in 1979 that someday I’d be listening to local feeds of a Brewer’s game on a phone I carry in my pocket, I’d have bounced a whiffle ball off your head.

People say baseball is boring, and they are right. (More boring than watching a basketball player pound his chest and taunt God after an above average play?) The other day I was riding my bike in the rain (tires kind of flat, chain needing some oil, me wishing I lived somewhere sunny) pretty well bored by the Marlins/Nationals game I was listening to on my Droid. ($15 bucks for all the games, but the app cuts out alot.) The Marlins announcers, for whatever reason, struck me as duller than most, and the game really was f’ing boring. But as I rode up my street, the bases ended up loaded for former Royal John Buck, a bright spot for Royals fans in these last twenty years of zero traction AAAA baseball. A solid guy and a solid catcher who had the good luck to get gone in one of the Royals de-building sales. Future Hall of Famer Pudge Rodriguez behind the plate; Livan Hernandez on the mound. It was like three cool characters from Gunsmoke took over a scene from a 1963 driver’s ed film. I wanted to know what happened next, for sure. I was at my driveway when Buck banged one off the top of the wall--almost a grand slam. Later, I finished the game watching it on the laptop while I made cobb salad, and Buck helped Leo Nunez hold it together through a rough patch in the late innings, so that his former Royal teammate could get the save. Summer might come to this mucky gray-brown valley yet.

Falling back in love with baseball is weird, you sort of have to work at it. And if you live in Oregon, who do you fall in love with--the Giants or The Mariners? Both teams are like going to a Mongolian grill, to me. Kind of cool, once in a while, but not really my thing. I’m in love with the Royals (cue Gram Parsons singing “Love Hurts” while drowning in the fountains at Kaufmann Stadium) and they have alot of promise, if they can pay the talent they develop to stay in town. I have a crush on the Orioles this year, and The Rangers are a good example of a super bad-ass team that isn’t the Yankees or the Red Sox. Kind of cool. I could become a Rangers fan like alot of people have become Red Sox fans because the team they grew up with sucks dog nuts. I also like the Brewers, a small-market team with a cool 80’s heritage. Gorman Thomas had a moustache that kicks the ass of pretty much every moustache since. If we’d sent Gorman Thomas’s moustache to take out Ghadaffi in 1982, we wouldn’t be in the Libyan pickle we’re in now. In a 1981 moustache duel, Gorman Thomas would have knocked out Dennis Leonard. But Dan Quisenberry would have used counter-offensive aikido moves and given Thomas alot of trouble.

Zack Greinke is in Milwaukee now. He groused about the Royals rebuilding plans last season, so maybe that’s why Dayton Moore, being a flat-top wearing Les Schwab kind of general manager, sent him packing. Greinke is wearing his hair long now and loosening up enough to get hurt playing pickup basketball.

Last night The Royals held tight through ten with the Twins--their relief corps is looking good, and Jeff Francis is looking really great, like a #1 starter. Falling back in love with baseball is pretty fun. If you’d told me I could watch EVERY Royals game on a computer I’d have definitely bounced a whiffle ball off your head.

2011-04-03T10:16:00.000-07:00

A couple weeks back I went over to Eric Sutton's w/ Dave Peterson and we put together the first System You Radio podcast in a long time. That was a blast! New Mike Watt, Off!, Pedals Jets, Dead Moon...our own little old radio station out there in Eric's garage with all his cool prints, paintings, records, and bikes. Soul brothers burrito confab. All we needed was a stove and some rocking chairs.

&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;a href="http://danjones1.bandcamp.com/track/stone-lions-demo"&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;Stone Lions (demo) by Dan Jones&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;

I posted a new Golden Motors demo, inspired by my friend Craig's front stoop statuary: "Stone Lions."

I'm presently in my own garage studio with The Last going on the digital turntable, enjoying some nice midmorning sunshine outside, even though it's still kinda cold. I finished Spraypaint the Walls: The Story of Black Flag yesterday. It was one of best rock books I've read, though the story ends sad. One of the cool things about it is the scene people who get their say, all articulate and cool. If you are hanging out with smart, creative dorky people, putting bands together or shotgun paintings in storefronts where the A & W used to be downtown...that's what the scene was like that my generation totally mythologizes. The parties and the violence and stuff were to the side of that (or those things are to the side, always, for me.) Regular people with creative drive, pretty well off the grid. Black Flag turned into something else--a weird, paranoid scene, and that's a melancholy development. (As a side note I would really dig a link to some archive of live Black Flag instrumental jams, before that turned into Gone. That stuff is so cool. Greg Ginn's guitar playing is still catalytic and weird and genius after all these years.)

Reading the book prompted me to get out The Last's "L.A. Explosion" and finally buy the first Redd Kross record.

The cat is officially out of the bag. Eugene musician and artist and sly svengali Dave Snider is turning 40 in two weeks and we will celebrate him with a fine show at Luckey's in Eugene. Note the early 80's door charge. Pull your thumb out and do this!

red fang
old kingdom
unicron
saturday, april 16
luckey's
$5/21+

13th century hershey's kiss helmets

2011-03-29T07:25:00.000-07:00

Last night I watched the 1938 Eisenstein film Alexander Nevsky, and I have to say, I haven't felt a work of art initiate such a wave of depression and anxiety in a long time. Maybe not since Time Rider in junior high, when I realized how bad movies can be, the same summer I wanted to be David Bowie but knew I was really more of a Gary Burghoff type. This was a bummer on a different level, and the only way I can put it is that this movie reminded me of a Rank and Bass holiday cartoon, made under the creative and financial supervision of a psychopathic, totalitarian dictator. Hard way to keep a career alive! A long essay could be written on the erotics of 13th century military helmets but I will leave that to some wise-ass in film school. You got your bucketheads, your Hershey's Kiss hats, your heavy metal horned devil masks (proto-Conan The Bavarian), and your black porpoise penis poppers. Stalin must have been getting some serious dictator wood at the private screening. And as for the Prokoviev score, how do you soundtrack four minutes of Teutonic soldiers drowning in broken ice? You gulp laudanum and have the cellos saw away, that's how. Throw in some codified hatred of spirtuality and clergy, and you have a real treat on your hands. Glad the sun is coming out on Thursday, and glad for the creative freedom that many people have--not all. Which is a good reason to watch this movie.

Drumb prak 3/20

2011-03-20T12:49:00.000-07:00

Drum practice today, very fun, to The Clean's Mister Pop. "Tensile" is one of my favorite songs of this young century. Heading over to Eric Sutton's later for a podcast and din-din session w/ him and Dave Peterson. I am really digging these baggy Mizzou shorts I got for my birthday. I am gonna lumber like a large caucasian bumble bee in these things when I hit the track. Appreciate all the nice Facebook birthday wishes too.

2011-03-19T18:58:00.000-07:00

This has been a busy week or so, culminating with a fancy birthday for me today. I played a gig on 3/10 with Ezra Holbrook and his band at The Granary in Eugene, then got to sit in on a couple songs with the Portland Country Underground at Sam Bond's the next night. I hacked us through "Tall Tall Trees" and "Country Is" and that was pretty fun. Got to see Michael Hurley perform a short set--what a thrill. The next night was The Alberta Street Pub w/ Boulder singer-songwriter Danny Schafer and Peter Wilde. That is a great room for troobadoring. Getting back in the swing of solo shows made me want to do that for a month straight in different towns.

Today started with a run at the Amazon track followed by a trip to Webfoot Printing to pick up Golden Motors t-shirts (thanks Chris Ross) and then to the new Red Lobster w/ Scott K. That was pretty damn good, though not as decadent as yesterday's Applebie's birthday blowout with Snider. Big gig tonight at Sam Bond's w/ Unicron and LSD & D. I think it may function as an after-party type event for the Roller Derby today...could be wild.

Last night I watched Together, a Swedish ensemble flick that was kind of Altmanesque in ways, alot of zooming camera intimacy with a large cast veering at times toward shambles....it was about a commune in the mid-70's, very funny with alot of drama too. I truly felt the presence of my friend Reynold Rydberg sitting next to me giggling. He did American commune life in the 70's, had all sorts of stories about people trying so hard to be good. He would have laughed at the earnest young man who did not want to have sex until his eager partner discussed socialism with him, and the kids sneaking off to play with war toys.

I also watched Aguirre, The Wrath of God, another mission near-impossible film featuring intense Europeans, this time set in the Amazon rather than in the psychological hothouse of commune living. This was synchronistic with my reading of The Lost City of Z, which mentions Pizarro's missions. Combine that with a reading of The Beach and our ongoing project of watching Lost, and I have a heavy dose of exploring, settling, sudden community, and survival stories. Next up, Spraypaint the Walls, a history of Black Flag, whose touring in the early 80's was once compared to the intensity of Herzog's films, I forget where, but that makes sense.

ian hunter - rain (acoustic / live)

2011-03-18T08:02:00.000-07:00

The Golden Motors at Reverb Nation

2011-03-18T07:57:00.001-07:00

Hooray for taxes

2011-03-09T07:47:00.000-08:00

Here's a good example of why taxes are okay--a nice public track near my house where some of the time they leave the lights on til 8:00. The surface is made of recycled tires and the field has artificial turf. This would be nerf football central for me if I were nine and hanging out with Fritz, Davis, Bobby, and Gary. At almost 42, I ramped up my laps too fast (without enough recovery time) and got really sore knees, so I scaled it back last night after four days off. When I ran almost three miles last week, my smartphone told me I had burned off seven apples, but I am back in the three carrot zone until knees give further notice.

This book is a great read, especially if you like adventure/exploration stories. Following up The Beach with this seems like a good move.

2011-03-01T07:22:00.000-08:00

This book is alot of fun...last night I watched Advise and Consent w/ Henry Fonda (I'm still in the A section). I try not to scan over to the next essay in the book, so that each one is a surprise. African Queen in next, but I'll skip that because I've seen it a couple times.

Revisiting Sachharine Trust, who were dissed as one of the crappy SST bands in the Husker Du bio. Gotta disagree there!

2011-02-25T07:41:00.000-08:00

The Golden Motors got some spin on The Watt From Pedro Show this week (2/22/11 show)--"a pickle and two pearl onions" from our upcoming platter. If you don't have the show syncing to your Itunes on a regular basis, check it out, it's great. His new album is almost here--on vinyl too.

The Adventures of Robin Hood is alot of fun. Campy and corny and acrobatic, all in Technicolor that is like stained glass in motion. Claude Rains pageboy/roller derby girl haircut is not to be missed.

Yo La Tengo and The Urinals at WOW Hall

2011-02-21T17:23:00.000-08:00

This was one of the funnest shows I've seen in a long time--capped with a Yo La Urinals combo take on "Surfing With The Shah." Yo La Tengo had an attention-seeking audience member spin the wheel, and the needle stuck on Dump, so we were treated to an hour of Dump songs by bassist James McNew, including a great Prince cover. He shredded. Their second set was hand-crafted during the break and included alot of good ones, including an epic "The Story of Yo La Tengo" that might have been the most fearsome guitar noise wigout I've ever seen. I stood by Davey Snider and our minds were blown and consciousnesseseseses shifted. The Urinals opened and were great. All in all a night affirming the rights of open-minded nerds of any age to do whatever they want with their guitars and drums. I am inspired and not dog-tired, even though I got home late. The Urinals photo above is an unofficial poster I made with my smarter-than-most phone and a program called Pic Paint.

On other fronts I added a lap to my track route and have hit 2.5 miles. It is fun to be running and enjoying it, chuggin' along. My first mile was my body doing something it hadn't done in a LONG time and going "uh, dude, uh, WHAT are you doing?" Sorry but I am gonna have to take all dub and Grateful Dead off my Ipod for running. It does not help--not with that.

I am also reading this book:

2011-02-17T07:51:00.000-08:00

THIS SHOW PREVIEW for 2/18 JUST IN FROM JEFF ROSENBERG @ THE WILLAMETTE WEEK. THANKS JEFF.

[FOLK ROCK PUNK POP] Two beloved Eugene songwriters have released "My Name Is John Smith," a split 12-inch single—six inches each by Dan Jones and Peter Wilde. Wilde is a longtime favorite of socially conscious folk fans, though his sense of humor and heart were always too big for that niche. His laconic vocals, in the style of non-falsetto Neil Young, deliver a pair of good-natured love songs here. Jones brings his brand of brainy, bouncy punk pop, like a cuter Hüsker Dü (one of Jones’ bands, the Golden Motors, performs tonight). The pair's old friend Chris Funk produced and plays all over the record, his enthusiastic participation further bolstered by PDX MVP Lewi Longmire on guitars and organs, pop-savvy bass by Adam East, and solid drummer Jivan Valpey. The EP is downloadable, but that's way less groovy than the clear vinyl, 45 RPM edition—purchase of which includes downloads of the EP tracks, a Wilde anthology and a live Jones album.

kelly's olympian
friday 2/18

Yesterday on the way home from work I saw a handmade sign tacked to a telephone pole. The person who put it up had slipped the sign into a plastic three-ring binder sleeve to protect it from the weather. But the sleeve had filled up with brownish-yellow,discolored rainwater, and so looked pretty much like a bag of urine. And that said as much about winter in Eugene as I know how to say. By way of contrast, here is a photo from our trip to Santa Barbara:

The Golden Motors hit PDX on 2/18....

2011-02-14T21:33:00.000-08:00

The Ghosts of Belfast by Stuart Neville--just rips. Loved this book. It was weird to be possessed by this novel in lovely Santa Barbara, where we enjoyed the sun and good food and all the lovely people in fancy jeans. I ran on the beach and my workout app told me I had burned off the equivalent of two peaches. Didn't give me a break for running on sand--don't I get a chocolate cranberry scone for running on sand? Cripes! To hell with you, Droid workout app! [Note: the hotel had a waffle maker with a timer and a little cradle you flipped over after filling the separate waffle sections...it was so, so cool. My Droid did not know.]

2011-02-08T20:43:00.000-08:00

I disliked this movie so much I became suspicious of why (and woke up thinking about it in the middle of the night, and puzzled on it the next day). Looking up some reviews helped sort it out a little. Here's a positive review from Roger Ebert and a more critical one from indiemoviesonline. So maybe sometime I will watch this one again.

I downloaded a workout app on my smarter-than-me phone...turns out that on this third trip to jog at the track near my house, the GPS is telling the app to tell me I burned off the equivalent of three apples. Little red apple icons show up on the screen. How nice! And I could, if I wanted to, post this to Facebook.

2011-02-06T10:12:00.000-08:00

Another Droid photo run through Pic Paint, snapped while walking back from a coffee bean jaunt to Market of Choice. To me this looks like the gatefold cover of a lost grunge album, by a band called Gut Hammer or Thee Rhino Balls. I am inspired to hook up my Rockman distortion processor and explore an imaginary commission.

I started Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones--it's good.

2011-02-05T11:01:00.000-08:00

I went to The David Minor Theater and saw this last night--sublime entertainment, with two good buddies, Dave n Derek. It has been open for a couple years and this was my first time--it's awesome! Big cushy chairs in groovy rooms, kinda funky. I'm hooked.

Speaking of brutal slaughter, I practiced drums to this, one of my favorites. Alot of the songs get the fade out treatment. When you are practicing drums with the headphones on and the song fades out, it almost guarantees you will hear how you actually sound, at least for a few seconds.

Yo La Tengo in Eugene 2/20, with The Urinals!

2011-02-04T07:40:00.000-08:00

I doodled this on my Droid X, using a free app called Pic Paint...stuck in Portland traffic. The phone-that-is-smarter-than-I got a workout this week, on a plaque and donor wall install trip up to Good Samaritan Hospital in Puyallup with Jake Kasper. I learned how to use the GPS navigator and Yelp! app to locate excellent Indian, Greek, and Thai restaurants, as well as how to allign and anchor backer panels. The installation went well, and we were visited at the Hotel Puyallup by a spirit guide we shall call Fluffy. I expected Puyallup to be a small working class city but it seemed more like a well-appointed suburban extension of Tacoma-Seattle area.

Jake also turned me on to the Radio Lab podcasts (also via smart phone, during drive time). That was great edutainment. Got to watch Karate Kid at the motel, too. Combine that with The King's Speech and you have a wax-on/wax-off mentoring movie double feature.

This was a fun one, though the fights they have are serious business, personally and culturally:

I have added a solo show to the calendar: Thursday, March 10 @ The Granary in Eugene, w/ Ezra Holbrook and his band. Ez has a new album called "Save Yourself" and his band features my good friend Tom Nunes on bass. (Tom is mixing The Golden Motors album.) Here's a review of Ez' new slab from The Vinyl Anachronist blog.

2011-01-30T20:46:00.000-08:00

The Golden Motors band had a fun time at Luckey's last night...above is a photo of Dave Peterson (The Underlings) givin' it up as usual. Splinter Cell (from Humboldt) and The U-lings rocked it. Here's two blogs from The Underlings camp: Dave's and Ed Cole's.

The next Golden Motors show is 3/19 at Sam Bond's Garage in Eugene.

Enjoying #5 in the Inspector Montalbano series.

2011-01-29T10:58:00.000-08:00

Today is the birthday of Anton Chekhov. He and Olga look happy in this photo--I like it.

A few quotes from the inventor of the contemporary short story:

The university brings out all abilities, including incapability.

Let us learn to appreciate there will be times when the trees will be bare, and look forward to the time when we may pick the fruit.

Faith is an aptitude of the spirit. It is, in fact, a talent: you must be born with it.

That last one--agree or disagree?

2011-01-28T07:28:00.000-08:00

This one is fun as an early take on crime lab drama, and features Ricardo Montalban as a dashing detective. The forensic slide show of faces superimposed over the skull of the murder victim is really creepy. Like something The Misfits would write a song about.

Noir + Pups + kim chi

2011-01-27T18:50:00.000-08:00

Robert Ryan's 1948 postwar limp is scarier than most noir films get in our day--"Act of Violence" is a good one.

Drum prak to two of my favorite records of all time. Meat Puppets II has some super-collider thrashy beats on it and some Crazy Horse lazy ones...Up On The Sun has some super fast high hat work that is clean as a whistle, and is generally snappier. My sneaks were clean across the room and I was sweaty but improved in character and musicality by trying to keep up. It's like golf--you get in a good lick once in a while.

Kim chee on hot dogs--why didn't I think of that before?. Let's let the 21st century finally begin.

2011-01-24T20:46:00.000-08:00

The second movie in Have You Seen...? was a wicked Billy Wilder number, Ace in the Hole, and I enjoyed it mucho. I watch maybe 80% of movies at home on DVD, so one of my standby AMM's (Awesome Movie Metrics) is how often I lose focus, fall asleep, get up to try frying weird things in the Fry Daddy, check e-mail on my smart phone, or go play bass. I know it's good when I don't check the time elapsed function on the remote. This was one tight unit, with a black-hearted social critique at its core that's as relevant today as it was then. Razor-sharp noirish one-liners cracking me up.

I also watched "Thirst," one of the early Bergman films. (I'm starting at the beginning with his movies.) It had some good laughs too--at peak moments of relationship-driven grimness. I think maybe there was some humor intended there, even though the characters pretty much auger down a corkscrew of doom. In what few Bergman movies I've seen, every moment is mindful and grounded and present and for that they have so far been good to watch. Religious in feeling even if what is depicted is dour business.

Drumming practice this week was humbling--Nikki Sudden's The Truth Doesn't Matter, and Eddy Current Suppression Ring's first album. The first has alot of trashy white soul disco high-hat patterns, mixed with Mo Tuckerisms and Stonesy stuff. I sounded like a real bad Bee Gee for a good bit of that. ECSR is just fast, with alot of staccato kick patterns that had me feeling like a not-so-hot drumming novice. But I kept it up--who gives a crap how bad it sounds anyway.

2011-01-19T06:14:00.000-08:00

Another fun flier by Mr. Dave Snider! Thanks Dave!

More drum practice last night: Volcano Suns "All Night Lotus Party" and Young Fresh Fellows "I Think This Is." I'm learning some basic stuff about drumming. Chuck Taylors are good drumming shoes; slippers are not. Clark's are great for Amsterdam rambles, but chunky behind the kit; that awkward Frankenstein kick, devastating in its Tom Dempsey-esque power, won't serve the song if it is not in time. (And that's a bad mixed metaphor!) Tevas just don't cut it. This isn't a jam band cruise.

Here is a link to The Golden Motors page at Reverb Nation, which features a rough mix of "Pink Pansies" from the new album. It's all stored on a shiny new external drive for mixing.

Sushi happy hour at Mio Sushi is fun, over at Oakway. The conveyor belt service is rad. Then you can go to the Old Navy close-out rack for five dollar shirts.

This is some of my favorite book jacket art, for the Inspector Montalbano series by Andrea Camilleri. I'd like to think I don't judge books by their covers, but I do. And I love these books.

Consolidated demos and such:

2011-01-16T12:55:00.001-08:00

I played drums along with two records this weekend, Ipod-style. Super fun, better than solitary drum clams in a garage vacuum. Key elements gotta be sitting up straight and breathing, plus keeping on, even when you get tangled up. Plus enjoying the physicality of life, and the little time travel memories of people and places that pop up when you're keepin' some time. People are haunted by the bad-asses, shredders, and bitchin' monster players we're all sposed to end up being if we do anything. The truly cursed are the trumpet players, with their tendancy toward unfortunate hair care products and Miles Davis Is God Syndrome.

I finished the third Stieg Larsson book, The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet's Nest. I'm sorry to see that trilogy come to an end--but the word is that there is a fourth manuscript that will come out once the sad conflicts over the estate are finished. In the meantime, I have started the Husker Du bio, and gotta say that all the preemptive griping and criticizing of it (even in the form of apologies from the author) are uncalled for, and kind of a weird gestalt bitchiness. It's a solid, non-sensational book and people probably got worked up because the band means so much to so many folks. Even without full involvement from the band, everyone gets a voice, via interview material, etc. Learning new things, like how they had a book of fairly by-the-numbers power pop songs that fell by the wayside early on. I like it. Like The Big Boys said, Now YOU go start a band.

2011-01-15T10:25:00.000-08:00

Abbot and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948) is the first entry in the David Thomson book, Have You Seen...? I deleted it from Netflix list a while back--in some kind of gloom. I also deleted the superhero cartoon movies I watch to cure burn out, plus the shrill political documentaries people talk about at work. I might oughtta sit for an hour and a half being told the pesticide industry lobby is more powerful than Nato, PEO, and 4H combined. I also need to do situps, pushups, meditate regularly, and cut back on salami and cambozola. There's about twenty trillion things we all ought to do. And enjoying Abbot and Costello once in a while may be have hopped back to the top of the list. And Batman Beyond.

Abbot and Costello are STILL funny, but meaner and more adult than I remember. When I watched their movies on Sunday afternoons (programmed alongside Shirley Temple, Three Stooges, Tarzan, episodes of Daktari, Rat Patrol, and KC Chief's football at its late 70's worst), Lou was the chubby punching bag and Bud was mean and impatient, and I got that. I didn't get all the bits about the ladies who pursued Lou, or that Bud might be frustrated with Lou’s dreamy, romantic attention deficit disorder. It make sense that when these guys are cast as clerks in a shipping and receiving department, Lou is gonna end up concussed under a pile of freight, getting smooched by a classy, good-looking lady. (And Bud says “I don’t get it.” And the lady says “You never will.”) Anyhow, this is a fun movie, good for a cozy night. Movies these days can do anything they want to do, technically, but Lou sitting on Frankenstein's lap in a shadowy castle is something that only Lou could do. The technical limits bring the personalities front and center, and the movie has to be put together right. (This makes me think of some over the top crapola like National Treasure, a massive, empty hunk of junk.) Lon Cheney Jr with crazy back-combed forehead wolfman fur? Might be more morbid in its awkwardness than anything in Fangoria. The gag with the revolving door in the castle was good too.

New Year's and Guilty Pleasures

2011-01-09T20:16:00.000-08:00

Here's a new demo. We revved it up quite a ways at Golden Motors prak night before last.

Here's an oldie posted via Bandcamp...I haven't put the albums up whole. One song every few days is more fun, then I put up the whole record.

Tracy and I kicked in the new year in Ashland. I liked all the twinkle lights on the main drag and walking in the clear, dry cold. (December was your standard mush and moss month in Eugene; if this were Holland we'd all get free Paxil in the mail, no questions asked.) We ate well (at The Ashland Springs Hotel restaurant--Lark's--and at a fusion-y joint called The Dragonfly.) T spilled half an americano in her Queen Bee purse on a movieplex caffeine smuggling op, so it was new purse time for her, and book-hunt time for me. I picked up The Black Flag history, Spraypaint The Walls, as well as a Camilleri mystery, a non-Wallander Mankell novel, and Have You Seen...? by David Thompson, a personal compendium of 1000 movie recommendations with short, readable essays about each one. The first one (under "A") is "Abbot and Costello Meet Frankenstein."

Our hotel was The Columbia, a quaint old place, pretty small, and affordable, right on the main drag, and close to Larks. I have a habit of wanting to go back to the same restaurant if it's good, just to make sure it's good, I guess.

It was probably a good thing that half the americano spilled. During one of the scary parts in The Black Swan, I hollered loud enough to startle the lady next to me. I was wound tight on Starbucks and that gothic pscych-ballet flick pushed all the buttons. Any time Natalie Portman tears off a fingernail, I'm gonna squirm. My row-mate pulled a basket out from under her seat, which I took to be preliminary to moving to a new spot. But it turns out I had also scared her dog, a small poodle happy to hang out under her chair where the popcorn windfall was steady, at least until I started yelling. It was like that old movie "The Tingler," where they installed buzzers under all the seats--but I was THE TINGLER. HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Last night at Sam Bond's was kind of a second New Year's--one band backing 25 or so singers on their favorite "guilty pleasures," which ranged from a ripping take on Billy Idol's "Rebel Yell" to Kiss's "Beth" to Nillson's coconut song. I did "Baby Hold On" by Eddie Money. He has so many hot-summer-night awesome songs, it was hard to pick, but I knew for me, it had to be something by THE MONEY MAN. I've never seen the place fuller or happier, with almost no attrition as the night went on. It was a magic fairy dust night that ended w/ Peter Wilde leading a gang chorus of "Against the Wind." I hope that goes annual--something to look forward to through the holidaze.
Photos of the wingding by Claire Flint here.

I ran into Patty Joe Hayden at Guilty Pleasures and discussed the new Husker Du book. He likes it. I haven't been super-charged gung ho about the excerpts I've read, and this is a book I've wanted to read since I was fifteen. Of course I'm gonna read it, and look forward to further reports.

I've said before that I don't really have an exhaustive survey for end-of-the-year lists, but those OFF! e.p.'s are my favorite of 2010. They rip. Keith Morris is a great singer, period. An avatar of tongue-in cheek hostility who turns rock and roll phrases like Chuck Berry. The songs are short, tight, and in your face. Kabam!

It's Twinkle Time

2010-12-20T19:03:00.000-08:00

Well, there it is, a Christmas number! Never done that before, that I can remember. I've been nuts for the lights this year and the gutters are strung.

This week features a big show at Sam Bond's Garage, Thursday 12/23--Elliot Martinez hosting the Sam Bond's White Elephant Exchange, with a special opening set from The Squids featuring TWO DRUMMERS (Mike Last and Ken Howe) and Dave Snider on bass. The Golden Motors will round out the night playing songs from our long-player in progress, which is ready for the mixing board after one last session at Big Timbre last weekend. Jason tied up the loose ends and then he and Pia headed out on Comforters tour. It's sounding great. The Sam Bond's also celebrates the birthdays of two rad dudes, Doug and Dru.

Shoot, we're heading toward Top Ten time, but I have no exhaustive line on what's new and cool--only my knocking through life and running into stuff I like. I have been heavy into anything by Richard Hawley. The Mission Of Burma documentary knocked me out; so did the film Winter's Bone. I recently picked up The Pedal Jets revamp of their second record, which they were never that happy with. (Much of it re-recorded, re-mixed, and given mucho TLC after a rush job on the original.) They are a Kansas City band who were heavily active in the mid-to-late 80's, touring with more well-known bands of the day, and sounding alot like The Replacements with more psychedelic stuff going on and more of a lower-midwest rhythm section in line with the KC/Chicago hammer-down style. At least that is my rock crit balogna about it. Sounds like home to me. I guess the best show I saw was The Baseball Project at The Doug Fir...my favorite restaurant is still Belly, and my current pair of Chuck Taylor's is gray, and should last a few more years. I am getting less worse at drums and still bike commuting most days. I see the Royals traded Greinke, but fans are used to years of de-building, so I'm still keeping an eye on the date that pitchers and catchers report. Chiefs heading toward the playoffs? I'm waiting for the tell-tale shimmer that tells all Star Trek fans they are in an episode featuring an alternative universe triggered by an ion storm and some flimsy sci-fi hypothesis. My alma mater Iowa and my home place team Mizzou head-to-head in a bowl game? Break out the black and gold M & M's.

2010-12-19T13:27:00.000-08:00

The Minutemen, Live at The Blue Note in Columbia, Missouri, 1984.
Watt thanks The Orange Doe-Nuts, one of the bands we used to see alot back then.
An intense Grateful Dead hankering this week took me to archive.org, where I found this.

2010-12-17T22:57:00.000-08:00