Call Me Mr. Lowbrow

A little bit of my taste in movies. Comedies, Jimmy Stewart, Tatum O'Neal, zombies, truckers, and people in gorilla suits. That just about covers it.

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WFMU always brings the goods

Murfreesboro / Nashville legends, Travis and Jonathan, have been noticed by WFMU. Their parody of Grizzly Man is damn funny. WFMU also has a great post on the bubblegum glam band Milk 'n' Cookies including a concert from the mid-70's recorded at CBGB.

CD Review: Magnet - The Tourniquet

Magnet, Even Johansen, has attracted acclaim for his low key pop melodies. He's a major star in his native Norway. There have been three EP's (Where Happiness Lives, Chasing Dreams, The Day We Left Town) for Ultimate Dilemma and one full length, On Your Side, all infused with a melancholic simple beauty. His new album, The Tourniquet, on Filter US Recordings continues in the same style, but with a more optimistic outlook.

Lead off song "Hold On" begins with a spare arrangement before ending with a Beach Boys lushness channeling some Friends era positive TM sort of vibes, but there's a James Taylor meets Sufjan Stevens feel over much of the album. "The Pacemaker" could pass as British mope rock. There's a sublime lullaby with "All You Ask" and "Fall At Your Feet" has a cinematic flair that suggests Magnet's ultimate future is in soundtracks. A bonus track is included on this American release - "This Bird Can Fly", but it has the sound of a leftover and could have been omitted.

The Tourniquet was recorded in Bergen, Norway among the fjords and was finished in the sunshine of Los Angeles assisted by Jason Falkner of Jellyfish fame. It's languid pop with a frosty exterior befitting such a pairing and while I might wish for a rawer American current, its Old World charm is quite winning when the time is right. You wouldn't listen to this to get yourself psyched up. It's chilling out music perfect for February twilight listening. The Tourniquet will be release on February 14th.

Battle Royal

Guy Mann-Dude versus Chuck Norris. Place your bets.

We Have A Set List

Rock concerts; drunk and stoned fans, over priced concessions, concert t-shirts, long lines at the restroom, mosh pits, standing room only, whining pushy people rushing the stage after the show has started, lighters held aloft during the ballad, shouts of play "Freebird", scalpers and bootleg merchandise people outside the venue, gorillas in security shirts, and stepping over the puddles of vomit and people who've passed out after the show. That doesn't even include the actual music which can veer from transcendant to total crap depending on who's playing. Many times you'll go to a show and find an opening act that blows the headliner off the stage, or perhaps the opening act is so bad you can't sit through them, or the opening act is inexplicable in some way. Whatever the case, it's often the opening act that stays lodged in your memory and this is what this post is all about.

Blown Off The Stage (All events taking place in Nashville)

Magnapop opening for Mudhoney - April 4, 1993 at 328 Performance Hall.

I'd never heard Magnapop before the show. Their blend of classic and alternative rock along with their super cute girl singer made for a pleasant forty minutes with the big winner being their cover of the Big Star classic "13" which just about brought tears to my eyes. Mudhoney came on stage and proceeded to bore the hell out of me. I was a huge Mudhoney fan at the time and perhaps being mucho disappointed has colored the event, but the guys in Mudhoney were lifeless and the music felt the same.

Urge Overkill opening for Dinosaur jr. - Thursday May 9, 1991 at 328 Performance Hall.

I loved both these bands so I was stoked when the bill was announced. Urge Overkill didn't disappoint. They were out supporting The Supersonic Storybook at the time and once again a cover song caught my ears: their version of Hot Chocolate's "Emma" sent shivers down my spine. Dinosaur jr. were loud as advertised, but it was apparent that J. Mascis had no soul. Their set had thud, but no heart.

Y & T opening for Twisted Sister - some Saturday late in the summer of 1984 at Municipal Auditorium.

Dokken was also on this triple bill of metal and technically were the opener with Y & T being the middle act, but no matter how the gig was billed Y & T were the highlight. Dave Meniketti and his bunch lit up the place with their pop metal AOR groove. Then they got the crowd really amped up when the Y & T metal man joined them on the stage. Twisted Sister just came across like louts as Dee Snider did his usual berate the fans for not standing up routine. Even as a joke, it just came across lame.

Megadeth opening for Dio - Tuesday January 19, 1988 at Municipal Auditorium.

Dio was on the way down at this time. His stage show budget had been sliced to the bone and instead of fighting dragons he fought real cheap looking electronic spiders. Megadeth were on the way up to superstardom and their set was killer. I started some slamdancing with the Gonz and Mike and then got Mustaine's autograph between sets. Savatage were also on the bill and they too were better than Dio this night.

The Alarm opening for Bob Dylan - Friday July 22, 1988 at Starwood Amphitheater.

Dylan wasn't bad, He was actually really good, but he acted like he didn't give a shit and he barely played over an hour. DD Blank and I couldn't help but feel a little ripped off by him. We cooled our jets and decided to give the old man a pass since he was and is a living legend. We had The Alarm's incredible opening salvo to lift us up. Mike Peters was like a man possessed with the true spirit of rock and roll as he exhorted the crowd even if it meant running out to the soundboard in the middle of the seats once. It was anthemic and uplifting.

Worst Openig Acts

Barkmarket opening for The Pixies - Saturday February 1, 1992 at Memorial Gym.

Damn Barkmarket sucked. They were noisy, They were tuneless. They were sorta ugly too. That was probably their point, but I didn't have to like it or take it. After about five songs I told DD I was going to get a coke and that I would be back. I was telling DD a lie. I had no intention of subjecting myself to the full blast of their muck furnace. He found me a few songs later sitting at the bottom of a staircase and he gave me hell for bailing on him. We stayed there until Barkmarket finally finished both knowing we had shared an historical event - the worst group we were ever likely to hear.

The Nerve opening for Ted Nugent - Friday April 20, 1984 at Municipal Auditorium.

The Nerve, a local Nashville band, weren't supposed to open for Ted. Bon Jovi had been slated as the openers. I was actually relieved that I wouldn't have to sit through "Runaway" which was their big hit at the time. But The Nerve blew chunks. They were old looking, Some of them were even bald! And there seemed to be way too many people in the band. I guess they were some sort of hippie jam band based on their music...hey dude cue the bongos! The crowd wasn't too appreciative letting The Nerve know that warming the stage for a metal god like Nugent wasn't too cool. They started getting things tossed at them and it wasn't women's underwear. Lucky for us they split rather quickly.

Autograph opening for Van Halen - Saturday February 11, 1984.

David Lee Roth was jogging buddies with the lead singer of Autograph. That's how they came to open for Van Halen. They had yet to have success with "Turn Up The Radio" and were complete unknowns to the crowd who only had one thing on their mind; rocking out to Van Halen. The booing was so bad I felt sorry for Autograph who were gamely trying to win the audience's favor. They only way they were going to do that would be to leave the stage, which they did after the whiskey bottles started flying. My pity didn't stop me from throwing one too.

Afghan Whigs opening for Teenage Fanclub - Tuesday May 12 at 328 Performance Hall.

I really liked the Whigs before the gig. I had their Sub Pop release with the picture of the cut hand on the cover and it had become a constant on the record player. They had moved on to a little different sound by the time of this show. It didn't do too much for me. It was strictly dullsville; plus Greg Dulli was a pretentious nob the entire set. Their naked drummer didn't help out visually either. Teenage Fanclub were great. I've still got their setlist from that show.

Marky & The Unexplained Stains opening for Volcano Suns - late 80's or early 90's at Elliston Square.

Mark Nevers has gone on to be an excellent producer, but Marky & The Unexplained Stains was one terrible band. I believe they were trying to bring some NYC flavored rock to Nashville, but it was just a cacophonous mess.

The Inexpicable (strange and wondrous)

Firehose opening for Soul Asylum - Thursday September 19 at 328 Performance Hall

Firehose were their usual awesome selves, but it just didn't seem right for them to be opening for the soon to be megastars for a moment Soul Asylum. Sure, they were both out of the indie college alternative circuit, but Firehose were far superior to Dave Pirner's bunch in my opinion. I think they were on the same label at the time.

Dead Milkmen opening for Living Color - sometime in the late 80's or early 90's at the Cannery.

I bought Big Lizard In My Backyard after hearing "Bitchin' Camaro" back in 1985. So I was down for the Milkmen. My old band, The Dislocated, were known to bust out some Living Color songs like "Middle Man" or "Desperate People" so I was up for some Vernon Reid guitar slinging. But on the same bill? It was just totally weird. A huge contingent of Murfreesboro punk wannabe's came to the show just to see the Milkmen. It seems they'd all heard "Punk Rock Girl" and thought it was great. So they proceeded to slam dance and act like total idiots to the people who had come to see Living Color. I'd never thought of the Milkmen as being punk in any way. I ended up spending some of their set outside talking to a dude who had come all the way to Virginia just to see Living Color. He had gone outside because some of the Milkmen's fans had said some racist crap to him. He didn't want to get in trouble for kicking their heads in and then miss Living Color so he was cooling off.

The Replacements opening for Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers - Saturday August 5, 1989 at Starwood Amphitheater

The first words Tom Petty told the audience were "We're a little different. We have a set list." His opening act, The Replacements, had just spent a good half hour drunkenly taunting the crowd. I had seen The Replacements before as a headliner at the National Guard Armory where they were awesome, but I knew about their reputation for dissolute drunken gigs. As soon as they walked on stage that hot summer evening I looked over at DD and we both said, "they're totaled." We weren't talking cereal consumption. They played a few of their own songs halfway decent and then they starting fooling around with "Walk On The Wild Side" and it went nowhere. It was just an aimless mess. Then they started taunting the crowd, which was packed with Petty fans that had never heard of The Replacements, while slugging down bottles of Jack Daniels. "F*%# You, but we love your whiskey," they snickered. They announced a drum solo by Chris Mars and he threw his sticks into the crowd instead of playing. It was completely awesome in its way. I overheard a couple of guys later talking about Westerberg and company - they'll never get anywhere with that kind of attitude. Sadly, they were right.

Julianna Hatfield opening for The Lemonheads - Wednesday August 12, 1992 at the Exit/In.

I think Julianna was ticked off about Lisa Loeb's success. When the audience wouldn't prostrate themselves at her feet after a few songs she started to talk about how lame we were. It's a Wednesday night in Nashville - you're lucky if you can get a crowd enthusiastic on a Saturday night here. We were politely applauding her very sedate and polite music. She wasn't horrible, but Liz Phair she isn't. So we weren't completely stunned when she said, "You're the worst audience ever" and then stomped off the stage in a tizzy. I'm proud that I was part of her worst audience ever.

Feel free to share your own opening act experiences at concerts in the comment section.

Porcelain God On The Front Lawn

It was the summer of 1986, or maybe 1987. It could have been the summer of 1988. Those summers are as indeterminate a haze now as the weather was back then. All of my friends from the high school days would be back in town from college and weekends were spent hanging with them. There was the pig farmer and engineering student Clyde, McDonalds manager Smooth, DD Blank, minister's son Drew Bob, divinity school bound Scott, hell raising Ralston, beer drinking Bruno, and future air traffic controller Duff. We were a motley bunch in transistion phases and the weekends could feature almost anything.

Classic recreational standbys were bowling, going to the movies, attending rock concerts, crashing MTSU frat parties, Clyde's summer parties, throwing frisbees in empty parking lots, bird dogging the girls at MTSU's cheerleader camps, renting videos, driving around town, annoying any of the gang who happened to have a date for the night, and the usual favorite: sitting around drinking beer. But the most spontaneous event of all was the weekend the gang went commoding.

We were sitting around bored one Friday looking for things to do when somebody in the group remembered seeing a bunch of commodes just sitting outside a certain nearby institution. Apparently they were being replaced. I guess the reason the toilets were brought up was just because the sight of so many commodes removed from their normal places was funny. Ralston wasn't around that night and soon a use for the toilets beyond a mere sight gag was devised. Ralston was renowned for his devious pranks. It was time to prank him (and others).

That's right, we decided to go get a bunch of the commodes and drop them at the houses of people we knew; like Ralston they all had it coming. A bunch of us packed into the cab and bed of Clyde's old truck and off we went to the porcelain zone. We loaded several of the commodes into the bed of the truck and were off without any witnesses to the heist. I think it was DD who first decided that a toilet makes a perfect seat, but soon all of us in the back of the truck were enjoying the view from a throne as we drove through a typical Murfreesboro summer night.

People started noticing the commodes and began yelling encouraging words at us. We were traffic stoppers. We were a spectacle. I'm still amazed to this day that the local Murfreesboro cop, Hiram, who loved busting young adults didn't spot us that night. We pulled up to one busy spotlight and a car yelled at us from a car, "You guys want some brew." Soon he was pitching some cold beer up to us. A simple equation was thus born: ride around on toilets in the bed of an old pickup truck and you will get free beer. Sidenote: there is some debate over when this incident happened - I say it happened on the first night (since I was present) and others say it was on the second night when I wasn't there.

We blasted out of town and dropped the commodes off at each victim's home. We wouldn't get to see the look on their faces, but we did get to hear about their discovery of a toilet in their yard wondering at the mystery of it all. The night of commoding was so successfull and fun that the gang went out and did it again the next evening while I toiled away at Mazzio's Pizza. I was just glad I lived so far out in the sticks they wouldn't want to commode my house.

So I no longer look upon commodes as mere utilitarian items. They can be a source of mirth. They can help build group bonds. They can be uniters. They can be something that baffles left on a lawn. They can be one of the many ghosts from my past that bring a smile to my face and leave me chuckling. Here's to the porcelain god!

Roller Boogie two

I used to be a roller skater. I was never a full blown roller boogie champ, but I got pretty good before I abruptly gave it up in 1982. One reason: heavy metal kids didn't roller skate. The second reason was that girls had stopped liking me. I guess I just wasn't cute and adorable anymore or maybe it was my taste in music which was shifting to only heavy metal. Whatever the reason, it wasn't any fun just going in circles without the chance of getting kissed. But that era's echoes reverberate with me from time to time.

A couple of things have conspired to make my mind wander that way again. My oldest daughter has been invited to a roller skating birthday party and I'm sure I'll lace up some skates for the first time in years. The other one was a random trip through the radio dial where I heard "I'm Allright" by Kenny Loggins. That song was one of my favorite roller rink songs. One verse was all I needed to zoom back to the past and soon all of my favorite songs were doing the hokey pokey through my mind.

So what were my favorite skating songs? I mentioned a few of them in my previous roller boogie post, but I didn't rate them or go into any great detail. This time around the rink you'll learn what made me smile and put on the extra burst of speed. Here are my top ten roller rink classics:

1. "You Shook Me All Night Long" by AC/DC. I had been a huge Kiss fan for years, but it wasn't until I discovered AC/DC that I really started to become a heavy metal fan. The roller rink could have just played dance music, but instead they went with a mixture of AOR and R&B. It was a great mix with something bound to please somebody at some point in the night. "You Shook Me All Night Long" was a fist pumping anthem that just made you want to go as fast as you could, at least until the skate cops blew their whistle and sat you down. I was usually on the bench by the time Angus's guitar solo began.

2. "Backstrokin'" by Fatback Band. You had to roller skate backwards with a pretty girl by your side for this slice of bass heavy funk.

3. "Cars" by Gary Numan. When you're skating around in a circle, you sometimes imagine you're behind the wheels of a car. Enter the electronic cool of Gary Numan and a skating classic was born. You could also pull out some robot moves to it.

4. "Coming Out" by Diana Ross. At first I thought she was singing "I'm coming up" and that was cool since I was an up and coming high school kid. Then I figured out that it was "I'm coming out" and while not as cool it was still a grooving tune - fast and funky enough at that. I didn't have a clue to the subtextural use of the song.

5. "The Tide Is High" by Blondie. I was a big Blondie fan. My room was some unholy mixture of Blondie and Kiss posters. "The Tide Is High" was such a perfect song to skate to - it was bubbly and I could take pride in knowing I had been a long time fan. It was the first time I can remember feeling some hipster pride at all of the squares just now "getting it." Just ignore the fact that Blondie had been huge for years and let me have a little bit of credit.

6. "I'm Allright" by Kenny Loggins. I liked this song so much I bought the 45. Looking back I can't really see why I liked it so much, but it spoke to me in some way or other. It might have been the goofy fifties doo-wop bridge.

7. "Her Strut" by Bob Seger & The Silver Bullet Band. This is about as hard rocking as Seger gets. What teenage corndog boy wouldn't like a song about watching a girl strut, especially with a pun like "I do respect her but..." included in the lyrics. My cousin Freddy and I spent alot of time analyzing the way girls walked back then; plus we worked on our own cool dude walking styles. We didn't really have a clue as why we should be watching the girls or wokring on our own attention getting swaggers, but our nascent idiotic ways are rather endearing, don't you think.

8. "Le Freak" by Chic. This song was at its peak when I first starting hitting the rink in 6th grade. Nobody would sit this song out. The skate floor would be one big lumpy mass of elbows askew and shaking heads. It wasn't good to fall down during it.

9. "Another One Bites The Dust" by Queen. Fitting that a song which lifted from Chic would make the list right beside them. It's a total inversion of "Good Times" lyrically while swiping the bass riff. You could almost see people light up like fireflies when the needle dropped on this song.

10. "Hungry Heart" by Bruce Springsteen. You wouldn't think an 8th grade kid would dig this song, especially not in a skating rink. But I did. There was just something about the way it sounded that meshed well with aimless rolling. It also was a good tune to skate doubles to, even if the lyrics weren't fitting.

Honorable mention:

"Same Old Lang Syne" by Dan Fogelberg. It's sentimental and sophomorish to me now, but it was a window into adult relationships when I was in junior high and the adult relationship scene didn't look too appealing. You'd skate around to that song and then tell the girl you were skating with that this would never happen to us. Two weeks later you'd be skating with a different girl and telling her the same thing.

I'd Like To...

I'd like to learn to fence. I'd like to learn to fly an airplane. I'd like to see some folks again and then there are some I could do without ever seeing again. I'd like to get wiser as I get older, but for now I remain just a wise guy. I'd like to go dip my feet into the ocean. I'd like my oldest daughter to have a better 1st grade teacher. I'd like to be at least a D list blogger, but I'm more like a Z minus lister. I'd like to finish a book again. I'd like to make a real power pop album sometime. I'd like to see the Aurora Borealis in person. I'd like to take a spin around the Daytona Speedway. I'd like to think I've been doing some good.

Those Hip-Hop Fisherman Blues

Glitch rock, folk hip-hop, blues, and a disconcerting since of played out evolution combine on Them Get You...Them Got You by jd walker. It's appropriate that his usual profession is being a fisherman from Maine; there's a clanking fish tackle stumble to the album and the location fits - it being the end of America in the East. The future of music seems to be with artists influenced by a poly glot of genres. This can a good thing, but it can also end up a gray mess of porridge. Them Get You...Them Got You falls somewhere in between; it's a serviceable craft and fairly seaworthy filled with the best artistic intentions.

He aspires to be part Johnny Cash and part Rakim, but can only reach the level of a Beck in Beck's laziest moments. This isn't a horrible thing. Hybrid styles can take some time to get used to and this album makes a slow lobster crawl with an emphasis on the ambient side. It's college radio progressive hip-hop intellectual electro-beat with murmured vocals and abstract poetry. Some highlights are "Nails Over Munjoy", "Since Saturday", Patients People", and "Them Get You...Them Got You Part 2." There are studio appearances from alias, bluebird, k-the-i, Sontiago, and lontime collaborator, producer and anticon co-founder sole. The album is available on Six Months Records.

Riding In A Car

The view from Walden's Ridge wasn't as spectacular as it can be when the afternon sun is shining brightly, but the lights from the city of Dunlap penetrated the gloom of the rain showers. I raced to the floor of the Sequatchie Valley and then began the ascent of the Cumberland Mountains with a little trepidation. The rain was mere mist here, but it had been raining steadily all day and I hoped there would be no rock slides. The radio was playing Pachelbel's "Canon In D Major" and it was a perfect match for the scenery. Water was rushing over the side of the mountains as white mist clouds floated skyward. I briefly wished it could be summer time, because if it was I would pull the car over and stand beneath one of the myriad waterfalls formed from the rain. This fleeting thought changed over to a meditative rhapsody in tune with the classical music and the scenery that slowly went by. I thought about how peaceful it can be just riding in a car and this led to thinking about other scenes of other days spent inside automobiles.

Sequences of ephemeral moments of transient transits rushed through my mind like an automotive flip book. There were the days when I was a small child riding in the ancient machinery of my uncle's Buick Roadmaster or his Ford Truck with the dashboard consoles out of my reach unless I stood instead of sat on the floorboard. Don't even think about wearing a seatbelt. Trees and telephone poles would march outside the windshield and the little imaginary man I would make with my fingers would leap over or cut them down while a fat orange sun collapsed into twilight. The road was invariably Manson Pike because we were either living there or my uncle and granny were living somewhere that had to be reached by way of it.

I'd ride with my father and mother in souped up Ford Gran Torino's with my mother screaming at my father to slow down. Which is but one of the reasons why she and I got in a taxi that took us to the bus station where we'd catch a Greyhound to Ripley, Mississippi without my father. Months later I'd repeat the trip back to Murfreesboro beside my father where I'd later watch as a U-Haul truck was loaded with our belongings. The ride back to Ripley was huge for a 4 year old kid. Getting to sit up high above the other traffic I was finally big enough to really see what was going on outside on a trip. Too bad I didn't have a clue as to why all of the events had transpired between my parents.

There were GTO's, Barracuda's, and '57 Chevy's in Mississippi. My uncle's on my mother's side of the family were hell raisers and beer drinkers of the sort that mythologies should be written. The scenery would wash to a blur when I rode with them. They loved to scare their nephew and liked to see me sliding across the seat when they'd take sharp curves. For all of my mother's protests about driving fast; she wasn't above putting the gas pedal to the floor.

After we moved back to Middle Tennessee we lived off Almaville Pike and the route home was Manson Pike to Burnt Knob Road and then Almaville. There was a hill in front of a Methodist Church on Manson Pike and if you hit it with enough speed it would make you feel as if the car was leaving the road and going airborne. She'd never hesitate to gun the car as I urged her to go as fast as possible.

My father had been read the riot act too many times by then and he now drove slowly. He'd traded in a Gran Torino for a blue and white Ford Ranger pickup with a camper top. I liked to ride in the back under the camper even during the sweltering summer heat peering out the back with my tongue hanging out like a coon dog. When riding in the cab I would put my arm out the window just like my father. My right arm would be darker than my left, but would match my father's left arm.

I also liked to stick my head out of windows. During my roller skating days of 7th and 8th grade I would wash my hair right before leaving the house and hang my head out of the car to dry in the wind for that feathered hair disco look that the young girls liked so much. I wouldn't recommend this method today.

The memories start to accumulate like a traffic jam on the freeway. An orange Vega on the way to breaking down in Ripley, riding in a Nissan Pulsar on the way to a rock concert at 90 mph, sitting on the hump in the back seat of a Pontiac Trans Am (rock concert again), riding shotgun in DD Blank's parent's Sunbird, keeping Clyde from falling asleep on the way to Florida in the middle of the night, and starting a fire in a Volkswagen Beetle (that's what happens when you tear out the back seat and set a wooden plank over the battery housing).

There's the day I was driving a Buick Electra I got from my parents to a party out in the county with a couple of girls that Bruno and I had picked up at a Monkees reunion concert and the back seat was full of TV Tempo magazines. It was a local free tv listing mag and I had so many because that particular issue had a coupon for money off at the Readmore Bookstore. It was for 3 or 4 dollars off and they hadn't specified books only so I was using the coupons to get free magazines. The girls were riding in the backseat and they started to tear the papers up and then throwing them out the window. We were in a convoy of cars heading to the party and there were TV Tempo's blowing all over the road behind us. The first car would get hit by them and the next few cars would whip them into the air after they hit the pavement.

There are numerous other events, but I've mused enough on this today. I hope all of your rides are as enjoyable as the ones I've listed. And if you're a driver with passengers; remember that you're participating in what amounts to a sacred trust.

CD Review: Bobby Bare - The Moon Was Blue

The Moon Was Blue, which came out last year, was Bobby Bare's first new album in over a decade. It was co-produced by Mark Nevers and Bare's son Bobby Bare Jr. which has led some to compare it to Johnny Cash's time with Rick Rubin and Loretta Lynn's Van Lear Rose project produced by Jack White. Rubin and White definitely added some hip rock credibility, but Cash's and Lynn's own strenghs as musical artists were the real calling cards in their associations with their younger producers. Older musicians often just need someone to challenge and champion them with respect.

This is just what Bare Jr. and Nevers have done with Bobby Bare here. There are subtle traces of rock and roll on the album, like the feedback on "Everybody's Talkin", but most of the music recalls the Seventies countrypolitan sound of artists like Ray Price and Charlie Rich. It's a perfect match for Bare's mellowed baritone voice. The songs chosen are serious ones ranging in mood from poignant to sentimental, but done with an easy going assurance.

"I Am An Island" is given an appropriate Hawaiian flavor. "Everybody's Talkin" is given a bossa nova touch. The album's title comes from a line in "Yesterday When I Was Young" and Bare does a great job on this tearjerker. Bare always has a way with a Shel Silverstein song and "The Ballad Of Lucy Jordan" is a highlight with its theme of exhausted suburban ennui. "Shine On Harvest Moon" sounds like what you'd get if Brian Wilson had decided to produce country music in the Sixties; Nevers and Bare Jr. are the ones really doing the shining on that one.

Let's hope Bare Jr. can get his daddy into the studio more often. The Moon Was Blue is available from Dualtone Records.

Roll Film

I used to be quite the movie buff (cue the Seinfeld reference, please). I met my future wife in a film class. I drifted away from watching films for almost a decade. There were other things out there to amuse me: a wife, music, books, and our children. Most of the movies we go to watch are with the kids. There's no movie theater in Smithville so the wife and I rarely go to the movies (they also just cost too damn much). I'm also not too keen on renting movies. But lately I've found myself buying lots of used DVD's. I stay up late watching them after the kids have gone to bed. So the cinema bug is still in me. I've found myself visiting IMDB often lately. I've also been digging the blogs Film Brain, Cinecultist/Crazy For Movies, and The House Next Door (Matt Zoller Seitz's blog). I think I'll add a film heading to the sidebar soon.

Tagged And Bagged

When D. Wooderson gives you an invite; how can you refuse. Alright alright alright. Let's play some internet tag.

Five jobs you've had in your life: telephone book deliveryman, skateboard shop manager, record store clerk, pizza cook, Wal-Martian.

Five movies you could watch over and over: To Kill A Mockingbird, The 400 Blows, The Bad News Bears, Paper Moon, Planet Of The Apes . Yes it's true I had a huge crush on Tatum O'Neal when I was a child.

Five places you've lived: Memphis when I was a baby in an apartment in Fraser, Murfreesboro in multiple places - trailers and houses, Ripley, Mississippi for a year - one house down the street from a shoe factory and in another one house over from a Big Star grocery store, Smyrna, TN on Prindle Drive, and currently rocking out just outside of Smithville, TN.

Five TV shows you love to watch: House, MD, Everybody Hates Chris, How I Met Your Mother, Junkin',Mythbusters.

Five places you've been on vacation: Panama City, NYC, London, Amsterdam, Orlando.

Five websites you visit daily: Nashville Is Talking, Slashdot, Stolen Pony, Geek Press, WJLE.

Five of your favorite foods: tacos, pizza, baby spinach, sushi, chocolate pie.

Five places you'd rather be: London, a Gulf Coast beach, fishing in a stream, browsing in a book store, hanging out with the wife and kids at an amusement park.

Five albums you can't live without:

















Five people you'd tag to play this game: Jenny Valentine, Here Comes Trouble, Rex L. Camino, Jill, and Mo.

As D. would say, "Keep on livin'."