wishful thinking

June 28, 2007 at 1:49 pm · Filed under politics

bush on castro:

“One day the good Lord will take Fidel Castro away,” Bush said in answer to a question after a speech at the Naval War College.

one day the good lord (or a pretzel) will take bush away too. oh please, please, please make it a day in the very near future. only caveat: make it at least one day after cheney departs.

UPDATE: okay, not a good idea to post when you’re incensed over so many things (like stonewalling subpoenas, people dying needlessly in iraq, billions being wasted daily, how sad that the list goes on and on and on). so i’m just going to recalibrate my degree of anger and say that “take away” means impeach. still best to get rid of cheney first.

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tennessee, tennessee. ain’t no place i’d rather be (for a few days, anyway)

June 12, 2007 at 9:59 pm · Filed under music

tomorrow evening i’ll be winging my way east on a red-eye flight to nashville via charlotte (and yes, i know about the shortest distance between two places thing. i also know about the cheapest flight thing) to meet friends, pick up a car and head down to manchester, tennessee on thursday morning. that must mean it’s bonnaroo time.

this will be my fourth pilgrimage to the farm (700 acres of tree-sprinkled grassland; superfly productions actually bought it outright prior to this year’s festival) and i have to cop to a bit of obsessive behavior about bonnaroo. there are very few times during the year that i am not thinking about bonnaroo in some way, shape or form. i find it to be an incredibly efficient means of witnessing a lot of incredible music in a short period of time, a great way to reconnect with friends i don’t get to see that often, and a catalyst for wiping the mental slate clean. Read the rest of this entry »

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john darnielle, national treasure

June 7, 2007 at 11:47 pm · Filed under music

and the hits just keep on coming.

if you don’t already know about the mountain goats, you should. some day i’ll explain why i think john darnielle, who for all intents and purposes is the mountain goats (though he would likely take umbrage at that, graciously sharing the goatness, as he does, with his comrade in arms, peter hughes, and to quote the afore-linked website, “...a litany of drummers we stole from our opening bands.”) is a national treasure. but not today, because i’m wary of unleashing more of those run-on, parenthetical, comma-abusing sentences like the one before this one.

instead, i’ll just post a track from their recent show at the independent. a track that, by the way, serves as a fine example of darnielle’s unique style: an amalgam of simple chord progressions, incredibly personal and confessional lyrics, and a vocal delivery that would take some getting used to if the overall package wasn’t so damn compelling. throw in his self-deprecating and amusing intros when he performs live and you just can’t help but love the guy. well, i can’t, anyway. and clearly i can’t help myself from rambling tonight either.

i first discovered the mountain goats via chat threads on the sick-n-tired mailing list from the early 90s. that led to a chance find of “beautiful rat sunset” in a used CD shop in hong kong and i’ve been hooked ever since. fast forward (i can hear you, by the way, muttering “thank god for that”) to march 8th of this year. which provides a nice segue to the first encore from that night, “this year.” the entire show, by the way, can be heard in a nice soundboard version here. for those of you keeping score at home, that’s jon wurster from superchunk (and the comedy duo, scharpling and wurster) on drums.

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april was the coolest month

June 4, 2007 at 12:26 am · Filed under music

i had a birthday and got to see one of my favorite bands.

so much has been written about the decemberists and so much of it has been laudatory. rightly so, in my opinion. so, at the risk of sounding like a broken mp3, i’ll add a bit to the heap of praise.

the decemberists have put on two of the best shows i’ve seen in the past five years. they are one of a handful of newer bands out there that understand the fundamentals of old-school showmanship and have the musical chops to take the whole thing over the top. it’s not purely rock ‘n roll showmanship either. there’s a huge vein of theatricality running through their live show with crowd participation and props and musical suites and old instruments you’d never see on a rock stage. bottom line is that a night with these guys is a hell of a lot of fun. and i’m looking forward to another chance to see them in a few days at bonnaroo.

the current tour supporting “the crane wife” (a great album; the latest in a series of winners) rolled through san francisco on april 26th. it takes a lot to get me out to the warfield these days; even more to be on the floor there. but the sold out show was delightfully undersold and you could actually breathe and move about in general admission.

rather than feature something here from “the crane wife,” i decided to post one of the evening’s highlights for me: a particularly joyous version of “song for myla goldberg” from the album “her majesty the decemberists.” apparently colin meloy was a media escort for myla during the “bee season” book tour, and from that we get this wonderful tune. some great shows from the tour are available over at the archive, complete and available for download or streaming.

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meat the puppets

June 1, 2007 at 12:35 am · Filed under music

every now and then something rends the time-space continuum to such a degree that you have to slap yourself silly just to make sure you haven’t suddenly fallen into an alternative universe or mistakenly downed a quart of robitussin.

such was the case when i saw a listing back in april for a show by the meat puppets at the independent. what’s the big deal, you ask? well, after doing a little research, i discovered that this would be the meat puppets with cris kirkwood. the same cris kirkwood that had last been seen rotting in jail after bottoming out on smack, losing his wife to an overdose, and being shot after assaulting a cop in a parking lot. sure, the pups were always crazy. but they weren’t always stupid.

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