Strange Pulse

My commute home last night took me THREE HOURS.

THREE!

*whimper*

Seriously.

I love how they’ll take a three-word phrase and build a song out of it. “Hate Paper Doll,” “Flip Your Wig,” “New Day Rising.” All so good. I’ll post them all to the radio.blog.

But this is my favorite:

The Replacements’ “Bastards of Young:”

It was the anti-music-video music video.

The Replacements were a fave of mine. So good.

S’mee posted on her blog about a bee swarm that invaded her yard (complete with pictures), and it reminded me of how my father kept bees when I was a kid.

My dad was an engineer at Boeing, but he really wanted to be a farmer, so he rented some farmland in the valley and farmed on the weekends (u-pick strawberry fields). And he kept several beehives on the farmland.

I have this memory of him moving the bees to our backyard. I’m not sure how accurate my memory is, so hopefully my dad will chirp in and verify this for me. What I remember is a huge amount of bees all up and down our street. Thick in the air. I can remember riding my bike down the street and hearing and feeling bees crunch under my tires. However, I don’t remember being pelted with them as I rode, but I’d be surprised if I wasn’t.

The neighbors could not have been happy.

I have a few. I’m gonna post a few tracks from the Calexico show I just saw:

Sunken Waltz
Stray

and

Not Even Stevie Nicks…
Black Heart

The sound quality’s really good. Such an awesome show.

Other boots I have of shows I’ve been at:

Queens of the Stone Age - Graceland, Seattle, WA 05/31/2002
Mark Lanegan -Showbox, Seattle, WA 12/12/2003
Jane’s Addiction/Soundgarden - Paramount, Seattle 1988 (on cassette)
Melvins - Showbox, Seattle, WA 3/7/2004
Brant Bjork - Viper Room, Hollywood, CA 3/10/2005
Frames/Josh Ritter - The El Rey Theater, Los Angeles, CA 10/4/2005

My 12 year old said to me, “Iron Maiden has the #2 bassist in heavy metal!” (Iron Maiden is his current favorite band.)

I said, “Who told you that?”

He said, “This book! The Encyclopedia of Heavy Metal!”

I have it on my bookshelf (of course). It was written by a guy who posts on a music forum I frequent, which is how I knew of it, and why I bought it. (And since I ordered it just before Christmas, when I got home and saw Daniel had already opened it, I said, “Merry Christmas!”)

It’s pretty awesome. My 12 year old has been reading it a lot lately. Mostly the entry on Iron Maiden, his latest favorite.

Got any favorite books about music? You can pick this one up here. Did I mention it’s only $14 or so?

Any guesses as to who the #1 bassist is in heavy metal? I’ll give you a clue. The band also has the #1 drummer in heavy metal. And no, the Who are not classified as heavy metal. (I was actually kind of surprised this band was, though.)

If I can, I like to take pictures of the setlists at shows. I don’t keep them, usually someone grabs it before I can even think about it. But I also realize if I grabbed it, it’d just get lost and be a waste of energy. So I like to take pictures when I can just so I can remember what they played, or at least what they planned on playing.

They’re not always in a spot that’s easily accessible so I don’t have pictures of that many—compared to how many shows I’ve seen. But here’s some photos just for fun.

Fu Manchu:

Low (I asked the girl who grabbed it if I could get a picture before she made off with it):

Ariel Pink:

Fatso Jetson (this was the sax/harmonica player’s—I actually have the photo flipped upside down so it’s readable—note the mic stand):

Hermano:

High on Fire:

Three Inches of Blood:

Isis:

New Model Army:

Nebula:

That one cracks me up. Was that really their entire setlist? I’m guessing not! But I had to take a picture of it anyway. What is it? Maybe someone tossed that note on stage hoping they’d play it. Nebula is known for taking requests. Maybe they were planning on improvising the setlist but didn’t want to forget that one song!

Years ago we lived in this little house next door to my parents that they owned. This is Catherine and her cousin (my grand-nephew) on the front porch:

One day I looked outside and noticed the neighbor’s house was on fire. The neighbor was outside, trying to put the fire out with a garden hose, and talking on a cordless phone, calling 911.

All the neighbors behind us came down the hill (we lived at the bottom) and stood in the street next to our house to watch the fire. Me and the kids were all on the front porch.

The house was made of wood and plaster and was completely gone in 20 minutes.

I realized I was standing on the porch with my small children watching someone’s house burn down. (This sounds horrible, but I think we may have been eating popcorn.) And that wasn’t good. So I loaded the kids in the car and went to the grocery store. When we got back, the fire department was just starting to leave.

Nathaniel, about age 4, said to me, “Can we do it again?” I realized he had thought the fire was cool and wanted another house to burn down.

I explained to him fires were horrible things. That everything that family had in their house was gone now. All their clothes, all their toys, all their furniture, everything.

He really took it to heart. He was traumatized by it. After that, if there was a fire drill at his preschool, I had to keep him home that day, he’d get so upset. I worried that he needed to know what to do if there was a fire, but after talking to his teacher about it, we both agreed I should just keep him home those days. It really freaked him out.

Once when he was about 6 or 7 (and we were living somewhere else) the smoke alarm in our house went off—I think a friend who was over was testing it, you know, pushing the button to make sure it worked. Nathaniel freaked out and started running towards the door.

He got over his fear as he got older, though.

Another time, when he was about 8, our neighbor’s truck caught on fire in their garage. Their teenage son had been working on the it, and when he saw it catch fire, he pushed it out into the yard. His quick thinking saved their house. Have you ever been near a car fire? The smell of all the plastic and rubber burning is horrendous. The kids wanted to go check it out, but I made them watch from inside the house—that stuff has to be toxic.

www.kulturblog.com

With more pictures from the show.

If you’ve never heard of the Anthology of American Folk Music, you should go read about it here. It’s a collection of very early American recordings, of artists such as the Carter Family and Blind Lemon Jefferson.

You can probably find the box set at your local library. I did, and I copied it. I’m gonna post to the radio.blog a few early recordings of traditional folk songs and then more recent versions.

Buster Carter and Preston Young: “A Lazy Farmer Boy”
Alison Krauss and Union Station: “The Boy Who Wouldn’t Hoe Corn” (live)

Clarence Ashley: “The House Carpenter”
Nickel Creek: “House Carpenter”
Natalie Merchant: “House Carpenter”

G.B. Grayson: “Ommie Wise”
Songs: Ohia: “Omie Wise”