As a fan of a wide variety of popular (and not-so-popular) music from the 1950s (and sometimes even earlier) up through the present, one of my bucket list projects for years has been to put together a list of my 100 favorite songs of all time. At some point I decided that, once I got around to figuring that out, I could put it out on a blog, for the infinitesimally small proportion of the Internet world that might be interested. So, here we are. While the Top 100 will be a major focus, I also plan to post on a variety of other musical (and occasionally non-musical) topics, in which you may or may not be interested. (If a particular posting doesn’t ring your bell, you’re only a few clicks away from a dancing cat video on YouTube.)

Monday, June 8, 2015

June 7, 2015 – Cubs 6, Nationals 3 – Nationals Park


 
Attendance: 40,939
Game Time: 3:12
Weather: 79 degrees, overcast
Wind: 4 mph
Umpires: Home Plate - Kerwin Danley, First Base - Gabe Morales, Second Base - Rob Drake, Third Base - Joe West
Seventh-inning stretch song: Twist & Shout – The Beatles
 
Highlights – perfect baseball weather … sellout crowd … Metropolitan Washington Ear recognized on the scoreboard at the end of the fourth inning … Desmond 2-run homer in second gave Nats a two-run lead … after Cubs took a 4-2 lead, Nats rallied in the bottom of the sixth to cut the deficit in half … bullpen held Cubs scoreless over last 3 innings
 
Other – Jordan Zimmermann struggled, giving up 4 runs in 5 innings … Blake Treinen let Cubs expand lead to 6-3 in top of the sixth, giving up 2 hits, 3 walks and a wild pitch … Nats lost their 8th game in the last 10 and fell behind the Mets into second place in the NL East

Dawes w/ Gill Landry, Warner Theatre, 6/6/2015


Orchestra, Row E, Seat 109 – dead center, several rows back from the stage 
 
While I like the band Dawes a lot, I don’t follow every interview and news item, so I was surprised when five guys, rather than four, walked up on stage around 9:15 Saturday evening. Turned out that the band recently added guitarist Duane Betts (son of Dickey Betts of Allman Brothers fame) to their touring lineup. The change actually makes a big difference; while Taylor Goldsmith still played a mean guitar himself at many points in the show, he no longer had to handle all of the guitar work himself in addition to all the lead vocals. This let him be more expressive gesture-wise on some of the songs, and also produced a couple great two-guitar jams.
 
The band started off with “Things Happen” (the lead single from their just-released All Your Favorite Bands LP), followed by two more tracks from that album, “Don’t Send Me Away” and “Somewhere Along The Way.” The latter was stunning with its vocal harmonies and guitar work near the end, producing the first of many standing ovations. They then went “back to the beginning” for “That Western Skyline”, the very first track from their debut CD. They continued with a mix of older material (hitting my favorite, “A Little Bit Of Everything”, about midway through) and a few more tracks from the new album. The finally got to “When My Time Comes”, getting everyone to their feet and singing along, and concluded the main set around 10:45 with “From The Right Angle” – not one of my favorites, but it worked well live. They returned with a couple of must-performs, “Time Spent In Los Angeles” and “From A Window Seat”, winding up with the title track from the new LP, which was particularly appropriate given its reference to Charlottesville in the first verse.
 
Bottom line – rock & roll lives! Best show I’ve seen so far this year, against some tough competition.

Setlist from setlist.fm 
Gill Landry, who’s also in the band Old Crow Medicine Show, did a 35-minute opening set, going solo on acoustic guitar for the first few songs, then bringing out a drummer and a fiddle player. The show was bookended by the first and last tracks from his current self-titled album, “Funeral In My Heart” and “Bad Love”. (As you might gather, Gill is a mournful kind of guy.) He did have the best one-liner of the evening when introducing his second song: “I actually wrote this one for Katy Perry, but she never wrote back.”

Raul Midón, AMP, 6/5/2015


My first trip to Strathmore’s new small club in Rockville’s Pike & Rose development since its official opening in March proved gratifying, both musically and otherwise. We got to the parking garage 5-10 minutes before the club doors opened at 6:30 and had no trouble either finding a parking place or a good seat. (Note that sitting on the window side gets you as far away as possible from whatever conversations may be going on in the bar area.) The service was great, and the salmon entrée was both delicious and reasonably priced.
 
I hadn’t listened to any of Midón’s music coming in, but he proved to be an engaging and charismatic performer, singing and playing a mean acoustic guitar (plus bongos on his final main-set song), as well as doing an uncanny mouth trumpet that could hardly be distinguished from the real thing. He started out solo, then brought out David and Daniel Bailen to play drums and bass, respectively. Style-wise, he mixes folk, soul, and Latin sounds, doing some singing in Spanish on a couple of numbers. Highlights included the songs that opened and closed his main set (“Sunshine (I Can Fly)” and “State Of Mind”), as well as “Was It Ever Really Love” (currently on the national Smooth Jazz singles chart), “Always Time For Love”, and “Mi Amigo Cubano” (which he co-wrote with Bill Withers).
 
And, by the way, Midón has been blind since infancy.