Shuffle #8 (June 7, 2014)

All Good Things (Come to an End) – Nelly Furtado

Kiss – Prince

Wandering Boy – Rodney Crowell

You’d Be So Nice To Come Home To – Jim Hall

California Love – 2Pac

Take On Me – a-ha

Easy – The Sweet Remains

Cleo’s Back – Junior Walker & The All-Stars

#53 If I Had A Boat -- Lyle Lovett (1987)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpM8FjO4Vko

Bringing in Roy Rogers, Dale Evans, the Lone Ranger, and Tonto, Lovett’s quirky tune about “me upon my pony on my boat” could almost double as a great children’s song, were it not for Tonto’s parting shot near the end.

#54 I Can't Make You Love Me -- Bonnie Raitt (1992)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOzMGYCTn-Q

I haven’t checked, but it’s probably safe to assume that this is the only song on this list co-written by a former college and professional football star. Mike Reid was an all-American defensive tackle for Penn State, winning the Outland Trophy for top defensive lineman in 1969 and finishing fifth in that year’s Heisman Trophy voting. After being the 7^th overall pick in the 1970 NFL draft by the Cincinnati Bengals, Reid went on to play in two Pro Bowls before retiring after the 1974 season to turn his attention to music. He was equally successful there, winning a Grammy in 1984 for Best Country Song with “Stranger In My House”, hitting the top of the country charts himself in 1990 with “Walk on Faith”, and winding up in the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame. He has also composed the music for several musicals and operas.

“I Can’t Make You Love Me” is probably the greatest ballad Bonnie Raitt has ever recorded, and it continues to be a show-stopper whenever she performs.

Postie #4

Every day during the major league baseball season, the Washington Post, like most other daily U.S. newspapers, publishes the expected starting pitchers for that day's games. For each pitcher, the Post's listing includes name, handedness, won-lost record, ERA, and the team's record in games the pitcher started. All very nice, except that apparently no one at the Post ever actually looks at the (presumably computer-generated) final product. 

Dating back to last season at least, the listing has been garbled when there's a pitcher with embedded blanks in his name, as illustrated by this example from this morning's paper: 

CARDINALS AT ROYALS, 7:10

Wainwright (R)    8-3   2.32   9-3

Vargas, J J     8:10p    5-2  3.39

Sometimes the output is even more perplexing, with negative numbers floating around. Seems to obviously be a computer glitch, but you’d think that someone could fix it by now.

Another systematic problem occurs when a team is unsure of its likely pitcher and provides two possibilities, in which case the entire game is listed twice, once with each pitcher’s name. It really appears to be a double-header unless you’re paying close attention. 

This past Saturday, I was glancing through the listing and was surprised by the number of day games – although there are plenty of exceptions, teams usually play their Saturday games at night. I finally realized that the listing of games and pitchers was not for Saturday, but rather for Sunday. 

They also can’t seem to quite decide the order of the groupings. Typically National League games are listed first (with the Nats game first in that group), followed by American League games, with interleague games as the final group. When the Nats are playing an AL foe, however, sometimes they keep the standard order of the groups, meaning that the Nats game is buried near the bottom, and sometimes they move the interleague group up to the top. 

OK, these are not exactly life-and-death issues. But you’d think that some sentient being in the Post’s sports department would be on the ball enough to get all of this straightened out.

Serendipity #13

Don’t Look Any Further – The Kane Gang (1988)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_dZwjflM3Y

Heard 6/2/2014 around 6:00 at Chipotle in Rockville (Fallsgrove)

#55 Driving With The Brakes On -- Del Amitri (1995)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Mj8KDpoZnQ

Del Amitri – most underappreciated rock band ever?

The exposure and chart success of this Scottish band in the U.S. was modest – they had one big hit (“Roll To Me” in 1995), preceded by a couple of other tracks that edged into the top 40 (“Kiss This Thing Goodbye” and “Always The Last To Know”) and accompanied by a couple other songs (“Move Away Jimmy Blue” and “Nothing Ever Happens”) that got some airplay on more adventurous radio stations. They did have considerably more success in the UK, with 4 albums that hit the top 10 and 17 songs that cracked the top 50.

At some point in the late 90s or early 00s I came across a 17-track “Best Of” compilation (Hatful of Rain: Best of Del Amitri) and decided to buy it, although I’d only heard 5 or 6 of the songs. Happily, unlike other experiences I’ve had where the unfamiliar material turns out to basically be filler, the songs I hadn’t heard were easily as good as the ones with which I was familiar. The tongue-in-cheek nature of the band’s summary of the contents didn’t hurt either.

These seventeen tracks happen to be the album tracks released on British A-Sides between 1989 and 1998 and when asked to attend a greatest hits party turned up in this order and in the present form. We hope that they enjoy each other’s company and if not that they become rapidly inebriated, commence bickering and finally expire in a massive punch up.

With liner notes like that, you know that Justin Currie can come up with great song lyrics as well. Musically, despite the “alt-rock” label they’re pretty traditional (guitar, bass, drums, keyboard), although they do bring a variety of stringed instruments in for variety now and again. Although “Stone Cold Sober” and “Just Like A Man” are a little more aggressive musically, most of their stuff is mid-tempo to up-tempo, rock with a pop sense and sensibility. The user reviews on Amazon are well worth reading – best single description I could find was “quality, well-written, intelligent pop/rock music” (written by a self-described “24 year old black dude from brooklyn”).

It’s really tough to pick one favorite from their body of work. “Driving With The Brakes On” is probably the slowest, moodiest piece they’ve ever done, certainly not typical for them but perfect for late-night listening.

Speaking of the band’s quirkiness, how many people name a compilation album after one of their songs that doesn’t actually appear on the record? Fortunately, the song “Hatful of Rain” does appear on an equally great 2007 compilation (Collection), which only duplicates 4 songs from the earlier greatest hits album.

#56 Who'll Stop The Rain -- Creedence Clearwater Revival (1970)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lIPan-rEQJA

As John Fogerty said, this one is timeless.

June 1, 2014 – Rangers 2, Nationals 0 – Nationals Park

Darvish dazzles

Umpires: HP: Clint Fagan. 1B: Jeff Nelson. 2B: Scott Barry. 3B: Laz Diaz.

Weather: 75 degrees, sunny.

Wind: 1 mph, In from RF.

T: 3:06.

Att: 32,813.

The Nats broke out of their offensive doldrums in a big way in the first two games of the Texas series, scoring 9 runs on Friday night and 10 on Saturday afternoon. It was certainly too much to expect them to keep up that pace, and Rangers ace Yu Darvish shut them down emphatically on Sunday afternoon, pitching 8 shutout innings with 12 strikeouts in the visitors’ victory.

The Nats got off to a good offensive start with a leadoff double by Denard Span, who went to third on a grounder by Rendon. With the infield in (!) – the Rangers were obviously anticipating a low-scoring affair -- Darvish responded by getting a shallow pop from Jayson Werth, and then fanning Ramos after working around LaRoche. He then proceeded to strike out the next 4 batters, prior to a one-out single by Span in the third. Span stole second base with two out and Werth up, but Darvish struck out Werth to retire the side. Singles by Werth and LaRoche put Nats on first and third with one out in the bottom of the sixth, but Darvish again pitched out of trouble, featuring another strikeout of Ramos.

Tanner Roark matched Darvish in results if not dominance for six innings, helped out by an attempted double-steal with two outs in the first inning on which both managers used replay challenges. Matt Williams argued that Elvis Andrus had not in fact crossed home plate before Alex Rios was retired at second, while Rangers manager Ron Washington claimed that Rios should actually have been called safe. Both rulings went the Nats’ way, and an important run was taken off the board.

The Rangers finally put a run up against Roark in the seventh. Donnie Murphy led off with a single, but things looked good for the Nats when he was caught attempting to steal second. Leonys Martin, however, promptly deposited a Roark changeup into the Nats bullpen for the first run of the game. The Rangers added an insurance run off Drew Storen in the top of the eighth – not really needed as it turned out, as the Nats went quietly against Darvish and Texas closer Joakim Soria in the bottom of the eighth and ninth.

Traffic was pretty reasonable on the way down (slightly longer backup to get onto the 14^th Street Bridge than usual), but the mysterious late afternoon backups on the Legion Bridge continued, with slow traffic for the last couple miles of the GW Parkway. Went with tacos again (they remembered the salsa this time), and lemonade given the perfect weather. (Would have also picked up some ice cream, but there was an extremely long line, and the promised express line for us eCash users wasn’t in operation.)