Richard Thompson Electric Trio w/ Robert Ellis, The Birchmere, 6/17/2015

Richard Thompson, great show, yada yada yada. Nothing particularly unusual about that. Over the past several years, most of the times I’ve seen him have been solo. One of the advantages of a band show such as this is that it lets him rock out more, spotlighting his electrifying (sorry) work on electric guitar as well as his superb acoustic work.

 

The credibility that Thompson has built up with his audiences over the years allowed him to trot out about half of the 12 songs on his new album Still (although it won’t be available for purchase until next week), including the first and third songs of the set. The best of the new tracks were the first single, “Beatnik Walking,” and the album-closing “Guitar Heroes,” during which Thompson plays in the style of everyone from Django Reinhardt to Chuck Berry.

 

Thompson also mixed in quite a few classics, including a stunning version of my all-time favorite, “Al Bowlly’s In Heaven.” Other highlights included “Tear-Stained Letter” (which ended the two-song first encore) and “Wall Of Death.” Thompson and band played for an hour and 45 minutes, and no one left feeling cheated.

 

Many of us hadn’t realized that Thompson would have an opening act: Robert Ellis, who performed several songs on acoustic guitar in a 30-minute opening set. The Texas-born Ellis struck me as a sensitive singer-songwriter with a bit of country twang in his voice, meaning that he seemed like an odd opening act for Thompson. The audience was reasonably appreciative, with the best crowd reaction coming from “TV Song.” (I found out later that he co-wrote “Steady As The Rising Sun,” which he also performed Wednesday night, with Taylor Goldsmith of Dawes.)

 

Traffic on the GW Parkway coming down was a mess due to an earlier accident – left Rockville at 3:30 (via Falls Road) and didn’t arrive until 4:45. Still got a reasonable line number (D66, with a starting point of D19) and sat at table 214, on the left about halfway back. Coming back, I heard on WTOP before I got too far that the northbound Parkway was completely closed due to an accident. (It was still closed when I got up this morning.) I followed the Google Navigation recommendation to take I-395 south and catch the Beltway at Springfield – seemed out of the way but worked well, getting home in under an hour. Tried the orange butter salmon from the specials menu, which was quite good.

What time is it? Time for some campaign dysfunction

Early last week, I received some material (including a bumper sticker!) in the mail from the Clinton presidential campaign. Since I knew that she was planning a major rally and speech on Saturday, I decided to wait to see how that went before deciding whether to make a contribution at this point.

 

On Friday morning, I thought I might watch the speech myself, assuming that it would be available live on the Internet, but didn’t know what time it was scheduled for. Figuring this would not be difficult to find out – the campaign would certainly want as many people as possible to watch this, correct? – I went to the official campaign web site. I was surprised that no time was listed, nor was there any such information on the campaign’s Facebook page. There was a reference to the speech being Livestreamed, so I went to the Livestream site and checked their listing of events for Saturday. Not there either.

 

Being nothing if not persistent, I tried again around 8:30 Saturday morning. The web site now had a large “LISTEN LIVE” arrow button, but still no information about the time. I went to Google News and searched for “Clinton campaign rally” – this produced a number of articles about the event, but nothing that gave a starting time. Tried the Livestream calendar again, still with no luck.

 

I finally went back to the campaign web site, and decided to see what would happen if I clicked the LISTEN LIVE button. Well, this brought up a page that promised, if I entered my email address and zip code, to send me a message when the live broadcast was about to begin.

 

I did not have any difficulty whatsover deciding NOT to give them my personal information in exchange for the “privilege” of knowing when their rally was going to start. I decided instead to award them my first (and perhaps only) “Most Clueless Campaign Move of the Week” award.

 

I will be returning the postpaid envelope they sent me earlier, but it will contain a copy of this blog entry rather than a campaign contribution.

Near-symmetry

With their loss yesterday afternoon, the Phillies reached a season-low 20 games under .500 (22-42). All signs point to that deficit getting worse – much worse – as the long summer continues in the City of Brotherly Love.

 

Meanwhile, their top minor-league club, the AAA Lehigh Valley IronPigs, has a record of 23-42, “only” 19 games under.

Whom did the Phillies outsmart by drafting Cornelius Randolph?

The Philadelphia Phillies pulled a mild surprise in last week’s baseball draft, selecting high school shortstop Cornelius Randolph with the #10 pick in the draft. After many years of unsuccessful high draft picks (Anthony Hewitt, Joe Savery et al), the Phils seem to have turned things around with their previous two top selections (J.P. Crawford and Aaron Nola). The Randolph selection appears to be popular in Philadelphia, with one columnist quoting the team’s area scout for Georgia as saying that Randolph has the “hitting gene.”

 

Outside of Philly, the pick was not met with universal acclaim. Randolph was listed as the 20^th-best draft prospect in Baseball America’s pre-draft review. Christopher Crawford of Baseball Prospectus wrote that he didn’t “understand this pick at all” and opined that Randolph would lack the power to be any more than a “second-division regular” at non-premium positions such as third base and left field. (The Phillies have indicated that they plan to move Randolph to left.)

 

Only time will tell, of course. It will be interesting to see how highly Randolph is regarded a few years down the road compared to other high-school bats that the Phillies passed over, such as catcher Tyler Stephenson and outfielders Garrett Whitley, Trent Clark, and Nick Plummer, all of whom were more highly rated by many analysts coming into the draft.

 

Did the Phillies outsmart the rest of baseball by picking Randolph, or did they outsmart themselves?

Weird Al Yankovic, Wolf Trap, 6/12/2015

Q: What do you get when a performer makes his entrance on video, winding up coming down one of the aisles through the audience (to the strains of “Tacky”)? When he (briefly) rides a Segway on stage? When he manages more costume changes than Madonna and Katy Perry ever dreamed of?

 

A: Must be a Weird Al Yankovic show. And the sellout crowd loved every minute of the two-hour spectacle.

 

I especially enjoyed the “acoustic set” in the middle, featuring “Eat It,” “I Lost on Jeopardy,” “I Love Rocky Road,” and “Like a Surgeon,” as well as the Star Wars-themed encore with “The Saga Begins” and “Yoda.” (The guy sitting next to me seemed to know every word to the former, which is done to the tune of Don McLean’s “American Pie.”) Other highlights included “Word Crimes” (the big hit from his most recent album), “Fat,” “White & Nerdy,” and Al’s extended foray into the crowd during “Wanna B Ur Lovr.” Many of the videos shown during Al’s costume changes were also hilarious, most notably a mock interview with Celine Dion. The four-piece band did an excellent job throughout. The music covered most of his career, going back to “Another One Rides The Bus”; the only omission that surprised me (given the latest sequel’s massive hype) was “Jurassic Park.”

 

The full setlist is available at setlist.fm.

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

http://m.nationals.mlb.com/news/article/129218082/cubs-grind-out-third-win-in-washington

 

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 8^th 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.

Serendipity #37

Been To Canaan – Carole King

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4REEmty-8xw

Heard 6/5/2015 around 12:45, at Wegman’s (Germantown)

LP #9 Chuck Brown and Eva Cassidy – The Other Side (1992)

If it’s cheating to have this album on my list when I’ve already declared Eva’s Live at Blues Alley to be my all-time favorite live album, then so be it.   ;-)  If you love standards, particularly R&B classics like “Drown In My Own Tears” and “Dark End Of The Street”, and you like (or at least can tolerate) Chuck’s baritone, this one is definitely for you; the two both sing on the first 6 tracks, while the rest feature a couple more duets plus solo turns by each of them. I’ve pretty much exhausted my superlatives for Eva by now (and there’s also a little more about Chuck in the entry for “Bustin’ Loose”), but if you do want more, check out this great 1998 Washington Post column by Jefferson Morley.

 

Favorite tracks:

Over The Rainbow

You’ve Changed

I Could Have Told You So

Dark End Of The Street

Red Top

You Don’t Know Me