Am I The
Same Girl – Barbara Acklin
Heard
7/28/2015 around 6:15, at Panera (Pike 7 Plaza near Tyson’s Corner)
Wednesday, July 29, 2015
Monday, July 20, 2015
July 19, 2015 – Dodgers 5, Nationals 0 – Nationals Park
http://m.nationals.mlb.com/news/article/137408936/zack-greinke-extends-scoreless-streak-in-win
Attendance:
40,293
Game Time:
3:14
Weather: 93
degrees, cloudy
Wind: 0 mph
Umpires:
Home Plate - Bill Miller, First Base - Doug Eddings, Second Base - Jim Wolf,
Third Base - Adrian Johnson
Seventh-inning
stretch song: Cantina Theme (Star Wars)
Highlights –
Scherzer had to work out of trouble a few times, but held the Dodgers to one
run in 6 innings … the bullpen kept the game close until the 9th
inning … Thomas Jefferson looked fetching in his Princess Leia outfit … there
will still R2-D2 Can Coolers left when we got to the game (around 12:25)
Other – the Nats
allowed Zach Greinke to extend his remarkable scoreless-inning streak to 43⅔
innings, nicking him for only 3 singles and a walk during his 8 innings of work
while fanning 11 times (after striking out 14 times against Kershaw on
Saturday) … the since-demoted Blake Treinen allowed 5 hits and 4 runs in the
top of the ninth while retiring only one batter … the dark side won the
Presidents’ Race as well as the ball game … Metro worked well on the trip home,
but on the way down we had to wait 15 minutes at Gallery Place before a Green
Line train arrived … it was a bit on the warm side, despite the shade and
occasional breeze in our seats
LP #7 Marshall Crenshaw (1982)
While
Marshall Crenshaw went on to write and record plenty of other great songs
during his career – the 2000 compilation The
Best of Marshall Crenshaw: This Is Easy is well worth checking out – he
never released a better or more consistent set of power-pop nuggets than on his
1982 debut album. Although he did creep into the Top 40 for the first and only
time with “Someday, Someway” (which peaked at a modest #36), Crenshaw may be
better known for playing Buddy Holly in the 1987 Richie Valens biopic La Bamba. The casting would have been apt
even without the physical resemblance; Crenshaw’s tunes do sound something like
Holly’s work, but they sound even more like tracks Holly probably would have
recorded had he come of age in the 1980s rather than the 1950s. It also doesn’t
seem like an accident that Crenshaw co-wrote “Til I Hear It From You”, which
was one of the biggest hits for the Gin Blossoms.
“Someday, Someway”
is my favorite song from the album, but they’re really all pretty great (and if
you like that one, you’ll almost certainly like the rest). I was tempted to
just write the names of the other songs on slips of paper and draw them out of
a hat, which would have produced a list about as good as the one below.
Favorite
tracks:
Rockin’
Around In N.Y.C.
Soldier Of
Love
Mary Anne
There She
Goes Again
She Can’t
Dance
Friday, July 17, 2015
Guster w/ Kishi Bashi, Wolf Trap, 7/16/2015
Row B, Seats
26-27 (dead center, second row in back of the pit)
Proposition:
Guster is the world’s greatest rock band that almost no one has ever heard
(of).
Last night
at Wolf Trap provided evidence for both ends of this, as the guys put on a fantastic
show in front of a smallish but enthusiastic audience. (“Smallish” here meaning
that if the Filene Center were a glass, it would have been closer to half-empty
than half-full.)
All 5
“members” of the band (Ryan, Adam, Brian, Luke, and ???) displayed their
musical versatility – despite the apparent looseness of the show and the
repartee, it obviously required a huge amount of organization to keep track of
who was playing what instrument as they moved between songs. Front man and
resident goof Ryan Miller, for instance, played 3 or 4 different keyboards
(xylophone, organ, …) at various points, in addition to guitar and bass. The
biggest cheers, however, seemed to be reserved for Adam Gardner whenever he
picked up his trumpet, while percussionist Brian Rosenworcel moved seamlessly
back and forth between two drum kits while in one song also showing both
standard and distinctly non-standard uses for a trombone. (Trivia note – Brian’s
sister Jessica is one of the five members of the Federal Communications
Commission.)
From the
beginning of the show, the band demonstrated the depth of their catalog,
starting with “Long Night” (the first of several tracks from their recent Evermotion CD), following that with “Careful”
(from 2003’s Keep It Together), and
going back to last century for tunes such as “Barrel Of A Gun”, “Happier”, and “Either
Way”). They also resisted the temptation to only play their hits (OK, they
really didn’t have any actual “hits”), eschewing more familiar tracks such as “One
Man Wrecking Machine” in favor of less-played tunes such as “Lightning Rod” (a
personal favorite of mine).
The band
ended the pre-encore portion of their show with a rousing crowd singalong on “This
Could All Be Yours”, followed (after perhaps a 15-second break) by “Kid Dreams”.
They then brought back opening act Kishi Bashi to add violin on the classic “Satellite”
and a rousing version of “Come On Eileen”, after which they strolled back to
the lawn for a short acoustic conclusion to the show. By this time it was
10:55, which is the closest any show I’ve been to in the past few years has
come to the Wolf Trap curfew. (Guster started just after 9:00.)
Ah, what to
say about opening act Kishi Bashi (the “nom de la musique” for 39-year-old
violinist and singer Kaoru Ishibashi)? The Wolf Trap program notes that he “blends
elements of pop, classical, electronica, and beatboxing to create an experimental
sound that transcends cultures and pop music eras.” Lots of looping on both
violin and vocals. Very personable guy – not exactly my cup of tea style-wise,
but certainly one of the more unusual openers I’ve seen recently.
Serendipity #42
I Just Can’t
Stop Dancing – Archie Bell & The Drells
Heard
7/17/2015 around 6:30, at Panera (Tyson’s Corner)
Monday, July 13, 2015
LP #8 Gin Blossoms – New Miserable Experience (1992)
I’ve posted
a longer discussion about the Gin Blossoms elsewhere, so I won’t repeat it
here. New Miserable Experience didn’t catch on immediately, but it was all over
the radio from the summer of ’93 through fall ’94, with 5 of its 12 tracks
getting significant radio airplay. The other tracks are well worth a listen as
well, especially the poignant “Pieces Of The Night”, which was among the 6
songs on the album written or co-written by the late Doug Hopkins.
Favorite
tracks:
Hey Jealousy
Until I Fall
Away
Allison Road
Found Out
About You
Mrs. Rita
Tuesday, July 7, 2015
Shuffle #61 (July 7, 2015)
(large
economy size)
Nick Of Time
– Bonnie Raitt
Things We Do
– Indigenous
Walking Down
Madison – Kirsty MacColl
Island Girl –
Elton John
Weekend In
New England – Barry Manilow
The “In”
Crowd – Ramsey Lewis
Drown In My
Own Tears – Eva Cassidy & Chuck Brown
Omaha –
Counting Crows
You Send Me –
Sam Cooke
Everything
Your Heart Desires – Hall & Oates
You Never
Need Nobody – The Lone Bellow
Go Ahead And
Cry – The Righteous Brothers
Sight Unseen
– Richard Thompson
Till The End
Of The Day – The Kinks
Psycho
Killer – Talking Heads
Things Have
Changed – Bob Dylan
Talk To Me,
Talk To Me --- Little Willie John
Ain’t No
Mountain High Enough – Marvin Gaye & Tammi Terrell
Great
Goodbye – Kwesi K
King Of
Anything – Sara Bareilles
How Far We’ve
Come – Dawes
The Heart Of
Rock & Roll – Huey Lewis & The News
Kiss Away –
Ronnie Dove
Fields Of
Gold – Eva Cassidy
Step Right
Up – Tom Waits
Inner City
Blues – Brian Auger’s Oblivion Express
The Light –
Brewer & Shipley
Talk It Over
In The Morning – Anne Murray
Holiday –
Green Day
Pretty As
You Feel – Jefferson Airplane
I Can’t
Understand – Los Lobos
Wooden Ships
– Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young
Monday, July 6, 2015
July 5, 2015 – Nationals 3, Giants 1 – Nationals Park
Attendance:
33,157
Game Time:
3:02
Weather: 83
degrees, cloudy
Wind: 3 mph
Umpires:
Home Plate - Phil Cuzzi, First Base - Gerry Davis, Second Base - Pat Hoberg,
Third Base - Will Little
Seventh-inning
stretch song: Higher Love – Steve Winwood
Highlights –
7 effective innings by Jordan Zimmermann (3 hits, 1 walk, 8 Ks, 100 pitches),
with the only blemish being a fourth-inning homer by Brandon Crawford on a 3-0
pitch … 2nd-inning RBI single by Michael A. Taylor after leadoff
walks to Ramos and Espinosa … 6th-inning solo homer by Ramos to
restore the Nats’ lead … 8th-inning insurance run on Harper double
and Ramos single … another home save (and free Chick-Fil-A sandwich) courtesy
of Drew Storen … periodic updates on the U.S. Women’s World Cup championship
win over Japan, which elicited enthusiastic crowd chants of U-S-A
Other – beat
the traffic by leaving Rockville 5 hours before game time (we wanted to arrive
early enough to eat at Nando’s and get to the stadium in time for the Strasburg
bobbleheads (no, they didn’t portray him clutching some body part on the way to
the DL))
Serendipity #41
Move By
Yourself – Donavon Frankenreiter
Heard 7/6/2015
around noon, at Zoe’s Kitchen (Kentlands)
Sunday, July 5, 2015
Serendipity #40
Put The
Message In The Box – World Party
Heard
7/5/2015 around 12:15, at McDonald’s (Derwood)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)