Wednesday, March 1, 2017
Friday, February 24, 2017
Comic of the Day #6 – February 24, 2017
(OK, “Comics
and editorial cartoons” …)
Tom Toles --
Trump’s new security state is finding threats where nobody looked before
Saturday, February 18, 2017
Arlo Guthrie - Weinberg Center for the Arts (Frederick MD), 2/15/2017
Row E, Seats 105-106 (best seats we’ve had for him, 5 rows back in the
center section)
“Alice’s Restaurant” is back in mothballs, following the conclusion of
the extended “50th Anniversary” tour, but Arlo and his four
bandmates nevertheless put on a satisfying show Wednesday evening at the
Weinberg. He featured 3 Dylan songs, sounding more like the 60s version of the
Nobel laureate than Bob himself currently does. Other highlights included the
mandatory “Coming Into Los Angeles” (which ended the first set) and “City Of
New Orleans”, “St. James Infirmary” (which was also a holdover from the
previous time we saw him), and a timely rendition of Woody’s “Deportee”.
Food-wise, I’d highly recommend the Ayse Meze Lounge for its wonderful
Mediterranean food at reasonable prices; it’s less than half a mile away from
the Weinberg, but enough on the fringes of downtown Frederick to have its own
free parking around the back. (Be sure to try one of the pide.) As a bonus,
since it was a Wednesday, we got to enjoy Patty Reese playing in the bar area
as our opening act for Arlo.
Tuesday, February 14, 2017
#137 Don't Let The Green Grass Fool You – Wilson Pickett (1971)
For quite a
few years, Reston Town Center has sponsored a free Saturday night concert
series during the summer months. Often they’d close out the summer with an
appearance by the great doo-wop group The Legendary Orioles. While they would
play their hits, most notably “It’s Too Soon To Know” and “Crying In The
Chapel”, they would also do their versions of Motown and other soul classics.
Each time I went to see them, they opened with this track originally done by
Wilson Pickett (who, coincidentally enough, was living in Reston at the time of
his death in 2006).
They made an
excellent choice. It comes from the album Wilson
Pickett in Philadelphia, which was the only time that Pickett worked with the
Gamble and Huff “Sound of Philadelphia” production team. Musically the song is
lighter and more upbeat than, say, “Mustang Sally” or “Funky Broadway”; Stewart
Mason has a great writeup at Allmusic.com.
Friday, February 10, 2017
Baseball has pace-of-play problems; extra innings aren’t one of them
Post columnist Dave Sheinin thoroughly demolishes one of the worst
proposed baseball rule changes ever. (They will actually be trying this out in
the low minor leagues this year: what is Joe Torre thinking?)
Saturday, February 4, 2017
Tuesday, January 31, 2017
#136 The Edge Of The World – Sonia Dada (1992)
I bought
Sonia Dada’s self-titled debut CD (used, for $2.99) based on their catchy (if
ungrammatical) ditty “You Don’t Treat Me No Good”, which got quite a bit of
airplay on WHFS and was revived in 2010 by Jerrod Niemann. Retitled “Lover,
Lover”, the surprisingly faithful cover went to #1 on Billboard’s country
charts. The original actually hit #1 in Australia, where the band had
considerably more success than in the U.S.
“The Edge Of
The World” is even better, a fantastic soul ballad that really should be
revived, although I doubt that anyone else could come up with a version that’s
better than the original.
My copy of
the CD lists “Daniel Laszlo” as the songwriter for both tracks – he’s actually
the writer or co-writer of all 12 tracks – and as a member of the band. The
band’s Wikipedia page and official web site, however, list “Daniel Pritzker” as
the band’s co-founder and primary songwriter, with no reference to “Laszlo”. I
did track down a couple of websites that indicated that Pritzker used Laszlo as
an alias, at least at the beginning of the band’s career. None provided any
explanation, but my theory is that Pritzker felt that his status as an heir to
the Hyatt hotel chain might have damaged his rock cred. (As of the date of this
posting, Forbes listed his net worth at $2.1 billion.)
#135 Ain’t That Enough – Teenage Fanclub (1997)
For some
reason, I completely missed out on this band originally; I’m not sure whether
WHFS didn’t play their stuff, or whether it just went right
past me. Regardless, I didn’t become aware of them until I bought Nick Hornby’s
excellent essay collection Songbook,
which devotes one chapter to this song and another to the also-worthwhile “Your
Love Is The Place Where I Come From,” both of which are from their classic
album Songs From Northern Britain.
(Full disclosure: I couldn’t pass up the book after seeing that Chapter 2
featured “Thunder Road”.)
I couldn’t
possibly improve on Hornby’s description: “a three-minute blast of Byrdsian
pop, packed with sunshine and hooks and harmonies and goodwill.” In other
words, although the book came out over 13 years ago and the album is from 1997,
it’s a perfect ray of hope for the times we currently live in. (For more, pick
up the band’s fantastic album Here from
last year.)
Serendipity #66
Glad -- Traffic
This Is The Day – The The
Heard 1/30/2017 around 6:00pm, at Potbelly (downtown Rockville)
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