Serendipity #39

Come Running – Van Morrison

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78JvlJrA6wI

Heard 7/3/2015 around 3:40, at Wegman’s (Germantown)

Shuffle #60 (July 3, 2015)

I Am Your Man – Ryan Shaw

Love Story – Katharine McPhee

Have You Seen Her – The Chi-Lites

I’ve Got You Under My Skin – The Four Seasons

Take Me Out – Franz Ferdinand

Rattle My Bones – The Secret Sisters

Love Will Lead You Back – Taylor Dayne

Let There Be Music – Orleans

Watershed – Indigo Girls

John Fogerty (“1969” tour), Wolf Trap, 6/30/2015

Row K, Seats 60-61 (right side)

 

The first third of Tuesday night’s show by John Fogerty and his five bandmates (including son Shane Fogerty on guitar and the ubiquitous Kenny Aronoff on drums) was good. The remainder of the show was superb.

 

The turning point was an extended version of “Keep On Chooglin’”, an album track from Bayou Country, the first of three LPs that Creedence released during 1969. They followed with a well-chosen mix of hit singles (such as “Lodi” and “Green River”), extended workouts (“Ramble Tamble” and of course “I Heard It Through the Grapevine”), and covers of early rock classics (“Good Golly Miss Molly” and shortened versions of “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On” and “Rockin’ Pneumonia and the Boogie Woogie Flu”, both of which featured Fogerty on piano). I was particularly impressed by their versions of a couple of singles that I had never counted among my favorites: “Hey Tonight” and “Long as I Can See the Light.”

 

The band kicked it into overdrive near the end, winding up with “Down on the Corner”, “Centerfield” (which drew the biggest crowd reaction of the night), an extended version of “The Old Man Down the Road”, and “Fortunate Son”. The enthusiastic crowd was rewarded with two classic encores: “Bad Moon Rising” and “Proud Mary”. (For whatever it’s worth, by my count just 10 of the 27 songs actually came from the year 1969, not that I’m complaining.)

 

The show started at 8:20 and ran just over two hours. In lieu of an opening act, the evening started with a 15-minute video focusing on the tour’s title year, with photos, concert footage, and some reminiscing from Fogerty. It wasn’t bad (and no doubt was particularly useful for those in the audience who didn’t live through it), but it tended to ramble at times, and for me ran at least 5 minutes too long.

Shuffle #59 (June 28, 2015)

You Keep Me Hangin’ On – The Supremes

I’ve Got Dreams To Remember – Otis Redding

Channel Z – The B-52’s

Everything Your Heart Desires – Hall & Oates

Undercover Of The Night – The Rolling Stones

Soul On Fire – LaVern Baker

Disarm – The Smashing Pumpkins

Time The Avenger – Pretenders

Private Idaho – The B-52’s

Playlist for SCOTUS

This morning, the day after the landmark Supreme Court decision legalizing same-sex marriage, I happened to hear The Platters’ classic “With This Ring” (on the world’s greatest oldies station). Naturally I took this as a sign that I should come up with a playlist marking the occasion.

 

(Yes, I know that this wasn’t the only significant Supreme Court decision this week, but I couldn’t really find any good songs about health insurance subsidies.)

 

With This Ring – The Platters

Same Love – Macklemore & Ryan Lewis

Chapel Of Love – The Dixie Cups

Power Of Two – Indigo Girls

Love And Marriage – Frank Sinatra

Serendipity #38

Satellite – Guster

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekt6PELAcEg

Heard 6/26/2015 around 9:45, at Wegman’s (Germantown)

June 21, 2015 – Nationals 9, Pirates 2 – Nationals Park

http://m.nationals.mlb.com/news/article/132070802/nationals-cruise-to-sweep-with-rout-of-bucs

 

Attendance: 40,015

Game Time: 2:34

Weather: 87 degrees, cloudy

Wind: 11 mph

Umpires: Home Plate - Sean Barber, First Base - Mark Wegner, Second Base - Mike Winters, Third Base - Mike Muchlinski

Seventh-inning stretch song: It’s Not Unusual – Tom Jones (excellent choice!)

 

Highlights – 2-run Harper homer, 3-run Escobar shot, double by Gio, all in a 9-run first inning off poor Charlie Morton, who was lifted before getting the third out and saw his ERA rise from an excellent 1.62 to a pedestrian 3.97 … 7 shutout innings by Gonzalez in an efficient 85 pitches … Pirates outfielder José Tabata, who ruined Scherzer’s perfect game bid Saturday by managing to get plunked by a pitch with two out in the ninth, was booed lustily by the sellout crowd every time he came to the plate

 

Other – inbound traffic worse every game; left home at 11:30, got to the bridge that replaced the old Humpback Bridge on the GW Parkway just before noon, took 25 minutes to make it the rest of the way

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.