As a fan of a wide variety of popular (and not-so-popular) music from the 1950s (and sometimes even earlier) up through the present, one of my bucket list projects for years has been to put together a list of my 100 favorite songs of all time. At some point I decided that, once I got around to figuring that out, I could put it out on a blog, for the infinitesimally small proportion of the Internet world that might be interested. So, here we are. While the Top 100 will be a major focus, I also plan to post on a variety of other musical (and occasionally non-musical) topics, in which you may or may not be interested. (If a particular posting doesn’t ring your bell, you’re only a few clicks away from a dancing cat video on YouTube.)
I first saw singer-songwriter Shawn Colvin at the Lincoln
Theatre in 2003, when she was swapping songs and stories with Mary Chapin
Carpenter, Patty Griffin, and Dar Williams. Since then, I’ve seen her a couple
more times with Carpenter, and at the 2016
XPoNential Music Festival (with Steve Earle). While she attracted music-industry
notice relatively early in her career – her debut album Steady On won a
Grammy in 1991 for Best Contemporary Folk Album – she didn’t really come to the
attention of the wider public until she hit the top 10 in 1997 with “Sunny Came
Home”, which went on to win both Record of the Year and Song of the Year
Grammys the following spring. Her 15
minutes of national fame ended quickly, however, as that was her only song to
hit the U.S. Hot 100.
While Colvin writes most of her own material, she’s also
good at reinterpreting songs by others, as one of the titles below suggests.
The low-80s weather was wonderful! While it was quite warm
out in the sun, our seats were in the shade throughout, with an occasional
breeze.
Traffic on the way down was even lighter than usual, with
the slight disadvantage that the gate to our usual parking lot was still closed
when I first arrived. Despite being cruelly abandoned at that point by “Gloria”
(my navigator), I managed to circle around a bit until the attendant arrived
and opened things up. After parking, I headed down to Rasa for lunch. The drive
back included a much-longer-than-usual backup at the top end of the GW Parkway,
but I still got home in plenty of time to watch home plate umpire Angel Hernandez infuriate both Milwaukee and Philadelphia batters on
ESPN’s Sunday night game (won by Milwaukee 1-0).
As it was Kids’ Opening Weekend, around noon the line
awaiting the opening of the centerfield gates stretched almost all the way back
to the Metro station. (It turned out that, although only 5,000 Juan Soto kids’
jerseys were available, there were still some left by
the time the game started.) The season ticket holder line was much shorter, so
I wound up getting through in less than a minute. Once inside, there were long
lines for the children’s attractions, and the line to buy items in the main
Team Store extended almost all the way back to the entrance. The wait to buy
concessions, however, wasn’t very long, at least before the game.
Ah, yes, the game. Things did not start well when third
baseman Lucius Fox became ill after just a couple of pitches (Washington Post
game story headline: “Sickening start leads to a sweep of the Nats”.) Backup
catcher Riley Adams took over at first base, leaving Washington without any
healthy position players on their bench for the rest of the afternoon. To make
matters worse, leadoff hitter Joc Pederson ended his at-bat by knocking one of
Joan Adon’s pitches out of the park, and the Giants tacked on another run later
in the frame. The Nats got one run back in the bottom of the first on an RBI
single by Yadiel Hernandez. San Francisco added two more in the top of the
second, which Washington answered an inning later on a two-run shot by
Hernandez to keep the game close.
Unfortunately, that was pretty much it for Washington’s
offense, as they managed only three more baserunners over the final six
innings. The visitors tacked on single runs in the 5th and 7th,
as Pederson added a double and a second home run for an elegant 3-3-3-3 box
score line. The wheels completely came off in the top of the 9th,
when the Giants doubled their run total on a pair of walks, two hit batters,
and a plethora of singles. The Nats needed 46 pitches by 3 pitchers (a total of
8 for the game) to record the final 3 outs.
Coming into this year, Del
Amitri was one of only two of my all-time favorite
dozen acts that I had never seen live. (I hope to knock the other one off this
summer.) Given that they’re based across the pond, were never big stars in the States,
and hadn’t toured here in 25 years, it was a delightful surprise when I learned
earlier this year that they would be doing a U.S. tour. It was well worth the
wait.
Appropriately enough, for both the band and most members of
the audience, they started out with “When You Were Young”. A particularly
strong point of the show came just a couple of songs later, with a 1-2-3 punch
of “Always The Last To Know”, “Not Where It’s At”, and
“Kiss This Thing Goodbye” (the first thing I had ever heard by them). Their
four-song encore was one of the best I’ve ever experienced; Justin Currie held
everyone spellbound with his vocals on “Empty” and “I’m So Scared Of Dying”, and they closed with the will-he-or-won’t-he “Be
My Downfall”, one of my personal favorites.
Interestingly, a couple of the highlights of the show for me
were songs with which I was less familiar; in addition to “Empty”, they did a
great job about halfway through the 90-minute show with “Crashing Down”. Seven
of the 13 tracks from last year’s Fatal Mistakes album (their first
studio effort since 2002) made an appearance, complementing the older material
nicely. In addition to “I’m So Scared Of Dying”, I
particularly enjoyed keyboardist Andy Alston stepping out front with his
accordion for “Mockingbird, Copy Me Now”. The musicianship was stellar
throughout – I was especially impressed with Iain Harvie’s work on lead guitar,
which came across much more in person than on their records.
My only disappointment was with the arrangement of “Driving
With The Brakes On”. I at first thought that the clickety-clack
percussion was a prerecorded backing track, but a glance at Ashley Soan revealed that the wood-block tapping was completely
live. Either way, I found it distracting for such a great, slow, moody song.
Being about 10th in line – I arrived around 4:15 –
I got a forward-facing padded bench seat at table 316: dead center, parallel to the stage and just in front of the divider. The view was
quite good, and the sound was excellent. Currie’s vocals could be heard clearly
over the instruments, even on the louder numbers. While the show didn’t sell out,
at least 80% of the seats seemed to be occupied.
Kris Dollimore, one of the band’s guitarists, provided a
nice 30-minute acoustic opening set, with a pair of instrumentals (both of
which reminded me of Tom Rush’s “Rockport Sunday”) sandwiched around more
bluesy songs that also featured his singing, including a Mississippi John Hurt
cover and a spirited version of Marvin Gaye’s “Inner City Blues”.
