Magical Spring
Posted on April 11, 2005 at 11:39 am | No Comments
Yeah, it’s a song title from my least favorite Ride album, but it fits. The most ideal New England spring weekend just finished up, and despite the fact that I’m back in the old cube farm, I’m still on a bit of a high from it.
Lots of time spent with Amie and Nina on Saturday, a relaxing drive up to Gloucester, oceanside on Wingaersheek beach, a lunch of fried clams and Corona, then back to Boston for Fever Pitch (the power of the Sox compelled us) and a great meal at Panaficio. Sunday was errand day, did some work on the house, then relaxed with videogames, dvds, and comics. So many of my favorite things packed into two near-perfect days (only two Sox losses kept it from perfection). If my life had a TiVo, I’d hit rewind do it all over again.
I know it was kinda quiet here on the ‘Nac this past week… which means my real world was the polar opposite. If it wasn’t for the stress relief of the weekend, I’m not sure I’d be functioning right now. A couple doses of employment-related weirdness knocked me out, but things are settling down and I’m nearing normal…
Here, have a couple live-from-tv mp3s to make up for my absence (each featuring a guest appearance by a damn talented lady). A new song from John Doe, and a Sabbath cover…
John Doe with Neko Case – ‘Highway 5’ (live on Conan) The Flaming Lips with Cat Power – ‘War Pigs’ (live on Austin City Limits)
I’ll be posting that long-awaited five song set from Jodi Buonanno later on today or tomorrow morning, so definitely come back for that.
And now, a quick brain-purge…
So today the Red Sox get their World Series rings, and a few of us from work are taking late lunches to watch the ceremony at the bar next door. Seeing Fever Pitch got me in the mood, although until then I’d been less than enthusiastic about this new season (even before our pitching staff started us out in last place). Call it coming down from the highs of last year, but I feel like that big payoff, the near-heartbreak and emotional rescue, the total drama and impossible wins… it feels like whatever hunger I had has been satiated. I’m still full from it, and anything else is anti-climactic, y’know? It’s not surprising, even a little expected, but maybe today (and a couple of wins against the yanks?) will get me back in the game.
Oh, and speaking o’ the Sox, Matt is exactly right about this crap. Lighten the hell up, folks… we won the whole damn thing, in spectacular freakin’ fashion, and nothin’ else matters (and besides, the movie was actually pretty good). It’s not like Fallon ran out and got in the way of a Dave Roberts’ season-saving second base slide. Yeesh.
And for New England sports fans: Sports radio station WEEI now has their live web stream up and running. Yeah, you won’t be able to listen to Red Sox games (the MLB has a legal lock on that), but you can at least listen to them blather before and after (and listen to the ring ceremony this afternoon?). You have to sign up for their listener network, though. Hey, y’know what I’m thankful for? That the presidential election is finally far behind us, and I don’t have to listen to their occasional political pearls of wisdom. Man, that made last fall a little painful, and nearly put me off WEEI for good. Kindly keep your politics outta my sports, fellas.
Switching gears: Easytree is dead. Long live Dime A Dozen. Yeah, the Easytree torrent-sharing site was intimidated into closure by the RIAA, but faster than I could even mention it, Dime A Dozen arose to take it’s place, using the same user and torrent database. No need to even re-register. Damn glad to see that happen, and we’ll see if they stay or get scared away.
Good news in game land: The follow-up to Call of Duty, the best combat-related first person PC game ever, is coming this fall. The hyperbole starts with a bang, but I’m a believer. I’m also pretty jazzed about the in-the-works Half Life 2 expansion. Gimme.
Many thanks to WMPG DJ (and apparant Almanac reader) Tom Flynn for letting me know that Crooked Fingers stopped by their Portland, Maine studio a couple weeks ago and played a live acoustic set on their Local Motives program. All five songs, interview clips, and some pictures are available for download right here. Such a treat.
Also relating to quality independent radio: The Late Risers Club program has been running on Boston’s WMBR for almost 30 years, and a new documentary by Marissa Acosta celebrates and explains how its early days. A bastion of the independent airwaves, the LRC is one of life’s few comforting constants. From 10am to noon on weekdays, there’s always a place to turn. The documentary screens at 11:55pm this Friday, April 15th, at the Coolidge Corner Theater.
Bob Mould just finished up his next solo album on Saturday. Looking forward to it.
So yeah, we saw Fever Pitch and it was good for a few laughs, and some inevitable warm fuzzies when they showed Sox winning it all. That footage just never fails me.
But that’s far from the best movie I saw last week. That’d be the preview screening of freakin’ Kung-Fu Hustle, baby. If you’re a Stephen Chow fan (Shaolin Soccer, God of Cookery), you know what you’re in for… he breaks the martial arts and special effects rules, making what amounts to exaggerated live action cartoons, and I gotta say, this one may be his peak. Blatant lifts from (and homages to) Looney Toons, Spider-Man, Star Wars, even broadway musicals. It starts off hiliriously and doesn’t let up. The crowd I saw it with ate it up, the thing got major applause afterwards, and my friend Adam is now referring to life events like this: B.K.F.H and A.K.F.U. (Before Kung-Fu Hustle and After Kung-Fu Hustle). It’s that good, and I am so seeing it again after it opens on April 22nd.
Also starting that weekend is the Independent Film Festival of Boston, which kicks off on the 21st. My friend Alex spent much of the past couple years producing one of the films featured in this years fest, a documentary called ‘Same Sex America‘, which “follows the fallout of the Massachusetts Supreme Court decision that allowed same-sex couples to obtain marriage licenses.” Can’t get much more timely and locally relevant than that, can ya? Check out the trailer here, and grab tickets to one of three screenings in Boston that weekend. If you miss out, word is that it’ll be on Showtime in June. Can’t wait to see it.
Oh, and heads up: Steve Buscemi will be hosting the East Coast premiere of the new film he directed, Lonesome Jim, on the opening night of the festival, and there are tickets available (just bought my two!). Just ten bucks each and no service charge, so go here and scroll down to get ’em. That’s April 21st at 7pm, and I’ll be rushing from there over to catch the Wedding Present at the Middle East right after. Great night, that’ll be.
So I updated the ‘upcoming shows’ list on the left, and there’s some really great stuff coming up here in Boston. Not only do we get Mary Timony and that Wedding Present show later this month, but Ted Leo returns in a couple weeks for a college gig, and Pinback hit the Paradise. That’s just a few of many that I need to check out. I also need a big bag of cash to fall out the sky in front of me.
Back to the grind, then I’m off to watch the Red Sox World Series ring ceremony. Yeah, I still need all the visual proof I can get that the whole thing actually happened….
[Live MP3s] Crooked Fingers in Cambridge, MA 2005
Posted on April 4, 2005 at 6:32 am | No Comments
Last Tuesday’s return of Crooked Fingers to Boston was a personal near-miss, as I’d been up too damn late for too many nights in a row and was seriously wavering on yet another. But that was before I got an email from an Almanac reader who’d just seen them in DC and raved, asking if I’d be going and recording the Boston stop. He used words like ‘incredible’ and ‘best show…’ and ‘felt like seeing the Archers again’… meaning the Archers of Loaf, CF frontman Eric Bachmann’s longtime former band who I absolutely adore. He said that this tour marked the return of crazy-great Archer’s bassist Matt Gentling to the road, and that he added a lot to the set.
So I was decided. After work would bring a nap and another night out. And I’m so, so glad I did. Not only did I decide to go, but a really nice yearly review at work meant I was buying myself a little present that day, and in honor of the show, it ended up being a new Sony Hi-MD minidisc recorder (no more whining, picky audiophiles!). Tuesday night would be my beta-test.
Got some great stuff, although it was a not an entirely successful trial run… ends up the auto-recording level action on these new Sony players is useless, so most of the set pushed it too high. Even the louder ones I’m sharing up are occasionally marred by snare-induced level drops, but still, the quiet stuff is ace, sounding so much better than my Archos, ‘natch. (If the model I bought had a backlit screen, I’d have known about the level problem, but the dang thing was too dark… so I exchanged it today for the beautifully backlit model MZ-RH10 that is just perfect).
So, yeah, here’s what Crooked Fingers played, with the best sounding songs shared for your enjoyment…
live at the Middle East Downstairs
March 29th, 2005
[ download the 10 songs shared below in one .zip file ]
Bad Man Coming
Big Darkness
New Drink for the Old Drunk
Broken Man
Call To Love
Wrecking Ball
Islero
Andalucia
Don’t Say A Word
Let’s Not Pretend To Be New Men
Under Sad Stars
Twilight Creeps
The Rotting Strip
Carrion Doves
Weary Arms (acoustic in the audience)
Valerie (acoustic in the audience)
Sleep All Summer (acoustic in the audience)
Crowned in Chrome (acoustic in the audience)
They deviated just a bit from the planned setlist near the end, although most songs were from the excellent ‘Dignity & Shame‘. Thrown in were selections from the other three CF full-lengths, including markedly different versions for the full-band setup, as well as the unreleased ‘Let’s Not Pretend To Be New Men‘. I didn’t get the one-song encore since the battery wasn’t fully charged, but it would have distorted as well, so no biggie. I fell lucky to have gotten what I did. Future recordings should be distortion free, and I’m pretty psyched.
As for the performance itself, I loved nearly every single second of it. The up songs, the down songs, all of ’em. Yes, there were those Springsteen moments, there were the oft-mentioned shades of Neil Diamond in his voice… but y’see, I’m down with that. For Bachmann and his band, it just plain works. They put on a show, and damn if it wasn’t great to see Matt Gentling rocking out again near the back of the stage, stomping and swaying like the bass-playing maniac he always was in the Archers. They all looked like they were just enjoying the hell out of playing for a half-full club on a Tuesday night… grateful, enthusiastic, energetic, swapping instruments and singing along even without microphones.
Speaking of which, that was the most special part of the night, as most who’ve seen this current tour will probably attest… for four songs, the band brought themselves and their instruments out into the center of the room and played acoustic as the crowd surrounded themselves in a circle. They don’t do it every single night, but only when the mood is right and the room suits it. The pictures below and recordings above can’t express how cool it felt to be right there next to ’em as they performed for us all…
Like I said, aside from my trip down to the Teenbeat shindig, this was easily the show of the year for me so far. So thanks to Eric Bachmann, Jason Parker, Barton Carroll, Matt Gentling, Barbara Trentalange, and Dov Friedman for that. I’ll be at every Boston appearance from here on out, no matter what night of the week it is.
For a few more photos, check out my Flickr page, and make sure you visit the Crooked Fingers site for more tour dates, tour photos, some mp3s, and a stream of the entire new album.