interrobang (‽)

Given that I had to back out of the last two gigs in Houston that I had tickets for (Gomez, and Green Day) because I was sent to Chicago on gig-day, I was super-bummed to learn that my current loves, The Decemberists, were playing Houston when I was, yet again, in Chicago. But as I was scheduled to be up here for five weeks, I decided I may as well see if there was anyone interesting playing in Chi-Town (correctly pronounced shit-town, Colin Meloy was pleased to inform us) whilst I was here.  And joy of joys, I discovered that The Decemberists’ tour […]

After seeing The Road to Psychedelia at the Black Angels gig, I felt compelled to dig into Janis Joplin a bit more.  So I ripped my wife’s 3-CD boxed set Janis onto my iPod, and dusted off my copy of Myra Friedman’s book Buried Alive.  I’d bought the book almost ten years ago during a spending spree at Tower Books (which also netted me Saucerful of Secrets: The Pink Floyd Odyssey, and U2: The Unforgettable Fire, both of which also remain unread) so it was probably a little overdue.
Friedman worked for Janis’s record company (Columbia Records) as Janis’s publicity agent.  She spent a […]

OK, maybe it’s time to admit that I’m finally too old for all of this.  Last night I went to see another band - The Black Angels - and I’m starting to feel like I don’t belong.  It’s not the music.  The band were excellent, and I was shuffling along as enthusiastically as the next person (apart from the guy who was flailing his arms around wildly and making guttural grunts of appreciation at the end of every song, but I put that down to his superior drug intake and not the quality of the music - he would have […]

Despite having heard only a four-track EP by The Black Angels, I thought they’d probably be worth seeing live, so jumped at the chance when they came through Houston.  This was again at the Warehouse, but in a different/smaller room than the one I saw The Black Keys in - either that or they have remodeled and significantly downsized.  This time the ’stage’ (a wooden platform that stood at most a foot off the ground) was squashed in a corner of the room, and there were sofas in the ‘audience area’, which I didn’t take as a good sign.
The evening started […]

In a post a year ago I described a recently-published chart of ‘best ever’ albums that claimed to be the most accurate as it was based on historical sales.  I posited that a chart based on what people were actually listening to would be better, although this would be impossible to obtain. In that post, I hazarded a guess (by way of example) that the 10 albums I listened to the most were:

Radiohead OK Computer
Desaperacidos Read Music Speak Spanish
Bob Dylan, Highway 61 Revisited
Jesus and Mary Chain Darklands
At The Drive In Relationship of Command
Pleasure Forever Alter
Oasis Definitely Maybe
Suede Dog Man Star
Nick Cave Let […]

Many years ago (1988), I took my girlfriend-at-the-time to see Roy Harper play live.  He was supported by a young singer/songwriter/guitarist called James Varda.  The gig was excellent, and I was so impressed with James Varda, that I bought his debut LP, Hunger (direct from the record label , as HMV didn’t carry it).  It didn’t disappoint, with the best lyrical imagery this side of thin-wild-mercury Dylan, and some powerful use of a semi-accoustic 12-string.  I must have all but worn out the grooves on that album.  A year or so later the girlfriend left me and - I found out later […]

The in-laws are currently visiting, so I thought I may as well take a week’s vacation (first one since we went to Spain in 2005, I think…) and go somewhere interesting.  ‘Interesting’ turned out to be Memphis, Tennessee.  “Why Memphis??” everyone here in Houston asked.  “Why Memphis??” everyone in Memphis asked.  I’d like to think that I went there to visit the “Birthplace of Rock N Roll” ™ and soak up some of that ol’ blues history, but the truth is that, at 600 miles from Houston, Memphis is about as far as I thought I could take the kids […]

I’ve been back in Houston for four months now, and decided that it was about time I got back into the live music scene.  There was no-one I desparately wanted to see, playing, but I fancied a night out, so I took my chances with The Black Keys, at the Warehouse. 
I hadn’t heard anything by The Black Keys, but I’d heard some positive things about them, so I thought I’d give it a go.   Finding out that Dinosaur Jr. were also on the bill was the decider - although I couldn’t believe that J. Mascis & co. were relegated to […]

I just finished reading Danny Sugarman’s biography of Jim Morrisson, No-One Here Gets Out Alive.  It’s quite a few years old, but Jim’s been dead since before the book was written (even so, this is the second edition), so I reasoned that I probably wasn’t missing much.
I enjoy reading biographies and autobiographies of the artists I like - I find it gives me a better insight into their work, and I enjoy the music more as a result.  But with this book, although I still enjoyed reading it, I wish I hadn’t read it at all, because I came away […]

Ever since I got my iPod I’ve wanted to find a way to list my ‘recently played’ tracks on this Blogsite.  There are a few WordPress plugins and widgets that claim to do this, but they all seemed overly-complicated, requiring additional e-mail accounts, modified server permissions, and god knows what else.  So what with having a life to live and all, I never found the time to dig into them and get any of them working properly.
Then last week a buddy responded to a post of mine in the Music category, mentioning Last.fm which he said tracked people’s listening habits.  […]