03.25.07
Posted in hot live action, cory branan - March 25th, 2007 at 5:15 pm by Mimi
Cric’s back home at a wedding and hitting on ROTC boys, and I missed Drag the River on Thursday because I’m a lamer. However, I beat the bushes to drag people to see Cory Branan on Saturday. New converts. It’s amusing to attend a Cory show with people who only know his studio stuff because I get to watch the cartoon hearts pop out of their eyes as he radiates that sort of folksy élan that overwhelms anyone who sees him live.
(I’m screwing something up as I post this, but I have no idea what. I am really dim, people. Cric will have to fix it when she gets near a computer.) [Fixed.–Cric]
I had cocktails before the show with Wes Charlton and Charlotte (who does him the favor of dating him) who live ‘round the way from Cric and me. I was a little worried when we got to the 3 Crow because the place was nearly deserted and I got further scared when I thought the opening-closing acts had been reversed. Having to sit through a full rock-set by a local band…oh noes! Not nearly drunk enough for that torture! But, whatever, you don’t care about my psychological issues.
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03.22.07
Posted in cricket spazzes, hot live action, random - March 22nd, 2007 at 12:21 am by Cricket
Here at HCT HQ strange things happen. Locust-like clouds of drunken bluegrass pickers descend on the house at odd hours, play for a while, eat, drink and then whisk us off to bonfires in the middle of the night. I warned Mimi when she put up that weird wreath on the door that she was inviting the fairies in. Who knew fairies looked like drunk musicians? [Weeeeeeeeellll…I forgot to tell you about my childhood in the Unseelie Court, Cric.–Mimi]
Among other strangeness, one day Mohammed just appeared in our yard. Mohammed is a cement lion. He sits in a fairy-ring of stones, surrounded by tulips. Yeah, really. And we didn’t even put him there. Well, you know lions come from the same place as hippos and if there’s one thing we love unreasonably (even more than music) at HCT HQ it’s hippos. We have many. Mohammed couldn’t come to them, so like the mountain, we brought them to Mohammed. [Look out for more pictures of Mohammed and his crazy antics…when we get bored again.–Mimi]
Hippos bathe placidly in the spring sunshine
unaware of the lion king lurking above them.
Yep.
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03.13.07
Posted in some albums we done liked others we ain't - March 13th, 2007 at 9:42 pm by Cricket
Among my favorite albums is Willie Nelson’s Red Headed Stranger. I love a good concept album. Story songs are awesome, but when the whole album tells a story from beginning to end? Even better. Chuckanut Drive delivers completely with their recent re-release of The Crooked Mile Home.
These boys are from Bellingham, Washington, a stone’s throw from my own hometown. Oddly, it isn’t attention to local bands back home that led me to them. A friend in Boston helped me develop a nifty obsession with them and turned me on to their rockin’ alt-country. They twist together, with a heavy dose of twang, Johnny Cash, Hank Sr., Gram Parsons, Son Volt, Uncle Tupelo, and more traditional rock.
The songs on The Crooked Mile Home range from upbeat and punchy, bordering on rockabilly, like “Reno to Vegas,” “Any Way I Can,” and “Little Did I Know,” to slow, pain-filled songs, like “Juanita,” and “You Cross My Mind,” that carry the torch of the high lonesome sound. Though the “high” here is more like high desert than the top of the Appalachians.
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03.05.07
Posted in cricket spazzes, random, back catalogue, steve earle, stephen simmons, todd snider - March 5th, 2007 at 7:46 pm by Cricket
It’s strange how, in the modern day of air and car travel, the folkloric power of trains seems not to have diminished at all. It’s true I can get in my car and drive nearly anywhere in the country, yet the idea of hopping a train seems to hold more fanciful notions of freedom and escape from the everyday. [It’s because it is a myth, that’s why, exactly.—Mimi] But there’s more to it than that. There’s a wistful, lonesome sound of far-off train whistles which promise escape that is somehow out of reach. The sound now contains more nostalgia than ever before, though trains are still prevalent all over the world.
Where we live, you can hear the trains everyday, all the time. Though more at night when they aren’t masked by road traffic noise and the television or the iPod. Often the sound will wake me up in the night, which isn’t bothersome at all. It’s more like a reminder of the time and place I’m in. The rattle-hum of freight trains over the tracks sound like home. When I was little, the trains ran right along the far side of the field behind my grandparents’ farm. You could hear them coming when they were miles away and even miles past you could still sense the train when the whistle was too far to hear. I’m sure there’re many people who grew up hearing trains to the point where they hardly notice them, [Like me, for instance, the tracks ran along the bluffs and curved along the coast where I grew up a couple blocks down from my house.—Mimi] but pulled away from them would come to think of it (unconsciously) as a cradle sound, something calming.
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