April 22, 2003

I found out this morning that I had a Phillip's head screw stuck in one of my tyres. My Honda's had a passel of tyre troubles since I've bought it.

Religion

Passover/Easter Question

After the second song at last Saturday's show, Ira Kaplan did ask if Ash Wednesday and Passover were related. He received a resounding "no". However, Easter and Passover are closely tied.

Creationist Conspiracy

Boing boing has a post by a fellow who believes that Creationists are controlling his Amazon recommendations. Somehow, a bunch of creationist books showed up in his list that is normally hard, conventional science. It may be possible that creationists have somehow managed to phreak Amazon's recommendation system. I suppose it's also possible that someone who has bought a mess of creation science books recently bought some other books to do critical research. Of course, the Amazon interest system is far from perfect. For my "Gold Box"^TM today, I was recommended a pair of giant Hulk hands and some copper bots with a whisk. I guess Amazon figures I'm a guy who likes making meringue while wearing a pair of giant green hands. Hmmm, maybe they know me a little too well.

The White Stripes

The White Stripes will be playing all week on Conan O'Brien. If you're not up at 12:30, you can catch them when the show repeats on Comedy Central at 7pm the next day. I purchased Elephant recently and am well pleased. I can't cycle through the tracks without playing "Girl You Have No Faith In Medicine" three times in a row. How can you not love a song that uses the word "Acetaminophen" as a rhyme? [Found on Metafilter]

April 20, 2003

Yo La Tengo at the 9:30 Club

It's been a while since I've made the road trip up to DC to catch a show at the 9:30. However, Yo La Tengo always puts on a great show. Last night's show was another great show. However, it was also different than any of their shows that I've seen recently. Saturday night, Yo La Tengo put on one of the more throughtful and surprising shows that I can remember seeing.

I grabbed Summer Sun shortly after it came out. The album hasn't grown on me yet. Given the mellower, more dense sound of the album, I expected the show to be similar. However, the live songs that Yo La Tengo played from the album were quite good. YLT started out with an instrumental from the Summer Sun, then did "Autumn Sweater" then more songs from the new album. Rather than jump between different songs, the band kept up the mood from the current CD. Ira spent a long time at the keyboards for the first half of the set. I'm know convinced that I need to listen to the album again, except at a really loud volume.

For the second half of the set, Ira brought out three members of Sun Ra's Arkestra. Yo La Tengo has played with the Arkestra before. However, I get the impression that their presence at the show last night was a surprise. The larger line-up kicked off with "You Can Have It All" and then went through a string of songs from the current album. The Sun Ra tune "Nuclear War" ended the set with Portastatic joining YLT and the Arkestra members.

For their first encore, Yo La Tengo brought out the three players from the Arkestra for a great encore. They started with the Sun Ra tune – "Dreaming". Ira gave a nod for solos by the flute player and one of the trombonists. For the second number, they did "False Alarm". And the last song was "Speeding Motorcycle". I never would have imagined a flute part and solo for a Daniel Johnston song, but it worked – that song was one of the high points of the evening.

After more applause, Yo La Tengo came out for a second and final encore, playing a cover (sorry, no title), "Cherry Chapstick" and "The Hour Grows Late". The last song was especially appropriate; Yo La Tengo started their set before midnight and finished a little before 2am.

Independent Minded Country

What do Dolly Parton, Dwight Yoakum and Loretta Lyn have in common? They've all left major record labels for independent country labels. As part of an interview with Ricky Skaggs for his coming show, the Times Dispatch has an article on the growing trend of country musicians moving to small, independent labels. It turns out that smaller labels are giving country musicians more artistic freedom and letting them pocket more of the revenue from their record sales. Hmmm, sounds familiar.