MP3 Of The Week: Her Name Is Nancy….and Frankie Is Her Pa

I’ve decided on a merger of sorts. Over the last few years I’ve been thinking about who would end up being my ten favorite bands of the 1990’s. It took me five years to figure it out, but I’ve finally done it. I’m not doing a stupid countdown or anything, either, because it’s simply impossible for me rank my ten favorites. Each of them have meant so much to me at different times for me to pick one over the other. Perhaps I have an inkling of who my favorite two or three bands are from that era if someone had a gun to my head, but nobody does. See?

So here’s the deal. Over the next ten weeks, my MP3 of the Week feature will showcase a song from my ten favorite bands during the decade when music moved me most. Perhaps during that time it was msuic that even moved me like nothing else has in my life. It changed my career. It changed my tastes. It opened my eyes to all formats and genres. It indirectly, and probably most importantly, made me more accepting of people, no matter what race, religion or sexual preference. It cemented important friendships that remain steadfast and true to this day. It made too many truly unforgettable moments and memories. What a time.

So I hope you are able to download even a few of these songs over the next few installments and experience the soundtrack to my life for a decade.

First up are the Bottle Rockets. I’ll probably say something like this every week, but I don’t really have enough space here (or writing talent, for that matter) to explain what an incredible live band this is. Just know that there was a time when I was absolutely, positively convinced that a live show couldn’t get any better. Until I saw Sloan, that is, but that’s another story.

The Bottle Rockets were originally (and probably unfairly) a part of the great alt.country scare of the 1990’s. Let it be said here: this band is a rawk band, tried and true. Hailing from the small town of Festus, Missouri, they’re certainly bound to throw in a few southern accents here and there, but they’re fooling nobody – this was thee most rocking bar band you would have seen back then. There was nobody better.

They were also a little older, fatter and had longer beards. They somehow played great guitar solos while chugging entire pitchers of beer onstage. When someone once yelled, “show us your tits!” at a show in New York, they happily obliged, undoubtedly making that person, and the rest of us, regret that request being made. One particular highlight still makes me smile: one night at The Mercury Lounge in NYC, they came out on stage with a bucket. Inside the bucket were all of the songs they had ever recorded and they proceeded to let the fans simply pick songs out of the hat for the rest of the night. That was their set. Classic. I still have thier original t-shirt, too, which is a complete rip-off of the Harley Davidson logo, and while it’s largely relegated to the pile of shirts I only wear under my hockey equipment anymore, at one point it was in very heavy rotation in my daily life.

The Bottle Rockets also serve another specific memory for me – it was at their show in Austin, Texas sometime in the late 1990s where I believe I got as drunk as I ever have in my lifetime. By the end of the show, I was sitting against the back wall of the Waterloo Brewing Company, just smiling at what I was witnessing. Rock bliss.

In looking for a song, I can’t say that Nancy Sinatra is my favorite Bottle Rockets song, but I do believe the song speaks to everything this band is all about – well written tributes from middle America. Drunken tributes, maybe, but tributes nonetheless. This song is specifically written from the point of view of a regular dude who just happens to be watching some late night TV and comes across an infomercial selling one of those 1960’s retrospectives called “Swinging Sounds of the Sixties,” and features some Nancy Sinatra footage. They paint the rest of the picture….

Give it shot, won’t you? Let me know your thoughts if you care to.

Again – Fire The Coppee Editor!

Oh, Boston Globe, why must you make my life so much easier when it comes to idea generation for my blog? Today’s gaffe, probably one of the worst of all time, comes on pages 3 and 5 of the Sports section, where they’ve run the exact same article twice about Mark Bellhorn possibly signing with the Yankees. The only difference in the two articles is that one of them has a photo. How is it even possible to miss this in the copy editing room?

Yesterday’s Globe contained no obvious mistakes as such, but I did manage to get a chuckle out of something. I was paging through the new daily Globe insert called “Sidekick,” when I came across a page of reader-submitted celebrity lookalike photos. After realizing that none of them really looked that much like the celebrity, I began wondering to myself who exactly sends these photos in?

As I look closer, only one struck my eye – it seemed that some woman sent in a photo of herself and said she looked like Jennifer Aniston. She didn’t. Not even close, really. Who says to themself “whoa! I look like Jennifer Aniston! I’m going to send my picture to the Boston Globe immeadiately!” How vain is that?!?! Uh, come to think of it, how vain is four years of writing a blog about yourself? Yeah, I’ll shut up now.

Anyway, all the other photos were submitted by friends or family, thankfully. I should also point out that the entire Sidekick section is really horrific. I know, I know, the economics of the newspaper business call for the dumbing down of the daily scribes, but they didn’t need this. It’s mildly insulting. Maybe I’ll switch to the Times.

Stupid criminal alert! Click that link. I love this story. What’s the thought process here? Not only do you have one stupid criminal, you actually have another one who a) didn’t notice they were putting the wrong type gas in and then b) both decide that the only logical way to figure it out is with a lighter? Classic.

In other news, let’s hope the town sends his parents a plaque of some sort for this.

Katrina & The Waves

“Walking On Sunshine” will not be the song that people in New Orleans and the surrounding areas will be singing to themselves over the next couple of days. In case you’ve kept your head in a vacuum over the last couple of days, Hurricane Katrina is poised to kick some serious ass in New Orleans on Monday. That the city sits below sea level is one concern, but from wherever you’re sitting right now, even if it’s in Alaska, Katrina’s coming for you, too.

Situated in The Gulf of Mexico between Louisiana and Florida are the refineries that produce 30% of American oil. That is exactly where Katrina is right now and it’s not expected to be pretty. The best case scenario has the refineries back up and running within a week. That’s if there’s minimal damage. Last I checked, though, Katrina was spitting out 165 MPH winds and was a category 5 hurricane – as serious as it gets.

What next? Starting like, now, watch as your local gas station knee-jerks and kicks prices up to levels you’re not going to like. At all. It’ll partially be greedy profit-taking and the increase will be temporary, yes. But it will also speak volumes to the teetering old tree that is oil supply and how just one small event can turn an industry and your wallet on its ears. Now just imagine terrorism (or something else) shuts down Saudi Arabia’s production. My goodness. The results would be catastrophic.

All that said, I do manage to find serious amusement in the fact that quite a few are remaining in New Orleans and washing it all down with some time on Bourbon St. I mean, you have to hand it to these folks, if they handed out medals for partying, these dumb-asses get the Distinguished Service Cross.

ITunetastic:
Teenage Fanclub – “Don’t Hide”
The International Submarine Band – “A Satisfied Mind”
Bruce Springsteen – “Prove It All Night”
Mission Orange – “Up On Blocks”
Sparklehorse – “Tears On Fresh Fruit”
Georgia Satellites – “Cool Inside”
Simon & Garfunkel – “Scarborough Fair”
Fairport Convention – “Million Dollar Bash”
Bottle Rockets – “Nancy Sinatra”
Elliot Smith – “Tomorrow Tomorrow’
Television – “Prove It”
Guided By Voices – “The Enemy”
Green On Red – “Hair Of The Dog”

When It Rains, It Typhoons

Hey, remember just two weeks ago when I was lamenting my Toyota Camry’s trip for just $200 worth of scheduled maintenance, only to be socked in the gut with an $1800 bill for brakes (among other things)? And how, just two days prior to that scheduled maintenance, I had just gotten the car back from the body shop after a ladder had fallen on it, courtesy of the guys who painted my house? Remember that time? I do. So I’ve had the car back now for a week. Neat!

Neat, that is, until Sunday afternoon while returning from a nice weekend spent at a bed & breakfast in Marblehead. We’re driving home through Salem, MA and how this particular woman missed seeing us (and the line of 5 or so cars behind us) as she backed out of her driveway is truly beyond me. Sure enough: wham-o. This time it’s the passenger side in the rear quarter, which I believe is now the only original piece left on the car. This makes three minor accidents in the space of one year, none of which were my fault. Granted, the damage in all three of these mishaps has been quite minor. This latest one, however, could have been much, much worse, so I’m grateful. The woman who hit my car, well, that’s a story I probably need to tell in person, so ask me next time you see me. I wonder what goofy rental car I’ll get next?

I’m experimenting with some new content offerings here on the site. I thought it might be interesting to offer an MP3 of the week. I have a vast library of roughly 4,000 songs on my computer now and occasionally I’d like to share a song or two to give readers a sampling of my tastes and expose artists whom I think people would really like. I’m not entirely sure how much server space my hosting company gives me (who pays attention to stuff like that?), so I guess this will last until they say I have no more room.

This week’s MP3 of the week is Everybody Dies by Dramarama, one of my favorite bands from the ’90s. “Everybody Dies” is a newer track from 2004 and it’s a comeback song of sorts for Dramarama, whose fires were rekindled after ten or so years by, of all things, a VH1 reunion special last year. Back in the early part of that decade when I was voraciously gulping up as much new music as I could in college, Dramarama became one of my favorites, a nice blend of modern rock with a hat tip to classics like the Stones, etc. At the time, John Easdale (whom I interviewed here last year), is still one of my favorite well-kept secrets. A great songwriter. As an added bonus, “Everybody Dies” has cowbell. We all know this world could use far more cowbell.

Easdale’s comments on the idea behind “Everybody Dies:” “My best friend was diagnosed with esophogeal cancer, and I came up with the song as a sort of “Don’t worry, be happy” kind of message for him before we knew how bad it was…he has since departed…and then my mom got sick and died right after that, so what was originally written to help somebody else has helped me deal with things as well…it seems as if death is the ultimate taboo, even more than sexuality and substance abuse (at least here in the US).”

If you download (come on, go ahead, give it a shot), please let me know if you were able to successfully grab the song, as I’m not entirely sure I’ve done this right. You can also get the song from my newly created MP3 page, which only contains one song, but will eventually be the central repository as I add to the MP3 of the week archives. Enjoy. Would love to hear what you think of the song.

Fyre The Copy Editor!


Every so often in my daily morning sojurn through the Boston Globe, I’ll come across an incredible oversight on the part of the copy editing team at the Globe. I often wonder how people can miss such glaring mistakes, but hey, nobody’s perfect, right? I mean, I often find my own grammatical errors long after I’ve posted something. Anyway, the fact that nobody is perfect often leads to a good laugh. This headline above, which ran in yesterday’s paper, is one of my recent favorites. The headline would indicate that “a woman known for courage and daring action” was seized by police, along with some cocaine. No word on whether or not the heroine was released on her own personal recognizance.A terrific overview of the oil situation in Saudi Arabia, which also explores OPEC’s genius use of “fuzzy math” can be found in this somewhat lengthy New York Times article from Sunday. A really good and informative read if you’re looking to get your feet wet on the seriousness of the subject.

Quickly on baseball: while we’re obviously happy to see the Red Sox maintaining their hold on first place in the American League East, I’ve been feeling the same nagging thoughts since around May – that this team is constantly teetering on the edge of a 15 game losing streak or something. They continue to defy that thought, however, so maybe it’s just….all those years. I can’t help but think their pitching is going to catch up to them, though. If not now, then certainly in October.