Sunday, February 24, 2008

Raising Sand

You've heard of this, haven't you? The duet CD that Robert Plant and Alison Krauss did? I had several reactions when I first heard about this one, ranging from quirky to odd to intriguing to "Who thought that would be a good idea?" I mean, you can't be much farther apart musically than Black Dog and The Lucky One, can you?

Once I thought about it a little more, though, it didn't seem as far off base as I first imagined. Consider the Led Zeppelin songs The Battle of Evermore, which is basically Jimmy Page playing the mandolin while Robert Plant sings part of The Lord of the Rings, or When the Levee Breaks, which is Delta blues played louder than usual. Or consider that Alison Krauss + Union Station have covered songs by the Beatles and Bad Company. Or that Alison herself has waived off millions in income by staying largely as a bandleader in the bluegrass/acoustic music tradition. She has to be the most notable iconoclast in American music this side of Willie Nelson

Okay, having built a case that the pairing isn't so strange as it appears on the surface, what about the music? Glad you asked. It goes down about as smooth as a drink of well water on a July day on a Carolina farm. Both Plant and Krauss stretch outside their usual leanings, they have some pretty sweet harmonies together, the song choices have some real personality quirks, and the sonic landscape is appealing. The last two aspects of the project can probably be ascribed to T-Bone Burnett, the CD producer who's also responsible for the soundtrack to O Brother, Where Art Thou. Remember that Plant is a songwriter who had a hand in most of Led Zeppelin's better known songs, and that Krauss is a highly skilled song interpreter, almost on par with Tricia Yearwood. All in all, Raising Sand is one of 2007's biggest, and most pleasant, musical surprises. I won't be at all surprised if it is considered a classic in a few years.

This week's best line in a forwarded email...

I wondered why the baseball was getting bigger. Then it hit me.

Saturday, February 23, 2008

Frivolous fluff, your comments, yes

There are days, like one last month, that I shouldn't even read anyone else's blog, much less comment with such drivel as this:

I met John Scalvi. He was our server at our favorite fine restaurant, the night I became a man in the arms of my beloved. I don’t know what he was so agitated about, but I was still lost in the warm hazy afterglow, and I didn’t recognize that he’d replaced their usual coffee with Folgers Crystals. Unfortunately for Scalvi, Judge Barlowe at the next table did. Justice moved swiftly, and the judge gave Scalvi the choice between becoming a cat wrangler or a Marine. After contemplating the likely future of one who joined what became “The Last Great Cat Drive” of American Shorthairs and Persians from the Florida panhandle to Tiajuana (otherwise known as “The Feline Lonesome Dove”), Scalvi opted to become a jarhead. He departed that afternoon for Parris Island with only the clothes on his back and the textbook from his Genetic Manipulation class. His was the first squad trained with the Winchester plasma rifle, and four years later, he led the liberation of Montreal. After receiving the Medal of Valor, he left the military to pursue his vocation of genetic research and his hobby of Grandmaster-level chess.Given all this, should my family and I tremble in fear or delight over this case of Folgers Crystals that the uplifted Calico just delivered?

What can I say, I was in a very silly mood.

Banner ad of the day

Seen on GoLookOn, a site for Harrisonburg and Rockingham County, Virginia: Pump It Up, the Inflatable Party Zone.

Monday, February 11, 2008

Before I Forget...

Some observations from the last couple of months:
  • My dad had surgery December 17th to repair an aneurysm on his aorta. The surgery was a complete success, but he did not recover nearly as fast as we all expected. I guess that's a side effect of being 75.

  • Lisa and I, in one of the traditions of our marriage, saw the Trans-Siberian Orchestra on December 19th. Four straight years we've done this. There was a short in a part of the lighting rig over the floor audience, and after electrical sparks showered down on them, they were moved just long enough for the crew to fix the problem. I also thought that the guitar sound was quite a bit more aggressive this time around.

  • We spent Christmas with my family in Whiteville, and on our way down there on Christmas Eve, we saw a rare case of justice done. We were in the outside lane coming up on the last exit off of US 74 heading east in Laurinburg. There were a couple of cars slowing down in front of us to take the exit, and there was a pickup in the inside lane probably 100 yards in front of us. As we were passing a state cop who had pulled someone over on the shoulder of the westbound lane, a car whipped past us doing far faster than the speed limit. It pulled into our lane and had to slam on brakes to keep from rear-ending the cars slowing down for the exit. There wasn't room for it to get back into the inside lane because of the pickup, so I thought we were in for a pile up. Somehow, the fool driver managed not to hit anyone, and as soon as he had a clear lane, he took off like a jet with afterburners lit. A couple of minutes later, another state cop passed us like we were standing still. Just as he was almost out of sight, he turned on his blue lights. Sure enough, we passed him with the idiot driver pulled over to the side shortly thereafter. Merry Christmas!

  • Christmas morning is a great time to watch It's A Wonderful Life.

  • Gift cards are not a bad way to go at Christmas for your extended family.

  • The Eagles have been my favorite rock band for as long as I can remember. Long Road Out of Eden has been in my car CD player almost constantly since I got it right after Christms. There's something about the combination of Don Henley's angry, driving commitment, Glenn Frey's sweet grace notes, and Joe Walsh's stinging guitar solos together that makes music like no one else. Out of 20 songs, only I Love To Watch A Woman Dance, which is lovely but is a lyrical mess, is dispensable. The title song is a tour de force, Center of the Universe sounds like a reincarnation of the Beatles (this is a very good thing), and It's Your World Now is the best passing of the torch song I've ever heard.

  • The language and the story in The Darkest Evening of the Year continued to live up to the standard I noted in this earlier entry. The story did have a bit of a lapse in the epilog of a last chapter; the climax was in the penultimate chapter, and after that, we were told in the author's voice what happened, where in the rest of the book, the story flowed from the characters. That weakened what should have been a powerful affirmation of the miraculous in our lives.

  • For the first time since my children moved away with their mother, none of them made it to North Carolina during the Christmas holidays. I know what bittersweet means.

  • Los Angeles is not a bad place to visit in late January / early February. I took a class for work, SQL Server 2005 for Developers, and this will really come in handy over the next few months when several databases at work are upgraded from SS2K.