15. Dead horse

Free Music Archive has a great interview by Rick Moody with Ben Hall re: his collecting & sharing of old gospel 45s & 78s, first via his Bap-tizum site & soon to be archived at DRAM. FMA has 5 tracks to d/l, but you can also check out Bap-tizum Radio to listen to many more.

14. Guess I'm Falling In Love

Back on my feet, internet up after some storms, so will try to 

catch up on recent events. Stay tuned...

7. Zuckerberg

Saw "Social Network" @ the dollar flick tonight & well worth a buck!!

"She had to leave..."

Finally saw X last Tues. @ the Cradle after listening to their music on/off for 25 yrs. Can't remember who we taped it from then, but probably somebody's older sib. I do remember that my copy of Los Angeles had Judd's high school handwriting on the cassette case....

Not a sold out crowd, but plenty of people there, though still enough room to snake up towards the left front where I like to stand. Surprised by Exene's height (or lack of). Just read re: her being diagnosed w/ MS, but she sang great & seemed to be having a good time. John Doe's energy still strong & fun, moving around & sweating like a beast on bass. Billy Zoom played a gold-sequined gtr right up at stage front & made silly smiling faces to all the iPhone stalkers et al. He must be a great guitarist b/c the whole band was so tight, but he looked almost bored at times. Otherwise he seemed to be having good fun too.DJ Bonebrake was...solid, tight...though not as impressionableas the others. Wore an X tee & had jazz/vibraphone CDs for sale.

This was part of their "Total Request Live" tour where you can vote on what songs you wanna hear ahead of time & (maybe) they will play them. And looking at that list, it seems like they got most of them in there. Highlights: "We're Desperate," "In This House That I Call Home," "The New World" ("lately this song has taken on a whole new meaning...and we hope it keeps on meaning that..."), "Sex & Dying in High Society," "Devil Doll," "Adult Books" (inspired by this episode, according to J. Doe), an acoustic "See How We Are" plus some other encores and finally, "The World's A Mess, It's In My Kiss". Loud, fast, fun & somehow: relaxing. Afterwards I drove home through the rain.

DB's got soul!

One of my favorite internet radio programs over the last couple of years has been David Byrne's, which features a different genre or international theme each month. DB is currently spinning a great selection of OLD SCHOOL GOSPEL, so get over there & listen to it before March has got up & gone! Plus check out the interesting & usually informative online journal from a man who ain't scared to wear a tutu!

lou, lou, lou @ carolina theatre, durham: transcendent...in moments

* leather angel opera rock *

my setlist notes

(i don't usually keep track, but red wanted me to bring home a full report of everything that happened....) longtime fans will see that i didn't know the names of many of the recent songs, some of which i liked/seemed to work better than others, and most of which featured lou's typical goofy/sincere lyric combinations. one stood out: "the power of the heart," which hasn't been released yet. (nice love song incl. the lyrics "i would marry you again".) also didn't realize that he and laurie did finally make it official.

to try to describe the black leather t-shirt that 66-yr. old lou wore wouldn't really do it justice, though i'm sure you can imagine...or you can just check out this shot of it two days later in Knoxville (w/ the "silver shovel" guitar):

(by TennesseeJed)

"sweet jane" was fun, but never quite took off. however, by the third song i was hooked: thrilled to hear "i'm set free" w/ a great lou solo (though the accordion caused a conflicting fascination/repulsion, as though elvis costello were performing the song with full band on "Austin City Limits".) "i'm sticking w/ you" was a complete surprise, b/c of course i haven't seen that juno movie to know that it must now be "current". the poe stuff was alright, interesting & i'm sure a fun & challenging exercise to set to music. "guardian angel" was probably my other favorite recent one, the lyric from poe sung in lou's voice seemed "absolutely lou". biggest complaint was that the whole thing was waaaaaay short, and of course they only played one encore ("perfect day"): fun to hear but not particularly...transcendent.

the backside of my notes sums up the evening pretty well:

"fancy pants (to my left) didn't like the show.
bob & shirley (to my right) loved it.
i just grokked. "