Perils of Caffeine in the Evening

Since it’s all the rage to generate excitement on your blog by having
guest bloggers, I’ve invited an old acquaintance of mine to guest blog
here at Perils of Caffeine. I met him when he was 16 and the
editor of his high school newspaper. When he was in 7th grade,
Jim Leyland, the former manager of the Pittsburgh Pirates and Florida
Marlins, was a senior, a sports star (natch) and went by the name of
Jimbo.

My young friend’s math teacher was a wiseass guy from New York with a
bit of a mean streak, and hung the name “Philbo” on the chubby little
putz in his math class in what he probably thought was a brilliant bit
of irony. The name stuck, but the kid wore it indifferently, as
few, if any, of the other kids were fully aware of its sarcastic
etymology.

His career at the school newspaper had its ups & downs. As
sports editor in his junior year, he incurred the ire of the football
team by referring to a 44-0 defeat as a “holocaust”. His editor,
the baseball coach, stood by him, however, and things got worked out
without his having to make an appearance at practice without pads.

In his senior year, he began to fancy himself (despite a paucity of
evidence) a writer and, with the latitude of being co-editor of the
paper, started writing a column.  He has agreed to submit one of
these columns as our guest blog.   Check him out!

This is from a “humor” column I wrote for the school newspaper as a
senior in high school.  I stumbled across the stash of these old
papers last week, and had some fun reading through them.

Mike tagged me with this, probably in order to draw out in more embarrassing detail what a weird musical sense I have:

• Total volume of music on my hard drive: (I’m counting my 40gb Creative Nomad Zen Xtra, since I only have music on my computer long enough to download it and rip it) 13.54 gigabytes - that’s 257 albums, 2,573 tracks.


• Last CD bought (download): Within Me by Camille Bloom.  She’s a relatively new local act that owes a lot to Ani DiFranco.


• Last CD bought (store): Say What You Mean by Maktub  Another local act that we’ve heard live quite a few times.  Reggie’s voice is so versatile, he can sound like Otis Redding on one cut and Soundgarden on the next.


• Song playing right now: Elephant from Who Is This America? by Antibalas Afrobeat Orchestra.  This New York-based band is a lot of fun to see.  They travel with 15 or so musicians and have a terrific horn section.  We’re hoping to see them June 10th at Chop Suey.


• Five Songs I listen to a lot: I tend to select albums instead of individual songs.  One reason, I suppose, is that I’m too lazy to create playlists on my mp3.  Here are 5 albums I’ve been dialing up frequently recently




• Street Signs by Ozomatli


• Brazilian Girls  by Brazilian Girls


• President Alien by Yerba Buena


• When It Falls by Zero7


• Blue Scholars by Blue Scholars

It strikes me that I haven’t been playing singer/songwriters very much.  I own and like people like Jeff Buckley, Elliott Smith, Neko Case, Ani DiFranco, Tom Waits.  I shy away, I think, from an entire album at one time.

A friend called the other night and offered me a ticket to tonight’s baseball game between Seattle and the Yankmes.  Confession:  I’ve not been to Safeco field yet, I’ve been in a snit over the way the stadium got built (slid through the state legislature after being defeated in a popular vote), and also over the penurious tone-deafness of ownership in its subsequent personnel dealings.

Well, the stadium’s not coming down any time soon, and I pay for it every time I buy a meal in King County, so it’s time to extract the corn cob from my butt and go see a game.  We’re meeting at the exquisite Etta’s Seafood restaurant in the Pike Place Market, then on to the game.

Film at 11!

Well, that certainly was fun yesterday.  Thanks again, Birdie.  I don’t think I’ve ever gotten over 100 hits on this gasbag in a single day before.  Scads of your fans drove by hoping to see something smart, and kept checking the address when they saw this dingy double-wide.

It will be fun to see what the other guys have to say as the week progresses.  Ulak preceded me on Sunday; Mark of the droll and witty Fried Green al-Qaedas clues in the clueless today.

I’m a guest blogger today over at Birdie’s most exquisite Beauty Dish
site. Birdie’s a nominal Avon Lady, but she uses this as a ruse
with which to populate her stories with interesting characters and
madcap situations. It’s kind of like having a duck blind in a
bird sanctuary. Every now & then she’ll actually give a
beauty tip. I’ve yet to try one.

All this week is Dude Week there,
with a different male guest blogger each day. I feel like a
supermodel on a runway (hope that Airbus misses me). Be sure to
leave a comment on my article - I’m competing for a pair of nose hair trimmers.

Apropos of our recent blogversation about the contents of our mp3 players (Mike apparently plays “air mp3″), here’s an article our paper picked up from the San Francisco Chronicle about how our mp3 playlists, like an Internet Explorer security flaw, may be an unguarded window into our souls. 

To obfuscate, some are placing music onto their players that they never intend to listen to, like buying furniture for a room that you never sit in except when in-laws are in town.  As one guy said:

 Christopher Breen, editor in chief of Playlist, a San Francisco magazine covering the digital-music scene, said he keeps his own library in pristine condition.

It’s similar to when “your mother tells you always to wear clean underwear because you never know if you’re going to end up in the emergency room,” he said. “Now you have to worry if someone sees you have ‘Me and You and a Dog Named Boo’ in your music collection.”

Mike kicked my ass the other day for not posting about the Thievery Corporation show we saw Wednesday night.  We’ve developed a liking for a few of these “downtempo” groups, like Zero7, Massive Attack, Supreme Beings of Leisure along with Thievery Corporation. They tend to have original tunes and lyrics layered over a sometimes-dubbed, sometimes live rhythmic groove.  Their forebears number Portishead and the French group Air. It exists, I believe, to create a chill atmosphere to accompany substance abuse more than to grab you by the lapels and stimulate your intellect.

Similarly, Thievery Corporation put 13 - 15 musicians on the stage, including two drummers, bass, a guy playing an electric sitar, 3-man horn section, 6 different vocalists and the two DC-area founders, Rob Garza and Eric Hilton. The show was at a new venue for us, Premier on First Avenue South, and it’s nice - newly remodeled and spacious - unlike a lot of local music venues that seem to be merely real estate in transition, just waiting for the gentrification reaper.  They played one long, generous set plus an encore, and we danced and sweat and went away happy.

I had my camera, but the battery was dead when I tried to use it, so I took a quick lesson in how to use my wife’s camera phone (mine won’t take pictures.  They end up looking kinda arty, but that’s solely due to the technical limitations of the device, and not to any talent on my part.

Thievery Corporation includes a lot of Middle Eastern/Indian influences, most apparent in their cd The Richest Man In Babylon.  These were two guys from Istanbul who played wind instruments on one of the numbers, Facing East, from that album.  One was a sorta double-reed like an English horn, the other a flute-like thing. They only appeared for that number.  You wonder how they can travel with so many personnel and use them situationally.  The show was $30 apiece, though…

This has such a familiar ring - dark horse candidate (Gerald Ford) ascends to highest office upon the demise of larger-than-life predecessor (Nixon), then, with unseemly haste, pushes an agenda designed to enhance/rescue the reputation of said benefactor (pardons the bastard).  Now, if it turns out Ratzinger played football for Michigan…

Kathy at Freshman44 uncorked a Friday meme - Put your iPod (in my case, a Creative Nomad Zen Xtra) on “shuffle” mode, and list the first 10 songs with a color in the title.  This kind of thing is fraught with danger, as it may reveal some really lame stuff with your fingerprints on it.  OK, deep breath…here goes:

• That Old Black Magic - Glenn Miller (Shut up! I like Big Band music)
  
• Green Dolphin Street - Miles Davis (the ‘58 Sessions)
  
• Blood Red River - Beth Orton (Central Reservation)
  
• Ivory Tower - Garaj Mahal (live recording - they’re a west coast acid jazz act we’ve seen a couple of times)
  
• Carmen Ohio - The Ohio State Marching Band (I’m playing on the recording)
  
• Orange Moon - Erykah Badu (Mama’s Gun)
  
• Green Earrings - Steely Dan (Live In America)
  
• Gold In The Air Of Summer - Kings Of Convenience
  
• Blues Part II - Blood, Sweat & Tears
  
• You Blues - Juliana Hatfield (Only Everything)

Bonus Tracks:

• Black Cat - Starlight Mints
  
• Yellow - Coldplay (Parachutes)
  
• Black Milk - Massive Attack (Mezzanine)
  
• Black Cow - Steely Dan (Aja)

Then my fingers got tired.