What Burns Never Returns - Don Caballero

Hooooweee! I'm in the middle of selling one house, buying another. It's a load of 'fun'. I'm not complaining though. Heck, lotsa people can't afford a house at all. But I tell ya, going through an inspection of a house build in 1852 is quite the emotional experience. The good thing is that we found nothing major wrong with it. The bad thing is I now have eight bazillion things to do at the current abode to get it ready for sale.

What's this got to do with Don Caballero? The shifting, jerky and somewhat unpredictable rhythms of this music pretty much parallels (or makes fun of!) the rest of my life. Actually, it's a good musical metaphore for most people's lives.

Besides, I can't help but be drawn to song titles like "In the Abscence of Strong Evidence to the Contrary, One May Step Out of the Way of the Charging Bull".

I don't know who this guy is, but he needs to be a BlogCritic.

This has to be one of the funniest things I've ever seen on Ebay.

Hmmm....that danged Michael Bublé disc has got me thinking about the so-called neo-con, young lion musicians. I feel a purchase coming on. I heard Diana Krall doing her version of Elvis Costello's "Almost Blue"...and it was kinda cool.

Diana Krall...Harry Connick Jr....Josh Groban...Norah Jones...Michael Bublé. What to make of young, attractive musicians who seem rooted in the past? Are they tryin' to trick us by offering lite and easy-to-chew nostalgia?

Sorry, but that's a big loada hooey. Even though the visually-oriented marketing makes me a little nervous (especially in the case of Krall...though her "Peel Me A Grape" makes me forget for a while), it's not fair for me to say that I know what the motivation is.

Hey, maybe they just like the music.

This is surely the case with Michael Bublé. This live (mostly) CD and DVD showcases Bublé the singer and showman. He just might be a little too good for his 28 years. Now, the concert recording and behind the scenes footage on the accompanying DVD certainly could be a cynically constructed marketing vehicle for Bublé. After all, he's photogenic and the ladies seem to love him. But...that's not what I'm sensing. How Bublé came to love music from the Frank Sinatra/Bobby Darin era is hinted at by references to his grandfather. This comes across as genuine passion for the music, far beyond mere respectfulness.

I grew up listening to tons of Sinatra, Darin, Dean Martin and others so, yea, I could be falling prey to nostalgia a bit...but one thing is certain: Bublé can sing. The slow burn of "Fever" an "The Way You Look Tonight" is set against the uptempo "Moondance" and "For Once In My Life". There's also a beautiful version of the Bee Gees' "How Can You Mend A Broken Heart".

The concert ends with "My Funny Valentine". Here, a bunch of Bublé's influences show up. I hear some Sinatra, Darin and (surprisingly) Chet Baker.

So is Michael Bublé the "real thing"? That's hard to say, but I've gotta give him some credit: he's putting a ton of energy into, as his grandfather said, 'bringing the music back'. That can't be a bad thing.

Family Style - Vaughan Brothers

I heard a great segment on npr yesterday about The 100 Best Texas Songs. Melissa Block interviewed Texas Monthly writers Jeff McCord and John Morthland who, through various methods, came up with the list. Very interesting stuff. Their criteria:

"Rather than limiting ourselves to songs that are about Texas, we defined a Texas song as any song performed by a Texas artist. Who qualified? Anyone who was born here, even if he or she left the state while still in diapers. As for the non-natives, they needed to have spent a good part of their career inside the state lines, and their songs had to be a product of their time here or related in some way to the state."

The interview inspired me to pull out Stevie Ray & Jimmie's very cool record. "Hillbillies From Outerspace" is a great way to start off a weekend.

Oh, here's the top 10 of the Texas 100:

• She's About A Mover - Sir Douglas Quintet
• New San Antonio Rose - Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys
• That'll Be the Day - Buddy Holly and the Crickets
• Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain - Willie Nelson
• Tighten Up - Archie Bell and the Drells
• I Fought the Law - Bobby Fuller Four
• Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground - Blind Willie Johnson
• Stormy Monday Blues - T-Bone Walker
• Las Nubes - Little Joe y la Familia
• Me and Bobby McGee - Janis Joplin

Now there's a pile of fun.

Walk On The Wild Side

Sweet Jane

Before I began paying attention to Lou Reed, these were the only songs of his that made any impression on me. All of Lester Bangs' rants had no effect. Velvet who? Didn't matter. There was as yet no 'there' there for my adolescent brain to muckle onto. It took a few years a living (plus a whole pile 'o Rolling Stone, Creem and other rock propaganda) to figure out that, hey, there's just something about that weird dude and his even weirder voice.

But then...I turned into a jazz snob. There's no gettin' around it. Honkin', screechin' and cats-walking-on-piano sounds emanated from my stereo for several years. "When are they gonna stop practicing?" was the joke question. Well, they never really did stop 'practicing' in my mind, but some happy musical synchronicity brought Reed back into the picture.

Right around the time of the release of Lou Reed's New York (and subsequent airplay of "Dirty Blvd.") I heard the most amazing song on the after-work drive. The 'singer' sounded like Louis Armstrong gone insane. There were references to booze, strippers, trench coats and cleavage. Accompanied by just a drum kit, the 'singer' belts and scats it out. The tune was Tom Waits' "Pasties and a G-String" (from Small Change). In a very short timespan, I had developed a jones for oddly constructed male vocals.

As I dug into the coolness of New York the residue of Lester Bangs' incessant ReedRamblings(tm) came to mind. I got myself a copy of some live Velvet Underground record and discovered a whole nuther world 'o screech. Maybe Bangs wasn't nuts after all. Maybe I can figure out why I find myself enjoying those flat& wobbly vocals. Maybe the Honda Scooter ads made sense after all.

Fast forward to the present and Reed's new live album Animal Serenade. Instead of the early-Animal GlamRockOnSteroids sound, Lou's very talented band (second guitar/guitar synth, bass, drums, cello) delivers the goods in an elegant, almost cerebral fashion. The influence of wife and fellow art-weirdo Laurie Anderson, maybe? In any event, we are treated to some of Reed's latest ("The Raven"), 'newer' material ("Set The Twilight Reeling"), older rarities (Berlin's "Man Of Good Fortune" and "The Bed", "Small Town" from Songs For Drella), sturdy Reed classics ("Street Hassle") and the Velvets classic "Venus In Furs", with scorching Cello solo provided by Jane Scarpantoni.

There's also a song written and sung by bassist Fernando Saunders: "Revien Cherie". I've seen some reviewers spitting bile at this tune. Relax! The juxtaposition of Saunders' beautiful voice next to Reed's croak is what makes it work. What? Lou's not following your rules for his show? Get over it.

This record makes for a pretty neat Reed career retrospective and statement of where Reed is currently at. Some folks can't take the altered arrangements of the material but, hey, that's their problem. For somebody with such a varied career, I would expect nothing less.

bartender with granola dress curly hair up drove a scooter home

After many years of listen to jazz music, both traditional and skronkalicious, I figured I had most of the bases covered. Then a CD by Enrico Rava shows up. The list of jazz artists trumpeter Enrico Rava has played with is nothing short of amazing:

Gato Barbieri Steve Lacy Alex Schlippenbach (and the Globe Unity Orchestra) Carla Bley John Abercrombie Roswell Rudd Cecil Taylor Don Cherry Joe Lovano Charlie Haden Archie Shepp Tony Oxley Miroslav Vitous . . .

The list actually goes on for quite a while. What amazes me is the wide variety of music styles represented and: even though I'm familiar with every person on that list, I've never heard of Enrico Rava.

The Italian-born (Trieste, 1939) Rava, in addition to his work with members of the afore-mentioned contemporary jazz army, had a successful recording career with ECM Records during the 1970's and 80's. Easy Living is his first record with the label since 1986's Volver.

Rava switched from trombone to trumpet after attending a Miles Davis concert. But, is he a Miles clone? Not at all. While some of Miles' characteristic sparseness can be heard, Rava's sound is more wide open and introspective. A crazy (maybe even useless...but what the hey) analogy might be: Jim Hall playing with the Keith Jarrett trio...if Hall played the trumpet instead of guitar.

The instrumental lineup of trumpet, trombone, piano, double-bass and drums paints quite a few moods on Easy Living, from the pensive "Blancasnow" to the propulsive "Traveling Night" to the joyous "Hornette And The Drums Thing". Even at their most quiet, this group sounds like they're having a good time.

So now that I've recovered from the shock of Enrico Rava flying below my jazz radar, it is time to check out the rest of his musical universe.

For Alto - Anthony Braxton

This morning, one of the emails caught in my spam trap had the following Dadaist poetry subject line:

doubtful barnyard helga hundredth fulsome origin folly servile exculpatory celsius optoelectronic applause criteria devisee artful melissa sickle feldman

Now, isn't that a mouthfull? I especially like the "doubful barnyard helga" part. Could be a band name, or maybe a new gymnastics move, or something.

Anyway, the disconnected nature of this stuff inspired me to listen to some music with a certain amount of randomness...and this Braxton solo disc fits the bill. If you've never listened to Anthony Braxton before, well, I wouldn't recommend starting here. It's difficult listening. He's an interesting guy though. Most of his compositions are named by number ("Composition 187"), combinations of numbers ("1. Composition N. 169 + (186 + 206 + 214)"), or pictogram describing the relationships between song structures:

If you want to find out more about Anthony Braxton, try to find a used copy of Graham Lock's Forces In Motion, in which you will discover that Braxton may have too many brain cells in that head of his.

As it turns out, Air America stopped payment on a check to Multicultural Radio Broadcasting after it discovered that air time had been double booked on a station in Los Angeles:

Mr. Cohen, however, said that Multicultural owed money to Air America. He said that Mr. Liu's company had recently deposited a check from Air America for $315,000, and that it had cleared. But Mr. Cohen said that Air America had stopped payment on a second check, for $156,000, after Air America discovered that Multicultural had leased air time on its Los Angeles station to another programmer in February and March, before Air America went on the air on March 31. While not broadcasting during that time, Mr. Cohen said, Air America had already leased that time from Multicultural and was thus entitled to any fees collected.

Read more at the New York Times, Morons.org (luv that site name) and at Air America Radio's pseudo-Drudge commentary.

Back in the era of the skinny tie (for you young-uns out there, that would be the early 1980's) I met this guy who liked to call himself "Stevo".

Why?

Because he was a huge fan of Devo (this didn't seem even a little bit dorky to me back then). He was always introducing me to new music. I'd walk by his dorm room and he'd say "hey, check this out"...and shortly afterward a blast of something new & fresh would pin back my ears. The Specials, Gang of Four...I never really knew what to expect. It was a load of fun though as we would stand around soaking in tunes and feeling superior to the kids down the hall listening to Reo Speedwagon's High Infidelity.

One day Stevo turned me on to Joe Jackson's Beat Crazy. Except for "Is She Really Going Out With Him" I didn't know much about Jackson. After hearing this one tune though, the urge was strong to head to the record store and get a fix. Don't know exactly what it was, but the combination made me vibrate: a rockabilly-meets-"Secret Agent Man" guitar line, nervous percussion, Jackson's shouted refrains and Graham Maby's snaky bassline (I always thought of Maby as Jackson's secret weapon).

As you would expect, I became a big Joe Jackson fan, following him through the rest of his multifaceted career. While making my way through last year's Joe Jackson Band reunion effort, Volume 4, it struck me that there are so few artists capable of drawing together all characteristics of their musical life.

So what's all this blather have to do with Joe's new live disc Afterlife?

Well, the live reunion shows as documented here show just how well music from the various Jackson eras can hang together. A solo piano "Steppin' Out" segues into a raucous "One More Time" and then into the Volume 4 tunes "Take It Like A Man" and "Awkward Age". "Look Sharp" is followed by "Down To London" from the forgotten gem Blaze of Glory (it's out of print, write your Congressman). Then the classic "Beat Crazy". From there we go back to Look Sharp!'s "Fools In Love" (with a cool mid-song morph into the Yardbirds classic "For Your Love") and then back to the present with new songs "Love At First Light" and "Fairy Dust".

Jackson and his band end the show with blistering 'oldies': "Sunday Papers", "Don't Wanna Be Like That" and the punkish "Got The Time". The amazing thing is that none of this seems like a nostalgia trip. The old and new material come together to celebrate and revel in each other.

I don't own my skinny tie anymore (it was made of brown leather, if you've gotta know) and every so often I wonder what became of Stevo.

Get ready for this one:

Walter Chronkite is a DeadHead. He's also a good friend of Mickey Hart.

What the hey?!

Dang, definitely too much work going on.

The current spate of Java hack-o-rama is being supported musically by the soundtrack to PI. A wee smidge of Single Malt may have to be worked in there somewhere. Espcially after taking a peek at cnn.com to see the headline: "Chef admits he sawed off wife's head". Gees, and I thought I had a temper!

I'm sitting here watching Arnold Palmer play the last hole of his 50th (in a row!) Masters tournament. Pretty moving. I guess everybody's gotta get old...

Someone in the gallery just shouted "Thanks for all the years Arnie!". Pretty cool.

Second shot in front of the big bunker on the left.

Third shot pitched up onto the second tier to within 4 feet or so.

Crap! Missed the par putt.

Gees....I'm gettin' weepy...

Quartet For The End Of Time - Olivier Messiaen

Moments of sheer beauty and tenderness sometimes pop out of the most unexpected circumstances. One of them was surely Messiaen's Quartet For The End Of Time.

This morning I happened across an article about the composition. The very short story on this is that Messiaen composed it during his 'stay' at prisoner-of-war camp Stalag 8-A. It was first performed there on January 15, 1941.

This got me to thinking about the current state of affairs in Iraq...wondering if right now the seed of some unimaginable artistic event is being planted.

"The heart wants what the heart wants." That cliché is often trotted out to describe all manner of incongruous (or dysfunctional) relationships. In this case, it describes my relationship to Permission To Land.

I shouldn't like it...but I do.

This record has had mountains of press devoted to it. People love it, people hate it. They've saved rock & roll, they're pathetic. Innovators...or "Queen-lite".

It's all true. Every last drooling accolade and snotty put down. Pick your side. I don't care.

All I know is that on the strength of the buzz emanating from that inconclusive war of words, plus a single bizarre appearance on Letterman, my curiosity won out.

Actually, the Late Show appearance is a good place to start. Four butt-ugly guys playing a kind of sorta-metal that could have come right out of 1972. The singer's voice wavered from growl to shriek to an amusing faux-operatic falsetto. Even with the slightly off-pitch delivery (hey, who am I to judge? I can put up with both Fee Waybill and David Lee Roth!) I was intrigued. Somethin' elusive and mysterious was setting up camp in a little-used part of my memory.

So now with the CD in hand I set out to nail down what the fuss (this time internal) was about.

They're not just ripping off Queen. Oh, no. They're actually making something new out of nearly every rock cliché you can think of. From early metal to classic rock to pop metal to hair bands. It's all there...Every stupid drug reference, every chunky guitar intro, dual guitar solo, vocal exclamation ("Yayah!"), thudding tom and crashing ending.

I love every dumb minute of it.

It's like Spinal Tap and Tenacious D put through a blender while the Wayback Machine was running. You don't have to listen too closely to hear bits of Focus, Deep Purple, Bad Company, Queen, King Diamond, Cheap Trick, AC/DC, Kiss, Boston, Poison and even Bon Jovi.

It's rock cliché ventriloquism of the highest order. It's a load of fun.

Saviors of rock? Probably not. But with all of the truly dark stuff going on in the world, The Darkness sure have brightened up a little corner of it.

Here & There - Elton John

Ok, so I walked into the kitchen last night right in the middle of American Idol...and was informed that John Stevens had attempted "Crocodile Rock". Glad I missed it. I like the guy's voice but the selection of that particular tune shows he's lacking in the judgement department. What the heck were his alternate choices? "Philadelpha Freedom"? "Your Sister Can't Twist (But She Can Rock & Roll)"? "The Bitch Is Back"?!!!

I got over my shock in time to witness George Huff blast off with "Take Me To The Pilot". Oh yea, that was fun. It dislodged an old musical brain particle, causing me to dig out my old vinyl copy of John's underrated 1976 live album. The original record ends with a blistering "Take Me To The Pilot".

The current CD version contains all sorts of goodies left off of the original release. Check it out.

Normally, an artist's music speaks for itself. This is no less true with Carla Bley. However, she's such a unique-lookin' individual that I thought the visual applied: because her music is one of a kind as well.

A pianist/keyboardist, composer and all-around jazz alchemist, Carla Bley builds musical stories that live at opposing ends of several emotional scales.

Sounds high-fallutin', eh? It's not.

Here are a few of the emotional spectra traversed by a typical Bley composition: humor and introversion, darkness and elation, sadness and nearly violent joy.

Violent joy? Hey, didn't Mingus write the book on that stuff? Yes. Bley just put her twist on it.

Carla Bley has performed with and composed for an impressive list of musicians including: Paul Bley, Jimmy Giuffre, George Russell, Art Farmer, Gary Burton, Steve Swallow, Charlie Haden , and Pharoah Sanders. More impressive still is the wide range of ensembles: from simple duos to sextets to double-quartets to big band. All of the music carries her distinctive signature.

Bley's :rarum collection contains selections representing nearly all aspects of her 30 years under the ECM umbrella. The humor is evident from the first few bars of the opening track "Baseball" (from 1999's 4x4). It's a jazz meditation (sort of) that uses "Take Me Out To The Ballgame" as inspiration. It's funny and fun.

The rest of the disc moves chronologically backward through Bley's career. "Major" is a piano/bass duet with Steve Swallow taken from the live Are We There Yet? "End of Vienna" is a track from the quirky Fancy Chamber Music. Larger ensemble compositions are represented by "On The Stage In Cages" (from Big Band Theory) and the title track from Fleur Carnivore. The slightly smaller group from Social Studies presents "Walking Batteriewoman" (I like the mischievous version on Duets: Carla Bley and Steve Swallow, but that's my problem).

The final trio of songs begins in the 1980's with the tune "Silence", written by Charlie Haden and found on his The Ballad Of The Fallen. Next up is "Why", from what is probably Bley's most 'famous' record: Escalator Over The Hill. "Why" is a weird, almost Zappa-esque, waltz-time song with vocals by Linda Rondstadt. "Ictus", the last selection, is the most 'outside' composition in the set. Bley composed it for the Jimmy Giuffre 3 (with Paul Bley and Steve Swallow).

One again, the ECM :rarum series has come up with an excellent distillation of an artist's career. To me, allowing the artist to choose makes all the difference. Check out what Carla has to say about her ECM longevity:

And Manfred Eicher, with similar single-mindedness, has never decided to exchange me for someone who would sell more albums or better reflect his taste in music. Like a permissive parent, he has put up with my various musical directions without complaint, even though some of them must have caused him concern.

Too bad there aren't more record labels employing that kind of thought process.

Last night, being too tired to read, write a review or even listen to music (that's when I know I'm tired) I decided to do a little vegging in front of the tube. The second show I watched was on the Food Network. It was about the top 5 truck stops in the United States. Aside from the sheer amount of food offered at these places, the other thing that really struck me was how genuine most of the people were: both truckstop workers and truck drivers. Like most of us, they're out there just doing their job.

Why did I notice this?

Well, a couple of days ago, while cooking a birthday dinner (Pad Thai) for my dad, a saw a couple of the latest presidential campaign ads.

The first was out of John Kerry's camp and had to do with the offshoring of jobs. The ad reports that Bush says that sending jobs overseas "makes sense". The problem is that Bush didn't say it, it was in fact a quote from Bush's council of Economic Advisers. The action of Bush being attached to the statement makes it sound like he's being a cheerleader for the loss of U.S. jobs.

The second ad was from the Bush side. In a similar fashion, it attacks Kerry for his supposed support of a 50 cents per gallon gas tax increase. The truth is that Kerry at one time did support such a tax in the context of deficit reduction over ten years ago. Further, Kerry never sponsored or voted for such legislation. The second ad is also 'enhanced' by some old-fashioned black & white movie footage and happy music.

When I see these ads they both scream out to me: "YOU ARE TOO STUPID TO UNDERSTAND".

So I guess my question is: why do we, as Americans, accept this? We're supposedly the defenders of the free world. Beacon of democracy. The reference standard. And yet the way we elect our president, the most powerful person in the free world, boils down to one giant (and embarrassing) case of "he said, she said". The process is sick inside.

We've got a long, long campaign season and the television portion of it, where much of the money is spent, will undoubtedly get worse. I suppose it's acceptable to shake the bits of truth from the ad spots by going to FactCheck, but it just seems wrong.

This is no respectful tribute to their roots. Nope. Honkin' On Bobo is Aerosmith's randy and justabout out of control take on the blues. The sticker on the jewel case says "Blues Done Aerosmith Style!". Hell yea! They weren't kidding.

The more rocking tunes, "Road Runner", "Baby, Please Don't Go" , "Eyesight To The Blind" strike me as the kind of thing pulled out as an encore to close out a sweaty two-hour rock show. The crowd's exhausted? Give 'em a little more.

Surprises? Steven Tyler's harmonica hasn't sounded this good since the early seventies (and the liner photo of the woman with a harp tucked into her jeans is a nice tribute to James Cotton's Live & On The Move). A very cool rendition of Mississippi Fred McDowell's "Back Back Train" with Joe Perry taking the vocal lead while playing Dobro and Hurdy Gurdy (hats off to Tracy Bonham for terrific backing vocals).

Maybe the biggest surprise of all is the sound. Recent Aerosmith records have been slopped up with so many layers of digital crud as to be nearly unlistenable (I like to call this syndrome "I've Got 128 Tracks and I'm Gonna Use 'Em"). Honkin' On Bobo sees Aerosmith working with their 70's era producer Jack Douglas, who produced two of my favorite records from back then: Toys In The Attic and Rocks. Gone is the digital sheen, replaced with good old fashioned loud guitars, cracklin' drums and sharp harmonica. It sounds the way an Aerosmith record should.

The album ends with a fine, soulful and traditional "Jesus Is On The Main Line".

An Aerosmith record ending on a gospel standard. Who woulda thunk it?

Matthew Bellamy and Thom Yorke have a few things in common. The first is that they both are very adept at fusing lyrics to winding and interesting melodies. The second: I usually have no idea what they're talking about. Both men front 'rock' bands that draw from the same pool of sound. There are moments of claustrophobia as well as bombast.

Muse is more of a 'rock' band in that they're not afraid of make 'the big noise'. It can be argued that Radiohead can make 'the big noise' too. Yes, they can...but they don't really seem to enjoy it.

After the fifth or sixth listen through Absolution, some observations:

• Muse reminds me of Coldplay (or at least that "Politik" thing)
• "Time Is Running Out" comes from that Yorke school of paranoid vocalisms
• There's an awful lot of yearning going on here (maybe like Creed-meets-Coldplay, but not nearly so icky)
• I can't figure out the lyrics, but there's obviously something important going on

The big noise? There are lots of them (the piano-pounding crescendos of "Apocalypse Please" for one) but the most resonant for me comes during "Stockholm Syndrome". Now here is where Muse let go. The snarling opening guitar riff wouldn't be out of place on a Rush record. Later in the tune are some crushing power chords that owe a lot to Teen Spirit-era Nirvana.

There is also one particularly great 'small noise": the string-driven ballad "Blackout". If Freddie Mercury had done this song, we would have called it brilliant. Seriously.

I didn't plan on this review to take the road of "is Muse a faux-Radiohead?", it just sorta happened. The similarities between the two groups, vocalists in particular, can't be ignored. In the grand scheme of it all, groups like Muse will survive on their ability to stand out. Have they accomplished that on Absolution? Uh..sort of.

Just got back from poetry night at the Blackbird. Kinda cool to see all these completely different types there.

A few mildly amazing things happened:

• This guy gets up to read about his favorite musician: Harry Chapin. I'm thinking, uh oh...but it ends up being one of the best of the night
• A woman reads two poems for this 15 year old girl who's too shy top get up there. I peek over at the girl during the readings and she's just about to burst
• There's this vaguely asian-looking woman sitting behind me who has this running commentary going as each reader makes it to the mic. It becomes apparent that she knows most of the people there. When it's her turn she turns out to be amazing. One of her poems is about a woman who takes a telemarketing phone call, allowing the woman on the other end to complete her entire spiel...before asking her what she's wearing. The sales woman hangs up...soon followed by the phone ringing again: it's the sales woman's husband, complaining of her perversion.

I just love the odd combinations of personalities at events like this. At one point a guy gets up there...he appears to be the 'rock star' of this crowd. He's loose, funny and pretty entertaining. He's followed by this short dude who's painfully nervous and seemingly introverted. He can't make eye contact.

I think I had too much coffee.

Currently, on Air America Radio, Al Franken is discussing wrestling with G. Gordon Liddy.

Surreal.

We Saw a Bozo Under the Sea - Zoot Horn Rollo

It's a good thing I bought my dad a nailgun for his birthday, because it's been raining up here in the northeast for what seems like the better part of a week. We're having the wood delivered today so as to get an early jump on the ark-building project tomorrow morning. Somehow, "We Saw a Bozo Under The Sea" just sorta fit.

Rollo (real name: Bill Harkleroad) was the guitar player in Captain Beefheart's Magic Band for several albums including: Unconditionally Guaranteed, Clear Spot, Spotlight Kid, Lick My Decals Off, Baby and of course, the ultimate in weird & unique music fun: Trout Mask Replica.

Rollo's album here isn't nearly as weird as I expected it would be. It's an all-instrumental 'jazz' record that every so often tosses out Zappa elements here, Marc Ribot chunks there. A track or two get a little too close to the F-word for me (like Larry Coryell, maybe) but taken as a whole it's a fine listen.

My dad turns 80-something today. He'll spend part of the evening eating the pad thai I'm making (assuming I don't screw it up). Then of course we'll all eat too much cake, fall into a stupor and watch the latest episode of The Apprentice. Or something.