Baseball season is over and that sux. For me anyhoo… Ran across this today related to MLB walk-up tunes and thought maybe I could keep the mojo going for another day. We’ve discussed walk-up tunes before. Here are just a few examples:
NLDS Walk-up Music: Rockies Try to Stave Off Last Dance of 2009
Talkin’ Baseball Walk-Up Music
This one seems worthy of note. So check out what The SF Giants‘ resident-oddball (and I mean that in a mostly good way) is into:
CLICK ME. DARE YA.
This one puts me in a Cold Sweat…or…makes me wanna put your ray gun to my head. Either way you figger it, someone seriously ripped someone off here and the guilty party is either David Bowie or James Brown.
A couple of weeks ago Mr. Moderator made a west coast trip to The Back Office to discuss some Q3 RTH ventures. As part of this company retreat we attended a taping of Conan, complete with VIP tickets (true story).
Proof
Steve Wynn and the Miracle 3
That I am a co-producer of this blog-thing that led to some dude emailing me to ask if I wanted to interview Steve Wynn actually and truly is one of my proudest accomplishments. The music of Dream Syndicate founder and solo artist extrodinaire, Steve Wynn has played an important part in my musical and creative evolution. All of us here likely have at least one artist or band that has made a big personal difference. Well Steve is one of my top few and I’m still giddy that he actually answered my questions. Living proof that the 18 year-old rock nerd in me is alive and thriving.
Steve Wynn & The Miracle 3 are going to be playing Saturday night in Philadelphia at the North Star Bar with The Fleshtones (see Peter Zaremba interview here), Palmyra Delran, and Stupidity. You can go here, http://northstarbar.com for more info and to buy tickets.
The only band that I’ve seen live more than Steve Wynn is Meat Puppets, mostly ’cause of time in Arizona. Wynn puts on a great, fun, tight, energetic and engaging show. Honestly, some of the best live shows that I have ever seen. And I’ve seen Foghat! True, unfortunately.
So without further ado…
Confession upfront: The “friend” discussed here is me. I have album issues and am reluctant to chase down and/or listen to singles. Using iTune’s Genius Playlist thingy is about as close as I get. I’m working on getting over my condition and I have found a most unexpected path.
Years ago when Guided By Voices was being hailed as the-next-great-thing I read about the bands they were compared to and influenced by and blah blah blah. This led me to suspect that I would dig them. According to said experts, I should run-out-and-get a CD of theirs called Bee Thousand. So I did. I listened to it. I listened to it again. I even tried listening to it by skipping from song-to-song, which is unlike me. To no avail. I can’t say I think “they suck” as it seemed good enough I suppose. I could listen to it again and probably rip holes in it but I don’t see the point in that. Let’s just say that I haven’t listened to it since.
In mod-like fashion Mr. Moderator recently gave me a flash drive with a bunch of singles-like stuff on it. Loads of it I dug. None of it I disliked. I was playing it in my car via the USB Aux thingy and it didn’t always reveal the artist/song/album on the radio display. I actually liked that I was frequently unaware of who was playing the song. I had no prejudgement on any of these particular tracks. Of all the tracks, I kept coming back to one over and over again. It quickly became my favorite among so many that I liked. I even misunderstood a word that I assumed was in the title. I thought the guy was singing “Hey, black girls, only wanna get you high.” I thought that was funny, gutsy, and cool and so I Googled that phrase. Other than a number of links quoting the fairly obvious Rolling Stones reference, I kept seeing that Guided By Voices did a song that went “Hey glad girls, only wanna get you high.” At first I thought that there was no way it could be GBV as I didn’t really like GBV. I was wrong. Here’s the tune:
CAUTION: Please be aware that some of the following content is likely Not Safe for Work viewing, depending on where you work. I don’t add the potentially offensive material for salacious reasons. Rather I only offer the truth of the situation.
I hate to post this on the heels of the, arguably, new high water mark set by KingEd and Mr. Mod. Their interview and backstage hang with Nick Lowe was indeed impressive and I don’t want to detract from that in any way. However I do want to say that I, sammymaudlin, have been fortunate to top even that mountain top.
Last night, Ms. Maudlin and I went to a local-ish fair, Conejo Valley Days, to watch and dance to a local Fleetwood Mac tribute band called Belladonna, http://www.belladonna-music.com. Note that they, and rightly so, said to beware of http://www.belladonna.com. Don’t shoot the messenger. Here they are making lovin’ fun:
Good and fine. They were fun as usual. BUT the band that opened for them was far, far more. They were so much more than I, or you, could possibly have hoped for. That I was able to glimpse them at a place like this is beyond comprehension. And “no,” I was not able to interview them. And “no,” I was not able to hang backstage with them. But no matter, as who they are and that I was within eye-shot of them is enough to humbly put me at the pinnacle of the RTH mountain top. I should note that, due to my respect for them I chose not to make eye contact and rather looked nervously to the side when the opportunity presented itself. For the record, I did not drink a drop, yet the shear power of their performance impacted me severely when the show was over:
I would’ve categorized this as “News” but…really? “News”?! I received this email the other day from a local radio station and it was entitled:
Here’s a quote from the note:
“A whole new world…” That’s what the legendary Joe Walsh told me as he described life as a sober Rock star. He’s feeling great, and we couldn’t be happier for him. I thought you might want to see the chat I had with Joe…”
Lots of questions come to mind after receiving this email and watching the video.
As many of you know, I (Rock Town Hall’s own sammymaudlin) suffered a “traumatic brain injury” on February 16 of this year. It was really just a freak accident. Sadly no drugs or alcohol were involved. Even though I only fell in my hallway the “scale” of the fall was recorded as that of a “backwards fall from a 2-story building.” I was induced into a coma for 2 weeks to control the brain swelling. And to boot, my 12-year-old son’s appendix burst while I was holed up in a hospital for 6 weeks.
Anyhoo…It was quite the stressful time for both my family and me.
So many folks came to our aid with supportive emails, snail mailed cards, financial contributions (Q: Ya know how much money a self-employed guy makes when he can’t work? A: Zip!), meals for the family, yard care… It was amazing and beautiful to see how many people did so much to help out. Without a doubt I now feel more connected to life, love, people, and more.
Blah, blah, blah. The purpose of this post is to personally thank my peeps here at RTH. The posted support, emailed support, and community/financial support via Sausages For Sammy was overwhelming and deeply appreciated. Many of you I know personally and my love for you is el grande. And many of the RTHers that helped out I have only met once and some I’ve never even met in person at all! For these folks I don’t so much take your support personally as much as I do a testament to this cool community that we have all built together. A place so great to many of us that when one of us was in need, you did what you could. The Reverend sums it best for me here:
