I do have actual new music on the way—some of Springsteen’s back catalog, sent to me cheap thanks to BMG—but until then, it’s time to continue to work off the bootleg backlog. [It sucks being an obsessive completionist. Maybe not so much being a friend of one, because Misty has more Police bootlegs that she knows what to do with, but hey.]
Other than one notable exception, last week’s selections rocked:
Yes, yes, terribly behind and all that. I’m just gonna power through and catch up.
The week of the 11th was dominated by Tom Brosseau:
Tom Brosseau’s Grand Forks. I would normally use the terms “solid but sparse” to describe Brosseau, but … well, then that’s what I’d say for all three of these. His writing reflects his home in North Dakota in that regard. His newest record is really great, evocative of his sophomore effort, What I Mean to Say Is Goodbye, which is what I first found and fell in love with.
Tom Brosseau’s Empty Houses Are Lonely. I’m actually kinda glad now that this isn’t what I picked up next of Brosseau’s; I just never got around to getting this last year. It’s not that it’s not a good record—I give it three stars—but it’s mellow, lightly instrumented, and pretty lo-fi. It sorta takes some time to wear into my ears…
Tom Brosseau’s self-titled record. Now I know why folks in LA made a big deal over him at first. Three-and-a-half stars.
I’ve emailed most folks who’ve used my old gmorris@ijsm.org address on this score, but in case there are others: gmorris@ijsm.org goes dead at the end of March 2007. I’ve been using gfmorris AT gfmorris DOT net for a couple years now, and I’ve forwarded the ijsm.org mail here. But in analyzing my incoming SPAM email, I’m finding that the signal:noise ratio is <0.01. That’s past my law of diminishing returns, so I’ll stop the forwarding very soon, and mailing me there won’t do you any good.
I will do the same with gfmorris AT gfmorris DOT com later this year, but it gets more legitimate traffic.
Well, a funny thing happened on the way to the end of Doug Ross’s coaching career at UAH … our boys went from the lowest seed at our conference tournament to the tourney champions. Unfrickingbelievable. All the teams I’ve followed, all the times we’d been to the CHA tourney final—this was our fifth appearance—and we win it with a team that went 10-19-3 in the regular season. Criminy.
Yes, folks … we’re 13-19-3 and in the NCAA’s. It gets better when you learn that UAH is 5-0-1 in their last six games. Yeah, we were 8-19-2 not that long ago. Just a horribly long start to the season, I guess. 
Of course, I’m on my way to the regionals to broadcast the games. We start off with a game against Notre Dame tomorrow at 4:05 p.m. Central; that game will be streamed on the Internet at 730UMP.com, thanks to the fine folks at WUMP. They’ve really stepped up for us—all the postseason games we play will be broadcast by them or their sister station, WVNN. Thanks a ton, guys. Zack Bennett and Thom Abraham are our heroes of the week!
Oh, did I forget to mention that my boy Mike Anderson is broadcasting with me? I think I did. This is gonna be awesome.
I type this entry from a Panera in Nashville [on 21st, in case you're curious]. I was going to dine at the lovely Fido’s a bit further south on 21st, but damn if their parking lot wasn’t completely and utterly full. [Bry, I'm right next to Satco, man. I have a hankering for some terribly greasy Mexican food that I'll regret at 2:00 a.m. Wish you were here!]
Why am I stopped? Don’t I drive all night? Well, see … I have a fantasy baseball draft tonight, and unlike, oh, Ronzilla, I’m not so lame that I’ll skip the draft despite needing to be on the road. I’ll do our draft [which usually goes under two hours], finish that up, and then get back on the road. Tonight I’m staying in Elizabethtown, KY, and I’ll get up early in the morning and finish the drive. I might yet beat the Pep Band bus to Grand Rapids.
More later. Should be a fun time.
[And yes, I'm posting because, as Mom noted in a phone call yesterday, I've been posting nothing but links lately. Yes, I'm terribly busy at work. No, I can't talk about any of it. I don't really want to talk about it, anyway. ;)]
In honor of seeing him on the 9th, I bought out the rest of Tom Brosseau’s collection. This drove my listening habits for last week. [It should tell you how nutty last week was that I'm just now posting this. ]
Tom Brosseau’s Grand Forks. Tom Brosseau’s Empty Houses Are Lonely. Tom Brosseau’s self-titled record. For the first time in some time, I didn’t have a Wilco bootleg last week.
Last [er, Friday] night, I drove up to Nashville to go see Sandra McCracken play a show at The Rutledge. It ended up being an interesting night: she and Drew Holcomb were the late show, so I had to go to the Mexican place next door to kill some time. [Let's not discuss how I got to the venue four hours before the show, shall we?]
I learned a lot of things, though:
Turns out that, as I sat in my car waiting for the early show to end, Sandra pulled in next to me to park. I waved, hopped out of my car, and offered to load in, knowing that she’s about six months along at this point. “I love this part of it!” she beamed. “I haven’t loaded in for about four months, other than maybe a guitar.”
I didn’t realize that this show would be with a full band—Kenny Meeks on electric, Mark Polack on bass, and Garett Buell on the drum kit—so it was doubly awesome. I got to catch up with GB on the Caedmon’s tracking, talk with Mark briefly, and share an awkward “we’ve never been introduced, but we’re still both too ‘guy’ to introduce ourselves” moment with Kenny to talk about hockey. To say nothing of how great it sounded. I was just above the sound board, so I bet my recording kicks ass. I’ll find out later today … for now, I think I ought to go to bed, as this is two nights in a row up this late, and I have to sing at both services today.
Q: What do Caedmon’s Call and Jars of Clay have in common?
A: They’re both still trying to live up to their first two major label releases in a lot of folks’ eyes.
In groups of people about my age cohort [say, three or so years either side of my age], we associate both bands with all the great music the bands were putting out when we were [finishing high school|going through college|starting post-college life]. Because we associate those songs with those days, anything that comes out since gets shortchanged because it’s not coming at what we see as the prime of our lives.
[Thought prompted by the awesomeness that is "Crazy Times" from Jars's Much Afraid.]
[[Followed by: am I going to associate the absolute awesomeness that is M. Ward's oeuvre to date with the sheer shittiness that has been 1Q2007? Man, I hope not.]]
But think about it: what good music do you associate with a great time in your life, and subsequently consider anything by that band to be sub-par as a result, whether or not it’s really sub-par? [Because I'm still with Derek on the "Share the Well is the best album Caedmon's ever put out" bandwagon.]
It’s been fun to watch people I know take to Twitter. [Especially Alex.] Ross Mayfield writes about the rapid adoption—using the term “tip the tuna”, which I’m wholly unfamiliar with and brings up a point I wholly agree with:
Good thing too, because back when it was called twittr people held back believing what they posted would be interrupting on mostly mobile devices. Lately I think people just go for it, and most consumption is on the web or other clients. I’d love to see some research on posts/user, client use, tracking @username, group identities, geographic dispersion and revealing other undesigned conventions.
That was exactly my original hangup in signing up for it. Like Alex, I find that Twitteriffic is practically perfect for the service, and I lament the lack of a Windows-based counterpart client. [But then I hardly have the time to update at work these days.]
The best thing about Twitter is the constraints: a simple system with a simple vocabulary of verbs, limited by 140 characters. It’s well nigh awesome. Constraints are good—they encourage creativity. Blank slates? Too intimidating.
![[caedmonscall.net]](http://rocksmyfaceoff.net/images/rmfo/ccneticon.jpg "The Official Fan Site for Caedmon’s Call.")
![[derekwebb.net]](http://rocksmyfaceoff.net/images/rmfo/dwneticon.jpg "The Official Fan Site for Derek Webb. (Last updated 07/03/2004 04:24)")
![[rmfo-blogs.com]](http://rmfo-blogs.com/images/rmfoblog.png "An experiment in Weblogs for community members.")
![[rocksmyfaceoff.net]](http://ijsm.org/wordpress/wp-content/themes/ijsmorgv3/images/rmfoicon.jpg "The server I run.")
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