Nostradamic Twins Prediction

Relax, fellow Twins fans. The Twins will win the American League Central in 2010. The Tigers put on a run there, but they mainly did that because they had 6 consecutive home serieses against last place teams. That has to be some kind of a record for ease of schedule and yet all they could do was pull roughly even with the Twins. Now the Tigers have lost six straight (which the Twins will not do this year) and the Twins will play Detroit a bunch of times in the remainder of the season, winning the season series handily.

What of the White Sox? Well, they were 8 games back once. They have played their best baseball of the season and are only 2 and a half up, even though the Twins just suffered through the worst month they will have all year. Peavy is injured and the Sox will fall away. It might be close, but the Twins won't even need game 163. Also, Duensing, Roy Oswalt, or Dan Haren will be in the rotation by the end of the season.

Sadly, they will go to New York, sneak in a single win at Yankeeish Stadium behind a revitalized Kevin Slowey, then blow it at "home" at Target Field, losing the ALDS 3-1.

Incidentally, my baseball predictions are never wrong.

The Long and Winding Road

Today, we answer the question "How many sites do you have songs posted at?"

Many years ago I put up some songs at mp3.com. That site was cool then, and at different times I had "hit" songs on their download chart. "New Christmas Song" was among the leaders in the admittedly small category "traditional holiday song" and "Wave 61" was the #1 "surf instrumental" for a while. Then that site started using a different business model and it was all Eminem and Pink. It doesn't look especially appealing to me now either.

One of the cooler things about mp3.com was hearing C2, a one-man band from Italy that I really like.

Scot was nice enough to put up some of the songs after mp3.com stopped being free and that page is still up, which I've always appreciated. Six Songs at Scot's.

I tried just putting them at my geocities (now Yahoo! Small Business) site, but then a person had to right-click and choose "download linked file" because I don't know how to program that to happen in html. Not a super option.

I used a site called band-mates.com for a while that did free hosting and tried to make money selling reviews. It was pretty cool but short-lived. That is totally gone.

garageband.com is really cool, but sadly it ends Thursday. I heard a lot of great music that way - stuff I still listen to a lot. I reviewed tons of songs by other people, many of which were very inspiring.

Something called iLike is apparently associated with garageband.com, and that has the most Memphis available for free at the moment. That's where Amanda Cey heard my song about her dad Ron, so that's cool. I'll leave it there, but I never really do anything with it.

If this reverbnation.com thing is as cool as two other guys say it is (Cody Weathers and Kevin Higdon, similarly independent guys to whom music is very important) I will put a lot of stuff there. I twittered William Shatner to tell him to record "The End of the Skies" on his new album he's making. Wouldn't he be the ultimate person to sing that? So the new, definitive, actively managed place to get my music online is reverbnation.com.

Someday I should just make a CD like other, more motivated bands do.

Congratulations Jim Thome!

Heartiest memphisevans.com congratulations to Jim Thome, who passed Harmon Killebrew on the all time home run list today, taking over sole posession of sixth place. Also to Harmon Killebrew, whose secondary message was perfectly clear when he spoke in his congratulatory video of Thome being a credit to major league baseball. For anyone paying attention, the list now looks like this:

1. Henry Aaron 755
2. Babe Ruth 714
3. Willie Mays 660
4. Ken Griffey, Jr. 630
5. Frank Robinson 586
6. Jim Thome 574
7. Harmon Killebrew 573
8. Reggie Jackson 563
9. Mike Schmidt 548
10. Mickey Mantle 536

Major league baseball, with its long and noble history of not paying attention, still includes the following notable cheaters: Barry Bonds, Sammy Sosa, Alex Rodrguez, Mark McGwire, Rafael Palmeiro, Manny Ramirez. memphisevans.com does not include these men's numbers, so I am now your superior source for actual major league baseball information. Also, I do not use flash and will not cause your web browser to "unexpectedly shut down".

Congratulations, Jim Thome!

Top 10 Paul McCartney Backup Singers

10. Michael Jackson
9. Bowie (Live Aid)
8. Abe, Brian, Rusty, & Wix
7. Paul
6. Ringo
5. Hamish
4. Denny
3. Linda
2. George
1. John

Discuss.

David Bowie Ruuuuuulez and Other Less Important Things

I know I've mentioned it before but I just must say again how very, very much I have been enjoying the work of David Bowie in the last year or so. With the purchase of this remarkably inexpensive (used) and fairly comprehensive box set of his five most recent studio albums I now have all of his currently available studio and live albums.

The cover is not immediately appealing and it's not the place to start if you've never really heard anything by him, but man it is just so good. Very inspiring. I don't know why I never got into him when I was a kid.

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Do you have World Cup Fever? No, neither do I. If America was going to enjoy soccer as a spectator sport it would have happened by now. Yahoo should give it up and its headlines should remind us exclusively that there has been an oil spill.

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So the oil spill was bad enough and everything no doubt, but another bad thing about it was it was the final nail in the coffin of any Americans giving a darn about Haiti. Remember when Haiti was all over the Super Bowl? Remember when Haiti got $10 just by having Americans text? It worked because we didn't even have to get up off our couches. Remember...wait, what was I talking about? Sorry. Nevermind. OIL SPIIIIILLLLLLL!

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Remember the '80s? We were all watching The A-Team and Karate Kid and the Celtics were playing the Lakers in the NBA Finals. Those sure were the good old...hey, wait a minute. Our mass culture is a vomiting dog. Nostalgia is the dog going back and eating it.

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David Bowie played Andy Warhol in the interesting movie Basquiat. Jean-Michel Basquiat is listed as a Haitian artist on Haiti's wikipedia page. This is not just one of those totally random things. It all ties together. With soccer. 'Night.

Or Am I Just Too Old?

You know how sometimes you watch a movie or tv show you used to really love and you're just like, "Why did I like this? This is crap!" I recently invested four and a half hours of my time in watching Dances With Wolves. And guess what? That is still a great freaking movie. And it made me realize something I like about old movies.

In the past, if creators of films wanted something to be in a movie, they had to create that thing or a very near facsimile of that thing in real life, then point a camera at it. Movies that are made this way are fundamentally different than movies now. Even movies that could have been made this way in the past are given superfluous special effects, usually by Industrial Light & Magic and a staff of hundreds, all of whom get their names in the overlong credits.

I remember watching the otherwise excellent movie Primary Colors about the election of a pseudonymous Bill Clinton. There's one scene where a character is driving in a car. The reflections on the car window jumped off the screen, took me out of the story, and screamed, "Look! I'm a computer! We added scenery reflections after we shot this scene. We did it for the same reason dogs lick their butts - BECAUSE WE CAN! I'm a computer! This is a movie! These are actors! La la la la la!"

I'm so used to this happening now that I was dreading the moment in Dances With Wolves when I'd see the special effect and go, "Oh yeah, it's that part of the movie where something totally obviously fake intrudes." Never happened. I watched the making of feature (also old-school, btw) and when the script called for a buffalo hunt they actually got real-world buffalo sculptures, covered them in real-looking fur, smashed them into the ground using various ramps and ropes, and pointed cameras at them while they were smashing into the ground. They got real Native Americans who rode horses in a herd of stampeding buffalo and pointed cameras at them while they did that. They trained a real wolf and pointed a camera at it. Sure it was hard. But it's so very much more effective at drawing me into the world of the movie and making it feel real.

It seems like no one will ever make a movie like this again. I liked Up, which was fully a cartoon, and I liked Moon, which was modern sci-fi with seriously batty, mind-blowing special effects. But I would love to see a new movie that creates its reality by making things in the real world and pointing cameras at them as they do their thing. What is the most recent great movie that has no intrusive special effects? It can't possibly be Dances With Wolves, can it?

There's this whole era of late 1990s/early 2000s movies where they used computer effects when they wouldn't have had to. And the effects weren't that good yet and so the worlds of the movies are kind of emotionally uninhabitable. Unfortunately the Star Wars prequels fall right in the middle and serve as cautionary tales of this era.

There's an interesting, contemporaneous parallel in the world of baseball, with a whole era of superstars who will never be taken seriously as Hall of Fame candidates. Would Rafael Palmero have hit 500 homers without the drugs? We'll never know and he'll always live under a cloud of shame and he'll never be in the Hall.

So please, someone make a movie by creating real things and pointing cameras at them. And if you're going to play baseball, stay off the drugs and high on life.

Oh, and don't even talk to me about the 1980 Yoda puppet or 1983 Jabba puppet versus their fake incarnations in the prequels. Blech.

Internet Flotsam

This is what happens when I pay attention to the news...

Gordon Brown. A politician in trouble for speaking his mind and probably being right. Everyone knows someone who parrots bigoted garbage about immigrants. Sounds like that's what GB had just been forced to endure with a straight face. Nothing makes people angry like being told the truth, so this actually costs him votes in England's PM race. The story.

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If, like me, you love to observe the contrast between a person with a truly unique talent for communicating through the arts and a run-of-the-mill technician, you simply must watch this. Shatner!.

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While you're there you should watch this unreal, terrifying mascot dunk. Where are Bango's parents? Where is OHSA?

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As one of the billions of victims of the 2000 elections, I admit to a grudge against Florida. I was heartened to learn that Florida may lose some or at least not gain as many congressional seats based on current census results. Ohio, maybe you could lose a few censi as well. Y Floriduh cant reed. If they trickle down to Minnesota, as the article suggests they might, so much the better.

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"This is Alabama. We speak English. If you wanna live here, learn it." May I introduce to you Alabama's next governor, Tim James? A master of the zeitgeist. Still, why does he keep stopping the tape, moving away from the camera and then walking towards it?

And...I'm done paying attention to the news for the day.

Pulling Out All The Stops

Fellow musicians,

Are you certain your album is done? Have you considered any of the following enhancements, used so successfully by the artists noted? Consider using the following "stops" as in "pulling out all the". They are not mutually exclusive and I have begun creating a song on which I intend to use all fourteen. Use all fourteen on every song on your album and I will refund your recording costs if you don't win a grammy*.

1. Children's Choir. Nothing says sincerity like the innocent voices of little ones. If you really, really mean what you are saying in your song, you simply have no other alternative. (Tina Turner's We Don't Need Another Hero, Bob Dylan's They Killed Him)

2. Modulate up a whole step. It's like writing a whole new song. There is an entire website dedicated the study and promotion of this practice. I have written two songs (Powerful Statement, We'll Go On Forever) that each do this two times or more. Make sure the kids really nail the first few notes of the new key - that can be tough. (Barry Manilow's Mandy, Looks Like We Made It, and every other Barry Manilow song)

3. Instruments drop completely out then blast back in after a big vocal line or total silence. Our ears need a break and then they need to be hit harder than ever right away. (Semisonic's Closing Time)

4. Rap break. Allows use of the very hip "feat." tag and will attract a whole new demographic to your music. (R.E.M.'s Radio Song and more recently The Outsiders)

5. Spoken section. Again just proving the sincerity. There is no reason you can't use all five of these so far in the same song: after a rap break, have your music track blast back in a whole step up with children speaking the words. This will not ruin anyone's life. (Elvis' Are You Lonesome Tonight)

6. Operatic chords and melody. This is harder to quantify, but I know it when I hear it. I think in C it would go something like this: d minor-G dominant 7-C Major 7-F Major 7-Bflat-E dominant 7-a minor-A dominant 7. (Elvis' My Boy or The Sound of Your Cry, possibly Gloria Gaynor's I Will Survive)

7. Tension between scale degrees 3 and 4. Mi and Fa yield some real greatness when they're the main part of your melody. I noticed this when I really studied the wonderful chorus of Elton John's Mona Lisas And Mad Hatters and elsewhere I can't think of right this second.

8. Pick scrapes. Why would you only use the tip of your guitar pick when you can use the side as well? You paid good money for that pick - make the most of it. Studying Mick Ronson's (at 1:57, 2:10, and 2:38) brilliant guitar work with David Bowie can help you master this crucial technique.

9. Synthy answering phrases to the vocal. Your singing will never seem so human until it is contrasted with the eerie strains of a DX7 or one of its descendants. (Tina Turner's What's Love Got To Do With It at :41)

10. Special guest vocalist. The Beatles didn't expect people to listen to a single singer for a whole album - what chance do you have? Extra points if the song, tantalizingly, might actually be written about the special guest. (Carly Simon's You're So Vain)

11. Speeding up the tempo at the end. You hardly ever hear this anymore when everything is recorded to a metronomic click track, so you'll stand out from the crowd. (The Beatles' All Together Now)

12. Flanger on everything. Why add that eerie, windy sound to a single instrument when you can make the whole song sound like it was recorded on Mars? Caution: do not use on the entire song. (Doobie Brothers' Listen To The Music)

13. Muted guitar strums as percussion. You may not know it, but some of your favorite sounds are those with no pitch at all. Sure, everyone knows Smells Like Teen Spirit is F-Bflat-Aflat-Dflat, but it wouldn't be the same without the atonal strums in between the fingered chords. Go even further and don't play any chords (Paul McCartney's Maybe I'm Amazed - listen closely at 2:08) Go double super even further and add a wah pedal to the non-chord strums! (Isaac Hayes' Theme From Shaft)

14. Answering/counterpoint vocals. The main vocal can be open to all kinds of misinterpretation, so make your point even clearer by restating it another way in the background. They Might Be Giants are the foremost masters of this technique, most obviously on the song Dead.

Fellow musicians, you're welcome and I look forward to hearing your vastly improved works.

*offer is not legally enforceable.

Flash! A-aaaah! (Flash Gordon part three)

Did you miss part 1 or part 2?

The next day, Monday, I did the vocals in the afternoon. The evolving rough, literally caffeine-fueled, punk feel of the recording was too fast for me to get all the words in. Also, the notes of the melody are way out of what I might conservatively think of as "my vocal range." As I am sometimes able to do, I put all these limitations out of my mind and just did it and it's fine. It was super fun.

I have been thinking about Alex Chilton's death. When I heard about it, I immediately had the idea to record one of his songs and maybe even make a video of myself playing it and post it online. Then I thought about how very, very many people very much like myself will do that very thing. Alex Chilton was a master at confounding expectations, mixing genres, and doing exactly what he wanted to do in music without any consideration for commercial success or even, you know, logic.

I began to think of my Beatles/Punk version of Queen's "Flash (A.K.A. Flash's Theme)" as a spiritual tribute to Alex Chilton and so it is.

Finally, has anyone listened to "Chimes of Freedom" from Another Side of Bob Dylan lately? I mean really listened, not just let the recording you've heard a hundred times wash through your ears. I actually listened to that the other day and it was shocking how compassionate, wise, and moving it was. How many songs anywhere near the rock genre actually celebrate "the gentle" and "the kind"? I just sat on the couch and cried and loved everything and everyone. Okay, that's where I'm at with the whole thing.

Flash! A-aaaah! (Flash Gordon part two)

Did you miss part 1?

So now we are in 2010. As part of my anthologizing project of putting everything I ever recorded on my cassette four track onto my computer for potential remixing, I recently came across "Marriage of Dale and Ming (And Flash Approaching)". It was every bit as hilarious as I'd remembered and also strangely moving. I'd still only ever recorded the two songs, and that was in 1996 and 1997. At this pace, two songs in fourteen years, I would finish the 18 song album in 2066, at 94 years of age, three years after Zefram Cochrane invents warp drive and the Vulcans make contact with Earth. To pick up the pace, I decided to record a third song from the soundtrack, using a fun, simple beat that had been going on in my mind on and off for a few weeks.

At first I could not find the music. I had to give the original book back about thirteen years ago but I had the good sense to make copies of all the Flash Gordon songs. I had put them in a pristine white folder I found in a dumpster (not that I was looking there, you understand. It practically jumped out at me. Originally it contained information about a hospital's taxes or some such thing.) along the river in Northfield behind Division Street. Can you believe the things people just throw out? Anyway, I searched my archives but it still took me a few days to find it, and I only found it while I was looking for something else.

I have been listening to a ton of Beatles lately and have had this cheerful beat going through my mind a lot. I thought it was the beat to "She Loves You" but a quick look at my Beatles Complete Scores revealed that it's not quite. Nevertheless, I used the half measure intro to "She Loves You" and the beat I had in my mind as a starting point for my new recording, which I decided would be "Flash (A.K.A. Flash's Theme)" That was the song that most intimidated me in terms of actually finishing the album, so I decided to tackle it head on. I had it in mind to use a typical Beatles/Ringo tom-heavy "bridge section" beat for the bridge section but couldn't really find one in Complete Scores, so I just used a dramatically slowed down version of the lopsided "Ticket To Ride" beat for the bridge.

I set up my drum kit last Sunday. That in itself was an adventure, as I haven't had it set up for a while. I had to take the heads off, clean it, remove the sponges the previous owner had put in for no reason I can discern and I never got around to removing all of until now, reassemble, and tune it. I recorded the drums first and they were a little too fast. Take four was good enough that I thought I would continue with it. Next was acoustic guitar, then bass, then electric guitar.

For the electric, I used a Chandler mother-of-pearl "Serious About Tone" pick because I've heard Brian May is nuts about picks and sometimes uses English coins to get the most powerful sound. They don't make those picks anymore but I have a stash. I knew I wouldn't get the Queen guitar sound, so I went for The Carpenters instead. On "Goodbye To Love" Richard C. plugged his electric directly into the recording sound board and turned it up until the VU meters were deep in the red. It's awesome. I did a similar thing and it sounded very raucous and inspiring. I ended up taking an impromptu solo during one of the spoken sections. It ended up sounding like a surf instrumental.

If you really want to know the kind of thing that is almost always going on in my actual mind, sometimes even while I am talking to people in person, you will continue bravely on and

Go to part 3.

Flash! A-aaaah! (Flash Gordon part one)

I guess "This is a big f***in' deal" beats "As of now, I am in charge here." Joe Biden lives up perfectly to the wonderful way the Onion portrays him. Thanks, JB! Love it. I really do. That's not sarcasm. It's like a faint glimmer of the glory that was President Bill Clinton. That is also not sarcasm. It's so hard to tell on the electronic web, where almost everything is sarcasm but I remain endlessly, undetectably sincere. Anyway, what I was going to say before I got distracted by the internet, was...

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So here is one thing I am doing. Many years ago a sister of a friend was a huge Queen fan. I am a Queen fan only to the extent that I really, really love their original Greatest Hits album from 1981. This friend's sister had a spiral bound book with the entire oeuvre, dramatically reduced to chords, words and melody, and maybe a few bass notes or instrumental lines here and there. When I saw the transcriptions of the music to the 1980 film Flash Gordon I laughed and laughed. Why?

I have only ever heard the title song, but I am pretty sure the soundtrack music has more to it than is conveyed in the book. Curious, I recorded "The Kiss (Aura Resurrects Flash)" adhering strictly to the written music. Some of you reading may have on some old CD or even tape I gave you. It's the one with delicate nylon string guitar, a soaring Casio keyboard melody, no words, and long, inexplicable pauses. I mean I recorded it EXACTLY in accordance with the music as written in this strange little book. According to the book, there are several measures with absolutely nothing, which is only part of what made me laugh. The recording ended up being very beautiful and poignant if I may say so.

I put up an mp3 of the song to explain what I mean here.

I put up a scan of the music I'm working from so you can look at it while you listen to the recording. View scan.

I resolved to record the entire soundtrack without ever listening to Queen's version. I felt that listening to Queen's version would pollute my feelings and my vision and the relationship I was developing with this strange little book. About a year after I recorded "The Kiss (Aura Resurrects Flash)" I recorded "Marriage of Dale and Ming (And Flash Approaching)". So that was two songs in two years. I thought that was an appropriate pace for the project and figured it would be sort of an overview of my recording process as it evolved over the years. Like a greatest hits album can be for a normal band, only it would be a solo, cover version of Queen's Flash Gordon soundtrack. Good grief. You could not make this shit up. You have to live it.

Go on to part 2.

So You Want Some Big Star

Here's the thing. They really only made two albums and sort of three. Those are essential, but even so you have some choices.

1. #1 Record/Radio City (best edition)

Their main two albums are #1 Record and Radio City and those are both included on a great CD that was originally released in 1992. This has Ballad of El Goodo, Thirteen, Way Out West, etc. If you only buy one CD, I think this is the best place to start. Maybe. Or maybe Third.

The thing is, in 2009 the album was remastered and reissued with two bonus tracks. These bonus tracks are inessential and, to me, disruptive of the overall listening experience. I read the amazon reviews and gave it a miss. I still love my old CD from 1992, which sounds perfectly great to me. The old CD without bonus tracks is now technically out of print and, as you can see from the link above, expensive. You could just buy the mp3s and cut the bonus tracks out of your iTunes playlist. Of course, you don't get the artwork and booklet, but you could get this book for all the reading matter you could want:

Rob Jovanovic's excellent Big Star bio

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2. Third/Sister Lovers (best edition - Rykodisc, of course)

The "Third/Sister Lovers" album is different and sort of bipolar but also essential. It's easier to get the best edition because there is really only one on CD.

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All of the songs from these albums are also included on the 2009 box set, but some are in alternate mixes and so forth so I think of the box set as being more for people already familiar with the band.

So those two CDs (three albums) are really the place to start. Enjoy. Be sure and let me know if you need more because there is a lot to enjoy and I can certainly advise. If I had to select one other album that is radically different from Big Star but equally indicative of what a shockingly amazing musician Alex Chilton was, I would throw this out there:

Cliches

Have fun!

It's Wild To Be Young (Alex Chilton, part 3)

Did you miss part 1 or part 2?

It's wild to be young, isn't it? You can actually fall fully in love with stuff without thinking about it. Someday, if I keep borrowing their albums from the library and listening to them once in a while, I might like Yo La Tengo a lot, or any of these other bands that smart people recommend to me. But I can't remember the last time I really fell in love with a band the way I did with Big Star or Trip Shakespeare or...that's it really. Oh, and They Might Be Giants. And kind of Ben Folds Five, but I was still only like 26 when I heard Whatever And Ever, Amen. And I still haven't bought every single thing he's done and seen him live every chance I could since then like with Alex Chilton or Matt Wilson.

Which reminds me. I can stop looking at the bar/band/show schedules in the back of City Pages now. Matt Wilson has an online presence and an active band and notification of upcoming shows again (finally!) and Alex Chilton, the only other name I was ever really searching for, is gone.

Shows (Alex Chilton, part 2)

Did you miss part 1?

I saw Alex Chilton in concert three times, all in the 1990s, each time with a different group. I saw him at Mill City Music Festival in Minneapolis. It was the big REV105 stage out on 1st avenue and he was playing before Soul Asylum. There were these crappy little punks two or three deep standing at the stage with their backs to it, squatting for Soul Asylum. Alex was constantly trying to get the sound men to turn down the volume on his own guitar, which was ear-bleedingly loud, a characteristic shared with every other band I saw that day. (Including a mutilated version of The Lovin' Spoonful (without John Sebastian for fuck's sake) and Etta James (who did some nasty things with the microphone if I remember correctly.) It did not surprise or terribly sadden me when this festival disappeared.)

I think Chilton played "In The Street" and maybe some other songs from his then most recent albums High Priest and Black List. Honestly, it was a disappointing show. He did not seem engaged and I couldn't really blame him and I've always held it against Soul Aylum for no good reason.

I later saw him at First Avenue with the 1990s version of Big Star with original drummer and singer Jody Stephens and Jon Auer and Ken Stringfellow of the Posies. This was a better show, although the first thing I think of was his awkward, speaking-to-each-other-but-into-the-microphones fight with Jody before they played the song Jesus Christ.
Alex: We're gonna do this next song, but I don't want you to actually think we believe any of this crap.
(Some in crowd cheer)
Jody: I think it takes more courage to admit that you do believe.
(Others in crowd cheer or laugh nervously)
Alex sort of groaned and rolled his eyes and they went ahead and did the song. So I guess maybe Alex wasn't a Christian and Jody was/is? You think? Did we need to know that?

The other problem with that show was that the big pauses in the song Big Black Car were filled in with hi-hat quarter notes. Yes, the band all knew when to come back in but all the tension and despair that builds up between sections of that song was popped like a balloon.

The best show I ever saw him give was, strangely enough, a free show with the Box Tops at Taste Of Minnesota in St. Paul. In the Box Tops he didn't really write or play any instruments and as I understand it he quit way back in 1969 because he felt like a tool of the producers, who wrote all the songs, oversaw the recordings and record releases, and kept most of the money.

I guess the Box Tops got control of the name and at least some share of the money because the band I saw (with all the original members) was totally great and enthusiastic. Alex was singing his heart out and climbing the scaffolding at the side of the stage. His voice was energized and powerful, a truly soulful synthesis of the gruff voice he used on those original Box Tops recordings and the calmer, nuanced voice he had discovered and used in Big Star and his wonderfully varied solo work.

After the show he was actually standing behind a table in a tent signing autographs and talking to fans. I desperately wished I had brought one of my many CDs of him. I wanted to talk to him but didn't know what to say. How could I have put it that wouldn't have seemed totally weird?

I watched him sign a few CD booklets then someone tried to hand him a cassette, undoubtedly of their own music for Alex to listen to. He laughed and said he had stacks and stacks of tapes and he'd never get to listen to it. He was laughing and nice about it but he just left the tape on the table. Now that I'm older I totally get both sides of that.

When I was young I wanted to send my music to him and to Matt Wilson of Trip Shakespeare for no real particular reason except that I saw myself as part of the same line that led from The Beatles to those guys to me. Hearing Alex say that he had stacks and stacks of tapes that he'd never get to listening to made me realize I was not alone in that feeling (which I never actually acted on).

There's an interesting parallel here. Hearing Alex talk about all the tapes people sent him made me realize that I was not alone in wanting my idols to hear my music. When I first heard Alex' music it had made me feel that I was not alone in the way I felt back in 1993.

Go to part 3

Thanks, Andy (Alex Chilton, part 1)

The fall of 1993 was a good time to become a Big Star fan for a few reasons. Logistically, Rykodisc had just issued the first complete, good sounding CD editions of the Third album, a live radio show, and Chris Bell's complete solo work. The previous year had seen the band's other two albums, #1 Record and Radio City, released on a single disc.

Personally, I was not doing so well. I may or may not have been suffering from what scientists today call clinical depression. Also, there was a girl. I thought about death a lot. I needed something to make me feel like I wasn't alone. Big Star music was that something.

Like most people who love the band, I did not hear about them from the media. I heard about them from other people who loved them. Trip Shakespeare, a band equally deserving of greater acclaim but which has received even less, covered "The Ballad of El Goodo" on their final album, Volt, which I loved. I did not know anything about the listed authors Alex Chilton and Chris Bell. If you can, try to imagine a world in which information about these mysterious people was not immediately available to me. There was nothing about them at the college libraries. If there was such a thing as searching the internet I was not aware of it. I had to actually ask people!

I asked the most knowledgeable music guy I knew, Andy Honigman. He provided me with a tape of a record of Third and his CD of #1 Record/Radio City, which, oddly, was signed by the drummer from Walt Mink. (Oh, by the way, which one's Mink?)

The Third/Sister Lovers album spoke to my emotional state like no other music ever had. I shortly thereafter bought the CD myself, along with all the rest of the band's music. I listened to it a lot. Along with Trip Shakespeare and R.E.M.'s then-new Automatic for the People album, this music and my own emerging writing and playing gave me a reason to get up in the morning. The music gave me a sense that other people had felt the way I felt. All this music was important to me, but Big Star was the most.

I learned the Big Star songs The Ballad of El Goodo, Thirteen, Give Me Another Chance, I'm In Love With A Girl, Blue Moon, Way Out West, In The Street, and the Chris Bell songs You And Your Sister and I Am The Cosmos. Except for the Beatles there is no other band whose songs I've put more effort into and had in my playing repertoire for longer. I'm being intentionally dramatic and overstating the case just a little when I say slightly (but only slightly) disingenuously that Big Star's music saved my life. Certainly it strengthened my friendships as I played those songs with people I loved and began to get the idea to name myself after the band's home town.

Go to part two.

The Secret to a Great GUH Show

Some variation on "Great GUH Show" is, I believe, the most common headline at this blog. Tonight we played at the Bean Factory (proudly serving J&S Coffee) on the south side of Randolph Avenue just east of Snelling in St. Paul. The young man working there welcomed us to the place and got a space cleared out for us to set up. It doesn't seem like that would make such a huge difference but it totally does. I've played places where everyone working there seemed to feel that the music was a nuisance and this was the opposite of that and I appreciate it.

We had enough people show up that the place was full. There were always people paying attention and enjoying the show. People requested stuff we knew and stuff we wrote. A kid requested several songs I knew from my days as a guitar teacher and I mumbled my way through Heart Shaped Box and explained that being a guitar teacher in the 1990s means that I know all the guitar parts for that song but none of the lyrics.

Karl played and sang great. We rehearsed for a couple hours before the show and went back to some rarely played stuff off 1997's old man will travel, our first CD. We did pretty strong versions of our recent Christmas material. We did the minute song, holding the final note to make it exactly a minute, watching the second hand of the clock near the stage, a live variation on the tacked-on, backwards intro of the recorded version. We finished with We'll Go On Forever, Foreign Movie, and finally Powerful Statement. We had people that weren't previously acquainted with us buy the Toys For Tots CD, raising $48 in cash and checks and taking home a big box of toys.

Modest goals perhaps, but they were thoroughly and well met. (I'm listening to Elvis' "So Close, Yet So Far" right this moment, my iTunes set to shuffle, and it occurs to me that I should use a delayed electric guitar obligato sometime. That descending riff in the right channel on the chorus is such a cool sound on that song. So is the descending, delay drenched electric riff in the Monkey Eat Monkey version of Flip Nasty's "No One Could". Anyway...) The place was relatively small, but it was a great GUH show and afterward Karl and I stood out by our cars talking about what makes a great GUH show and to some extent it's the music but we can play music alone at our houses. What really makes a GUH show great is the people.

So! Sincere thanks to everyone who came and supported the live music scene that matters most to me - my own! The staff of the coffeshop who welcomed us, the totally unexpected, spontaneous man (also named Karl) who opened our show for us singing That's Amore with his mandolin and telling us about his experience moving a piano and a truck, the people who enjoyed our music and supported the Toys For Tots drive, and of course my man Karl who set it all up and played his heart out like he always does.

And we'll see you tomorrow night! (Incidentally, I'm going to try to recquaint myself with some of the material we tried tonight that didn't work as well as it could have. I'm thinking here of Foreign Movie and Bass Guitar.) Sunday, November 29, 5-7 p.m., Eden Prairie Dunn Bros. at the historic Smith-More House. Full information. See ya!

p.s. Here's something extremely weird. Our old man will travel CD is available from resellers at amazon.com and people are trying to get $40 and much more for it. I have two questions: a) Why? and b) Are people actually paying these prices? I have sent the following e-mails to the sellers:

Hi (seller name),

I am in the band that created this CD. Just out of curiosity, are you actually selling any copies of the CD at these prices? I notice a lot of people selling it for a lot of money and am wondering if there is some collector market for it that I am unaware of or whether it's some kind of marketing strategy? Just wondering. Thanks.

Memphis

I'll keep you updated when I hear back.

In The Year 2021

Hello! Come in! Sit down. You're here to see which one, now? Oh, yes. Ah. Let me tell you a story from when she was only two years old - that's what parents do, isn't it? Hm.

So anyway, she ate a berry off a yew bush in the backyard. Not a big deal, as we found out from poison control, until you eat three or more, then you can get sick. Now I didn't have anything against that bush, but I knew that girl and I knew if she'd tried it once she was likely to try it again and maybe eat three or four or twenty of those little red berries. So I took pret' near every tool in the garage and went AFTER those bushes!

First I sawed off all their limbs with a saw and a pruning shears. It was a hot afternoon, but I didn't care. I was sweatin' and workin' and once I had most of the bush all sawed off I started HACKING away at the soil and the roots with a pitchfork and a shovel. It was rocky soil and I could only loosen it up, even with those tools, so I just had to get in there with my hands and rip those rocks out of there. I tore them out and just kept SMASHING and CUTTING with the pitchfork and the shovel blade.

Finally after my hands had gone all black and my nails were breaking and bleeding I grabbed what was left of that bush and I ROARED - I actually ROARED! - me, a sophisticated, modern guy, and I threw that mutilated root ball halfway across my yard as I finally wrenched it out of the earth. OH MY, but it felt good!

Whew! Like I said, I didn't have anything against those bushes, but once I realized they were a danger to my daughter they were in tiny pieces in the garbage can within twenty-four hours. Now I still got ALL those tools out in my garage and the question I wanna ask you, young man, is this: Are you a danger to my daughter?

A Brand New Song!

This is a totally new song I am very excited about. You can listen to it and download it for free.

It's Not About The Words

Clicking on the song's title above will take you to garageband.com, where I have an artist page. The page includes complete lyrics and exclusive song information. This is the best way I have found to give you, my friend, my music here on the internet. Enjoy!

-----------------------------------------------

I also had some communication with an old classmate about the essay I wrote about the Great Uncle Helmer CD old man will travel. I went through and tried to make all the verb tenses match, which they hadn't, and then added the communication to the end of the essay. Why not listen to your copy of old man will travel while you read this essay? Spend the evening with Karl and Me.

Read the essay here

or

Buy the album

And here's a tip: Don't pay more than $10. Good grief! Some people are trying to get $50-70 for this. Good luck.

This has been "new stuff", once a page at memphisevans.com, now a blog.

Some Promotional Thing

So this kind of might promote my song "Yeah, Hey, Alright, Rock and Roll, Whoo!" or it might not. But I'm curious to see what this link takes you to, so check it out with me if you wish.

Yeah, Hey, Alright, Rock and Roll, Whoo! (link no longer exists)

Or it might just promote myspace and toyota, two things I am increasingly indifferent about.

PostScript: Okay, that's actually kind of cool. If you haven't heard that song already, check it out. I've now posted it to facebook and myspace, as can you.

Fraud, Anyone?

Let's pretend you're a band. Now let's pretend you're a band that has some people in it who played the Minneapolis songs on Bob Dylan's Blood on the Tracks album. Now let's pretend you call yourself "Blood On The Tracks Live" and distribute flyers and merchandise with that name. Do you think people coming to see you play would expect you to play songs from any particular album? Any album at all?

Let me help you out here. If you call yourself "Blood On The Tracks Live" and make a big deal about having people in your band who played on the album "Blood On The Tracks" then people who come to see you are going to expect to hear songs from...wait for it...it's a Bob Dylan album...from the mid '70s...that some of you allegedly played on...it's in your band name...?

No? No idea? Okay, well then never mind. Fool me once shame on me, or you, or whatever that is.

Maybe they did "Buckets of Rain" as their third encore but I'll never know because I was done with them. Final question: Idiot Wind - Wind = ?

Update: July 17, 2009
Umm...nevermind. There was a front page article in the next local paper about how they played a final set with local hero Dan Israel singing a whole slew of Dylan tunes. I had left by then, but "Buckets of Rain" was indeed among the tunes.

Also, never, ever purchase or consume a Chelada. (Commercially available mix of Clamato (yum!) and Bud Light.) Yuck. And never pour it out on a napkin just to see what it looks like. You don't want to know what it looks like.