GIRA

Listen to GIRA by Vanessinha & Alessandra.

In 2005 we had a new dog (hence the cover), plus my sister was living at our apartment and so we all got a vote as to what was on or off the Christmas CD (hence the title).

2005 was also the year that baile funk really broke out into the quasi-mainstream (thanks M.I.A. and Diplo!), so there were a whole lot of tunes, such as Gira, that all of a sudden were available for download. I kinda doubt Gira was even recorded in 2005, but I don't know the slightest thing about it except it's super catchy and over in two minutes. And that it was voted on the holiday mix, of course...

Photo: 2005: Designed by Committee.

ROSES GONE

Listen to ROSES GONE by The Ashes.

Hello again! It's good to be back after a week off, though it's a shame we had to let Stu's series go. Great stuff that was.

This week it's back to the archives. Last night I was listening to The Walker Brothers, and settled on a theme for this week: "slow & moody songs from the 60s." These are songs from a particular era of pop music, where it was okay for emotional songs to be a little theatrical, before the rock 'n' roll era made "authenticity" the key quality for any pop music performance, but also before soul music (in particular) went baroque and started putting a premium on vocal gymnastics.

Today is a good example what I'm trying to get at, even if the group is obscure. The Ashes were a West Coast folk group who recorded a couple of singles, and morphed into a group with a well-developed cult following, The Peanut Butter Conspiracy. And it's not just for the name--the music is really good!

Roses Gone, as I said, was recorded in 1965 by the group when they were The Ashes, and it's got a great 2 AM quality. I love the slight reverb on Sandi Robison's voice. It's a great performance, which is good, because her voice is basically the entire song. Won't you give it a try?

(By the way, Amy & Martin aren't contributing to the blog this week because they're on an epic (halfway) cross-country road trip this week. You can follow their progress here!)

Photo: Empires State Building series (5).

2008 MS Walk: One week away!

A week from today, the 20th annual MS Walk takes place. Amy has convinced about thirty of her students & colleagues to join her (and the dog) for this year's walk. Check out her fundraising pitch:

Dear friends and family,

For the 20th anniversary of the MS Walk (and my 10th anniversary participating), a group of students at my school have agreed to walk the 10 mile route on April 13th.

Many of my students need to raise at least $50 to participate. Won't you support them by donating on their behalf? I typically ask you to support me, but this year I am asking you to support them since they care!

If interested, please follow this link, choose a student and donate some $$ using the web site:

http://msnyc.kintera.org/walkms/teammartin

Want to walk? Join the team through the same link and ask your friends to donate!

We thank you!
-Amy

Friday Martin's Birthday blogging

My apologies for stepping on Jason's post, but Martin's birthday only comes once a year. Happy Birthday, kid! You're legal!

Martin blogging; new template testing

So this is what the new template is looking like. Hope you like it. There's more room, bigger photos, less fatiguing colors (I hope). A few bugs to work out. The main one being I can't get the header image to hyperlink back to the homepage. We'll fix that. I wouldn't mind getting rotating header images too, but it's not crucial, and it requires a knowledge of Javascript that I don't have. Hasta!

...I have to figure out how to hide this "Read More" thing when we're not using it, too

...Fixed? Yes!

A sniff of the new year

Hope you all had a nice and easy New Year's Day, just like us!

Photo: Martin taking in 2008.

Go away trick-or-treaters

I've got my hand over Martin's mouth so she doesn't bark at anyone coming by to trick-or-treat, as I don't want to get off the couch to hand out candy before Amy gets here. Feeling lazy here's my ceiling AND my Arsenal post for today. This is what the ceiling looks like from said couch as I'm watching Arsenal beat Sheffield United 3-0.

THE LONER

THE LONER by Neil Young.

Welcome to October! Martin and I just walked Amy to the subway and you can finally feel a little nip in the air. It's not bad at all.

Growing up we had what I had always assumed was Neil Young's first solo album, "Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere." At some point, though, I found out there was actually a self-titled album released even before that one, at the end of 1969. The question I always had was, is this a great lost album, or just crap? You never saw it in stores, so there was no way to find out.

This is one of those burning questions that I never got answered until about two years ago, when I saw the first album available online. I picked it up and can tell you you're not missing a whole lot, to be honest. A real shame, especially considering who played on it (Jack Nitzsche, Ry Cooder, Jim Messina, Gloria Jones, Merry Clayton... ). I listened to it again yesterday, and there's really only one choice to share with you, and that's The Loner. So, have a listen, see what you think, but don't expect everything on that album to be as good as it!

LISTEN.

Photo: The Grove (May 2005).

Just great

First things first: Amy's done with the kids for this year! (Just about.) They say teaching gets easier by the fourth year, and from my perspective, it seems like it has, but I'm still amazed at how much work she puts into it every day. Legend.

Speaking of legends, the other day on NY1 they had a little segment on a photo exhibit on Muhammad Ali over in the West Village. So Martin and I decided to pop over and have a look! Here's one of the photos we saw:



So that was nice. Having finished as much reading as I'm going to do about Maine (probably), I am back on non-wedding stuff. Yesterday I finished "Falling Man," by Don DeLillo. I shouldn't say I was disappointed, because I wasn't. More disengaged. I found the book easy to read and even easier to finish. It simply passed by me. Writing a "September 11" novel must be a very difficult thing to do. Since I have (everybody has) such a strong feeling of what it was like to live through 9/11, I found myself not particularly interested in how the characters in the novel reacted. Their experience was singular, not much to tell me about mine or anything. Some of my reaction, though, must be controlled by DeLillo, because the style of the novel is so clipped, elliptical. It encourages the reader to pass over it lightly. Anyway, enough about that.

Our friend John is now a blogger! He just started this week, looks like. Go say HI THERE.

More songs Friday.

Martin, Dog of Danger

...Speaking of Martin, she nearly got me into trouble. While I was wishing her a happy birthday on the blog, with the Arsenal match on replay in the background, I was wondering why there was a helicopter hovering over our building. When I took Martin downstairs for her evening walk, I found out there was an armed man on the loose that did this up the street from our building. We are happy to report that we survived our walk.

Two years of Martin

Two years ago today, Martin, the girl with the boy's name, was born. I found her for sale on a website while I was sitting at home from my latest (and hopefully last) knee surgery instead of being in Paris at Emily & Milos's wedding. Windy went up to Washington Heights and picked her out, and we had photos in time for our fifth year anniversary, and she was home by May. She's helped us through the good weeks and the bad weeks and we hope she'll be around for many years to come!

SPRING HALL CONVERT

SPRING HALL CONVERT by Deerhunter.

You might have picked up Spring Hall Convert from Pitchfork if you have nothing better to do. It's also been making the rounds on the blogs, but I've yet to read a decent description of the song. And you won't be reading one here, because for some reason the one song that it keeps reminding me of is Oceans by Pearl Jam(!) And I mean that in a good way, even though I haven't listened to "Ten" in ten years, at least. The more usual way you'll hear it described is some reference to Spiritualized or a Wall of Sound or shoegazing which are all nice things to say about a song.

LISTEN.

Photo: Martin's Bar & Grill.

SUNLIGHT BATHED THE GOLDEN GLOW

SUNLIGHT BATHED THE GOLDEN GLOW by Felt.

We've had a few milestones today. Today is the first time we have dogsat for someone in our building. Martin and Lafayette (another labradoodle, but brown) played lazily for a few hours, earning her parents a night off and perhaps some brownie points for us. Arsenal played in the Netherlands and lost for the first time in 2007. The less said about that the better.

And this post marks our first song (in only 46 songs, but still) from the Eighties! It amazes me that Felt is not better known, but they're not. I found them cited as an influence on The Clientele, and it took me quite a few months to track down this album, "The Strange Idols Pattern and Other Short Stories." Sunlight Bathed The Golden Glow is characteristic of Felt's sound. It's no surprise that it's from 1984, but even so, it's got a really distinctive sound: guitars as dry and clear as a bell, almost ascetic in method, but used in a robust pop form. Lawrence Hayward's vocals are basically always described as "deadpan," but that's because it hits the nail on the head. You don't get the feeling he spent too long working out his vocals, because he had such a naturally singular delivery. And, as all good pop songs should do, Sunlight clocks in under three minutes! Enjoy!

LISTEN.

Photo: Magic hour.

The most exciting day ever.

Amy and I were ever so excited about today. Owen was coming into town and we were going to be able to spend quality time together. I mean, when does that happen, right? We were so excited that I got up at 6:30 a.m., walked the dog, made coffee, and woke Amy up. On top of everything, Arsenal were playing a match, and they're always exciting too. So at 7:15 we walked over to the Red Lion to watch the match and meet Owen.

Well, at halftime of the worst match I've ever seen, Owen texted saying he was feeling unwell and consequently wouldn't make it to the viewing. Or words to that effect. So not knowing that the second half would be as bad as the first, we stayed by ourselves for the whole thing. I finished my third beer, and then we went home and went back to sleep.

At around one, I woke up and took Martin to the dog run, and Amy took a bath. Below is a picture of the snowy dog run. Martin is, well, not quite in the frame, but the snow is. On the way home, Owen texted me for directions to McSorley's, I stopped to get hot chocolate, and now we're going to go to the movies with Stu and Claire. What an exciting day!