Music

Potpourri

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  1. Today would have been my mother’s 100th birthday. Missed it by 19.
  2. Yesterday I tried a different place to walk, Powell Butte. It’s a couple more miles further away than my usual haunts.
  3. Today while walking in one of those usual haunts, a decent-sized black cloud appeared about a 1/2 mile away toward the road. Later I could see flames, but then it seemed, wherever it was, there were people putting it out. I started to hear sirens about the time the smoke stopped.
  4. Yesterday evening I finished one jigsaw puzzle, tore it apart, and started another fresh puzzle right then.
  5. Today I watched the Boston Red Sox lose their 34th game against just 25 wins.
  6. Day before yesterday I binge-watched season 2 of The Four Seasons. I don’t recall the first season being that great, but, this one felt comfortable enough. If they do a 3rd I’d like to say I won’t watch it, but I know me better.
  7. Last week I stopped watching LOST at season three, episode twelve. I’ll probably start again. Once I finish the stuff in my Netflix queue.
Red Sox chances of making the Wild Card round in the 2026 playoffs: 26.8%

 

Honky Tonky

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I almost didn’t blog tonight, almost.

I didn’t yesterday because, about the time I would have, I was nearly 100 miles away at a bar in Lebanon, Oregon. Four of us from the community piled in one car at about 6pm and made a beeline to Sam’s Place to listen to the folks above. The drummer and his wife used to live in Quail Hollow, but moved south of the city to help the wife’s mom on her farm. We only stuck around for the first 1-1/2 hour set so we could make it home by midnight and not turn into mice looking up at a large orange cultivated winter squash. Unlike my last foray into a bar to hear a band with my neighbor, there was no dancing. Nobody was dancing except for the birthday boy and his wife, who slow-danced one song…

Today was a typical Sunday: bike for breakfast, wash clothes, watch Red Sox, lunch, jigsaw puzzle, random YouTube vids, dinner, and now doing this.

Red Sox chances of making the Wild Card round in the 2026 playoffs: 21.5%

 

More Than Words

Daguerretype GTI

That is a photo of the GTI parked while I squeezed in a couple-mile walk before the day devolved into the random chaos of brief moments of sunshine surrounded and outnumbered by rain, sometimes quite heavy. While killing time until the Red Sox game at 4pm, I caught up on my car-related channels on YouTube. From there I wandered, looking for music to listen to at night to sleep by. I tried white noise and rainfall stuff, but couldn’t adjust to it, so I’ve a playlist of quiet ambient stuff that works.

This led to me finding a segment that I didn’t know existed: “First Reaction to Insert Song” by individual rappers, music teachers, or opera singers. Sometimes there’ll be a couple people doing it together. The first one I listened to was a woman’s reaction to Phil Collins’s “In The Air Tonight.” It was a live version of the song that is 7-1/2 minutes long with that famous drum bit at about 5-1/2 minutes in. She did a little research on the backstory of the song (he was going through a divorce); she would also explain the technical musicy stuff, and seemed to really enjoy what she was listening to. And not gonna lie, she was also attractive to look at.

This led me to her channel, The Charismatic Voice, where I found the one that is the title of this post, “More Than Words” by Extreme. I know this song because I bought their CD just based on hearing this song. I wouldn’t say it was the only song out of the thirteen that is good; there are a couple more worth the listen, but the band really were more hard rock than I liked at that time.

Red Sox chances of making the Wild Card round in the 2026 playoffs: 35.1%

 

My Beloved Wife

Being a huge Natalie Merchant fan I was probably aware of her song “Beloved Wife” from her solo debut album, Tigerlily, but I didn’t really connect with it until a couple years ago when the confluence of Donna’s ALS, our fast approaching 50th wedding anniversary and Radio Paradise added it to their rotation brought it to the forefront.

If I was going to have an actual service for Donna this would have been the only song that I would have had played at it. Of course, Donna died a few days short of our 48th wedding anniversary, but this tune would still be a perfect fit because we knew each other a couple of years before we tied the knot.

On a side note, there was another song that was an attention getter for me in Radio Paradise’s mellow mix rotation for the last year or so called Harmony Hall by the group Vampire Weekend. Probably wouldn’t have played it at any service, but there is a line in there that gets repeated about a half a dozen times and it was a little too on point for me, “I don’t wanna live like this, but I don’t wanna die.”

Everyday Is Like Sunday

Ever since I’ve been retired, my grasp on what day it is has been pretty fluid. This was perfectly captured in a Pickles cartoon that I featured here back in April. Today we were reading the paper and listening to Radio Paradise waiting for CBS’s coverage of the Masters to start, when the above song came on and it stuck in my head.

When 10:00AM rolled around and I swapped from the Roku box to cable I thought, hmmm, it is 1:00PM on the east coast, wonder which NFL games will be on, might delay golf it is interesting. A quick scan of the cable guide showed nothing but college football games. Oooh, that’s right it is Saturday.

Didn’t help either that our 4 times a week newspaper, had just last week, changed the Sunday Edition to a Saturday delivered Weekend Edition.

What’s Up?

A few weeks ago, I went looking around on YouTube for some music to listen to in the background while sitting at the PC. Radio Paradise’s Mellow Mix is in constant rotation around here, but I wanted something a little different. Remembering my favorite satellite radio channel “The Coffee House” that played acoustic covers of songs, I searched for that sort of thing. Found a couple of interesting songs by interesting acts (Chase Eagleson, Gat Brothers, The Petersens, Music Travel Love), but when I found the song below, I was hooked these guys, The Running Mates, Spencer and Julie Broschard.

So I went to their music page and bought their Acoustic Covers EP (it is pay what you want, so $1 a songs about right.) So then I searched out a YouTube music downloader and started ripping some of their songs. So then I went to their YouTube page and found out they have been doing 1 to 1-1/2 hour long live living room #Quaranstream concerts since April. Today was their last one (maybe for a while) and once again I missed it live because I am on the west coast and they are on the east coast and I’m a dummy about this time zone thing still.

Then Came the Last Days Of May

just because this is actually the last day of May

They’re ok the last days of May, I’ll be breathing dry air
I’m leaving soon, the others are already there
You wouldn’t be interested in coming along, instead of staying here
They say the west is nice this time of year’
that’s what they say
– Blue Öyster Cult