FYI: Hec just wanted to make sure that you knew - they are playing two dates in the Bay Area: 9/24 and 9/25 at the Greek Theatre. Tickets are on sale now.

Woo!!

Ritchie Unterberger came to my booksigning. At one point, I was airing some super-obscure British Invasion clip and I just turned to him and had him ID it for me. He wrote the two volume history of Folk Rock, and also a couple books on cult rockers. And he's one of the main reviewers on AMG.

I see no New England dates. That's unpossible! They went to UMass!

Preach it, but I always got the feeling they hated the music scene up here. I don't know where I got that impression, but I always got that feeling.

Their Coachella show is floating around on the net -- one of my coworkers was playing it. It rocked.

Kate, CDs are en route to you as of today.

A while back Teppy said she was suffering from random dread or anxiety attacks or something like that. So I started to put together my Random Dread Alleviation Mix, which was just a bunch of songs that make me happy. Some are goofy, some are upbeat, some are slow, some are instrumentals, some are actually kinda deep and soothing; the only common thread is that they make me feel happy. I had way too many for one disc so I decided to go with mp3s. Unfortunately when I burned it a bunch of files got truncated. I thought maybe I had put too many on and that was causing the screw up, so I deleted a bunch... and had the same problem. Tried a different software when burning. Same problem. It worked on my mp3 player because the songs were already there & I was just importing the playlist, but I couldn't get it to work otherwise. This is the kind of thing that makes my head explode so I gave up before someone or something got hurt (i.e., before I broke my hand by punching out my computer.) Anyway, I have one of the screwed up discs at work & have been listening to it and it's making me very happy, f'ed up files notwithstanding. (For every truncated one there seems to be another with 10-30 seconds of silence tacked on to the end. Weird.) There's Bud Powell and "Un Poco Loco", about which I've already talked way too much in these parts. Couple Spike Jones tunes -- love the gargling of the "William Tell Overture." Not a bossa nova fan but one of my favorite Sarah Vaughan recording's is her 1964 "Corcovado." Joe Ely's "West Texas Waltz". Couple tracks from Have Moicy!. Monk's "Bye-Ya" and "Bemsha Swing". Some Chic, some Bing Crosby, buncha Sinatra, "All Shook Up", Howlin' Wolf, Jeff Beck, Doug Sahm, Le Tigre, Lenya, Led Zep, Susannah McCorkle, Count Basie & Jimmy Rushing's "Mama Don't Want No Peas and Rice and Coconut Oil", Tom T. Hall's "Ballad of Bill Crump" and John Prine's "Grandpa Was a Carpenter", "Mothership Connection", "Adelaide's Lament" from Guys and Dolls... if it makes me happy I included it. And I'm having so much fun listening to it I'll take the chance of my head exploding just so I can fix the technical difficulties & share it with anyone who wants it.

Kate, CDs are en route to you as of today.

Woohoo!

I'm kind of hooked on "In the Shadows" by The Rasmus. Is that okay?

And I'm having so much fun listening to it I'll take the chance of my head exploding just so I can fix the technical difficulties & share it with anyone who wants it.

Oooh! If you fix it, I'd love a copy!

Hayden, they're singing you're song. I don't expect you to make the trip to see this, but if anyone else in NYC wants to check it out I'd be happy to give it a shot.

Oooh! If you fix it, I'd love a copy!

I'll work on it, but for various reasons (including but not limited to laziness & incompetence, not necessarily in that order... actually, yeah, in that order) it could take a while.

Going to see the great Clark Terry tonight at the Village Vanguard. To continue mixing the themes of music and theater, Terry "played" Puck on Duke Ellington's Such Sweet Thunder, a suite inspired by Shakespeare's plays and characters (Johnny Hodges' alto starring as Juliet in "The Star-Crossed Lovers" is another highlight). Not long ago I saw a great production of A Midsummer Night's Dream by Edward Hall's Propeller Theatre. The only bad thing about it was that I saw it on the day it closed & didn't have a chance to see it again. I've tried unsuccessfully to find out if it moved to another city or just ended. If it shows up near you GO SEE IT! Unbelievably funny. In lieu of that, or better yet in concert with that, give the Ellington a try.

Wow, that sounds great, Joe. I wish I could up & head to Manhattan every time the urge struck me.