Sorry!

Allllllllllllllllright! Rio and Saget!

Also: Congrats to Fiona, Mr. Fiona, and the Fiona clan!

First, congrats to Rio! Wishing you many many happy years of wedded bliss. And Japan! Yay! So jealous - I lived there from the time I was 7-12 and miss it so much.

In The Fishtank on Kranky. It might be out of print

I just ordered it off of Amazon so it must still be in print.

MORE COWBELL!

This weekend I saw a 13-15 yr. old boy on the El with a brown t-shirt that just said "More Cowbell!". I laughed out loud and must have looked like a crazy person.

Tina, thank you for the extra nudge to go see it.

Yay - glad you made it.

Lovely Sufjan Stevens article in the LA Times.

Great article. Thanks for posting it, Hec.

OK - earphones were purchased and - oh my FREAKING god - they have changed my whole world.

I ended up getting Ultimate Ears Super.fi 3 earphones. Oh lordy. I can fill my volume bar on my iPod to 25% (with the Apple earphones I filled to about 95% and still had trouble hearing the music when on the train) and the volume is so loud and the sound is so clear that - well, it's really loud and clear. You really have to be careful though - this morning I couldn't hear ANYTHING on the train - no voices, no announcements, nothing. You don't want to wear them walking on the street or riding a bike or anything.

YAY, RIO!! Saget is a lucky man!

And congrats as well to the Fionafam!

A new label for Lost in the Grooves fans? [link]

t edit And congrats to Rio, Saget and Fiona, of course!

"There's all this amazing stuff that's under the radar," Gorman says. "No one's going through the cultural wreckage and finding these albums."

Yuh huh! Dude, they're even releasing a David Allan Coe record.

I'm not a fan of Lewis Taylor, but I think he's going to go over big stateside. He has a smooth-soul voice, guitar chops extraordinaire, and a penchant for odd, obscure covers (including his in-progress track-for-track remake of Trout Mask Replica as a soul-pop album).

Anyway, some of the music geeks I know really like the guy, but I can't get around his style, which seems altogether too slick for my tastes.

including his in-progress track-for-track remake of Trout Mask Replica as a soul-pop album

Aww, yeah, fast 'n' bulbous, baby
That's right, my lil' mascara snake
Dry that tin tear drop, darlin'
Thass right

Congratulations, Rio and Bob! Congrats, Fiona & Mr. Fiona! Welcome, Clara! Big Bro may be interested in the EDO classic (yeah, I'm pimpin' the band again) "Benno Knows a Secret," available at gmail in the buffistarawk section.

Oh, Jon, that label sounds fun - thanks for the link.

I just got the three Mountain Goats compilations of out-of-prints, one-offs, and oddities (you have to respect a singer-songwriter who can say, as Darnielle did in a recent interview, "my first three hundred or so songs...") And I love the liner notes. How sad am I!

This is the note for "Against Agamemnon":

This is actually one of two or three favorites out of my innumerable songs. If you read the play "Ajax" by Sophocles, its action will become clear as crystal. I feel confisdent that half of you think I'm lying and won't bother to investigate further, and that the other half are direct descendants of Sophocles who have been waiting for this moment to indict me on charges of copyright infringement.

Adding my congrats to Rio and Sagat!

(Slowly I am making my way through the threads. I look upon Natter with dread)