Who's your favorite artist?

I've just finished a compact-disc census, creating a list of all the (non-burned) CDs I own. It's in a database and everything. So, a simple SQL query* tells me how many CDs I have by artist, thus giving a hint at who my favorite artist is.

various artists	72
bob dylan	13
richard thompson	12
the byrds	9
miles davis	8
neil young	7
johnny cash	7
neil young and crazy horse	6
marty stuart	6
dwight yoakam	5
the jayhawks	5
wilco	5
john zorn	5
uncle tupelo	5
junior brown	4
the last poets	4
chris thile	4
stevie ray vaughan	4
the allman brothers band	4
ricky skaggs and kentucky thunder	4

I think this list contains items that everyone expected, as well as items that nobody gets.

* select artist, count(album) as count from compact_discs group by artist order by count desc limit 12

We're talking like "Sonic", right?

In the late 80s, I was kinda Marten. Not that I was in a relationship with a hot coffeeshop owner, but I was a big music geek who knew new music from lots of bands that most people who aren't me didn't know or care about. I know a little about a few, but I'm not nearly that guy like I used to be. I try — I follow music blogs and all — but I'm just not keeping up.

So, I saw something on Wolfgang's Vault that piqued the interest in the 1990s Marten in me. It's called "The Pixies/Fugazi/Sonic Youth Syndrome" . Let me give you an example: Eddie Van Halen loved Cream-era Eric Clapton. Eric Clapton loved B.B. King. B.B. King got started listening to Bukka White. Half the guitarists of the 80s got into Eddie. Now, consider that EVH fan chasing up the influence chain. Easily, some Cream could leave them cold. Maybe they'd get B.B. King and maybe not. But what is a metal guitarist gonna get from Bukka White?

OK, now recast all that as late 80s alt-rock bands and you get the gist of the point. It does me well to look for ideas in the influence of my favorite bands, but that doesn't mean that I'll get anything that means anything to me, and that doesn't mean the audience should feel remotely obliged to even care.

Let me quote:

I sometimes feel that people grow up but never grow out of that attitude, unable to separate musical opinion from musical fact. The bands they loved when they were young served as gateways to new, exciting music and may have just changed (or, as often stated overdramatically, "saved") their lives. But those bands existed in and for a certain time. I recently did a tedious article for the St. Louis alt-weekly paper where I listened to every single band playing the local date of Warped Tour. After the 15th screamo band I heard, I desperately wanted to burn 3,500 copies of Relationship of Command by At the Drive-In and hand them out to the youngsters in attendance, as if to "teach them something.” But I'm sure many who heard Relationship when it came out wanted to do the same pretentious campaign with Refused’s The Shape of Punk to Come at the front gates of ATDI shows. And it keeps going further back until we’re all crowded around a creaky record player listening to Black Flag’s first 7” on repeat all day long. Where’s the fun in that?

This woke up my Marten. Who is At The Drive In? Is Relationship of Command all that?

I don't know yet. Haven't had time to get into it yet. But, so far, I'm liking it better than Jane Doe.

Connections James Burke Would Have Missed

This is "See That My Grave Is Kept Clean" by Blind Lemon Jefferson.


Notice the last verse. Blind Lemon uses the low E to stand in for the tolling of a church bell. I was sitting, playing around when it struck me that this concept was part of "Hell's Bells" by AC/DC. So, I started trying to pick it from memory. Turns out that they used the open A.

E -----------------------------------------------------
B ---3---1-----0-----1-------3---1-----0-----1---------
G -----2---0-----0-----0-------2---0-----0-------------
D -----------0-----0-----0-----------0-----0-----------
A -0-----------------------0--------------------3-2-0--
E -----------------------------------------------------

I am not 100% sure on that, but that's at least a start. What I find interesting about it is that it implies G major ( D C2 G ) over a droning A.

What amazes me was that I wasn't going over and over on the record. I was able to think it through. Then again, there's not a bad song on Back in Black.

Crossing Over

At about 3:10, you'll hear Jake E. Lee dive bomb the low E on his Charvel.


Jake E. Lee.

Doesn't really have a Floyd Rose on that Charvel of his, does he? Do they even make Charvel guitars without Floyd Rose bridges?

And where does a guy get that idea? A raging shredder, holding the spot on Ozzy's stage that Randy Rhoads held before and Zakk Wylde would soon take. Where might he get such a thing?

Maybe....



(I would've used a Buck Trent video, one showing off the P90-loaded banjo he has that sounds like a Telecaster should, but I couldn't find one that was embeddable. So, J.D. Crowe gets the nod.)

Now that's pretty specific tuning, isn't it? Right on. Jake has said in interviews that it was not a sure thing that he'd tune that E right on return, but by the end of the tour, he'd get it right most of the time. J. D. Crowe did it, over and over again.

He had help. Either Bill Keith's tuners or the knock offs. You set two screws, which lock an uptuned and downtuned position.

(I bet he's going to bring up Clarence White about now. That's about how he goes.)

Clarence White put a set on his guitar, on the E and A. This would let him go to Drop D (DADGBE) or pretty close to Open G (DGDGBE). (Theory is, I understand, that you keep your high solo strings the same but can drone on the low strings. Marty, as you see, has them set on the E strings, which allows him to drop both to D (DADGBD).

Are there other ways to do it? Yeah.



But with Scruggs tuners, you can put 'em on all six strings.

Connections on a technique

First, listen to Paul Gilbert talk about warming up his picking hand. The nutshell is this: You're doing up-up-down picking on the E B and G strings.

E -0-----0-----0-----0-----0-----0------
B ---0-----0-----0-----0-----0-----0----
G -----0-----0-----0-----0-----0-----0--
D --------------------------------------
A --------------------------------------
E -------------------------------------- 

Paul then moves it up to the fifth fret, where it moves from an E minor to an A minor

E -5-----5-----5-----5-----5-----5------
B ---5-----5-----5-----5-----5-----5----
G -----5-----5-----5-----5-----5-----5--
D --------------------------------------
A --------------------------------------
E -------------------------------------- 

He then suggests you try it with other A minor forms, with ornamental notes, to keep your ear and left hand from being bored.

E -5-----8-----12----8-----11----8------
B ---5----10-----13----10---10-----10---
G -----5-----9-----14----9-----9-----9--
D --------------------------------------
A --------------------------------------
E -------------------------------------- 

Which is all sort of interesting in and of itself. But I first saw this pattern (up-up-down, or UUD) on an Al Dimeola instructional video from 1992. He put that pattern somewhere else.

E --------------------------------------
B --------------------------------------
G --------------------------------------
D -5-----5-----5-----5-----5-----5------
A ---5-----5-----5-----5-----5-----5----
E -----4-----4-----4-----4-----4-----4-- 

That is G,D and G#, for those keeping up at home. That's G# flat-5 major-7. Or Gminor2? Any way, there's lots of tension that gets relieved when you drop it back to G5.

E --------------------------------------
B --------------------------------------
G --------------------------------------
D -5-----5-----5-----5-----5-----5------
A ---5-----5-----5-----5-----5-----5----
E -----4-----4-----4-----3-----3-----3-- 

Now, remember my term for that? I have been drawn toward bluegrass, and specifically flatpicking. You have heard me go on about Clarence White, and from the guitars I have pointed to and the videos I have linked to, you might have thought he was just a chicken-pickin' country rock guy. He started out being a bluegrass picker, a master of the crosspicking style, where you use one flatpick to mimic the fingerpick style of banjo players.

"Bury Me Beneath The Willows" from 33 Acoustic Guitar Instrumentals

Listen to the first verse, where by controlling his picking dynamics, the melody is clearly hearable above the stream of notes. Listen to the third verse, where the floodgates are loosed and the notes fly out as fast and hard as bullets from a machine gun. They generally work from the D G and B strings, where the open strings for a major triad, unlike Paul Gilbert's minor triad from the video.

E --------------------------------------
B -----0-----0-----0-----0-----0-----0--
G ---0-----0-----0-----0-----0-----0----
D -0-----0-----0-----0-----0-----0------
A --------------------------------------
E -------------------------------------- 

Do you see it? Do you see the change here? They generally are trending down instead of up. The Gilbert style would be considered a "backwards roll". And there are generally two schools of thought in the flatpicking community: pick down-down-up, basically reversing the Gilbert/DiMeola order and the straight alternate picking people. In short, there's DDU ...

E --------------------------------------
B -----u-----u-----u-----u-----u-----u--
G ---d-----d-----d-----d-----d-----d----
D -d-----d-----d-----d-----d-----d------
A --------------------------------------
E -------------------------------------- 

And there's DUDU ...

E --------------------------------------
B -----d-----u-----d-----u-----d-----u--
G ---u-----d-----u-----d-----u-----d----
D -d-----u-----d-----u-----d-----u------
A --------------------------------------
E -------------------------------------- 

I have tried to pick up DUDU and DU (On Flatpick-L, you're no part of nothin' if you don't do DUDU), but I have never been able to get any power or even much accuracy with those techniques. But I am able to get decent speed, accuracy and power with the Gilbert-DiMeola UDD method. Which is interesting.

Sign 'O' The Times

In the CD section of my local library. A triple-disc set.

Disc 1) Audio tracks from Orbital shows at Glastonbury, 1994-1999

Disc 2) Audio tracks from Orbital shows at Glastonbury, 1999-2004

Disc 3) DVD Audio and Video of all on Disc 1 and Disc 2.

This is marketed as a CD, not a live DVD.

There's something to be made about this. I just don't know what.

While you ponder, here's some Orbital.

Hey, when I'm wrong, I'm wrong

For years, I have had the following line on Guitar World magazine: I don't dress all in black and I don't play high-gain thud-rock, so there isn't much for me in Guitar World. But I went to the local library the other day. I'm sorry to say they've gone from having Guitar Player on the periodicals wall to Guitar World, but I picked up a back issue.

• Ritchie Blackmore talking about the difficulty of finding a decent hurdy-gurdy and integrating it into modern synth-driven recording environments
• Alex Skolnick of Testament talking about playing "Detroit Rock City" and "Rock You Like A Hurricane" in a jazz context
• Tele-bender maestro Jerry Donahue with a column where he name-checks Clarence White
• Eddie Van Halen on the cover

Thud-rock is in there. You can't get away from the thud-rock in Guitar World. Premier Guitar and Guitar Player remain my fave guitar rags. And Mattias IA Ecklundh got to "Detroit" via the Hot Club of France well before Alex. But there's something in Guitar World for me now. And it behooves me to admit when I'm wrong as strongly as I crow when I'm right.

Speaking of Alex...

Don't Even Know What I'm Hoping To Find

Tonight was practice night.

Imagine a guy who kicks the bass drum like Bonham. On a kit with a double pedal so he can make a drum roll without using his arms.

Add a bassist with a five string whose chief influences seem to include Cliff.

Plus a Hammond organ and a grand piano.

Plus me on acoustic. He wants me on acoustic.

In a band like that, an acoustic guitar is as useless as a screen door on a submarine. Nobody will be able to hear me. Probably not even myself.

So, I'm disappointed.

In the mean time, I've been playing the vid on the last, nameless post. Playing it while having the tab sheet open. You see, I was doing scale exercises last night and came onto a bit that sounded like "Running on Empty". I was on electric, not one of my steels, but I was still pretty sure it was in A. And I was right.

Isn't it great when you're right?

So I played it again, trying to play along. I found the first steel bit, at about 50 seconds in. It took me a bit by surprise. It's an A arpeggio. It's easy on a steel, because hey, you don't even have to move the bar, but guitarists want to hit the scale notes beyond the chord notes. But if you play around A major near the 12th fret, you'll find most of the notes you want.

So I took out my #2 lap steel, a repurposed Epiphone Les Paul Peewee with a nut extender, tuned it to A Sebastapol (like open D, except up to A on a smaller instrument), brought up a Sebastapol tuning on my scale and chord tool, and started to play the scale. Then I plugged into my Frontman 25R and tried to dial in the tone.

Nobody is ever going to mistake a Frontman 25R for a Dumble. But that's my amp and I'm happy with it. Use the Drive channel but with the Gain only up to 3, I got a bit of the wailing tone. I'm not sure, but I think there's some phaser in there, too, because I don't have it, but I have a decent tone to start with. Maybe it's just screaming tubes that my solid state amp just can't mimic.

This is what I have of the main lead, tabbed in standard tuning.

e ------------------------------------------------------
B --------------------------------15-15-14-12-----------
G -14-14-14-11--------------11----------------14-11-----
D -------------14-11--11-14----14-------------------11--
A ------------------------------------------------------
E ------------------------------------------------------

e ------------------------------------------------------
B ------------------------------------------------------
G -14-14-14-11------------------------------------------
D -------------14-11--14-11-------11--12-11-------------
A --------------------------12-14-----------12----------
E ------------------------------------------------------ 

I guess it's the F# where I lose it.

Interesting Mix

I sometimes wear just one headphone, so I might be able to hear the sounds of my environment. A Who song came up on my playlist. "I'm A Boy", specifically. What seemed to be an instrumental take on "I'm A Boy".

It took a good long time for me to wonder if there's a vocal-less take on "I'm A Boy", and if I had ever heard of one, much less heard one.

So I put my other ear on. There's the vocal track.

I'm used to vocals being mixed dead center. In fact, the quick trick to get a karaoke track is to reverse phase on left or right and force it into mono, and the vocals, being identical left-and-right, will phase out and be silenced. A one-sided vocal mix? That's odd. I know they did that on VU's "The Gift", but as it started as a poem/story and the music was added on, so a hard music/words division makes sense there.

Brothers from Another Genre

One is a pop country hit machine, writing and singing songs about love, pickup trucks and fishing.

One is a metal gun-for-hire with full sleeve tattoos, making instrumental shred albums with song titles inspired by serial killers.

Looking at Brad Paisley and John 5, you'd think they couldn't be further apart. And that might be right. But beyond all that, they're both fantastic guitarists, both worthy of the guitar mag covers they've gotten, and they're both Telecaster players. Which is where I get drawn in.

Brad Paisley, "Make A Mistake"
John 5, "Fiddlers"

That's two songs, ones that I think hit the point where they remind me of each other. They have the same musical sense of humor. Crossing genres, like a twanger going jazzy or a shredder gone country, is funny. Breaking the fourth wall, like "I don't hear any music" and the engineer saying "That's the wrong chord, guys", that's funny.

I really think they could do a great head-to-head version of "Devil Went Down To Georgia".

Except the wrong guy's named Johnny.

Too Much LDS At Berkeley.....

So, I was reading this blog about people driving through Chicago too fast. Specifically, "Speeding on LSD" was a phrase that I read.

I thought that meant lysergic acid diethylamide. That struck me as a particularly dumb thing to do, but that doesn't mean people don't do it.

I didn't take it as meaning Lake Shore Drive.

If you read "drivers on LSD", what would your initial reaction be?

Anyway, it seems like an interesting book.

So, I jammed with the keys/drum guy and the other guitarist yesterday (Tuesday). I played bass. Not my instrument, but I want one. I certainly want a Jazz bass, probably a 5-string (not so I can really hit the low B, but more so I can play the E in a slightly more hand-friendly place.

I'm getting better, but it's cool. But there is something missing.

Drums.

Keys, guitar, bass, no drums. And I'm the bass.

Did I mention that the bit they were playing was in some odd time signature? 1-2-3 1-2-3 1-2-3 1-2 1-2. That's 13/4 or something, right? I was trying to find the one, trying to hook in. I think Peter Hook of New Order, playing long notes over the tight rhythm of the keys, drums and guitar. I think that style would really work with them.

If I could just fine the One.

It Has Been A While

This will be a bit random. I have left too much unsaid.

Tonight was pretty interesting. The lead guitarist was sick, so it was all on me. The drummer was back, so Keys-to-Drummer was back on keys. The power supply on the synth was gone, so he was on the grand piano. This meant he underplayed, because the weighted keys are tough on the hands. He thought he did poorly, and once he kinda got lost, but I only gave him grief because, with the other guitarist gone, it was my job to give people grief. He did well, he sounded good, and I enjoyed myself.

And my wife said I played pretty.

I'm playing hybrid picking, which in my case is pick and middle finger fingernail. So I'm trying to figure out how to keep my nails in good condition. MusicThing has a compendium of links on that subject. Already, my fingernails are working better. Which actually is getting in the way of my typing, but you do what you must.

Also from MS, silver cast replica knobs for your instruments.

As I told Pribek, my local area has a folk festival. Except it ain't folk. It's called The Fiddler's Gathering, and it has the violin as it's raison d'etre. I don't think I've seen classical music there, but just about anything else where you'd expect to hear a fiddle on is fair game. Including jazz.

In the past, I have seen Johnny Frigo and Claude Williams at this festival before. Great players, but very old guys. This weekend, I saw Aaron Weinstein. I saw him at the festival before, about 10 years ago, when he was on the open stage. Now he's graduated from Berkelee and swinging like a pendulum. Catch him if you can.

I knew I'd really dig him. What I didn't know was that I'd really dig another act. Out of New York, they call themselves Spondoolix. Cello, guitar, fiddle and vox, and fifes and pipes. Might I say that Uilleann Pipes rock? Anyway, the star in my mind is Mazz Swift, the fiddle/vox person. You don't often see a black lady with dreadlocks playing traditional celtic music. And of course she did it well, or else I wouldn't be writing this up. (If I had a digital camera and I didn't have a wife, I might put up a picture of her in her digital skull-and-crossbones t-shirt, which was way cool.) The coolness to me is that, in all the celtic singing I've heard, there's an edge to it, a harshness. And she really doesn't, so it forces you to listen harder. Lovely, lovely music.

Back to the gathering: Some famous festivals have instrument competitions. I'm thinking the flatpicking competition at Winfield, but there are others. I have a bit of a problem with the idea of competition in that way. I couldn't say that Mazz was better than Aaron, or either was better than Sammy of the Foghorn Stringband. How do you compare swing violin to oldtime fiddle?

I wore shorts. I didn't wear anything to protect me from the sun. And Sunday morning, I had a burn on my right knee that felt like a bruise. Rock the SPF, dudes.

And, as it is a fiddler's festival, I pulled out one of my two. I'm a guitarist. I'm a mandolin player. I'm a fiddle owner. But I still want to play with the stuff. And in preparation, I went to the Sam Ash that's (nowhere near) on my way home from work, and I saw a Fishman pickup for fiddle that clips to the fiddle bridge and cost $100. I'm curious as to the volume level from that, whether I could fiddle through my wah and AX1500G or whether I must pick up a Para DI, too. Anyone play that four-stringed beast?

Huh?

There's a Song Meanings page for Ray Wylie Hubbard's "Screw You, We're From Texas".

Wanna know what that song means?

It means "We're from Texas, so screw you!"

It's really not that hard.

I'm not from Texas, so I guess "screw me", but he does have a point. I mean, Mr. Stevie Ray Vaughn is the best there was, and there is no band cooler than the 13th Floor Elevators.

Not musical?

Try this, then.

Why can't I be a 15-year-old musical prodigy?

Earlier this evening, I saw a classical guitarist.

If you want to respect yourself as a guitarist, don't watch classical guitarists.

Her name is Chaconne Klaverenga, and she's the daughter of one of the guitar shop owners' in town.



Isn't she good?

Those pops really drew me out. Bob Brozman says that electric music has killed dynamic range, that this is one of the big benefits of playing acoustic. This is a terrific example.

I dragged out my acoustic when I got home. My dread, not my classical, which should barely count as such. And I re-realized that fingerpicking hurts my thumb, on the edge where it hits the string. And I feel like a wimp. But enough about me and more about her.

Tying This Back In

Black Flag is where we get Henry Rollins, but it is also (and mostly) the band of guitarist Greg Ginn.

And Greg Ginn played an Ampeg Dan Armstrong, until it got swiped.



He played through solid state amps, because he couldn't get the sharp treble he wanted through tube amps.

Storing your treasures

It isn't my favorite album. If I had to choose a favorite album, I'd have to choose either Layla and Assorted Love Songs by Derek and the Dominos or Hollywood Town Hall by the Jayhawks. But it is my most treasured album.

Program: Annihilator.

It's a sampler for SST Records. SST Records was the home of Black Flag. I heard of Black Flag the beginning of my freshman year of high school, as what seemed like a quarter of the student body was wearing new and red Slip It In t-shirts. But I didn't hear Black Flag until later.

Circus magazine was switching from covering punks to covering metalheads, I think, and there was an ad from SST advertising a free sampler. I was a driver, so this was at least 1986. Anyway, free is the right price for a teenager, and I sent away. And one day, it came in. I opened it up and right away, I was jazzed. It has the coolest liner notes ever, or at least what a 16-year-old would think of as the coolest liners ever.

A WARNING FROM THE PROGRAMMER: EXTREME CAUTION is mandatory with all use of this psychic program material, for while - with proper use - this program information will tune the listener to sufficient destructive capability to get any job - no matter how dirty - done. If mishandled, this psychic fuel program (Program: Annihilator) may overload the Subject's receptive capacity, which could result in indiscriminate violence of an intensity the Programmer can only assume the Subject will consider undisirable. THE PROGRAMMER THEREFORE HEREBY DISCLAIMS ANY RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE ACTIONS OF THOSE WHO WILLINGLY MAKE THE DECISION TO AVAIL THEMSELVES OF Program: Annihilator.

What red-blooded American teenager could resist that?

I put it in the cassette deck while driving with my friend Mason to the comic book shop.

And I immediately pulled it out.

"War Is Our Destiny" by Saint Vitus.

Sucks.

Imagine second-album Black Flag meeting Blue Cheer. Now make it suck 45% more. That's what Saint Vitus sounds like. Mason liked Rush. I liked Iron Maiden and Metallica. Neither of us liked Blue Cheer wannabes.

The first four tracks are Saint Vitus. I can only think of it like the beginning of 40-Year-Old Virgin, with Cal going on about the Tijuana donkey-sex show he saw. It's supposed to make you uncomfortable, so you appreciate it more when the good stuff comes.

Which it did eventually. I fast-forwarded past all the crap Saint Vitus to finally hear Black Flag. And I heard Black Flag. "Annihilate This Week". "Society's Disease". "You're Not Evil". "Beat My Head Against The Wall". "Thirsty and Miserable". This is crucial stuff. You think Metallica and Mötorhead are hard, then you hear this, your concept of hard transforms. Immediately.

And the rest! DC3! Overkill! "Ladies in leather! Submit or you'll only upset her!" SWA! "Baby, baby, now what you need is a little bit of my surgury! Let my love show you all that it could be!" Wurm! "There's a knife behind my smile!" I loved this thing. Except for the first four tracks. Which were Saint Vitus and are made of suck.

I went to college, and one of the first friends I made introduced me to Bad Religion and Big Black. In return, I let him borrow my treasure, my Program: Annihilator. He gave it to someone else, having her return it to me, but she put it down, and someone with sticky fingers picked it up.

It took me five years of hunting record stores to find it again. I found it in the Vegas Tower Records. It cost me $20 to replace the recording I had originally received for free, and I thought it was cheap.

What is your treasure? The irreplacable recording? The great thing that you have to dig out and play for friends?

The things you can find on the internet....

I'm listening to Exile On Main Street.

No, not that. Not the Stones version. I already had that.

I'm listening to Pussy Galore's version.

Pussy Galore's we-made-it-on-cassette-and-only-made-500-copies version of Exile.

I love the internet.

He Likes To Make A Livin' Runnin' 'Round

I have the Country Boy Albert Lee instructional video out from Netflix, and I have had it for a while, because I haven't had the time to sit down with guitar, amp and DVD player and get it into my hands yet. Parts are in my head, to be sure, and those parts will continue to be useful, but they're not in my hands where they can be useful.

One thing I do kinda have if the Floyd Cramer lick. In A:

E ---------------------------
B --------------5-7-5---5h7-5
G ----4h6---4h6-------6------
D --7-----7------------------
A ---------------------------
E ---------------------------

Or something close to that. Floyd's piano is one of the few bits of countrypolitan that I can dig. It's a guitar hammer-on style that Floyd borrowed for guitar, so it's OK that we take it back. The central deal is on the G string, a hammer-on from the second to the major third. And of course it sounds more Floydish if it's up higher.

I also got Fallen Angel, a biographic documentary of Gram Parsons. It's really interesting. You get his family from Florida going into all the detail of the home life he ran away from, Chris Hillman wanting so hard to say nice things about Gram the artist but always going back to his barely-contained contempt for Gram the flighty druggy Keith wannabe, and the back and forth between Phil Kaufman and everyone who hates him and thinks he's a putz.

What really made me stop and rewind was the passing mention of Clarence White. Regular readers of this blog will know that mentions of Clarence White will always make me stop. And since his death and funeral, Gram's singing "Farther Along" and making a pact with Phil are crucial to the story of Gram's death and cremation, it kinda has to be there. I wish there was more. And I wish there was video of the country rock super-tour with Clarence and Gram and Emmylou ending the show together. And, really, I wish that Clarence was never hit by a drunk driver. Less sure with Gram; if he never died, would Emmylou have blossomed into the incredible artist she became? And if it wasn't that night in Joshua Tree, wouldn't it have been some other night at some other place?

Anyway, upside is, the one that came most recently is going back so that my eldest can get a Jimi documentary for a school report, and the one I've been sitting on will stay at home.

I'm Torn

It all started because I had Google Alerts warn me when the word 'Telecaster' shows up in the news.

A CD review page with three artists reviewed talked about an artist, Daniella Cotton, who plays like AC/DC and sings like Mavis Staples. This to me is good TV, and I started thinking I should look her up. I even brought up her MySpace page, but all the music-sending doodads are blocked by work.

Then, Pribek inspired me to listen to the radio. I'll get into radio later, but I'll say that they talked about a Gin Blossoms show and played the first track from the first Counting Crows album, which fits my definition of "Songs I've Heard A Thousand Times Already". They also mentioned her free afternoon show at a place near downtown.

I want to go.

I have it planned to commute my hour and then pick up my new glasses.

What should I do?