Another source

Some of the readers of this blog like the record/CD reviews of new albums and the retro-reviews of albums that may be two, twenty or even forty-plus years old. I found another blogger whose site is listed to the left on My Blog List: Garage of Cheese (you can go to the site by clicking on the title). The subtitle of this blog is Memoirs from the Mind of Kurt Baker. Caution, there is some mature/adult language on the site.

Kurt doesn't post that often but I found two album reviews on his site that I appreciated or enjoyed. The first is a February 25, 2008, review of the then recent Green Day one-off EP, a 60s style collection - with, yes, a very retro cover - called Foxboro Hot Tubs - Stop, Drop & Roll! I'll admit to knowing virtually nothing about the band Green Day; nevertheless, I found this write-up to be entertaining and worth the read.

Earlier, on February 17th, 2008, he posted a fine review of the Beach Boys album Wild Honey, an album actually released back in the 60s. Not only does he do a nice job of reviewing the music on the album but he also explains how he came to both discover and love the music of the Beach Boys. Again, his review is worth a read.

Speaking of the Beach Boys, they say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. If so, the CD Freedom Wind by The Explorers Club out of South Carolina is an extremely flattering tribute to the Beach Boys style of music. Naturally, it also has a retro-cover of the band members frolicking on the beach like it's 1964 or '65.

We may have more to say about this extremely interesting musical release at some point in the future.

courage

It takes courage to be a runner. Because it's about more than fatigue. It's about pain, and dealing with it for a long time. And it's about resolve.

You can't really be much of a runner unless you have courage.

John L. Parker, Jr.

Buckeye fan alert!

What is predicted to be the third-largest BCS Tostitos Fiesta Bowl and Buckeye-loving viewing party in the U.S. will be held in Elk Grove, California at 5:00 p.m. on January 5, 2009. This gathering of Buckeye fans will take place at Mandango's Sports Bar and Grill, 8238 Laguna Boulevard. According to the event organizers, only the states of Ohio and Arizona -- a retirement state -- will have larger parties to root the Buckeyes on to a victory over the Texas Longhorns.

Go Bucks!

(This blogger has no relationship to either Mandango's or the manufacturer of Tostitos. However, in the interest of full disclosure, it must be noted that Munchy the cat loves Doritos. He is not, though, currently a spokesfeline for that product.)

Photo: Gregory Shamus/Getty Images

The Hounds of Winter...

Since we're battling the hounds of winter, we thought it would be nice to look back at a warmer period when Munchy the creative cat was soaking up the sun rays!

Photo: Joseph/Munchy Archives (Click on the photo to see a larger version.)

L. A. Living...

One of the things that was so interesting growing up in a small city in northern California - and later returning to work in this region after living in Los Angeles - is how much energy was spent on discussing L.A. Folks who had only seen L.A. on their way to Disneyland had opinions on just about everything from how people drive in "the crazy traffic down there," to the smog and how crowded and supposedly violent L.A. is, etc. But when I moved to L.A. for graduate school I saw that the residents very rarely worried about the opinions of others - in fact, for most Los Angelenos the world is contained within their county's boundaries. There's just no time for talk about San Francisco, Sacramento, Orange County or San Diego.

Yet L.A. is not like New York City, a jurisdiction whose residents seem obsessed with convincing others of their supposed superiority. People live in L.A. because they like living there - an awfully simple notion that seems to be so terribly difficult for others to understand.

Imagine my surprise when in today's San Francisco Chronicle I found these words written by the great columnist Jon Carroll, who seems to have hit the nail on the head (Kudos, Jon!):

(A friend) thinks L.A. is a place for the brain-dead. He says, if you turned off the sprinklers, it would turn into a desert. But I think -- I don't know, it's not what I expected. It's a place where they've taken a desert and turned it into their dreams.

I've seen a lot of L.A. and I think it's also a place of secrets: secret houses, secret lives, secret pleasures. And no one is looking to the outside for verification that what they're doing is all right.

A Review of Jenny Dalton's Rusalka's Umbrella

Lately we've been quite interested in Jenny Dalton, whose music and lyrics remind us of a young Joni Mitchell; although her lyrics are a bit more oblique than Joni's. In interviews Jenny has said that her songs are more like what she remembers of dreams than actual events in her life... Maybe this is why, so many years ago, Bob Dylan labeled some of his songs as dreams.

With this in mind, here is a re-print of a review published on September 24, 2008 in the Twin Cities Daily Planet. The review -- abridged here -- was written by Jay Gabler, the Daily Planet's arts editor.

MUSIC NOTE: Babushka, babushka... Rusalka?

It grew on me. It took a few days of driving around the Twin Cities listening to Jenny Dalton's new album Rusalka's Umbrella, but it finally got under my skin.

It's a concept album and the concept is water. The songs (and accompanying book) are inspired, Dalton's web site notes, by "a collage of influences including Twin Peaks, the Morton Salt Girl, The Shipping News, ghosts, Memoirs of a Geisha, folktales, The Fall by Albert Camus, the 35W bridge collapse, mermaids and more." I don't think I caught all that on the record, but nor did I ever figure out... what the hell happened to Billy Shears.

There's an aptly Eastern European tint to a couple of the songs (in Slavic folklore, a rusalka is a water spirit)... Over Stingesquely decorous arrangements, Dalton lilts like Joni Mitchell with the trilling of Rs and swallowed vocals of the Cranberries' Dolores O'Riordan. Taken as a package, though, the nearest point of reference is the iconoclastic siren Kate Bush -- perhaps the only other living artist who could put such genuine feeling into lyrics like "Six points on a snowflake, eight arrows on a compass/My brother with a host family playing drums for the Norwegians." Move along, folks, move along -- it's all part of the concept.

If the album is a little perplexing at first, by the third or fourth listen it does cohere, and it's well programmed to sweep the listener from the ominous opener "Better Known Vacancy" to the piano-pounding boogie "The Turn and the River" into the strange realms of the album's heart, climaxing with the elegant ballad "Dear Paul" and the surging "Puddle Jump" before depositing us back among "The Snow Mazes of Norway."

I'm sorry I missed the album release show, where the music was dramatized. I'm sure the interpretation wasn't entirely literal... It occurs to me that from the album's lyrics you could assemble an alternate universe Village People: the pirate, the Viking, the test pilot, the surfer, and the sheriff.

Mission Accomplished in Pasadena...

USC 38, Penn State 24 and the game wasn't that close. The Philadelphia Inquirer agreed stating, "Looking national championship-worthy, USC blindsided Penn State today, 38-24, in a lopsided Rose Bowl that was nowhere as close as the final score." The Pittsburg Post-Gazette said that, "(USC) Quarterback Mark Sanchez single-handedly beat Penn State." Finally, Josh Peter of Yahoo! Sports wrote, "Joe Paterno wore his traditional horn-rimmed glasses Thursday, but he should've traded them for a blindfold. It was that ugly."