I'm just gonna follow the sound.

It's Thursday again and I find myself touting the opening band instead of the main one. Again. Yes, the Black Keys are going to dominate the stage tonight, they just are. It's been a long spell since I saw them do their thing in concert (Seattle being the last time I can recall), but Dan Auerbach has one of the greatest voices in bluesy rock and Patrick Carney has to be one of the tallest drummers I've ever seen behind a set, well, ever. It's just all arms ... like watching Animal from The Muppets. You'll love it more than your mom or something. Still. I feel like I'm one of the few that owns a copy of Human Highway's Moody Motorcycle, but I just had to pick it up after hearing their song "The Sound." It's one of the catchiest songs I've heard in a good long spell. It'll have you by the opening few seconds. And, if you think you don't know them but you know that old weird band the Islands, well then, you do. You so do. I'm going to try as hard as I can to get there early for this show. I actually want to see it instead of hearing it. Come with, yes?

Human Highway - "The Sound" from Secret City Records on Vimeo.

Wordless Wednesday.

Not the Piano Man.

I wrote a song the other day. If I'm real lucky, someone I admire will bend it, shape it, add some notes to it and be able to make it sound nice when sung. Sorta the ultimate compliment in a way, am I right?

Inspiration, awakened.

Ever written one of those almost poems? They're the ones that exist without much prose or turns of phrase to speak of, but plenty of that good, old-fashioned intent? When I was back on that horse and poem writing for a good spell not long ago, this came out of me while on a trip to Louisiana. It captures something in it, so I hesitate to force any kind of structure or rewrite upon it; I've left it largely as it was written ... for now. No poems are ever really finished, right? So it's been said and so it'll be said again.

Wanderlusting

The humidity is like a blanket
even in this shadow, in this sunshine
so cool and sticky at once
always comforting enough
to stay beneath it

it feels like Panama, the place
I can recall mostly for the smiles
even more for the rain
and just once for the beach
the one with the hammock, surfing,
waves so faithfully on its shore

it all leads back to that first desire to sail
but not on crests, but to an elsewhere
a reality just beyond the present
the one so clouded by the more lucrative —
New Zealand, Thailand, Brazil,
even the Bahamas for one long second —
this place with the bananas
and Spanish so much past my own

it’s the land that wants me
if only to pen more thoughts like these.

There is that push inside again.
Who knew it would exist amongst
boiled red crawdads
and smashed road armadillos
in Louisiana?

— 5/10/09

Bon Iver stops by.

bon iver sound check

Last night, I didn't see much of the show. Sorry to disappoint. It sounded really pretty great and I liked running into a whole mess of friends and family for hours on end, but I can't offer much of a review. I can say I didn't ride my bike away disappointed, but I didn't see enough of either concert to offer more of an opinion than that. Too many other people were there to see the same thing I wanted to. That aside, can I just send you to my friend Emily's blog for you to understand a lot of the same feelings I was feeling? I'm gonna do it, right meow. Because today, well, she took the words right outta my mouth ... and also because I'm just that lazy. It's Friday, what can you expect? Clickety click here, won't you? Spanks.

What about Fernando?

You know, everybody is pretty amped to see Bon Iver tonight at the Gallivan and, having seen him just a few months ago at Sasquatch (pretty much right in front of the stage, no less), I can get behind that. And, sure, there are going to be 6,000 others all battling for a spot on the little green spot of putting green they have there; I'll even be one of them. All of that aside, though, why isn't anybody talking about Jenny Lewis, the band's opener? She can throw down a pretty good show as well. She's our era's indietastic Dolly Parton. I can still remember when she debuted the power of "See Fernando" over yonder at Kilby. Everybody clambered to get a recording of it before it ever got properly released, too. So, sure, Bon Iver will makes hearts ache and a whole lot of people pretty happy (for free, no less), but ... BUT ... he's no Jenny Lewis in a short skirt. And I sure want to hear "Carpetbaggers" tonight, in a bad, bad way. That's all I'm saying. See the rest of you there, eh?

Wordless Wednesday (belated).

Take 2 and call me in the morning.

I enter my land of pretend tomorrow morning, the one where I don't believe I am sick, where I possess the very drug to do away with those bronchial evils that ail me and where my throat is not tired from the relentless coff coff coffing. It's a bad thing to be seized with sickness in the summertime. I used to always think those that got colds in 90-degree heat had done something very, very bad at some point to deserve such a fate. When they weren't looking, I made fun of them. And now? I'm among the punished. I don't want a day in bed of sleeping and coughing. I want to run and bike and walk in the outdoors, where I am supposed to be. I even want to go to work, I do. So, once 6 AM hits tomorrow, the mind is going to conquer this worn down, confused bag of bones and it's going to up and forget it ever had to take a sick day in the first place. It'll be one of those new beginnings.

"Do what you fear, and the death of fear is certain." - Mark Twain

Last week in local muzak.

Before I ran out of things to say a couple of days back, I had a bunch of stuff to blather about regarding a couple of concerts that took place in these woods (namely, AA Bondy and White Rabbits). It was a blur of a week getting it written and watching the shows and on and on, but I'm fairly pleased with how the piece turned out. I don't quite have my mojo back as far as my doing concert reviews is concerned, but I'm glad City Weekly is allowing me to gain my footing again, so to speak. I'll get there, I think. Baby steps.

If you want to read the piece, please do. It went live today (and will also be in the free paper version, if you'd like to get newsprint all over your wandering fingers instead). Go over HERE and do so.

Well, how about that?

I ran out of things to say. Can you believe it?

Wordless Wednesday.

AA Bondy @ Urban Lounge 6/23/09