Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival

This weekend we are heading to SF to see the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival again. Last year, it was really good. I got to see one of my favorite musicians (John Prine) and got a peek at some new artists that I had never heard of or seen before. Last time the only problems that we ran into were: a) it was a pain in the rear to park anywhere near the park, and b) we realized people post themselves at the big stages rather than move around, so if you want to see someone specific, you'd better get there early and take a seat in the grass...

This time, the list of performers is a little more recognizable to me than it was last year. As the title of the Festival suggests, it's not simply a bluegrass festival (we didnt watch a single bluegrass act last year) but also an alternative country festival. Here are the bands I'm gonna try to catch this time around:

Mark Olson and Gary Louris: These are the two original singers/songwriters from the Jayhawks. Mark Olson left the band after their 2nd album, and a new Jayhawks sound was born. This is part of their "reunion" tour, and this will definitely be the highlight both days of the festival for me. I need to make sure to get a good seat for this one.

Jimmie Dale Gilmore: We saw Jimmie last year with his supergroup - The Flatlanders, but I wasn't really into it. I like Jimmie Dale solo, not with others. He has a high-pitched nasally voice and timbre that in my opinion is best heard alone with an acoustic guitar. His voice sounds like he's been singing for 100 lonesome years, and I like it...

Emmylou Harris: She's a living legend in my book, and I hope to get to see her play if we get the chance. She is a big hit at the Festival though, so we may not get the chance to see her.

Iris DeMent: John Prine introduced me to Iris DeMent through their hilarious song "In Spite of Ourselves". I really like her voice and her song themes, and I think we will get a chance to see her, which will be really cool. Check out her song "Our Town". I love it, especially this version with Emmylou Harris singing backup. (Sorry for the bad quality):

Loudon Wainwright III: This guy is just hilarious and can write some nice little songs. He's the father of Rufus and Martha Wainwright, and I'm hoping for a suprise appearance from either or both of them.

Iron and Wine: This is one guy who made his whole first album by himself on a junky little tape recorder in Seattle. I heard the song "Upward Over The Mountain" and got hooked on him.

Elvis Costello's High Wine and Spirits: I'm thinking the crowd for this will be crazy, but we will try to see him for sure.

Pegi Young: This is Neil Young's wife, playing her own music. We will see her if we can. I'm hoping since Neil and Pegi live here in the Bay Area, that Neil will pop in and do a song or two.

Should be a fun 2 days of concerts.

Today is a sad day in movie history... Paul Newman passed away late last night (September 26th) and to me, it's a huge loss to not only the film world, but to the charities and organizations that he ran and participated in. I've been knee deep in a tribute project compiling Paul's films, and now i'm finding it hard to get back into it today.

If you've got a copy of a Paul Newman movie, or happen to see one on TV today, do yourself a favor and give it your time.

R.I.P. Paul

Here's a quick story about Paul's "Hole in the Wall Camp" for sick children:

This past year, at one of the usual meetings of parents and children at the original camp, Newman showed up; crowds pressed close. The mother of one little girl spoke to Ray Lamontagne, the head of the camp’s board. Her daughter wanted to tell Paul Newman something, but she couldn’t get over to him because she was in a wheelchair. Lamontagne fought his way through the crowd and brought Newman back to the little girl, and he knelt down by her wheelchair. “For the first time in my life I have a friend,” the little girl told him. “I’ve never had a friend before, because I’ve been in a wheelchair most of my life, so kids avoided me. So thank you, Mr. Newman, for this camp.” Newman had tears in his eyes.

He had already said, “I wanted to acknowledge luck. The beneficence of it in many lives and the brutality of it in the lives of others, especially children, who might not have a lifetime to make up for it.”

"Plastic Jesus" from Cool Hand Luke:



For more info on him: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Newman

The Ghosts That Sell Memories

Here is one of my favorite Tom Waits songs: Tom Traubert's Blues (Four Sheets To The Wind In Copenhagen)- aka Waltzing Mathilda off of his 4th album: "Small Change"


This is Mr. Waits in his jazz/blues/crooner prime just before he re-invented himself in what I call the "Rain Dogs" period. If you are interested, I believe Tom has three distinct periods of his musical career:

1973 - 1980 (Mainly blues/jazz/bebop - piano and guitar)
1980 - 1992 (A new Tom Waits with a heavier sound and moodier music - dabbling into new instruments such as pots and pans for drums)
1992 - Present (The current Tom Waits, an older/wiser musician who does modern folk songs driven by non-traditional sounds)

This song is 30 years old and still just as meaningful and affecting as I'm sure it was when it first came out. This was played on live TV back in March of 1977, months before I was born. I tell you, I was born in the wrong decade....

Funny aside: The first time my Dad heard Tom Waits, he thought it was Red Foxx singing blues songs hahahahahaha! After he said that, I had to agree, it sounded very similar.

Supermen with Silverguns

I was a teen in the 90’s and in high school, so it would be pretty hard to say I wasn’t influenced by the music of the time. There was something strange going on then, and I like to think of 1992 through 1998 as being one of the best times in musical history. Sure, grunge was the scene, and electronic music was just starting to find it’s place on the radio, but no one can deny that a classic form of music was born in 6 short years. I’ll cite Belly, Mazzy Star, Tool, Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Smashing Pumpkins, Everclear, Weezer, Tori Amos, 10,000 Maniacs, and even Third Eye Blind and the Gin Blossoms as huge influences on me, or most people I know from my generation. Not to be ignored is Stone Temple Pilots.

Early on they drew comparisons to Pearl Jam and other grunge rock bands, but honestly, I never heard a similarity. Maybe it was because I heard more Led Zeppelin, Doors, and KISS in STP than any other sound.

I was a huge fan of STP once “Plush” became a massive hit. I actually had heard “Sex Type Thing” hundreds of times on MTV during Headbangers Ball, (does anyone watch MTV anymore? All I see is pointless shows with uninteresting half-naked people… I remember watching MTV for HOURS each day…) but I wasn’t really sold on STP’s sound for some reason until “Plush”, and then “Creep”. When I first started hanging out with Dave and Dustin, we all found a shared love for the band, and it even caused us to go into the Great America sound booth and record our own version of “Plush” with probably a few too many swear words and re-workings… (I still have the tape). Soon after STP released their 2nd album, we created our first band: “Bench” and we tried to emulate their sound.

As years went on, the band became less interesting to me because after their 3rd album, their music began to sound very repetitive and not as interesting as in their heyday. I still bought all the records, but I couldn’t really get into them very much. As time went on, the band fell apart, and they became another band on my list of “Bands I wish I would have seen”. There were many rumors of reunions, but I didn’t believe them at all, and besides, I don’t know about you, but I find most bands that re-unite a joke. STP however is the rare case of a band who reunites as if they never broke up in the first place. As a result, on Friday July 25th, I saw one of the best concerts I’ve ever seen.

The band came out like they were still in their 20’s, and rocked the hell out of the place. If you’ve never been to the Greek Theater in Berkeley, you are missing out. It is simply the best outdoor venue I have ever been to. The sound is always awesome, and no matter where you sit, you have a great view. We got to the theater about 3 hours early, and patiently waited through 2 somewhat un-interesting opening bands (Black Rebel Motorcycle Club was not bad, but I couldn’t get into it). Once STP started though, the crowd went ballistic, and welcomed back some of the heroes of our youth (The average age of fans at the theater seemed to be 28-35).

Although I was excited to see them come out and get ready to play, I was left underwhelmed by their opener: “Big Empty”. On its own, it’s a good song (though one of my least favorite’s of their singles), but it is just so slow that it just flat out sucks as an opener. At the very least though, it is a popular song (might be their biggest hit), so people were singing along and remembering why we used to love this band. As the night went on, they played more and more hits. So many in fact, that I was actually surprised that I had forgotten just how many radio hits they had. Song after song, it became clear that this band was in fact the closest thing that my generation had to a Led Zeppelin – the powerhouse rock band of skilled musicians.

Aside from a few questionable song choices (and a seemingly pointless Obama tribute), I was loving every minute of it. They played the songs as close to the albums as possible in a live setting, and they kicked major butt. Best of all, they played a rare song of theirs which is probably my favorite song of theirs: “Silvergun Superman”. This was a shock to me because I had been looking at set lists for their tour to see what they were playing, and I had even forwarded a list to Dustin saying, “Perfect set list, except they are just missing Silvergun Superman”. So when they played that, it really made my night. Here they are with Vasoline:



They did play a few songs that just don’t seem to fit a concert setting that I wish they’d have kept off the agenda (Sour Girl, All In The Suit That You Wear, Too Cool Queenie, and Coma), but otherwise, they knew their audience, and played some great songs. The best thing to me about the concert was the fan reaction. I’ve been to a ton of concerts, and I don’t know what it is, but most audiences seem to not really be into the concert, don’t know the music, and in most cases, leave early. Hell, no one even knows how to keep up the cheering to make the band come out for an encore it seems… Anyway, at this show, everyone was singing along, everyone seemed happy, and believe it or not, the place stayed packed from start to finish. I haven’t seen a concert retain so many people since KISS in 1996. Awesome. I’d love to see them again if I get the chance. Here is the set list:
1. Big Empty
2. Wicked Garden
3. Big Bang Baby
4. Silvergun Superman
5. Vasoline
6. Lounge Fly
7. Lady Picture Show
8. Sour Girl
9. Creep
10. All In The Suit That You Wear
11. Crackerman
12. Plush
13. Interstate Love Song
14. Too Cool Queenie
15. Coma
16. Down
17. Sex Type Thing
18. Sin
19. Dead And Bloated
20. Trippin’ On A Hole In A Paper Heart

Fools Gold

This is one of my favorite Thin Lizzy songs, and I wanted to post this rare performance of it.

No Substitutions!!

Most people know that I am an insanely picky eater. I either love what I am eating or hate it... So its easy to imagine that when I go into a restaurant, I want exactly what I want and nothing else. Some places are good about it, and others are bad. Mr. Nicholson walked into one of the bad ones. (What you see here is what I feel like sometimes when I am ordering...)

This is from Five Easy Pieces, one of my top 10 movies:

She sang Rock and Roll with the Devil....

Album Review: Matt Mays & El Torpedo – Terminal Romance

It’s too bad you probably don’t know who Matt Mays is. He’s a Canadian rocker who fronts a band called “El Torpedo”, who carry the torch of the likes of Tom Petty, Neil Young, and now apparently Thin Lizzy.

I first found Matt Mays about two years ago on Pandora (Internet radio station), and I haven’t stopped listening since. I fell for his songs immediately because the music he makes is heavily influenced by so many rock genre’s, including folk rock, classic rock, glam rock, and it’s all done in a modern alternative rock way. Because of this concoction of inspirations, and his own guitar playing/vocal styles, we get loud distorted guitars, folky acoustic guitars, rock and roll solo’s, the Killers style orchestrations, and even delicate and thoughtful songs. Even with a variance in style throughout his albums, there is an overbearing style that carries each song to the next.
Last week, Matt Mays released a new album called “Terminal Romance”, which I didn’t think I would like so much, because on first preview, it was a little too “in your face” rock for me (hey, I’ve been listening to a lot of slower/lighter music for the past few months). But after a listen or two, I have really began to dig my heels into this album and get behind it. This is a full-on rock album. There are about three songs that sound like they could have come off of an early 80’s Thin Lizzy album, which is very impressive. I haven’t heard a rock song like this since the last Lizzy album I bought. Two songs sound like they could come off of a Tom Petty album, and two that are straight out of the Ramones era punk. The final song, sounds like a it was made by Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, and the Allman Brothers had they all been California bred bands. This is seriously good stuff.

My favorite song on the album is the title track called “Terminal Romance”, about a guy wandering the streets of New York alone trying to reconcile with the past. He seems disillusioned with love and relationships (It should be noted that in the final song “Long Since Gone”, he doesn’t miss his girl, he misses his band), and he seems to be ready to just give up on things because as he says, “heartbreaks are un-curable”. The part I love most is the climax of the song, where Mays starts singing in an almost gospel manner, repeating, “She sang rock and roll, with the Devil”. While I have no idea what it means, it is sure fun and easy to sing along with (for over a minute).

This is only Matt May’s second album with El Torpedo, and I can only hope for more. Sadly, since he’s on the East Coast of Canada, the chances of seeing him and his band live are not very good.

The Queen's Lair

A month or two ago, Koo Koo got a new bed, and it has become her favorite place to be. Without spending a dime, we transformed our buffet into a kitty bed!

I got the idea when she was jumping up onto the buffet about 20 times a night just trying to get close to watch the fish. This would make her knock the fish food over, and cause all sorts of trouble, so I decided to see if she would sit in the drawer. I emptied it out, and sure enough, she loved it. So we put a pink towel in there (why do all my cats like pink blankets and towels?) and she loved it immediately. She spends about 3 hours a night in there, just watching the fish swim. She also tries to catch her mortal enemy: The Sucker Fish (seen sneaking past her while she sleeps in the picture above).



She pays no interest to the 100+ mystery snails that we have been raising.... If you are looking for some apple/mystery snails, we've got tons to give away. They are awesome looking little dudes, which are either yellow/orange or purple/blue. The purple ones just look too cool for school. Let me know if you want any. They are low maintenance, and clean up gunk in your tank.

Boys Gone Wild

Monday night, Dustin and I went to San Francisco to catch a screening of Sam Peckinpah’s first breakthrough film: “The Wild Bunch”. Some of you may know that in my book, Peckinpah is second only to Sergio Leone in terms of visual style, directing, and editing, so I do my best not to miss seeing his movies up on the big screen, the way they were meant to be seen. In 2006, Dustin and I did a bonsai trip and drove to Santa Monica to see a double-feature of Peckinpah’s, “The Ballad of Cable Hogue” and “Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid”. Monday night was a repeat performance, two dudes taking a trip to watch a “guy film” from the guy who invented the guy film.


After picking Dustin up from his work, we headed into SF to Castro Street, where the Castro Theater lives. We got to the theater a little early (280 > 101), so we were able to stop in at my favorite place to eat in SF: The Sausage Factory. If you haven’t been there, go check it out. Totally simple Italian food, and a decent price. In the past I’ve only ever had Pizza there, and it’s always good if you like thin/simple pizza with no frills, but last night since we didn’t have much time, I decided to check out the cheese ravioli’s, which were good enough to make me want to get some again next time. Stopping at the Sausage Factory before or after movies at the Castro has become somewhat of a ritual, so I was glad that we were able to stop by and get some good food on a work night.

After eating we headed a few blocks down to the theater. If you haven’t been to the Castro Theater, it is similar to the Stanford Theater, in that it is a classic Movie Palace, built in the early years of Hollywood. On the outside, other than the big marquee and the old school ticket box, it doesn’t look like much. On the inside however, it is a grand theater with huge artifices, paintings, and old world designs hanging from every corner of the room. The seats are much better at the Castro than they are at the Stanford Theater, thankfully, and they seem to be built for people that are taller than 4’ 2” and heavier than 112 lbs. They show primarily older films, and have interesting film series’ every few weeks, and it really makes me wish I lived closer. For instance, in August, they are presenting a film series of 80’s fantasy movies that were all done without CG, such as Labyrinth, The Dark Crystal, and The Neverending Story.

When we got to the theater, it was about 60-70% full, which is pretty rare for some of these old movies that time has forgotten. The last time I saw the theater that full was when I saw a double-bill of Taxi Driver and Citizen Kane. I’ll get my major gripe out of the way before I go any further…. The print of the movie that they used for The Wild Bunch was supposed to be a print from a 1995 Director’s Cut restoration, but the version we saw had a very annoying popping and crackling noise coming out of the left hand side of the screen, and there was a deep warbling coming out of the right hand side. Both of these sounds seem to have been amplified by the fact that they had the sound turned up well beyond the norm, which was strange to me, since the Castro is really big on giving an accurate presentation. The sound was mostly audible during the quieter scenes, so it wasn’t too distracting, but I would never want to see it presented like that again. I'm guessing they did not store this copy of the film very well for the past 13 years, because there was some severe damage.

Onto the movie. The Wild Bunch is important in the history of American Cinema, because it is considered the first “Ultra-Violent” movie. Before the Wild Bunch, American films followed a set of rules called “The Hays Code”, which was established in 1930 with a goal to control content in films. Films were not to show nudity, drug use, any form of sexual perversion or adultery, or even hint at homosexuality. How this affected action/adventure movies such as those that Peckinpah had made before The Wild Bunch, was in the way violence was depicted. According to the Code, a realistic death could never be shown in film. For example, you could not show a person pointing a gun at someone and firing, then show the victim grab their chest and fall to the ground. Cuts between footage were required when filming scenes like this, so for example, we would see a shot of someone firing the gun, then we would cut to a close-up of the victim’s face in pain, therefore separating the act of firing the gun from the bullet killing the victim. In 1968, the Hays code was forever to be discontinued, and films like The Wild Bunch (1969) began doing all that the production code prohibited. In fact, The Wild Bunch took things a step further by not only showing the shooter and the victim in the same scene, but also by having the victim’s death shown in agonizing slow motion as they fall to their death and writhe in pain. The amount of violence in the film also propelled it into history as beginning the “rise of violent films”. This was the first American film to portray violence in such a way, and it has left its mark permanently.


Despite being originally released with a Rating of “X”, the film was a critical and commercial smash hit, and it made Sam Peckinpah a star director, granting him bigger budgets and more freedom in the industry. Unfortunately, the film also pigeonholed Peckinpah as being a violent filmmaker, and as a result, when he made his next film, “The Ballad of Cable Hogue”, a light-hearted comedic Western, it was a failure because the audience was expecting violence.

The film itself carries a common theme in Westerns, that of old men past their prime trying to adjust and survive in the modern world. This is shown through the two main “heroes” of the film, Pike Bishop, and Deke Thornton. Pike is the leader of the Wild Bunch, and is trying to make one last big score before retiring. Deke, on the other hand is a former member of the Bunch, and has been offered a release from prison if he agrees to hunt down Pike, his best friend. Throughout the film we are reminded of just how old these men are, and how the modern world has no use for their type of outlaws and cowboys. In fact, a car is introduced about halfway through the film, letting the audience know this is in fact a 20th century world they are living in, no longer the Old West. The drive of the film becomes honor and a man’s “word”, and the past histories that put these men where they are today. Through Pike and Deke, we learn about these men, their commitment to each other, and their desires of living young and free the way they did in the past. These ideas are best summed up in a scene where the Bunch is seeking refuge in a Mexican village, and the town elder speaks of how age and life lessons can affect a person: “We all dream of being a child again. Even the worst of us. Perhaps the worst most of all.”

Peckinpah intelligently chose to use Hollywood actors that were past their prime, and losing ground in the newer, younger Hollywood of the 1960’s to star in the roles of outlaws past their prime. William Holden (who played Pike) had been a dignified and popular actor of serious dramas before he fell out of favor in the new Hollywood, and it was very fitting that he played the disgruntled leader of the Bunch, wishing for the return of the good old days. Peckinpah made films about men, and he made them well, raging with machismo, and bordering on misogyny, and he influenced some of the greatest filmmakers who followed him. Peckinpah style movies are long gone, but at least we can still view them at these old movie palaces.

Dinner at Tiffany's

After a fun day at Quarry Lakes in Fremont (check it out, itz cool), we spent Saturday night in Palo Alto to go see “Breakfast At Tiffany’s” at one of my favorite theaters, the Stanford Theatre on University Avenue. It’s an old Movie Palace built in the 1920’s, around the time of the birth of the film industry. The Stanford Theatre only shows movies that were made in the old Hollywood system, so you get a classic experience in a classic movie palace. Plus, most of the audience is over 60, so aside from a few people fainting and falling asleep, the theater is relatively quiet, except for genuine cheers and laughs from the audience, and you get to see a film, the way it was meant to be seen, in a fancy theater with people there to see a quality movie, not the latest junk that studios put out.

This was only my second time seeing Breakfast at Tiffany’s, and I loved every minute of it. The first time I saw it was a year or so ago at the California Theater in downtown San Jose, another fancy movie palace.

I won’t ruin the story of the movie for those of you who haven’t seen it, but let’s just say that Audrey Hepburn plays “Holly Golightly”, a not-so-innocent girl who seems to be the life of the party for anyone she meets. Something about her charm and spacey attitude really works for me. The only weakness of the movie in my eyes is her co-star of George Peppard as Paul, or Fred-Baby… depending on who is on screen at any given moment. The rumor is that Paul Newman was supposed to play the role of Paul, but plans fell through. I love Paul Newman, and think he would be great in the role, and much more interesting than Peppard, but I also think that Breakfast At Tiffany’s required a lower-key actor to play alongside Audrey to allow her to radiate more off the screen. I can imagine if it were her and Paul Newman, the hotness of the movie would hurt the story and style of the film.

Three things I find very interesting about this movie:

1) Audrey Hepburn’s style is unmatched. No one has ever come close to looking as modernly elegant has her in any movie. She’s built like a boy, and just ends up looking so gorgeous. Her hairstyle was just perfect for her outfits every time, and the shades that made her look high ironically worked to make her look even more elegant sometimes. My only complaint was we didn’t get more focus on her shoes…

2) Moon River: This might be the saddest song ever. Every time it came into the film it was very affecting. The song acts as Holly’s theme song, and serves as the centerpiece of the film in the scene where she plays and sings the song on her balcony, using her real voice and an acoustic guitar. The scene works as a sort of confession that she gives to the streets below, and in my opinion identifies her with the alley cat theme that the film carries as a subtext.

3) The final scene... I won’t ruin it, but it has to be one of the most gut-wrenching scenes ever. There is such a sense of loss, pain, and disappointment all wrapped up into about three or four minutes of film, it hits like a brick in an otherwise upbeat film. As Emily said, the cat in the film deserves an Oscar for his performance.


After the movie, we went to Paxti’s Chicago Pizza. The place is not very big, and has a very long wait time for food, but the pizza was pretty good. An 8 on my pizza scale for the main ingredients: the cheese, and spaghetti sauce topping was nice, and it was a nice place to eat. Unfortunately, it scored pretty low on my scale for crust and leftovers. The crust is pie crust, and I’m not a fan of it…. And, the pizza simply was not good later that night when I took some leftovers home. That’s too bad. Tomatina pizza is still #1 in my book, tied with a funky little place in Napa that I always forget the name of….

We had some gelato afterwards, and it was good as always. It was a good way to spend a Saturday night.

Hopefully the Stanford Theater will get off its butt and get some more great film series’ showing there like they did in 2003 and 2004. Emily and I practically lived there back then, when they had Western and Jimmy Stewart marathons.

What's in a name?

As my first post of my new blog, I wanted to explain it's name a bit...

The title comes from one of my favorite songs: Mazzy Star's "Cry, Cry" from their final album, "Among My Swan" (See Pic). I got this album on my birthday in 1996, and I doubt I've ever gone a month without listening to it. They just don't make albums like this anymore...

I'll have to admit that this was not my first choice of Blog names... I tried at least 50 different names, but most were taken or sounded strange as a URL. Anyway, I like this one.

The plan is to update this blog somewhat frequently with stuff that is going on with me, my friends, and my family. Fair warning, it will be boring, and sometimes long-winded, but I hope it will be enjoyable and interesting for those of you I don't get to see on a daily basis.