Slacking...

Yikes.

More than two weeks?

I visited my grandparents (92 & 90) at their home in Durham, NC last week. In case you haven't hung around anyone that old in awhile, lemme tell you - that's pretty f*cking old.

My grandfather can't hear a thing. Trying to talk to him is a cornball gag on a bad sitcom. You yell, as close to his ear as you can get, and if you annunciate perfectly and your voice is in the narrow register that penetrates his eardrum, he yells right back. He has difficulty talking in long stretches, running out of breath easily and unexpectedly.

For the last ten years he has hobbled around on the instep of his right foot, planting his weight, now down to 130 lb., on his ankle. A simple self-test will give you an idea of the sort of discomfort this has been causing him.

Every morning that I was there, my grandfather took an hour or more to shave, shower and get dressed. Much of this time he spent sitting down catching his breath. On more than one day I called out for him, realized he couldn't hear me in a million years, looked down the hall to the bathroom with its door closed, and opened it to find him sitting on his stool, both hands firmly planted on its sides. He'd look up and smile and say, "I'm fine."

There is now oxygen in two rooms of the house to help him catch up, allowing him to take eight to ten of his cherished naps in comfort. It is a testament to the strength and will of a great man (a great railroad man) that he undergoes his trials every day, humble and without complaint, to preserve the simple dignity of putting his pants on one leg at a time. Of being a man.

Unable to use any Wi-Fi access points because of my port and router configurations (don't ask), no blogging was to be done. However a couple walks to the Duke campus got my ears pretty good. In no particular order -

Late Registration - Kanye West
Axis: Bold As Love - The Jimi Hendrix Experience
Decoration Day - Drive-By Truckers
Fear of Music - Talking Heads
This Year's Model - Elvis Costello
Damn The Torpedos - Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers

66 albums / 70 days remaining

60 in February? F*ck Off, Al

Took a solid hike into my local national forest on Saturday. Invigorating. We've been alternating between freezing rain with extreme cold and days like Saturday when you want to eat a Big Mac that came an old Styrofoam container, toss it and your 64 oz. Coke out on to the highway and light your tires on fire when you get home. These swings both create and melt a lot of ice in the mountains, which means the streams are really running.

Motoring through protected lands on your own two feet is choice for music appreciation. Even when you're so far in that you begin to wonder if anyone's behind you, but keep motoring, music blasting. At a point I was balancing the serenity of leaving my phone at home with (how loud I could scream) x (how fast I could run) if Jethro and his brother Jethro decided I was purdy. The adrenaline helps.


Neon Bible* - The Arcade Fire
The Sound - The Larry Keel Experience
Sailin' Shoes - Little Feat
Southern Harmony Musical Companion - The Black Crowes

*This album is pretty f'ing great. I'll have more on it after another solid listen.

72 albums / 85 days remaining

More Rules

Aside from being a testament to American vocal harmonies (which are vividly expressed to the listener when stereo headphoning) Disc 1 of The Grateful Dead's Europe '72 is an album unto itself.

Physical Graffiti is two albums as well. The White Album and Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs are not. All of the aforementioned titles were originally packaged as 4 sides of music on 2 records. While the former 2 retain that divide in CD form, the latter have had their dichotomy digitally rejoined, making them into single, no-less-perfect albums.

I'll post a list of all the rules soon, quit banging down the door, people. Jesus...

One Nation Under A Groove (Expanded Edition)*** - Funkadelic
Europe '72 (Disc 1) - The Grateful Dead

***This is worth noting as it includes a live Maggot Brain as performed by the late, great Eddie Hazel not featured on the original album. Enjoy.

Rules Pt. 2

Tried the car today. (Not "the car" as in "my car" as in "one that I now have to drive whenever I want because I have the keys, and for that matter, the title", - that doesn't exist. As in "listening to an album within specified parameters to make mention on this website")

It does not count.

Two Christmases ago, my father got me a piggyback subscription to XM Radio. There is nothing in the world like having XM in your car. Listening to music, or more specifically, to an album, takes concentration. This very thing is a luxury you don't have while driving. Or the other hand -

Bowling counts.

12 games today. Got my footwork down. I imagine the nerve damage in my fingertips will balance the value of $1 games, but that won't be for at least another, say, 6 months. I'll have to have a job by then, right?

Right?

Physical Graffitti - Led Zeppelin
A Charlie Brown Christmas - Vince Guaraldi Trio
Yankee Hotel Foxtrot - Wilco

80 albums / 92 days reamaining

Some Rules

Being ahead of schedule for maybe the first time in my life, I've decided that the success of this experiment will hinge on the transparency of its guidelines. This was crystallized for me when a discussion between two dudes on two floors came down to this:

Dude 1: "What are you (the author) doing? You don't have a car, you lost your cell phone, your speaker cabinet is here, but you amplifier's in the shop, oh...and you have no job." (Ed. note - Anyone in any way familiar with the assumed cast of characters here will find the irony to be delicious.)

Dude 2: Correct, but I cut my hair myself and I'm playing a lot of guitar and I've listened to 56 albums* since then.

Dude 1: OK. But so have I, and they pay me *@#$(% an hour to do so.

*No, I haven't listened to 56 albums since then. Not by the standards that I set forth and am about to clarify.

A whole lot more music has entered my earholes since this site began besides the 14 albums (17 counting this post) officially tallied. I'm listening for me; I'm writing it down for you. In order to count on the big board:

1) Albums must come through my Sennheiser HD515s (my unintentional parting gift from a former employer. Big companies take note: The longhairs in your company will a) alway get along and b) work in jobs where you're not sure exactly what it is that they do, you just know that you need them, and you're justified not to question those purchase orders, 'cause when a server crashes, it really f*cking crashes, don't it?)

When I cut my hair off with the dull blue-handles on Saturday, I listened to This Year's Model from the laptop perched on the toilet. I've got Harmon Kardon 1" speakers on the laptop. That's not really listening, is it? I may make an exception later for albums played through the stereo proper in my domicile, but I'm currently totally OK with a headphones-only policy.

2) Albums must be listened to start to finish within +5 minutes of their actual runtime.

I listen to a lot of music to cop the licks from it. That's cool, but it's studying, not appreciation. Also, something breaks my concentration and I need to have the headphones off for more than 5 min., I'm interrupting the flow of the record, and, as I'm only getting 1 listen per (many of my favorites have needed at least three spins before I take them in) I owe the creators my full attention to their vision. At least once.


That's it. Those two rules define the listening that I'm doing. If I get a job tomorrow, I can't count the albums that play while I work. Unless they let me wear headphones and leave me the f*ck alone. And I know it's $6.50/hour, guy, but it's not really listening to me.

Wincing The Night Away - The Shins
Talking Heads '77 - The Talking Heads
The Life Aquatic Studio Sessions - Seu Jorge

83 albums / 94 days remaining

Day 4

Bowled poorly last night. But $1 games & beers + finally hearing the song "Jesus, Take The Wheel" + 3 screens of wrastlin' = A great desire to learn how to spin a bowling ball.

And the fact that a dude who seemed to possess none of his natural legs was able to do it.

Funeral - Arcade Fire
Comfort Eagle - Cake
Pressure Chief - Cake

86 albums / 97 days left

Stuck On The Mink / Valentine's Day

Yesterday was Valentine's Day, and I spent most of the day like this.

By the afternoon I was both antsy and thirsty (thirstantsy? This feeling...It's not antsy...it's not even thirsty...) so I decided to take a walk.

Bundled up, big gloves, on. Had to make a decision about what I was going to blast at myself for the first leg of the journey.

Walt Mink. Again.

I've fallen completely back in love with their record Miss Happiness. This is not to say that MH and I ever had a falling out. I didn't catch it on top of my girlfriend.

***Wait...I guess that, seeing as we speak a derivative of a Romance language, we tend to think of things in terms of their sex, right? It's a girl (not to say girl-record, or girly record, even though the bass player for the group is of the female perusasion - more on bass being the only instrument for girls in rock bands some other day) - the same way that I'm Mr. Wookies, this record is Ms. Happiness. (If we got married, I'd be totally cool with her keeping her maiden name.) So - actually, if I caught this record with my girlfriend, I'd probably turn into antimatter on the spot.

I didn't catch Miss Happiness cheating on me. We were hot and heavy during the summer in between my Sophomore and Junior years of high school. I'd be openly flaunting the warning from the biggest sticker I'd ever seen, which was plastered on the glove box of the blue '87 Honda Accord, diverting my attention instead to the effortless operation of the car's manual transmission by Utris songster/guru/guitar fondler John Patrick Hastings and trying to glean some of his seemingly endless knowledge of the backroads of Northwest DC. And smoking a lot of weed.

The neighborhoods were (p)lush. It'd always be around 7 and with the sun was waning we'd float uphill towards the gig. Every single Sunday before our weekly gig at the Grog and Tankard with the Crazy Crackhead Bouncer (whose famously lackluster efforts we applauded in our albums liner notes) the Iranian bartenders and our famously underage friends, Walt Mink blasted. Every week. I took her for granted. Let her slip away.

I never realized how beautiful she was, though, until yesterday. With headphones on. Fumbled through my giant gloves to play it on the return trip. Got home, picked up my guitar and knew where every note was. Played the shredding for Ester. "Interesting choices (for the notes to the guitar solo on 'Chowdertown')," he offered. Good enough for me.

The Mink did another good record, Colossus, but after MH, the drummer left to play for Beck. I think he's been on every record since. It's only the Mink I love on Miss Happiness.

A Swingin' Affair - Frank Sinatra
In The Wee Small Hours - Frank Sinatra
Songs for Swingin' Lovers - Frank Sinatra
Miss Happiness - Walt Mink

89 albums / 97 days remaining


***Totally unnecessary section. Avoid.