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It's The Heat AND The Humidity

Now that the weekend's almost over, I finally feel 100% over that cold/flu thingie I've been dealing with for a few days.

Ain't that how it goes?

Still, it was a fairly productive weekend. I saw Reckless Kelly at the International Festival, and that was a little bittersweet. The best song in the set was a cover of Jay Farrar's "Drown," from that wonderful Trace album from Farrar's Son Volt days. And some of the old standards from the Millican CD are still a pleasure to hear -- that was such a statement album from a new band that I guess I expected more of a breakthrough by now. Instead, most of the new stuff sounds awfully derivative of Uncle Tupelo to me.*** That's not a bad derivative, mind you, just not where I thought they were headed. Then again, I think a lot of the original band's sense of melody and arrangement was lost with the departures of Casey Pollock (original guitarist) and Chris Schelske (original bassist, sometime songwriter, and harmony vocals).

Speaking of bands, I managed to crap out before seeing Steve Earle, who closed down the festival last night. One of these years, I'll see the dude. But yesterday, I settled for "Guitar Town" cranked through the home stereo a few times. The heat and humidity won. That happens in Houston.

And still speaking of bands, I managed to get some work done for my current favorite band. I hope they like it. Or hack it usefully. Or send it back for a complete rewrite without too many curse words. :) We'll see.

Finally on the topic of music -- my old, trusty headphones with the amazing frequency response have finally about crapped out on me after some intense listening over the weekend. So I ordered a nice nice replacement set of cans. Not quite audiophile -- I'm not willing to chuck out that kind of cash -- but by all the reviews, very very close. I'd forgotten what a pleasure it can be listening to stuff through a quality set of cans.

So there's your weekend, boys and girls.



*** If you're a big RK fan and love the current sound, please don't mailbomb me. Especially since I purchased the new CD and spread a little love (cash always spreads love). "Mersey Beat" was probably worth the cost alone. That's a great little song, even if it seems a little out of place (it was co-written with Schelske, and the arrangements haven't changed much from the old days). In fact, I'd love to hear Rick Poss cut loose on it (he shares a birthday with George Harrison, after all)

[Posted at 20:09 CST on 05/04/03] [Link]

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