PSoTD

Time to sneak a YouTube in while Dr. Demento's not around.

The sublime Arcade Fire!

I really enjoyed their show at the Whitaker Center in Harrisburg last night, but then I'm partial to the band and the location. It was great to see that the house was pretty much full - the last couple of shows we saw at the Whitaker were not, and that has to be a bit depressing for the performers.

There was a good piece in the Intelligencer Journal yesterday that I missed. I thought there might already be some pics from last night's show on Flickr, since I saw several folks taking phone camera pics during the show, but not yet. If a good one comes along I'll post it.

A band with as big of a catalog of songs as the Cowboy Junkies can't play everything one might want to hear, and last night there were two I was hoping for that didn't happen: Misguided Angel and "To Live is to Fly". The crowd really wanted "Sweet Jane" but no luck with that, either.

Margo Timmins did something I don't recall seeing a performer at this level do before - invite the audience to meet her and her mates after the show in the lobby. We stuck around for a little bit but since we have kids and a babysitter we couldn't really stay. But a lot of folks did, and it's a very friendly thing to offer, and I hope to read somebody's account of it, somewhere, eventually.

Oldies go against everything I stand for, but Tony DeFranco's dance moves and footwear are so uncannily reminiscent of PSoTD on the basketball court that I'm making an exception. Take special note of PSoTD's signature defensive shuffle at 2:10!

I finished a less than inspired listening to Jethro Tull's "A Passion Play". I think the review here fits my thoughts.

I like Jethro Tull's work - Aqualung was my favorite of their work for a while until I really listened to Thick as a Brick and Warchild, and I'm good with any of those three, but I find "A Passion Play" to be a tedious listen.

Bad lyrics and rock go together like George Bush and incompetence. Blender has come up with their list of the 40 Worst Lyricists.

Here's an example ...

09 • Donovan

LSD may be a lot fun—But not if we have to listen to entire albums made on it.

The ’60s folkie once claimed he could “write about any facet of the human condition”; sadly, Donovan chose to concentrate largely on the ones ­involving mermaids. The annoying hippie’s annoying hippie, Donovan traveled to India to see the Maharishi, wore robes on his record covers and released a double album for the children of Aquarius called Gift From a Flower to a Garden. Today, a man with his skill set would be hassling people for bus fare; back then, he was a pop star.

Worst lyric: “In love pool eyes float feathers after the struggle/The hopes burst and shot joy all through the mind/Sorrow more distant than a star/Multi colour run down over your body/Then the liquid passing all into all/Love is hot, truth is molten” (“Barabajagal [Love Is Hot]”)

To be fair, I don't think many lyrics hold up without the music. There are some pretty good bands on this list. Donovan's lyrics aren't bad, they're cosmic!

Yeah, it was time to dig into Spring Session M by Missing Persons.

Sure, Dale Bozzio's voice still gets on my nerves, but no doubt, this is a pretty important album from 1982. The pop new wave tunes - and the synthesizers used to make them - are about as reminiscent of the whole decade as anything.

Not going to buy a replacement for the tape, but I'll listen to the tape again.

Have some Starz.

Ambrosia's Somewhere I've Never Travelled was up. I forgot how good they were. Yes, it's goody-goody pop, sometimes, but it still sits well, although I might be biased by the memories that go with their music.

They also have one of my favorite song lines in a song: And My Front Brain... Would Not Accept... My Thinker.

Try to beat that.

Ah, a favorite 80s album - The Smithereens' Especially for You. Behind the Wall of Sleep is a great, hooky, song. Same with Blood and Roses, and pretty much the whole album. Of course, my favorite is White Castle Blues, if only because of the tinny recording effect.

Yesterday I listened to The Chameleons' "Script of the Bridge". It was okay. Just okay, though, to my ears.

It's funny how many Amazon reviews of almost any album you select has such terms as:

masterpiece
top ten for (whatever)
most underrated

I'm sure you'll find these, or similar superlatives, here.