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I grew up in the '80s, and I think Van Halen probably makes up more of my musical DNA than any other music.  I haven't listened to them all that much in the last 20 years or more but it is undeniable that they are a massive presence in my life and in so many vivid memories of my past. I cant separate them from memories I have of so many childhood friends (and enemies). I know exactly where I was and what I was doing when I heard as a 12 year old that they were becoming Van Hagar.  They were my first music purchase I made with my own money.  They are on the MTV Mount Rushmore.  They are my grade school graduation swim party. They are my high school cover band.   They are what the boys AND girls I knew thought was fun and awesome...which is a fucking revelation when you're 11 years old.

EVH is maybe the most influential person who ever lived.  At least when it comes to what matters.

What if a few Republican senators dying or going into comas from Covid is how RBG's seat goes unfilled?

That'd sure be a twist.

I can envision Mitch McConnell right now getting the every Republican in the senate to write notes saying their dying wish is to vote for Amy Coney Barrett, and then if enough of them die, McConnell arguing that those are valid votes.

I've noticed something about Biden that I wish he would work on, or that his team would have trained out of him by now.   He'll start to make  what is obviously going to be a direct, plain spoken and clear statement from his heart, then before getting to the meat of the statement he stops, says "Look...", then veers off into a related but much less clear statement.  

He does this a LOT, and if he would overcome this habit it would greatly increase the effectiveness of his message, and probably score him a lot of powerful sound bites.

That's my primary criticism of Biden's performance, and of him in general as a debater.  

My criticism of Trump is that he's was and is a miserable, abusive sack of shit from the word go and stayed that way through the entire debate.

1 hour ago, uncool2pillow said:

 

 

If Biden wins and turns Congress blue, I'd love to see them add two more justices. Hell, add 20.

Adding two still puts the liberal justices on the losing side of 6-5 (or 7-4 if Breyer drops dead in the next couple of weeks).  There's no point in increasing the number unless you end up with an even balance or the winning hand.  

6 minutes ago, Chez said:

That's fair, though if not having experience as a trial judge is a deal-breaker for you, consider that only one of the current justices (Sotomayor) ever was as a trial judge before being elevated to the U.S. Court of Appeals.  The Hon. Ruth Bader Ginsburg never was a trial judge.  

Lack of trial judge experience is not a deal breaker.  I mention that because it would count for lot if it were in addition to her 2.5 years of experience as an appellate judge.  And frankly, the first half year (or more) as a judge is spent moving into and setting up your chambers, hiring law clerks, etc., so 2.5 years is a pretty flimsy amount of actual case work.  

I think the standards should be quite a bit higher for anyone holding the highest possible position in a profession.  

I'll bet the standards to be the president's limo driver are more stringent.  Certainly the pilot of Air Force One has more than 2.5 years experience piloting an actual aircraft.

1 hour ago, Chez said:

 she s unquestionably qualified to be a Supreme Court Justice 

I'd say she's only barely qualified.

She has 2.5 years total experience as a judge.  While there is no requirement for a SCOTUS justice to have any experience as a judge whatsoever, or to even hold a law degree,  I would hope that all Americans would prefer for our Supreme Court Justices to have served more time on the bench than that.  Her experience as a judge only includes federal appellate court, and she has zero experience as trial judge.  Her on the bench experience is slim enough that anyone would be perfectly justified in questioning her qualifications.   

I would hold the same opinion if this were Barack Obama being nominated by Joe Biden.

I want to see the Supreme Court bench stocked with justices who have lengthy experience deciding cases.  She does not rise to that level.

For those reasons, I don't think she is "unquestionably qualified."   

I saw on Nels' Instagram page that he was playing on the new Joan Osborne album Trouble and Strife.  I had never heard her music, aside from What If God Was One of Us?, so I didn't know what to expect.

Anyway, Nels does some fine playing on this record, and has a few solo spots that are very satisfying to hear.  My opinion is that Wilco has underutilized him in recent years, using him on the records mainly as a background/ambient sounds, with only the occasional moments where he gets to come up to the surface, so to speak, so it's nice to hear him play some traditional lead and rhythm guitar in a pop/rock format. 

When listening. I was convinced Glenn was also on some of these songs, but that is apparently not the case.  The drummer is Aaron Comess from Spin Doctors, playing in a very Kotche-esque style, at least on some of the songs. 

I can't get the Ashes episode to play, but i'm enjoying the At Least... episode.  

Regarding your discussion of Sunset Magazine in the At Least... episode, and magazines specific to states or cities, which seems to be a novel concept to the Canadian host of this podcast, that is very common in the states.  Most cities and states in the US have their own magazines.  Here in Atlanta, we have Atlanta Magazine.  We also have magazines specific to various statewide industries or interests.  Georgia Music Magazine (now defunct) was one that comes to mind. 

Even Little Rock has it's own magazine, Little Rock Family.   You could probably google any city + magazine and you'd find results.  I'm kind of surprised this isn't a thing in Canada.

That's a fair point, I typically will look at the rundown for who played what (if available... newer Wilco albums don't have as much info for song-by-song, unfortunately) and will look up any weird instruments I'm not familiar with, for instance on At My Window Sad and Lonely I noticed Billy plays a "bouzouki" and off the top of my head I wouldn't have been able to tell you what that is. But in that situation I caught that before we recorded and was able to quickly do some research. Clearly for Art of Almost I didn't do that, which is too bad because explaining what a cimbalom is, is exactly the kind of in depth, slightly nerdy stuff I want to share. So I probably should have just done my due diligence instead of guessing! Seems like I was caught off guard with that one. I want the show to find a good balance between being informative and feeling like a fun conversation between friends. So I don't want it to feel too structured or rehearsed, but there's probably a good balance we can find. I do try to research each song before hand but I also like going into these not knowing exactly where the conversation will flow or what Jason thinks and feels about individual songs.

But thanks for the clarification, I think doing a "corrections" segment every once in awhile will be fun, so I'll mention it there (unfortunately we're trying to record ahead so we have a large bank of episodes before Jason's child is born this winter, so it won't be able to set the record straight till we're into the Cs). Fair point about the percussion instruments too, I tend to think when there's a blanketed "percussion" credit that it's just shakers/tambourines but you're right in that isn't fair for all percussion instruments.  

The other piece of feedback we've gotten is we don't always delve too deeply into what a song means. Sometimes, that's fine, like for Christ For President, it's right there in the title. Other times, like At Least That's What You Said, there was probably opportunity to talk about the lyrics a little more in-depth. Though I also don't want to get too into the weeds of dissecting each lyric Jeff writes, again, there's a balance in there somewhere to find. I tend to think much more about the songs sonically or the story behind the songs, lyrics can become an after thought for me at times, so I'm working on that. 

Another change you'll notice after these initial batch of episodes is we lock down the format for the show a little more which I think has a big payoff for just keeping things organized and focused. 

Again, thanks for listening and caring enough to offer your thoughts! 

Hey, Looking forward to listening to the Ashes episode later today.  Just as soon as I finish listening to the George Clinton interview on Questlove Supreme.

BTW, I agree with your take on Art of Almost feeling like an experimental track shoehorned into a fairly straightforward batch of tunes.  That, and like you guys, The Whole Love is my lost Wilco era.  It's my least listened to of their albums, and one of the few tours I skipped (I think I skipped the Schmilco tour, too).  I was hoping what they were doing on Art of Almost would be representative the whole album, but instead it's mostly breezy pop, straightforward rock, and a couple silly moments.  And a way too long folk song that I don't really like at all.  Come to think of it, that song may be the main reason why I skipped the tour.  

I've listened to a number of episodes now, and have enjoyed it, but if I may I'd like to offer a bit of constructive criticism based on a couple things I noticed in the Art of Almost episode.

When talking about Glenn's contribution to the song they make a couple of unforced errors.  They say he plays a cimbalom.  They don't know what this is, and guess that it is some sort of cymbal.  That's not a bad guess based on its name, and I'm sure 99.9% of people in the world don't know what a cimbalom is (I didn't know for sure, and I'm a musician who has played in numerous school orchestras with well outfitted percussion departments) but it's actually a stringed instrument played with mallets, very similar to a hammer dulcimer.  A quick Google search would have allowed them to explain what this instrument is, maybe narrowed in on the sound it's contributing to the song, etc. This would have added some interesting content to the episode, which is better than guessing and being wrong.  

Example of a cimbalom being played:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-NhCJMoDd5E

Another thing was their discussion of percussion in general.  They're right that listing "percussion" in album credits is ambiguous, and they describe it as anything having to do with rhythm.  This description is not correct.  In addition to rhythmic instruments, the percussion family includes many instruments used for melody and harmony, and others for sound effects (vibraslaps, for example).  One of the melodic percussion instruments Glenn uses is crotales, which are tuned metal discs and are used in a similar way as a xylophone or glockenspiel.  One example of his use of crotales is I Am Trying to Break Your Heart, which you can see below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3paspn2oYw

I enjoy the podcast and I'm glad it exists.  I hope this criticism won't be taken as anything other than suggestions.

I'm almost done watching Teenage Bounty Hunters.  It's been a fun show so far. 

So now I found another link of the above link that I posted and it lists the show as "Lou Reed performing live at the Théâtre St-Denis in Montreal, Canada on the 13th of August 1989."

 

You didn't happen to keep a 'sonic journal' (a la Bear) and jot down the date of the Lou Reed show that you saw on on your 1st trip? It would be a bit funny if you watched it a black and white TV, all along. My TV in the 1st half of the 90's was an old black and white, which I got poked fun at for. Even had tin-foiled rabbit ears.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AUiDLepxgvI

I guess anything's possible, but I know the person whose TV I was watching it on had a 4 head VCR, which was high end at the time (I remember that because he advised me to insist on 4-head when I was in the market for a VCR), so it'd be weird if it were a B&W TV.

I suppose that could be the same video I saw, but I remember it way differently.

I think you are thinking Chris Slade who played with AC/DC -- I don't think Slade ever played with Reed, though.

 

From what read, Robert Medici played drums on the New York tour. The only picture I can find is not very good.

 

 

I wonder if the below is what will be released on the DVD -

Lou Reed - New York Album - live on TV 1990

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JevqIVGPR1A

Well, that's interesting to know.  He looks just like Chris Slade when you're six hours into an acid trip.

That's definitely not the New York promo video I saw.  The one I saw was more sparse.  Filmed on what looked like a soundstage.  No concert production or lighting.  So no frills it was almost black and white.   

But again, the acid, so who knows.  

 

a DVD of the long out-of-print “The New York Album” concert film, which features Reed performing the album in Montreal at the Theatre St. Denis. 

This concert film, in its entirety, took up an hour or so of my first experience taking acid.  

Not a particularly good concert film for that.  

Would be very interesting to see again now, 30+ years later.   I recall he had the bald drummer from AC/DC in his band, which was a bit of overkill.  His songs don't really require that level of beastly pummeling. 

I'll check it out tomorrow.  Sounds like a fun podcast.

Probably the first ever was a big band jazz concert with my grandparents in Massachusetts.  We used to see a lot of that kind of thing when we'd visit the grandparents, especially after they found out I wanted to play drums.  

But the first one I went to without adult supervision was George Benson and Lee Ritenour JVC Jazz Festival tour in 1988, at the Fox in Atlanta. 

First rock concert was The Who The Kids Are Alright tour 1989.   4th row center at Lakewood Amphitheater in Atlanta.

As a constituent in his district, it was always a pleasure and honor to cast a vote for him.  I hope we in District 5 will be able to fill his seat with someone worthy of following in his footsteps.

That audience shot was from the Riviera in Chicago during the Residency of 2008. As I recall, that shot was during the encore break of the last show of the 5 night run. 

Ah, thanks.  I was curious because the paint job is a little like the Tabernacle in Atlanta (different colors but similar style.)  

These are fantastic!  Thanks for sharing those.

What is the venue in the shot of the full audience/balcony with purple painted wood taken from behind the drums?  About 2/3 down the page.

That's cool. I think there is scene in the I Am Trying to Break Your Heart where Spencer is playing along on his knee to a song - think it was Heavy Metal Drummer.

 

Though, it would have been pretty funny if you had a Richard Cole/Peter Grant type road manager who would have berated little Spencer ---- yelling 'hey little piss-ant, I don't care who your parents are -  get the fuck off my drummer's set', while pointing a finger in his little chest...

Lol, I’ve met some people in bands who might react that way.

I don’t remember exactly what was said, but I do sort of recall Susie or Jeff mentioning that Spencer used to play the drums in Susie’s office at the Lounge Axe when he was extremely young. They both seemed to agree that that was probably the first time. I’m not sure how drums would fit in an office of a smallish concert venue, but that’s how I heard it.

 

Or it could be when he (with Jeff) used to come visit her at the Lounge Axe when she was in her office, he’d find his way to a drum set up on the stage. I haven’t gotten around to watching that one again.

Lounge Axe had a basement that was failrly roomy, if memory serves. I could see a small drum kit fitting down there somewhere. In this case, my drums were set up on the floor in front of the stage while we waited for our sound check. After setting them up I was vegging out by the front window when I heard drums and turned around to see Spencer playing them, with Sue watching over him. Little moments like that can be pretty refreshing for an exhausted, d-list touring band.

The Tweedy Show Tuesday April 7 Episode 19

 

 

— when did Spencer start playing drums?.

What was the answer to this?

Spencer played MY drums in October of 1997 when my old band played at Lounge Axe. I remember he was a toddler, but I don’t know what age he was. He seemed like he knew what to do, but didn’t have the body control to execute it.

I hope RBG is being kept in isolation.

I'm Not OK With This was great.  Currently on Netflix.

From the folks who made  End of the Fu*&%ing World, which was also great.

I always enjoy the 30 minute format.  A series with hour long (or longer) episodes is like watching five or more movies per season, and I would never watch that many movies from the same storyline in the span of three or four months, or even a year.  I've probably never even done that in a decade.

To me it comes down to this:

 

Who other than the most popular candidate would be the nomination? Someone with fewer delegates?

As of yesterday the DNC was angling for Sherrod Brown with Michele Obama as VP.