I’ve finally wrapped up the music projects that have been eating up a lot of my time lately. As I do, I find my new music playlist is down around 40 songs. For a good chunk of 2024 it’s been closer to 60 songs. The new tunes have definitely dried up over the past month. Hopefully just a lull before another wave flows before the holidays. It took adding a few old songs to pad this week’s playlist out to a reasonable size.
“Suddenly Last Summer” – The Motels
I was thinking I shared this more often in the past after Labor Day. A check of the blog archives, though, shows I’ve only done it twice before. A good song for a weekend when we will go from 90 one day to the low 40s two mornings later. And then it’s going to be 90 three days later. September in the Midwest is a roller coaster.
“You Wreck Me” – The War On Drugs covering Tom Petty
Last month we got Eddie Vedder. This month TWOD add their entry to the Bad Monkey soundtrack/Petty tribute album. When I heard they were on the LP, this was one of the first songs I imagined them doing. Like the EdVed track, they don’t do much to reimagine the original. Which is fine, because it fits their sound so well.
“I Thought You’d Change” – Hotline TNT
This song came out almost exactly a year ago, and was featured on all the big sites, yet somehow I missed it until this week. Bummer, because it’s a solid mashup of pop and shoegaze. They are signed to Jack White’s Third Man Records.
“A Bit Like James Bond” – The Bug Club
This is fun!
“Casual Drug Use” – Katie Gavin
The second solo single from the lead singer of MUNA. I’m not the first to make this observation but her solo work slides into a space where a lot of country and country-adjacent artists have moved in recent years, while remaining steadfastly pop.
“Wild” – Spoon
So one of my mysterious “Music Projects” was listening to every Spoon album and making a list of my favorite songs. Which I did over the course of about two, two-and-a-half weeks. Then I realized I doubt many of my readers are interested in that list. So I’ll just share the song that I ranked #1. They do have a lot of great ones.
“Until The End Of The World” – U2 Tom Breihan just got to the last song from U2’s Achtung Baby album that reached #1 on the Alternative Rock chart, “One.” In his three entries about AB songs, he referenced other tracks on the album that either were not singles or did not hit #1. So many of them got 8’s, 9’s, and 10’s in his grading scale! A reminder what a great album that was, with almost no misses or songs you skip past. This did not get a big push from the band or label, but still made it to #4 on the Alt chart. He gave it a 10, which was absolutely a deserved ranking.
“Caribbean Queen (No More Love On The Run)” – Billy Ocean
We may have reached the point where all the iconic songs of 1984 have made their chart debuts. Well, almost. I can think of a couple more in the weeks/months ahead. But that great run of the middle part of the year has clearly come to an end. Not that this is a bad song. It went to #1 for two weeks in November. I don’t love it as much as some of the other classics I’ve shared, but it’s still fun and I’ll happily listen to it if I have to.
Famously released first as “European Queen,” it bombed. Only when Billy re-cut this version, and another called “African Queen” that was released in Africa, did it become a smash. Which should have been obvious. European Queen makes me think of someone who is old and stuffy and from a long line of possibly inbred people. Caribbean Queen sounds like someone who is young, fun, and you would do anything to spend time with them. It debuted on the Top 40 this week at #36.
My NFL predictions are always half-assed. Let’s see if I can make them even more half-assed (quarter-assed?) by typing them up on a morning when a chirping smoke alarm woke me up at 3:30, it took me an hour to fall back to sleep after finding/quieting the proper alarm, then I had to be up less than an hour later to get L to practice…
I never do any real research for these posts, although this year I’ve listened to a few preview pods. I don’t know that they gave me any great insights because there were some wildly varying opinions of certain teams. One guys loves the Cowboys and hates the Bengals. His cohost feels exactly the opposite. How is this supposed to help me? We’ll see how much that limited amount of information has screwed up my perspective.
AFC East
The first of several divisions that are tough to pick. Most folks think the Jets are the most talented across the roster, and their success comes down to whether you trust Aaron Rodgers to 1) be healthy and 2) to somehow regain his 2021 form at age 40 coming off an achilles injury. Buffalo shed a ton of talent to get out of salary cap hell, but still have Josh Allen. Miami? Their shit only worked against bad teams last year. I have no faith in Rodgers, but the Jets won seven games with below-replacement level quarterbacks last year. If Rodgers can play most of the season, he doesn’t have to be an MVP for the Jets to win the division. New York Jets
AFC North
Is Joe Burrow healthy and/or will the Bengals’ receivers’ contract situations be distractions? The Steelers and Browns will suck on offense, and be fantastic on the other side of the ball. That makes it the Baltimore Ravens by default, even though they lost a few very important players. Always trust Lamar. Until January…
AFC South
There is a lot of worry here in Indy because Anthony Richardson looked so erratic in the preseason. I would remind people he played just parts of four games as a rookie, and came into the league as a project. The best hope is that he stays healthy this year, by the end of the season we are seeing progress/growth, and maybe the Colts can sneak into a Wild Card spot. Jacksonville is a mess, although if Treor Lawrence can get his shit together they can make a Wild Card run. Tennessee is terrible. The Houston Texans are an easy pick here, even if CJ Stroud doesn’t get an ounce better than he was as a rookie. The team is young, talented, and loaded.
AFC West
The Kansas City Chiefs until Patrick Mahomes’ arm falls off. And don’t give me this “The Broncos are interesting” talk I’m hearing. They still stink. The Raiders are horrible. Odds favor Jim Harbaugh turning the Chargers around, but not enough to challenge the Chiefs.
Wild Cards
Buffalo
Pittsburgh
Cincinnati
NFC East
This was long the league’s glamor division, filled with three east coast teams plus Dallas. You could generally count on at least three of the teams being excellent. This year? Is even one of them very good? The Eagles will either be super focused and scary good, or be overwhelmed by all their internal drama and struggle to win eight games. Dallas could go either way, too, and we know if they are great from September to December, then they will find a new, humiliating way to lose in the playoffs. Washington and New York are at different parts of the rebuild curve, but both at the bottom. I’ll go with Dallas simply because they won 12 games last year and Dak Prescott is playing for his next contract.
NFC North
Everyone loves Detroit now, which is a weird thing to type. The Packers are a half-step behind them. Chicago could be sneaky good, although it feels early for Caleb Williams to turn them into a winner. The Vikings will host several games against playoff teams. Detroit did it longer than Green Bay last year, so I go with the Lions.
NFC South
This division is a good argument for regulation. Couldn’t we drop New Orleans, Carolina, and Tampa Bay, bring up Georgia, Oregon, and Ohio State and get more competitive games? I know, I know, that is a truly dumb thing to say. It might actually work this year, though. Atlanta by default.
NFC West
I, like many, want to pick against The 49ers here. They have the Super Bowl loser hangover to contend with. The summer was filled with contract drama. Christian McCaffrey is already hurt. Even then, they remain one of the deepest teams in the league. LA has a lot of holes but Sean McVay is a true coaching witch. A lot of folks think Seattle could be sneaky good. I’m not on the bandwagon. Arizona will be better, but still bring up the rear. They may only win 9–10 games this year, but I still like San Francisco.
Wild Cards
Green Bay
Los Angeles
Philadelphia
I was going to pick all the playoff games, too, but that is too much for my brain today. Instead I’ll jump straight to the Super Bowl. Kansas City 30, Detroit 24. In triple overtime. Detroit misses four field goals in OT and Mahomes finally throws a 75 yard TD on the first play of the third extra period.
Well, August was quite a month when it came to reading. I finished seven books last month. And that was with a vacation, the Olympics, paying more attention to baseball (at least some of the time), and watching the US Open mixed in. I guess I used my free time wisely. Also I read some very enjoyable books that kept me engaged and turning the pages.
Here are the last four from that run.
Thursday Murder Club – Richard Osman
One of my sisters-in-law had this with her when she visited last Christmas and without asking her about it, I added it to my reading list. When I checked its status at the library there was a 30+ week wait for it. Yowsa. I placed my hold and waited until early August when my name hit the top of the list.
Worth the wait. It is a fun, entertaining, thoughtful, charming, at times poignant book.
A group of four residents at a British retirement community start a club where they dive into cold cases for fun, hoping to find clues the police missed and bring the proper people to justice. Hey, big surprise, the group stumbles into a real murder in the process! Then another. And another. Working on their own, and sometimes in concert with the police, they eventually solve all the mysteries. Naturally the cold case they started with ends up tied to the new ones they are looking into, with a surprising connection to their group.
The end got a little messy, as Osman unravels all the threads he’s spun, including several that intentionally led in the wrong direction. That is the tiniest quibble. And perhaps I was just reading too fast as I raced to get to the resolution. I’m looking forward to more adventures with the gang from Cooper’s Chase.
She Rides Shotgun – Jordan Harper
It’s been quite awhile since I read a super-dark book. Like cringey dark. I’m not sure if this officially qualifies – it’s not into Daniel Woodrell territory, for example – but it did make me a little uncomfortable.
This centers on the heart-warming story of a dad reuniting with his estranged 11-year-old daughter and them forging a new relationship.
Well, it’s not quite that simple. Nate has been in prison and, just before being released because of a technical error in his conviction, kills a higher-up in one of the prison’s Nazi gangs. Then he kidnaps his daughter, Polly, from her school because he knows she is being targeted by the Nazis as part of their plan to destroy his life in retribution. After grabbing his daughter, Nate finds her mother and new husband murdered by the Nazis. They flee both the Nazis and the police, who think that Nate is responsible for the murders. Then Nate teaches Polly how to be a badass and she helps him rob Nazi stash houses and whatnot to earn a measure of revenge.
And it keeps getting darker from there.
I think I would have loved this story 10–15 years ago. Now, though? Not so much. Not just because of the wrongness of teaching your 11-year-old how to choke people out. There were some strange parts of the book where my question was less where was the story headed than what drugs was Harper using when he wrote those chapters.
Again, I might just be getting old. I’m going to give another of his novels a shot at some point, as he’s got a lot of notice for taking up the banner of noir lit.
The Pine Tar Game – Flip Bondy
Would you be shocked I raced through this book, about the Royals-Yankees rivalry at large and a certain 1983 baseball game in particular, in about 36 hours? I have vivid memories of the Pine Tar Game – I was at my grandparents’ home, watching with my grandfather. He took a nap after the game and when we woke, first thing he did, before lighting his traditional cigarette, was look at me, shake his head, and say, “That damn Billy Martin…” – but it was still fun to relive that day in great detail. It was also cool that one of the greatest rivalries of its era got a full accounting. Since it was a league championship series rivalry, it has largely faded into history outside of Kansas City.
Carrie Soto Is Back – Taylor Jenkins Reid
Finally, another book my sister-in-law directly recommended to me and that I saved until the US Open. Fine timing! This is focused on the greatest (fictional) women’s tennis player of all time, and her return to the game after a younger player ties her record for most majors won. Along the way Carrie Soto reconnects with her father, who had been her coach but from whom she became somewhat estranged late in her career. She has to deal with the realities of being nearly 40 and attempting to compete in major tournaments. And she gains a love interest on his own comeback trail.
Every aspect of this story is predictable. Reid has such a great, breezy yet compelling style of writing that it doesn’t matter that every twist and turn is telegraphed from chapters away. You keep turning pages anyway.
It was an action-packed weekend. At least for watching sports from the comfort of my house. Friday night in particular was kind of crazy. High school football on the radio. Indiana Fever and US Open on the TV. Royals-Astros Gameday coverage on the Mac. With bonus weather monitoring on every screen. I guess I’ll break things down by subject rather than day.
KU Football
A slow start turned into the blowout it was supposed to be Thursday night for KU. Not sure you can make any great assessments of the team given the opponent. I thought Jalon Daniels looked a little rusty, but I also don’t know how open the playbook was. It seemed like the coaching staff was doing some experimenting with the offensive line. A pick-six for Mello Dotson, likely not the last for this defensive backfield this season. Devin Neal scoring touchdowns, Luke Grimm catching passes. We’ll find out a lot more about the Jayhawks next week when they go to Illinois.
The first game at Children’s Mercy Park seemed to go just fine. Word from people who went is that it was a great atmosphere. The replay system not working early and likely costing KU two scores was kind of a bummer.
HS Football
A week after beating preseason #1 Ben Davis, #3 Cathedral got a reminder their schedule is still brutal, losing to #6 Brownsburg 30–14. They got there a rather odd way.
BHS jumped out to a 17–7 lead Friday night before lightning was spotted. Although the storm was 10 miles away, and moving away from the stadium, the game was delayed over an hour before a second series of storms popped up and officials decided to postpone the game until Saturday afternoon.
Things didn’t get much better in the resumed game. CHS was playing with their primary running back – who ran for 168 yards week one – hobbled Friday, then without him completely Saturday. L heard Sunday he’s probably having surgery and out for the year. Not sure if he was worth 16 points but I think he would have helped. If he is indeed out for an extended stretch, the Irish’s already brutal schedule looks even more formidable.
Weather
Last week was hot, sticky, and nasty. The heat index was up around 110 a couple days. Friday night three rounds of storms came through, and torrential rains and heavy winds blew the heat away. The humidity stuck around through Saturday. Then Sunday morning it was 52 and 100% pleasant. The extended forecast has a bunch of mornings like that, with a few even colder, and daytime highs mostly in the mid–70s with a few mid–80s sprinkled in. September is a truly glorious month.
US Open
I watched a ton of tennis last week and into the weekend. Week one of the Open might be the best week of tennis of the year, hell one of the best sports weeks of the entire year, with great matches in progress just about any time you turn on your TV from noon to midnight.
Weekend highlights were Frances Tiafoe’s two wins and both Carlos Alcaraz and Novak Djokovic losing early. It was a bummer that Coco Gauff went out early, but at least she lost to another American. In general it’s great to have several decent American players in both the women’s and men’s game at the moment. It sure makes for better crowds in New York.
Royals
Crap on a stick.
Last Wednesday afternoon the Royals were tied for first place and were up on co-leaders Cleveland going into the seventh inning, nine outs away from a four-game sweep of the Guardians. Then the Royals melted down a little and they’ve yet to recover, losing six straight games. Three injuries during that span have not helped. At least they still have a cushion in the wild card race for the time being.
It’s been a bit of a charmed summer for the Royals, totally unexpected and built on out-of-nowhere quality starting pitching. The pitching has still been fine, at least the starters; it’s been the bats that have let them down over the past week. They were nearly no-hit Friday and have gone deep into other games with just one or two hits. Maybe, hopefully, surely the hitters can lock back in and they can hold on to one of those wild card spots to complete this surprise season.
Fever
I know I’m not alone in having watched more WNBA games this year than in the rest of my life combined. I now know exactly when the Fever are playing, and on what channel. Unlike other sports, which S doesn’t really pay attention to, for the Fever she gets kind of locked in. Ironically our basketball playing daughter will still just breeze through and watch a few minutes, but rarely sits down and watches long stretches with us.
Two more wins over the weekend for the hottest team in the league. The Fever are now over .500 for the first time in five years. Which sounds made up. Have they really been that bad, for that long? Again, since I never watched I don’t know if that is a real stat or not.
It’s been fun watching this team figure each other out since their disastrous start. Kelsey Mitchell is a revelation, and a perfect backcourt partner for Caitlin Clark. Aliyah Boston finally settled down and started playing like the former #1 pick she is. Lexi Hull is one of the most fun players to watch, and seemingly can’t miss a 3 since the Olympic break.
And, of course, there’s Clark. She was starting to get comfortable before the break, but has looked like a first team all league player since getting some time to both rest and work on her game. In those seven games she’s averaging 24.6 points, 5 rebounds, and nine assists. And that’s with her teammates still booting 3–4 passes a night, or blowing open layups.[1]
She’s added a floater. Her teammates are getting better at anticipating her crazy passes. She’s handling the physicality of the league better. She still makes a few horrible passes a game, but when she’s averaging almost nine assists a game, you’ll take those. And her outside shot still isn’t locked in. That will come next year. Any questions about her transition to the pro game have been answered.
The only real bummer to the Fever turning the corner is it has kept us from going to a game. Tickets were crazy expensive at the beginning of the season, as you would expect. I planned on waiting until the hype died down and the team fell deep into the bottom of the standings before trying to grab some for a weeknight game. So much for that. I was looking at tickets for tomorrow’s game and even upper level seats were going for $200 each. That seems excessive, especially when L isn’t super into watching. Although she would go if given the chance.
Oh, one other WNBA note. The yammering idiots on TV need to drop the whole Caitlin Clark vs Angel Reese thing and focus on the real issue: how stupid are the four teams other than Indiana and Chicago who passed on drafting Reese? She’s getting 20 boards a night over the past three weeks and leads the league in rebounding for the season. From watching Chicago Friday, it’s obvious that some of those numbers come because her coach leaves her on the court deep into blowouts to pad her numbers. But 20 rebounds is 20 rebounds.
The rookie of the year argument is pretty much over, as CC is both having a better and more impactful year while Chicago is dropping like a rock despite Reese’s play. That shouldn’t hide the fact that Reese is having a phenomenal rookie year of her own.
College Football
It’s always hard for me to dive in this first week of real college football action. There’s so much other stuff going on, both on TV and in real life, that it’s hard to lock in. I had plenty of games on but other than Notre Dame – Texas A&M didn’t get super focused on any of them.
That was a big win for the Irish. Notre Dame’s defense looks incredible. They have a cake schedule. They will be one of the top four teams in the playoff. The obvious joke is they will then lose to Alabama or whatever SEC runner-up they play in the first round. But that game will be in South Bend. In December. Surely Touchdown Jesus will scare up some lake effect snow, or at least nasty windchills, to aid the Irish.
Family Time
We didn’t do anything big family-wise for the holiday weekend. M stayed in Cincinnati. C and L went to the CHS game with friends Friday, but neither went back to the resumption on Saturday. L went to the gym with basketball friends Sunday. C went to the Pitbull concert Sunday night. We had the in-laws over for dinner Sunday, and three of the nephews over to swim on Monday. S and I went to dinner with friends Saturday.
I also found a little project for myself over the weekend. It scratches one of my biggest itches and will have a direct effect on some of my blog posts. I doubt most of you will be as interested in it as I am, but I’ll still share more details about it soon.
And with that, summer is over. Preseason training for school basketball started for L today, and I was up at 5:15 to get her to school on time. A perfect way for her to knock out some of her driving in the dark time!
As the father of a lady baller, I will say the most frustrating part of the women’s game is how many layups are missed. That, more than any other area, is where the difference between men and women is glaring. It’s a lot harder to make a layup in traffic when you release the ball a foot/foot-and-a-half below the rim than within a few inches of it. ↩
2024 Summer Olympics
Already much discussed in this space.
A
The Americans, season 3
The re-watch continues. Season three was a tight, excellent set of episodes: I believe every show fell between 43 and 48 minutes. Even in 2015, that was rare in the prestige TV realm. The last four episodes, especially, were crackling with intensity as the Jennings’ secret started to spill out.
A-
Homicide: Life On The Street, selected episodes
One of the all-time great TV dramas finally arrived on a streaming platform last month. I watched a fair amount of Homicide, at least the early years, back in the day. I read the book it was based on. And, of course, I obsessed over its spiritual and thematic successor, The Wire.
Tourist Sauce, Return to Australia
The NLU crew went back to the location of their first travel series, nearly seven years later, with a bigger budget and crew, and a lot more knowledge of what they were doing. As usual, the result was great.
Buying The Cheapest Cameras In Japan
OMG!!! You don’t have to know a thing about cameras, or be interested in photography, to find this piece totally hilarious.
Every Olympic 100m Final (1912–2016)
This is pretty cool. It would be even cooler if it noted who won each race. Also, these are only men’s races, so it’s not really every 100m final.
I Visited Mount Everest Base Camp
An interesting undertaking: this kid doesn’t try to climb the entire mountain, but rather just get to base camp. Which is way harder than I would have expected, and even this is probably beyond the abilities of 95% of people.
Mascots Savage Moments Against Little Kids
This might be the greatest video ever made. Each time I see it, I laugh my ass off. Also fun is finding the full-game videos from these events. The Colts’ Blue is a beast in those games.
I Drive The Fantastic Polestar 3 For The First Time!
I was super intrigued by the Polestar 2 when I was car shopping, specifically used ones, which have plummeted in value. Someone not too far from us owns one, and I keep wanting to catch them at Target or wherever so I can ask questions. However, the closest current service center is in Columbus, OH, I have concerns about the long-term health of the line, and then the difficulty in calculating how much damage the previous owner did to the battery. It looks like the company is continuing to do great things. Now the trick is coming out with one in the $45K range so I can test drive one in three years when I get back into the car shopping game. Another trick will be not going out of business before more affordable models can hit production.
After months of having more than enough songs in the queue for these posts, the tide of new music might finally have slowed a bit. Have no worries, I still have plenty of songs for you. It is just taking a tad more work to put this week’s playlist together. Which I, of course, do not mind.
“Summer’s Over” – Jordana, TV Girl
One weekend left.
“Hallelujah” – Bad Moves
There is always a debate on whether rock music and politics go together, and then how much politics you can inject into a song before it puts people off. Of course there is never the same debate for country music and politics, but let’s not get into double standards at the moment.
At first listen this song would not seem to be political at all. As soon as you pay attention to the lyrics, though, you’ll find this is a scathing indictment of the various ways conservatives attempt to legislate rights away from fellow citizens they don’t like. And you can shake your ass to it, which is a bonus.
“Bitter Pill” – Queen of Jeans
I can’t imagine anyone not liking this song.
“Madeline” – Georgia Gets By
GGB is the solo project of Georgia Nott of the band Broods. Here she sings about the overwhelming feelings that come with meeting someone you know will change your life.
“In the Moonlight (Fade #3)” – The Tisburys
I forget the exact conversation, but some music writer was referring to Bruce Springsteen and recommended this band as one that picked up his mid-80s Heartland Rock sound and carried it into our times. I hear more direct lines to R.E.M.’s Eighties sound than Springsteen’s, but I get what that person was trying to say.
“Little While” – Wishy
Another track from local kids Wishy, who keep getting national love for their new album.
“The Feast Of St. John” – Glen Hansard
As I mentioned, I didn’t know much about Hansard’s music before seeing him open for Pearl Jam Monday night. He introduced this song as being about the “fuckers who try to drag you down.”
“Setting Sun” – Pearl Jam
One more song from Monday, and another great one from the latest album. PJ has always done a pretty good job sequencing tracks, opening and closing their albums with songs that fit the moment. This is the closer for Dark Matter, and has become an immediate, late-in-the-encore track at their concerts. I’ve grown to love it more-and-more over the past few months. Seeing it live Monday reinforced that love. When Eddie lets loose in the extended bridge/outro section it was truly amazing. Earlier this year they were using it as the final song of the night, which makes a ton of sense given its emotional weight and tone. Now, however, it serves as the last new song of the night with the traditional closers (“Baba O’Reilly,” “Rockin’ In The Free World,” and/or “Yellow Ledbetter”) to follow.
“Acquiese” – Oasis
The biggest music news of the week was the Gallagher brothers finally calling a truce and announcing a set of reunion shows later this year. I guess Liam needs to make back the money he lost in his divorce. We’ll see how all of that goes. I liked, but never loved, Oasis’ music. I’ve always been entertained by their dumb antics, though. This song has always been a banger.
“Panama” – Van Halen
Mixing it up a bit this week, sharing a song that was on its way down the charts instead of up the week of September 1, 1984. All of the new songs this week were kind of crap. Somehow this peaked at just #13. This was its final week in the Top 40, landing at #32.
College football is finally here! With it comes what is the most anticipated and also oddest season for the Kansas Jayhawks in my life.
Anticipated because a program that won nine games last year enters week one with 20 of 22 starters who are either seniors or redshirt juniors, a level of experience this program has probably never had before.
Biggest of all is the return of quarterback Jalon Daniels. When he’s been healthy at KU he’s been amazing. The only problem is he gets hurt every year. Sometimes badly. This year there is no Jason Bean backing him up.[1] Cole Ballard might be able to step in for a series or two, but it is difficult to see him doing what Bean did the last two years when Daniels was hurt. The single biggest factor in KU living up to this year’s hype is keeping JD6 on the field. If he plays 10+ games, the Jayhawks have the talent and schedule to win 10 games. If he gets hurt? 😱
I say oddest because KU will be playing two home games at Sporting KC’s Children’s Mercy Park, and the rest at Arrowhead because of the reconstruction of the stadium in Lawrence. It’s kind of classic KU football that this project hits in a rare year when the Jayhawks enter the season with legit expectations. How much of a home-field advantage will they have in those Big 12 games in Kansas City? Especially the Iowa State game? I know KU has made some moves to protect tickets for that game, but Clone fans live for coming to KC and taking over. If that game is a close loss and the crowd is mostly ISU fans, there’s going to be grumbling about timing and whatnot.
You know what, though? I don’t think it’s going to matter. I think this team will be really good. The defense still has holes, but will be opportunistic. While people were freaking out about OC Andy Kotelnicki leaving for Penn State, I think new OC Jeff Grimes might fit KU’s talent better. Kotelnicki was great. He was imaginative and made KU’s offense one that routinely got national praise. But maybe he got a little too cute at times? I’m not sure that’s fair criticism, but I also don’t think that Grimes getting dinged for his last year at Baylor is fair when he did amazing things at BYU before that.
Again, if Daniels is healthy, this team can cook. Devin Neal and Daniel Hishaw are as good of a running back combo as any in the country. None of the top three wide receivers seem like NFL talent, thus their returns. But they are all super solid, super experienced, and better than most people think.
The new Big 12 should be entertaining, at least. Utah is very good. Arizona looks legit as well. We get to see Coach Prime’s antics up close while welcoming old friends Colorado back.
My favorite thing about the new Big 12 is that it feels like a conference of equals. There is no Texas or Oklahoma that has way more money than everyone else and stadiums twice as big as the rest of the conference. Aside from TCU and Baylor, it’s a bunch of schools that are mostly similarly sized, with similar athletic budgets, and similar facilities.[2] No one is going to be signing a top ten recruiting class; most will be in the 20–50 range each year. There will be egos and rivalries based on stupid things like there always are in sports. It feels, at least for now though, like we’re starting with more programs on similar footing.
Which will last until the conference adds UConn and ACC schools to be determined, or the Big Ten decides they want to grab a couple Big 12 schools. Realignment never ends!
What’s important is that football is back and unlike so many years in my life, the Kansas Jayhawks are probably pretty good.
Rock Chalk, bitches!
Bean had a fantastic preseason for the Colts, granted usually in the second halves of games. So good our local columnist called for the Colts to keep him on the active roster. They did not do that, but did sign him to the practice squad. I don’t think he’s an NFL QB. But he is so fast and has a solid-enough arm and QBs get hurt so often, that you never know if/when someone might take a chance on him. ↩
Arizona State and Cincinnati are both massive schools, but without the athletic budgets of other schools their sizes. Also ASU is weird in that so much of its enrollment is online that I don’t think you can really put them in the same category as the other schools with over 40,000 students. ↩
As hinted at in yesterday’s post, I got to do something insanely awesome Monday night that I’ve been waiting a long time for. Even with a short night of sleep, I’m still a little keyed up from it this morning. If you choose to proceed, prepare yourself for an overly detailed accounting of my evening watching Pearl Jam play live rock ’n’ roll music.
One of the funny things about me is that for as big a fan of music as I am – and I think the archives of this blog are testament to that – I’ve not been to tons of concerts in my life.
There are lots of factors that go into that, but I believe the biggest was because in the years I was coming of age with music, I lived with a single mom who both couldn’t afford concert tickets and didn’t have the time to take me. You would think as I got older that would change, but it never did much. In the mid–90s I went to tons of shows at local clubs, but even then I never became one of those music fans who went to a show a week or whatever. And I rarely went to big stadium/arena shows.
I also blame the years in the early ‘90s when I was a poor college student. A big group of friends went to the U2 show at Arrowhead in 1992, one of the greatest tours ever. I was offered a ticket last minute, but the $50 or whatever seemed like soooo much money at the time.[1]
I also just had some bad luck over the years. I was supposed to see Prince in 1998, but came down with the worst case of the flu I’ve ever had and had to sell my ticket.[2]
Anyway, that is all needlessly long prelude to the point of this post: Monday was the best concert I’ve ever attended. My total shows seen might be small, but this beat them all.
It was Pearl Jam’s first visit to Indianapolis in 14 years.[3] It was my first time seeing them in over 20 years. It was worth every second of those collective waits.
It’s hard to review a Pearl Jam show, because they are almost always incredible. While I’ve not seen them in person since 2000 – more on that later – I’ve watched tons of their shows online, both officially and unofficially. There is no better live band in music. They are a well-oiled machine that combines the spontaneity of a setlist that changes every night with a structure that allows for almost seamless transitions between most songs. They famously play epically long shows that often veer in unexpected directions depending on where the night and crowd takes them. Shows become near religious events as thousands of devoted fans scream out every word and react to every element of the performance.
Everything about Monday’s show lived up to the band’s reputation.
It was a fire-cracker hot night here in Indy, in the mid–90s during the day, and the air at Ruoff Music Center was thick and heavy when opener Glen Hansard took stage at exactly 7:30. He had the line of the night when he introduced his band: “We’re from Ireland and we’re happy to be here. We’re going to play for 45 minutes and then we’re going to fuck off.” And then they only played for 30 minutes! Under-promise, over-deliver!
His set was terrific. I didn’t know much about his music, mostly the more soft/folksy songs he did for the movie Flag Day, including “My Father’s Daughter,” a song he made with Eddie Vedder and daughter Olivia Vedder. But from the go, his band absolutely kicked ass. Roaring guitars, screamed lyrics. It was a good start to the night.
Pearl Jam took the stage at 8:40, just as the sun was disappearing and a nice breeze was beginning to blow through the partially covered main seating section. My buddy SK and I had been trying to guess what the opening song would be, a pointless exercise since PJ opens with a different song every night and can literally go hundreds of directions when you account for covers. He guessed “Low Light.” I didn’t take a real stab at it, but “Hail, Hail” had been in my head all day.
We were pleasantly surprised when Stone Gossard started strumming the opening lines to *Ten*-era B-side “Wash.” A terrific omen, as many of theirs shows on this tour have begun with slower songs.
Twenty-three songs followed. The band was in fine form, although the sound was a little muddy. Eddie was in great voice. The crowd was frenzied. On the biggest songs, “Alive” for example, you could barely hear the band because the crowd sang along so loudly. You couldn’t ask for a better show.
It was interesting to look at the show from above, as a long-time PJ fan, and see how far this band has come. They’ve been an incredible live band since day one. Those early Nineties shows were intense affairs, Eddie a brooding, distant, sometimes scary frontman. The band went through their difficult mid–90s period, where the performance was generally great but the band was going through a lot and you never knew how much joy and personality they would put into each show. There were a few notable meltdowns in this era when the band’s future was in question. Around 2000, they realized that touring was their salvation, and they began to enjoy it more, stretching shows out to Springsteen-esque lengths. About 10 years ago it seemed like Eddie was losing some of the power in his voice. He made allowances, but sometimes those were jarring to see/hear.
In the last five years that has changed again. Eddie has become more theatrical on stage. It’s hard to put into words, because that sounds a little cheesy and he is not cheesy. He just does a lot more from the start of the show to the end to interact with the crowd, to entertain with his actions rather than just sing from the bottom of his soul. The once reluctant star happily embraces everything about being the director for where each night’s show is headed.
His political monologues haven’t disappeared, they’ve just morphed. Monday he encouraged everyone to get out and vote, and noted that 30 years ago he was imploring us to vote, where now he is asking us to get our kids to vote. His most pointed comment of the night was about women needing to reclaim their right to choose. He never said any candidate’s name, nor espoused a particular ideology.
Of course last week while in Jeff Ament’s home state of Montana, the entire band wore Jon Tester shirts, so I think they just pick their spots these days.
Eddie’s voice seems to have recovered from whatever ailed it, too. I remember watching concert films from early in last year’s tour and being floored by how good he sounded. I think he’s found ways to strengthen his voice but also to adjust how he hits certain notes so that he can mask the effects of age. Not that long ago I worried about how much longer he could tour. The past couple years, he’s sounded as good as he ever has and I can see the band touring forever. His energy level is also insane for a guy who will turn 60 in a few months. He doesn’t climb lighting rigs anymore, but he’s in constant motion around the stage.
His energy and strength and stage presence translate to the rest of the band. The greatness of their live act has always come from their collective abilities. Every member of the band absolutely still has their A-games. Mike McCready in particular has an apparent endless reservoir of energy. There wasn’t a song, or even part of a song, where the band behind Eddie seemed to be half-assing it.
As we were walking out I told SK beyond the spectacular performance, what makes PJ shows so great is how many terrific songs they have to choose from, and even the ones that might not be your favorites are played so well that there aren’t really any down moments in the show. Even if you don’t hear all your favorite songs, you walk away thoroughly satisfied.
That was the case with me. Of my seven favorite PJ songs I listed a year ago, they played just one, “Corduroy.” And, you know what? I was not disappointed at all that I didn’t hear “Release” or “Elderly Woman,” or “Given to Fly,” etc.
I thought it was interesting they basically cut out an entire era of their career from the setlist. There was exactly one song from their albums that were released between 2000 and 2020, and that, “Lightning Bolt,” was a request from a couple who were attending their 57th PJ show.[4] I think most fans are fine with that large chunk of the band’s studio career getting nudged aside. “Lightning Bolt” did sound great, though.
The per-album breakdown was:
Ten/Ten-era: 6
Vs. – 1
Vitalogy – 5
No Code – 1
Yield – 1
Lightning Bolt – 1
Dark Matter – 7
Covers – 2
The beauty of Pearl Jam is their next show in Chicago will likely have a completely different mix, aside from the Dark Matter tracks.
A note about our seats. When PJ announced they were coming to Indy in May 2023, both SK and I signed up for tickets. With the band not hitting here in so long, we knew it would be a tough ticket. He is in the band’s Ten Club and hoped that would get us in. I didn’t get selected in the public lottery, but he got a notification that he would be able to get Ten Club seats. Until a week later he got another saying he, in fact, did not make their cut.
Fortunately he has a neighbor that has some serious connections in the music industry. Thanks to her assistance, last July he got an email from someone within the Pearl Jam organization saying that we had two Friends and Family seats.[5] When the September 2023 show was postponed, his contact said we would remain on the list for whenever the show was rescheduled. Sure enough, when this year’s tour was announced he got another note asking for confirmation that he still wanted those seats. Two weeks ago he got official word that we were in.
We had no idea where our seats were until we picked up the tickets at Will Call Monday. Even then, Ruoff’s seating scheme is so odd we couldn’t figure it out by just looking at ticket. So we kept showing them to ushers and they kept waving us further forward. We ended up about ten rows behind the pit section, stage left. They were pretty fucking great seats.
Oh, and not to brag too much, but the tickets were somehow comped to us. SK thought he paid for them a year ago, but went back and looked and he never sent anyone money for them. My previous all time best show was U2 in Kemper Arena in 2001. We got free tickets to that show. Yep, I haven’t had to pay a dime for the two best concerts I’ve ever attended. The Music Gods must be rewarding me for all those concerts I did not go to.
This was just my third Pearl Jam show, which seems dumb. SK, in comparison, has now been to 14. I saw them in Kansas City in both 1998 and 2000. I famously missed their appearance in Lawrence in May 1992 because 1) they had not yet become huge and 2) I spent the day playing basketball with one of my best friends who was about to graduate and move to California. Oh, and 3) I’m an idiot. Less than two months later they were my favorite band, a belt they’ve held off-and-on for over three decades now.
In 2003 they were in Kansas City three days before S and I got married and moved to Indianapolis. Didn’t seem like the right time to sneak away for a concert. I missed their Indy stop on that tour because we were on our honeymoon. I think they’ve been in Indy just once or twice since then, during our “lots of little kids in the house” phase and I never even considered going to those shows.
Show number three was a long time coming. And totally worth it.
A few other notes:
SK and I got excited when songs four, five, and six of the night were the first three songs from Vitalogy, in order. Every now and then PJ will play an entire album in order. This was a tease, though, and they moved on to new songs.
“Black” was a song I got sick of in the Nineties because I thought it got super overplayed. It was truly fantastic Monday.
Gossard said before the Dark Matter tour began that they would begin to pare back their shows a bit, with Ament already 60 and Eddie right behind him. They still played nearly two-and-a-half hours Monday. The biggest bummer about not seeing them last year was they were still pushing three hours in those shows.
The audio-visual portion of the show was excellent. At most Ruoff shows there are a few cameras shooting video that show up on the auxiliary boards for fans up in the lawn. PJ shot this like a concert movie, with tons of cameras that were constantly switching feeds on the boards. I now see why so many of their shows end up with high quality movies on one site or another. They take that part of the presentation very seriously.
As we walked out there was a dad with a college-aged son in front of us. We overheard the dad tell the son, very seriously, “I hope you realize that was a fucking incredible concert!” We couldn’t hear what the kid’s response was. He better have recognized, though.
Eddie has been wearing a Walter Payton jersey at all their shows on this tour. It was Jeff Ament who made the local connection, wearing a shirt that had Larry Bird’s face on one side and his number on the other.
Speaking of shirts, I’ve never bought a concert shirt before. Again, I’m a man full of contradictions and surprises. I bought one last night, though, because they were perfect.
Shout out to the merch arm of the PJ empire. That thing is as well-oiled as the band’s performances. They opened up at noon for people who wanted to get there early and get the limited edition items. Inside the venue there were multiple spots to purchase items with crazy long lines before the show. We stopped at one after the show and despite the line, had to wait less than five minutes to purchase my shirt. There was another still open outside the gates that had no wait. And although they were short a few sizes, you could still buy just about anything you wanted almost 12 hours after they sold their first shirt of the day.
Also cool was the special stand that printed up setlist shirts. SK told me the band hands off their final setlist when the show begins and by the time they are done, there are stacks of shirts with that night’s unique collection of songs listed. Genius way to make fans eager to fork over another $40 for a unique memento of the night.
PJ still does the “official bootlegs” of every show. I think I still have all the early 2000s ones I bought somewhere in the basement. I believe I will be buying this one when it is released in a few weeks.
Both times I saw PJ in KC, they closed with “Rockin’ In The Free World.” Which was great. But I was going to be disappointed if I heard it again. Fortunately they closed with a spectacular “Baba O’Reilly” – “Yellow Ledbetter” double. Finally hearing “Baba” live was a big checkmark on my all-time PJ must hear list.
An online inflation calculator suggests that translates to $112 dollars today, which seems reasonable for a U2 show, but understandable for a poor college student to decide he’d rather eat/drink off that for two weeks than blow it in one night. Still wish I had gone to that show, though. ↩
I also missed a KU basketball game that week, so you know I was sick! ↩
And, of course, this concert was delayed from a year ago when Matt Cameron got Covid. ↩
Eddie: “You attend 57 shows, you get a request.” ↩
Not sure if it was accidental or intentional, but his contact sent him the link for F&F tickets for the entire tour. We had a phone call last spring where we seriously debated whether to get tickets for one of the Wrigley shows later this week, or going to another big city to see them. We decided the smart move, and affordable one since we both have kids in college and at Catholic high schools, was to stick to just the Indy show. ↩
This weekend seemed pretty chill to me. There were enough things going on to justify a blog post, though. Let’s see how many words I can stretch this alleged slow weekend into.
Friday Night Lights
High school football started in Indiana last week. In a shocking upset, it was a perfectly pleasant night. That will change this week, though.
That wasn’t the only upset of the night. Number 10 Cathedral pounded #1 and defending 6A state champs Ben Davis 24–6.
I did not have high hopes for CHS coming into the season. They remain in class 6A, two up from their natural class. While they have some really good skill players – mostly the starting running back and a couple receivers – along with a much improved offensive line and solid defense, they have one glaring hole: quarterback. For the first time in seven years they do not have a kid who is one of the best QBs in the city behind center. This year’s starter is a junior from St. P’s who was listed as 5’7”, 150 on last year’s roster. I think both of those measurements might have been stretches, too. When he got in for mop-up duty as a sophomore, he mostly handed off.
Throw that kid against a schedule that features the pre-season #1, #2, #3, and #4 teams in 6A, along with #2 and #10 in 4A, plus a top 15 team overall in Ohio, and you understand why I had some reservations.
Naturally the Irish were up 24–0 before the Giants ran a tipped pass back 100 yards for their only score of the game.
I was only able to listen to the second half, when CHS was already up 17–0, but they sounded pretty solid, controlling the game on both sides of the ball.
Both of our girls went. They both left early.
The Irish’s reward for breaking a 15-game losing streak to Ben Davis?[1] A game against Brownsburg, the likely new #1 team after both Ben Davis and Center Grove lost in week one. BHS beat CHS convincingly the past two regular seasons on very hot nights, so we’ll see.
Greek Fest
Why wasn’t I either at the game or listening during the first half? S and I went to Indy Greek Fest for the first time in 15 years or so. It was an annual outing the first few years we lived here, but once we had more than two kids, we decided it was too much of a hassle.
Good food and people watching. One of S’s partners is Greek and was working the dessert hall, so we got to harass him a bit.
Other highlights were watching some dude in front of us get fed up with the slow traffic to get to the parking lot and literally drive through someone’s yard to turn around. I’m not talking about a couple wheels up on the curb that kind of slipped into the grass. I’m talking about driving his entire car through the middle of this yard to get to their driveway and spin around. Ass.
Also, when we were leaving we noticed the car next to us had a club on their steering wheel. You remember The Club, right?
To be clear, Greek Fest was at a huge, fancy, relatively new church in one of the highest income zip codes of the entire area. After we left we drove through one of the neighborhoods where many of the homes go for high seven and even eight figures. But this person was worried someone was going to steal their car. And it wasn’t like a nice car, it was some ‘90s Oldsmo-buick.
I probably just answered the mystery: this was clearly some super old Greek lady who has been locking her car up for 40 years and doesn’t see any reason to stop because her friend Nikki’s car got stolen once at a church event and you never know…
Girls Nights Out
C and L had big weekends, at least on the social tip. They each had sleepovers both nights, C hosting one and going out for the other, while L slept away from home both nights.
Astute readers might recall that L had a long period where the only two things that caused anxiety in her were thunderstorms and sleepovers. So she didn’t successfully sleepover anywhere, not even with family, for like seven years or something. She made a conscious effort to host a couple in 8th grade, and finally worked up the courage to try a few at other friends’ homes. And now she did two in two nights! Of course she was totally wrecked when she got home Sunday, so I don’t know if she actually sleeps or not. She doesn’t call home at 2:00 AM asking to get picked up, which is the key to S and me.
Rush
As for daughter #1, last week was rush at UC. M was very busy all week long, as this was a huge class of prospective new members, or whatever they call them these days. She told us mid-week there were two girls she was “obsessed with,” which made us both laugh and roll our eyes. She is such a sorority girl sometimes…
Anyway, we talked Saturday and she said both of those girls made the house’s final cut, and she was hoping they would both end up being her Littles.
She ended up going one-for-two. One girl picked another sorority, but the other committed/signed/pledged to M’s house. Her new little is from California, at UC to study interior design, which seems pretty interesting.
The best part of all of this was reading captions on M’s various posts and watching S’s reactions. If you know S, you know that despite being in a sorority when she was in college, she is kind of the opposite of a sorority girl. I think it horrifies her a little how into it M is. There’s been talk of screenshotting some of these posts to mock M with later.
All in good fun, of course. We are thrilled that M has found a community that she loves being a part of so much, and that fits her personality so well.
Classes at UC start today.
Weather
I mocked people last week who were already talking about fall. It was indeed truly gorgeous here. We had the air turned off and the windows open all week. A few nights it was so chilly we had to close the windows. The pool never got below 87, so on a few of my swims the water was 20 degrees warmer than the air temp.
As I knew would happen, summer is roaring back. It got above 90 both days this weekend. We already have heat warnings in place for Tuesday, with the heat index expected to approach 110°. Yowsa.
Better Tuesday than Monday. Fingers crossed, candles lit, rabbit feet rubbed, doing everything I can to avoid jinxing it, I will hopefully be spending tonight doing something very cool that I can share tomorrow.
Tied for longest consecutive loss streak to a team in school history. The last CHS win against BD was in 1987. ↩
A little smaller selection this week, as I’ve had two music projects that have been sucking up my listening time this week.
“London Calling” – The Clash
Joe Strummer was born 72 years ago this week. At first, I accidentally added the entire London Calling album to this playlist. For a second I thought about making that the entire PL for the week. There are worse ways to spend an hour.
“Skydiver” – Briston Maroney
Maroney hasn’t been around very long. I’m not sure he’s put out a bad song yet.
“Old Tape” – Lucius featuring Adam Granduciel
Lucius provided backup vocals for The War on Drugs’ “I Don’t Live Here Anymore” three years ago. Adam Granduciel returns the favor, along with some guitar work, here.
“Sprinter Brain” – Wild Pink
Two-for-two on terrific singles from the next album.
“Taxi” – Onsloow
“No Good” – Christopher Owens
These two songs both made Stereogum’s Best New Songs list last week. Fully deserved, very important honors.
“Torture” – The Jacksons
After a long stretch of classic/very good songs to pick from for our 1984 video, this week was suddenly pretty barren. Plenty of solid songs in the bottom 10, but nothing that really jumped out and screamed “I’M 1984!!!!” to me. This is about as close to a memorable song in that group as I could find. At the time, it was huge. Still, it wasn’t nearly as big of a hit as the first Jacksons’ single of 1984, “State of Shock.” That was basically a Michael Jackson/Mick Jagger duet, so it was bound to be huge. I bet a lot of people who were around in the summer of ’84 have totally forgotten about this track. The video is always hilarious, mostly because Michael and Jermaine refused to appear in it (and all the wild family issues that prompted those decisions) and how their absences were handled. It is extra funny that they decided to make a video that was over six minutes long without the two most popular members of the group being present. I bet the remaining brothers felt like jackasses singing the chorus by themselves. Number 35 this week, on its way to #17.
