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“The Rain That Falls” - Cast I don’t know a thing about this band, but apparently they’ve been around since the early 1990’s and were stalwarts of the Britpop scene. They were also big influences on the Gallagher brothers. This song, off their brand-new album, sounds like a mature Oasis and better than anything the Gallaghers have done in their various post-Oasis groups.
“Stray” - The Mysterines Like Cast, this band is from Liverpool.
My reading pace has slackened a bit. I’m actually taking a day or two off between books, which is likely a good thing. Because of that I only finished three books in March.
Nettle and Bone - T. Kingfisher I famously don’t read much Fantasy fiction, yet something about the genre always holds an allure. I occasionally search for something that can reignite the magic of reading The Lord of the Rings for the first time when I was 12, only to be disappointed by another impenetrable story.
Easter A relatively chill, long Easter weekend for us. Having kids in Catholic school means it was a four-day weekend, stretching from Good Friday through Easter Monday. Not that we took much advantage of it by doing anything special.
M had a high school friend visit her at UC on Friday, so she didn’t come home until Saturday morning, with her pal giving her a ride to Indy. Then she spent Saturday evening with friends.
I said last month that I needed to reset my YouTube algorithm so I was getting better recommendations. I think I’ve accomplished that, spending way too much time on the platform over the last six weeks. Now it is skewed to like 90% car stuff. Which I’m fine with, at the moment. That has caused me to add a new category for at least this month.
Otherwise, not a lot of long form programming in March.
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“Late March, Death March” - Frightened Rabbit It’s about as late in March as you can get.
“3 Sisters” - Waxahatchee Katie Crutchfield has done it again. Her new album, Tigers Blood, is stunning. Most of it drifts deeply into the alt-country sound, and I don’t mind one bit. There’s something pure and honest in her vocals that blasts right through all my normal reluctance to embrace that genre. Expect it to be at or near the top of every Best Of list at the end of the year.
You take everything written about Apple with a grain of salt because of the company’s notorious secrecy, but even if this piece is only partially true, it is a fascinating look at their failed attempt to get into the car business.
How Apple Sank About $1 Billion a Year Into a Car It Never Built
And I liked this effort to find something good in Apple’s car program. Or any EV manufacturer, for that matter.
I love honoring musical anniversaries, mostly by dropping songs with birthdays into my Friday Playlists.
I missed a big one while we were on spring break, one that demands more than just a song in a playlist.
March 18 was the tenth anniversary of the War on Drugs’ Lost In The Dream. It is an album that has been a huge part of my life since the day it was released.
I’m sure some of you are far more interested in my thoughts on Kansas Basketball than what we did over spring break. I’ve been ruminating on the topic since Saturday’s loss to Gonzaga. The result is a classic two-parter. Here, in part one, I’ll look back. Part two will look ahead.
I picked KU to lose to Gonzaga in both of my pools. I was not expecting a 21-point loss that featured a ridiculous 39–9 run by the Zags to open the second half, though.
What a fun week we had on Anna Maria Island, Florida for our spring break. Travel was mostly a breeze, with one exception we had terrific weather, and we were able to enjoy a relaxing week in the sun.
Alarms were set for 3:50 AM a week ago Saturday so we could be at the airport by 5:00. We made it comfortably and it was literally the easiest airport experience we’ve ever had this time of year.
[open.spotify.com/playlist/...](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6tSkKKX6aWg1u2EACTEoiS?si=589bb970d01843ef) "The Trap" - R.M.F.C.
If you read these posts closely, you know how I love to identify Australian groups by their common sound alone. I don't know that these kids jumped out as Aussie to me right away. It leans a little more Southern Cali surf rock, although that sound does have a big influence the Australian sound I like so much.
"Neon River" - Pond
Let's stay Down Under with the latest from these Aussie psych-rock heroes.
As promised, a second Car Buying post for the week. I’ve had to revamp this one several times, because my brain has been overloaded with info the past few days, and I’ve struggled to turn it into a coherent piece. Today’s mostly revolves around Ze Germans.
Why I Am Ditching Audi I think I addressed this a bit in my first post, more about why I’m stepping down from my Audi in terms of finances.
I’m finding the titles of these posts to be cumbersome. Plus they overlap with my high school hoops post titles. So, going forward, I’m just using this generic title.
It’s been an eventful week on the EV front. Not just for me, but also in the news. For today’s post I figured I would knock out thoughts on some of those macro issues. As this is a pretty quiet week leading into spring break, I may have another car post this week to continue to clear out some of the topics I want to hit.
In some ways it was a terrible weekend. In other ways it was a good one. The common theme was a lot of basketball.
Jayhawk Talk I’m very glad that I didn’t see a minute of Houston destroying KU. I had this game chalked up as an L ever since KU easily beat the Cougars last month. A 30-point loss, though? I have to admit, that was unexpected. It wasn’t a huge surprise that Kevin McCullar was ineffective then sat the entire second half.
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“Birthday” - Late Bloomer Their album came out last week and it is filled with agreeable rock like this.
“Brown Paper Bag” - DIIV Their first new music in five years, their new album is focused on the state of the world and, from the band’s point of view, its impending meltdown. This lead single is appropriately sludgy and gloomy.
“Beautiful Girl” - Kaiser Chiefs Another band that has been away for five years.
I might be reading too fast. This is the 10th week of the year and I’m about to finish my 14th book of 2024. Because of that they are running together a bit. I apologize, as these summaries aren’t the most detailed of my writing career.
The World We Make - N.K. Jemisin Jemisin’s Great Cities series was supposed to be a trilogy. Between the pandemic, US politics, and some other things that got her down, she decided to cut it off at two books.
I said in my last car post that despite deciding to get a Tesla Model Y, I would continue to research EVs until I actually pulled the trigger to make certain of my final decision. It doesn’t take much to send me down research rabbit holes, and I spent a decent chunk of the weekend re-evaluating my choice and diving back into review videos and posts. It started Friday when my brother-in-law in Boston, Uncle Maaaahk, mentioned that if I had time for more test drives, he has a friend who owns a Volkswagen ID.
Movies, Shows, etc The Greatest Night In Pop The funny way to sum up this look at how “We Are The World” was recorded would be to say it was outrageous. Some of you will get that joke. I’ve read about that night several times, but there were still some terrific little tidbits in this film. I’m on record as not being a fan of the song, but I liked how Bruce Springsteen described his experience: no matter what you think of the song, it was a tool for helping people.
A relatively laid-back weekend, although some of that was unexpected, so a quick post to get the new week started. No, I did not buy a car.
Jayhawk Talk Another road loss, although the game at Baylor was chalked up as an L to begin the season, so no real harm. Kevin McCullar came back and looked decent. He still can’t hit a 3 and missed two makable layups, so maybe he’s 100% healthy?
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“The Sound of Suffering” - Salim Nourallah I’ve long used these playlists to celebrate Spotify’s Discover Weekly feature, and share new discoveries I’ve made through it. I have to admit that something about their algorithm has changed and it has been sucking lately. It has been offering music that doesn’t match either what I listen to historically or recently. Like not even close. But this song was in my new playlist on Monday, so maybe they have made corrections to the model and the suggestions are improving.
Weird week here. It was in the 70s Monday, high 60s Tuesday, then the wind chill was in the teens all day Wednesday. The sun is bright and dazzling today, but it is still very chilly. That combined with some other things has thrown my body clock off.[1] I’m having trouble sleeping at night then struggle all day to avoid taking a nap, usually unsuccessfully, so I can go to bed tired.
When I realized that the Kia EV6 likely wasn’t the car for me, I started thinking about the areas where it failed to be sure about what I was looking for. Kia is fairly new to EVs, so their products are not mature. They don’t seem to have a strong organizational commitment, on either the corporate or dealer side, to EVs at the moment. With the electric market softening over the past year, I wonder about how serious they will continue to be about their models going forward.
It was a three-day weekend at CHS. Which was good since L and I started the weekend off early.
Caitlin-palooza I took L and one of her hoops buddies down to Bloomington Thursday night for the Iowa-Indiana game. This was my first time in Assembly Hall 2003. Our seats were better for that game. We were UP THERE! We arrived right when doors opened two hours before tip and found the back of the line, which was roughly half a mile from the arena.
This week features several new songs from artists who have played a large role in my musical life.
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“Dark Matter” - Pearl Jam One of my all-time favorite bands returns. This isn’t too bad at all. Now sending out good vibes to keep anyone in the band from getting sick in late August when they are scheduled to return to Indy.
“Oh Hi” - Crowded House One of my all-time favorite artists returns with the band that made him famous.
Things are moving quickly compared to my last car buying adventure. As I shared yesterday, in the span of about 36 hours I went from casually looking at one set of cars with a planned acquisition date in early May to suddenly test driving a totally different car with the chance of bringing it home soon.
Part of that adjustment was adding electric vehicles to my list. I’ve been interested in EVs for some time.
I mentioned Monday that I fell into a rabbit hole over the weekend. If you pay close attention to all my nonsense, you probably could have made a pretty solid guess as to what that rabbit hole was.
I am officially car shopping again!
Just like when I did this three years ago, there’s going to be some background bullshit before we get to the good stuff. I’ll try to be brief, but y’all know how I am.
Chart Week: February 25, 1984 Song: “Nobody Told Me” - John Lennon Chart Position: #7, 6th week on the chart. Peaked at #5 the week of March 3.
I’ve been thinking about songs by dead people lately. There’s no mathematical way to quantify it, yet I keep trying to isolate the effect an artist’s death has on new music released after they pass. Do songs get more popular because of our morbid fascination with death, and thus become bigger hits?
Snow! Our first significant snow of the year hit Friday afternoon. Which was perfect for A) kids who are driving home from school, B) a wife who has to commute through rush hour traffic, and C) the opening night of All Star Weekend. Perfect in this case meaning the opposite of perfect. We ended up getting between 4–5” inches of heavy, wet snow at our house. Everyone made it home safely and I was excited to get to use the snowblower for the first time in three years.
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“Cured” - Restorations This band enjoys taking its sweet time between new releases. It’s been six years since their last album. I think you can hear the effect of the breadth of their career in Jon Loudon’s vocals.
“Distinct Star” - So Totally As much as I’ve enjoyed the recent shoegaze revival, I’ll admit it has become a little much since s many of the songs sound so much alike.
I had planned to post a new Reaching for the Stars entry today, but I can’t quite get the right flow to the piece, so I’m going to keep at it a few more days. Instead, some assorted notes to unload my brain.
Health After nearly three weeks I think I’m finally beating whatever has been ailing me. S kept asking me in week two if I wanted to start taking antibiotics.
Sing Her Down - Ivy Pochoda I read this book while I was sick. Maybe the infection or virus or whatever was plaguing me combined with a lack of sleep and cold meds kept me from appreciating it. Because I did not get this book at all. It is the story of two women who are released from prison during the Covid lockdown and travel from Arizona to LA. They run into some troubles and get the attention of an LA cop who has her own issues she’s dealing with.