L’s first true travel basketball tournament of her life is in the books. She had fun, but it was a mixed weekend results-wise. Hoops first. Her team went 2–2 for the weekend. Friday night they got absolutely annihilated by a team from Canada. Whatever your mental image of how Canadian seventh grade girls should look and play, these girls were the opposite. Big, fast, strong, good hoops IQs, and the most athletic team we’ve played this year.
open.spotify.com/playlist/… “Rewind” - Whimsical Some very turn-of-the-millennium shoegaze from Northwest Indiana, of all places. “Alive” - POLIÇA Oh, damn! This song absolutely slays. “Bones” - Rosali After some shoegaze and electro-pop, let’s take things in a completely different direction. It sure seems like a whole lot of shreddy songs like this come out of Philly. I think Rosali has worked with The War on Drugs at some point. “Saw You At The Eastern Beach” - Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever RBCF’s new album took a little longer to connect than their last, which I thought was the best of the career.
Last week was the one year anniversary of me acquiring my Audi Q5. As my car search series was immensely popular - I believe at least 10 people read it - I feel like I owe those fans a one year update. Aside from some minor quibbles, I am still deeply in love with my Audi. It isn’t perfect, but it is still a pretty fantastic ride. It is mostly an around town vehicle, and it handles that nicely.
You may have missed the news because of more important things, but Apple officially retired the iPod line of music players last week. That’s not exactly true, as the iPod Touches that were discontinued were more iPhones without a cellular radio than anything resembling the classic iPods. But, still, Apple no longer sells a dedicated portable music player. There have been plenty of odes to the iPod in the tech media.
L finally got back in hoops action this weekend. The tournament her team was scheduled to play in in Indy got cancelled because of lack of teams. Our coach scrambled and got us into a tournament in Bloomington. Which is nice since they’ve been working on the main highway between Indy and B-town approximately since I moved to Indiana. There was a long stretch where there were barrels blocking one lane and the speed limit was 45.
open.spotify.com/playlist/… “Better Days” - Liam Gallagher I’ve never been a huge fan of the Gallagher brothers' post-Oasis solo/group efforts. But this song is solid. And I hope that Liam is right that the better days we’ve been waiting for eventually get here. “Nowhere At All” - Young Guv Nobody is better right now at making hazy, summery, jangle pop like this than Ben Cook. “Hearts Underground” - Tallies More fun, jangly sweetness.
I just can’t seem to get on a regular schedule for sharing fun things I run across in my internet travels. So I’ve decided to scrap the periodic link-heavy posts and move towards sharing interesting pieces individually, as I run across them. That means more content for you, dear readers! Let’s kick it off with this wonderful profile of Creed Bratton. In recent years I’ve learned plenty about his life. I don’t think I knew anything about his “real” life until well after The Office ended its run on NBC.
Chart Week: May 5, 1979 Song: “Music Box Dancer” - Frank Mills Chart Position: #3, 15th week on the chart. This was the song’s peak. Songs like “Music Box Dancer,” complete outliers to everything else on the pop chart at the time, fascinate me. It makes no sense that this track spent over four months in the Hot 100 and climbed as high as number three. Even for the 1970’s, a decade loaded with bizarre records that landed in the top ten, it seems strange.
A lighter weekend around our house. No basketball for L’s team, which was good as she was still recovering from her injury. She’s much better and is headed back to practice tonight. She should be good-to-go for this weekend, although the tournament they were scheduled to play in got cancelled so she may get another weekend off if the coach can’t find us a replacement. M had her second tennis match of the year last week.
open.spotify.com/playlist/… “Do You Pray?” - Tess Parks When artists are described as “Psych rockers” it can go several directions. I like the direction Parks takes that description. “Falling Apart (Right Now)” - Wilco Wilco has had a hell of a journey through their nearly 30 year career. They’ve meandered all over the soundscape, had various levels of success, had lineup turnovers, personal strife, and eventually became elder statesmen of American rock.
Chart Week: April 26, 1980 Song: “Cars” - Gary Numan Chart Position: #22, 11th week on the chart. Peaked at #9 for three weeks in June. It has always bothered me that Gary Numan never seemed impressed with the biggest song of his career, 1980’s “Cars.” I’ve read several stories in which he speaks of it dismissively. On the song’s Wikipedia page, he is quoted as calling it “a pretty average song.
Shows and Movies Official Secrets Weird how huge events that happened A) overseas and B) while we were waiting for M to be born have totally slipped my mind. Here is a dramatic recounting of how Brit Katharine Gun leaked a confidential memo about the efforts to sway the UN Security Council to vote in favor of war against Iraq in 2003 to the press, and her experiences after confessing to her “crime.
I was going to begin this post with a complaint about the weather. Then I realized that our recent run of swings between warm and cool are what spring is supposed to be like. Sure, it would be great if it was 60 for two weeks, then 65 for two weeks, and so on. Recent years have seemed a lot more like 40s until April 10 then it’s suddenly 85. The bouncing back-and-forth is normal, we’ve just grown accustomed to the abnormal.
April 2022 Wet Leg - 96 Crowded House - 48 Jack White - 41 Hatchie - 29 Arcade Fire - 26 Complete stats available at my Last.fm page.
open.spotify.com/playlist/… “Roman Holiday” - Fontaines D.C. FDC’s new album dropped last week, to critical acclaim. It is a little too one-note for me, so no surprise that this track is the one that stuck out to me, as it is the only one that varies (slightly) from the rest of the album’s sound. “Wonderment” - Chastity Brown Hey, it’s Adele music for people who like good music! I kid, I kid!
Prom We survived our first prom weekend with pretty much zero drama. Well, I should say prom night was pretty easy, but there was plenty of drama leading up to it. M found a dress quickly and easily, got it altered well ahead of time, and had most of the basics squared away several weeks ago. But the planning for prom night itself was a little tense. That’s only because the plan was constantly evolving and those changes were often presented to us as “Here’s what we are doing now,” instead of “Is it ok if I do this?
open.spotify.com/playlist/… “More Than Love” - Hand Habits Meg Duffy spent the lockdown huddled in a home with fellow artist Sasami and engineer Kyle Thomas. Duffy said the time spent with them gave her the courage to write the songs for her latest album. I’ve given it a listen and this is, by far, the standout track from it. “Dignitary Life” - Twen This duo has a lot of early 2000s DNA in their music.
Thanks to the NCAA tournament, spring break, and general laziness, I’m behind on a couple sports stories. When a huge one broke Wednesday night, that jogged my memory that I should probably get to them. Jayhawk Talk Hey, did you know the Kansas Jayhawks won the national championship two weeks ago? It was pretty cool! We’ve had a steady run of packages dropped off with national title gear over the pat week.
Chart Week: April 19, 1986 Song: “A Little Bit of Love (Is All It Takes)” - New Edition Chart Position: #38, 8th week on the chart. Peaked at #38 for two weeks. Every teen pop group faces a dilemma as they get older: how do they maintain their audience as they, their fans, and their music matures? New Edition was bumping into that issue when they recorded their third album, All For Love.
I’ve been on a good reading stretch lately. Here are some blurbs. The Mercenary - Paul Vidich Vidich gets a lot of critical acclaim for his espionage novels. I wasn’t crazy about his first book I read, The Good Assassin. It was so noir-y that I felt no warmth towards or connection with any of the characters. Despite that, I decided to give this one a shot. Taking place late in the Soviet era, just before Mikhail Gorbachev took over and began opening the country up, it focuses on the attempts by the CIA to exfiltrate a KGB contact, something they had never successfully done.