Wilco - Jesus, Etc (clip)

Dire Straits - Down to the waterline [Dortmund live '80]

Vinyl Revival MOTM Mark Knopfler

There has been a vinyl revival in my house, my collection of many years has been unearthed because I decided to go to the DJ section of Best Buy and purchase a turntable one of the features of this turntable allows one to rip the albums onto the computer, a feature I won't use; the reason for the vinyl revival? My children...it's time that they listen to a whole albeit half of an album, i am tired of a disliked song being changed so easily, what ever happened to an appreciation of the entire record, listening to the whole work from start to finish then maybe a song once ignored finds you in that mellow mood and now sounds fantastic but as demonstrated by my sons, a song that is disliked NEVER has to be listened to, or perhaps learned to appreciate, perhaps it's not about the song but about YOU or ME or HOW WE LISTEN; I am quite fond of my record collection which includes Pink Floyd, The Doors, America, Elton John, The Call, 77's, Rush, Iron Maiden, Rita Coolidge, U2, Dire Straits, Steely Dan, Wings, Grateful Dead, The Beatles, David Grisman, Miles Davis, CSNY, Emerson Lake & Palmer, Johnny Cash, ELO, Queen, Whitesnake, Styx, Doc Watson, Willie Nelson, Lita Ford, Patsy Cline, Rollingstones, Def Leppard, Van Halen and others but you get the idea that there is alot of material there and a variety of musicians to appreciate and so I must share and it is my duty as a mother of my sons to share with them the things I love most about music which is so funny because years and years ago I bought my father 'Brothers in Arms'(1985) a record put out by the British rock band Dire Straits and I bought it because 'Walk Of Life' at the time was the song used as a sound bite by some channel's daily or weekly coverage of great moments in MLB games and I can still hear it to this day and so I figured out who it was and bought the cassette tape for my dad but managed to fall in love with Mark Knopfler and commandeered this tape whenever possible and so think of how remarkable it is that all these years later and just announced on this VERY DAY that Mr. Knopfler has, on March 10, 2011, entered once again into the studio to record yet another record and I'll say that not only does he hold my personal title for one of the best moments in guitar solo history, but his confident tidy yet laid back and entirely very sexy style of playing that cherry red strat continues to make me crazy in fact, Dire Straits' first album (1978) and self titled holds another title of one of my top ten favorite albums from stem to stern, and one of my all time favorite songs on the whole entire planet earth 'Down To The Waterline' (the sweetest final note) and my kids now know every song on the album and know when to air guitar the talent of Mark which pleases me and warms me and it's so funny how things with the kids can move a parent or cause a parent to swell with pride and for me, it's in the sharing of my records and the moments I see them recognize the beauty of the notes strung together so elegantly the ones that are transmitted from the grooved vinyl to needle to speaker with a new found technique for dancing that keeps the skip at bay my children will learn about the greatest musicians of all time one at a time and I will see to it.

My Morning Jacket - I'm Amazed (Live on Letterman)

MOTM Jim James of My Morning Jacket

You know I've been thinking this week about my earliest remembrances of time keeping an awareness of the passage of moments that led to my father walking through the door each day at the same time much like the man who dropped the hammer off the roof and each time he did, while his daughter stood watching below, the sun would rise but when her father died, the sun rose just the same though she did not expect that it would (an illustration of David Hume's strange brand of empiricism as taught by Dr. Craig Keen) it's not that I came to expect things to happen because of the predictability of some events in childhood it was just the predictability I came to rely on, anyway, I suddenly remember that as a youngster my days were punctuated by regularly occurring events and each day was predictable except on vacation weeks or my summers, for the summers I would float in the pool and watch the trees grow, I felt gifted, then I would blink and the trees would grow again blink/grow blink/grow and repeat because I could not keep from blinking no matter my best effort to stop....I think music has so much to do with our earliest understanding of time as more of a real thing, a measurable distance sort of related to the cool metronome of ticks that pile up if you happen to pay attention and maybe it was the beginning of the record or the first note of the song and then the resolve of the song but a formative understanding of time passage came through the song and when I loved the song enough I would return the needle with precision into the gap, the 0 between songs, so as not to scratch or smudge the sound 3:18 was about right, then again and again I could burn a whole hour down blinking and listening to the B side song of a 45 (ahem Tina Turner, if you must know) just as building with Legos for a child builds an understanding of how construction into the surrounding space however high and however wide music was the score for the everyday, space and time, and here I am, still preoccupied with space and time, able to run nearly a half mile in the time it takes that song to wind down, there is much about the sport of running that is concerned with time and if you consider trying to become competitive, the sky's the limit and of course your effort put forth; when I chose Jim James to be the MOTM it was for so many reasons but I'll be honest, one was the photo you see of him with that Flying V, good god, and of course something else that is so unique about him in My Morning Jacket is his vocals, often, when I completely let myself become absorbed is his music, his vocal tone takes a position of an instrument where I don't can't or am unable to understand his voice but yet there is melodic quality that is so awesome I made my 9 year old Elijah stop and listen and he just looked at me but I had my eyes shut and I was saying like 'see?' and 'hear that?' and 'shhh' and 'right here!' until finally he saunters off I think Eli is still working on his sense of time or something because My Morning Jacket has been playing the house for 3 days and you'd have exactly a hard time missing the genius in Jim James, his writing is fantastic and the influence of Neil young seems especially obvious when his vocals were recorded kinda like singing into a deep well, especially his acoustic recordings -he's big into the Beatles you can tell the complex characteristics of his songwriting but he can't help he's such a great song writer and writes pretty much all of it for My Morning Jacket- finally among the most organic of processes the one that produces his type of art and it gives me a charge - the flying V helps not far to look to find an old soul rocker - he is the one that draws me very quickly i don't try to listen past the chilly undercurrent of a super intense falsetto he's easy to love just an indi guy with a raw non ego very open plan to the vocals SIde note: Yim Yames (a moniker of his) has a neat solo album out of covers that are acoustic and quite delightful http://www.yimyames.com also check out monsters of folk http://monstersoffolk.com

_Amy Winehouse - He Can Only Hold Her. (with lyrics)

MOTM Amy Winehouse

God her death totally sucks at 27 is unacceptable really

It's hard for me to come to this point in the year without pause, a deliberate one, one that is heavy and slows like molasses that was inadvertently refrigerated by someone who shouldn't be poking through your baking supplies anyway--no matter--through this blogging I've determined that I like pauses and there are pauses in strategic places throughout the year--without reviewing them now, I'll mention them again as the year progresses--there is something exactly unlike taking pause when it comes to running, the sport commands a rhythmic pace, like that part of the heart that is the origin of the impulse that is manipulated when an artificial jump start is necessary, that prime moving part of the body, the origin of the heart beat, that place from which the energy that our body needs to perform, presses out meeting some resistance, then moves deliberately to the muscles feeding and nurturing but this central place is in our chest and at times that could be a metaphor for so much about what drives us and makes us reach if you could find a place on the body that generates that kind of passion, it couldnt be from our mind, I dont use my mind when I run -- i've heard that running is about love and I have refuted that because I love other things that I don't do or even do even better than running; there is difficulty in getting me to admit something soulful, but i do understand the desire for the heart to love and attract, running just might be the hardest thing I do with my body and it seems like there is something that drives it and I can admit that there is something soulful for me and music - this is not a brain activity for me - a measure of my love for music can be found in the effort I make each day to get my dose, probably like most people except we don't talk about it other than when something comes on that really sucks and our sails collapse, I've learned to listen to Amy Winehouse with a critical ear and not the kind that deconstructs its parts but I've had to consider her influences and her style which is so lounge-y, 50's wind instrumentation, with a very heavy ska vibe that I really find so unique and, Amy, I consider her quite prolific as a song writer, as one of those artists who takes me flying out of what I know or have experienced and shows me that something new is happening with a combination of styles that is pioneer-like in a very exciting sort of way, where there is a distinct point a place where the mind drops off and the heart grabs hold of the reins, it's why we energize, it's why we swell and smile and share -- so while it may not be love I'm talking about, there is definitely a correlation between romance and being totally present with the hope and promise of being inspired.

The Pixies : Gigantic (1988)

MOTM Kim Deal ~ The Pixies

It was a couple of days before he left town for Thanksgiving eating/visiting family-no, not eating the family, geez-- and so forth that we talked about how certain musical instruments influence, help to shape, create, develop the personality of the person playing it and the conversation went a little freaky, I mean, I started to think that the instrument is the control panel for the musician, and while the musician not totally or actually never incidental to the sound emanating from that instrument whether juvenile or stunning the instrument in effect is a conductor of the musician but of course I just invented the idea that the, say the Trumpet as we were discussing is the type of instrument that commands the personality of a true frontman, that which is defined in any genre--any band in any genre-- that quintessential front~human who pulls us in and takes us on this mission that the band has laid out on a set list --which is another fascinating piece to the live experience and a piece that is unrelated here but whatev, it's my blog and I'll deviate if I want to, anyhooooo so if a trumpeter emerges as a frontman, sort of, or mainly this the trumpeter displays some of the skill set that is required from the frontman than it must be said that the instrument is the X factor in the development of this personality type and maybe musicians should have their own personality types charted like the type A's B's C's and D's that the rest of less than hard core musically trained or totally untrained-non musical rabble are categorized by because I can't imagine Kim Deal fitting into any of the categories that make up the ABCD types, I mean, she's totally something different and you can hear it in the bass she plays, she's heavy, maybe she's an Em personality, nahh too much of a complaint for the stoic, maybe she's an F#m7 because it's not a depressed note the m elongates the # and those notes meld into to something that is quite beautiful actually and with Kim, I've realized in her playing that there are times that she can choose a steadily simplistic bass line because it is required by the composition and that her instrument doesn't play her according to an idea that the more complicated the line, the more it pulls through the song, adding to it and being a part of it-- maybe I find a relationship between the F#m7 and the lyric 'your feet are in the sky and your head is on the ground' that the bright tones poking through the F#m7 is a metaphor for Kim's smart interpretation of the bass for the Pixies taking the bass from what could be that which settles the song to that line which the song gets tangled up in like in a simple tangling which is how I think Kim would want it --which is odd because she is really quite complicated but I love her and I love the Pixies and actually she was much like her bass line while she was in the Pixies ~ heavily rehearsed perfect design off a bit and still relevant since twenty years have meandered by

Disco Biscuits - Home Again - 5/29/10 - Red Rocks, Morrison, CO

MOTM The Disco Biscuits

Marc Brownstein, bass, all mega hot with his Macbook

A Philly band I heard about from a fellow Goddard College student in a common area where we were probably partaking of the Vermont (North Kingdom) kind and talking ad nauseum about jammy faves but not certain if 'to the point of nausea' was totally the result of the topic; no matter neither his name nor his designer drug preference is necessary to reveal but what emerged from that conversation was an opportunity to experience live music that married my - at the time newly discovered first of the two is new- two favorite elements: persistent electronic house-ica fused to my -must have- long, live jammy gimme some o' that and with that combo I find myself running a 20 miler in the time it takes Bisco to page through only 4 or 5 of it's explorative, shift~changing numbers but it's confusing because well, what I mean to say is that the art is happening while the artist is at work so that in these moments of the live jam, the moments that do not repeat, unlike much of the music that fills our environment whether preferred/hand selected or unsolicited, music has a structure to it that commands a quality of listening, a quality that actually requires concentrated effort and sometimes bands are lucky if we don't participate in this way, other times we are lucky to listen in just that right way because these artists disclose themselves through amplification a complex formula for the framework that becomes the platform for this art and, for me that is, the attack and at times can be rootsy reggae, electronica, house rock trance stuff that makes for the best running music and certainly a fun live experience-- this is a dynamic in every live jam performance that makes me fully present because if it weren't there, neither would I, but, for me the attack is that something fresh to the sound, the dynamic~dynamic that particular place in the song doesn't sound exactly the same with each performance, the fluid improv attack-not just experiencing the dark sides of the artist but also the aggressive, driven notes a pelting attack followed by the airy breathe of notes cushioned by the familiar drones and tones, in the jam culture persists the manipulation of body through sound there is an iconoclasm and affect a resembling an expression of these sounds that have pressed themselves out of the souls of the fans and cloaks them in colors/fabrics/textures that are as diverse at the divergent paths in a 25 minute Lunar Pursuit and I am one of those jam fans under attack by the band seeking those pinnacle moments of an epic good time and as it seems to be with much more regularity having a better and stronger workout than yesterdays or at least accomplishing in each day a concentrated effort in listening and being.

Tool - Stinkfist [hq - fullscreen]

MOTM Tool

This was going to happen following the Screaming Trees because of the time period, the sound reminiscent of the inertia caused in part by Nirvana's thrust that sent waves through all of us, and then Tool
along with a handful of other politically conscious/pop culture rejected/spiritually unfundamental and in particular those groups that are preoccupied with a concept that no-thing should interfere with my becoming especially dogma or anything that constructs cultural or spiritually predetermining platforms in our minds or tries to control 'where the water flows' for the individual that absolutely nothing that begins with
'this is the truth and the light' interacts with our development as humans and it's not that only a select few have something important to accomplish it is that all of us are becoming and if something interrupts that which moves into the direction of our progession to being fullly then it must be at least identified as a space invader or an infection You might think I am talking about Tool as the Iconoclastic-clasmatic iconoclasts
who are as banal as the sloping~non~linear~turns of a woman's curves constrasted against the cold`hard`mortar and rough`clay`brick or something artsy that makes you want almost want to say ' I just don't undestand it ' so that the artist has an opportunity to acquire a sense of acheivement, NOT, these are these things we've known about Tool whether we've bought their albums in the 90's or not there's a message there that maybe the ears weren't there to hear and certianly if Wal Mart and MTV were busily watering down Tool then THAT is what we've really always known is the aberrant tendencies were what kept us, exactly the ones that failed to read the warning on the package [or on the pew], what is there then for us are the coliding opposites that is Tool, the vocal contrasts, metal pulse to the music, ebbs and strange miscounts, timing shifts reminding me of complicated 7/8ths that show a sophistication and pique my interest and allow my shoe stikes to filter through the ear buds for a few moments,
what we have is Tool and except for Mr. Keenan who bravely puts stage crashers in bass ackward body slam death grip choke holds and behold the simple all hallowed hotness of Justin Chancellor (he's second from the right pictured above) who stomps the bass, Tool means penis and like there's really nothing else to say about that except this video is about transformation, a disturbing varietal.

The Single Ingredient Diet

Along with my fitness program, my diet always needs modification.
It would also not be unreasonable to say that along with any good fitness
program, a good and effective diet also needs the SAME rigor and attention that the
exercise prescription requires.
My calorie demands, that is my need for energy, has increased and
the types of foods needed to satisfy those demands are really very simple.
I once wrote about or talked to someone about how food for me is less about an adventurous culinary
experience and more about adhering to a strict understanding between
the food-its micro nutrients and, its relationship to my workout.
Recently, and through a smart and attentive friend, it was delicately brought to my attention that I am
calorie deficient based on the demands I place on my physical self and my need for energy.
As an example, there are days when I eat more. On those days, I crest the threshold
of eating that is reminiscent of my 300 pound days--where quantity consumed was
an issue (although quality is not).
The morning following a significant carbohydrate intake, however, my workouts
have an extra power element that seems lacking on the days when I monitor those
calories [perhaps too] strictly.
The single ingredient diet means I eat sweet potato, egg, meat, fruit, vegetable, rice,
oat, pasta, black bean, nut. One thing. One ingredient. And, I do this every 2-3 hours.
So, from my diet, I had to omit: hummus, tortilla chips, marshmallow fluff, salsa, cottage
cheese, soy milk, wheat crackers, peanut butter, diet soda, bread, spelt cookies (ugh)
and maybe other sweets that I don't need anyway.
For someone like myself who has undergone such a radical change in her physique and
in her physical fitness (I have lost 170 pounds)--food failed to stop short at categorizing me
as playfully neurotic.
Never mind all of that.
It is very important to view nutrition as that which fuels our bodies for
the demands we place on it in a 24 hour period. What you do with your 24 hours is your business.
For me, I workout for approximately two of those 24 hours and my total miles run through the week
can vary from 42-80.
Having fun with food for people is an enjoyable pastime, they make friends, cooking appeals to their
creative side, they write blogs and make movies and write books about food (of course, everyone likes food, right?) But in America, with such an impatient crowd of eaters, and an increasingly high-maintenance crowd at that,
suddenly we have forgotten simultaneously that our legs are meant for running and our calories are meant to
fuel our bodies simply as energy.
There is such a systemic-asymmetric-relationship between our time spent exercising/moving/sweating and the time spent selecting/preparing/eating food. Geez. Such a crime.
And, we have forgotten--as we have evolved from our primate ancestors--that our diets CAN and SHOULD be so simple and so uncomplicated.
Our diet hasn't evolved.
We need basics.
We need grains, protein, fiber. It's so easy.
And, the added benefit of when you're in shape and powerful
and strong the food you eat, so long as you meet
those basic needs, gets put to work--honoring that machine that your body truly is and, dare I say, honoring a soul
that desperately wants that body to move.

Screaming Trees - Make My Mind

Screaming Trees ~ MOTM Musicians of the Month

So, here's a run~on sentence about this months' Musician of the month and I am happy to announce this grungy 90's band that I have loved for years the Screaming Trees with their undeniably west coast sounds and not those of the aimless laid back variety but of a new style that was opened up when Nirvana broke in hard and in squeezed the Trees with an edgier than usual sound differing their 80's roots as skater music with more of that laid~back stoner psyche they welcomed change as good artists do and because I get that change and what inspires it and what compels it and researching briefly what projects they have found themselves in over the years it is clear that these fellas dig music period {ie Bomb The Bass} but there is nothing like the monster power chords of the early nineties and stringing together those pinnacle chops in three BIG changes comes a mega song like none other during particularly great practices and with Beck~like ebbs the Trees have it and let me say this because I mean it what grunge did to 80's rock was amp it up without diminishing the 80's vocal quality it leveled it so that it was 90's ready and now that we're not in the 90's it sounds classic in that grungy sort of way and the hair from the 80's changed only slightly and by that i mean less shampooing for the grunge folks and I get that too because when you have long hair you don't need to wash it everyday (partly because it's a hassle and partly because it looks cleaner for longer periods of time) lol anyway so I run to the Screaming Trees and I can do that because it has that epic from start~to~finish 90's muscle that pushes.

Re~Inventing The Fitness Program

So here's a run~on sentence about fitness, this comes at a very important time because, as I have discovered, I must always organize and re~organize my fitness program for a number of reasons one of which is keeping my physical self interested in the regimen and I can know that it is interested by continued hypertrophy of the muscle tissue and continued dissolve of the fat globules which takes me briefly on this tangent of tissue, the muscle does not weigh more than fat and I know we've all thought this but it's just not true, that being said, muscle takes up less space than fat so let's see, one pound of fat takes up roughly 4x more space than muscle and fat is not efficient, muscles require calories while fat requires nothing and so therefore fat is only kind of lame and that's because women have to have some of it on their bodies for survival and having babies, etc but to make this easier to understand if you have 2 women that both weigh 135 pounds the one with only 20% fat will look more tone and healthier than the other woman with 40% fat, this is because fat has more volume and makes you look lumpy and now you can guess my new goal for the next 4 months is getting LEAN and this will be done and I will do it myself and when I am done you can ask questions or hire me to train you because I am beginning a program that will allow me to train folks and assist in developing goals (more about that later) but I think what this sentence is about is my muscles because I want them and I want to see them and I like them and I especially like the shape that has emerged through all the changes my body has gone through and I am continually impressed at the willingness certain components of my body have that enables it to adapt and re~shape re~form re~invent themselves in a very big major FU to all those who assumed I was stupid because I was fat, so to that I say this: I wasn't fat, I was friggin lumpy because fat has more volume than muscle, so there.

Grateful Dead live 94 -So Many Roads

MOTM Jerry Garcia

I am always at least surrounded by individuals who are strong, smart, reasonable and who care for me and aren't afraid to share their thoughts and it has been this aspect of my life that has my attention more than ever now that the focus for me is nurturing important relationships and feeling, at once, blessed to have them in my life and it is days like today and weeks like this one when I can see with such clarity that which makes me take a breath, deeply, like the breath that a relationship often takes like the slack between tides, at the apex of change or the final [gaseous] heave of the corpse, a pause between two places or people, the median, the juxtaposition, Taijitu, where balance is imminent and necessary and the forever equation that the cosmos is forever doing and forever undoing and rarely, stubbornly showing her work in a way that I'm prepared for--like 15 years ago today, Aug. 9, 1995, no one can question whether or not I can recall that day and it's apex for me, the great pause in my life, the day, really, when everything changed (a bit naive since I hadn't birthed a child but similarly and in retrospect, this day was the biggest breath I've taken) and it started with a phone call to an apartment in Portland, Oregon where myself and my boyfriend slept onlly on a floor and drinking wine only from a gallon jug, the death of Jerry Garcia was announced to us through tears on a phone line suspending into mid air above me went my entire impetus for being on the west coast in search of the kindest of everything and in a breath had suddenly reached it highest and lowest point in a simultaneous explosion of confusion and hurt and such a feeling of emptiness that I actually can't say that I've recovered from it but here is that moment revisited and the man with his genius and magic swirls in and out of my EVERY SINGLE DAY and through the lives of my children and my father who heard his first Peggy O twenty years ago and grooved in a way that made me look at him as not the same man I've known but one who listens with the same heart that I have and as I continue to struggle with the loss of this talent Jerry Garcia has continued to accompany me on many deeply intense experiences and conversations and paintings and thoughts and writings and miles driven and miles run and even during both births of my boys, these are things that cannot be taken away, so today I take that pause, like I do every year at this time, to recognize a guy that has given so much to my life and I thank him, wholeheartedly, and I miss him, selfishly. So many roads to ease my soul.

Led Zeppelin- Kashmir

MOTM Led Zeppelin

This month's MOTM is Led Zeppelin so my job here is to try to explain that in a run-on sentence although how can I explain that when it's strictly my preferences at work and while I'm no music theorist [there are those who are] and they will agree that the discussion of why I love this music for running may lend itself to a lengthy attempt to articulate how I process music in general which of course takes all the romance out of it for me, I guess I'm reluctant to do what I think is whittle music down to information or signifiers, which it may be at most simple or maybe it just appears that way when organized intellectually, yet this is necessary so music theory can be taught and also, when paralleled with a brief mention in Einstein's special theory when he insists that geometry is 'true' because it corresponds with stuff we experience though experience isn't required for geometry to be 'true' or moreover kind of true, in fact, what we can know by this is that the equation is more true than what can be experienced...and maybe (this is me now and not Mr. Einstein) it is that the word true is actually too impressive of a term to use EVER even when discussing planes/polygons and why Led Zeppelin is, for me, so relevant to running while oh let the sun beat down upon my face as a non-logical axiom was spun from an innocent length of road that when threaded together with a very percussive song in which the guitar emphatically mirrors that profound percussiveness we are so very pressed to acknowledge an equally heavy and dark cello, my god, which is so odd to me because my experience has been with the cello, while very moving, not as dark but I am continually reminded of the tenacity and courageousness of the artist so much that here I am not sure if I am more seated in Page than in that nameless cellist, or that out of this passion for running and new-sprung physical strength emerges a new way to process, a new set of preferences and a brand new axiom that marries music theory, relative positions and foot strikes thereby, which is even better, completing an epic trifecta of 60 degree angles that I call perfect.

People Under The Stairs - Acid Raindrops

MOTM~ People Under The Stairs (PUTS). A Run On Sentence About Music I Run To.

I know, I know it seems unlikely that I would choose (for the MOTM) the mellowest west coast hip~hop with the super~kind~deep rooted drum loops and heavy grooved rap with melodious movements lightly~mild~thinly~easy but committed to an R&B underpinning like the smooth hand groping under clothes, specifically the kind that moves my feet by way of my heart because the desire of melodious hip hop grooves is JUST that and not even JUST that because what I have discovered about these fellas lyrically (in their homonyms and homographs) is that there are phrases that are quite brilliant and strung together with marajuana, ammo and funky tracks and nickel sacks and reaching out so that I get what is referred to and why the lower ends of the mixes are riffs that take over vocals and the presentation of the song as a single structure becomes less structured and the components separate themselves from each other (a simple volume adjustment for the producer, who is an artist as well) , but giving in to that kind of listening allows the music to push itself through the space allowing us to breathe the intention of PUTS, in pleasurable ignorance.

Watch This Cool Trailer