Best show on TV.

THE WIRE is definately the best show on TV. I've never been sucked into a show the way I have with the Wire. Jill and I tore through the first season, since I've been off summer school and with as much time as we spent glued to it, I didn't come away feeling like I was "sitting around watching TV". Props to Bora for the recommendation

Favorite Character: Omar. How can someone be so scary and so loveable at once?

Laughed: Whenever Bubbles said "McNutty". (click here for a funny pic of Mc Nulty)

Music: Eclectic and informed. Steve Earle even plays Waylon, Bubbles'es N.A. mentor.

Favorite scene: When Omar aquire's all of Barksdale's stash by simply walking through the courtyard saying, "Eh-yo. Eh-yo."

My Gourden

A gourden is what weird gourd crafter people call a garden full of gourds. Yes, I've become one of those weirdos.

It all started with a rattle, called a shekere, that I salvaged and repaired. I love this rattle and use it for lots of different types of music. I decided, since my house is officially "done", that I needed a thing. And I got really into the idea of making percussion instruments from gourds.I've since done a lot of gourd research. I also went a little overboard and planted about 20+ gourd seeds around our property. Some in our vegatable garden, some in Jill's cutting garden, and some in different flower beds in the front. Some are bilobal bottle gourds, some are short-neck dippers, some are birdhouse gourds, and some are corsican flats. I'm not going to make a birdhouse with the birdhouse gourds, but I'm hoping to use them to make the body of a stringed instrument. I plan to make shekeres from the bottle gourds. And djabarras and shakers with the dippers.

I plan to blog about my progress as time goes on, but for now, they're aren't even flowers on the plants.

Wilco's new album (+Tweedy career in review)

Arright. So I bought it. Gave it a shot. Glad I did. I'm pretty into it. Surprised myself. Talking here about "Sky Blue Sky" by Wilco. A really good album.

(You can also read Matt's review of this album here.)

I was pretty disgusted with their last offering, "A Ghost is Born", which was self indulgent and poopy. Yes, poopy. Tweedy knew he could put a slice of balogna in a cd case and he would still sell a couple million copies at that point in his career (and you know that people would open up to find that round cold-cut and say, "This guys a genius!"). In Sky Blue Sky, Tweedy returns to the actual craft of songwriting and has a crack team of newish bandmates to back him up.


And this record is really about those bandmates. Tweedy takes a backseat here. Some of these guys have reputations in musical arenas that are much more virtuosic than indie rock. These guys have jazz records and percussion-only records and their reps travel before them. And the album is better for it with lush solos (sure, they get a little jam-band-ish, but nothing like the self-indulgent Krautrock of Ghost is Born) and interesting drumming and the return of steel guitar in a Wilco album. The etherial guitar wash of "Impossible Germany" reminds me of late 90s math rock (Sharks Keep Moving, South, Tristeza). Yeah, it's worth it just for that guitar part.

I've gotta say, it's good that Tweedy does kinda take a backseat here, because his lyrics continue to go downhill. That's the drawback.

Faithful Readership, one should know that even though this would be a satisfactory entry point into Wilco, a better album (their best, in fact) for the curious is the breakthrough "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot". It's a fantastic album. Classic. It does to American music what Radiohead's "OK Computer" did to British pop.

It should also be known that Jeff Tweedy was in a band with Jay Farrar (swoon!) called Uncle Tupelo in the early 90s. In the split, they formed Wilco and Son Volt respectively. Their fans typically take sides the way that Beatles fans do about John and Paul (or in my dad's case: George). I think we all know who I side with here. So this tends to cloud my ears when listening to Wilco and tends to prevent me from saying Tweedy's a genius. Conversely, if Son Volt released a CD with a slice of balogna where the disc should be, I have to admit that I'd be blogging the very next morning about what a genius Jay Farrar is and what an artistic statement he's making. Shucks.

Rating the Wilco Albums:
#1 "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot" 2002
Brilliant. Crossover. Most hyped indie rock album ever, but worth the hype.



#2 "Summer Teeth" 1999
A pop album. Lots of synth.



#3 "Being There" 1996
This douple album could do without half of the songs, the the good half is pretty good. At this point, Wilco was still more country and less pop.


#4 "Sky Blue Sky" 2007
See above.



#5 "A.M." 1995
Their first, but not their worst. Very country. Contains Tweedy's best song ever, "Casino Queen", but doesn't make it as an album.


#6 "A Ghost is Born" 2004
Balogna.

Woody Guthrie Autobiography (exerpt)

Here's an exerpt from the beginning of "Bound for Glory". This the real thing. He writes plain and that's my kinda book. The following paragraphs show that Guthrie could not only hold his own as classic songwriter and poet, but also as a writer. Here is how he describes a boxcar filled with hundreds of men:

"I set down with my back against the wall looking all through the troubled, tangled, messed-up men. Traveling the hard way. Dressed the hard way. Hitting the long old lonesome go.


Rougher than cob. Wilder than a woodchuck. Hotter than a depot stove. Madder than nine hundred dollars. Arguing worse than a tree full of crows. Messed-up. Mixed-up, screwed-up people. A crazy boxcar on a wild track. Headed sixty miles an hour in a big cloud of poison dust due straight to nowhere."

This is going to be my kind of book.

The study of EPs

As my band began work on putting together our EP, we did a lot of looking at other EPs to see what makes an EP (good wiki link here) tick. This caused me to revisit a lot of my EPs. I go through them, listen to them, and re-order them on the shelf the way that little kids rearrange their stuffed animals or matchbox cars- just for looks. I love EPs. They're so fun to get- like a bonus present betweeen albums. So Here's a look at some of my favorite EPs in my collection.
(note: "classic elements of an EP" are in Bold/Itallics)


Delta Haymax- "Self-titled 3 song EP"- Best EP ever. I think it's out of print. 2 members. This is the record that really turned me on to minimalism. It came out at a time when guitars HAD to be distorted. These guys hooked me on clean, simplistic, hook-laden indie rock. Changed my life. This EP was an intro to the band (their debut) and, honestly, the full-length record to follow didn't live up, in my opinion. All three are exclusive tracks. 1997

Bloomsday- "Self-titled EP"- I knew somebody that would play this EP ritualistically upon waking up and again going to bed. He usually revisited it several other times during the day. It's that good. Part of what make some EPs so great is that they are not muddled by the "filler" songs that an album is. Ther's no fluff. And on this EP it's all just perfect the whole way through 100%. 1997

Magnolia Electric Company- "Hard to Love a Man EP"- Hard to love a man? 'Nuff said. But seriously, folks, this EP has some of the classic elements of an EP. It has the single (from the full length album) and it has a cover (of "werewolves of london" by Warren Zevon). 2005



Death Cab for Cutie- "Forbidden Love EP"- Contains the best DeathCab song, "Photo Booth" and has another classic element of an EP which is the alternate version ("Company Calls") and the acoustic version ("405"). 2000










Starflyer 59- Starflyer (one of my absolute favorite bands) is one of those bands that puts out an EP between almost every full-length release. So, with about 10 notches in their album post, they have at least that many EP notches. "Fell in Love at 22" EP is the best. That song makes it on most mixes I give people, but a song that's actually called "EP Nights" contains the highlight lyric: "Jesus please come soon. This afternoon." that is surrounded by swirls of vintage synths that create a panic feel. I know on my worst days, this lyric comes to mind.





Son Volt/Jay Farrar- You don't think I'd leave them outa this post, did you? Jay is a guy who's really good at releasing little eps and singles between albums. Often they're collectable (yeah for shameless fanboys like me!!!!!!!!!) and often promotional (like: get this rare ep free when you pre-order the album through the band's website). Love it. Love it. Loooooooove iiiit!.

Other EPs of note:
Pedro the Lion- "Whole EP" 2007
Damien Jurado- "Gathered in Song"1998
The Jealous Sound- "s/t EP" 2000
Minus the Bear- "This is What I Know About being Gigantic" 2001
Sparklehorse- "Distorted Ghost EP" 2000
Kelly Willis- "Fading Fast" (son volt as backing band!) 1996

Say Hello, America

....to SON VOLT!

Yes, below is a commercial for Bendy Spice (I thought of that just now) on something called ESPN, I think it's a cooking channel. Anyway, the real treat is that it's Son Volt playing a cover of the Beatles'es "Hello Goodbye".

How Swede it is....

Some of you might have noticed that I deleted my other blog that served as a creative sort of journal where I wrote ideas for an instrumental music project I had going. Well, things with Winter's Fall have kept me really busy and I've really ignored the instrumental project, so I deleted the blog.

So now some Swede got the blog name. So if you want to see my ancestry, my lineage, the outer most branches of my family tree, click here: gidlund.blogspot.com

Some lyrics, a couple three books, some music, and a movie

Two lyrics that are giving me chills lately. They make me close my eyes and do rock'n'roll fingers and mouth the words like I'm Celine Dion:

"Mexico City bred so many, but none quite like him. Sweet warrior, pure magic matador."
Sun Kil Moon from the song "Salvador Sanchez" from the album Ghost of the Great Highway
Great song. Makes you so pumped up.

"Weather and war, they're the curse of the poor. Now I don't go outside or watch the TV no more."
Brandon Butler from the song "Killer on the Road" from the album by the same name.
Good point, Brandon.

Reading: "The Indian Creek Cronicles" by Pete Fromm. Pretty good. John Jensen let me borrow it. Makes me wanna live in the woods and kill things with my bare hands and then make clothes out of the skin. I could do it. I feel like a kid reading this book. I lived in a secret world in my innermind all through childhood by reading "My Side of the Mountain" and "Hatchet" and all the Gary Paulson books. This book is finding its way to those same nerve connections in my brain.





Not Reading: I sort of quit reading this self-help book that was gonna help me kick my needle phobia called "Overcoming Medical Phobias" so that I wouldn't be distracted by IVs or injections when my beautiful and deserving wife gives birth. I would pump myself up, before reading it each time, by singing "Doin' it all for my baaaaaabay!" by Huey Lewis and The News (but in my head, not out loud). I even was keeping a journal. The thing is that the book expects me to watch a bunch of people getting shot up and then get shot up myself. It's kind of a contradiction that the author didn't think about- why would someone with a crippling phobia want to read about it? Here's hoping that the euphoria of new life trumps my deapest fear (I'm crossing my fingers right now, but you can't see it). I've not totally given up, but I'm not presently reading it. I know that the author intended the word Overcoming to be a verb, but in my case it's just more of an adjective.

Not Read Yet: I also bought "Bound for Glory", a Woody Guthrie biography, with a very nice Cody's gift certificate from a student. I hope to update you, faithful readership, very soon.

Listening to: A lot of Boys Life real loud in my headphones while fixing up the baby's room at 1:00 am. Man, Boys Life makes me really feel those days when we would have our backs to the audience and lean over the amp and play the guitar like it was a drum. Also listening to a lot of Euro Mix 4 (an annual tradition: I make a travel mix for Sissy) and it's fantastic!
Watching: Also, Babel's pretty crazy, isn't it?