Primus sucks!

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Primus - live at Red Rocks Webcast - August 12th 2010 (Full Show)

2120 South Michigan Avenue

Here's a little Rolling Stones instrumental for ya.

"2120 South Michigan Avenue" is the street address of Chess Studios, where many of the band's R&B idols had recorded. After a disappointing first half of their inaugural American Tour, the Stones were brought to Chicago for these sessions. The first day, June 10, the Stones were thrilled by the appearance of several visitors in the studio - Buddy Guy, Chuck Berry and Willie Dixon. When the band arrived the next day, none other than Muddy Waters helped them lug guitars and amps into the studio, and stayed around to chat with the boys, who were astonished by the whole experience.



The video is "Truckdriving in Sweden". It was uploaded to YouTube by rocknsixties

SANTA'S reindeer will be flying higher than ever this Christmas...

... after munching magic mushrooms?!

Scientist Andrew Haynes believes reindeer deliberately seek out the mushrooms to escape the monotony of dreary long winters.

... the connection between psychedelic mushrooms and the Santa story has gradually woven itself into popular culture, at least the popular culture of mycology.

"Yalla Yalla" - Cracker Does It For The Troops

Here's a short documentary film/music video depicting Cracker's tour of U.S. military bases in Iraq, from a post at David Lowery's 300 Songs blog.

Today's Date In Music History:

Cracker - Pappy & Harriet's Pioneertown Palace - September 8, 2007

Recorded live at the 3rd Annual Cracker-Camper Van Beethoven Family Reunion Campout in Pioneertown, CA.




1.) pre intro, 2.) intro, 3.) Kerosene Hat intro, 4.) Low, 5.) Movie Star, 6.) Get Off This, 7.) Kerosene Hat, 8.) Take Me Down To The Infirmary, 9.) Nostalgia, 10.) Sweet Potato
11.) Sick Of Goodbyes, 12.) I Want Everything, 13.) Lonesome Johnny Blues, 14.) Let's Go For A Ride, 15.) Loser, 16.) silent tracks, 17.) Eurotrash Girl, 18.) silent tracks, 19.) I Ride My Bike, 20.) encore break, 21.) encore intro, 22.) One Fine Day, 23.) introductions and acknowledgements, 24.) outtro

Download full Set

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Ommegang

I recently traveled to Cooperstown, NY with Gator to visit Brewery Ommegang.


Ommegang, which began brewing Belgian-style ales in 1997, started up in a purpose-built building based on a traditional Belgian farmhouse, set on a former 136 acre hop farm in the Susqehanna River Valley, four miles south of Cooperstown, New York in the Town of Middlefield.




After filling some growlers and grabbing some "750's" at the gift shop, we ventured downtown and imbibed at some local establishments. We passed a Chinese restaurant called Foo Kin John. I toyed with the notion of stopping in and demanding a "Foo Kin egg roll", but opted for a burger elsewhere.




Whilst in Cooperstown - "a drinking town with a baseball problem" - we also paid a visit to the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum.




It was a great trip. I wish that I had more photos, but there were camera issues.
Oh well.

You may have noticed....

.... that posting has been a bit light lately. But fear not-the rumours of my death have been greatly exaggerated.
I've been quite busy-or should I say preoccupied?
went to Cooperstown with Gator last weekend. Great time - another post. soon to follow stay tuned.

Bicycle Day

April 19th is Bicycle Day.
It was on this day in 1943 that Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann ingested LSD before his bicycle ride home. It must have made for one amazing journey.

EAA Airventure 2009

This great video was taken at the EAA Airventure event in Oshkosh, WI!

Joyful Noise

Today's Date In Music History:

Derek Trucks Band Live at The Paradiso on October 16, 2005

Four years ago today, guitar phenom Derek Trucks led his band through an amazing set at Amsterdam's famed Paradiso in the Netherlands. The performance finds the group covering a variety of musical genres --southern rock, blues, soul, jazz, Eastern music, to name a few.
Derek is the nephew of Butch Trucks (a fellow member of the Allman Brothers Band) and is married to fellow guitar wiz Susan Tedeschi .

This recording is from an FM broadcast on Dutch radio.

• My Favorite Things

• Let's Go Get Stoned

• Crow Jane

• Sahib Teri Bandi

• So Close...So Far Away

• Key To The Highway

• joyful Noise

Download show here.

"only" 24 cans?!

Spectators at Australia's Bathurst 1000 motor-racing festival have been issued with strict limits on alcohol consumption – limiting them to 24 cans of lager.

(via telegraph.co.uk)

I was going to suggest that that is why the Aussies love those "oil cans", but despite its heavy international presence, the so-called original Australian beer, Foster's Lager, has very low appeal and limited availability throughout Australia.

Beer has played an iconic role in Australian life since the beginning of Western colonization, and the country's ranked fourth internationally in per-capita beer consumption.

The present custom of drinking alcohol to excess .. will continue. -Marcus Clarke, The Future Australian Race, 1878

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Today's Date In Music History:

Camper Van Beethoven - September 12, 2008 - Pappy & Harriet's Pioneertown Palace

This return installment of Today's Date In Music History features Camper Van Beethoven recorded live at the 4th Annual Cracker-Camper Van Beethoven Family Reunion Campout in Pioneertown, CA, USA

Some of this sets' many highlights include "Militia Song"*, "Take The Skinheads Bowling", and a cover of Pink Floyd's "Interstellar Overdrive".

Listen here:

Download full show here.

... and by the way, while you're reading this, you're missing this year's fest!

* "Militia Song lyrics":
"Studied mathematics in Berkely
Now I don't like society
Got me a little old shack in the woods
Gonna mail you out some explosive goods
They say my brother's insane and simple
But he lived in west Texas in a hole in the ground
I'm the only bomber that you'll ever need
Keep the commie Californians from repressing me "

Here's a related Cracker post.

Off To The Races

July 29, 2009 marks Opening Day at the track celebrating the 146th season of racing in Saratoga, at the oldest organized sporting venue of any kind in the United States.
2009 also will mark the 140th running of The Travers Stakes, the oldest major thoroughbred horse race in America.



I will be on assignment, at the track for the duration of the six-week season.

Stay tuned for updates!

Freedom Highway (1956)

In honor of Memorial Day, I present to you this short patriotic film (about 30 min.).

Freedom Highway shows a nation in need of spiritual and patriotic renewal, and as we'll see, this renewal is to be sought in our past.
A Greyhound bus transports us through the landscape of American mythology in this entertaining "story of America".
You'll meet an unusual group of travelers on this cross-country bus trip. Fred Schroder, embittered by the death of his son in Korea, is riding to Washington to accept a posthumous Congressional Medal of Honor on the son's behalf. Jimmy Rollins, the Boy Scout, is heading to Washington for his first Jamboree. Love interest is supplied by Mary (a young Angie Dickinson) and Bill Roberts, a football hero on the make. Tex Ritter, playing himself, takes a short ride on the bus as it passes through Texas, singing about the Alamo and the "freedom road." Most important of all, a black-suited mysterious stranger (Marshall Thompson) appears, as if from nowhere, to transform the outlook of the passengers.

The bus-bound journey through space becomes a journey through time as great moments and personalities in U.S. history are recreated.

There are a lot of families whose lives are forever changed by men who gave everything for us.


They deserve our respect.

"Oh, the Humanity!!"

The Hindenburg disaster occurred on this date in 1937.
The German rigid airship caught fire and was destroyed while attempting to dock with its mooring mast at the Lakehurst Naval Air Station.Out of the 97 people on board, 35 were killed, in addition to one fatality on the ground.


The largest man made object ever to fly, the Hindenburg would carry a gas volume of 7,062,000 cubic feet.


Although the Hindenburg is most famous for her fiery death, she was not initially meant to be filled with hydrogen at all. In order to keep the Zeppelin Company afloat during the hard times of the depression, large sums of money (bailout?) had been accepted by the National Socialist Party (anyone see a parallel here?).The United States, having the only natural deposits of helium in the world, was getting more and more suspicious of Hitler and his new Third Reich. Government officials wondered if the Zeppelin could be used for military purposes.Thus, a decision was made in the U.S. Congress and The Helium Control Act made it impossible for the Zeppelin Company to obtain helium for their new ship. With this turn of events, the Hindenburg was inflated with the volatile gas, hydrogen.
The "accident" served to shatter public confidence, and marked the end of the giant, passenger carrying rigid airships.
While many conclude that the cause was sabotage, various alternate theories abound.
Some credit the Pineys.

"a storm forced the Hindenburg into a holding pattern. The airship, only a few hundred feet off the ground, circled central New Jersey for two hours. Lakehurst, where it was trying to land, is on the edge of the Pines, and everyone knows Pineys don’t tolerate anyone poking into their woods, They figured the zeppelin was a government ship looking for their stills where they turn blueberries into whiskey, so they shot at the thing and opened leaks in the fabric. By the time the Hindenburg started to tie up, there was enough free hydrogen to blow the ship to kingdom come, which it did."
[excerpted from “Blue Highways” by William least Heat-Moon]

Just as with many of today's recent happenings, we may never know the "truth".
So much for transparency.

The Other Palin

Today, Monty Python's Michael Palin celebrates his 66th birthday.

Now hailed as a national treasure for travelogues like "Around the World in 80 Days", however far he may journey Michael Palin will never escape his reputation as a brilliant writer/performer and the Python you could take home to meet the family.

Perhaps, my fondest recollection of Palin is his role of Dennis (The Constitutional Peasant) in Monty Python and the Holy Grail .

"Listen. Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony.
... You can't expect to wield supreme power just 'cause some watery tart threw a sword at you!
... I mean, if I went 'round saying I was an emperor just because some moistened bint had lobbed a scimitar at me, they'd put me away!"

Here's the clip from that film described as "Another film completely different from some of the other films which aren't quite the same as this one is."



Below is a Brickfilm remake of the Camelot scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail by Spite Your Face Productions (in LEGO).

It's Been 50 Years

(CNN) -- The facts are these: Just after 1 a.m. February 3, 1959, a three-passenger Beechcraft Bonanza went down about five miles northwest of Mason City Municipal Airport, near Clear Lake, Iowa. The plane crash took the lives of the pilot, Roger Peterson, and three musicians: Charles Hardin Holley, better known as Buddy Holly, 22; Ritchie Valens (originally Valenzuela), 17; and J.P. "The Big Bopper" Richardson, 28. The three young musicians were part of the "Winter Dance Party," a ramshackle tour that started in Wisconsin.

It has become famous, in Don McLean's "American Pie" formulation, as "the day the music died."

Ida had posted this video, which shows how it might have happened.

Hear Here:History-Newscast About Richie Valens, Buddy Holly & Big Bopper Plane Crash

Strange Brew

A list of the world's strangest liquors, which includes Pizza Beer, Snake Bile Wine, and a concoction called 'Yogurito', has been compiled by Travel & Leisure.

via Coast To Coast AM

VIEW THE SLIDESHOW

Doyle & Debbie in NYC!

Doyle & Debbie will be on 'Conan O'Brien', on Monday Jan. 5th. Then at Joe's Pub on Wednesday and Thursday, the 7th and 8th.

The Doyle and Debbie Show is sublime parody, simultaneously lampooning and idolizing country music's tradition of iconic duos and their subsequent battle of the sexes. Bruce Arntson and Jenny Littleton wield the vocal chops of vintage country stars, taking audiences on a freewheeling joyride through a wickedly funny script and slew of equally hilarious original songs.
Over the past two years, Doyle and Debbie have developed a rabid cult following in Nashville, many of whom have seen the show over a dozen times—everyone from theater-going professionals to college students who wouldn't be caught dead in a theater or a country bar.

When You're Screwing Other Women


Please tell your NYC friends to come on down!

Keeping Up With The Joneses - It Was 30 Years Ago Today

Today marks 30 years since the horrific deaths of more than 900 people at Jonestown.
The massacre was orchestrated by "Reverend" Jim Jones.The men, women and children died after drinking a fatal cyanide-laced potion of Flavor-Aid (not Kool-Aid, as widely reported) at Jones' compound in the jungles of Guyana.
The event, termed "revolutionary suicide" by Jones, was the greatest single loss of American civilian life in a non-natural disaster until the events of September 11, 2001.
These poisonings at the compound followed the murders of five others by Temple members at a nearby airstrip. Those victims included Leo Ryan, the first (and only) U.S. Congressman murdered in the line of duty in the history of the United States.

I must confess, sometimes I'm a bit jealous of cult members. Those poor
deluded fuckers, at least they have a sense of purpose.

Hear the "Jonestown Death Tape", an audio recording made on November 18, 1978, at the Peoples Temple compound immediately preceding (and during) the mass suicide of the cult:


Here's a transcript of that tape.

Here's a related video.