Relief!

Everyone can relax now, Mutantes were excellent. The first twenty minutes were
awkward and stiff (other people I spoke to agreed), but then something kicked in,
and the next hour was brilliant. So joyful! Everyone was ecstatic. Yeah! They were
so goofy and charming, and the new lead singer, she was a 55 year old Brazillian bad-ass with tattoos. Man, it felt good. And sitting in the third row center didn't hurt at all. I had such a good time I even spent too much on an extemely cheesy
concert tee-shirt. Oh well. Now on to California... Good times a'comin' with my wonderful wife! It's been one very beautiful year...

A few months ago I posted that my friends in LA and Chicago should go see the freshly-reunited Os Mutantes. I think my exhortation was roundly ignored, but...who cares? They're coming to Seattle!
And I have a third row seat (Carolyn is concerted out)! But now I'm a bit nervous.
The other day NPR had a little profile about the reunion, and it turns out Rita Lee
isn't part of it. And the drummer hadn't played drums in thirty years. Uh oh.
And doesn't seem like a set-up for disappointment having such an obscure (albeit legendary) band play the Moore Theater? The reunited Zombies just played the Crocodile (a half-empty Crocodile) and they had Colin Blunstone and Rod Argent (which meant wading through a lot of mostly crappy Argent songs--though "Hold Your
Head Up" rocked). Well, it'll probably be okay. The material is solid, and even those guys in Buena Vista Social Club hadn't played their instruments for a long time... Cross your fingers, please.

On the CNN crawl:

"Rocker Bob Geldolf cancelled two concerts in Italy due to a lack of ticket sales."

Man. That's just cruel, CNN.

I mean, why?

Pentangle

I should've known I coulnd't keep up on my cd reviewing blog duties. Problem is, shocking as it may seem, I sometimes fudge a bit on my album purchasing limits. When that happens and I, for some odd reason, wind up with more than two albums in a week, and then I go and let a few weeks slip by without blogging, well, I just get overwhelemed. I have been picking up tons of great music, but I'm just gonna touch on random gems at random times. When I find the inclination.

If you like Fairport Convention you'll like this. Mattias claims they're even better than Fairport but he's a Swede. Sometimes, like F.C, they can get a little too "let us raise goblets of mead 'round thee olde Black Deathey Maypole" but that's just goes with the territory, late 60's British folk. Mostly they're just solid, deep, and soulful...in an acoustic English sort of way. Neil Young said Bert Jansch did for acoustic guitar what Jimi Hendrix did for... um, I forget. You might recognize Bert Jansch's voice from The Squid and the Whale soundtrack. I really want get me some of his solo stuff. Feels like I've been missing out..

Mom in the woods

A good book

Rigoberto Gonzalez's new memoir Butterfly Boy: Memoirs of a Chicano Mariposa is out! And check out that awesome blurb from Publishers Weekly...