War in Peace

Beck has this website where he records songs for a live video library. Currently he is recording Moby Grape's frontman Skip Spence's solo masterpiece, Oar. I stumbled, luckily, across this latest piece of work. Nels Cline fans, pour a drink, relax, and listen...

Record Club: Skip Spence "War In Peace" from Beck Hansen on Vimeo.

New Music

Most of this from the last couple of months, or more, from emusic.com downloads, a couple cd's:

Visqueen-Message to Garcia
Tommy Keene-In the Late Bright
Doug Gillard-Call From Restricted
Vic Chesnutt-At the Cut & Skitter on the Take Off
David Rawlings Machine-A Friend of a Friend
Girls-Album
Dirty Projectors-Bitte Orca
Tom Waits-Live
Lyle Lovett-Natural Forces
Boston Spaceships-Licking Stamps and Drinking Shitty Coffee
Flaming Lips-Embryonic
Daniel Johnston-Is and Always Was
Earthlings!-s/t
Grant Lee Phillips-Little Moon & nineteeneighties
REM-Live
Terry Anderson & the OAK Team-National Champions
Sting-new Christmas/Winter cd (awesome)
Tons of Holiday music
Watership Down-old cassettes I found (this stuff is so good)

So Long 2009 Goodbye

Here' s my Mom with her lifelong idol, Elvis. I'm going to miss her. The last two years of her life were not what you want for your mother, or anyone for that matter. I will try to remember something about her every day. Yesterday I taught Katie how to make noodles like her Grandma did. They turned out great and we had a classic meal.

2009 was the year of grief, wine & books for me. I set out this year to read 36 books. How did i do you ask? I think I made it. I'll compile the list soon. I am also working on the year in music which I'll post soon as well.

Have been listening to Vic Chesnutt all weekend. If you are familiar with his music, you already know he was a tortured soul. He wrote simple, lovely songs about the human condition in all of its strength and frailty. He was a bold personality that I was lucky enough to witness on 3 occasions. The first time I met him was in Champaign at Mabel's. I was there to see Bob Mould on his first post - Husker tour. The opening act was some guy named Vic Chesnutt. When my friend LaReau and I arrived at Mabels there was this guy at the bottom of the stairs in a wheel chair berating people who were not willing to carry him up the stairs. It was a fairly uncomfortable scene. So LaReau and I carried him up and he thanked us for not being dicks. Little did we know he was the opening act. I was blown away by his performance and bought West of Rome. I counted this weekend that I have 13 of his records. he was a genius.