Leaves everywhere

Every fall it is a race to get all the leaves picked up before the snow flies. October was so cold and wet I figured that we missed our window for certain and that this would be the year that the snow just piles up on top of an inch of leaves. Fortunately, November has been milder and I've been able to get out there and get the leaves picked up. They're not all done, but I made a serious dent in them the other day.

I have found that the winning combination is a lawn mower and a leaf vacuum. Getting them chopped up before they go into the vacuum is essential as the bag on the leaf vac is the size of a sandwich bag and you're emptying it every 5 minutes as it is. This has mostly been my domain - Monday I spent probably 3 hours out there by myself with my iPod (probably damaging my hearing) while I mowed and vacuumed. We've filled 13 lawn and leaf bags already.

Today Heidi went out with a rake and tried to consolidate what was left. Have a look.

It may not look like much, but that's probably at least another 6-7 bags, probably more. I have to try to get some done tomorrow morning before work as we're really heading into the time of year when there's precious little light after work to get the job done.

After this is done, the only thing left is cleaning out the gutters again, but this will be the LAST year for that as we are getting Leaf Guard next year which is pricey but so worth it because of the tree-filled neighborhood we live in.

A cracking campfire in Anchorage

I made an iTunes Genius playlist starting with 10,000 Maniacs' "A Campfire Song" this morning. It grabbed a motley mix of stuff, some expected (other 10,000 Maniacs songs, some Natalie Merchant solo and Indigo Girls) and some not so much. (Toad The Wet Sprocket? Annie Lennox's "Keep Young & Beautiful"?) The common thread between them for me is, as I've talked about in previous posts.

Although there are better known songs from In My Tribe, I think that "A Campfire Song" is my favorite 10,000 Maniacs song. That whole album just screams early November to me, so it's no shock that I've rediscovered it. I don't know what it is about the song that appeals to me so much. I think it's the whole let's-be-socially-conscious-without-hitting-you-over-the-head-with-it vibe of the song. And can you imagine that there was a time when I heard Michael Stipe's voice on the song and had no idea who he was? His countervocal to Natalie's during the bridge is just fantastic. It is jangle pop at its finest.

Also, I remember playing that song for my college roommate - the one responsible for destroying their Unplugged CD for me due to continual and incessant playing - and how when Natalie was singing "no devil or redeemer" he thought she was saying "no devil or edema." Probably a joke that only a health professional can appreciate, but I always think of it when I listen to the song.

The other song that showed up on there that I had completely forgotten about was Michelle Shocked's "Anchorage". Actually, I had forgotten about it until it showed up on a Genius playlist I made based on Suzanne Vega's "Ironbound/Fancy Poultry". I vaguely remember this song from when it was released - from right around the same time that I discovered 10,000 Maniacs, Tracy Chapman and Suzanne Vega - and while it's been in my iTunes forever, it just never got much play.



And speaking of Suzanne Vega, I am quite surprised that none of her songs showed up in the "A Campfire Song" Genius playlist, because I was listening to "Cracking" the other day and realized just now how well it would have fit in with the rest of the songs. "Cracking" is probably the ultimate rainy fall day song - Vega's entire debut album is much in the same vein without ever feeling repetitive or samey. For those that think Suzanne Vega begins and ends with "Luka", play the following.



(also, if I hear one more person rhyme "Luka" with "puke-a", I think I will "puke-a". It's been done and it's NOT original.)

These songs are so perfect for these gray fall days. Trashy dance pop just doesn't seem right at this time of year, which is not to say that I don't listen to it (quite the contrary), but it's hard to get into an album like Kylie's X when the weather outside is telling you to look inward a bit.

The thing is, time was

One of the ways that an iTunes library will always be inferior to physical CDs, records, tapes, etc. is that songs are much more likely to get lost in a sea of music when they are digital files. Even on my iPod, which contains about 25% of the music on my computer, I really favor probably a 10% chunk for frequent listening. There are so many hidden gems in my iTunes library that have simply been lost in the shuffle.

Anyway, I found a song this morning that I had forgotten about and I immediately added it to my favorites list. It is The Williams Brothers "Some Become Strangers". Actually, in my world, it's their cover of Stevie Nicks' "Some Become Strangers", but that is not really accurate as they wrote it, even though Stevie recorded it before them. I have spent the last 15 minutes looking for an embeddable version of their video for the song, but I can't - a state of affairs I always find utterly ridiculous. Anyway, I think it's gorgeous, moody and very autumnal. Watch it here. Seriously. Do it.

What I think is funny about this is how similar and different it is from Stevie's version, which she recorded for Rock A Little in 1985. Listen to Stevie's after you listen to theirs and you'll see what I mean.



I can't decide which I like more - obviously I have much more history with Stevie's version. I think it's funny how there's differences in nearly ever line of the first verse between the two versions. Plus I love the Stevie stamp of "I don't really need this in my life! / Why don't we forget about it?" at the end of the bridge which the Williams Brothers wisely did not use.

I am trying to find a copy of the album this song came from but - to no one's shock, it is not available for download on either Amazon or iTunes. The only copies for sale are used copies. I will NEVER understand why anything is out of print now. The artists will not make money off of sales of used copies, whereas if they put it up on iTunes for $7.99, I would have already purchased it and they would have my money. But the record companies are too busy going after 30 second song samples to actually be paying attention to what consumers want. (Earth to the music industry, that's called FAIR USE!)

Anyway, this is a perfect song for this gray weekend. Hopefully I can find some more of their music.

(I found their second album, The Williams Brothers, on iTunes hidden amongst the discography of the gospel group of the same name!)

Pumpkins

It's the unofficial "last day of summer" today, even though the autumnal equinox doesn't hit for another 15 days. Really, this summer has been kind of a weird one. It started off with the big westward vacation which, while fun, set the bar pretty damn high for everything else that happened this summer. Add this to the fact that it was really a pretty mild summer as Iowa summers go, and everything just kind of seems off kilter.

No matter, though, because now we're headed into fall and I love fall. Fall always reminds me of that line in You've Got Mail where Tom Hanks says in an e-mail to Meg Ryan "Don't you love New York in the fall? It makes me wanna buy school supplies. I would send you a bouquet of newly sharpened pencils if I knew your name and address." Yep, I have always loved fall. What's not to love? Cooling temperatures, leaves changing color, and Ames comes to life again after its summer dormancy by virtue of the returning ISU students. I don't like football, but I love football weather. But of all the things associated with fall, I love Halloween the most.

And it's because of this long time love of Halloween that I, for years, tried to grow pumpkins. I started when we lived at our previous house. I dug a garden in the yard and planted either pumpkin seeds or baby vines - I can't recall which. I would plant them and water them and tend to them all summer, only to have one of two things happen. Either the vines would be attacked by vine borers or the flowers would bloom but never produce fruit. One year I actually got small pumpkins on the vine, but unbeknownst to me, they were of the mini-pumpkin variety. So after years of failure. I gave up. I bought pumpkins along with everyone else from the grocery store.

Well, last fall, Anna went over to my folks and there was a pumpkin decorating contest somewhere in town. Anna decorated the pumpkin, left it there, and then it rotted. My father threw it in his peony patch to get rid of it. Through absolutely no effort on his part, it grew into a vine. The last time I was over there, I was amazed to see it flowering and taking up pretty much the entire patch. But he wasn't putting any energy into it, so I figured he wouldn't be any luckier than I was.

Wrong. Here's what they brought yesterday.

A fully grown pumpkin from his own vine! I thought, surely he must have hand pollinated the flowers. Nope. Just that lucky. AND there are three more growing. It would be easy to really dislike the man if he weren't such a great guy.

So maybe next summer I'll try my luck again. But I'm not expecting much.

Stop! 2nd grade time

It happens every year without fail - the first day of school, that is. Only this year, the State Fair's not even over yet and school is starting! Tragic, I say. Whenever I dare get riled up about that fact and the "what about kids in 4H?", Heidi gently points out to me that we don't have a kid in 4H and it really doesn't affect us so why are you getting so riled up? Point taken.

Anyway, it's written in a law book somewhere that you have to dress to the nines on the first day of school. Anna would have it no other way. She's is Hello Kitty'd out.

She was extra-excited because she got to ride her bike to school today, even though she had to have us tag along. There's no way she's biking the 1.8 miles to school on her own (yet). It was actually kind of cold on the way there. It's late August and it's only supposed to be 70 degrees today. What the hell happened to summer?

She's super-pumped about school. She met her teacher yesterday, dropped off all her school supplies, and left with nary a hesitation when we dropped her off. I was telling a friend that she is 5000 times more excited about the first day of school than I ever was. That probably has a lot to do with the fact that she is about 5000 times more social than I ever was growing up. Just how did two introverts birth this incredible extrovert?

Autumn non sequitir

It is a cool, dreary, rainy autumn day in Iowa. I have to work in an hour but have had a full day already. Part of the morning I helped out at Anna's school where the 4 kids in Anna's reading group got to go to the library to start a research project on an animal they don't know a lot about. Anna is researching wolves. Their job was to write 4 questions that they'd like answered about their animals, and then the teacher is going to write 4 more. I had to discourage one of the kids from asking the question "How do lions kiss?" by gently telling him that the questions had to be something that they'd be able to answer. He swore that he saw a picture of lions kissing in the book he was using, but we couldn't find it so he changed it to something else. Then I was off to an appointment and then back to the house where there was no shortage of things to do - laundry to be folded, dishes to be washed, a mattress to be flipped, etc.

I'm a mere three days from Sticky & Sweet and I'm excited to be going. It should be fun even though it is going to be expensive. There's no way around it and mostly, the money has already been spent so I am not going to allow myself to sit and worry about it and wreck what promises to be a hell of a lot of fun. It is odd to be going to a Madonna show so late in the year. All of the other tours have ended long before October, so this is a new experience for us. I may actually have to wear a coat! And there's a 20% chance of flurries on Sunday! Strangeness. Added to the fun this time around is Yuri who is flying to Chicago tomorrow to join us on Sunday. He has not seen a Madonna concert since Blond Ambition, and (as Jeff and I have said) we'll try not to hate him for having been at Blond Ambition. I'm sure there will be no commentary on the blog about this weekend at all.

It will be fun, there's no doubt. But what I really need is a week off to do nothing. However, I fear even that might not be enough.

I have been watching this documentary on Joni Mitchell on Netflix watch-it-now. I've been watching it kind of in segments as it's been hard to find time to sit down and watch it, plus the whole watching it at the computer is kind of a pain. Anyway, 2008 will probably be the year I truly discovered Joni Mitchell and I have been meaning to blog about her for months. It just hasn't happened for a thousand different reasons. What I will say is that "Stay In Touch", a latter-day Joni Mitchell song from the Taming the Tiger album, fell into my life at just the right time and it keeps on being relevant. I keep on coming back to it. It fits my life right now in more ways than I can count.

Also, apropos of nothing, I'm growing my beard a bit longer as my Halloween costume requires sideburns and I refuse to buy the ones that stick on. It is itchy. And I feel very Grizzly Adams, even though it is a few millimeters long.

And with that, I am off to work. Sticky & Sweet or bust.

(autumn leaves via)

A picture worth a thousand lies

Popular (and not so popular music) is such a huge part of my life that it's kind of hard to surprise me with something new. But let me tell you a secret: the way to do it is to introduce me to something that is old but new to me. Something from a time period through which I watched music come and go, but somehow managed to slip beneath my radar. Well, this managed to happen last night.

A song called "Bury My Lovely" by October Project landed in my inbox quite randomly last night during an e-mail conversation with a friend. I had never heard the song before, but his music recommendations rarely, if ever, disappoint. First released in 1993, this song hits me in all the right places. It boasts a female singer (Mary Fahl) with a haunting vocal, a minor-ish key signature, and syncopation all over the place. It is angsty but not too much, and has a dark and brooding video to accompany it. (sorry it's so small! There were no clips on YouTube that I could embed.)

Where was this song in 1993? Obviously, it was nowhere near my radar. It would have fit in perfectly with where I was and how I felt about life back then. That is not to say that I was this emo, brooding young adult, but I did have my fair share of (mostly manufactured) drama and I can just see myself sitting in my room at 3AM on a Saturday night while playing around on the then-fledgling internet (ISCABBS anyone?) playing this song over and over again. Kind of like now, I just can't stop playing it.

So this morning, I picked up the entire October Project album on iTunes. You would think that it would get same-y and you'd want to turn it off after a few songs. I was nervous about that as well, but I'm glad to report that those fears were unfounded. It also has a completely memorable album cover. It makes me almost wish I had bought the physical CD.

That's going to be my Halloween costume this year! OK, maybe not.

If I were to pick one adjective to describe October Project, I would pick autumnal. As I was listening to it this morning while walking to work, I found myself wishing that it were about 40 degrees cooler, a little bit darker and that the leaves were brown and on the ground instead of green and on the trees. I can see how this could easily have been one of the essential "fall albums" had I discovered it just a little bit later. But sadly, we can't control those kinds of things. I was lamenting this in an e-mail to the person who sent me "Bury My Lovely" and he had a great reply to this. I hope he doesn't mind that I reproduce it here.

October Project now is like looking at a picture of New England autumn during the blaze of summer heat.

I think he hit the nail right on the head.

I'd like to put you in a trance...

Erotica is perhaps the pentultimate fall album for me. And that's saying a lot as there are a lot of them (as you'll all be exposed to in the coming weeks.) I cannot talk about fall music without mentioning Erotica. It is the unlikely sister album to Simply Streisand. Both evoke such strong memories of my first year of pharmacy school that it is simply impossible to listen to either of them without thinking about that time.

I did a quick search of the blog to see which of the stories of Erotica I have told. I have told most of them. I've told of my disilluionment with Madonna around the time of Erotica, how I did not purchase it on the first day of release, how I didn't really like "Erotica" the song, but eventually, I relented and purchased it on the Friday after its release. It is, quite simply, Madonna at her best. It was always my favorite Madonna record - nothing ever came close until Confessions on a Dance Floor was released. But even having said that, I love Confessions for entirely different reasons. While Confessions was a calculated move aimed at the dance floor, Erotica was Madonna being a mess and self indulgent and being fucking amazing at it.

Despite being such a favored Madge album, Erotica is so far from a perfect album it's not even funny. For one thing, it is entirely too long. I would excise "In This Life" (sorry Madonna, the sentiment was good but the execution completely awful) and "Thief of Hearts" (sorry Heidi, I like it but I don't think it fits.) I would also jettison "Did You Do It?" which is the biggest waste of a CD bonus track ever. I would take some of the strong songs from the first half of the album and put them in the last half to bulk it up. Honestly, the album really falls apart after "Rain" with only "Secret Garden" coming close to the brilliance of the first 7 songs.

This album is also Madonna at her most uncommercial to date (she topped the uncommercial aspect with American Life in my opinion.) Gone was the little twentysomething girl singing about how she was going to be true blue to her man. There was no more singing about living in a material world. It was even a step away and to the side of the confessional nature of Like A Prayer. It was a natural progression from "Justify My Love" - here is Madonna finally being as scandalous as they had always accused her of being. Boy Wonder with whips and chains. Except that Boy Wonder was actually Girl Wonder. I missed the "happy" Madonna of the 80s when this album first came out. It took me a while to warm up to this woman who, while sexual, was oddly stripped of sexuality.

This was also the point where Madonna really began to falter. "Erotica" the single failed to go number one, and "Deeper & Deeper" - a song that really should be up there with "Vogue" and "Express Yourself" in terms of popularity with casual fans - barely scratched the top 10. The next two singles didn't do much of anything at all, although we got a fab video for "Bad Girl" in the process. In the end, I don't think people were ready for Erotica, even though it was what they had been accusing her of doing since she came on the scene.

But for me, the album contains what I consider to be two of Madonna's best album tracks in "Waiting" (where she brilliantly samples herself) and "Words." Both are kiss off songs - with "Waiting" continuing very much in the vein of the speak-sing that Madonna was doing at the time, but is a strong song structurally and musically. "Words" is more of a straight forward song with a bunch of classic Madonna talking at the end over an old typewriter clicking and dinging all over the place. Great stuff.

I know Madonna doesn't go back, but I can't help but wonder what she would get today with Shep Pettibone and Andre Betts, the producers of the album. Almost certainly, it would be better than the drivel that's coming from her camp now.

The next time you want pussy, just look in the mirror baby.

(For a really interesting look at the recording of Erotica from the POV of Shep Pettibone, check out The Erotica Diaries here.)

Simple and Streisand

Among the pantheon of quintessential fall albums in the life of Dan, is the 29 minute 1967 Babs album entitled Simply Streisand. It's quite an odd choice for me to associate with the fall - especially since it was released before I was born, even before my parents were married! But alas it is. It is, on first listen, not a very memorable album - she certainly has other 60s albums that are stronger, contain a better song selection, and almost certainly, have a longer running time.

I can still remember the first time I saw this CD. It was late August of 1992. Hurricane Andrew was tearing across Florida and I was in a single dorm room at the University of Iowa. I knew almost no one and was drowning myself in music as I am apt to do at times like those. The lovely thing about Iowa City and the University of Iowa is that the campus is right downtown for the most part, so I was only a short walk away from Musicland (later Sam Goody) and Camelot Music. It was at this particular Camelot that I found Simply Streisand. I was honestly not looking for anything, but, as is the case when you set out to find nothing, things usually jump out and bite you. I remember it being exceptionally cheap - like 9 bucks or something, so it was, of course, an instant purchase. It was even in one of those environmentally unfriendly longboxes, the front of which I still have to this very day!

I got it back to my dorm room and was initially very unimpressed. All the songs were ballads, the instrumentation VERY dated, and I what's more, I didn't really LIKE any of the songs all that much. And then, to top it all off, it was over before it even got started!! Good thing I only spent 9 bucks on it. I figured it was destined to be one of the first Streisand albums that I just wouldn't be able to get into.

Au contraire. After repeated playing (despite my initial hesitation), I slowly began to warm up to it. I grew to love "All The Things You Are" and "The Nearness Of You" - the latter of which is the now, the version by which all other versions of "The Nearness Of You" are measured. I still think that "I'll Know" from Guys & Dolls is the worst track on the record. And ultimately, that short running time played in its favor - I would frequently put it on right before bed and the nights that I would be asleep before "Stout Hearted Men" rounds out the album were always the nights that I had a prayer of making it to my 8:30 Biochemistry class in the morning (back in the day when getting up at 8AM to get to an 8:30 class was no small feat.)

Listening to it now, I think the thing I like most about it is Barbra's diction - something like the vocal equivalent of dotting all the i's and crossing all the t's. This is most apparent in "Stout Hearted Men" (mp3) where she sings:

You who have dreams if you acT
They will come true
To turn your dreams to a facT
It's up to you

And then the following:

Give me some men you are stout-hearted men
Who will fighT for the righT they adore.

I love it!! I keep having to resist finishing the "fight for the right" line with "TO PAAAAARRRTY!"

As you might gather, I've been listening to Simply Streisand a lot these days - as I am prone to do in the autumn of the year. I will forever associate it with being in that dorm room in Iowa City, lonely and nervous about where life was taking me. It is, as you might expect, a bittersweet memory, but one that stays alive in the music.

Soon, there will be a post about the other essential fall album that year. I'll give you a hint - the next time you want pussy, just look in the mirror, baby.

Autumn mornings

It's not exactly a crisp autumn morning around here - we're headed for a high of 85 today, but the weather has been gorgeous here lately. The other not so great thing is the realization that what I thought were allergies yesterday is actually a cold and I'm pretty miserable this morning. A part of me thinks I'd be better off staying home from work today, but that's the lazy part of me. I am really not THAT sick, mostly just uncomfortable. And a little medicating will go a long way toward remedying that.

But I sit here at the computer in the last few minutes before I go to get ready with my Millstone Pumpkin Spice coffee (simply the best pumpkin spice coffee I've ever had) listening to Babs wail "Down With Love" in the background. To make it a perfect fall morning, we just need to shave 30 degrees off the temperature and get us some more honeycrisp apples.

Dear God, those honeycrisp apples are fabulous.