music

Dear Poppy

I found this album this week and wanted to share it with you. I’d knew you’d like it too.

Trad Music Addendum

Loosely related to yesterday's post, I was in the car this afternoon, between the bus stop and piano lessons, humming along to my new local Irish playlist.

Suddenly a footstep on the stair
Who could it be but Reilly after slaughter
With two pistols in his hand
Looking for the man who shagged his daughter

Trad Music Nightly

I'm fond of the new Irish pub to which I can walk from my house. I owe them quite a bit, actually, and not the bar-tab kind of way.

Father Paddy's Public House popped into existence in Woodland last year and brought to us the things that I would consider a prerequisite for such an establishment, such as decent beer on tap and fine plate of fish and chips, but also something I hadn't thought to expect. Live local music. Specifically live local Irish music, which I didn't even know we had around here.

My Badass Week

For my birthday this year, my husband presented me with Flogging Molly tickets, which is hands-down my favorite living band. The concert fell on a Wednesday night in Oakland. We're not particularly impulsive people, and taking off and driving an hour and a half to see a concert mid-week like that, on a school night, as it were, isn't something we do generally speaking. The last time we did something like that was eight years ago when we decided that we had to fly to Vegas to go to The Star Trek experience before they shut it down. (Which. Was.

Miss New Orleans

There's music everywhere here. On any given street corner in the French Quarter there could be a band playing -- with dented up instruments and announced by cardboard sign -- that'll blow your socks off. They're playing for change and they have a box full of home-burned CDs enscribed in sharpee and wrapped up in binder paper. Then you go into the clubs on Frenchmen Street and your world gets rocked again. Everywhere you turn, jazz, brass, and blues.

Making a Playlist and Checking it Twice

Christmas music is one of favorite parts of the season. I look forward to it every year, and over time I've curated a rock and jazz collection of holiday tunes of which I'm very fond.

I never let myself listen to Christmas music before December 1st if I can help it. (I can't forbid the grocery store from playing "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" on November 1st. Yet.)

And Then a Piano Dropped into Our Lap

Our kid started piano lessons a few weeks ago, which were a Christmas gift from his Grandma, and which he is quite enjoying. My husband took lessons as a kid and still plays a little. I'm fairly non-musical myself.

The Lord Bless Charlie Mopps

I hope everyone had a good St. Paddy's Day. We boiled meat, made black and tans, listened to the likes of The Clancy Brothers and The Pogues, lamented that Flogging Molly hasn't deemed Sacramento worthy of tour stop in some years now, and finished off the evening with irish cream chocolate chip cookies for desert.

The Anti-Massacree Movement

It's almost Thanksgiving, and at my folks’ house that means a couple of things. It means family, it means turkey and Dad's smashed potatoes, and it means Arlo Guthrie. We'll tune the radio to KFOG and wait for Alice's Restaurant to come around on the guitar so we can sing along. Can you imagine? Can you imagine a dozen people sitting around the table singing a bar of Alice's Restaurant? You might think it was a family. And that’s what it is.

And it's the frakking Beach Boys again...

This morning I fed my iPhone an OK GO song. Go, go gadget Genius Mode. Make me a playlist.

I got Fountains of Wayne. Good. Joan Jett. Sure. Rancid, Everclear, and Garbage. All fair choices. Green Day, Me First and Gimme Gimmes, Marilyn Manson, Zeppelin, the Ramones. Cool.

And "Fun, Fun, Fun" by the Beach Boys.

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