1. I mentioned the other day that I returned to listening to Luna, an alternative band, and their album Bewitched. I played that album on Spotify, and to my surprise and delight, once the album was done playing, Spotify continued to play music similar to Luna and played some other Luna from other albums. Until a few days ago, I was completely unfamiliar with Stephen Malkmus, Smog, Silver Jews, Loose Fur, The Glands, The Sea and Cake, Sparklehorse, The Ladybug Transistor, and other groups from the 80s and 90s that recorded and performed way off my radar.
I did a little reading about these groups and discovered their music can be known as Dream Pop and this made a lot of sense to me -- there is a dreamy quality to this music (I think I mentioned this in a recent blog post) that I enjoy a lot. Sometimes these recordings are referred to as Lofi. They are often not highly produced and not only leave flaws in the recordings, but seem to invite them.
Two artists come immediately to mind as I listen to this music. I think at least some of these musicians were influenced by Lou Reed's vocals and by some of the Velvet Underground's musical stylings. From time to time I also hear pop sounds from the sixties -- could I have heard musical references to The Monkees? -- to Chad and Jeremy? -- did I occasionally hear some surf-like guitar?
Often, at least this is how I see it, J. J. Cale's recordings are Lofi. I'm not sure I can explain how or why I think this is true, but I'm going to trust that the way some of this music has been produced seems similar to J. J. Cale recordings and maybe to the Tulsa sound (I could be all wet).
Oh well. Whatever this genre is or isn't, I'm sure enjoying it!
2. Jeff Harrison emailed me a quick message to be sure to listen to his November 7th Deadish show on Eugene's KEPW radio (streaming at kepw.org). It was a show paying tribute to Phil Lesh, the Grateful Dead's bass player who died on October 25, 2024.
I went to the KEPW archives and listened to Jeff's show tonight.
After Jerry Garcia died and as the surviving members of the Grateful Dead reorganized themselves, Phil Lesh got musicians together and called them Phil and Friends. I guess my attention was elsewhere over the last, oh, 25-30 years because tonight was the first time I ever listened to any music by Phil and Friends.
Jeff played a generous helping of Phil and Friends music from a show at Eugene's Cuthbert Amphitheater in August, 1999 and the magic of his band's performances began to take hold of me.
It was especially fun that during the half hour of his show's overtime, Jeff played a fantastic Grateful Dead "Dark Star" leading into "Morning Dew", an uplifting and stirring way for Jeff's show to end and for my evening to begin to draw to a close.
3. I had a blast tonight making a stir fry composed of chicken tenders, red onion, cabbage, yellow squash, broccoli, eggplant, cilantro, and mushrooms. I seasoned the chicken with soy sauce and red pepper flakes and poured toasted sesame seeds over the meat pieces. I put the stir fry in my bowl over brown rice and flavored it all with Trader Joe's peanut satay sauce.
Wow! Believe me! It worked!
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