…that I’m in my mid-50’s: Shopping for food at the Trader Joe’s last night, they played Milquetoast by Helmet.
(this video is a tie-in with the movie The Crow, the thought of which makes me feel even older).
I’ve got a bunch of open browser tabs here so it’s time to clean up.
After years of litigation, a fleet of abandoned surplus planes went to auction in Greybull, Wyoming, including a pair of KC-97 freighters (essentially a B-29 with an extra deck), a trio of C-199 Boxcars, and a pair of P2V Neptunes, as well as multiple fuselages of other models. Oh, to have the money and space to save one of those planes.
Brian started a build thread about his EV project, and our video already has more comments than any of the others I’ve posted over the last two years (sniff!) We’ve got a couple of leads on how other people have wired up their projects, and I’m currently diving into those threads to learn as much as I can.
And in musical news, Alex and Geddy from Rush announced yesterday that they’re going back out on tour ten years after the death of Neal Peart. I’m happy for them; they’re working musicians and deserve to be playing live, which they both excel at. They’ve recruited a drummer who has been playing with Jeff Beck and teaching for over ten years; she looks like she’ll be an excellent fit.
I had a Spotify playlist going while I was working in Brian’s garage and this tune came up, and now it’s stuck in my head: Phantogram’s Howling at the Moon.
One of my favorite songs of all time. XTC wasn’t playing much live after releasing The Big Express, two albums before this one, but this is a rare live acoustic version of King for A Day, written and sung by Colin Moulding. Oranges and Lemons is one of the GOAT albums of the 1980’s, right behind Skylarking.
Damn. Brent Hinds, founding lead guitarist of Mastodon, left the band this March for unknown reasons, and all parties were initially quiet about the reasons. More recently he started posting angry tweets about being kicked out of the band, and things got uglier. Yesterday he was killed in a motorcycle accident, when a woman turned left without signaling in front of him.
It sounds like he had a lot of stuff to work out, and like any band breakup, I always have hope they can sort their differences and work together again; I do hope the band can continue making excellent music. Several of their albums have been inspired by personal tragedy, but this just seems cruel.
Huh, I must be on some kind of Soundgarden/grunge kick these past couple of weeks. The excellent Hands All Over is currently stuck in my head, and I’m not complaining.
As I mentioned earlier, I bought Louder Than Love in ’89 right after was released and it was on heavy rotation for the next couple of months. This was a welcome antidote to the heavy diet of hair metal I’d been exposed to in high school, and was one of several I bought at the same time: Nothing’s Shocking, Gish, and Pretty Hate Machine, which were definitely not being spun on local radio. Sadly, at that time Baltimore was not a regular stop on the concert circuit for most of these bands, so it was difficult to see them without going to D.C., which was difficult as a broke college freshman without a car.
Following up on last week’s earworm, Outshined is now stuck in my head:
An absolutely superior song by all measurements. And featuring one of the grungiest of grunge videos: fire, chains, dirt, sparks, the combination of shirtless black shorts and combat boots… I feel like it’s 1993 all over again.
Bonus: Brad Pitt’s best cameo appearance. We should all aspire to be Floyd.
I’ve had this fucking song stuck in my head for the past five days now, and it’s probably one of my least favorite songs this band ever produced. I had a cassette of Louder than Love in high school and played it until it wore out, but found that my appreciation for Soundgarden’s last two albums fell off sharply, minus a few songs. I didn’t pay much attention to Audioslave even though it was a mixture of two of my favorite 90’s bands; the styles and genre didn’t mesh as well as I had hoped it would even though they gave it everything they had.
RIP, Chris Cornell.
Update: The same day I posted this, I learned that a group of excellent musicians—William DuVall, (Alice In Chains), Bill Kelliher (Mastodon), Charlie Benante (Anthrax, S.O.D.), and Mark Menghi (Metal Allegiance) among others, formed King Ultramega to do covers of Soundgarden tracks during COVID, and just started releasing them, beginning with one of my favorites, Rusty Cage. All proceeds go to support the MusiCares Foundation.
From Can’t Get Much Higher newsletter, a list of the 18 best Podcasts About Music. This is basically a Venn diagram of my favorite things. Many of these I’ve never heard before and am excited to dive into; some of these I’m already familiar with (Reply All, Heavyweight, 60 Songs that Explain the ’90’s) but demand a repeat listen.
Something’s Always Wrong, by Toad the Wet Sprocket. I got this stuck in my head at a rest stop in Pennsylvania on the way home from Ohio. It’s probably the only song by this unfortunately named band that I like; the harmonies in the bridge are beautiful. This was on heavy alternative radio airplay back in the day in a time when “alternative” music was losing steam and leaning towards easy listening. I would have posted the actual music video, but it sucks.