If we can’t have any new material from Jeff Mangum, then I guess Elvis Perkins will have to do…

Seriously, I really like this song...but it is SUCH a blatant NMH rip-off, especially the end!

A week ago I went to see Shellac play at the Crofoot in Pontiac, MI.  I actually had a couple of tickets (that my mother-in-law picked up for me), but couldn't find anyone to go with me (Prentice was on his honeymoon and no one from Nashville could make the trip).  Phreddy Wischusen, general manager of the Crofoot, told her that by getting the tickets for me she proved wrong all the late night talk show hosts with their jokes about mothers-in-law.  The Crofoot is a fairly new and nice venue.  I was standing right in front of the stage.  Last time I did that was with Matt at Slint in Chicago.  Chris Brokaw opened the show.  The dudes talking loudly behind me during Brokaw's set were annoying.  The Shellac set was loose and enjoyable.  Here are some photos and video:

Below are some photos taken when Lisa, James, and I went to the Evan Dando in-store at Tower in March of 1994. Here's a related story. The night before Lisa and I (and Rawley, I think) were driving back to campus from the Central c of C building downtown when we noticed Evan Dando walking across the street carrying a guitar case into whatever that fancy hotel is. I must have had R.A. lobby duty that night because we were planning to watch Taxi Driver in the Sewell lobby. We stopped the car, and Lisa followed Dando into the hotel lobby to ask him if he wanted to come watch the movie with us. He graciously declined the offer but said it was a good film. Lisa said there was a chick hanging all over him.

Just noticed that a friend put up a torrent of yesterday's Polvo reunion show in Cha;el Hill via dimeadozen.org:

http://www.dimeadozen.org/torrents-details.php?id=196238

For the uninitiated, dime is a live bootleg bit-torrent site.  I've downloaded a bunch of cool stuff from there over the years.  It may take a while for you to get an account because they cap the number of users.  You have to check back at the main page to see if any accounts have been made available as inactive ones have been deleted.

Last Friday Lisa and I dropped the kids off at her parents house and then headed to the Royal Oak Music Theatre to catch Califone and Iron & Wine. It was a general admission show, so we ended up sitting in the balcony so that we wouldn't have to stand all night. We caught most of the Califone opening set. It was enjoyable enough, but the most interesting thing to me was thinking about the comparison back to Rutili's previous band, Red Red Meat, with which I'm much more familiar.

The Iron & Wine set started with a few songs featuring just Sam, his sister, and his guitar. This was the best part of the show in my opinion. Stripped down is how I like him. The collaboration with Calexico and the full-band jam-i-ness of The Shepherd's Dog is less my thing. The rest of the set was enjoyable too but pretty darn mellow (Lisa's actually dozed off briefly). We were kind of hoping he'd go back to solo again for the encore, but no such luck. The songs that I remember being played: Boy With a Coin, Woman King, Jezebel, Upward Over the Mountain, and The Trapeze Singer. Bird Stealing Bread was probably the main one I was hoping to hear but didn't. For Lisa, it was Naked as We Came. One of the more surprising aspects for me was how anal the venue's staff was. They were even harrassing people who were taking photos with camera phones.

I guess I would say Sam Beam (along with David Bazan) is my latest music obsession...following in the footsteps of Will Oldham and Jeff Mangum.