Dear Friends,
It’s good to be back in Boston. I love this town and every time I get a chance to be in Boston, I remember why. It’s a great city.
Boston is proof that the earth is not flat, which makes it strange that a former Boston Celtic, Kyrie Irving is (or was) a flat earther. Nothing is flat in Boston or goes in a straight line for very long.
*****
Salem…oh boy.
Tourist trap. The Salem Witch Museum is a joke. Like TQ said, “That’s 40 minutes of my life I’ll never get back.”
It was kind of fun, though, to walk around Salem and see some incredibly old buildings. It wasn’t terribly hot, either, being surrounded by water. If you like witches and monsters, it’s definitely a place to go.
*****
Yesterday was also my first time having NA beer on tap and it certainly didn’t disappoint. We met a couple of cool dudes, Patrick and Michael, at Woodland Farms Brewing, where they make some excellent NA beers, as well as some “A” beers, too.
Patrick is also a bass player in lots of bands, so we talked music and art and all kinds of great stuff. I can’t wait to go back there. Too bad it’s about three hours from Rangeley.
More on this to come at Sober Beer Snob (which is also coming soon).
*****
As far the news of the weekend goes, it only proved to me that I am, indeed, living in a TV show. Sometimes I am an extra and sometimes I'm a bit player in a tiny subplot and sometimes it feels like I have my own show. I don't like the way the show went this weekend and that's not a nice way of saying I wish the attempt was successful. It does, though, feel like things have all been pre-written, staged, and as an extra, I have to take what I get.
*****
There is probably no other record that reminds me as much of the first few years of my marriage to my wife, Rhondi, than Wincing the Night Away by The Shins. It puts such a smile on my face when I hear it. The reason being it reminds me how fiercely I loved her in those days. I was starving for the type of love that she offered me, and I didn’t know how to handle it.
I’m guessing that James Mercer, the main man from The Shins, can empathize with that feeling.
Wincing the Night Away is an emotional record. It seems to yearn for its own wants and needs, as well. Tuneful, catchy, and just enough Smiths in there to please any sad faced music fan. Mercer has a great voice and his deftness with a melody is hard to top.
When we saw this tour in Phoenix at Celebrity Theater, the band was amazing. They played most of the record, if not all of it, and every person in the building was hanging on every word and bopping along with every beat. It’s easy to do so.
This is another record where there really isn’t a weak spot on it at all. At the time it came out, we listened to it a lot. I remember thinking quite often that this was the direction that I needed to go musically, although I don’t have much acumen for playing this kind of thing. Ultimately, even if I tried, I would end up making it sound harder and meaner.
Wincing the Night Away starts off strong and just keeps it up. “Australia” is probably the most well-known song off the record, but it’s just a spoke on the wheel. I love “Phantom Limb” equally.
“Sea Legs” kind of reminds me of Robert Smith’s work. I wonder why I have never made the connection before now. The Shins could be a Cure side project, in a way. Now that I have had this thought, I don’t know if I will be able to shake it.
We listened to this record so much that I think we wore it out for a time. I am realizing, as I listen now (aside from the Cure reference above), I have not visited this record in its entirety for over a decade or more. One reason for this is that the last time I went to listen to it, the CD was gone.
Everybody in our house was a fan, I think, at one point or another. This is the type of record, too, that people will find for years and years and fall in love with it. I love this aspect of music as much as anything. Music is always new to someone.
“Split Needles” is a really beautiful song, too. It’s kind of slower in tempo than some of the others, but the percussion is really cool. There is some sort of reverse effect (or at least that is what it is called on my effectron II. I think it is a type of reverb effect. Either way, and I could be talking out of my ass here, I like it.
The guitar on “Girl Sailor” is super nifty. As much as some of the songs on Wincing the Night Away are kind of sad sounding, this one has some hope to it. Being the penultimate song, that’s probably a good thing. It also sets up the ending really nicely.
“A Comet Appears” caps things off really well. Mercer made a masterpiece here. I wonder what he is up to right now. I’m sure he’s still making great stuff, but admittedly, I’ve never really followed him that closely. This is one of those times where the one record is so good that I don’t want to risk being disappointed and that is just me being dumb.
Sentimentality rarely wins any races.
*****
See you tomorrow.
About to run the race says AI.
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