Playlist for June 10th, 2011

Rick Miller, Dave Hartman and Mary Huff are
Southern Culture on the Skids

This weekend, one of my favorite bands is coming to the prairie.

Southern Culture on the Skids (a.k.a SCOTS) are a band from the musically fertile Chapel Hill, North Carolina region.

Consisting of Rick Miller (guitar, vocals), Mary Huff (bass, vocals) and Dave Hartman (drums), SCOTS plays an excellent mix of rockabilly, surf, country and R&B with a little of everything in between thrown in and a great sense of humor.

I've had the pleasure of seeing this band a couple of times, including once before here in the prairie capital, and the shows are not only a musical experience, but a "cultural" experience as well.

So, if you're anywhere near the prairie capital on Saturday, head to the Hoogeland, throw your hard earned money down and get ready to boogie.

This week's playlist consists of some of my favorite SCOTS tunes.



Enjoy!

Playlist for June 3rd, 2011

So, the crazy times at work are on hiatus until the late fall.

To celebrate, I'm mowing the grass for the first time in about five weeks, I'm cleaning the house, doing laundry and weeding the garden.

But before all that, I'm going out to dinner with the Lady of the Manor, Quietly Disgruntled, Gigglechirp and a couple of other friends.

In honor of that, here is a playlist with songs about dinner.

Chicken, steak, pork chops, seafood, beans, potatoes, bread and don't forget dessert!



Enjoy!

Playlist for May 27th, 2011

This past week, one of the great American songwriters celebrated his 70th birthday.

Robert Zimmerman was born on May 24th, 1941 in Duluth, Minnesota.

After enrolling at the University of Minnesota, Zimmerman began playing at local folk music clubs and eventually took up the moniker of 'Bob Dylan', partly due to his admiration of the poet Dylan Thomas.  About two decades later, Dylan explained the name switch by saying....

"You call yourself what you want to call yourself. This is the land of the free."

Dylan became an icon in the early 1960's folk movement, but became disillusioned soon thereafter.

At the 1965 Newport Folk Festival on Sunday, July 25th, Dylan, along with a band that included members of the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, took the stage with electric instruments, forever changing Dylan's role in modern popular music (this despite the fact that Dylan had been recording electric since the beginning of his career.  For example, listen to the song Mixed Up Confusion, featured on the compilation Biograph).

Our playlist this week is filled with tunes from (what I consider) one of the greatest periods of Dylan's career, from the beginning of the electric period, 1965 to the end of 1969.  It was during this period that Dylan recorded with music greats such as Al Kooper, Mike Bloomfield, Johnny Cash, Charlie Daniels and, more famously, the Band.



Enjoy!!!

BONUS Playlist for May 21st, 2011

'Rapture'...heh, heh, heh...

The 'Huh"pocalypse.......

I haven't been on this little marble in the sky for very long (in relative terms), but I've heard of more than one idea, over time, that the world was coming to an end.

Maybe it's because I grew up in a part of the world that has a particularly harsh brand of religiosity, but....I digress.

From what I can tell, this iteration of the "apocalypse" stems from someone with lots of money, an FCC license and a penchant for proclaiming the end.

I really shouldn't get started on professional preachers, the way they prey on people and the real problems that are obfuscated by illogical mystical beliefs.

...anyway...

Some tunes about the end of it all...whatever that may be.

By special request...



Enjoy!!!

Playlist for May 20th, 2011

Not a whole lot to say for this week.

Here on the prairie, at my place of employment, there are a lot of folks dealing with numbers (both fiscally and geographically).

I tip my hat to all my fellow co-workers who are working hard to make it to the end of the month with their sanity intact.

This week, our playlist is full of songs with numbers in the title.  'nuff said.

Enjoy!!!

Movie Night - The Thomas Crown Affair

Thomas Crown (Steve McQueen) is a 36 year old self-made millionaire who gets bored with the "establishment".  Crown masterminds a bank robbery, hiring five men, who never meet until at the job, to steal $2.6 million from a bank in Boston.

Thomas Crown (Steve McQueen)
during the pickup.

Vicki Anderson (Faye Dunaway) begins
working on her suspect.

With no leads, the police and the bank's insurance company begin working with Vicki Anderson (Faye Dunaway), a slightly amoral insurance investigator who will stop at nothing to get her man.

As Crown and Anderson begin to come closer together, they begin playing a cat and mouse game with each other.  Crown has begun planning and implementing another heist, with Anderson striving to catch Crown red-handed.

Thomas Crown comtemplates his next move against
Vicki Anderson while playing chess.

As the relationship grows, questions of loyalty, love and crime come to the forefront, blurring the lines between careers, truth and consequences.

Vicki Anderson already knows her next move against
Thomas Crown while playing chess.

Stylishly shot and containing a steamy chess scene (bet you never thought you'd ever hear those words together), the original Thomas Crown Affair is a film you should check out!  (WP)(AMG)(IMDB)(RT)

TV Night - Fishing with John

Film director Jim Jarmusch (holding cheese slice) tries to
coax a shark to the surface for actor & musician
John Lurie (holding gun) to shoot.  This is not a
recommended way of catching fish, but it will work.

John Lurie is a musician (founding a band called the Lounge Lizards), an actor (starring in Stranger than Paradise by Jim Jarmusch for example) and an artist (whose work has been shown in New York, Amsterdam and Moscow, where his work Bear Surprise became a sensation), who has some interesting friends.

In 1991, Lurie decided to combine his eccentric friends, including Jim Jarmusch, Tom Waits, Matt Dillon, Willem Defoe and Dennis Hopper, with his total blissful ignorance of fishing to bring this six episode television show from the Independent Film Channel.

With episodes that include hunting shark off Montauk, New York & meeting up with a mystical jungle fisherman in the wilds of Costa Rica who shows the sportsmen an ancient fishing dance, Fishing with John is not a show if you are looking for tips on how to catch fish.

However, if you are into the absurd and enjoy the interaction between extremely creative people, then Fishing with John is a show for you.

Check it out!!! (WP)(AMG)(IMDB)(RT)

Playlist for May 13th, 2011

At my place of work, we are in (to steal a term from NASCAR) the "silly season".

That means long days, long nights, working seven days a week and lots of cranky people.

A vast majority of us go into this time of the year with the best of all possible attitudes (to paraphrase Kris Kristofferson), only to have them worn down slowly, in a grinding kind of way until the finale.

In order to help us through this crazy time at work, I'm throwing out this playlist dedicated to the weekend, a time that many of us haven't seen in a while and that all of us will see again (soon).



Enjoy!

Playlist for May 6th, 2011

Cairo from the air, looking north with the Ohio (right)
and the Mississippi (left) on either side.

I currently live out on the vast expanses of the prairie, but I was born and raised in the deep southern region of the prairie state.

Right now, the folks down south of the prairie are experiencing some record flooding, with little relief in sight.

There was a chance that the historic town of Cairo, Illinois could have been inundated by both the Mississippi River and the Ohio River.

Cairo from the air, looking south with the Ohio (left)
and the Mississippi (right) on either side.

Cairo lies at the confluence of these mighty waterways and this flood could have washed it all away, but they are holding fast.

Here at Tall Grass & Tasty Trash, we are sending out as many good vibes as possible and wish only the best to Cairo, all the residents of the southern section of the prairie state and points further south.

When the waters recede, try to make it a point to visit Cairo.

Cairo from the air, looking north with the Ohio (right)
and the Mississippi (left) on either side.

While there, get you some barbecue at Shemwell's, spend some time at Fort Defiance State Park and watch the (hopefully receded) rivers roll on by.

In the meantime, enjoy this playlist with tunes about rising water, neverending storms, the river and levees.




Enjoy, but (once again) don't forget Cairo!

BONUS Playlist for May 5th, 2011

Many people think that Cinco de Mayo (the 5th of May) is the same as Mexican Independence Day.

This is not true.

Mexican Independence Day is September 16th, the day that, in 1810, Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla, a Roman Catholic priest, gathered his congregation in the small town of Dolores, near Guanajuato, and called for a revolt against the Spanish.

Cinco de Mayo actually commemorates the victory of Ignacio Zaragoza Seguín and 4,000 Mexican soldiers defeated 8,000 better armed troops of the French Empire at the Battle of Puebla in 1862, during the French invasion of Mexico.

The French takeover of Mexico eventually was completed a year later with the help of an additional 30,000 troops, resulting in the Second Mexican Empire of Maximillian, which itself lasted only lasted three years.

The holiday is celebrated only regionally in Mexico, in and around Puebla.

Here in America, we love bastardized holidays that lead to parties, (see Mardi Gras, St. Patrick's Day) so, we celebrate Cinco de Mayo north of the Rio Grande.

Here is a bonus playlist full of rock y roll en espanol.



Enjoy!