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Archive for December, 2021

The Concerts of 2021

Posted in Concert on December 31, 2021| Leave a Comment »

2021 promised to be the year that concerts came back.

And they did, in a pretty big way.  However, there were random shows that were cancelled or postponed.  And then, the year ended with a huge number of shows being cancelled, which had already leaked into 2022.

The terrible irony is that some shows that pushed back their dates from the Spring of 2021 to the Spring of 2022 might get pushed back again because of the omicron variant.  I swear if that My Chemical Romance show gets pushed back again, the kids who want to see it will be out of school already.

As for me, I saw a lot of shows in the middle of the year and then kind of burnt out and blew off a bunch of shows.  Now with shows getting cancelled again, I’m wondering how much I regret not going to the ones I skipped.

The only real regret I have is missing the Stars/Kevin Devine show at World Cafe Live.  I’ve wanted to see Stars for a long time and they don’t tour all that often.  This show happened to be on a day that we were hosting a small get together and while I probably could have made it to the show afterwards, it would have been really tight.  So I just have to hope that Stars comes back around in 2022 (or 2023). (more…)

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Phish: New Years Run (Madison Square Garden, New York City, NY, December 29, 30, 31 2021 and January 1, 2022) [POSTPONED]

Posted in Coronavirus, New York City, Phish, Postponed, Quarantine on December 30, 2021| Leave a Comment »

[POSTPONED: December 29, 30, 31 2021 and January 1, 2022] Phish [moved to April 20, 21, 22 and 23, 2022]

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So I got totally shut out for the New Year’s Eve lottery.  The four of us would not go to see Phish.  I knew that no one else in the family wanted to see them on the other nights, so I snagged a ticket for January 29 and 30 for myself.

Although after an exhausting run of shows at the end of November, I was rather burnt out and had every intention of selling these tickets.  I felt like it would be good to stay home for a couple weeks.

I wasn’t going to try to make any money off of them (I’m a strictly cash or trade kind of guy). but I never got around to setting up the trade.

As it got closer I did consider that I might be willing to go to maybe one of the shows.  But as Omicron got worse, I decided that nope, I’m skipping it.

So it was good that they rescheduled, because I still get to go.  Although the shows are the week of S’s birthday, and that’s a pretty busy week,  So we’ll see.

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Phish: New Years Run (Madison Square Garden, New York City, NY, December 29, 30, 31 2021 and January 1, 2022) [POSTPONED]

Posted in Coronavirus, New York City, Phish, Postponed, Quarantine on December 29, 2021| Leave a Comment »

[POSTPONED: December 29, 30, 31 2021 and January 1, 2022] Phish [moved to April 20, 21, 22 and 23, 2022]

indexThis year, since shows were back, I hoped that Phish would do another New Year’s run.  And this year, my plan was simple: get four tickets for New Year’s Eve so my family could live out a bucket list of mine.

S. thought it would be fun. My kids don’t care about Phish at all and were indifferent to the idea.  But I told them that regardless of their opinion of Phish, it would be a lot of fun, because Phish always does a great New Year’s Eve show.  Plus, how fun would it be to be in New York City after midnight on New Year’s Day?

Well, I tried and I got totally shut out for the New Year’s Eve lottery.  I got totally shut out on Ticketmaster a few days later as well.  And that was fine, but I did still want to see them on this run.

So I snagged a ticket for January 29 and 30. (more…)

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Kim Gordon–Girl in a Band: A Memoir (2015) [audiobook 2015–Kim Gordon]

Posted in Artists, Audiobooks, Autobiographies, Beck, Bill Nace, Body/Head, Ciccone Youth, Coachmen, Fluxus, Introjection, Kim Gordon, Lydia Lunch, Marriage (Happy), Marriage Trouble, Real Life, Sonic Youth, Thurston Moore, Yuck on December 28, 2021| Leave a Comment »

[LISTENED TO: November 2021] Girl in a Band

I didn’t really have that much interest in this book when it came out.  I love Sonic Youth, but I didn’t really think I cared all that much about their origin stories.  Then I saw that there was an audio book read by Kim and that sounded pretty cool.

I realized that I had no idea anything about Kim Gordon’s life and it was fascinating to learn just how much of a bohemian artist she was before she joined the band.

The memoir starts with the final Sonic Youth show.  Kim and Thurston’s divorce was already going to happen.  They simply wanted to finish out their final shows.  So Kim played while watching her disappointment of a husband absorb all the adulation.

But Kim’s book isn’t a salacious tell-all. It’s the story of her life and how she wound up where she did.  In fact, there’s very little about Sonic Youth (a lot more about the earliest records and then bits and pieces about the later records).  And, while she’s obviously pissed at Thurston for what he did, she’s restrained in her need to thrash the guy.

Perhaps the biggest take away from the book is that after thirty years of being in a rock band, she doesn’t consider herself a musician or a Rock Star (maybe a small letter rock star).  That eye opening statement is a kind of lead in to the fact that she has been an artist for most of her life–just not necessarily in music.

She moved to New York from California in 1980.  It’s crazy thinking that Kim was a California girl.

It’s even crazier thinking about her older brother Keller who was manipulative and mean and ultimate institutionalized. Kim idolized him and he abused her terribly (more than an older brother might normally do).  All of this made Kim into the shy and sensitive woman who you would never think was responsible for some of the most iconoclastic and then iconic music of the 20th century. (more…)

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Dr. Dog : The Last Tour / The Districts / Natalie Prass (The Fillmore Philadelphia, Philadelphia, PA, December 27, 2021) [GOT COVID REFUND]

Posted in Coronavirus, Dr. Dog, Natalie Prass, Philadelphia, PA, The Districts, The Fillmore Philadelphia on December 27, 2021| Leave a Comment »

[DID NOT ATTEND: April 10, 2020] Dr. Dog: The Last Tour / The Districts / Natalie Prass

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I never really got into Dr. Dog but I’ve liked a bunch of their songs over the years.  But I’d always heard they were great live, so I’ve had them on my “gotta see” list.

Back in June, Dr. Dog announced their last tour.

“It is a disturbing thing to read, I’m sure, and trust me, an equally unsettling thing to write, but it’s all good,” they wrote. “It’s important to us that you understand that this is not a break up or anything like that. We don’t know what Dr. Dog will do, we just know it won’t include going on tour, except the tour we’re announcing now, which is going to rule.”

This seemed like the perfect (and only) opportunity to see them.  I tried to get tickets to the TLA show, but it sold out in a minute.  Then I managed to score a ticket to the Fillmore show.  I also found out that The Districts were opening, which was pretty cool. (more…)

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William Nealy–Skiing Tales of Terror (1990)

Posted in Christmas, Comic Strips, Funny (ha ha), Skiing, Snowboarding on December 26, 2021| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: hiatus.

[READ: December 26, 2021] Skiing Tales of Terror

My daughter T., got this book for me for Christmas.  She bought it at a flea market.  She told me that she thought I’d like it because it looked like the kind of cartoon books that I like (she is referring to the original editions of The Far Side that came in the short but wide comic style).

A fair guess.

Except that the content is entirely about skiing.  Which is something I have done maybe three times in my life.  And which I’m terrified of.

So, content-wise it’s not really my wheelhouse.

And yet, this book turned out to be pretty fascinating.  It is a mix of jokes about skiers and genuinely helpful skiing tips.  Indeed, if I had read this book before the first time I Went skiing I would have probably enjoyed the experience a lot more. (more…)

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Marguerite Yourcenar–“How Wang-Fo Was Saved” [Belgium] (translated by Alberto Manguel) [The 2021 Short Story Advent Calendar #25] (1963/translation 1983)

Posted in Alberto Manguel, Artists, Belgium, Canadian Content, Christmas, Death, Hingston & Olsen, Marguerite Yourcenar, Short Story, The Short Story Advent Calendar, Violence on December 25, 2021| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK:  hiatus

[READ: December 25, 2021] “How Wang-Fo Was Saved”

This year, S. ordered me The Short Story Advent Calendar.  This is my seventh time reading the Calendar.  The 2021 Short Story Advent Calendar is a deluxe box set of individually bound short stories.

As always, each story is a surprise, so you won’t know what you’re getting until you crack the seal every morning starting December 1. Once you’ve read that day’s story, check this link where editor Alberto Manguel is providing daily commentary on each of the stories he selected for this year’s calendar.

So here’s yet another story translated by Manguel.

The last few stories in this collection just left me feeling unhappy.  I didn’t really enjoy them, and found them mostly tedious.  A lot of them felt like stories that took an idea and kept building on it with more an more examples. Rather than advancing the story, it just reiterated the story.

Yourcenar evidently wrote many

Oriental Tales, stories set in the Near and Far East, a few based on traditional legends and folktales. According to Yourcenar, the story of the painter Wang-Fo and his disciple is her own invention, though inspired by a Chinese Taoist classic. Scholars, however, have pointed out that Yourcenar seems to have taken her inspiration from a collection of Japanese tales collected and retold by the nineteenth-century Greek-Irish scholar Lafcadio Hearn.

So, yes, another old story, which is what this reads like.

First we meet Wang-Fo’s disciple, who gave up his life to follow the amazing painter Wang-Fo.  He was very wealthy and slowly gave up everything so that Wang-Fo could continue to do his work. Everything he painted felt better than life–more vivid, more real. (more…)

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Oscar Wilde–“The Young King” (Ireland) [The 2021 Short Story Advent Calendar #24] (1891)

Posted in Alberto Manguel, Canadian Content, Children's Books, Children's Fable, Christmas, Hingston & Olsen, Ireland, Morality, Oscar Wilde, Religion, Short Story, The Short Story Advent Calendar on December 24, 2021| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK:  hiatus

[READ: December 24, 2021] “The Young King”

This year, S. ordered me The Short Story Advent Calendar.  This is my seventh time reading the Calendar.  The 2021 Short Story Advent Calendar is a deluxe box set of individually bound short stories.

As always, each story is a surprise, so you won’t know what you’re getting until you crack the seal every morning starting December 1. Once you’ve read that day’s story, check this link where editor Alberto Manguel is providing daily commentary on each of the stories he selected for this year’s calendar.

I was pretty delighted that Oscar Wilde was selected for this short story (with the caveat that there are hundreds of more recent Irish short story writers to choose from of course).  And it started off with Wilde’s wit with the king’s courtiers needing Etiquette lessons because most of them still had natural manners–a very grave offense.

But then, good lord, this story dragged on so torturously.

A 16 year old lad is named to be the next king.  He was raised by goatherds so he is blown away by the sumptuousness of the castle.  But, as is the case with children’s stories, of which this is apparently one, he has three bad dreams.

Long dreams.  Elaborately detailed and yet rather tedious dreams. (more…)

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José Saramago–“Reflux” [Portugal] (translated by Giovanni Pontiero) [The 2021 Short Story Advent Calendar #23] (1978/translation 2012)

Posted in Alberto Manguel, Canadian Content, Christmas, Death, Giovanni Pontiero, Hingston & Olsen, José Saramago, Portugal, Short Story, The Short Story Advent Calendar, Translation on December 23, 2021| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK:  hiatus

[READ: December 23, 2021] “The Fire Balloons”

This year, S. ordered me The Short Story Advent Calendar.  This is my seventh time reading the Calendar.  The 2021 Short Story Advent Calendar is a deluxe box set of individually bound short stories.

As always, each story is a surprise, so you won’t know what you’re getting until you crack the seal every morning starting December 1. Once you’ve read that day’s story, check this link where editor Alberto Manguel is providing daily commentary on each of the stories he selected for this year’s calendar.

This is the kind of story that unfolds itself, proving to be too big for itself.

It is about a king who feared death.  So he ordered a cemetery to be built in the center of the kingdom with very high walls.  Everyone currently buried would be dg up and moved to the new cemetery.

This takes extensive time and involves many years of building a digging (often with one piece sufficing as an entire body). (more…)

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KT Tunstall / Christine Havrilla (Ardmore Music Hall, Ardmore, PA, December 22, 2021) [DID NOT ATTEND]

Posted in Ardmore Music Hall, Ardmore, PA, Christine Havrilla, Gupsy Fuzz, Indigo Girls, KT Tunstall, SOPAC, WXPN 88.5 FM--Philadelphia, PA on December 22, 2021| Leave a Comment »

[DID NOT ATTEND: December 22, 2021] KT Tunstall / Christine Havrilla [moved from August 23, 2020]

So KT Tunstall was supposed to play three shows in my area.  The show at Ardmore was added when the other shows were rescheduled.  Then COVID pushed the shows back again.

For some reason this show was listed as being on December 8 for a short time before it was corrected to being on December 22.

That meant that it looked like she was playing four shows in the Philly area at different venues.

I like Ardmore, although if I can see a band closer I will go there instead.  Even though KT’s SOPAC show was postponed, the fact that it was postponed and not cancelled meant that I could just wait until she came back to South Orange. (more…)

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