CAN!!!

Yesterday was the first Kymba Wednsday group ride in a long time. I hadn't ridden in a week and I was dreading the heat once again. We met at the Seneca tennis courts and realized the ride organizer was MIA. A guy showed up without his helmet. Luckily I have three in the car. I thought I was hydrated and warmed up, but ten minutes into the ride I was dying. I just can't ride in the 90 degree heat. I don't think I will race this Saturday in this heat. It's just not fun in this heat. None at all. I think that I had too much weight and a heavy bike to boot. (Excuses Excuses)

I hope that this isn't your introduction to Can. But if it is, it will be a wonderful suprise. This band is the shit. If you are looking for a pop band with 4 minute songs then this is not your band. Supposedly most of the recordings are jams that when the tape happened to be running.
These are short tastes for what this band is about. I encourage everyone to at least buy one of the first 5 albums and take a listen. Ege Bamyasi is the one that everyone has on their must list. I'm partial to Future days. Enjoy!

Turtles Have Short Legs

http://www.mediafire.com/?9gkdqieulvr

Connection

http://www.mediafire.com/?brd1kuzo4jm

Moonshake

http://www.mediafire.com/?7xbkodim2vy

I'm Just Eatin Some Rocks and Listnin to Some Jazz

Jazz? On the trail? I'm sure you have Chuck Mangione and the melody of Feels So Good in your head. Listen, I'm not the biggest fan of standard jazz unless you are one of the greats. I guess my problem is that I love drums. Elvin Jones has got to be playing if it's one of the standards.
I encountered a jazz teacher from either UL or Bellarmine once at a party. I remarked to him that I liked the jazz-funk fusion type of stuff. You'd think that I pissed on John Lennon's grave with the look he gave me. I wanted to shove an alto-sax up his pretentious ass. What a dick.
My friend Ben and I were in a band together. (SARCASM ALERT) We thought that you always let the interviewer or the audience know that you've been listening to jazz to get your indie merit badges (SARCASM OVER).
So back to the jazz that I do like. I like the crooner stuff like Chet Baker. As stated earlier I like the early jazz-funk fusion, latin/bossanova-jazz fusion (Getz), and rhythmic jazz. The following song is what really got me on a jazz tear. It is Let The Music Take Your Mind by Grant Green on Alive!.

http://www.mediafire.com/?0yic2udyhgk


The other song offering is Orientation by the Don Ellis Orchestra. I don't know much about the group at all. I heard this on NPR one night and sat in the car until is was over. I just had to hear the title and the artist. This song moves with a great groove until it gets to the 9:27 mark with the big pay off. The whole group coaleses into a heathing mass of rhythms and horn shrieks. Unbelieveable!

http://www.mediafire.com/?ajmffwm9eli

Track 1 Rockers

It's all about the first track. The first song on a great album sucks you in on the opening bar. The song will never get old for you even though you hear it the most. If you can't open an album well, than why am I listening? Here are two great openers from two great albums.
Most people know Genesis as the band that brought you I Can't Dance and Land of Confusion. Few know that they were an avant garde prog rock band in their inseption. Who knew that years later we'd be punished in the 80's by Rutherford's In the Living Years ? Even fewer people know that Peter Gabriel was their singer at the time. Gabriel made a name for himself on MTV and songs in movies (Project X and Say Anything).

This highpoint of this line-up was the album The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway. The title track kicks you in the arse right away and pulls you in. The themes and melodies in this track are revisted again and again throughout the album. Track 1 (The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway):

http://www.mediafire.com/?dfuz32jgvmm

And if you haven't already heard this one, you haven't lived. (Iggy and) The Stooges album Funhouse eventually made its way to the CD player at every party I went to from '95-*97. For some reason the next album, Raw Power got more press. For the money the production on this album is on my top 10.

The album starts out with Down On the Street. The song isn't particularly hard or fast. It carves out a groove that lets you know right away that these guys are badasses.

http://www.mediafire.com/?2tmmxdmyncm

All Is Right With The World

Dinosaur Jr. reunited a year ago and recorded a new album Beyond. The
album shows that those guys could come back t form right away, picking up
where they left off. If these guys reunite, anything is possible. Mid-east
peace perhaps? Just goes to show that band chemistry may be more important
than the talent of each musician. In the book This Band Could Be Your Life,
Barlow describes the incident when band tensions came to a had. Barlow was
sitting on the stage making noise on his bass rather than following everyone
else playing a song. Mascis, frustrated went over and punched him. A clip of '
can been seen in the Sonic Youth video, Teenage Riot (at the 2:37 mark,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6rgBPMMJtIg )

Here is DSJ in live in Boston performing the hit, Feel the Pain:

http://www.mediafire.com/?4yja2hqerx9

90's Nostalgia Friday

I'm going to make this a Friday thing. "Nostalgia" doesn't really rhyme with the other days of the week. My formitive musical years were 91-99, when I think most of the great music was created ( in my lifetime). I think that a third of my music collection came from this period.

The Archers of Loaf came to my attention after my brother went to the Working Holiday festival in '92 (?). To me they have that anthem rock vibe mixed up with a Polvoish-Sonic Youth dissonance.Vs. The Greatest Hits of All Time burned up my Sony CD player. Audiowhore basically describes my friends at the time. We were name-dropping, indie rock, art-f*g, music-snob, a-holes.

http://www.mediafire.com/?65rsdvnmwoe

Songs For the Trail

To an old school punk rocker, listening to the Bad Brains is like standing on hallowed ground for a soldier. This band was the pinnacle of hardcore and they injected groove into a speed driven sound. H.R., Daryl Jennifer, Earl Hudson, and Dr. Know comprised the legendary D.C. band. If Pay to Cum doesn't get your juices flowing you might have to start doubting you own existance. This song will get you to spin a cadence not thought possible.

http://www.mediafire.com/?b7yzb2vnv2y

This a cool song by the Jellydots called Bicycle. Nice little indie tune to rock you through the trees. It probably would have made me feel better yesterday at Youngers.

http://www.mediafire.com/?5z2ma2nytxz

IT"S FRIGGIN HOT AT YOUNGERS!!!!!

Went out to Younger's Creek today at 5PM. I figured it would be empty because everyone was training for Waverly. I did not make it up any of the switchbacks. I maybe tried one. I couldn't even give it the old college try. It was just too hot and it just drains me. I had some ice cold water in the pack but I tried to conserve it for the long ride.
The terrain at Youngers was a bit more gravelly then I remember (is that a word?). I had a hard time pushing my speed (and confidence) on the turns. I tried to enjoy myself but I kept imaging my girlfriend and a search party finding my dried up corpse after a few days. Around the creek crossing the sensor of my computer snapped off and I have no clue where it went. Anyway, I rode all the trails and went back out the front. All and all I had fun, it was just I had to leave by 6:45 to make a dinner date in Louisville.


The political season is well underway and it's time to read the news, listen to the debates, and read the political blogs. I was thinking about if the country is more political or I do I just notice it more? I think I have narrowed my choice to two candidates. Now if they don't do or say anything stupid for a year, they may have my vote. So maybe I'll reveal my choices at a later time. Who knows?

There has been a big change that happened to kymba maybe almost a year ago. Call me naive but I think it was for the best. Locally we have reopened Cherokee and added more trail to Waverly. I think all that has happened just a few months is remarkable.


All that said, Melissa and I were in the car and the James Brown song, Get Up, Get Into It, Get Involved came on the ipod. After a few minutes we both remarked how "on another level" that tune is to everything else. There were some serious musicians in that group that knew how to groove. The song musically to me is a cross between James Brown's Get Up (I Feel Like Being A) Sex Machine, Pt. 1 and The Grunt pt 1, by the JBs. MAN CAN THOSE GUYS JAM!!!!!

http://www.mediafire.com/?d2n0nhj2vqh