I had the pleasure of meeting and interviewing Lindy Fralin recently. He plays around Richmond in a rockabilly outfit called The Bop Cats, and he’s known far and wide as one of the finest makers of aftermarket guitar pickups. (Check out this awesome mention in Guitar Player magazine.) The article won’t be out for a little while, but I’m celebrating earl by rocking 25 Years of Rock n’ Roll this week.
Still catching up after getting back from Florida. Mind if I squeeze in a belated CD Monday?
A few things about the Mountain Goats’ All Hail West Texas:
Been eyeing this one with CD Monday in mind for weeks. It’s Mrs. YHT’s copy — note the PA-based radio station sticker in the top right corner. Side note: Flipping through a high school CD collection that’s not yours is just about the funnest thing ever, especially when you’re in a friend’s room that was left alone since the start of college. You get to laugh at the crappy music time wasn’t kind to, shake the dust off the good stuff and pop it in whichever boombox they had, marvel at how many flashing lights there were on boombox displays… The 90’s were a wild time, man.
Two asterisks for this week’s CD Monday** — one for the fact that it’s not, strictly speaking, Monday, and another for the fact that Loose Fur’s self-titled album won’t actually be spending the week in my car. I’m lending it to Bandmate 4eva (and partner in Wilco-related crime) Doug, who I texted ASAP after finding a vinyl copy at Little Amps Coffee in Harrisburg, PA on Saturday.
*The Tuesday after Labor Day still counts as Monday, right? Yeah? Awesome. Glad we’re all on the same page.
Full disclosure: This was Baby YHT’s pick. Not even kidding — I held her up in the front of the CD rack and this is what she pulled out. Good sport, that kid.
I’m pretty sure a post-mortem B-sides compilation is the most backwards route to becoming a fan of a band, but here we are!
For more than 20 years, with only a couple of interruptions, my family has done a summer beach week in the Outer Banks. We’ve rented houses all over the place down there (as I type I’m subconsciously rewriting the lyrics to “I’ve Been Everywhere” and swapping in names like Nags Head, Kitty Hawk, Southern Shores, Kill Devil…) but we’ve spent the last bunch of years in Corolla. It’s become my happy place — as much a soothing thought as a geographic location. My favorite pizza place and bar are there, and it’s hard to get to, which is good, because it keeps us from making plans that would require driving.
What I didn’t realize until this year is how much of that happy place feeling had to do with the luxury of being a kid.
At a wedding in Baltimore this weekend, I ended up in a conversation with one of the other guests about Ray LaMontagne — about how I’d been gifted a vinyl copy of Gossip in the Grain a few years back, and then about how much I love Till the Sun Turns Black.
You Hear That 