Goodbye, Mary Travers

We'll miss you. So glad I got to see Peter, Paul & Mary in the early 90s. (Funny story about that show…some other time.)

Here are three favorites that appeared on the album Peter, Paul & Mommy.

(I don’t have an audio source for “Leatherwing Bat” to link to. Let me know if you’ve got one. –Ed.)

I Have A Song To Sing, O!

Peter, Paul & Mary

Puff (The Magic Dragon)

Peter, Paul & Mary

Amos Blue Raincoat

Sorry about the post title. Some stupid jokes are too obvious to remain unspoken. Or something.

Anyway, Purplesque was looking for this one, so in case she didn't find it, here it is.

Famous Blue Raincoat

Tori Amos

Song for June: “Always Making Up for Lost Time”

Okay, this is a good one. I mean, I think they’re all good. But this one…this is a good one.

Yes, it’s time for another track from Chaos Town, the 1998 CD by my old band The Practical Man.

The Minds of Billy Milligan

Inspired by The Minds of Billy Milligan by Daniel Keyes, “Always Making Up for Lost Time” tells the story of Billy Milligan, a real guy with multiple personality disorder.

Some tasty guitar work on this one, if I do say so myself.

More stuff about the band is here.

Song for May: “Behind the House”

If you had asked me to choose our one most likely "radio hit" out of all the originals we played, this would've been it.

Song for April: “Finding Sand”

And now on to "Side 2" (as it were) of Chaos Town, the 1998 CD by my old band The Practical Man.

This song evolved from a jam with old pal Rick. What you have here is the third version, or perhaps the fourth, depending on which of my fuzzy memories is less misleading.

We were playing this song at the now-defunct Ivory's when someone in the audience shouted to a friend, "THESE GUYS ARE COOL!" The song ended just as he said it, so we all heard it. I think that was pretty much the high point of our performing days. It certainly beat the time in Oxford when a guy came downstairs from his apartment and wanted us to turn down. (Um…you don't like loud music and you live above a fucking bar? Dumbass.)

For the sounds at the beginning, early one morning I stuck a couple of mics out the side door of the little house in Valleydale where we recorded and mixed the CD. (Give yourself a gold star if you know where Valleydale is without looking it up. Give yourself eight gold stars if you know what municipality it's in.)

(Song credits and more at The Practical Man’s download page.)

Song for March: “Still Life”

If you've been severely depressed about your lack of direction in life, you might want to skip this one. Or at least not dwell on the lyrics.

Dating back to pre-Practical-Man days, this Mark-penned song debuted on our cassette The Book of 1,000 Songs under the band name Mohammed Chang.* What you have here is the full-band re-recorded version from our 1998 full-length CD Chaos Town.

"Nobody else gives a damn if you make it or not before you're gone."** You can take that to the bank.***

(Song credits and more at The Practical Man’s download page.)

 

*There's an old joke that, since Mohammed is the world's most common given name and Chang is the most common family name, Mohammed Chang must be the most common full name.

**There should probably be a line-break slash in there somewhere. I don't care. Nyah.

***Actually, the bank metaphor is totally inappropriate, seeing as this is indie music and all the bank-related flow was outward, not toward.

iTunes Meme

Spotted here, an iTunes meme. Or an MP3 meme, if you're not using iTunes. (I won't call it an MP3eme, because someone cleverer than me already used that.) I added a couple of lines. Here we go.

How many songs total: 2,525
How many hours or days of music: 7.3 days
Most recently played: Iverson Minter, "Sittin Here Wonderin"
Longest since played: Sheryl Crow, "Strong Enough"
Most played: The Bravery, "Time Won't Let Me Go"
Most recently added: Mahavishnu Orchestra, "Dream"
Longest since added: Leo Kottke, "The Banks of Marble"

Sort by song title:
First Song: Pearl Jam, "●"
Last Song: The Connells, "'74-'75"

Sort by time:
Shortest Song: "Dante's Lament" (Dialogue from the Clerks Soundtrack) (0:04)
Longest Song: Brian Eno, Thursday Afternoon (1:00:52)*

Sort by album:
First album: Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, Abattoir Blues
Last album: Sigur Rós, ( )

First song that comes up on Shuffle: Queen, "Fight From The Inside"

Search the following and state how many songs come up:
Death – 6
Life – 74
Love – 84
Hate – 5
You – 267
Sex – 6

*The longest track in my iTunes (1:44:59) is actually part of a concert bootleg, but since it's a raw recording containing a lot of unindexed songs, I decided not to count it.

Song for February: “The Meter Man”

Ah, February: time for a sweet, romantic trifle from the catalog of my old band, yes?

No. You're getting a baffling song about the guy who comes to read the meter. (In reality, sometimes it's a woman, which can be embarrassing when you're a dorky guy standing around in a bathrobe, but the song doesn't get into that.) I wrote the lyrics in the Stickies applet on a Macintosh.

I'm now uploading these sound files to Vox, but they'll still be available free on the band's website–that makes it a little easier to save your copy (you DO want to save your copy, right?) and gives you a choice of formats.

One more note: the line says "search my anger," not "search my hangar." It's about a personal residence, not an airport. I just thought I'd clarify that since it could alter the outcome of the US elections or bring about world peace or something.

(Song credits and more at The Practical Man’s download page.)

Song for January: “After the Dawn”

Since today's Vox Hunt question is "Share your life anthem," consider this my response, as well as the Song of the Month from my old band The Practical Man's 1998 CD Chaos Town.

This is not, mercifully, my life anthem now, but it was once. It's about shitty jobs you take just to pay the bills, jobs where your skills aren't used and your boss doesn't care. It questions the ethic that any work, no matter how asinine, is automatically good for you and the world as long as it pays something. You've gotta eat, but don't let that keep you from looking for something better.

(Song credits and more at The Practical Man’s download page.)

Song for December: “Dateless”

It’s December, and it’s time for a Christmas song. It even has sleigh bells.

This is arguably the second crush song on the album, although as with the preceding track, maybe it’s more of a lust song. I wrote it about a woman at a Christmas party.

(Song credits and more at The Practical Man’s download page.)