Why I Oughta...

I heard the song 'History of Lovers' by Calexico and Iron and Wine on either Left of Center or Disorder and immediately dug it. I'm really into Iron and Wine and I have some Calexico, so I figured I'd give it a listen. (on Sirius, you see the name of the artist(s) and the song title when the song is playing). About half way through it, I 'tagged' it in my radio. On Sirius, you get a selected number of 'tags' whereby when ever that song pops up anywhere on the Sirius network, the radio alerts you and you can go have a listen. It's a terrific feature that I've chocked full of Wilco, Sufjan Stevens, The Staples Singers, and a few others. This allows you to not miss any of your 'favorite' songs. After a few times of hearing it in the car, I grabbed 'History of Lovers' in the itunes music store. I've been listening to the entire collaboration ever since. "History" really sticks out for me, so I dug a bit more. I fo

Yesterday afternoon, I cut out of work early (I left my desk...) and Maisy and I headed downtown to meet up with Nat. We were all set to head to the Jeff Twedy Show at the Abbey Pub . Good times, right? Turned out great! Well, I got there a bit early and Nat hadn't gotten home from work yet, so me and Maisy ran over to Barker and Meowsky for a new sweater and she dug it. It's a pinch big, but hopefully she'll 'grow' into it. (She's turning into a bit of a 'fatty arbuckle' as it is!!) We got back and Natalie was home. Outsmarting ourselves, we thought, 'Hey! Let's just get chow at the Abbey instead of SoupBox or Tomatohead . Irish Nachos and Ruebens and such. Well, as we're walking up to the Abbey, sure as shit, we run into Jeff Tweedy, his wife Sue Miller, their 2 boys, what appeared to be one of Jeff's cronies/guitar techs/friends, and a hot nanny. Jeff was carrying 2 clamshell carryout styrofoam containers and the kids weren't

Dig Arrested Development? Go read this whole deal . TVSquad got burned it seems, but the show is headed to Showtime, so that's nice, right?

USC's Daily Trojan knew Bob Dylan, and admits Conor Oberst is no Bob Dylan.: What would the scruffy old veteran say to the up-and-coming musician? Would words of advice be imparted? Would stories be shared? Would compliments be made?  I don't even think they'd get to words. Let's be serious. Before Oberst could mutter his hellos to the best songwriter in American history, Dylan would smack him in the back of the head like an owner shooing away an obnoxious pet that came to look for food at the dinner table. There would be no conversation.

Now that we got that State of the State nonsense out of the way, we can talk about the big things. Remember this ? If Dring can get on the stick, we'll launch in the coming weeks. I think we're near 40. Any submissions? Send them in, please...

I'm crawling into a long winter's blog nap til Monday. We're heading out of town for a party. Wish I could be with you all standing in moldy lines waiting for drinks, etc. Seriously. I wish I could. Instead, we'll be, um...doing a lot of nothing. Nice. Happy New Year. Don't drive, if you don't have to. Please?!? Smell ya later!

Doing an entire 'Year in Review' would be daunting, as I can't quite remember what happened 6 weeks ago, let a lone 6 months ago, but what I can do is tell all you--my loyal readers--what I think was/is the biggest story of 2005 in and around Chicago. ....Drum roll please........... The Biggest story in 2005 was the City of Chicago's 'about-face' on live, outdoor music in the City's parks. What? Live music as the biggest story of the year?!? WTF, Parrillo?!? What about the 'Drought of '05', or the White Sox, or Hired Truck, or Marshall Field's closing? Well...those are all good stories. They're all qualified for 'Biggest Story of the Year', but they don't have the same impact to me as the City's Leaders embracing live music. I wrote about it back in July when both Lollapaloza and Intonation were put on to rave reviews, despite the repressive heat. Dunno if you realize what is happening here. We just went from th