I totally borrowed the title from a Leonard Cohen song. Everyone should read and hear Leonard Cohen.
As the miserable heat of summer gives way to a brief autumn, people are beginning to go outside again. I am a little bit, but cautiously, because of… people.
I have been pretty busy. The blog has taken a back seat as I look for a steady gig and take on things to write about for more income. Plus, there is so much stuff to stream. The long and short of it is I am sorry to be so tardy with this.
This summer had a hot few months. Originally I was fine with that. After all, it is not snow or ice. The weird, colder spell in the middle is kind of weird, but also super nice. But now, there has been a break and it is not as muggy and nasty and crappy out. Hallelujah. That stretch of a week to ten days with the super high heat index was really a beast.
I am worried that our rather brief spring and summer means we may have a long winter. I do not want to see snow or sleet in the coming months. So, the seasons are a trade-off of sorts. All I know is I hate winter. And this year’s is supposed to be miserable. According to the Farmer’s Almanac, we are supposed to have a rough winter. Great.
Spring turned into summer and with those seasons came a sudden uptick in stuff I needed to do. I have had more articles to turn in and a few other projects have come down the pipeline. I am glad to be busy, but I am not thrilled with the arrival of the fall allergy season.
In addition to some articles for Broadway World, FEAST, and ReviewSTL I have been hosting a second radio show. It is called Antics and it airs on Louder Than War Radio on Mondays from 6-8 pm GMT or 12-2 pm Central time. Click here to listen to archived shows.
It differs from my other radio gig in that I do not need to run promo spots or reviews. It is more or less, a full two-hour slot of music. Plus, I can play longer music and make deeper dives into the songs I like. And there are less shenanigans to deal with. If you need a break from the station I also broadcast from, this is a nice reprive.
I also continue to co-host the Modern Musicology podcast. You should check it out, we’ve had some great guests on it.
Speaking of radio…Thirty years ago I was told by The Point that I didn’t know enough about music to be a DJ on their station. Well, looking back, most commercial alternative stations now are completely craptacular.
There has been so much music. I saw Sparks in Kansas City. They were terrific. This concert was fun and euphoric. However, I still think I liked their concert in Chicago last year more. it was more energetic.
In a weird chance of fate, I got an opportunity to review the Taylor Swift concert the night before. I was joined by over 80,000 other people. it was kind of surreal. I was only marginally familiar with her music, but I was really interested in the production itself. There were three connected stages, a massive video screen, lots of cool projections, elaborate sets, costume changes, and rising and lowering stages. It was a massive technical undertaking.
One takeaway from the show was how polite and nice her fanbase was. Another was the fact that she played for nearly four hours and showed no signs of fatigue.
A band that is buddies with T. Swift is The National. They dropped an album called, First Two Pages of Frankenstein. Now, they just dropped another album called Laugh Track.
First Two Pages of Frankenstein is solid, but Tropic Morning News is my favorite.
The album is pretty minimalist and it sounds just as intense as their previous records. Phoebe Bridgers and someone named Taylor Swift are on the album.
Laugh Track is more or less the same in texture and sound. The first batch of songs from it dropped a few weeks ago.
I like Space Invader a lot. I think it sounds like their older stuff. The guitars on it are also pretty good.
Louise Post used to be in Veruca Salt. Now, she has released an album called Sleepwalker.
I saw Veruca Salt open for that terrible band called Live once. I saw their set and then PJ Harvey’s and then left before Live went on stage. Recently, Louise toured for the record but it was a super short run.
Yard Act dropped The Trench Coat Museum a few months ago. It is simply epic.
In June I Saw Love and Rockets in Chicago. They were fantastic. They crushed it. I was really surprised by how tight their set was. They did play the hits but they also did some cool deep tracks and b-sides. At a time when everyone was doing a reunion tour, this one was really good.
The Theater Section
Opera Theatre St. Louis has come and gone for this year. I enjoyed the season immensely. I am looking forward to the upcoming season.
If you ever go to an Opera Theatre show make sure to people watch. The amount of 1970s polyester suits still in the wild is frightening.
I am seeing plays again. I am lucky that I get to review them, so if they are ghastly, I am not out any money. Nothing is worse than spending lots of money on rubbish theater. One of the best things about St. Louis that goes undervalued is our terrific theater scene. We have a lot of great companies doing terrific productions.
The best thing I saw in the Spring was the touring production of To Kill A Mockingbird with Richard Thomas. He was outstanding and the entire ensemble was terrific. I was pleased that it kept the spirit of the book. it is coming back to town next year.
I really enjoyed seeing Beetlejuice at the Fox. The show had a kinetic energy to it and the musical numbers were very good. It was a great opener for the Fox’s new season.
I am thrilled that The Phantom of the Opera has ended its run on Broadway. I know people love it, but I think it’s overhyped and tedious. It needed to be about a half-hour shorter. It just never did much for me.
I am thrilled that people are going to movies and live theater again. However, I wish they would remember that the time that is printed on that ticket they have is when things start. It is not an estimate or a five-minute alert. It’s the go time. But, somehow, there are always assclowns who come later. It is especially annoying when you have gotten all settled in your seat and then have to get up to accommodate some moron who has no time management skills. Oh, by the way, it’s really rude to come late.
Also when you come late and have to make everyone in the aisle move to accommodate you, don’t bring like 6000 things to carry with you. Especially snacks. And another thing…don’t talk during the show.
Let’s All Go To The Lobby
Party Girl is out on Blu-ray. This 1995 comedy starring Parker Posey and Liev Schreiber takes the spirit of comedies of the 1930s and puts it in 1990s New York club culture.
All these years later this is still a fine indie film. Ironically, it was filmed in Austin.
Trainspotting is getting a 4K restoration for a 2024 Criterion release!
This edition has a few new extras as well as stuff that was on the original Blu-ray release. There is also some sort of spinoff series with Robert Carlyle coming soon as well.
The new restoration of Stop Making Sense is fantastic. I had not seen the movie for maybe twenty years or so and was thrilled to see it has held up well as a concert film.
Seeing it now, I am reminded of just how great this band was. I saw them near the end when the were close to breaking up. They were good then, but nothing like this.
There is appliance news!
The black lining inside of the dishwasher was starting to come apart. I was going to buy some waterproof sealant and just that hold somebitch back into place. But, when I mentioned the issue to the property manager. She decided to get a new dishwasher instead. I was surprised because she is generally useless.
It should have been an easier process. But it wasn’t. The new one, probably bought from a second-hand place, was dropped off. The guy bringing it didn’t want to bring it inside. He wanted to leave it on the stoop and let me and my arthritic knee move it. But, eventually, he brought it in and I pushed the box into a corner. I had to do this because the person installing the dishwasher was coming the next day.
So, to make all of this work I had to move a bunch of appointments around. I wanted to be here when it got installed and not have the person alone in my apartment with it. Plus, I wanted to make sure the old one got removed and not left in my kitchen or outside somewhere where it would sit and rust.
The stupid thing is that the dishwasher we got doesn’t fill the entire space. So now there is a small cap between where the counter ends and the dishwasher starts. I am not quite sure how to fill it but it is a giant hassle.
Books!
First off, support your local library! help them fight the banning of books and be nice to their staff.
Probably the best music book I have read all year is Listening To The Music The Machines Make by Richard Evans.
It is a thorough examination of electronic music of the late 1970s and early 1980s. I am so glad someone else likes Telex as much as I do!
Nick Hornby is a fantastic writer. His latest book is a quick read.
In Dickens and Prince: A Particular Kind of Genius, he finds parallels between the two artists and how they executed their craft. He doesn’t directly connect them to each other, which is fine, but he does fanboy about each and why their work continues to resonate and why it is vital.
His books are always well paced and this one is no exception. Told as a collection of essays, he touches on how common themes of social status, race, and education affected each artist.
Finally, people found a lot of things to blame the Cardinals’ crappy season on. I think it is the flurry of “He Gets Us” Jesus commercials. I will say this, these things are slick. They really try to draw folks in some seriously unsuspecting ways.
I think the commercials are really annoying and I think that they should not be on TV or radio. I mean, people of other faiths listen and watch baseball games.
But overall, this campaign is insipid, stupid and diabolical.
STLCurmudgeon 
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