Cracker @ Blueberry Hill
N: Did he just say Girl you're a beautiful lemon mall?
D: No. He said animal.
N: Oh my god. Beatle Bob is up there.
D: Yeah, I know. I was hoping you wouldn't notice.
Johnny Hickman plays guitar so well that just listening to him might break your hoo-haw. I'm a big fan, but to me he seems terribly underrated. The simple fact is he's got a ton of chops and blues licks out the, well, hoo-haw. He did not disappoint. David Lowery just looked old and he seemed awfully tired. But, be that as it may, Lowery, Hickman and the whole Cracker gang put on a pretty decent show. Hickman's guitar could have been mixed up a little bit and the whole thing could have been a little louder, but at age 41, seven years of living on top of locomotive engines, and only six months removed from getting my eardrums perforated at a Supersuckers show, I'm OK with the lack of loudness thing nowadays.
It's actually been awhile since I've seen a show at the Duck Room (John Scofield?, Mike Stern?, Jive Talking Robots?), but I've always liked seeing a band there. It's a small enough room to basically be on top of the band and despite the small-ish bar, you always seemed to get served quickly enough, even if there is a large crowd. And there was a pretty large crowd to see Cracker which sort of surprised me. What surprised me most was the number of middle aged guys like me there. It was like a freakin' sausage fest. I always considered Cracker to be one of those groups that no one ever knows about. That is, until you play Low for them. "Oh, those guys. Yeah I remember them". I don't meet a lot of people who cite Cracker or Camper van Beethoven as one of their favorite bands, so to see around 300 people there kind of shocked me too.
They opened with St. Cajetan, which is probably my favorite Cracker song not titled Eurotrash Girl. This is mostly due to Hickman's kick ass opening guitar riffs. About eight songs in they did Eurotrash Girl and just about everyone in the place was singing at the top of their lungs. From that point it looked like they disregarded the pre-planned set list and just reverted to Lowery calling out songs. They played pretty much all old stuff and tons of it. At least 3/4 of the songs were from the self titled debut or Kerosene Hat. As near as I could tell they only played one song off the new release, which I haven't bought yet. Overall, including the three song encore, they played for almost two hours. That's certainly reasonable for your hard earned $17.50.
I should also mention that drummer Frank Funaro was as serviceable as expected and Sal Maida was outstanding on bass. Maida primarily played a white Fender P-Bass, but he also had another nifty looking bass that I have no idea what it was. I know very little about bass guitars.
David Lowery mostly played an orange Ibanez Jet King. I don't think it was the same one that was stolen from him in Montreal. All I know is that I want one and as soon as I see one that's for sale I'm going to buy it. His other guitar appeared to be a hollow body Ibanez Artcore, although I'm just guessing at that. Johnny played a black Gibson Les Paul.
The Heat Continues ... As Does The Grass Cutting
Late Friday evening he's out there again mowing his grass. This time without a shirt again.
Tootie's Bong
Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XwjSJ3__jVY
Ha, ha, ha!!! I can't wait for the episode where Blair buys everyone crack pipes.
Guitar Hero For Your Keyboard
Potential Pervert?! Isn't Pretty Much Everybody A Potential Pervert
We're All Such Dumb Asses ...
Link: http://www.wired.com/culture/culturereviews/magazine/15-07/st_infoporn?rss
... that we don't even pay attention when someone stops to point out with big simple circles that that we're surrounded by morons.
Robert's Tenth Birthday
Robert wanted to play video games at Dave and Busters for his birthday so that's what we decided to do. Originally we were supposed to do this on his birthday, July 1st, but his mother called the Friday night before and asked if we could switch to Saturday due to circumstances beyond her control.
Nancy was already on the other side of the creek on Saturday so she showed up just before us and picked up a power card. I had a birthday card so while I distracted Robert, Nancy slipped it in the birthday card. We went inside, found a table in the midway, and after ordering food, Robert opened the birthday card. We then spent time burning up power cards. (I have my own since I spend a lot of time at D&B ). Once the food arrived, Robert wanted french fries and cheese sticks, we stopped to chow. Afterwards, Nancy and Robert played games to burn up the rest of the power cards. We tallied our tickets which only added up to about 400 or so. I had about 500 on my card so I combined them and Robert picked out a handful of prizes.
After the power cards were properly burned, we headed over to our house to eat chocolate cake and open presents. Nancy got him several books, (Spiderman, a book of jokes, and the big book of gross stuff), and I got him a full size basketball, (he asked for one), and some lights for his bike that screw onto the valve stems. They light up whenever they detect movement. We headed out to the backyard to goof around with the ball and I was shocked at how well he could dribble the full size ball at only ten years old. Maybe I'm a little out of touch at what ten year olds are able to do, but he quickly juked me with a dribble between his legs and a crossover. He's got plenty of natural ability.
Reprehensible
Lions QB On Weeklong Bender
No Drew, Don't Eat That
For the most part my blog is self-indulgent; probably around 99% or so. Occasionally I like to be informative too. Nancy cooks all sorts of things that are delicious, but in the summer time one of my all time favorites is berry cobbler. Actually I would eat almost any cobbler as long as it had Nancy's biscuit-y cobbler topping. So last night while we are watching a movie, I thought I'd have a helping of it. It's really only a couple of days old, but when I took the cover off of it, it smelled similar to the fruit cocktail 'wine' we would occasionally make on the boat. In other words, fermented. Hey, I've been known to knock back a 'coupla Coke Cola's' so I figured that a little fermentation wouldn't hurt me too bad. Besides, it didn't smell all that fermented ... just a little bit.
It hurt me.
Take a tip from your old pal Drew kids. Don't eat the fermented fruit.
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