Warrior Dash!!

Back on October 10, 2010, right around the time my old computer gave up the ghost, my 16-year-old son Sean and I ran in the 3.15-mile Mid-Atlantic Warrior Dash, held at a paintball place in Quarryville, PA. I highly recommend these sorts of antics to anyone who likes to run and doesn't mind getting dirty. If, like us, you are a CrossFit person, you have double the reason to do it because it incorporates a lot of your CF training when it comes time to go over/under/through the various obstacles on the course.

You can check out a course map for the race here. But, basically, it's a whole bunch of obstacles scattered over the 3.15 miles. If you want to get any sort of decent time, you need to take off reasonably fast at the start, or else, as happened to friends of ours, you will get stuck in lines at obstacles. Not us, though. We weren't flying, but we were just fast enough to avoid the lines.

I should mention that the whole operation was really run smoothly. When you check in, there were a bunch of alphabetically arranged lines to pick up your number, timing chip, etc. There was a great, well-organized checkpoint for any gear you wanted to store during the race, and yes, they give you cool fuzzy Viking helmets. We didn't wear ours during the race, but a few people did. I can't imagine that those were anything but filthy by the end.

The good organization was even evident in the way the course was plotted out. You had to run for just short of a mile before hitting the first set of obstacles. That distance allowed the racers to sort themselves out really well, so the backups didn't begin until long after we were through. Of the first six obstacles that you'll see on the course map, none were particularly difficult. The "tankers" that you had to climb over had well-positioned ropes for assistance. I suppose the cargo net was the toughest of that first group, if only because I'm a klutz and got my feet caught on the descent.

But as soon as that section was done, there was a short sprint across a field (if you are a runner in real life, you can make up a ton of time on the open sections), a quick climb through some wires that were strung across the woods, and another dash through more woodsy trails. This pic makes me look faster than I really was:

 

Then came the muddy stuff. There was a short blast through a tunnel, and then a big splash into the Breathless Bog. A word to the wise: don't do what I did and figure the bog can't be very deep. In this section you had to wade into the swamp and vault over a set of four or five logs. It turned out that it made a huge difference on which side of the log you were standing. The side closer to the shore was in only about 3 to 4 feet of water, whereas the side farther from shore was about 5+ feet of water. Stupid me was on the deep side of each log and it's an effing miracle that I didn't end up with a waterborne parasite thanks to all the swamp water I swallowed.

As soon as you cleared the bog, it was up and over a series of wooden boards/hurdles, into and out of another much smaller bog and up a muddy creek bank. Most people chose to walk these sections and the muddy parts in between, but I passed a ton of people by jogging these parts instead. It must've been a hell of a sight -- me staggering/running past my fellow mud zombies. The muddy creek bank was particularly interesting. You had to either hold on to tree roots or just jam your hands into the mud and hope to hang on as you climbed. Thankfully, that part was over quickly and, once we rounded a bend, there was a cheering crowd and a mud pit with barbed wire to crawl under!

A few guys -- two of them are with me in these photos, dove in headfirst. Others (who got booed) tried too hard to stay clean and actually walked between the sections of barbed wire and just kind of ducked under the wires. That seemed lame to me, so I took the middle road -- sliding into the pit feet-first, but then crawling/splashing all the way across and under the wires to the end of the pit, after which the race ended with a leap over a "wall" of flames (really a bunch of Dura-Flame logs).

You end up muddy, and really happy.

So, you might ask....how do I train for such a race? The best suggestion I have, and it's a CrossFit-inspired one, is to run as many 400-meter sections as will make up the race (in other words, for a 3-mile race, that would be about 12 400-meter intervals) and between each 400, do 10 of something (e.g., pushups, situps, burpees, push presses with a weight bar, pullups, ring dips, whatever). If you can do that, you will have no problem getting a decent time in a Warrior Dash. I was nursing a bad/recently-strained hamstring, and I finished in 27 minutes and change. My kid beat me by about 90 seconds. Neither of us are close to elite/fast runners. But we both finished up reasonably high in our age divisions, so we were happy.

We had so much fun that we are already signed up for the Poconos WD in June 2011. On the other hand, I am signed up for a "regular" 5k Thanksgiving weekend and may have to splash through puddles just to make it interesting.

Road trip

So, off we were going to go....four dudes in a van. The Mondo Topless "Midwest tour."
The original plan was to leave on Wednesday, drive to Ypsilanti, Michigan, just outside Ann Arbor, hope to pick up some long-ago Stooges vibe and rock like hell with local band Mazinga, who came highly recommended. Then there would be a succession of shows in Milwaukee, Chicago, St. Louis, and finally, Columbus, OH -- Thursday through Sunday, then home Monday to Philly. The best-laid plans....

First we got bumped out of the Columbus gig only a day or two before we were about to leave. Something about a "house-band rehearsal" secretly scheduled at the same time as our (early) gig. That's a new one. The hell with 'em, we figured. Columbus on a Sunday night never really screamed out, "Rock 'n' roll," with or without the hootchie-coo, so we chalked it up to good luck. This way we could stay up late with our friends in St. Louis at the Beat 'n' Soul festival the night before the canceled Columbus gig, and just use Columbus as a way-station on the way home. No biggie. We still had four shows booked.

So Wednesday morning it was up at 4 a.m. to go get bass player Scott and head to Vox-guy Sam's house where we would all pile into the van, pick up guitarist Kris, and roll. It was a pretty uneventful 600 miles to Ypsi, other than the glorious stop at Beef Jerky Unlimited in Dundee, Michigan where Scott, Kris and I loaded up on various cured and salted four-legged beasts while vegetarian Sam looked on in horror. Elk, bison, alligator, venison and good old beef were all purchased and then, over the next few days, gleefully devoured. We joked that the Ypsi gig was off thanks to a jerky overdose. Turned out we were half right....

We met up with our pal Mark for one hell of a delicious meal at a Vietnamese place in Ypsi called Dalat. Awesome food (squid!) and uber-cheap. And then....the power went out at the club. Well, OK I think it'd been out already for a while that day. Instead of too much jerky, it was insufficient electricity that derailed the Ypsi gig. The club and about three or four other businesses on the block were pitch black with no hope of recovery. Promoter dude threw a few bucks at us for gas (thank you, sir; really!). We said goodbye to a sad Mark (he loves us and we love him too for his commitment to all that rocks) but we rebounded quickly, however, thanks to Meijer. How great is a store that sells everything, including alcohol? My Michigan-bred wife had long ago clued me in to the wonder of Meijer, and it saved our moods that night with a bottle of Evan Williams, some Leinenkugels (can't get that beer around here) and a pile of snacks. Band hangout night! Lampshade on Sam's head!

Only three gigs to go, and we hadn't played a gig yet.

And so, Thursday morning, Milwaukee beckoned. I hadn't been there since the early '80s, but it struck me as the same shot 'n' a beer town that I remembered. Everything was different there from Philly: the food (Scotch eggs!), the beer (Old Style!, Blatz! (has anyone ever put an exclamation point after Blatz before?)), the people (absurdly nice with no edgy East Coast vibe at all!). The venue: Frank's Power Plant.

Frank's is the epitome of a no-frills down-to-earth bar. And we love 'em for that. Starting the four-band bill at 10:45 pm on a Thursday? Not so in love with that, but we soldiered on, including an emergency "Oh shit, my pants just busted wide open and so did my belt and I don't know how to get back to the hotel so you have to help me" plea from Sam to me. It's hell being the navigator sometimes. Somehow he and I drove fast through detours, road closures and general madness back to the hotel, got him new pants and a belt and arrived back in time to wrangle our way into the third slot on the bill at the last minute (we were originally last of four) -- and when I say "the last minute," I mean DJ/promoter Wendy turned to us after band #2 and said, "Oh why not? Go on now. That'd be cool." We rocked. The setlist will never quite be known because it was thrown-together, handwritten-only amalgam of the best of what we were going to do in Ypsi and what we had planned for Milwaukee, but it went something like this:

Get Me to the World on Time
Ain't Dead Yet
SWLABR
Just One Thrill
Don't Want You
Magic Potion
Can't Dig It
I'm Crying
Pay to Cum
No More
Shake
Unsafe at Any Speed

And it was a blast. People seemed to dig it all. That set was the debut of our new Bad Brains cover, "Pay to Cum," and, despite a rocky start for the first five seconds or so of the new one, it kicked into gear in fine fashion and the punks up front started fist-pumping and yelling along to the "Hey!"s. Just the reaction I was hoping for. Thanks, guys. If you wanna watch a couple of videos that someone in the crowd took of us that night, go here for "Get Me To the World On Time" and here for "Can't Dig It."

The night ended with a local band who played through a best-forgotten cake/pie throwing incident engaged in by most of the remaining crowd (not me...I was packing up my gear), and all I could think at the time was: (1) "Glad my gear is in the back room away from the food-throwing," and (2) "This really isn't cool unless you are promising to clean it up." Unsurprisingly, none of the cake/pie throwers seemed to be involved in the cleanup. Hmmm....

We slept late, for us old guys anyway, hit the Denny's down the road for breakfast and drove the easy hour-plus to Chicago for a gig at Reggie's Music Joint. There was a wee bit of confusion at first about our placement on the six(!)-band bill (including one Eddie Spaghetti of the Supersuckers). But our third slot ended up working out great. I'm pretty certain there were more people in the room raising a ruckus during our set than during any other. And, before I forget, let me send a special "hell yeah" out to 13 Tikis, who are not only a killer surf/instrumental band from the Windy City, but a band that knows the travails of the road, and, as a result, gave us their share of the door. Good on ya, boys (and girl). We truly appreciate it and hope you'll come to Philly one day. Salud!

And our set went something like this:

Louise
I Want To
Mystery Girl
Ain't Gettin' Any
SWLABR
Break the Ice
Left in the Dark
Nothing Can Bring Me Down
Panty Sniffer
Pay To Cum
Loose

Short, sweet, and fun despite being punctuated by ridiculous house-drum-kit nonsense where the rack tom went airborne off its stand more than once and the whole kit kept moving outward like an amoeba each song, whereupon I would take a few seconds to re-collect the pieces and we'd play the next one. We learned right after the set that Mystery Girl is the favorite song of the 13 Tikis guitar player and we learned during the set that: Pay to Cum only gets better, Panty Sniffer is a stupid song that is too too fun to play and Loose is a seething rock and roll monster that I never get tired of playing. We had a great time. Thanks, Chicago.

So Saturday morning we were St. Louis-bound, specifically off to the inaugural Beat 'n' Soul fest. A quick word about Beat 'n' Soul, actually.... it was put together by friends of mine. Marie Arsenault, John Wendland, Jason Baldwin and Mark Wyatt are all veterans of the grassroots Twangfest festival, and they are hardcore music fans who wanted to start a garage/soul fest. So they did, at considerable financial risk/expenditure. They brought together a bunch of garage and soul bands that they love, and we were honored to be on that list. Thanks, guys. You rock. I hope B'n'S has many successful years to come.

Back to the trip....
It's an easy five-hour shot down I-55 from Chicago to St Louis through farmland so flat that we were playing "count the wind farms" and quickly gave up thanks to wind-farm overload. A rest stop in Godknowswhere, Illinois produced two amusing incidents. First, we ran into the Sights, the band playing after us on the bill that night. We didn't know at first that they were the Sights, mind you. But two of our guys saw them and said, "Hey, you guys must be in a band, right?" The shit was briefly shot, and we both rolled onwards toward the big arch....but not before Kris and Scott both bought 24-oz alcoholic energy drinks that produced two wildly different reactions. Kris: "Oh my god...what chicken just shit on my tongue? Can I sue myself for damages?" Scott: "I think I might have another." He didn't. There's something like four Red Bulls and five beers worth of caffeine and alcohol in each can, and good sense won out eventually.

We showed up at our friend Rick's house (dude, really, your house was amazing, and thanks), dropped off our bags and headed to the club. Five bands were playing that night and we were second on the bill, with an hour set aside for us to play. Nice. Instead of the 12 and 13-song sets we'd done so far this tour, we got to play 17 plus a one-song encore. It was awesome. I had designed the set for maximum festival appeal -- lots of covers (13 of 'em!), and lots of energy:

Ain't Dead Yet
Louise
Take It Slow
Magic Potion
SWLABR
In the End
Gonna Find a Cave
Useless
Bottomless Pit
Pay to Cum
Left in the Dark
Stupidity
We're a Bad Trip
Freaking Out
Shake
Loose
Asteroid B-612
Panty Sniffer (encore)

I am such a music dork that, knowing I would know a bunch of people there, I had specifically included songs in the set for specific people, and, apparently in a sign that I know my friends well, nearly every one thanked me for playing the precise song that I had dropped in there for that person. I had even more fun playing than usual. Everyone in our band was jacked up and animated as hell onstage, while people were whooping it up, and, well, I'd do it again in a heartbeat, so, yeah, count us in for next time, whenever that is. Best night of the tour, and that's not even including the amazing gourmet food truck that was parked outside all night or the fact that my wife Jamie met up with me there. The Stooges cover was, as always, for you, darlin'. What a great night.

Afterparty back at Marie's was much appreciated and, thankfully, subdued enough that no one paid for it then next day.

(Photo by Jason Baldwin)

And that's pretty much it. Yeah, we drove home for two days thereafter. But there's not much to tell about seven hours to Columbus and then eight to Philly. Best night's sleep all tour was in Columbus, but the absence of a gig that night pretty much predetermined that. We arrived home, still-exhausted, a little grumpy, but glowing with the knowledge that we tore it up for three gigs. And that's why we do it, 'cause that'll keep you going when nothing else will.

Stuffing a sock in the mouth of the moralizers

Perhaps the greatest truism of American politics, at least on a national stage, is that the independent center controls elections. Every time, about 40% of the electorate is going to vote Dem; about 40% is going to vote GOP. The remaining 20% in the middle is going to swing back and forth, deciding who they feel is best equipped to handle the crisis du jour. The center is, generally speaking, fiscally fairly conservative and otherwise possesses a "leave me alone" sort of social libertarianism that is quick to recoil in horror when a candidate starts a moral crusade. Sometimes, the center goes en masse for a particular candidate, e.g. 1984, Reagan over Mondale, creating what we later dub a "landslide." Sometimes they break hard for one candidate, but not quite in one big lump, e.g., Obama over McCain. And sometimes they split down the middle and make things close, e.g. Bush and Kerry in 2000.

But....the parties are often slow to realize this. Or perhaps "tone deaf" is the better word. When primary time comes around in either party, you usually see the candidates running hard to the extremes, throwing as much red meat as possible to the "base" of the party in order to get the nomination, and leaving the eventual nominee looking more like a hardcore lefty or righty and less of a centrist. Which brings us to 2012.

You might think that Barack Obama is in trouble for 2012, based upon the midterm elections, but not so fast. Remember, it's the middle 20% who are going to decide this thing. 80% of the electorate (40 Dem and 40 Repub) already knows what party they are voting for. The key, as always, lies with the middle 20%. That middle 20% makes its decision on a multitude of factors, but it all comes down to personality and trust. Do centrist voters have a problem with many aspects of the Obama presidency? Sure, the midterms just showed that, and many of those problems revolve around spending and fiscal issues. But those problems will evaporate fast if a moralizer like Sarah Palin or Mike Huckabee is the 2012 GOP nominee. The only way one of those types could win is if a third-party candidate comes in and skews the results enough that no one gets to 270 electoral votes and the whole mess ends up in the House of Representatives. Put differently, if it's Obama v. Palin (or Huckabee) in a two-way race, President Obama will be a two-termer.

So, who could the GOP turn to, if they were smart and could back off the moralizing and focus on fiscal issues? New Jersey governor Chris Christie's name gets bandied about a lot. He got elected (and has remained popular) with nary a peep about social issues, but he has recently rather definitively ruled himself out of the mix for 2012.  Mitt Romney is more of a centrist than Palin or Huckabee, but he has the reputation of flip-flopping on a lot of issues, and you have to wonder if that wouldn't come back to haunt him in both the primaries and the general election.

That leaves Mitch Daniels, governor of Indiana. Daniels has a strong record of fiscal conservatism, and has already called for a "truce" on social issues. He looks, frankly, electable as all hell. He's funny, bright, blunt and plainspoken about tough choices regarding spending. By the way, this isn't an endorsement, just a discussion of electability. I'm a social libertarian and a fiscal conservative, so Daniels' stance on social issues is not in keeping with my own. I like many things about both the president and Governor Daniels and don't know for whom I would vote if they were running against one another. But here's the catch when it comes to the electability of Mitch Daniels: if he's running, it won't be on a social-issues/morality platform. His focus is purely on fiscal issues. That could have a lot of impact with the independent center -- you know, the ones who control elections.

This post was prompted by another article extolling the electability of Governor Daniels but noting how tough it may be for him to get his party's nomination if social conservatives rule the roost, as they often do, in the nominating process. If those social conservatives in the GOP were thinking tactically about winning an election, instead of figuring out new ways to tell us all what we can and can't do in our personal lives, they might wake up and see that Governor Daniels may be the most electable candidate they could put forth against President Obama. I'm not holding my breath....

Stuck in the van, living to rock

I have a love/hate relationship with touring, even the kind of quickie mini-tours that we are forced to do out of life circumstance, day jobs, etc. Don't get me wrong...I love every moment of playing onstage, maybe even a little more so when it's playing in a city where the band either hasn't been in a very long time or has never played at all. The rush of a good show can keep you going for days. It can also, much like the joy of hiking up a really badass mountain (or, I've been told, childbirth), can leave you with a distorted picture of just exactly what the pain-to-joy ratio was (that'd be high, if you're wondering). Just like that amazing feeling of conquering the big peak often obscures the substantial effort and exhaustion it took to get there,  so can the great hour onstage dull the drudgery of the rest of the touring experience.

And drudgery much of it is. You wanna know, figuratively speaking, just how far up each others' asses four guys can get after six days in a van? That'd be pretty damn far. That joke was funny the first time, but not so much on Round #57. That annoying thing you do when you eat? Someone may kill you for it. Someone's penchant for too many (or too few) rest stops? This could all go postal in a short time. But, thankfully, if you play well together, most days the glory of the show that night will blot out all the bad vibes of any of the rest of the trip.

But this is not to say that there are not some really basic rules to make everyone's life a lot easier. There are, and no one has nailed those rules better than this guy. I don't know who he is, whether the band he plays in is crap or godhead, but he has pretty well gotten this aspect of band life perfectly. Just this past week, while on a Mondo Topless swing that went something like Philly to Ypsilanti (Michigan) to Milwaukee to Chicago to St. Louis to Columbus (Ohio, not Indiana) to Philly, I found myself chanting a few of these (silently, mind you, so as not to further annoy) like a mantra. I particularly like the one about the road making everyone bi-polar, so let the bad times pass by quietly, and things will get better. No life-changing decisions while in the midst of a "this/I/he/they suck(s)" bender.

But, at the risk of adding one too many rules to an already lengthy set of them, let me propose one more: when you get back, back off. Don't have band practice for a little while. How you define "a little while" can be dictated by circumstance, of course. For some, it might be a week or so. For others, take a couple months off. In our case, we are currently penciled in for a practice 10 days after we returned home. That seems about right, but, honestly, if an extra week makes it 17 days instead, that'll be just peachy too. I love playing in this band, and, when not cooped up like chickens, these guys are great to hang with, but it's a tough nut to stay shiny, happy, smiley, peace-loving for six days in close quarters. That's a fact. Dealing with it honestly is better than trying to ignore it.

Next stop....a few musical memories of the tour, 'cause it was a good one, and, yeah, I'm sure we'll do it again.

I'm back, and, damn, the Hoodoo Gurus rocked

I finally have overcome the death of the ancient PC. I'm typing on a brand new fancypantsed iMac and I love it. So let's catch up a bit...there's an impending Mondo Topless Midwest tour coming up that I will tell you more about eventually, but details are here if you can't wait.

I am off to see Social Distortion tonight for the first time in a couple years, but I'm still basking in the glow of an awesome Hoodoo Gurus show a few weeks back. I started seeing these guys in 1984 when they only had one album out, and what an album it was. All these years later, I realized as I watched them at the World Cafe Live in Philly, I believe they hold the undisputed title of Band That I Have Been Going to See the Longest. And here's the thing: I think they are better than ever.

One of the things I am proudest of in Mondo Topless is that we try to keep an active list of 40-50 songs that we can play on any given night. It keeps the mind young and the cobwebs never set in that way. Boredom is the death of many a band, and I'd hate to see that happen. Well, apparently, the Gurus have the same ethos. When someone requested a song, Dave said, "I dunno...we played that one last night," and he said they were trying to mix it up as much as possible. Sure, they took requests, but I got the idea that there were few, if any, repeats from the previous night. I recall that last tour that I saw them on, three years earlier, Dave said they had 50-60 songs ready to go. That is a rarity, and having just watched them tear through a representative cluster of songs from nearly every one of their albums, I am prepared to say that they have done it again. So I make this pledge: next tour I will see them more than once because I know I will get nearly a completely different show each night.

And what a show it is. The principal difference between the Gurus of old and the current band (other than male pattern baldness thankfully removing that '80s hairdo from Dave's head) is that, ala the force of nature that is the 2000s edition of Mission of Burma, the Gurus actually rock harder these days. Sure, the pop element of their garage/pop is still there, but overall the sound is tougher and ballsier. As a result, despite the glory of first-album tracks like "Tojo" and "I Want You Back," the truly shining moment for me was this one: The Right Time," from the Crank album. Damn. (Do yourself a favor and watch that video; it's one of my favorites ever...just completely ridiculous).

One other thing...you can see that they are still enjoying the hell out of playing live, and, in the days of the tired big-shed/re-tread reunion tours, watching a bunch of old guys ride the wave of unbridled joy that comes from turning it up and letting it rip is a beautiful thing indeed. Rock on, Gurus. Rock on.

An involuntary break

I had a computer meltdown about a week ago. I am switching to an iMac, but the new beautiful machine won't arrive until later this week. Then I have to figure out how to use it, having been a PC guy all these years. So, unless I wanna blog from my phone (and I don't), the blog will be silent for a little bit. When I return, I'll catch you up on how great the Hoodoo Gurus were at World Cafe Live, how amazing it is to run a Warrior Dash, and how the Heavy are a pretty damn great live band but need to tell the lead singer to stop talking so much between songs.

Do fun stuff before you die

This weekend, in a continuing effort to have fun while beating myself to a pulp, I am running in the mid-Atlantic version of the Warrior Dash.

It's a 5k -- no big deal, 3.1 miles -- but here's the fun part: obstacles! Somewhere between 11 and 14 of 'em -- hay bales, mud pits, mud pits with barbed wire stretched overhead so you have to crawl through, walls of fire to leap over, etc.

And what do you get for your efforts? A big fuzzy Viking helmet with horns! So a few of us are headed out to Totally-in-the-middle-of-nowhere, Pennsylvania, and sloppin' through the goop and the muck, all to prove to ourselves that we earned that ridiculous helmet. Perfect.

Oh, and just for a warmup in the fun department, on Friday night I'm going to see the Hoodoo Gurus prove, once again, that you can be even older than me and rock out. Gushing review to follow (I hope!)....

What do the Minutemen mean to me? The Minutemen mean everything to me.

Everyone (well, every music freak, anyway) has That Band. You know, the one for whom your loyalty will never die. A lot of bands mean a hell of a lot to me, but one stands above the fray as the one I would bring back tomorrow, if only I could: The Minutemen.

I'm not going to give you a history lesson (part one or two). You can learn all about 'em here, because Allmusic Guide's Stephen Erlewine and Mark Deming have waxed poetic about them, and particularly about their stone-cold masterpiece Double Nickels on the Dime, better than I ever could. But I want to tell you just a little, in my own bumbling way, about what the Minutemen mean to me.

Personalities loom large in any great rock band, but the Minutemen -- maybe because they were a trio -- wore their personalities on their sleeves a little more than the rest and made a statement from Day One that they were not going to play the music game like everyone else. They were going to take the D.I.Y. attitude of punk and, instead of turning punk into a uniform, make it into an ethos for doing whatever the hell you wanted to do with your art. So Mike Watt turned the bass into not just a rhythm instrument, but an expressive, nearly conversational, driving force behind every song. Over top of the rumble and twists and turns of Watt rode D. Boon's guitar, sometimes twanging, ala "Corona" (you know, the Jackass theme, jackass), more often spraying shards of perfectly aimed shrapnel at perfectly timed moments, but never, ever doing what all those other guitar players did. And then there was George. Fuckin' George...as a drummer I used to just dismiss the notion of him as an "influence" and instead viewed him as simply way funkier/jazzier than I could ever be -- sort of a punk version of some unattainable god -- but many years later, I can play like that, but it's still chasing the dragon, so to speak. In other words, I can do that stuff but I learn a little more every damn day I listen to the man. His powerful, jarring, solid, funky propulsive drumming is at the core of what made this band so special. And I listen a lot. Some weeks -- and this one is already looking like one -- each day I find the 100-some Minutemen songs I have on my iPod, hit shuffle and let the good times roll.

And good times they are. I used to say that a Minutemen gig (or later the same applied to fIREHOSE) was like a sporting event. It all was teamwork and brotherhood up there through sweat and hard work. Three dudes, giving their all every night. They knew that the average guy wasn't going to get to do what they were doing. Yet they also knew those same kind of average guys were in the crowd there to see three of their own who had somehow risen above the shit to do something great. So they always put out, just like they would have wanted when they were just "fucking corndogs," to borrow a lyric, going to punk shows "to drink, and pogo." And they never lost that sense of wonder -- a sort of "Damn, we are getting paid to do this? We'd do it for free!" attitude. I saw 'em 25 years ago in October 1985, and I never (ever) drive by that (former) warehouse on the 300 block of Brown Street in Philadelphia where that all-ages show was held and don't think (or usually say), "I saw the Minutemen in there." That was a bombed-out dilapidated part of town back then. Now, it's a lot more gentrified. The warehouse is something else. Apartments, maybe? Offices? But to me, it's the place where I saw Mike, D. and George jam econo.

And I try to pass on the respect. My oldest son just turned 20, and, although I've done my best to school him in music, he's charted his own path (like he should), sometimes appalling the old man with his taste (like he should), but not always. I remember when I gave an old car of mine to him a while back. I told him he could remove any of the stickers I had on there, except the one that has a pic of D. Boon on it. It says, in clearest terms, why I loved this band: "Punk is whatever we made it to be." Honestly, I was (sort of) joking, but Kevin turned to me and said, "Dad, are you nuts. I would never take a D. Boon sticker off a car. That's D. Boon!"

Well, hell yeah.

VIDEO LINK: Minutemen--"Joe McCarthy's Ghost"

A Farewell to Grains

And now a different type of farewell, from her Wild.Woman blog, Jenny Martineau sends a Dear John letter to the grains that are wrecking her life. Awesome.

A Farewell to Kings

All drummers secretly have a Rush problem. I have a simple rule: I won't turn off a Rush song if it comes on the radio. I don't love them, but sometimes their complete over-the-top progginess is precisely what I need, especially something insane from the Farewell to Kings album, like the video below.

VIDEO LINK: Rush -- "Xanadu"