More Great Music

At the end of the book, The World Without Us, by Alan Weisman, he makes a point about how radically our society has changed since the start of the 20th century. He does this by mentioning that at that time or a little before, 100% of the music people heard was live. Today it's less than one percent.
Which brings me to this post's point: More amazing live music within walking distance to my home (and some pretty good stuff right from the couch). As a previous post reported, Steve Earle did a great show at the Historic State Theater and at the time I figured it would be quite awhile before I experienced anything so fine. But there we were again, almost in the same seats just a month later, for a night with Billy Bragg, and we left with the same sense of awe and good fortune. You could say they are birds of a feather.
Bragg was inspiring, whimsical, topical, very British, and challenging. Politics have played a central role in his music over the years, and they were front and center at this show being just before the presidential election. And his music was mighty fine. Thanks to Dan Smalls for putting this show on. Here is a link to read what he thought of it and see Billy's performance of Woody Guthrie's "I ain't got no home in this world, anymore."
This past weekend our cake got some more icing when Ruttabaga Boogie brought Eilen Jewel to town with her band. Eilen writes some smooth songs, has a great selection of covers, plays a nice guitar and has a voice that goes so well with the styles of songs she does; but her band kills. Dropping jaws wherever he goes is Jerry Miller, whose been around awhile, and I'm glad he still is.
As for me, I'm going to grab the banjo now and keep my live to recorded music ratio up around 1:1. That's fifty percent for you struggling in Algebra this year.

Seeking Attention

Here's one person's way to "get the attention" of a neighbor.
This happened at 5 am and resulted in two calls (only one by me) to the police about a disturbance. I met the police when they arrived so they would be sure to go to the right place as I had given the wrong information over the phone. As we heard a loud bang it was clear they could find it without any further assistance from me and I went back into the house. The officers left after speaking with the guy for a few minutes, he was throwing pebbles at a window when they approached him and he admitted he'd had way too much to drink and should go to bed so he wouldn't bother anyone any more.
He's had our attention since he moved in back in August with his frequent screams of obscenities, now we're wondering to what degree he might go to get the attention of his next door neighbor.