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Here’s a neat little diddy I came across in my baby/childhood box last weekend.

With Lyle playing at Live On The Levee tonight I wanted to post one of my favourite of his songs.  I don’t think that made total sense.  It’s from the soundtrack to Stuart Little (an animated mouse movie) and from a couple of other comps.  Learn the words because it’s a fun song to sing.

Lyle Lovett – Walking Tall

Monday night Porter told his first Bald Faced Lie. 

In the bath I told him not to splash but he said he could.  I asked, “Who told you you could splash?” “Mommy.”  I knew dang well she didn’t.  I told him that she didn’t say that but didn’t make a big deal out of it.  I just held his chin, made him look at me, and gave him a good stare while telling him to tell the Truth. 
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Trish gave Porter a stuff Simba (from the Lion King I think) that Porter instantly attached himself too.  He’s got Lion King diapers so it’s fresh in his mind.  At bedtime he held Simba and put him in front of each stuffed animal in his bed and made him say “Hi” with a couple “Nice meet you’s” thrown in. 
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Right now he’s sleeping on an airplane pillow my Grandma Margaret made for me when I probably wasn’t older than him.  We had the following exchange.

Porter:  Where dis come from?
Me:  Grandma Margaret made it for Daddy when he was about your age.
Porter:  I meet her at foonral (funeral).
Me:  You sure did.
Porter:  I lub her.
Me:  I do to buddy. 

Then I rubbed his back for a little bit.
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He woke up from a nap Sunday and asked about my parents dog Levi.
“Where Levi?”
“He’s at Grandpa Tom and Grandma Jan’s.  You get to see him this weekend.”
“I dream bout him”
“About Levi?”
“Fef,” (that’s how Porter says ‘yes’) and then he giggled and said, “he lick me in face” and giggled some more.

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I was organizing pictures and think you’ll get a kick out of this series.  Here’s Porter going through 4 different feelings a few months ago.  The last one I take no responsibility for, it was his own interpretation.

Porter, show us:

Happy
Mad
Strong
Suave

Lastly, as of yesterday we are 1-2 cm dilated! 

Jessie will be here soon….

Since coming across my notebooks (previously buried under much stuff) I found a few more tidbits. Though this one will be brief.

Yesterday in 1994, 7-23, Alex, Chris, Scott, & Kyle went to see what I think was the third H.O.R.D.E Fest* line up. It came right at a point where the Jam Band scene was getting some love commercially via Blues Traveler (Run Around was one of the hits of that summer) and Dave Matthews who was just starting to get a airplay on the radio and MTV. A friend at work saw DMB when they played his frat house and had to pay more to cover his share of the keg than his share of the band.

In any case…

The Headliners for our fair city were (in order):

Sheryl Crow
Big Head Todd & the Monsters
Blues Traveler
Allman Brothers Band

Dave Matthews Band, The Black Crowes and a hip hop act of some sort played on other dates. It seems St. Louis usually get’s shorted on stuff like that. There was a busy second stage but the only band I remember off hand was the Screamin’ Cheetah Wheelies. Alex had put a song or two of theirs on his Smashing Fish series of jam orientated mix tapes.

A brief search for information about St. Louis’ stop yielded only a Kiss The Stone bootleg of the Allman Brothers Band’s set.

The Allman Brothers Band. Midnight Riding
Recorded live in Riverport, St. Louis on July 23, 1994. KTS. 508-09. sb6

Disc 1:
1) Sailing
2) Statesboro Blues
3) Blue Sky
4) Samething
5) Soul Shine
6) Southbound
7) Seven Turns
Midnight Rider

Disc 2:
1) Jessica
2) No One to Run With
3) Back Where it All Begins
4) In Memory of Elizabeth Reed

The sad part is that I adore the song Soul Shine and Seven Turns but the first 3 songs totaled about 50 minutes and we left early. None of us were particularly fluent with the Allman Brothers catalog and we were tired from being on a lawn in the sun for 8 hours in July. And at least I had a headache from all the pot being smoked around us. Speaking of, more people asked if they could by from me than usual.

Sheryl Crow was enjoying the upward mobility that ‘All I Wanna Do’ enabled. I think she was nominated for a Grammy for that tune.

I was most into Blues Traveler‘s set which I really enjoyed though I can’t bust out any specifics. Sheryl Crow did a nice set, Big Head Todd was just ok (never really got into them).

Steak N Shake afterward was 50 degrees in there and we had all been sweating until we walked in the door. This may have been a different gig.
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Then, the next night, Alex, Jake & Kate, Jason (Alex’s roommate), Mike, Scott, Tracy, and myself holed up at the very top middle of the lawn for Phil Collins. It was a nice change from the wandering and bizeeness of the day before. It was a nice night, everyone was laid back and Phil did a nice ‘best of’ sort of set list. It may be the first show where I socialized as much as I listened. I might have a full review somewhere in my Important Stuff box but I’ll tackle that another time.

Here’s the set list.

Phil Collins 7/24/94 at Riverport Amphitheatre

1. Don’t Care Anymore
2. Don’t Lose My Number
3. Everyday
4. Survivors
5. Another Day In Paradise
6. I Wish It Would Rain
7. Do You Rememeber
8. One More Night
9. We Wait And Remember
10. Seperate Lives
11. Both Sides Of The Story
12. In The Air Tonight
13. Hang In Long Enough
14. Find A Way To My Heart
15. It Don’t Matter To Me
16. Easy Lover
17. Missed Again (with a few lines from Englishman In New York)
18. Behind The Lines
19. Something Happened On The Way To Heaven
20. You Can’t Hurry Love
21. Two Hearts
22. Su-su-sudio
23. Take Me Home

*For your Trivial Pursuit gland, H.O.R.D.E stands for ‘Horizons Of Rock Developing Everywhere’

Here’s a nice shot of Porter getting his first bicycle helmet. Ellisville Police Dept was handing them out weekend before last.

Even though I’d like to have the “HAW HAW! I didn’t need a helmet when I was a kid,” mentality but when I was a kid I could also play kickball in the street. Too many cars now, and too many people don’t pay attention in general.

Trish has talked to Porter so much about wearing helmets that when he sees a kid without one, whether the kid is on a bike, skateboard, etc, he says: “No heh-met. They going fall get hurt?”  Easy as pie.
Hopefully it will be this easy when he starts noticing that some people smoke. I can hear it, “Daddy, smokeeeng bad? Die stinky?”

I digress.

He won’t bang his head too bad falling off his training wheels.

In the same spiral bound notebook that had the first 2 set list, I found this one, from a couple of months later. Shag came in town for it, and Jake, and 4 of his friends were with us. Somehow all 6 of us got in Row 3 with a perfect angle to watch Tori play piano. I got to hear China and Honey and she relented to a peristent fan that kept screaming ‘Song For Eric’. She opened with a cover of Bad Company (which was strange) and had started the tradition of opening each show with a cover of some sort. A lot of those covers made it onto a well circulated tape called Under The Covers. I taped the show with my little Panasonic recording device but it came out not to good as you imagine. I actually found Honey on a tape and ripped it to the hard drive for nostalgia.

The show was grand, but I think I remember the tour of the American Theater more than the show.

Like I said, we were in the 3rd row (heh heh heh) and Shag and I were standing up getting our stretch on before the opener (Peter Stuart, later of Dog’s Eye View) when we had a Rollins-like conversation:

Me: Hey Shag
Shag: Yeah
Me: You see that light right under the stage (there was a thin rail of light indicating space under the stage)
Shag: Yeah
Me: What do you think that is
Shag: That looks like backstage or something Nick.
Me: Do you remember that door in the bathroom.
Shag: The one that looked like a closet door but had a desk in it (we had investigated already)
Me: Yep.
Shag: I bet that door goes to that light
Me: Let’s go check it out.

So we head back to the men’s room for what we expected to be a trip through the looking glass, Jake and his friend’s Andy and Don (the other 2 of his friends were girls and couldn’t partake, na na nana na) joined.

I opened the door, poked my head in to scope the scene, and there was a guy behind the desk who grandly stated. “Welcome to the bowels of the American Theater!” That sounded pretty welcoming so I took a step in and everyone else followed suit.

Turns out he was the maintenance manager and was very gracious about showing us around not backstage, but understage. He did point out a door that went backstage but did so by saying, “I don’t really talk those folks too much.” There was all kinds of stuff scattered about from all of the old seats, the receipt books back to 1910 (which was the earliest I can remember), and as he was talking about the states of repair of different stuff Jake and Andy and I were trying to find small things to steal that wouldn’t be noticed. Since taking a 75 year old folding leather seat was out of the question we grabbed a 1/4″ reel promoting a production of Oklahoma and a stack of business card sized tickets to a Charlie Brown play of some sort. While we were down there when Peter Stuart started his set, and we made it back to our seats in time for the last couple of songs. Then Tori took the stage and performed this set:

American Theater 9-24-94

1. Bad Company
2. Crucify
3. Waitress
4. Icicle
5. Precious Things
6. God
7. Angie
8. Happy Phantom
9. Me & A Gun
10. Bells For Her
11. Cornflake Girl
12. China
13. Honey
14. Silent All These Years
15. Song For Eric

Here’s a detail I almost forgot, and am kind of sorry I remembered it. Tori was doing 2 shows that night and we were at the early one and I remember that she did Purple Rain and Pretty Good Year and I think Past The Mission in the second set. Dammit dammit dammit.

Also, a fun website to browse is Toriset. It has an exhaustive data base of Tori shows and what songs she played where, how often, all that stuff.

I posted yesterday about seeing Aerosmith and the Black Crowes, and as a coincidence that date coincided with our first Tori Amos gig. Here are some hastily put together thoughts.

Only in youth would you have the means and a healthy desire for road trip adventures that would motivate you to drive from St. Louis to Louisville, KY by taking a route directly through Champagne, IL and West Lafayette, IN.

That’s what Alex, Scott, Kyle, Tom, and I did around this time in 1994. The reason for such roundaboutedness was so that we could see our first Tori Amos show.

It was a grand 4 or 5 days of hanging out with my homies and seeing a show by someone who I was verifiably obsessed with. There was something really cool about that show being in a different town.

Tom was attending Purdue at the time and stuck around for the summer. We had a blast hanging out there for a few days. After hanging out during the day and raiding unlocked academic buildings during the wee hours, we caravanned down the length of Indiana to Louisville. Scott and Kyle in his Jeep, Alex and I in his Olds, and Tom and Dan in Tom’s Grand Am.

Much revelry ensued.

We had a little time to hang out in Louisville before the show and took a few pictures, some of which became a series known as U2 Album Covers. Had I noticed this coincidence of dats before yesterday I’d scanned some and posted them along. Maybe in a day or two when I get some time to monkey with our scanner (can’t be too hard)

The McAuley Theater was really nice. Held about as many people as the American Theater here, but with just one balcony that hung out almost as far as the floor seats (where we were swankadelic in the middle of the 8th row).

Tori started a tradition of having a simple songwriter open for her. The opener was a native american called Bill Miller and he was pretty good.

Her performance was everything I wanted it to be, as you can imagine I had very high hopes. The highlights for me were: Silent All These Years (which is probably true for any gig), Bells For Her, China, Precious Things, Baker Baker moistened the eyes a bit, Me & A Gun was very draining (it still is), and Angie (Rolling Stones cover) was fun. Speaking of covers, it was cool to hear American Pie roll into Smells Like Teen Spirit in person. I came out of the show with a new appreciation for Spacedog and Mother and a loathing of Cornflake Girl which continues to this day.

After the show we hung around at the back of the theater and got a couple of pictures of Tori.

If you were there dig upon the set list.

McAuley Theater, Louisville, KY 7-17-94

1. American Pie –>
2. Smells Like Teen Spirit
3. Crucify
4. Icicle
5. Precious Things
6. Waitress
7. God
8. Silent All These Years
9. Happy Phantom
10. Angie
11. Me & A Gun
12. Bells For Her
13. Cornflake Girl
14. China
15. Spacedog
16. Mother
17. Baker Baker

I don’t remember where we did after stalking Tori but Aldon, one of Shag’s friends from Miami Of Ohio, put all of us up in her father’s basement. It was very random and very fun. Tom slept on the bar because the stairs weren’t as comfortable as he thought.

The next morning we got on the road back to St. Louis (Tom and Dan rolled back to Purdue) so we could get back with time to spare to see Tori again, this time at the American Theater. Shannon (Miller), her boyfriend Eevon, and two of his friends joined Scott, Alex and I.

The show was great. I remember it was hot. Bill Miller opened, he did the same set but it was interesting to see the little nuances. I was really happy that she opened with Spacedog since it had been in my head all day. She did a short improv before that has introed the song many times since. While the set list wasn’t too far off Louisville’s she did close the show with Winter (even though a nuclear powered orange light cycled right into our eyes every 4 or 5 seconds) and having heard China the night before, I was quite satisfied hearing the trifecta of contemplative tunes. Leather was really good too.

This is the setlist from here.

American Theater, St. Louis, 7-18-94

1. Improv
2. Spacedog
3. Leather
4. Icicle
5. Precious Things
6. Happy Phantom
7. God
8. Silent All These Years
9. Waitress
10. Bells For Her
11. Me & A Gun
12. Baker Baker
13. Cornflake Girl
14. American Pie –>
15. Smells Like Teen Spirit
16. Angie
17. Winter

There don’t appear to be tapes of either of these shows out in circulation (though I haven’t searched in a while, perhaps i should) so to commemorate this lofty and auspicious occasion here is a live studio version of Baker Baker performed for the NPR show World Cafe in Spring 1994.

Last night before dinner we gave Porter gave some yogurt to munch on while Trish prepared fondue for our dining pleasure.  Porter, seeing that Trish was melting a pot of cheese and cutting up bread and pickles, started spooning the yogurt from his little bowl onto his plate.  He was very casual about it.  When he had completed his task he presented his empty bowl of yogurt and declared, “I all done wif yogurt. Fondoo.”

What?  Little stinkerpotamus (I say in a squeeze-his-chubby-cheeks voice).  Times like this it’s convenient that we don’t have a dog.

As I write this, at 11:30pm, Mike (Winship), Dave, Scott, Alex, Mike (Grasso) & his girlfriend at the time Julie were sitting in the parking lot at The Arena after seeing Aerosmith (with the Black Crowes opening) waiting out the traffic and what was surely a trip to Steak N Shake. No, wait. It wasn’t Steak N Shake, I think it was some fast food joint along Manchester road. We were trying to set off the weight bar so that the drive thru would serve us on foot. I’m sure we could have easily driven thru but what kind of fun was that?

Mike, Dave, Shag, and I were in the 19th row center while Alex, Grasso, and Julie, were somewhere in the middle but in the circle. I seem to remember they were behind where a hockey goal would have been and someone was dishing out pot from a backpack full of the stuff.

The show itself I remember as being very awesome. I was full on into Aerosmith at the time and the band hadn’t quite become the prom ballad machine that I perceive them to be now. I didn’t keep set list when we saw the show but I remember digging the songs Young Lust, Rag Doll, Walk This Way, Dude Looks Like A Lady, and a few others. More than anything though it solidified a love of live music.

I had bought the Black Crowes tape hearing that they were opening for Aerosmith and enjoyed the heck out there set.

Aerosmith data from that era seems hard to come by but I found the Black Crowes’ set list at the tied-for-best Black Crowes website, Crowesbase.

The Black Crowes
17 July 1990
The Arena – St. Louis, MO

1. Thick N’ Thin
2. You’re Wrong (early version of Sting Me)
3. Twice As Hard
4. Sister Luck
5. It’s A Sin
6. Hard To Handle
7. Stare It Cold
8. Jealous Again
9. Struttin’ Blues

To commemorate, here’s the song Live Too Fast Blues from a short, brilliant bootleg that I’m an asshead for selling when I was broke a long time ago. It was recorded in the Soho section of London at Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club. I think I converted the tape I had to a CD but don’t for sure. I’ll have to find it now that I’m motivated.

Another similar post to come.

And you know what this means dontcha? No? Huh. Me neither. I saw on a this-day-in-history sort of sidebar that today is Bastille Day and thought it would be a grand excuse to post a bootleg version of the Rush song ‘Bastille Day’. But, the only Rush bootlegs I’ve got have it as part of a medley, and just about 2 minutes of instrumental. So in honor of Bastille Day, here’s a version of Natural Science from the album Permanent Waves. I’ve always liked that song. It was recorded right here in St. Louis at the Kiel Auditorium on Valentine’s Day 1980. The lyrics are here if you were wondering what the were.

As I made the post about Live Aid I remembered that my radio show, Sleeping On The Sidewalk, ended on this date last year.  The radio station has been on my mind the past month or so since I’ve only been down there a few times in the past year.  Funnily enough it turns out the only time I have is at 2am.  I’ll get back to it eventually in some form or another. 

Here’s the playlist for that last show, which was co-hosted by Alex Miller and a pre-recorded shout out from my brother Jake.  It’s still interesting to me how it was just as much a hodgepodge at the end as it was the beginning.

In a note of sentiment, the show ended exactly as it began:  Alex on the board with me, playing a song that our friends wrote and recorded just for us.  ______________________________________________________________

1. Queen – Sleeping On The Sidewalk (News Of The World)
2. Vallejo – The Crawl (Black Sky)
3. Primus – La Villa Strangiato (Live @ Red Rocks, 6-5-04)
4. Fishbone – Shakey Ground (Psychotic Friends Nuttwerx)
5. Maceo Parker – Maceo’s Groove (Funkoverload)
6. Ani Difranco  – Swing (To The Teeth)
7. Downtime – Lovin’ You (In A Prison Way:  The Blue House Sessions)
8. George Clinton – Get Yo Ass In The Water & Swim Like Me (single for ‘Get Yo Ass…’)
9. Marvin Gaye – Let’s Get It On (demo) (Let’s Get It On, Deluxe Edition)
10. Beck – Debra (Midnite Vultures)
11. Run DMC – Christmas In Hollis (Very Special Christmas 1)
12. Downtime  – Santa Is Your Daddy (Take 10, with trumpet solo) (Downtime’s Christmas Catheter)
13. Goldfinger – Rio (The Duran Duran Tribute Album)
14. Sting & Branford Marsalis – Roxanne (From Live Aid, 7-13-85)
15. The Cars – Just What I Needed (From Live Aid, 7-13-85)
16. David Bowie – Heroes (From Live Aid, 7-13-85)
17. Nellie McKay – I Wanna Get Married (Live at KDHX, 5-10-04)
18. Downtime – Interview (Original ‘Nick & Alex Show’ Audition Tapes)
19. Downtime – Blue House Over Yonder (Original ‘Nick & Alex Show’ Audition Tapes)
20. The Incoherents – Happy Trails  (50 Seconds Of Cacophonous Teenage Rock & Roll Bliss)    (This last song was recorded in Scott’s parent’s basement, it was appropriate to end the show with the friends that I’d enjoyed music with for so many years.)

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P.S. A google turned up that the playlist archive is still on the KDHX server, even though the last entry I put in was July 6.

Live Aid was a big deal to me when it was on 26 years ago today.  It was 1985, summer, the 80′s musical vibe was in full swing and the shows performed at Wembley Stadium in London and at JFK Stadium were a representation of the good and the bad of the era.  MTV had found it’s footing and my memory is that their covereage ruled the day.  Of course Martha Quinn and Co. held more sway over my opinions than whoever the network suit was. 

My own knowledge of music was getting pretty good and I think knowing most of the bands, their songs, and some history made it more fun.  Even more, I watched as much of it as was broadcast and remember how much fun it was to be watching it with Jake (he was 9, I don’t think he watched all of it, but I do remember we were both stoked to see Duran Duran and Phil Collins). 

Nutshell is that I dug the heck out of it.

The song I’m posting from the concert is the only version of Roxanne that I like.  Sting did it solo, as he typically did in this era of his career, and he was accompanied by Branford Marsalis.  It’s very tasteful.  There were a lot of great performances but this is one of only a couple that I’ve ripped from the 2004 DVD.  To my knowledge this arrangement wasn’t performed again until a VH-1 special sometime in the past few years.

It’s interesting to note that organizer Bob Geldof never planned to sell Live Aid material.  He wanted it to be a purely humanitarian effort.  As a result, MTV, NBC, and the BBC for the most part pitched their tapes of the show (if they even recorded it).  With the approaching 25th anniversary and widely available bootlegs of the original broadcast the DVD was compiled with archival b-roll footage and fragments of the main cameras.  The result for me is very interesting because many of the camera angles are from the side or rear of the stage where you can see more of the action.  Not all of the songs or bands are on the 4 disc set, but if you click here you can see the whole dang set list.

Check it out, it’s very interesting.

I recorded this podcast a couple days ago but haven’t posted until now while I finished my other 2.  This is the second podcast of new stuff I mentioned a week or so ago.  It kicks off with a couple of new Pearl Jam tunes (whose website was redesigned and has an extensive set list archive) and ends with a parody of contemporary rap. 

Enjoy!