"a radical statement about the possibilities of heaviness"

A gecko displaced by the fall garden cull.

Last night:
Vic Chesnutt, At the Cut
Giant Sand, Swerve
Smoke, It's Smoke Time

This afternoon:
Vanilla Fudge, Vanilla Fudge
Wilco, The Whole Love (streaming at NPR)
Frank Black and the Catholics, Pistolero

• I don't know I wholly agree with JFRARRAR's assessment of Vanilla Fudge on the Rhapsody site, but I'd love for any product of my creativity to one day been described as "a radical statement about the possibilities of heaviness".
   
• I'm going to hold my comments on the new Wilco for the 225 blog except that at one point I thought, this sounds like a Seal record. I'll have it be known that two of my good friends from high school play in Seal's current band and were my musical influences to be cut up like a pizza, those two friends each have a bigger slice than Wilco does. So there's that.
    
• Upon my announcing Vic Chesnutt's demise at the coffee shop like some breathless page from dispatched from a distant kingdom, a friend of mine replied, " I went to see Night of the Iguana with Vic Chesnutt." which sounds like something to have on one's cultural resume. I thought while listening to Giant Sand on the long, dark Interstate bridge across the Atchafalaya Swamp, I could do this! I want to do this! but of course I cannot nor will I. Giant Sand's Howe Gelb wants you to think these thoughts and then realize that's all they are, thoughts you have, while he turns similar thoughts of his directly into songs. I picture sausage grinder being used in his process, but I'm likely romanticizing. This song sounds great driving across a swamp in the dark.
  
  
  Giant Sand, "Angels at Night"
    
• I remembered Jack Pendarvis describing in a article something Howe Gelb did as, "such a Howe Gelb thing to do" and then I remembered Jack mentioning Atlanta band Smoke to me once and I was all Smoke! and dialed them up. The first song title seemed like kismet!
  
  
  Smoke, "My Friend Jack"
  
  I realized I had the wrong Smoke. This happened once before with the Jody Grind, another band from that same conversation with Jack.
     
• I turned off the wrong Smoke and started making up a Giant Sand-ish song about things falling. The song was pretty bad, but I like one bit about a cop who fell asleep at a donut shop counter with his gun about to fall out of his holster and thought Pistolero!  The second Frank and the Catholics album might just be the sharpest arrow in Charles Michael Kittridge Thompson IV's vast quiver! If I may mix up my weapon metaphors. Which I can. No matter what Howe Gelb or anybody says.
  
  
  Frank Black & the Catholics, "Western Star"