The Power is On

The power went out last night as we were across the street buying a tub of water ice. The storm came up on is like a freight train, and by the time the front fdoor was open, the normally magmaesque A/C-less Cobra-La was completely cooled down by gusts of wind that had already knocked over hald the shit in the living room. At first I was bummed by the whole thing, but as usual my grownup instincts kicked in and told me "light the grill, cook up some sausage and make yourself a drink". and from there the night was allllright. The whole neighborhood appeared on their front porches and made conversation. We ate on the porch and fucked around with a giant spider, feeding it moths and cheesy poofs, and then played Uno. I didn't even know I owned Uno, but there it was, still in its wrapping from when my mom gave it to me 2 christmases ago. I fell asleep without music or TV background which hasn't happened since summers in high school when I had an army of crickets waiting outside my window. It was a nice evening all around. I wonder if insomnia was at all common before the advent of electricity. I'm sure it existed, but I bet the internet and cable TV made it exploide like a virus, piping sleepless hours into households all across the world. I guess Crystal Meth might've contributed to it as well.
Right before I went to bed I write a little poem:

Lying awake in my useless kitchen;
even the fridge has lost its begrudged hum.
I wonder if the frontier sounded like this at night;
only without the chainsaws of the workmen
up the street.

Anyways, I've got 2 announcements. I've been trying to change some things on the template of this page, just little superficial stuff, but my html is the ultimate suck, so if everything looks crazy just cut me some slack for a little bit.
also, as of this morning my ipod was destroyed, along with scores of non-backed up songs that I was planning on posting here. You're gona have to bear with me, but in the meantime there might be (even more) less interesting songs here, and possible fewer of them. I don't know, I have yet to take a complete inventory of the situation. So yeah, just bear those in mind for a little while.

The first Sweet Relief album had a pretty massive impact on me when I was 15, and probably for a while after that. I don't think i'm alone in this, either. I think I fell in love for the first time listening to it, and there was a two year period where every mixtape I made had a track from it. I'm pretty sure I hadn't heard a single Victoria Williams song at the time (and haven't heard that many since, to be honest), in fact I'm pretty sure I bought it because of the Pearl Jam and Lou Reed songs, but the standout track for me was the Jayhawk's "Lights". It remains to me their finest moment, a quality that singer Mark Olson's marriage to Victoria Williams didn't tarnish any. The tone of that guitar solo remains one of my favorite sounds ever coaxed from the instrument. Lou Reed sounded like a craggy old man (and this was 4 years after he'd released the only solo album of his that I knew at the time), but it totally works for him here. Thinking about it now, you'd think I would've run out to buy the sequel to this, but by that point I was pretty well steeped in sock snobbery and a disdain for R.E.M., so i guess it make sense.

"Tarbelly & Featherfoot" - Lou Reed

"Lights" - The Jayhawks
But Sweet Relief: A Benefit for Victoria Wiliams here