A Free Man

I’m not sure how to describe Dan Deacon. Wikipedia calls him an absurdist, which puts him in the same category as Camus and Kierkegaard. Deacon’s clever, but this may be a bit of a stretch. I heard of him on NPR’s wonderful music program All Songs Considered where they featured his track “The Crystal Cat”. Something about the bizarre octave shifts and racing rhythm caught my fancy. I discovered I had two other free tracks, “Okie Dokie” and “Snake Mistakes”, both of which I’ve included in this post. “The Crystal Cat” is fantastic, a good, fun, original track. With the second and third tracks, however, the lightness and humor wanes to being vaguely irritating. Dan Deacon is not really my cup of tea - sort of a strange man and his synthesizer. But if you like the other two tracks, the Baltimore-based Deacon’s new album “Spiderman of the Rings” came out earlier this summer. If not, enjoy “The Crystal Cat”.

Dan Deacon photo is from Water Cooler Gossip. Dan Deacon mp3s courtesy of Pitchfork, KEXP and stereogum.

“Spiderman of the Rings” is available at Amazon, eMusic
and .

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“Oxford Town, Oxford Town
Ev’rybody’s got their heads bowed down
The sun don’t shine above the ground
Ain’t a-goin’ down to Oxford Town…”

-Bob Dylan - “Oxford Town”

Baby Z and his Dad are pretty excited about today’s Georgia - Ole Miss game in Athens. First, with a 1 p.m. Eastern kick off, we won’t have to be up in the middle of the night. Second, the Rebels are struggling this year particularly against the pass. We’re hoping that last weeks overtime win in Tuscaloosa gave Dawgs QB Matt Stafford and his receivers some confidence that they’ll bring against Ole Miss today. Lastly, as much as we enjoyed Scott Howard, Zach’s looking forward to hearing Larry Munson’s sonorous tones calling the game this week. May be the last year he gets to hear a legend.

The only worry that we’ve got is that the young Bulldogs might have a bit of a hangover from an upset win last week. Ole Miss played Florida hard and came close to beating them. They’ve lost seven in a row to Georgia and would love to come out of Sanford Stadium as spoiler.

This should be the last week of pieced together Georgia colors as Grandma & Grandpa V. have shipped us some official Dawg gear. But Daddy’s proud of the outfit he combed the Oxford city center for on Friday lunchtime! He was the only guy in any children’s clothes department in the city. Z showed his Bulldog pride this morning by chucking up all over his new outfit. The joys of fatherhood…

Finally, our soundtrack for this post is Bob Dylan’s “Oxford Town”. I reckon there will be a lot of heads bowed down in Oxford, Mississippi this evening. Let’s go Dawgs! Sic ‘em!

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I have been enthralled by the pictures coming out of Burma this week. There is something very emotional about the images of these monks standing up to the military regime that’s running the country. I just find it amazing that these people are willing to put their lives on the line for a political belief. How many of us in the Western world would do the same? It’s easy to get complacent when you’ve got enough food and housing and big cars and Continue Reading »

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One by one the flowers fading in my garden
One by one the leaves are falling from the trees…”

-Woody Guthrie - “One By One”

While walking through the Parks yesterday, I noticed some of the leaves on the trees around Keble starting to turn and drop. Then while biking home last night a little bit late from work I noticed dusk creeping in earlier than what I’ve come to expect.This morning I certainly noticed the biting north wind in Continue Reading »

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More About Wordless Wednesday

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“I only know what I know
The passing years will show
You kept my love so young
So new…”

-Styne & Cahn - “Time After Time”

Sometimes science is about quantifying or providing evidence to support a hypothesis that is fairly obvious. Some people call this “no duh” science; my boss is a bit more colorful - she calls such research “results from the Journal of the Bloody Obvious”. This week, an Australian study in BMC Immunity & Ageing treads on this territory. But the role for “bloody obvious” research is to provide empirical evidence and sometimes a scientific explanation for things that everyone “knows” but no one has “proven”. It’s probably pretty universally accepted that long term drug addiction is not Continue Reading »

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“Just can’t find the time
To write my mind
The way I want it to read ”

-Wilco - “Box Full of Letters”

I found myself in a quandary this week. Frequent readers of this site will now that Mondays have been dedicated to reviews of new albums. However, since Z’s come along and I’ve realized just how many diapers we’ll be going through, I’ve decided to temporarily curtail my new music spending. So welcome a new feature which, if one were of a cynical bent, could be called Old Music Monday.

I prefer to think of it as a musical history for my son. A year or so ago I stumbled on a wonderful podcast called Dancing About Architecture, described as a musical Continue Reading »

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Before I start with Heavy Trash can I just make a plea to all the musicians out there - please do not put your music on autoplay on your websites. If I want to listen to your tracks I will push play, if I don’t you will just annoy me and make me go elsewhere. At the very least, have the volume low so you don’t wake my 10 day old baby who I am trying to get to sleep!

If, like me, you have a baby you’re trying to get to sleep or you just don’t want to be assaulted by extremely loud music, mute the volume on your computer before clicking on the Heavy Trash website. I’m slightly annoyed with this band right this minute, but while screening the free MP3s of this week “Outside Chance” caught my ear. It’s sort of garage blues sounds and raspy voiced vocalist reminded me a lot of the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion. Therefore a remarkable lack of surprise when I found out that Heavy Trash is a collaboration of Spencer and a guy who I’ve not heard of, Matt Verta-Ray from a band called Speedball Baby. Spencer was big in the early nineties, coming out of the DC scene in a band called Pussy Galore before striking out with the Blues Explosion. They put together a couple of really strong albums, but I’ve not heard anything from Spencer for a while.

“Going Way Out With the Heavy Trash” is the duo’s second album and was released earlier this month in the UK. I probably won’t buy the album because honestly from what I hear from this track it’s not that different from the couple of Blues Explosion albums I already have (and they woke up my baby with their website). But if you’re a hardcore Spencer fan or like what you hear from this track, check it out.

“Going Way Out With The Heavy Trash is available from and Amazon.

Buying music supports artists. This song is up for listening purposes only for a short time. If you’re an artist or label who wants the song taken down, please e-mail me: cdv[at]chrisdellavedova[dot]com. If you would like your MP3 reviewed on this site, please contact me at the same address.

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Baby Z barely stirred in his Dad’s arms at 4 this morning when Scott Howard screamed “TOUCHDOWN!!!” and his Daddy danced around the living room. I guess he’s a bit young to appreciate the excitement of knocking off Alabama in Tuscaloosa in overtime. Georgia managed to throw away a two score lead in the fourth quarter. But on the Bulldogs’ first play from scrimmage, Matthew Stafford lofted one to Mikey Henderson who miraculously caught the ball. The ESPN video is available here. Go Dawgs!

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Georgia versus Alabama tonight! Z and I are pretty nervous about the Dawgs going over to Tuscaloosa to take on Nick Saban and the Tide. Georgia’s won the last two meetings, but Alabama leads the series and hasn’t lost three in a row since 1916.

We’re still piecing together game day Georgia gear for Z. He wants to say thanks to Aish for the onesie and Alex & Nichole for the black pants.

Georgia at Alabama kicks off at 1:45 a.m. British Summer Time (thanks ESPN) but the good thing is that Zach prefers to sleep days right now, so he’ll kindly wake me up to listen to the game. This will be the first Georgia game I’ll ever listen to without Larry Munson calling the game. I remember driving back from north Florida to Athens in November of ‘98. Larry got me so hyped up during the Georgia Tech game that I had to pull off the interstate somewhere in south Georgia to listen to the fourth quarter. Scott Howard and Eric Zeir have some big shoes to fill!

Most folks have the Tide as big favorites in this one, but ‘Bama fans may bear Neil Young’s warning in mind:

“Oh Alabama
The devil fools
with the best laid plan…”

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