The Tabasco peppers are the really tiny orange and red ones.

I removed about 12 Tabasco pepper plants from the beds today. I’m just never going to get around to making my own sauce. And the damn things are too hot to eat otherwise. I’m really looking forward to filling those beds with something I can eat, or something that looks better than a bunch of half frost-bitten Tabasco pepper plants. And I wrote this song today, if you can call it that.

Blog post title inspired by R.E.M. song of the same name. Speaking of R.E.M., the decided to call it a day on Sept. 21, when I had this conversation on Facebook.

I got her The Beatles and John Lennon albums she didn’t have, and now our Beatles collection is complete.

Out in the streets, where I grew up (How I got over)
The first thing they teach you is not to give a f- (How I got over)
That type of thinking will get you nowhere (somebody, somewhere)
Someone has to care

How you get over? Are we “running out of time out here”? The struggle is alive and well and the Next Movement is back to remind us of it with a 42-minute album that will keep your head checkin’ it and your soul questionin’.

But you’ll keep coming back to this title track, about these damn cold streets, where “every man is for himself” and this “warzone” — this endless war on our poor. “Where no body cares about you, only thing you’ve got is God.” After hearing it, you’ll be thankful for someone to worry about you.

With featured guests like Monsters of Folk, John Legend and Joanna Newsome, The Roots prove they’re more than just another late night house band — they’re great collaborators, making something more powerful than any one of them solo.

On “Dear God 2.0,” they loop Jim James and make a weak song shine — with a slower delivery and some rare-for-their-genre self introspection.

On “Right On,” Joanna Newsome gets “we should shine a light on” stuck in your head and it makes you want to go out and change the world.

On “Walk Alone,” Black Thought gets his “Charlie Parker on” and sing the blues.

And they’re still doing what they do best: keeping it positive with tracks like “Hustla” and “The Fire” and “rising out of the flames like a Phoenix,” like in “Doin’ it Again.”

Face it — I keep doing it well.
Doin’ it sans assistance
Just do it yourself
Doin’ it below the radar, we doin’ it stealth
Doin’ it again for Illadelph, yo who else?

These are songs that leave you proud to have overcome. That give you comfort for being among those who got over. You’ll be celebrating — and cerebrating — “The Fire.”

There’s something in your heart
And it’s in your eyes. It’s the fire. Inside ya.
Let it burn
You don’t say good luck.
You say don’t give up.

Word. You’ll be playing it again.

A lot can happen in 14 years, and I’m sad to report that there is no powerhouse well-written single like “Trippin’ on a Hole in a Paper Heart” or “Vaseline” on the new record.

There’s a lot of what you’d expect, though — some crunchy, roarin’ rock songs from two brothers and a recovering rock star.

The disc opens with “Between the Lines,” with Scott Weiland belting:

“I like it when you talk about love
You always were my favorite drug.
Even when we used to take drugs.”

I bet you’ll be hearing a few of the more infectious cuts off this record on your mainstream radio, including the first single “Between the Lines.” The video of which, found on their website, features what you’d expect of the band made famous by MTV: An attractive model who keeps putting on her clothes and an aging Weiland withering and waltzing to the music.

Other radio-worthy gems: “Hickory Dichotomy,” “Cinnamon,” and “Maver,” the last of which closes out the disc and is a song that has it all — including ponies and pendejos — and the ever-important question, “How many nights did you make it without it?”

Of course, it wouldn’t be a STP record if there weren’t some pretty ridiculous songs thrown in the mix. For instance, “Dare if you Dare” must be one of the lamest songs I’ve ever heard. Ever. I won’t even dignify “Bag Man” with my criticism, let’s just pretend that track was never pressed.

All in all, I’m glad the band that got me through junior high alive and emotionally accessible is back at it again. It’s good to hear old friends again, even if on “First Kiss on Mars” someone sounds a  little too much like Bowie, in a stab at a radio-friendly summer love song complete with “super magic robots” and a free “solar system.”

If the album were to hinge on one thought, it’d be a line from the second track “Take a Load Off,” an otherwise boring song: “Could our shattered past just set us free?”

Here’s hoping that Weiland stays in the studio and out of the jailhouse.

Buy the deluxe edition. The live material and the added cut “Samba Nova” is worth the extra scratch.

Like in “12 Gracious Melodies” on Purple Weiland takes the opportunity to croon on the bonus track:

“You can always buy a new lie
When yours is finally over
Either way you’ll find a new life
When yours is finally over.”

OK OK OK, before we go any further, the obligatory disclaimer: She ain’t doin’ nuthin new. See Elton John, Madonna, Cher plus countless others who arguably have done it better. But, they did it then. This is now.

I mean, seriously. We have a disaster fustercluck in the Gulf. We have a liberal president who all my extremist wacko relatives hate — passionately — yet, we’re still entangled in two endless wars, the economy’s still  a flatliner, and all we got is some minor gains in the student loan and debit card rackets. Social security? Still broken, we won’t see any of it. And we have a fustercluck in the gulf. And tar balls in Galveston! And we’re all oil-guzzling accessories to it, one could argue, or …

We can listen to Lady Gaga, singing:

“Sorry I can’t hear you I’m kinda busy.
…
Stop calling, stop calling, I don’t want to think anymore.
I left my head and my heart on the dance floor.”

Play that “Telephone” track, and like — heh — who cares if John Cornyn’s about to throw a hissy-fit on the senate floor over Elena Kagan, lowering himself to Orrin Hatch’s level. I mean, I’m kinda busy.

On “Dance in the Dark,” she advises:

Find your freedom in the music.
Find your Jesus. Find your Cupid.

Nevermind Rick Perry. Maybe “Monster” applies:

“He ate my heart.
He ay-eight-hate my heart
That boy is a monster.”

At least, the last poll I saw, reported Bill White’s neck and neck. Hope, you see, is on the horizon, see: “So Happy I Could Die.”

“Happy in the club with a bottle of red wine
stars in our eyes because we’re having a good time”

She could reveal more with her lyrics, and less with her costumes. Well, i guess you can’t have it all.

“On our first flash of freedom
I called out your name
love it is hard like an overdue train
we felt so much more than our hearts could explain”

Now, compare those lines with the opening lines sung by Jim Morrison in The Doors’ “Waiting for the Sun.” I have taken the liberty to bold the identical words.

“At first flash of Eden, we race down to the sea
standing there on Freedom‘s Shore
waiting for the sun”

Is this a coincidence?

Could Petty and Mike Cambell, the song’s composers, be paying homage to the great Doors anthem?

Morrison asks, “Can you feel it now that spring has come? And it’s time to live in the scattered sun…” while Petty is more interested in “A fistful of glory; a suitcase of sin / The rain which you dream in / When you count to ten.”

“First Flash of Freedom” clocks in at almost seven minutes, and being the first cut of the Heartbreakers’ new record that was released, it was a clear sign to fans and the critics that their new album Mojo is an exercise in self-indulgence and a good study of several jam genres.

On “Don’t Pull Me Over,” what some critics have called a cheesy Rastafarian ripoff, Petty actually sings “(it) should be legalized.”

“When the moonlight turns to blue light
makes me so afraid
let me go, leave me alone
until I’m warm and safe”

Sure — it’s cheesy, but you’ll be rockin’ your head at the riff at the concert.

And “Candy?” I think it’s a track written with the sole purpose of allowing Petty to flex his drawl, and sing about “turnip greens” — previously uncharted territory for Petty and his southern jam band — which he pronounces “toynup grayns.”

Mojo wasn’t penned for the radio — it was penned for the road, for a summer tour that stops in Houston in September. It was supposed to stop here in May, in The Woodlands, but the record wasn’t released on time which pushed back several tour dates and which means that the Houston audience gets to see ZZ-Top open instead of previously scheduled Joe Crocker.

Mojo was released June 15, and it’s the band’s first album in 8 years since 2002′s The Last DJ.

He puts the best song he’s penned since “Square One,” from his 2006 solo effort Highway Companion, in the second-to-last spot on the record. “Something Good Coming” will strike a nerve.

“And I’m an honest man
work’s all I know
you take that away
don’t know where to go

and I know that look that’s on your face
there’s somethin’ lucky about this place
there’s somethin’ good comin’
for you and me
somethin’ good comin’
there has to be”

Kim and I had a chance to drop by their offices recently for a cake testing and they made two giant cakes for us to sample and showed us a portfolio of their work.

I hate to spoil the cake before it’s baked, so I think all I’m allowed to say is that Kim’s will be white and mine will be chocolate.

I was really impressed with the owner’s cake portfolio and professionalism and look forward to the masterpiece her staff will be creating for our special day.

We took home a lot of cake after our tasting at Sweet Tooth.

Also, songs that were rejected today for consideration for the wedding reception playlist:

• Table and Chairs – Andrew Bird
• Waltz #2 – Elliott Smith
• Sugar Magnolia – Grateful Dead
• Flowers and Liquor – Hayes Carll
• Burn the Honeysuckle – The Gourds
• Voodoo Chile – Jimi Hendrix

It will blow your mind.

I artistically altered the short clip from the bootleg using audacity, providing for an echo effect and a cross fade in during the fret scratching part. Best. Guitarist. Ever.

Download here: ~~~~* voodoo *~~~~

Kim and I on the hill at The Woodlands Pavilion

Well, getting out of the reserve parking garage ($15: for the privilege) was the worst nightmare ever, we were all the way at the top of the darn garage and it must have been 45 minutes before we could even get in the exiting line. There were other traffic jams elsewhere, thanks to the cops’ strategic decision to route traffic away from Woodlands Parkway, but a few turns away from the herd found us on that main road and onto the freeway while others probably waited another 20 minutes just to get to the feeder road.

I think the musical climax of the evening was when one of his backup singers, who’s from Houston, led the other stage performers in a Tina Turner-esque rendition of Proud Mary.

Apparently, someone bootlegged it and it’s up on YouTube, but I can’t vouch for the quality because, hell, I was there. No need to see it again. It appears to be an amateurish capture from the hill, which is where I was, just a little to the right of that obnoxious guy with the foreign flag who kept outstretching it and pissing off all the old people whose view he blocked.

I’m serious, a few of those old Rod Stewart fans almost threw down.

Rod played all the songs that I knew he was famous for, including that Van Morrison song “Have I Told You Lately” that kick-started his career once again when he did it on MTV Unplugged. I think that’s how the story goes. I dunno. He also sang that Creedence Clearwater Revival “Have you Ever Seen the Rain” song, I think it’s on his new (covers) record. He tossed around a few of Sam Cooke’s hits, too.

I could have done without all the soccer video montages and the constant stripteases … but his computer animated video intro was so … adorable. I can’t find it on the web, so I guess you just kind of had to be there.

He only performed one encore song – Maggie May – and then the large screen behind him lit up with “Mr. Stewart has left the building.” Kind of rude, but hell – it was Houston in July.

Stick with the little guy, I thought. Of course, if I really cared about the little guy, I would have stuck with Juno. Does anybody remember Juno? I think it pre-dated GeoCities – and, yes, that was my first web space provider.

Juno was a dial-up ad-based system. You dialed up. It spat out your e-mail, then, disconnected. If you were lucky, and if the seven Houston numbers you had pre-programmed in weren’t busy. Man, those were the days.

But anyway, I remember having Yahoo mail back when you had, like, only a little bit of space. I was constantly deleting messages to keep from going over my limit. Then, one day, they opened up the floodgates … and now, size is no longer an issue. But I shouldn’t say that. You can only send like 20MB in one e-mail. Want twice that? You need to buy their premium product for like $20-30 a year, I believe. The premium product also allows you to export the e-mail into something like Mozilla’s Thunderbird and/or Microsoft Outlook. I’m pretty sure this used to be a free feature. Man, I should have configured it before they made it a revenue stream.

A screenshot of a Yahoo Mail fail.

Today’s news that Yahoo will be incorporating Bing into its search system is likely what has my Yahoo mail on the fritz. It’s also probably why the search function on the Yahoo Groups has sucked for about a year or more … or, maybe like so many other Yahoo products, maybe they’ve just abandoned the Yahoo Groups Search function. It makes trying to moderate a group like VINELIST pointless … so I don’t, really, anymore.

Random thought of the moment: I miss San Antone.

Yahoo’s e-mail service is dead in the water so often lately – and so is it’s stock price, after today’s news. And I’m thinking about jumping. I guess it’s time for me to get a gmail account. Sigh. Maybe I’ll pay the premium fee for a Yahoo account, export all my e-mail to a client like ThunderBird, then I’ll get a free e-mail service that will also allow me to export to said client. With Google Wave coming up, and my current addiction to Google Reader, why the hell not jump onto the Google wagon. It’s not like they’re a large evil corporation or anything. Crap. brandonmoeller@gmail.com is already taken. What. The. Hell. Sigh.

That’s the feeling I was trying to convey by attending Saturday night’s Buxton 7″ release show at Mango’s on Westheimer.

Proof I'm a scenester: Look at all my summertime scene loot ... Two Buxton 7-inches (Kim joined me for the show), Buxton's A Family Light (up top), and the ArtStorm Summer Exposure compilation.

For those who may not know what Mango’s is, let’s just say it’s that bar next to Helios – the two-story which used to be called The Mausoleum – and Mango’s has it’s own sordid and at times vacant-real-estate history. Mango’s used to be called The Oven, a name that’s a little more apt for all the sweat that poured out of me in the crowded-past-capacity-bursting-at-the-seems-someone-for-the-love-of-god-call-the-freaking-fire-marshall Buxton show.

I didn’t know who the hell Buxton was before the summer started, and then one day – around June 10 to be exact – there I was, poring over my RSS feeds, minding my own business, when all of a sudden out of the blue IndieHouston.org celebrated some new compilation coming out of some local outfit called ArtStorm. The original IndieHouston.org post, which had four embedded songs included with it, has since been removed – replaced later with a post that looks identical on July 8.

The compilation was advertised as super cheap ($4), and so I went to the ArtStorm site, put it in my cart, realized I also needed to cough up shipping ($3), flinched but didn’t yield, and then more than a week later, the CD finally arrived.

Note to ArtStorm, or whoever handles your orders for you: I’m on to you. I send CDs through the mail – a lot – and one CD plus a little bit of packaging (the comp comes in a paper sleeve) costs less than $2. Hope you enjoy handling my extra $1.50, and thanks for the speedy service.

But I digress. It’s an awesome compilation, and I’m really glad ArtStorm cares enough about us Houston scenesters to enlighten us with it. “Doctor” by Buxton has to be one of the catchiest and funnest song I’ve heard all year. And I listen to a lot of songs.

The compilation got me interested in Buxton. So, I checked out their gig (though a mistake for listening to music, I couldn’t really hear what the hell anybody was saying in that place! See my comments on this review here). While waiting for them to come on, I heard Wild Moccasins (read more and download three tracks here and one more track here), and they were freaking awesome. After listening to the aforementioned tracks I downloaded after the show, their lyrics ain’t bad, either. Couldn’t really hear them at the show, though. Maybe I’m old.

But the show allowed me to walk away with Buxton’s new 7″ – including “Feathers” and “Flint” (including a download URL so I can snag the tunes without dusting off a record player that, uh, I actually don’t own) – and I agree with those calling for “Feathers” to be song of the year. Also snagged their 2008 release A Family Light and it’s very impressive. Compared to the new 7″, though, it’s like Summerteeth meets A Ghost is Born. Look at me. Fitting in so well with this whole scene thing.

But we’ll never return to Mango’s for a big show. Maybe lunch. Or a drink. But never something as big as Buxton.

I’ve just uploaded all the vacation photos, from the first day, here.

Aren't we cute?

On another note, the world cried today because there was some kind of celebratory event at the Staples Center in Los Angeles. *Shrugs*

“Whatever, Al Sharpton – and stop hollering. There’s plenty strange about your daddy, and he ain’t even your daddy.” -Kim

Right?

Correct?

Uh huh?

What?

They were playing that scary Barbara Walters interview from 1997 tonight. Woah. The man did best staying quiet and secluded.

Everyone – even critics I respect – call his early work very influential and essential to every collection. I don’t own a lick of it. And that’s OK. (Yeah, it was one of those things I was not allowed to experience, considering his debut video was associated with the occult, he didn’t sing Christian music and he was, uh, different from what I was allowed to enjoy culturally, which really was nothing except for G.I. Joe and John Wayne movies. Don’t ask.)

Whatever. Here’s a bunch of links I’ve been meaning to share.

• Your photos, presented in a timeline. Free to $40/month. Hmmmm.
• New Wilco song “You Never Know” gets me all apathetic and such as if I needed help.
• New New Yorker fiction: Should I read this? Has anybody else? Sigh. Six pages, I need some friggin’ time, people!
• One out of 20 confirms I’m still not a geek. (Yes, I like IMing the loved one sitting next to me) Doh! Gotta work on that, I suppose.
• Esteemed New Yorker music critic Frere Jones calls  Sonic Youth’s Eternal her favorite in a long time.
• Trent is back! Sorry, I still don’t care.
• Laid-off Chicago Tribune reporter calls “bullshit”  – and he doesn’t miss newspapers
• Meanwhile, in magazines: Easy come, easy go
• I never knew bacon could be so scary.
• When Michael Jackson dies, the world turns to the web, and a little piece of the web dies. Meanwhile, I was driving home, thinking about rain. That never came. Sigh.

Which is sad, because Kim found me on MySpace but now we spend all of our time on Facebook and … well, Kim only found me on MySpace because I was smart enough to use my own name and she could have also found me through www.brandonmoeller.com but, I mean, well … man! I’m a geek.

Meanwhile, Facebook is gobbling up the audience of people who want to connect to their friends on a social network. It could easily be replaced by the next big thing that also can’t figure out how to make money, but that’s not Twitter because Twitter is useless.

Jeff, over at Broken Record, argues that MySpace should concentrate on what Facebook never figured out how to do: Music and performance art.

“I’ve thought for a while now that MySpace should consider focusing primarily on entertainment – movies, music, comedians, etc. There is a real opportunity to fill a void, particularly since they have the interface and the fan base already in place. It’s doubtful they’ll follow that advice, but a site with the size and resources of MySpace could dominate online music.”

I agree with Jeff (and I commented on his blog) … but one of the reasons I dread touching MySpace is because it allows its users to do some very uncouth (rhymes with Sonic Youth) things, like installing way too many bandwidth-clogging graphics and cringe-worthy design.

MySpace: A place for music logo.

I guess we’ll just have to see if Murdoch’s MySpace can recover from its downhill trend in a Facebook world … and what it might mean for local indie artists like Chase Hamblin, who doesn’t really have his new album online and available anywhere but MySpace and a handful of brick and mortar shops in Houston. Sigh. And it’s too bad, I’d order his new one if I could, but don’t really wanna hear it thru MySpace at this moment. And, I won’t be able to make Friday’s CD release party at the Continental Club.

Bearkat110 is a novice gardener just like me and she frequently offers some great posts about her captivating work in progress in Spring, Texas.

Her post starts off:

My stomach hurts and I am sitting here ready to break into tears…..

I asked my landscaper to trim up my yard before he put mulch down.

Look at what I came home to. Every where I look, I see the hacking.

The photo she posts with her blog brought me to tears, too, and it reminded me of a recent hack job I got at a local car repair shop that I trusted.

But after my experience, and about a gazillion dollars later, I will never take my car back there. Because I no longer trust them.

Here’s why. One day, I raced a co-worker to the parking lot as we were free from another day at the factory. I let him pull out first and I was following, until my whole power failed in my prized 2003 PT Cruiser and I coasted to a nearby parking spot 20 feet from where I started.

The car was towed to this shop I had frequented for the oil change because of their cheap advertised specials. The shop is Auto Care USA, 5757 Reading Road in Rosenberg, and they haven’t been there more than three years. New building, many nice bays, always have the history channel on in there and the place is cool. I liked it.

I arranged to meet the guy there the next morning; I was there when he got there at opening time, sharp.

Twenty minutes later, he came and assessed me of the situation.

Said that there timing belt done broke and that’s why the car wouldn’t start. Said most of my cost would be in labor, taking apart a PT Cruiser to get to the belt was no easy task (hell, changing the batter on this thing ain’t no easy task – that took me more than an hour one cold, cold morning in some corporate media parking garage). Said I might as well replace parts X, Y and Z while they were in there.

Said it was going to come to some astronomical figure that I can’t even disclose here in fear that male mechanically-inclined friends and family will publicly mock me.

But I am not mechanically inclined. I am service inclined. I am a web mechanic, but I don’t get my hands dirty. I can trouble spot and manipulate and fix some pretty nasty code, though, but if my fixes are going to change the function of the website or drastically alter the design, I’m going to clear that with my client first, because there’s nothing worse than doing a bunch of coding without communicating.

And so when this clown told me I was in for quite a repair bill, I told him that there was something I wanted fixed while he was in there. Hell, add it to the bill, I said. And then, I went out to the bay and with a flashlight, I showed him a wire that connects to the starter that has been frayed for about a year now. Every now and then, whenever I have somewhere important to go in a hurry, this wire will spazz out on me and I’ll have to open my hood and reach my hand down there in a very tight spot and wiggle the damn thing. I told him to fix it. The guy next to him said, well, we could just put some electric tape … and I stopped him and I sternly told him to order the part with the other parts they had to order and install it.

The repairs took longer than estimated. The time they projected came and went, I had to call them to get appraised of the situation. I missed two days of work. And close to closing time the second day, they called and said it was ready to be picked up.

When I got there, they told me they had noticed my A/C wasn’t blowing too cold, and so they said they recharged it for me and they’re looking for the leak. I told them that it was no bother, and that I’d like to pay and go. So I paid and went.

The next day in the garage, the car wouldn’t start. Popped the hood, and there was some electric tape on that part starring at me. I gave it a wiggle. Cranked right up.

Four days later, my car was blowing hot air. And in Houston, that hurts. I was beyond pissed. I think these guys wrecked my A/C system. I think they recharged it – without my permission, and when they did, they blew a hole in my hose. Or. maybe they just exacerbated an existing problem. I don’t care. You do not mess with a closed system in my car unless it fails – that’s my motto. Perhaps it’s a silly personal superstition, but it’s my superstition and they did not communicate anything to me before doing it.

And then, six days after the very very very unpleasant expensive repair, my oil light would start binging at me after extensive driving. That never happened before, either.

And so the other day I posted this to Bearkat110′s blog, which should now make more sense, with all this long-winded background:

brandonmoeller wrote:

Fire ‘em. If they want your continued business, they should have communicated with you thoroughly about what you want. I bet they’ll want to communicate when you tell them they’re fired (if you bother to communicate to them, heck – they didn’t bother to offer that favor to you by clarifying your wishes with you). If you must, you can communicate “it’s too late, pals.” I recently had a lot of work done on my car. I went in the garage and specifically told them a part I wanted replaced. They said they’d add it to the extensive repairs I was getting. They didn’t. I haven’t been back since. And I didn’t communicate why to them. They should know.

Roy’s Auto Care, 5050 Highway 36 in Rosenberg, took my car in and couldn’t find the A/C leak at first. But they were able to clean what appeared to be a oily mess that was making my oil light sensor act all haywire. So they recharged the A/C system and charged me a fair and modest fee. A week later, when the A/C system went kaput again, they did find the worn out hose and they replaced it, and after everything was back together, they noticed a little bit of fluid escaping from the A/C dryer. But, a week later, Roy basically refused to let me schedule that part to be replaced – he said, “Let’s play it by ear.” And he was right. If we’re gonna have to replace that part down the road, anyway, which requires recharging the A/C system, then let’s go ahead and wait until it all escapes out anyway.

That was about a month ago now. It’s still blowing cold. There’s nothing better than finding a mechanic you can trust, who charges a reasonable rate and who can properly communicate and listen.

P.S. In the random department, part one: It’s comforting to know we can only move at the speed of light.

P.S.S. Trent Reznor nailed it: “Idiots rule.”

P.S.S.S. New Danger Mouse out, but the music’s not in the stores. It’s here – “Danger Mouse” “Dark Night of the Soul” torrent – throw this into a Google search field, then download the torrent from The Pirate Bay. Some interesting fan commentary there, too. 209 seeds when I jumped on. 250 two minutes later when I jumped off.

I haven’t been that good of a moderator, ever since a co-moderator split to concentrate on cabin songwriting (No hard feelings about him splitting, either – man the music he’s making is great), and as such the activity on the list hasn’t been too exciting as of late. I wouldn’t say our group is in decline because we’ve had more messages posted in 2007 than ever before, in fact the group has improved under my leadership.

Not that I’m to credit. It was started by a great person who had to leave it for personal reasons, but before he did he asked who wanted to help out. Being new to the hobby again, and believing one can never have too many friends, I volunteered, and so did about four other people and so we had a quasi-Committee of leadership.

But then, one by one, the authority dwindled, and I’m the sole surviving leadership figure, though I probably don’t deserve to be. I don’t police the group as much as I should and I haven’t been doing what the last moderator who split thought every member should do: Offer up a lot of good music regularly.

For those who may not know – and who have patiently read this far in an effort to understand what the hell I’m talking about – it works like this: A VINELIST member posts a message to the group, which can be received in group members’ e-mail in-boxes or just read from our archive Web site, and the message is basically a listing of the bootleg concert the member is offering to the group. It lists the date of the show, the artist(s), the set list – basically, all the info that is known about the show to the collector. And in that message, there’s typically a variation of the following: “This one goes to the first with an address and a promise.” You see, the first member who replies to that message with a promise to re-post to the group when the receive it, and their mailing address so the offering member can know where to send it, gets it. And, it keeps being offered up over and over by members until it has reached everybody in the group who is interested in it.

But lately, not many people have been offering up new vine offers, and I likely know the reason why … it’s very time-consuming and actually, a little bit expensive. I mean for me, the hobby means I have to always have on hand: blank CDs, packaging tape, bubble envelopes, a case to put my CDs in and sleeves to put CDs in that I’m sending to other people. I can probably count on both hands the number of really active members we have, but we’re a pretty tight-knit group and I have actually befriended many people thanks to it all. (But only one was kind enuff to send a Christmas card, which was actually just a lot of bootleg concerts in an envelope.)

Anyway, I’m glad to have kicked out about 8 new offers this week (in case you care: they are a little Dylan, some
classic David Grissman and his quintet, a Drive-By Truckers quickie performed two days before the birth of
my daughter, the aforementioned Conor Oberst, a Warren I’ll-Sleep-When-I-Die Zevon boot, 9 CDs from Janis Joplin – all squeezed onto a DVD data disc titled Blow Away My Blues, and some great outtakes from The Beatles), it makes me feel like I’m contributing to the vast illicit underground library of bootleg recordings, which I have tapped numerous times to enrich my own library and I guess this long-winded post is just a sort of vow to try to keep improving the group this year, even though most people are moving toward doing nothing but online swapping over bit torrent and other high-speed Internet technologies.

I guess my new-found interest in doing what I should have been doing all along is spurred by this year’s New Year Resolution, which was composed on the spot when a person asked me what mine was.

Background: The person who asked me is someone I admire, a real hard worker – the type who does their best every day and never seeks recognition for what they should be doing, anyway. So when she asked me what my resolution was – which, is quite the personal question so it caught me off guard and I only answered because I’m the type of person who will give a well-thought out answer to a question posed by someone whom I respect, though most would tend to just brush it off with a string of cliches – I kind of sorta fumbled, and said, not likely as coherently: “Well, I dunno, I quit smoking last year, and that resolution took all year to realize ((It’s true folks, not one cigarette so far this year! Cigars – well, they’re not cigarettes!)) and so I guess this year I’m gonna vow not to use long unconstrained stream-of-consciousness blahty-blah-blah sentences in blog posts.

No! That wasn’t it. Sorry. I told her, “well, I quit smoking last year, which was really hard, so if I can do that, then this year,
I’m gonna do everything else.”

So there, I bled my heart out to a kind person I hardly know because she asked and yes, it was still a restrained answer (ooooh, that would be a good name for a blog) which was pretty generic and not really telling and really, really open
to interpretation. I hope she didn’t interpret that I have other addictions I want to kick, which I do not, or that I’m on one of those tedious self-improvement missions that involves shedding 25 pounds. That is not gonna happen here.

Not if I have any say in the matter.