Class Assignment

Compare Lach's take on Tom Petty's biography/life from Lach's upcoming book "The Day I Went Insane  w/ Dan Penta's take on Tom Petty's biography/life in The Everybody Knows song "Only You Know."

Two Herb Scher Pieces

Herb Scher has a really nice photo essay online for American Songwriter about the 2011 Winter Antifolk Fest 

Herb has also posted a very interesting "talk show" interview with Ben Krieger.

You should go read them. Maybe "should" is too value laden, too authoritarian.....

I think you might enjoy them how's that?

Monday Night Exodus

A few weeks ago I was watching TV and there was coverage of the music scene. It was pretty cool-- the members of the scene were able to get together and give each other awards and stuff. They called it the Grammy Awards, and it was good to see musicians supporting each other. Some of their songwriting actually approached the quality of the scene here. And of course there is also some cross over between the scenes as when Peter Nevins was nominated for his artwork.   So that was kind of cool. I wish those folks well.

Back here at our particular scene the Sidewalk has been closed for renovations and the Monday night doings have been moved to the obscure and unplugged Gathering of the Tribes Gallery (wherein Catweazle occurs on Thursdays) The First Monday Night  Exodus was an fairly amazing night.  Some moments were just historic. Hopefully the tape (over an old Elvis Costello cassette) of Crabs On Banjo's "Gilligan meets the Brady Bunch" will circulate , but who knows if it will sound as good on tape as actually being there with Ben Krieger doing this kind of android Alan Hale Jr. singing "Hey little buddy let's go" till it became the default response when Brian tossed him a line and he couldn't think of anything else looking like Ralph Kramden forgetting all the other lines except that one. People could not contain their laughter.  Then when it devolved into Ben Krieger doing his Barry Bliss imitation...

Herb Scher did his very first write a song and play it 5 minutes later-- a clever blues about the Monday Night Exodus, but the Herb highlight was him simply sitting with his back to the audience at the Tribes piano and playing "Tower Records is Gone" and everyone knowing without being asked that we were to do the gospel choir part....

There were other moments as well and really good songs and well...