Dollar Bob

New Music Releases

Dollar Bob — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 17:44:48 GMT

JUNE 3, 2008

MOTHER TRUCKERS, Let's All Go To Bed (Funzalo)
JESSE MALIN, Mercury Retrograde (Adeline) Live album.

JUNE 10,2008
ALEJANDRO ESCOVEDO, Real Animal (Back Porch)

SCOTT KEMPNER, Saving Grace (00:2:59) First solo outing in 16 years from ex-Del Lord/Dictator.

JAKOB DYLAN, Seeing Things (Columbia/Starbucks)

SLOAN, Parallel Play (Yep Roc)

SAM PHILLIPS, Don't Do Anything (Nonesuch)

JUNE 17, 2008

HEYBALE, The Last Country Album (Shuffle 5)

JULY 1, 2008

LOS LONELY BOYS, Forgiven (Epic)

JULY 8, 2008

WILLIE NILE, Live From The Streets Of New York (00:02:59)

JULY 22, 2008

AVETT BROTHERS, The Second Gleam (Ramseur) An EP of six to eight songs, primarily Scott & Seth duo recordings, as with the first Gleam EP
MATTHEW SWEET, Sunshine Lies (Shout! Factory)

JULY 2008
BLUE MOUNTAIN, Midnight In Mississippi (self)

AUGUST 26, 2008
BACKYARD TIRE FIRE, The Places We Lived (Hyena)

They call it rock, Billy!

Dollar Bob — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 14:04:25 GMT

“You guys are really good! I never heard of you before….you sound great!”, says a young music fan clearly not realizing the company she was in.

Ok, a well-intentioned compliment to bassist Claude Arthur of Too Much Fun, the backing band to Bill Kirchen. Bill made a return appearance last Saturday night at the Bank St. Café to a good crowd looking to see a true master at work. If you’re heard the song “Hot Rod Lincoln”, you’ve heard Bill’s guitar. If you’ve never heard that song, well, then you’d have real trouble filling in the blank for the beginning of the song:

“My pappy said son, you’re gonna drive me to drinkin’

If you don’t stop drivin’ that hot rod _______”

If you guessed “Audi”, stop reading this right now and slap yourself upside the head until you get some sense.

Yes, Bill’s been around for along time and is always a great club show. Take a Fender Telecaster, some drums, an upright bass, apply liberal amounts of alcohol (um, for the crowd, not the band) and truck drivin’ songs and sprinkle with some well-chosen covers and you’ve got yet another great night of music in downtown New London.

The pictures with this blog attest to that. In fact, one in particular captures the speed that Bill can play on that fretboard.

Some of the people in the crowd that night will also attest to it:

The lady front and center in the wheelchair who did not stop moving all night long!

The guy with the not so well-hidden video-camera taping it for future posting to Youtube.

Gordon on sound (most, most excellent sound in this club) who arranged for Jack Smith (from opener Jack Smith & the Rockabilly Planet) to jump up on stage for a great version of “Matchbox”.

The wife of a local bar-owner and guitarist himself who could not contain herself during a “What’s So Funny ‘bout Peace, Love and Understanding” encore.

The guy who came from nowhere to plant himself front and center during the last song, “Sleep Walk’” to revel in Bill’s guitar skills.

The WCNI dj who likes to play Bill’s music during his most excellent Saturday afternoon gig on the station.

Yes, they’ll all attest to another great night of music in New London. Join us sometime.

Tickets are "Gone, Gone, Gone" !

Dollar Bob — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 18:24:53 GMT

So, we’ve all heard the alternate name for Ticketmaster, that evil corporate gateway to overpriced arena concerts. Unfortunately, they (“powered by Live Nation!”) hold a monopoly on most concerts.

This week’s hot ticket was the June show at Mohegan Sun with Allison Kraus and Robert Plant. You know, the bluegrass queen and the stuffed-crotch king. They actually did a nice album together and seeing them on a PBS concert special convinced me to get tickets.

Correction….it convinced me to try and get tickets.

Tickets went on sale Monday at 10AM. Accessing the Ticketbastar site promptly at 10, I’m able to get in and select 2 “best available”. I bypass the link to get a $255 “hot seat” package which presumably includes Mr. Plant and Ms Kraus personally picking you up at home and driving you to the show. I mean, what else could be worth $255 per ticket?

The next screen in the process is the one that is supposed to foil those “bots” that scarf up seats through some auto-programmed logic and re-sell them at a handy profit. Say, $255?

Anyway, the screen shows two words in barely-decipherable fonts with squiggly lines through them like you just picked up a ransom note out of a puddle on Bank St.

The key is to re-type those words to get to see what seats you’re going to get. Mistype and the process is delayed and someone else cuts in front of you.

I think what I see on the screen is “Lousy seats”. Or maybe it’s “Mouse meat”, I can’t tell. Sometimes they use actual words, other times it’s made-up words. Hell, I’ve even seen just a “e-“ as one of the words so it’s pretty easy to mistype. Maybe it’s deliberate on Ticketbastar’s part in order to up their page views. To save time, I click where it says “Vision impaired”.

That takes you to another screen that plays a sound file. There’s a link on this page that says “can’t hear the sound?”. Presumably that takes you out of the site entirely and to BarnesandNoble.com so you can just order a book to read that night.

I can hear the sound file fine. Problem is, again they’re looking to foil the bots so what you hear is a number code randomly read over/under a backing track that sounds like an old party-line phone from 1965. What I hear is, and I quote:

“garble…numeric garble…mumble, mumble…numeric mumble…”

I go back to the words and now can clearly see the two words they’ve chosen for me:

“You’re” and “screwed”

I type these in, check the clock to see that tickets have now been on sale for three minutes. 180 seconds.

My “best available” seats are upper section, back of the arena, row GGG. Hhmmm…maybe I should have specified floor seats and not “best available” because clearly they think that sitting somewhere in the Mohegan Sun parking lot is the best seat for the show. I like how they also have a friendly tip to “Enter via the Winter entrance”. I think for these seats, they meant to say, “Enter via Old Saybrook”.

180 seconds and they’ve already apparently sold 9,000 seats. Makes me think of a different two words.

I went back and re-did the process and ended up getting seats that looks like we’ll be seeing Plants backside more than the stuffed crotch. That’s ok, we’ll bring a camera and get a good close-up of the face-lift scars in back of his ears.

The wrong demographic

Dollar Bob — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 20:30:51 GMT

Early February and, like most guys in a relationship, I'm thinking about what to do this year for Valentine's Day.

Flowers? No

Dinner & a movie? Yawn

Blue Collar Happy Hour? Missed it by a day!

Stuffed animal? Hell, she's got more stuffed animals than Angelina Jolie has adopted children.

Got to be something different.

One day, following a link to a link from a link on a web site (I mean, that is how you find everything now, right?) I see that 'Create-a-Bear' has CT. Sun bears. Perfect, as we're season-ticketholders.

So, fast forward to yours truly standing slightly befuddled in the middle of the Create-a-Bear place at Crystal Mall. Well, not just standing there, but standing with the shell of a bear in one hand and a WNBA outfit on a mini pink plastic hanger in the other hand.

"Can I help you?" says the amused clerk to the bemused customer.

"Yes, I have no idea what I'm doing."

"Well, if that's the bear you want, step over here."

She then sits down and takes the bear shell and sticks the (to be polite) posterior of the bear onto a metal pole coming out of a giant Willy Wonka-type device.

"Step on the pedal, please."

I look down at the floor and, sure enough, there's a pedal with a tube going to Willy Wonka's device that apparently ends up in the bear's, um, well, you know.

I step on the pedal and stuffing shoots into the bear. Well, that's kind of cool.

"Pick out a heart."

"What?"

"In the box...pick out a heart"

I look into a box in front of me and there's little, well, hearts. Half are solid color and half are plaid. I look from the box of hearts to the bear to the clerk and back to the box.

Clearly sensing my confusion, she says, "It goes in the bear."

Clearly I'm not the target audience for this process because I just don't get it.

"We put the heart inside the bear so it can start living."

While sentimentality is not a strong suit, practicality is.

"So, then it doesn't matter if it's plaid or solid, right? I mean, if you're just going to sew it up inside the bear, it doesn't matter."

"Well, you'll know", she offers.

Plain it is.

The ever astute clerk mumbles, "I won't make you jump up and down to start the heart."

"Good call."

"Would you like a birth certificate?"

"Is it free? Sure!"

In hindsight...that's where I went wrong. Should have opted for the quick checkout.

"Ok, go over to the computers over there and it'll take you through the process."

"You mean those brightly-colored red computers with the plastic-covered keybords to protect against baby spittle and the giant colored keys with shapes on them in front of the tiny 12" high stools made for 5-year-olds?"

"Yes."

I walk over and see two other guys already sitting at one of the computers. They're maybe 20 or 21 but just as embarrased by the process as I am. We give each other the "guy" look. You know, the quick look that says "You tell no-one you saw me, I'll tell no-one I saw you."

I set the bear down on the stool next to me and make myself as comfortable as a 6-footer can be on kindygarten stools.

I press the key with the big diamond to start and the first prompt is to enter the bears name.

Stumped.

Absolutely stumped. Never thought I'd need to name this thing.

I turn to look at Mr. Bear like it's going to come to life (hell, it's got a heart!) and introduce himself to me. Come to think of it, it could be a Mrs. Bear. I go with that and name it "Erin" after her favorite player.

There's a bunch of other questions all read to me by a voice right out of Blue's Clues or Hannah Banana or whatever the hot show is this year for kindygartners.

Each question is answered by pressing a different color key with a different shape on it. If only my day job was this easy. Where's this voice helping me through a quarterly budget process?

Finally done, it prints the certificate and I guess it's official that I've adopted a living bear named Erin.

Just one problem...after proudly giving my Valentine the bear...she informs me it's not a bear but a cute puppy!

"Hell, I knew that! I gave it life!."

Sustainable Greed?

Dollar Bob — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 22:56:40 GMT

A year ago, that title would have been "Green Greed" but we no longer go green. We want "sustainable". Sustainable architecture, sustainable agriculture, sustainable industries...hell, there's probably even sustainable sustenance.

All a very noble concept that I fully support. I feel so strongly about global warming that I almost shelled out the $23.00 for Al Gore's coffee table-sized book 'An Inconvenient Truth'. However, that book is so big it probably cost 1/2 a rain forest to produce so I thought it would be better to support the concept by not actually buying it.

All of which brings me to the stated mission of freecycle.org. If you haven't heard of it, it's a mailing list that claims "It's all about reuse and keeping good stuff out of landfills."

The theory is that you have, say, a plastic cat litter box that instead of dumping in the local landfill, you post a message offering it up for free. People then respond and you arrange a time/place to "recycle" the item. The example above is from an actual recent posting. I can only assume that the person offering it up actually took the time to clean it before handing it over.

So, we recycle instead of filling landfills and everybody's happy, right?

Well, apparently some people want to be really happy. See, you can also post "Wanted" items.

That's where the real fun of the list is. Do people post that they want simple household items like, say, plastic cat litter boxes or old vacuums? Well, some do.

Others? Well, a recent peek at a local freecycle site finds people asking for:

A child's guitar (ok, that's understandable, isn't it?)
An oil-fired furnace (uh....free delivery too?)
A TV...no wait...not just a TV but it has to be a TV/VCR or DVD combo! See? Beggars can be choosers!
A working laptop (don't waste my time with a broken free laptop!)
A used car

I kid you not. Someone's asking for a used car! Got me to thinking about posting:

WANTED: An all expense-paid vacation in the Caribbean. I desperately need a vacation and am in dire need of 7-10 days away. Please, no offers of free weeks in the mountains or the coast of California. I will only take serious offers in the Caribbean. Cruises are acceptable but would not be my first choice. Ok, well, maybe the Bahamas. Please post by tomorrow or you're out of luck.

A Resolution to Anger

Dollar Bob — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 20:01:00 GMT

Some things in life are inevitable. Birth, school, work, death and taxes all come to mind. Not to mention that the #1 search term on Google in any given year will always be a drunken celebrity.

New Years resolutions are also inevitable. Whether you believe in them or not, you at least think of one and say, well, maybe this is the year I should stop/start fillintheblank.

I've never been one to seriously resolve to do anything substantially different from one year to the next which goes a long way to explaining my 1978 hair.

As I get older, I notice that I carry around more anger every year. It should be the opposite, I know. What used to piss you off should just be taken in stride over time. Well, hence the resolution.

In 2008 I resolve not to get angry over:

Eli Manning
People who insist that their Ford Gargantua SUV is nothing more than a phone booth with a steering wheel and simply cannot drive unless talking to somebody, anybody on their cell.
Tom Coughlin
People who insist that ther Toyota Minimus Hybrid is on the road to police cell phone users and go out of their way to sidle up next to the Gargantua and provide a one-finger primer on highway etiquette.
Eli Manning's parents
People on infomercials that tell you how easy it is to make money on foreclosed real estate but apparently can only make money themselves by telling you how easy it is to make money in real estate.
Eli Manning's voices in his head that apparently tell him to ignore the :30 clock
People who obsess over sports
The fact that there are now more TV series called "CSI" than there were networks when I was a kid
People who insist the good ol' days existed

Well, that should give me plenty to work on in 2008.

When do the Giants play again ?

What a wonderful life?

Dollar Bob — Wed, 26 Dec 2007 13:31:00 GMT

So, Christmas is just not the same with twenty-somethings (TS's) as it was when they were still young enough to believe that Christmas morning meant, well....MORNING!

In order to avoid the hours spent waiting for TS's to actually get up and come downstairs to exchange gifts we decided this year to switch to Christmas Eve. We figured 7PM would fit in nicely with their schedule. In fact, it would still be kind of like Christmas Eve Morning if you're a TS.

The unintended consequence of the switch was it gave the TS's less time to shop. Procrastinators deluxe, they now had 6 less hours to rush out in a panic because, well, apparently no-one sent them a text message telling them of the impending holiday.

"What? Stores aren't open Christmas Eve? What a joke!"

So, we prepared to be happy with well-planned and well-intentioned gifts from Henny-Penny (ooh...look...holiday egg-nog!) and Dunkin' Donuts (mmm...a six-pack of pumpkin muffins!)

As it turned out, they didn't do too bad. One TS bought another TS movie tickets. Unfortunately, Regal Cinemas time-stamps the tickets with the purchase time. Uh, yeah, "Dec 24th...3:55PM". Tis' the season.

The TS that received these pacesetters of procrastination pointed the time-stamp out to me. I pointed out to that TS, that his gift to his mother did not have a time-stamp since it had no receipt, no bag, no wrapping, no tag and in fact, had no actual value at all since it did not even exist.

Ah, well, no matter. We had each other and isn't that what it's really about? When all is said and done, the one lasting memory of the holidays is that family picture in front of the tree right?

You know, the one where one TS is making a face like "when will this end and I can get outta here?", another TS is subtly squeezing a whoopie-cushion right before the flash goes off and the family dog is jumping at the camera tripod on the way to the remains of the roast on the counter.

Where's Jimmy Stewart when you need him?

Best of '07

Dollar Bob — Sat, 22 Dec 2007 00:25:00 GMT

Another year, another list, another chance to agree or disagree!

My pick for best discs of 2007 ...or is it albums? ...or is it product?

10 Brandi Carlile : ‘The Story’ – this had to make the list if only for the title song written by her guitarist. www.myspace.com/brandicarlileband

9 Patty Griffin : ‘Children Running Through’ – a great year for the chick singers. Deserves to be higher but this was a good year to go back in time. http://www.myspace.com/pattygriffin

8 Chuck Prophet : ‘Soap and Water’ – I like the way you freckle too. You ever get a chance to see him live, no excuses...go. http://www.myspace.com/chuckprophetofficial

7 Buffalo Tom : ‘Three Easy Pieces’ – yes, Virginia, you *can* go back again. 90's alternative rock returns. “Hearts of Palm” is a good candidate for song of the year. http://www.myspace.com/buffalotom2007

6 Sarah Borges & the Broken Singles : ‘Diamonds in the Dark’ – The 25 or so fans that caught her recently at the Bank St. Cafe know how good she is. They also know how lame *you* are for not going to support live music. http://www.myspace.com/borgesrocks

5 Dinosaur Jr. : ‘Beyond’ – I mean it, Virginia, you *can* go back again. That clown from Dinosaur Jr. can still play! http://www.myspace.com/dinosaurjr

4 Two Cow Garage : ‘Three’ – trust me, it rocks. This is the sound of a band hitting their stride. http://www.myspace.com/twocowgarage

3 Avett Brothers : ‘Emotionalism’ - who knew that the Beatles would crop up as an influence on punkgrass? http://www.myspace.com/theavettbrothers

2 Rilo Kiley : ‘Under the Blacklight’ – This is one great mix of soul, alt-country and rock. Every once in awhile, the major labels get it right. http://myspace.com/rilokiley

1 Jason Isbell : ‘Sirens of the Ditch’ – Drive-By who? Took three years to make and one listen to love. Again, other than the 50 people who saw them at Sailfest this year, shame on you. Now redeem yourselves by going to Toad's Pace Feb 19. (btw, new DBT release Jan. 22) http://www.myspace.com/jasonisbellmusic