Our site was offline this morning because someone at our web host, Spry.com, messed up permissions on the server. It only takes a few seconds to run a chmod on a Unix box to make things right, but it took the folks at Spry.com waaaaaaaaay to long to take care of it. The site was throwing 500 errors this morning, and then the Spry folks stepped in to fix it. Thanks to their intervention, the site started throwing 403 errors instead. Gee, thanks fellas. And they won’t give me any answers regarding how the permissions got messed up in the first place.

Anybody know of a decent PHP host with SSH access? I can’t take any more of this.

A few days ago I posted news of Big Dipper, Bill Goffier’s excellent post-Embarrassment band, planning reunion shows in April of 2008. I was very pleased to see some excellent footage of the Embarrassment in their heyday appear on YouTube this week. This was filmed in their hometown of Wichita in April of 1981. Enjoy.

Previous Embarrassment-related posts:
Big Dipper reuinion in the works for April 2008
The Embarrassment singing Drive Me to the Park
The best song in the history of the world, part II

We’ve upgraded the site to the most recent version of WordPress, 2.3.1., which has native support for tagging. New posts will have tags listed just under the title. You can click on a tag to find similar posts. For example clicking on the Old-Timey tag will find you recent posts about old-time country music. Tags are similar to categories, except that they are more fluid and often more specific.

I haven’t gone all the way back through the archives to tag old posts (there are over 600 of them), but this should make it easier to find things going forward.

If your favorite local karaoke bar doesn’t let you croon along to Split Myself in Two, you can use these tracks to sing along to the Meat Puppets seminal second LP. Drummer Derrick Bostrom has been running MeatPuppets.com as a blog, and helping disseminate rare outtakes, live recordings, alternate mixes, and all kinds of other cool stuff. These are the backing tracks from the Meat Puppets II sessions, rough mixes made before Curt added his vocals.

Bostrom’s description of the atmosphere surrounding the making of that record is surprising. The band’s growth between their debut LP and this record is absolutely remarkable. While Kirkwood’s vocals on the first record sound like a gopher caught in a woodchipper (I mean that as a compliment), his vocals on the second record are much more delicate and nuanced. Despite the obvious growth, Bostrom writes that, “Curt agonized over whether to go back into the studio and attempt to redo the vocals, leave them as they were, or just scrap the whole project. Fortunately, he got comfortable with the takes over time, and we moved on to bigger concerns (like convincing SST to let us actually finish the album).”

Equally surprising was the lack of interest their label at the time, SST, seemed to show in completing and releasing the album, which fed an increasingly acrimonious relationship with the label.

Unfortunately, there were those who viewed our efforts as a betrayal of “the form.” Coincidentally or not, “Meat Puppets II” languished unfinished for six months. [SST staff engineer] SPOT became “unavailable,” and no one seemed to be able to locate him or the tapes. We seethed resentment over the delays, and began to imagine conspiracies and ulterior motives at the label, especially after we discovered that Husker Du, the Minutmen and even Black Flag had “post-hardcore” albums in the works. “Meat Puppets II” wasn’t released until the spring of 1984. Even after the album got a glowing four-star review in Rolling Stone magazine, our disatisfaction with SST hardened, and the relationship settled into a stifling atmosphere of mutual suspicion.

You can read all of Derrick’s comments and download the full recordings at MeatPuppets.com.

I am not alone in thinking that a rock and roll band called The Embarrassment from Wichita, Kansas, is among the finest this country has ever produced. When that band splintered, the gentlemen continued to make great music with other bands. Guitarist Bill Groffier played in a great rock and roll combo in Boston called Big Dipper, who made some very good records with many of the same qualities that make Embarrassment records perpetually endearing. Not least of these are Bill’s thoughtful guitar playing and soaring harmony vocals.

So it’s a pleasant surprise to hear that Big Dipper are getting back together for a handful of shows to celebrate the release of a 3-CD box set. From RockTownHall.com:

Big Dipper is indeed reuniting for a handful of shows in April 2008 and the release of a 3-CD set. The release will include a 12-page booklet with liner notes by Scharpling and, most importantly, songs from the band’s first 3 long-out-of-print albums along with the requisit rarities, unreleased tracks, and even the original video for “Faith Healer”. I’ve been waiting a long time for this day, and I’ve been waiting a long time to have more than this grainy, 12th-generation clip that’s been floating around YouTube for some time as a visual record of the band.

Earlier this week, I had my iPhone set to random play, and Big Dipper’s gorgeous song Ron Klaus Wrecked His House popped up. I then briefly amused myself by singing ‘Ron House wrecked his Klaus’, in honor of the Ohioan who aspired to have a band ‘as big as, but not bigger than the Embarrassment.’ It all made the 45 mph headwind blowing through downtown Chicago a wee bit more bearable.

I am a dedicated Firefox user, and I keep my bookmarks toolbar loaded with the sites I visit most often. Most of the time, when you drag a bookmark down to the toolbar, Firefox will automatically create a link with the bookmarked site’s icon, along with a description of the page.

I like to keep a lot of stuff in my tool bar, so I usually delete the description, leaving only the icon. While you can easily change or delete the text associated with your links by right clicking the bookmark and going to its properties page, Firefox doesn’t provide an easy way to change the icon your bookmark uses.

This can be a problem if the site doesn’t have an icon. You’re left with an ugly image of a blank page, like with this PBS Kids link. It’s also a problem if you have multiple links to the same site. All your links to google pages, for example, will use the same ‘G’ logo. This annoys me, as it denies me my god-given right to cram my toolbar full of pretty colorful links. Like any good American, I decided to take the law into my own hands.
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I saw the Meat Puppets this week when their reunion tour made a swing through Chicago. Seeing the Meat Puppets at the Newport Music Hall in Columbus in August 1987 was one of the transformative events in my life. It was as close to a religious experience as one can have at an event that ends in the crowd being pelted with cold cuts from the band’s deli tray.

Our live shows are external combustion and a lot of drool. Curt Kirkwood .

You can download a 1987 Meat Puppets show via the Meat Puppets website, which will give you a pretty good idea of what it all sounded like. You’ll miss the visual component, though, things like the Kirkwood Brothers looping their belts together and somersaulting across the stage, or giving each other piggy back rides while playing, all while playing like demons and singing like Grover being strangled.
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This is the earliest clip I’ve ever seen of the Dubliners, back when they still went by the moniker of the Ronnie Drew Folk Group. I’ve written about McAlpine’s Fusiliers in an earlier post, you can refer to that if you want to know a bit more of the history of Sir Robert McAlpine. The lead vocal is by the great Ronnie Drew. Ronnie, sadly, is apparently in ill health, and receiving treatment for cancer.

In what appears to be a wee bit of censorship, Drew changes the last line of the song from:

If you pride your life
don’t join by Christ
with McAlpine’s Fusiliers

to:

If you pride your life
don’t join by God
with McAlpine’s Fusiliers