Friday Night Videos

I like Jewel, but don't think she ever quite lived up to the promise of her first single, "Who Will Save Your Soul." It's a funky, soulful folk-pop fusion that evoked for me some of the great singer-songwriters of the 70s, the type of song you simply don't hear today. Must be that Hammond organ. She's got some clever wordplay, a sly delivery and the requisite social commentary themes running throughout. Even the video's edgy in its own way. Unfortunately, this is the only song she's ever done in this style. Everything else off her Pieces of You album is in the angsty, melodramatic, weepy style she built her career on (and I understand there's an earlier version of the song left off the album that was recorded in a more bleak, Jewel-like style). "Who Will Save Your Soul" is my favorite of hers, and I long for something more in this style.



Previously on Friday Night Videos... The Producers.

Now Playing: Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers Live at the Fillmore West

Hoverfly

At home there are a number of grape vines growing in the back yard. Grapes, if you are unfamiliar with them, have clusters of tiny flowers that are easily overlooked during the brief time they blossom. They have no petals or flashy colors, and are normally missed among the large green leaves. So yesterday, near sunset, I suddenly thought I'd grab my camera and try my hand at a few macro shots of these tiny bouquets using my 50mm Nikon AI-s lens coupled with a reversing ring and a Vivitar 2x telextender. Not the most professional of setups, I know, but it's fun to play with until the day I can afford a dedicated macro lens.

Unexpectedly, there was a visitor on the blossoms barely bigger than the tiny flowers--a little fly that mimicked the appearance of a wasp. I've since learned this is a type of hoverfly, a species that specializes in flowers and is an important pollination agent for plants not serviced by bees or butterflies. I didn't know that at the time. All I saw was a glittery, metallic wasp-like fly that showed no fear as I pushed the lens scant inches away from it and clicked away. Dozens of shots were wasted as focus was difficult to get and even harder to maintain in the fading light, but ultimately I salvaged a few keepers. I'm pleasantly surprised, but it does make me wonder what I could do with Canon's 65mm f/2.8 dedicated macro...







Now Playing: Clandestine The Haunting

Friday Night Videos

Growing up in tiny Columbus, Texas didn't afford too many entertainment opportunities, but during my high school years, a band calling themselves The Emotions (no relation to the female R&B group of the 70s) played the K.C. Hall every few months. Those were weekends of great excitement. Sad, I know. They were a cover band, and didn't introduce original material until a failed record deal, and their breakup followed shortly thereafter. They did, however, play a wide array of covers from an eclectic mix of artists, some of which us ignorant high school kids assumed were originals. "She Sheila" was one of those, a staple of their closing set for the entire four years I went to their dances. My senior year, I believe, I learned that the original was by a band called the Producers (no relation to the Mel Brooks movie and stage play) off an album titled You Make the Heat. Being the music junkie I was at the time, I bought that tape and wore it out. Nothing else on the album was quite up to the level of "She Sheila," but then who would expect otherwise? Enjoy the flashback to high school days.



Previously on Friday Night Videos... The Kinks.

Now Playing: Tom Petty The Last DJ

Hey, if it worked in La Grange...

The great thing about politics is that nothing has to make a lick of sense for a major news story to develop. And that's exactly what has happened with Republican senatorial candidate Sue Lowden's admittedly silly suggestion that patients could barter with physicians for medical care.

"Before we all started having health care, in the olden days, our grandparents, they would bring a chicken to the doctor," Lowden told a local news station. "They would say I'll paint your house."

The suggestion has now been derisively labeled "Chickens for Checkups," and I have to wonder if I'm the only person who thinks she, being from Nevada and all, may be confusing her grandparents' doctor visits with trips to the infamous Chicken Ranch?

As the Great Depression hit and the economy fell, Miss Jessie was forced to lower her prices. Though initially she still had plenty of clients, as times grew harder, customers were not so plentiful and the girls grew hungry. Miss Jessie therefore began the "poultry standard" of charging "one chicken for one screw." Soon chickens were everywhere, and the establishment became known as the Chicken Ranch.

So, what we have is a Nevada politician suggesting a barter system that includes poultry, from a state with a working brothel known as the Chicken Ranch, which lifted its name from the Best Little Whorehouse in Texas that legend has it used a barter system that included chickens. I don't know anything about Lowden's positions on the issues, so I'm not going to comment on her qualifications as a candidate, but I guarantee before all is said and done she'll wish she'd have chosen her words more carefully...

Now Playing: Clandestine The Ale is Dear

Stalled

On the commute home from work today, The Wife calls and asks me to pick up a pizza order for dinner, as it's a Girl Scout night and there's not much time for dinner otherwise. So I get into New Braunfels and exit I-35 onto Walnut Street, and stop at the stoplight as I've done hundreds, if not thousands, of times before.

And the engine in my car stops.

Just like that. No go anymore. No sputter, no coughing. It just shut down as if I'd turned the key. Now, I've been having problems with the cooling fan, so my first panicked thought was that the engine'd overheated and died on me, but this wasn't the case. Water temp was still relatively cool, which makes sense since I'd just exited the highway. Cranking was useless. The engine would turn over, but it wouldn't catch. There was more than a quarter of a tank of gas left, and plenty of battery power, so it wasn't the alternator gone bad.

In any event, I had a lot of irate people behind me at the stoplight. I get out and push my car through the intersection into a parking lot, and wait to have it towed (cell phones are nice in this situation). I leave the car at the garage, drop the key in the drop box and pull all the important stuff from my car as The Wife drives me home.

I'm hoping whatever's wrong with the car is a relatively simple (ie inexpensive) fix, such as a burned out distributor cap or somesuch. I'm not holding my breath, though. Seems like whenever something goes bad on a car I drive, it costs half the value of the vehicle to get it fixed...

Now Playing:

Friday Night Videos

"To The Bone" was the final single put out by the Kinks prior to the band's... well, I can't call it a breakup, since they never officially stopped working together. Dissolution? Evaporation? Dispersal? In any event, the double-album of the same title was part of the wave of acoustic "unplugged" reinterpretations of artists' catalogs in the mid-90s. So, naturally, the Kinks defied that trend by electrifying some of the tracks. But still, if you are going to get only one Kinks album, "To The Bone" offers a great cross-section of their decades-long career, spanning from the early British Invasion days through the arena rock period, including as many great but obscure album tracks as big hits. Highly recommended.

But that's getting off-track. The single "To The Bone" (originally titled "12 Inches and Black" according to Ray Davies in a VH1 show) is one of two original songs on the album (the other being the quite good rocker "Animal"). To be blunt, "To The Bone" is a melancholy, bluesy piece of work that showcases some of Ray Davies' best songsmanship ever. For someone who's reputation in the music business is built upon his clever lyrics, that's saying a lot. I've always imagined the "old double-pack" album he refers to in the song is actually their mid-80s "best-of" collection, "Come Dancing with the Kinks" and although they don't go so far as to show this in the video, the fact that Ray himself is the cause of the relationship breakup echoes those self-referential vibes I pick up from the song. The video itself is odd, and Ray can't resist hamming it up in his post-hippie 1970s persona that he originally played in the "Predictable" video, but still. You'll just have to watch to understand.



Previously on Friday Night Videos... Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers.

Now Playing: Peter Gabriel Peter Gabriel I

Friday Night Videos

Hmm. Haven't don't Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers in a long while, so let's feature them in tonight's Friday Night Videos installment. "Don't Come Around Here No More" seems the obvious choice, with the Alice in Wonderland theme, but I featured that video a while back. So instead I'll go with one of his more obscure hits, "Jammin' Me" from the late '80s. So obscure that it didn't make his Greatest Hits collection, which is baffling, since it was a top 10 charting single if I recall correctly. I've still got the 45 around here somewhere. Yeah, I bought singles in high school, and read Rolling Stone religiously. At any rate, it's a good song. Enjoy.



Previously on Friday Night Videos... XTC.

Now Playing: