concerts

Damien Rice, redux

Back in 2003 I wrote about the experience of seeing a then unknown-to-me Damien Rice at WorkPlay, my favorite little music venue down in Birmingham, AL:

Photos from Over the Rhine show

DSC_0408View on Flickr

Geof lured me into driving down to the most excellent Workplay Theatre in Birmingham to see Over the Rhine perform last night. As we explained to the fans at the next table who had driven in from Florida to see the show: "He's a fan of the band. She's a fan of the venue." (Full photoset is here.)

Geof taped the show, so I'm guessing he'll post a link here when the download's available? It's like going to the show, without the annoying "get back after one a.m. when you have to be at work at 7:30" factor.

It's worth noting that we looked like reporters with all the gear we hauled in: taping equipment and two semipro cameras. (I'm still wondering how I ever managed to photograph concerts without a tripod / monopod.)

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bringing on the weather

Sunday morning.

The clouds are pouring in from the south; a promise, nearly fulfilled, of the rain that is coming. Hurricane Dennis will soon be making landfall somewhere south of us. We are too far north to get real damage, even from a category 4, but we will take our dousing and be glad of it, thank-you-sir-may-I-have-another?

Hurricanes make for odd storms here. We are accustomed here to weather and wind moving from west to east, or northwest to southeast. Hurricanes billow up from the south, with hard winds blowing from directions normally unseen here: east to west, or southeast to northwest. Jeff says that when he was growing up, he was always told that a storm moving from east to west meant bad things.

He'd said it off and on for years before I realized that the only storms around here that provoke that weather pattern are newly-landed hurricanes.

Week Of Music #3: the church of Steely Dan

I'd love to tell you where it began, but the truth is that I don't remember. Instead, I have to choose a beginning point, arbitrary though it is, and begin from there.

The speed limit on the Cutoff was 40, but anyone with half a brain knew that the cops never policed that section of road, because there was no place for them to park, and even if there was, Bauxite didn't have cops anyway. The descent to the paved-over area where the railroad track used to be was one such that if you hit it at just the right speed, your car wouldn't go airborne, but you would.

Week Of Music #2: breathless but screaming, Damien Rice

"Stones taught me to fly
Love taught me to lie
Life taught me to die
So it's not hard to fall
When you float like a cannonball"
- Damien Rice, "cannonball"

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