NOTE: this blog is no longer active as of 12/07. New one: http://blog.kirchhof.com
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur.
Wed, 31 May 2006
Another Year, Another Tourney
Posted at 19:00 by Randy Kirchhof [Permalink]
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G'wan Chicks!
The
Dixie Chicks rock our world. Again.
Dixie Chicks New Album, Taking The Long Way, Debuts At #1 On Billboard
Top 200
Wednesday May 31, 8:45 am ET
Dixie Chicks Become First Female Group Ever To Have Three Albums
Debut In Top Slot On Billboard Charts. Sales Dates For Dixie Chicks
"Accidents & Accusations Tour" Announced
NEW YORK, May 31 PRNewswire --
As Taking The Long Way debuts at #1 on the Billboard Top 200
best-selling albums chart this week, with first week's sales of
525,829, the Dixie Chicks have become the first female group in chart
history to have three albums debut at #1, breaking the record the
Chicks established in 2002 when the group's last studio album, Home,
debuted at #1 and made them the first female group ever to have two
albums debut at #1.
With the #1 debut of Taking The Long Way, the Dixie Chicks have also
become the first female group in chart history to have three studio
albums occupy the #1 slot on the Top 200.
Taking The Long Way has achieved one of the year's Top 5 first week's
sales tallies and has the best first week's sales for any female act
on the Top 200 in 2006.
Take that upside the talking head, Faux News.
Posted at 16:29 by Randy Kirchhof [Permalink]
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Sun, 28 May 2006
Sunday Morning History Goodness
I love stuff like this. The
Futureswatch Timeline. Zoom in and get lots of cool info. Zoom
back out and get perspective.
Posted at 14:43 by Randy Kirchhof [Permalink]
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Fri, 26 May 2006
Desmond Dekker
Desmond Dekker Came First
Toots & The Maytals
Sing a song yeah
reggae soul my brother
There is a right or a wrong way
Just to do everything
There's a right or a wrong way
Just to do everything
Desmond Dekker, he came first
And The Techniques, they came third
Clancy Eccles, he runs fourth
And Derrick Harriot, he came fifth
So I came second....mmmmm mmm mmm...
in the competition
Reggae legend Dekker dies
By Jim Welte
May 25, 2006 at 01:01:00 PM
Reggae icon Desmond Dekker, singer of the first Jamaican song to
become an international hit with 1968's "The Israelites, " has died in
London. He was 64.
Montreal dub producer Moss Raxlen, who has been working with longtime
Dekker guitarist Lynn Tait, said Dekker likely succumbed to a heart
attack but the exact cause was not known.
Born Desmond Dacres in Kingston, Jamaica, Dekker first auditioned for
Studio One founder Coxsone Dodd in 1961, but didn't record his first
song, "Honour Your Father and Mother" until 1963. Several local hits
followed, and Dekker eventually found his own ska backing group, the
Aces, a quartet of singing siblings, and churned out a string of ska
hits, including the bouncy love letter "This Woman" and "Mount Zion."
In 1967, he recorded the hit "Tougher Than Tough" with Derrick
Morgan, and his own rocksteady number, "007 (Shanty Town), " vaulted
to the top of the Jamaican charts.
But it wasn't until 1968 that Dekker became an international
star. "The Israelites" introduced reggae to a worldwide audience,
topping the UK charts and reaching the top 10 in the US.
Although he never had another hit as big as "The Israelites, " Dekker
continued to churn out singles and albums at a prolific pace in the
1970s and 1980s, mostly on the renowned Trojan label.
Thank you, Desmond.
I first heard "The Israelites" at South Padre on the beach, the
summer after my mom had died. I was a withdrawn, introspective, almost
irretrievably damaged child that summer, and the radio was my best
friend. I had no idea what it was, this weird music, but I thought
that it was really cool, and I listened to it on my little radio that
boasted of having "9 Transistors", sitting and watching the waves at
2:00 in the morning by myself. The style of the music spoke to me of
other worlds and other possibilities; that song spoke to me of
struggle and redemption; I couldn't even understand all of the lyrics,
but at the end he sang "After a storm there must be a calm", and it
comforted me.
And then I got The White Album for Christmas in '68, and heard "Ob
La De, Ob La Da" and recognized the beat again, even if
Anglicized. And then Johnny Nash came along with "I Can See Clearly",
and then Paul Simon with "Mother And Child Reunion." And one day in
'74 or so, my worldly outlaw friend Terry put on "Positive Vibration"
and I understood.
But, as Toots said, Desmond Dekker Came First.
Godspeed to you Desmond. You touched the heart of a very lost and
alone little boy in a faraway corner that summer, and helped him to
see a larger world. That little boy still lives, even though he
couldn't imagine at the time that it was possible, and he did okay. He
has had the pleasure of meeting, even sharing the stage with many of
your childhood friends. And he truly wishes that he'd had the chance
to shake your hand, and to thank you, and to tell you.
Posted at 12:19 by Randy Kirchhof [Permalink]
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Mon, 22 May 2006
Sorry About The Quiet Around Here...
It has been a busy, busy series of days, with Ryan's orientation at
UT, his school and jazz band practices and concerts, awards
ceremonies, band trips, field trips, day work, night work, etc. The
young fella made all of the commendation lists and honor rolls, aced
his TAKS stuff, and the last ten days have been a string of showing
proud paternal support at his honorifics in between trying to put
bread on the table and dealing with some pretty amazing mail traffic
with long lost colleagues (some from as far back as the late seventies
Armadillo days) over on my MySpace page. It's a full
life for the moment, over here at R & R Kirchhof Haus...
Neat one: I am happy to say that the first time Ryan performed as a
musician, playing the family cornet on a public stage (as opposed to
school), he improvised a solo to a Charlie Parker tune. It was a sort
of monotonic polyrhythmic thing, but he did it, and I was chuckling as
I watched him up there on the Stubb's stage. It certainly could've
been more interesting musically, but, hey, the foundational principle
is good; he's only been playing for six months. Not bad musical
company to be in, and not a bad way to start off a career, should he
choose to go in that direction. Probably has Charlie as his guardian
angel now, after showing that kind of courage...
Saturday (after a busy 12th birthday party at Park & Pizza) he
spent the night with a friend, and I went to hear Shantytown
Underground at Flamingo Cantina. They're a local roots reggae outfit
helmed by Claude McCann, and they are a great band, with 10 people on
stage, full horns including my old buddy/nemesis Wallace on valve
trombone & the always tasty Mark Wilson on sax, with backup singers,
the works. It is just a
wonderful band, playing reggae songs the way I like them
to be played. I spent the entire set just smiling and remembering why
I love the genre so much.
This type of thing is exactly the project that I envisioned with
the Mau Mau Chaplains when we founded that band; unfortunately, that
got sidetracked back into the 'country reggae' stuff and musically
uninteresting two chord jams, which is why I had to bail on 'em, even
though they are mi idren and I love 'em dearly. (Of course, we must
note that they survived just
fine without my opinions. They're still a great band, and I
love to watch them perform. It's just not the band I wanted to
be in; not my cup o' tea as a musician. Heh. I like songs, with
verses and choruses and bridges and middle eights and change-ups. If
structural minimalism is the goal, there's a huge canon of Gregorian
Chants available out there...)
Anyway, I am delighted to add a newly discovered reggae band to my
list of must-go-to's. I hope that Claude will let me mix 'em
sometimes.
I also talked with Kris Brown, and it's likely that I'll start
playing w/ Family Sauce soonly; we've been trying to hitch our wagons
together for a couple of years; we share the funk, and now it looks
like the stars are finally aligned. 'Twas a good night all around,
kind of an old home week for Austin reggae, and I left with a huge
smile on my face, happy to have renewed many a friendship and happy to
have heard some of my favorite colleagues ply their trade.
So, anyway, this dad is very proud of his boy, and Dad will be playing
again too, soon. Greezy Wheels is going to release some new product
imminently as well; I am doing some tracking on that project this
evening. I'll keep you posted; looks like a July release with quite a
few radio stations around the country ready to add it.
Other neat stuff may be coming soon, too. It is a time of change
and opportunity.
Posted at 16:37 by Randy Kirchhof [Permalink]
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Thu, 18 May 2006
Katrina: What Actually Happened
The Times-Picayune has a flash animation showing what happened
during Katrina, bit by bit. It is kind of spooky; it has really
brought home the extent of the catastrophe in a way that I hadn't
noted until now.
Posted at 17:00 by Randy Kirchhof [Permalink]
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Mon, 15 May 2006
Six Minutes And Twenty Two Second Of Heaven
Frank Sinatra and
Antonio Carlos Jobim, together in November of '67.
Posted at 01:59 by Randy Kirchhof [Permalink]
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Sat, 13 May 2006
Saturday Oddity Time
Just so you are well informed in a variety of areas, here is a
guide to
laundry heiroglyphics.
Posted at 13:31 by Randy Kirchhof [Permalink]
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Fri, 12 May 2006
Another Fitzmas Eve?
Rove
Informs White House He Will Be Indicted.
What a great month so far. And next week The Boy turns twelve too.
Posted at 22:41 by Randy Kirchhof [Permalink]
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Thu, 11 May 2006
The Surreality Of These Times
Listen to a John Bircher speak. And be very, very surprised.
Posted at 09:51 by Randy Kirchhof [Permalink]
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Wed, 10 May 2006
The Linguists Are Restless
A really interesting article
on the strange language of an isolated Brazilian tribe,
if you're into that kind of thing. No concept of numbers, no
subordinate clauses, no terms for color, three pronouns.
We're a neat species, capable of almost anything...
Posted at 10:48 by Randy Kirchhof [Permalink]
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Mon, 08 May 2006
My Cool Son
I am a very, very proud Dad today. My 11-year-old, Ryan, has
been accepted into a program called Breakthrough. It's a mentoring
program for high potential students that starts after sixth
grade. Forty kids a year get chosen from AISD, out of the 80k or
so. The students attend advanced classes at UT, participate in
extracurricular activities year round, and mentor younger students as
they progress, all in parallel to their standard curriculum through
middle and high school. The result is that they are exceptionally well
prepped for university life, and well in line for scholarships and
such when they graduate high school.
He'll do six weeks at UT this summer. He's not very happy about the
two hours of homework a night, but I'll bet he's going to find it a very
cool and intellectually comforting place to be once he ramps into it.
Oh, and he's doing three cornet solos at the band concert
later this month. Heh.
I am just really pleased that he'll have the challenges that he
needs throughout the rest of his school years. What a fine day this
is.
Posted at 20:24 by Randy Kirchhof [Permalink]
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Fri, 05 May 2006
Like Sand Castles?
Behold
the championships...
Too cool.
Posted at 10:24 by Randy Kirchhof [Permalink]
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Tue, 02 May 2006
New Cell Number
All, my cell number has changed; if you need it and I didn't manage
to notify you already, get in touch via email and I'll update you.
Posted at 20:57 by Randy Kirchhof [Permalink]
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Mon, 01 May 2006
The Passing Of A Great Man
John Kenneth Galbraith passed this weekend at the age of 97. He was
a good man who actually left this world a better place than he
found it, due to his prodigious intellect and his dedication to the
betterment of the human condition. He was a geek, a bon-vivant, an
economist, a drinker, a writer, a lover and a fighter, and he was an
example of the best that this country can produce. He looked power
directly in the eyes and made it blink countless times.
I can't think of a
better way to remember him than by repeating his words:
In all life one should comfort the afflicted, but verily, also, one
should afflict the comfortable, and especially when they are
comfortably, contentedly, even happily wrong.
In any great organization it is far, far safer to be wrong with the
majority than to be right alone.
Faced with the choice between changing one's mind and proving that
there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof.
All of the great leaders have had one characteristic in common: it was
the willingness to confront unequivocally the major anxiety of their
people in their time. This, and not much else, is the essence of
leadership.
Anyone who says he won't resign four times, will.
Economics is extremely useful as a form of employment for economists.
If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular
error.
Politics is not the art of the possible. It consists in choosing
between the disastrous and the unpalatable.
The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in
moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral
justification for selfishness.
...and, of course, his take on Reaganism and trickle-down economics:
If you feed enough oats to the horse, some will pass through to feed
the sparrows.
A life well lived. Safe passage, Sir.
Posted at 10:54 by Randy Kirchhof [Permalink]
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