#cd monday

CD Monday! It's back! And we have Small Friend Records & Books to thank!

The kind people there did a grab bag drawing to celebrate their one year anniversary, and as a result, I got to take home an absolute treasure trove of CDs. Label samplers. Promo copies of upcoming albums. Lots of stuff from Get Hip Recordings. Almost none of it was on my radar, and I'm looking forward to making my way through the stack, one CD Monday at a time.

First up is Nick Zammuto's soundtrack for the 2018 film We the Animals. I haven't heard too much of it yet, but it's certain to be a welcome respite from all the Daniel Tiger we've been listening to in the car lately. (Kid 2's burgeoning DT obsession has reignited Kid 1's. Not good. "I'll be back when the day is new" isn't just an understatement, y'all; it's a threat.)

Speaking of being back... many thanks to Small Friend for getting CD Monday up and running again. Here's a link to the piece I wrote on the shop a little while back, in case you missed it.

We have the Easter Bunny (hi, Mom!) to thank for the return of CD Monday.

Joan Baez's latest was waiting for me in one of the Easter baskets hidden for my daughter to find, and I went ahead and started spinning it this morning. "The President Sang Amazing Grace" was playing when I made it to work, and I had a hard time leaving the car. It's a really gripping and direct tune (written by Zoe Mulford), and Baez's performance reminds me a little of her rendition of Bob Dylan's "With God On Our Side" in how faithfully it renders the song's sturdy structure. Maybe this is a leap, but both illustrate for me how you tend to cling to something solid when you're shaken, physically or emotionally.

The return of CD Monday! Well, not really. This is a more of one-off, given that my daughter is still threatening to melt down if she doesn't get to determine the playlist during rides to and from work/daycare. (Potential DJ name: DJ Emotional Blackmail.) But I can listen to whatever I want while running lunch errands (!), and this week I'm getting reacquainted with Side Trips: Volume One, which is being issued for the first time on vinyl as part of this year's Record Store Day: Black Friday event.

It's a pretty snazzy album. Howard Wales wails (GET IT?!?) on Hammond organ and Fender Rhodes, and you get to hear how Jerry Garcia acts and reacts in a jazz setting. Parts can feel less like jazz and more like the middle of a Dead jam, but whatever. The vibe is fun and intuitive and exploratory, and it makes for great unfocused listening. Zone in. Zone out. Your call. It's also perfect dinner music, assuming your guests are cool with meandering, guitar-driven jam-jazz. OK so maybe it's better this is being reissued after Thanksgiving.

See y'all in line at BK Music on Friday!

Going to try to sneak some CD listening in this week. May just end up listening to Little Mermaid, like we have been lately. We'll see. Looking at it as a win-win.

Very curious about what Then Play On has in store, because I've heard very little of it (it's not on Spotify) and the friend who loaned it to me said it's nothing like Mac's later output. More bluesy, I'm told. 

If it's half as majestic as that cover art...

This week's CD Mon(Tues)day goes out to the Oklahoma City Thunder. Even in defeat, they were magnificent. KD is amazing. Russ is a freak. Steven Adams is unexpectedly hilarious and kind of a badass. I wanted Golden State to win -- so they can win the title and fully validate the absurd number of hours of Warriors basketball I watched this season -- but I hate seeing KD sad. Dude needs to win at some point, in OKC or elsewhere. Same for Russ -- his maniacal efforts deserve to be rewarded. Hopefully they'll stick together and win one eventually.

On loan from a generous coworker. (He also loaned me a DVD copy of Runnin' Down a Dream, the four-hour Tom Petty documentary Peter Bogdanovich made.) This is the first I've heard of Mudcrutch, but wouldn't you know it, the rejuvenated Petty project just released an album last Friday. Wild, eh?

Tom Petty called the band's name "really terrible." I call it "really fitting" because it won't stop raining and there's mud everywhere and I can never remember to take off my shoes before I go in the house and Toddler YHT is laying waste to my backseat by grinding her adorable and sparkly but also muddy Crocs into the fabric opposite her rear-facing car seat.

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Gifted by my mom, picked this week by Baby YHT. Fitting, given that this is the time of year when I get to reunite with my paralyzing fear of bees...

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