If you are on Twitter, you know that, like all social media tools, it can sometimes be useful and sometimes be awful.  If you are not on Twitter, you'll have to take my word on that. My new podcast is a result of one of the useful things. I follow an artist consultant over there on Twitter.  Not only is he tastefully named, he also routinely gives useful advice for independent musicians on his feed. One day his advice centered around remixes.  He said that if an artist has commissioned remixes for one of their songs, they should have a podcast conversation with the person who did the remix.  This provides a useful behind-the-scenes look at the artistic process, and is also valuable content.  You know, "#content".

It turns out, dear reader, that I have a single coming out on March 15th called "Hold the Wick".  If you are currently subscribed to my mailing list, well, you received an email this morning that gives you an early listen to the new single.  (If you are not currently subscribed to my mailing list, I warmly invite you to click the link earlier in this sentence and sign up. That way, you'll be the first to know what I'm working on.)  I commissioned seven remixes of "Hold the Wick".  They come in a variety of flavors. I decided to follow that free advice I picked up on Twitter, and interview the remixers for a podcast. Shortly after I decided to do that, I decided to not stop there.

You really don't want to listen to a podcast if the only thing that will happen is self-promotion, right? I figure that this is the case because I wouldn't listen to a podcast if that was the only thing happening, either.  Ok, my new podcast will definitely NOT be all about self-promotion. I have plenty of interests... sports, travel, languages, history, food, art (outside of music), science fiction, board games... these are just some of them.  There are plenty of people who share some or all of those interests, and I would enjoy talking to them.  I think you would enjoy listening to those conversations.  That's what my podcast is going to be about.  It's called the You Could Be My Aramis Podcast, which you might recognize as the name of my publishing company and LLC.

Those of you in Dayton might remember the Gem City Podcast. Those folks brought us entertaining and enlightening conversations for several years. They covered all sorts of topics, but my favorite episodes were the Wednesday episodes with Terry "IzzyRock" Martin.  If you were a Dayton artist and were releasing a new album or had an important show coming up, you went on Gem City Podcast to talk about the hard work you put into your art, the songwriting process, your gear (the rig rundown), what your childhood smelled like, and any other topic that came up in the conversation. Alas, that podcast is no longer with us. Obviously I do not have their experience or track record, but I would like to make a humble attempt to fill that void in Dayton podcasting. If you are a Dayton artist with a new album coming, and you'd like to talk about it with someone who is ready to listen, well, I'm ready to listen. I am certainly not saying that I can replace Terry and Libby and their fine work, but perhaps I can follow in their footsteps just a little.

What are some of the things you can expect to hear on my new podcast?  Well, it is true that I'll spend the occasional episode talking to the talented people who remixed "Hold the Wick"... we will learn about their approach to remixing, but we'll also learn about their creative process for their own music.  I talk to a musician from the Dallas area and a musician from Chicago during episodes that have absolutely zero to do with self-promotion.  I'll be promoting them. Episode 2 is a wide-ranging conversation with a local doer who has his hands in a few different businesses, and whose face should certainly be familiar to Dayton musicians. The above episodes are all scheduled for release in January.  The first episode to be released in February is a chat with a gentleman who was a fixture in our music community for over 25 years, who remains one of my favorite living songwriters, and who speaks as passionately and eloquently about music as anyone I have ever met.

You should be able to find the You Could Be My Aramis Podcast on whatever platform you normally use to listen to podcasts. Just so that you don't have to search, you can find it right here.  The show notes will live on my official site, just click the navigation menu at the top of the page where it says "Podcast".  That failing, the link is https://mikebankheadmusic.com/podcast. Feel free to subscribe on the platform of your choice.  Please listen.  If you enjoy what you hear, perhaps consider leaving a review?

Episode 1 is coming your way two days from now, on Wednesday January 5th, 2022.

 

I found this to be an interesting year for music.  A few artists I listened to in my youth back in the 1990s put out new music this year.  This includes Candlebox, Matthew Sweet, Teenage Fanclub, Garbage, Sleater-Kinney, Liz Phair, Toad The Wet Sprocket, and Quicksand.  None of these made my top ten for the year. Another band from back then from Canada called Big Wreck put out an EP this year, and I really like it... their singer Ian Thornley is about the closest voice I have ever heard to Chris Cornell (my favorite singer), and the songs on it are good.  It looks like this:

A few artists from my music community here in Dayton also put out new music... Looking at YOU: Age Nowhere, Paige Beller, Sadbox, The New Old Fashioned, and TINO.  (I encourage you to click on those links in the last sentence and check out some good stuff from Dayton, Ohio.) Guided By Voices also put out two albums in 2021, because of course they did. 

Another Ohio band who I have expressed my appreciation for in the past, Snarls, also has a new release this year.  They went to Seattle to record the EP What About Flowers? with Chris Walla (who you might know from Death Cab For Cutie), which is a pretty cool thing for a Columbus band to do. 

Elbow is one of my favorite artists, and they put out an album this year.  It's not among my favorites in their catalog, but maybe it'll surge after a few more listens.  My favorite song on it is "What am I Without You".  If you often read about music, you'll surely see the latest Japanese Breakfast album turn up on a few best-of-the-year lists.  I really dug the song "Posing For Cars" from that one.  Some other folks I know also put out fine work this year... Chelsey Coy's project Single Girl, Married Girl , Lauren Light, Baby Molly, and Greg Owens & the Whiskey Weather have new albums that deserve your attention.

Here's a blurb that I wrote for an album that I liked, but as it turns out, it's not in my top ten, and goes into the "honorable mention" category.  The cover art is awesome. Consider this a bonus blurb:

BEAMS - Ego Death 

I had never heard of this band until I started putting together my favorite albums of the year.  I checked in with Juliet Fromholt, music director over at WYSO, to see what she was considering for her end-of-the-year list, knowing that there were certainly things that I had missed.  Juliet sent me all kinds of stuff that she enjoyed, and while I certainly should have heard things from all of these artists on her shows, I don't get the chance to listen to ALL of the shows each week.  Beams was on Juliet's list.  I do my due diligence, working through the artists, and when I got to Ego Death... well, it stopped me in my tracks.  Give me all of that distorted guitar and songcraft and vocal harmonies please, thank you. 

A little Internet research tells me that this band is from Toronto, and that Ego Death is their third full-length album.  Apparently they were leaning in a more folk-sounding direction before, which is fine, but that's not what I hear on this album.  Whatever prompted their evolution into bigger sounds, well, I'm cool with it.  I might get around to heading back into their catalog to listen to their past work, but for now, I'm going to listen to this one a few dozen more times.  I dig it. 

• Favorite songs: "Born to Win", "Break Glass", "A Flower Blossomed"

 

 

All of the above said, here is my top ten, which, other than the first one, are in no particular order:

FAILURE - Wild Type Droid

I'm sure glad Failure are back, and they keep making excellent music.  This one is a little different than their last few efforts.  Think back to Fantastic Planet and The Heart Is A Monster... those are both long albums that sort of meander through a story, complete with instrumental segues to tie pieces together.  Next, they put out In The Future You Body Will Be the Furthest Thing From Your Mind, which was the result of collating four EPs into one album.  All of those are excellent work, by the way, and Fantastic Planet is especially a masterpiece. Failure has noticed that fewer and fewer people care enough about music to listen to an album all the way through, so they've adjusted their art to match.

This new one is only 10 songs.  It's still atmospheric and spacy. The songs that are supposed to sound big still sound big.  The songs that are supposed to be stripped down and more delicate are still stripped down and delicate.  Unlike their previous work, however, you probably don't lose anything from the listening experience if you listen to this one out of order, or put a song on a playlist.  You aren't losing any of the flow or context by doing that this time around.  Failure is still making music that sounds like Failure, but they seem to be tossing an olive branch to modern listening habits.

This is my favorite album of 2021.

• Favorite songs: "Submarines", "Bad Translation", "Half Moon"

 

ERIC BIBB - Dear America

People who know me are going to be surprised to see a blues album on this list.  There is more here than just twelve bar I-IV-V progressions and various solos. There is plenty of folk and americana sounds here as well.  What stands out to me the most here though, is that Eric Bibb clearly has something he still needs to say.  The Internet tells me that this is his 23rd studio solo album, so maybe it's a little amazing that he is still moved enough to keep making art.

Listen to his lyrics.  Eric doesn't live in the United States anymore, but he used to... and of course, we all live in the same world, and see the same appalling things.  Those of us who write songs use the craft to work our way through the feelings that life thrusts upon us, and that is what it seems Eric is doing on this album.  The album title and picture on the cover suggest that this collection of songs is intended as a letter to the United States... a letter complete with solos... a letter with frank declarations like: "what a way for a boy like me to have to die", in a song about Emmett Till.

• Favorite songs: "Born Of A Woman", "Emmett's Ghost", "White & Black"

 

 

ADIA VICTORIA - A Southern Gothic 

The "South" is not my home. I don't feel safe there. I really don't even like visiting. It is Adia Victoria's home, since she is from South Carolina. You can hear the love for her home in these songs. The love is there despite the region's traditional lack of inclusion of voices like hers.  She says this in Rolling Stone:  "I wanted to include myself in the history of the South. I wanted to make this young Black girl's narrative just as emblematic of a Southern experience as Faulkner could write."

Despite the love that Adia clearly shows here, there is also plenty of anger to go around, and the angry parts of the album are the ones that I think I relate to the best.  My favorite example of that here is on "Deep Water Blues". 

Sounds of blues, gospel, and country all collide on this album. If you happen to enjoy listening to any of these genres, well, this album is definitely for you.

• Favorite songs: "You Was Born To Die", "Whole World Knows", "Deep Water Blues"

 

 

 

THE MARS VOLTA - Landscape Tantrums (Unfinished Original Recordings of De-Loused in the Comatorium)

Ok, The Mars Volta released De-Loused in the Comatorium in 2003, and I happen to love that album.  These gentlemen from El Paso reached into the past, grabbed the early progress on those songs, and released them this year.  This album is probably more enjoyable if you are already familiar with the songs in their finished form... however, I think that even if I didn't know what these songs would eventually end up becoming, I would still be blown away.  Sometimes the sounds are frantic, sometimes delicate, there is plenty of playing around with rhythmic elements that aren't necessarily typical in rock music, and the mix is very different than what we got in 2003, so the songs all kind of shine in different ways.

In addition to these mixes being simpler and minimally produced for them (if you can believe it), the track order is different here, and the songs "Tira Me A Las Arañas" and "Cicatriz ESP" are missing.  That's ok, there is enough here to ponder.  Especially if you enjoy this band's work, listen on headphones, close your eyes, and dig in.

• Favorite songs: "Inertiatic ESP", "Eriatarka", "This Apparatus Must Be Unearthed", "Televators"

 

 

 

JACKIE VENSON - Love Transcends

Jackie is an incendiary guitarist from Austin, Texas. Her music usually blends a few different styles, but with Love Transcends, she heads in a more traditional blues direction.  For her, this is keeping it simple. She says this about the album on her Bandcamp page: "Written across a decade, recorded in a pandemic, played in a style a century old."

In addition to her own songs, there's a mash-up of a Sister Rosetta Tharpe song and an old Negro spiritual. She plays her heart out when she is performing live, and you get some of that live feeling on this album. Her rhythm section is outstanding, and the little keyboard licks here and there add nice flavor and texture.  You'll want to turn this one up.

• Favorite songs: "Always Free", "Cover My  Eyes", "Love Transcends"

 

 

 

RHIANNON GIDDENS WITH FRANCESCO TURRISI - They're Calling Me Home

It's folk music gone international.  An American and an Italian living in the United Kingdom, and the music they make on this album shows influences from all three of those places. Strings are here, plucked and strummed and bowed, and they are the backdrop to strong vocals and beautiful harmonies. I don't think I've ever heard anything quite like this, even on the old traditional songs they cover here, and that's probably why it holds my attention.

• Favorite songs: "Avalon", "Si Dolce è'l Tormento", "O Death"

 

 

 

 

VALERIE JUNE - The Moon And Stars: Prescriptions For Dreamers

Many thanks to Greg Owens for telling me to go listen to this album.  I love it.  It's soulful, subtly groovy, elegant, relaxing, moving, and beautiful. I kind of feel bad for not having a few more paragraphs of things to say about it. Go listen. Really.

• Favorite songs: "Colors", "Call Me a Fool", "Smile"

 

 

 

 

YOLA - Stand For Myself

Yola is scheduled to stop by Cincinnati on her 2022 tour, and I currently have tickets.  I very much hope this show still happens.  Yola is English, but when she sings, she doesn't SOUND English.  No, you're getting a very soulful sound out of Yola, and one could conceivably put her music in to the "americana" genre, which is curious, because you know, she is English.

The songs sound classic, as if they could have been released in the sixties or seventies, as if they could have been recorded in Memphis or Detroit. Apart from the music, the subject matter of some of the songs also sounds like it could have been written in the sixties or seventies, which speaks to how little things have changed for Black folks in the grand scheme of things.

• Favorite songs: "Barely Alive", "Diamond Studded Shoes", "Starlight", 

 

 

 

 

LUNG - Come Clean Right Now

Chances are good that you haven't seen anything like Cincinnati's Lung.  Live, it's Kate on cello and Daisy on drums.  That description doesn't do the live sound justice, as the cello is played through an array of pedals and effects, and it's delightfully noisy in addition to being musical. Their shows are loud and punky and energetic and passionate and basically rock.

This here is their latest full-length.  Come Clean Right Now was released in August. It rocks. Taking this great music to the studio allows Lung to layer the cello and the vocals, giving the listener a lush experience together with the nodding along. 

• Favorite songs: "I'm Nervous", "Tick Tock", "Morning", "Arrow"

 

 

 

JERRY CANTRELL - Brighten

You might recognize Jerry Cantrell from such rock bands as Alice In Chains. He's been at the music thing for a very long time, and in addition to being the main songwriter for Alice In Chains, he's got a few solo albums out as well.  If you are familiar with his sound, well, you'll probably think Brighten sounds familiar, as it sounds very much like a Jerry Cantrell album.

That said, I like this one better than his other solo work.  Maybe I should go re-listen to the rest of his catalogue to see if I've missed some details, but the songs here just seem especially well-crafted and nuanced... even when they are simple.

• Favorite songs: "Black Hearts and Evil Done", "Nobody Breaks You", "Dismembered"

I enjoyed getting to learn more about some talented folks this year via these written interviews.  I hope you enjoyed them as well, and I hope you found some new music to enjoy.  Below the picture is a review of the people we met this year.

 

with Baby Molly in Austin before the pandemic

 

Riley Hall - Bass player and singer in Snarls, a band from Columbus that you really should check out.

Jenee Halstead - Artist, singer-songwriter. She released an album called Disposable Love this year.

Baby Molly - Songwriter who recently moved from Toronto to Vancouver. You'll be hearing more from him soon.  

Chris Keats - Artist name is stylized as KEATS.  He released an EP this year called When the Sails Collapse, As Live.

Elyssa Vulpes - Italian songwriter who has moved to New Zealand since we did our interview.

Emmrose - Songwriter and artist from New York City.

Kyleen Downes - A music professional from right here in the Dayton area.

 

If you missed any of these interviews, or would like to re-familiarize yourself with any of these fine people, feel free to visit the links.  Listen to their music, connect with them on social media, and if you find any of the songs particularly moving, maybe tell a friend?

 

Dad's Album of the Week Month is back. This is the series where I briefly review my late father's vinyl.

Yes, it's been a few months since I ran one of these.  Clearly, I'm not cut out to review an album every week, let's try to get to one each month instead, ok?  

Do you remember when you would have a CD jewel case, and you would open it, and there would be two discs in there?  One disc would be the actual CD that was supposed to be in the case, and the other one would be a disc from something else, and at some point you "temporarily" put it in the case, but then you forgot, and forevermore you have two discs in one case.  Did you know this can happen with vinyl as well?  The last time I did one of these posts, I wrote about Exit...Stage Left.  Look what I found in the gatefold along with the two Rush records:

 

Yes, another double album is in there with the Rush records.  Ok then.

Frankie Goes To Hollywood - Welcome to the Pleasuredome

I don't even know what to think of this one.  The second song - which is the title track - is 13:40 long, and has some funky bass that I didn't expect... that comes and goes through the length of the song.  Here's the thing though, the Internet tells me that this band is English, so why does this one sound like Dayton funk?  I think you can draw an influence line straight from Lakeside to this song, at least.

The third song is "Relax", which I have certainly heard on the radio, albeit a LONG time ago.  The Internet tells me that this song was banned by the BBC because of the lyrical content, which is odd to me, as I've never paid attention to any words in this song except for "relax", but now that I've read them out of context, yeah, I can see how this might rankle zealous censors. That one is followed by a cover of "War", where some of the funk-imitating sounds are brought back.

In all, this album is very synth-y, very poppy, and very eighties.  It's not really my thing, but it might be yours.

 

We have a neighborhood event in Dayton called Porchfest. This event has a simple premise. Many homeowners in a pedestrian-friendly neighborhood offer their front porch (or their back yard) as a venue where an artist can perform. The performances are staggered by location and scheduled in order to avoid too much sound overlapping. This event is free to attend, and it's something I look forward to... walking around listening to live music for a few hours is exactly my idea of a good time.

This summer, I was invited to play Porchfest for the first time.  I was very much looking forward to participating in an event that I enjoy attending as well, and I convinced Ray Owens, Brandon Berry, and Jeremy Raucci to spend time learning my songs so that I could give a full band performance.  (Thanks, gentlemen!)  I was scheduled to play at 5:00 PM.  Porchfest started with a drum corps in the 1 o'clock hour, then the first slot for the artists throughout the neighborhood was to be at 2:00 PM.

One of the bands I enjoy ran into a problem.  They are called Sadbox.  Wait, the name of the band isn't the problem, stay with me here. Their bass player had been possibly exposed to COVID-19, and as a responsible citizen and fine upstanding member of society, was self-quarantining.  This meant he was not able to play Porchfest, and the folks in Sadbox found this out the night before the show.  I found this out the morning of the show, shortly before noon, as I was borrowing their drummer, Ray, for my set as well. Guess what instrument I play?  Yep, bass.  I immediately offered my services.  Sadbox accepted. Great!  But there's a challenge here...

You see, dear reader, I enjoy listening to Sadbox songs, and know many of them fairly well, but there is a difference between knowing a song from listening to it and knowing it well enough to actually play it in front of people.  I had less than two hours to mentally prepare for the show... oh, and I also had to deal with preparations for my own set later in the day.  Once my offer to fill in on bass was accepted, I immediately started listening to both Sadbox albums again, working my way through the songs, specifically listening for the bass parts, and trying to internalize the music.

I went to the designated porch, and participated in the age-old ritual of setting up gear prior to a show.  Then, the ebullient and gregarious lead singer and songwriter of Sadbox, Paul, gave me a 20 minute crash course on how to play the songs on the setlist.  This is what my notes look like:

 

 

I didn't draw that cool thing at the bottom of the setlist, Paul did.  My handwriting is the stuff in black.  I took a selfie as we were setting up in order to memorialize this occasion.

 

 

Time sure flies when you're getting ready to jump in and play rock & roll songs that you've never played before live and in public.  Before we knew it, Porchfest was under way.  You know what?  It was great.  I made my share of mistakes to be sure, but I didn't feel much pressure because, well, I think Sadbox were kind enough to keep their expectations low. I was able to relax and enjoy making music with friendly people in front of a good-sized crowd of other friendly people.  I repeat, it was great!  Making music feels good.  Doing a favor for someone feels good.  I had the privilege to combine the two on this hot Saturday afternoon. In fact, I enjoyed playing with Sadbox more than playing my own songs during my own scheduled set. 

 

Photo by Art Jipson

 

Photo by Tom Gilliam

 

Behold! Three-fourths of the mighty Sadbox, with yours truly on the porch tagging along!  This is a moment that I'll remember for a long, long time.

It's been awhile since I've done one of the Ohio Spotlight entries.  I attempted to draw a logo for it using my tablet and the drawing pen that came with it.  As you can see clearly here, this is not a skill set that I possess.

You know something that I can do? I can identify when a band is funky.  You know who's funky?  Lakeside.

Lakeside is from right here in Dayton, Ohio.  They were one of several well-known funk bands from The Gem City around forty years ago.  I've only listened to three of their albums - Shot of Love, Rough Riders, and Fantastic Voyage - but I'll surely catch up with the rest of them. These songs make you want to, as they say, get on up and jam.  The groove is infectious, which is, of course, a characteristic of funk bands.

Here's their most well-known song:

Yeah, this still holds up.  This specific song, along with many other Lakeside songs, have been often sampled by hip hop and rap artists over the last thirty years.  It's good music, and since I'm currently taking inspiration for bass lines from their songs, this music is timeless.

There are several "first" experiences in my life that happened on the beautiful island of Sri Lanka.  Most of these things are educational and positive experiences. It was the first place that I saw the sun set over the Indian Ocean. It was the first place I toured a tea plantation.  It was my first time feeding and riding an elephant.  (That last one scared me out of my mind.)  I had my first delicious encounter with Singapore Chili Crab, a dish that is popular where you might expect based on its name, but the crabs are imported from Sri Lanka.  I tried kankun for the first time. I saw a water monitor crossing the road. I smelled a cinnamon plant that was right next to the street, as common as any deciduous tree would be here. Several foods that were unfamiliar to me at the time found their way onto my personal list of favorite things to eat; barramundi, sprats, pol sambol, hoppers, string hoppers, lamprais... everything but sweets, essentially.  Arrack was also a nice discovery for me. I learned the Sinhalese greeting "ayubowan".

There were also, however, some "first" experiences that were not quite as happy or pleasant.  Colombo was the first city I have visited where the army was deployed to the streets around the city.  I had my first experiences with military checkpoints. It was my first time being completely and utterly lost in a country where I could not speak the language. 

The sum of my experiences - both positive and negative - are the backdrop for the song "A Morning Like Yours".  Before I get into the details of the song, I'd like to share some photos based on the memories I mention above.

That right there is a Sri Lankan lagoon crab as the featured star of the Singapore Chili Crab dish.

Here's a typical Sri Lankan breakfast for me: Egg hopper, red string hoppers, coconut sambol, another sambol that tasted like burning, mutton curry.

This will likely never happen again.  I am not a small human being, right?  I look downright tiny on top of this kind and gentle and somewhat elderly elephant. Yeah, interacting with creatures that are larger than me, it's not my thing.

Oh, hello there Galle Face Green and World Trade Center.

 

The first time I set foot in Colombo was 2010. Unlike well-known traveler Anthony Bourdain, I didn't visit during the war.  In fact, while I was there the first time, the Sri Lankan government was planning a parade and a celebration to commemorate the one year anniversary of the war ending... there were roads blocked off, warships gathering off the West coast of the island, and the occasional tank... and then it poured rain for a couple of days, and the celebration didn't happen.  (A Google search tells me that the parade was held the following month.) The war was over, but the army was still in the streets. That was a somewhat frightening experience for me, as I had never been in a place with active military members on patrol. When I would walk around the neighborhood, I would see the soldiers - all of whom looked impossibly young - and hope that I wasn't going to give any of them reason to point those large weapons they carried in my general direction.

As I continued to visit over the years, the military presence diminished.  The checkpoints went away.  I felt safe, which is, of course, a mirage, as there isn't really any such thing as a place that is "safe".  

I stayed in four different hotels across my visits to Sri Lanka: Cinnamon Grand, Cinnamon Lakeside, and The Kingsbury in Columbo, and Mount Lavinia Hotel in Mount Lavinia.  These are all luxury hotels with varying degrees of opulence in the region, but due to exchange rates and the world economy, the cost per night is about the same as your average Marriott here in my home state of Ohio. No, it's definitely not fair, and it's one of those things I would try not to think too deeply about when I visited.  I was there to work, and it was rather nice that accommodations with that level of comfort were an acceptable price for my company to pay.  I would have breakfast in a hotel restaurant specifically open for that purpose every day, then head off to work...  after breakfast on the weekends, I might stroll around the neighborhood, go out on a touristy-type visit, spend time in the hotel gym, play tennis with the designated hotel staff member for that, walk around an air-conditioned mall... you know, that sort of thing.

I reference those normal activities with the lyrics of the opening verse to  "A Morning Like Yours".

Take my coffee by the window
Looking at your ocean 
Text my wife a little hello 
Put the day in motion 
Get a smile from the hopper station with my dal and sambol 
Just a morning like yours 
Just a morning like yours

The time zone difference between Sri Lanka and the United States is such that my mornings corresponded to late evening over here. Sometimes Misty was awake, sometimes she was not... at any rate, my mornings were never the time for conversation outside of a brief text or two.  The lyric about the hopper station... well, I certainly don't know how to make egg hoppers, so the hotels would all have a staff member assigned to handle that during breakfast. These people were at work, so maybe they weren't really feeling cheerful, but they always smiled and said "good morning" when I would ask them to please cook me an egg hopper.

Take a walk around Colombo
Looking at your ocean 
Heavy traffic from the get-go 
Bustle and commotion 
Get a smile from the hopper station with my dal and sambol 
Just a morning like yours 
Just a morning like yours

Colombo is a densely populated city with common large city afflictions.  There are a lot of cars.  There are traffic jams.  There are people everywhere.  That said, from three of the four hotels I have had the pleasure to stay in whilst on the island, the ocean is a short stroll away. Depending on which side of the building your room is located, you can even see the ocean from the windows at The Kingsbury and Mount Lavinia Hotel.  Here in Ohio, I don't have an ocean to look at, so this was a nice treat for me.

A terrible thing happened on April 21, 2019.

Be honest.  Do you even remember this happening?  I'm not sure if it is the case in your particular city, state, or country, dear reader, but where I live, most people tend to be poorly informed of world events, of different cultures, and even of horrible evil like the bomb attacks on 21st April 2019.  I would like to think that this is something that would make me angry and sad no matter where it happened, however, I am certainly more deeply emotionally affected by this event because I've spent time in Colombo. There are folks who I was proud to call colleagues in Sri Lanka. I've had rewarding conversations with regular every day people in Sri Lanka. These are people who had to deal with a lengthy civil war in the not-too-distant past, and after that ended, surely it felt as if things were headed in a positive direction... and then this.  There isn't any such thing as a place that is "safe".

Two of the locations that were bombed are restaurants where I would sit for breakfast every day... the one at The Kingsbury on the third floor (I do not remember what it is called), and Taprobane at Cinnamon Grand, down on the lower level. On this particular Sunday, these restaurants were filled with regular people going about their lives; families on vacation, business travelers who were on multi-week trips, local folks who felt like having a special breakfast.  These restaurants, of course, were also filled with hard-working employees and fellow citizens of the people who carried out the attacks. Lives ended or permanently changed by being in the wrong place at the wrong time. On another day, that could have been me. These thoughts inspired the last part of the song.

Take your tea by the same window 
Looking at your ocean 
Just an ordinary Sunday 
Until the explosion 
Get a smile from the hopper station when the shrapnel hit you 
Just a morning like mine 
Just a morning like mine 
Wrong place and wrong time 
Just a morning like mine

I don't think this song is good enough to take to a recording studio.  Maybe I'll change my mind about that someday, but right now, that's where it stands.  That said, it accurately sums up how I feel, which is kind of the point of songwriting.  As a wise man once said, "time and chance happen to all".

If you'd like to hear the song, my home demo is attached to this blog entry.

I left my corporate job earlier this month.  I had been employed at the same place for 17 years, which is a not-insignificant portion of my life.  In the culture here, it is difficult to not be defined by what you do, rather than who you are... and that is true of how others see us as well as how we might see ourselves.  For the first few days after leaving employment, I struggled a bit to determine what exactly I am supposed to do with myself now.

I've written about my struggles with anxiety and depression before. It's not like I'm hiding it, and it's an ongoing fight, and the corporate job was not contributing to my healing, so I figured that the best choice for my health at the moment was to step away.  There is some irony that health is a concern here, since not being employed by a corporation means I am losing my health insurance.  (For my friends who do not live in the United States, one's health care in this country is often tied to one's employment.)  

There was some fantastic life experiences over those 17 years.  Quite a bit of travel was involved for awhile, and my job took me to Mexico, El Salvador, England a few times, India many times, Sri Lanka many times, China, Hong Kong, and Sweden. How horizon-broadening it was to experience so many different cities, cultures, and cuisines!  I was able to interact with colleagues from all over the United States and from all over the world. Long after the memories of the stress and the bitter times fade, I'll keep pleasant memories of lovely people. I thought I might share just a couple of those here.

That's me with the team I was sent to train on my first ever trip to Sri Lanka.  It's a beautiful island, with lovely beaches (if that's your thing), urban hustle and bustle (if that's your thing), dense jungle (if that's your thing), and great food.

Here are some of the folks who were in El Salvador while I was there.  

 

This is what a day of training would look like in Bangalore.

Ok, onward.  What's next?  Is that what you're wondering?

Well, that's what I'm wondering as well.  For the moment, I'm going to keep taking my medication and try to find a therapist with whom I am comfortable.  It might be some time before I'm ready to get back into corporate work.  

I'm still writing songs.  As I've written before, songwriting is cathartic for me. I also have a few recording projects in various stages of completion.  If you'd like to support me, my online store is here, I have a page over on Ko-Fi (even though I don't exactly know how it works yet), and of course, my music is on whatever tool you use to stream music.  

You know I love music.  For some reason that I fail to understand, there exists a subset of artistic people - whether musical or otherwise - that have some kind of strange aversion to sport in general, and really love to make their disdain known. Fear not, I'm not one of those people whose interests are so limited. I enjoy all sorts of different stuff, and some of that stuff, well, that includes many forms of sport.  I happen to especially love baseball. I've written here about baseball before.  No, really, I have.  Last year, I ranked my favorite ballparks.  (Click here to read.) I love going to games.  I love watching games on television.  I love reading about baseball.  I love playing fantasy baseball.  It's fair to say that I have a deeper emotional connection to baseball than any other sport.  Why is that?

Part of that surely goes back to childhood.  I remember swinging plastic bats at plastic balls thrown by my grandfather and my father.  Playing catch with one's father is somewhat of a male American cliché, but it's cliché because it's true... I played catch with my dad for countless hours over many years. Baseball is a place where being left-handed is an advantage.

Consider this quote from the well-known 1989 motion picture Field of Dreams, said by a character played by James Earl Jones:

The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball. 

America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It's been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt, and erased again. But baseball has marked the time.

Now, I am completely uninterested in nostalgia as a tool of patriotism, and there is no part of me that yearns for past times when people who looked like me were publicly executed with impunity.  Wait, that still happens, let me rephrase... there is no part of me that yeans for a past when the greatest baseball player of all time was not allowed to play in Major League Baseball. That said, despite how much the game has changed, the basic tenets remain.  To quote another baseball film, "It's a simple game... You throw the ball, catch the ball, hit the ball.  Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, sometimes it rains."  I find that simplicity to be beautiful.

Despite the big picture simplicity, if you look closely, baseball has a certain level of complexity and is filled with infinite possibilities.  For example, there are nine (9!) ways that a batter can safely reach base.  Not all of them involve actually hitting the ball.  There are deep cat/mouse games between batters and pitchers. There are well-coordinated movements by the defenders for who backs up which base (I love watching catchers running down to back up first in their gear), for who the cut off man will be on a given play, whether a throw should even be cut in the first place, who covers second on a steal attempt, and the intricate dance of a run down play.

I don't quite remember what year it was when my parents decided to get cable, but I absolutely remember that TBS was one of the channels that we had.  The gentleman who owned that television channel also owned a baseball team, and did plenty of cross promotion with these holdings.  This meant that just about every evening, there was a baseball game on TV, and it was always the same team.  I watched a lot of games.  I became a supporter of this team.  The broadcasters who I listened to night after night - Skip Caray, Ernie Johnson, Pete Van Wieren, Don Sutton - they became my friends.  My favorite players were Murphy and Horner, Rafael Ramirez and Oberkfell and Hubbard... then Blauser and Andrés Thomas and Zane Smith... then Smoltz and Glavine and Avery and Gant and Justice and Pendleton. (As someone once said, at the end of the day, we support laundry.)  I watched so many games, that as an elementary school kid, I memorized the disclaimer that would be read on the air each game.  These days, I don't quite remember whether they would read it in the 3rd inning or the 4th inning, but I still remember every single word.  

This telecast is authorized under broadcasting rights granted by the Atlanta National League Baseball Club and is intended solely for the entertainment of our audience. Any rebroadcast, retransmission, or other use of the pictures, descriptions, or accounts of this game without the express written consent of the Atlanta National League Baseball Club is prohibited.

The Atlanta National League Baseball Club won the World Series this week, on Tuesday 2nd November. They are champions.  CHAMPIONS. The last time this happened was my senior year of high school.  This made me happy, albeit briefly.  I don't really do happy... but I freely admit that I am deeply emotionally connected to the Atlanta National League Baseball Club.  When I was young, they were horrid. They lost 106 games in 1988.  They very nearly lost 100 games again in 1989.  I watched the games anyway.  They unexpectedly won the pennant in 1991, going from last place to first place in a year, and lost a very exciting World Series in 7 Games to the Twins.  (I still haven't forgiven Hrbek.)  They were pretty good throughout all of the 90s, but only managed to win that one championship.  That is a championship I will never forget, in part because their opposition was a team from Ohio, but I think I'll remember this one for longer.

Of course, part of that is recency bias. Part of it is how this team managed to win.  Their best player blew out his knee halfway through the season.  One of their other major contributors turned out to be a terrible human being and domestic abuser, and was away from the team for that reason. There were several other injuries.  Of all the teams that made the playoffs in baseball this year, Atlanta was near-unanimously declared to be the worst of them.  Strange things can happen in small sample sizes, however, and baseball is decidedly odd that way.  Of course, you can never really know how all of these professionals are as people, but this group of players comes across as eminently likeable, and they never quit.  I kind of like how the article I link to in the previous paragraph puts it:

Atlanta completed a mathematically improbable journey to Tuesday’s champagne bath. The NL East champs didn’t have a winning record until Aug. 6, and they had the lowest win total of any team to reach MLB’s postseason this year, including the Wild Card clubs. The Braves are just the eighth sub-90-win team to win a World Series in a non-shortened season.

Improbable.  But the improbable happens fairly often in baseball, in ever-changing ways.  That's probably another reason I love baseball so much.

 

It appeared on social media, seemingly out of nowhere, this guerilla style deliciousness, this purveyor of flavor with punk rock ethos, this underground Detroit style pizzeria.  Specifically, "Underground Detroit Style Pizzeria" is how they describe themselves on their Facebook page. I, for one, happen to love Detroit-style pizza, and since I don't spend a great deal of time in Detroit, I am in favor of finding someone who will make it somewhat closer to home.  The challenge is, well, you can't really find these folks.  They are somewhere out there, out of reach, and the only way to corral them is to get on their waiting list.  I did so as soon as I could, which was back in July 2021.

 

Finally, the last week of October, my turn came up.  The waiting list is clearly quite long, which means that business is good for these folks.  I received a message via Facebook Messenger, asking me to select the pizzas of my choice, and then to select from a limited amount of available pick-up times.  What happens if you cannot make any of the selected pickup times?  Well, your name goes back to the top of the queue, and the Pig Slice Pizza folks make a social media post saying that they have an opening, and it can be claimed immediately by the first person to message them. Thankfully, Misty and I were able to be available for one of the pick-up times.  We obtained two delicious pizzas.

This is the first one.

 

Here's the Pig Slice Pizza description for what you see above: 

The Original PigSlice Pepperoni Pizza. 

Detroit Style with house made sauce, mozzarella and provolone cheeses, topped with pepperoni and a hot honey drizzle and finished with parmesan and basil ribbons. 

You're gonna want this one every time.

My thoughts?  Well, this was delicious.  I love this style of pizza for the crunchy crust, the crispy bits of melted/charred cheese around the edges, and the doughy depth of the crust once you get past the crunch.  The sausage on top (pepperoni is a kind of sausage of course) also got some crispiness to the edges, which was nice. Also, a good way to get me to really like a food presentation visually is to chiffonade some basil.  The only objection I have here is the honey.  I don't need my pizza to be sweet, thank you.  When my turn comes up again in the queue in what will surely be several months from now, I'll either ask them to not add the honey to this one, or I'll make another selection.

Here is a picture of the other pizza.

 

Here's the accompanying Pig Slice Pizza description:

THE cheese pizza. 

House made sauce, mozzarella, romano and parmesan cheeses topped with seasoned ricotta, basil and thyme. 

Cheese on cheese on cheese on cheese.

This was also delicious, and hey look, there's more basil, and again with the chiffonade. This one is simple, but there's nothing wrong with simple if you execute it well.  The ricotta gave this a creamy mouth feel. I might have selected a different combination of cheeses, but there isn't anything wrong with this pie. I would certainly eat it again.

The folks at Pig Slice Pizza seem to be content being an underground establishment for now.  Really, I shouldn't even call them a "restaurant", as you can't show up and sit down and be fed.  When you are contacted for your selections, you are given a pickup time as I mention above... on the actual day of pickup, you get another message with the location where you make the pickup.  You arrive, message them that you have arrived, and someone brings you pizza.  It works, they don't have to deal with the overhead of having a permanent non-residential location, and their dance card is full, so I don't know that they really have any motivation to change their business model.

If you live in the greater Dayton area, go ahead and find these folks online and sign up for their wait list.  It's delicious pizza.