Coyote Mercury

Friday Random Ten

April 6, 2007 • James Brush • 3 Comments

And on this Friday, made especially good by not having school today, the first ten off the ‘pod…

“Houses in Motion” – Talking Heads – The Name of this Band is Talking Heads
“Sorrow” – Pink Floyd – A Momentary Lapse of Reason
“I’m in Great Shape/I Wanna Be Around/Workshop” – Brian Wilson – Smile
“Five Room Love Story (Live)” – Cowboy Junkies – Waltz Across America
“Windfall” – Son Volt – Trace
“Feel So Bad” – Lightnin’ Hopkins – Blues Kingpins
“Antiquity” – Chicago Underground Trio – Flamethrower
“I Love Her All the Time” – Sonic Youth – Bad Moon Rising
“Sing a Simple Song” – The Meters – The Meters
“Open Country Joy” – Mahavishnu Orchestra – Birds of Fire

That is an eclectic set to say the least.

The Talking Heads tune at the start comes from my all time favorite live album. It covers the Heads from their post-punk minimalism through the expanded Remain in Light version of the band, which is still one of the most intriguing and thrilling musical adventures I’ve ever listened to. I had The Name of this Band… on tape for years and years. And years. Every time I went to a record store, I checked to see if it was out on CD, but no luck.

Few people I knew had heard it, and by 2004, the tape was getting pretty run down. The one day, lo, I saw it at the record store, not just on CD, but remastered and full of extra tracks from the Remain in Light days. The best parts, of course, are “Born Under Punches,” “Crosseyed and Painless,” and the ominous “Psycho Killer” that opens disc two. This was a band at the height of its powers and sometimes it seems the world is still catching up.

A Mercurial Coyote

April 5, 2007 • James Brush • 3 Comments

As one might guess from the title of this blog, I like coyotes. Yes, yes, it’s true. I never rooted for the roadrunner, though I like them too.

Though I prefer old coyote stories in the Native American trickster tradition or even the Western tall-tale genre, I like a modern coyote story as well so needless to say, this story caught my eye:

Employees and customers at a downtown Chicago Quiznos sandwich shop were stunned to see a coyote walk through the propped-open front door Tuesday afternoon and lie down in a cooler stocked with fruit juice and soda.

So fruit juice and soda? I figured he’d go straight for the roasted roadrunner on rosemary parmesan (ten times as fast as you can).

Assuming he’s uninjured and healthy, he’ll be released to the wild where he will promptly order an Acme anvil, Acme Quiznos employee disguise suit, and Acme deli meat slicer in order to build a fiendishly complicated Quiznos invasion device.

So Long, Big Ugly Billboard

April 5, 2007 • James Brush • Leave a comment

Back when this blog was only a week old (and hosted on Blogger), I took on one of the big issues of the time: big, ugly billboards.

I was inspired (or should I say provoked?) by a gigantic billboard that was erected near our neighborhood, surely making it one of the biggest erections in recent history. Well, it seems the county has won its legal battle with the apartment complex whose billboard can be seen for miles, as I realized when I first drove on the new toll roads.

I’m pretty sure you can see the thing from space.

At any rate, it sounds like it won’t be up much longer, which is good news for anyone who (like me) sees billboards for the vile eyesores that they are.

Posts that Aren’t Here

April 5, 2007 • James Brush • Leave a comment

Here are links to two recent guest posts I wrote for In The Pink Texas:

Teen Sex, The Legislature, and Other Icky Facts of Life about the move towards abstinence-only sex ed.

How Will We Destroy Public Education When This Kind of Thing Happens? about a recent vote in the Texas House to kill vouchers and increase teacher pay.

The Color of Jazz

April 4, 2007 • James Brush • 3 Comments

My aunt and uncle gave me The Color of Jazz: Album Cover Photographs by Pete Turner for my birthday. I’ve been enjoying it a few pages at a time since December, and unfortunately, I’ve finally finished studying the images and reading the accompanying text.

It’s a beautiful book, LP sized to give the full effect of the album art that’s usually shrunk to CD at best or iPod screen at worst, truly made for enjoying the full-size renditions of such iconic covers as Wave and The Sound of New York.

Turner did covers mainly for albums produced by Creed Taylor for Impulse!, A&M, and CTI during the 1960s and 70s. The process was interesting to say the least. Taylor would give Turner an album title only, and Turner would create or find an image that more often than not took the title in a different direction, moving away from the artist portraits that were so in vogue at the time.

The work is amazing. Turner relies heavily on colored filters to create sublime images that are as haunting as they are vivid. His images take the music of such artists as Antonio Carlos Jobim, Freddy Hubbard, George Benson, Deodato, Joe Farrell, and Milt Jackson among others to new realms, often connecting with the music in surprising ways such as with his unsettling image from the cover of Joe Farrell’s Canned Funk: a glass eye floating in a newly opened can of peaches.

Oddly, I didn’t realize how many of the CDs in my collection are graced by Turner’s images and how many of the albums he did that I don’t have but are on my list. Reading this, I can’t help but be saddened by the way that the new download culture of music is dispensing with the notion of visual art accompanying the music. I never bought LPs, but I loved CDs for their packaging. Of course, the whole notion of the album seems to fading away as well.

To have a look at some of Turner’s jazz covers, check out this site devoted to Turner’s work.

Backyard Birds

April 3, 2007 • James Brush • 4 Comments

Here’s a better shot of one of the Carolina Bewick’s Wrens who is nesting in the box on our porch. He actually came up while I was outside with my camera. Probably to demand mealworms. I checked the box and saw that the eggs hatched today. Hopefully, I’ll be home when flying lessons start.

Last weekend, we decided to see what other birds we could attract. I put up a woodpecker feeder since my wife saw one in the yard the other day. I’ve never seen one before, but the seed block had been pretty heavily pecked by the time I got home.

The only finches I’ve seen in the yard are house finches, but I put up a finch feeder in the hopes that we’ll attract some goldfinches. I think it may be the wrong time of year for them to be here, but perhaps if I plant a garden of lettuce, they’ll come as they seem to have for Amy at Esau.

So far, though, it’s mostly white-winged doves, house sparrows, and Carolina chickadees around here, although this afternoon I did hear a song I hadn’t heard before. The woodpecker, perhaps? I’m hoping to add him to my list.

And, of course, our wrens, one seen here singing “Bird Dream of the Olympus Mons.”

Visiting the Pond

April 2, 2007 • James Brush • 3 Comments

Tonight was one of those perfect spring-in-Austin evenings when the air is cool, so unlike how it will be in a few months. Perfect for a trip down to the pond. I need to remember these nights when it’s 90 degrees three hours after dark. These are the days when there’s nowhere I’d rather be.

Walking along, listening to the birds stake their evening claims, I noticed this tree that seemed to be reaching towards me in a way that made me stop to make sure it was just a tree. It was, and a nice one at that.

I walked along the trail to the dam and spent a little while watching barn swallows swoop out over the water, diving along the surface to grab insects before soaring back into the sky. Swallows are probably my favorite birds; they’re such graceful flyers and when I watch them, all grace and wonder, it isn’t long before I’m with them, oblivious to the ant mound I’m sitting on.

Less arresting than the aerobatics of the swallows, some ducks American Coots paddled slowly out in the middle of the pond, too far out to get a decent shot, so this one will have to do. I’m trying to figure out what these are, but they’re too far out for my zoom. I’ll have to go back with my binoculars this weekend.

These spring nights, when the sun sets so late, the air is cool and everywhere spring green trees and wildflowers make for perfect walking, perfect evenings, perfect…