Author: Tim Jarrett

Never too late to have a happy childhood

Live action Pac-Man
Photo courtesy Chris Eng

It seems I’m falling into a pattern where at least one day a week, I will end up posting for two days worth of material. This is one of those days. At least I have a good excuse for not posting. It was Veracode’s Hackathon IX this week, and that means craziness.

Monday’s activity? Live-action Pac-Man. What you can’t see from the photos is that there is actually a player. Pac-Man was wearing an iPhone on his chest, connected to Webex, with the camera turned on and headphones in his ears. Someone connected to a WebEx gave instructions to Pac-Man on how to move through the maze.

The ghosts all had simple rules of how to move just like in a real video game. So the whole effect was very much like feeding quarters to Pac-Man machines as a 12-year-old. But it gave me a new appreciation for the life of the ghost—all left turns and no free will. It got, frankly, boring after a while… until random turns brought me in contact with Pac-Man.

It all reminded me of this:

naw…it's not that

Friday Random 5: Hackathon IX edition

I’m bending the rules of Random 5 to bring you this hackathon themed random 5. Pray I don’t bend them again.

  1. Be Thankful for What You’ve Got – Massive Attack (Blue Lines)
  2. Rabbit In Your Headlights – UNKLE (Psyence Fiction)
  3. Roads – Portishead (Dummy)
  4. Górecki – Lamb (I Still Know What You Did)
  5. Breathe – Telepopmusik (Genetic World)

Be Thankful for What You’ve Got: I love this version, but I feel like I’m harming my cred just a little bit to admit that I like the Yo La Tengo version even more.

Rabbit In Your Headlights: Featuring a Thom Yorke vocal and dialog samples from one of the most tortured early 90s movies ever, this shouldn’t work as well as it does. But it totally does. Something about the rhythm section, and the fact that this was before Yorke wrecked his cords.

Roads: I want to like this album more than I do. But I love the electric piano intro to this.

Górecki: There’s no better way to confuse me than to reference this song, because I’m never sure if we’re talking about the Polish composer, or the Lamb track that samples piano chords from the second movement of the Third Symphony. Still a great song, though I’ve always preferred the edit that appeared on the CD2 single back in the day.

Breathe – This is really the tail end of the time period, but I’ve always considered the 90s lasted until September 11, 2001 anyway. Great song, regardless of its use in a Mitsubishi commercial.

Veracode Hackathon IX

Wall of obsolete hardware
Wall of obsolete hardware

It’s the semiannual Veracode hackathon, so I’m behind on blogging. Again.

It’s that most wonderful time of the year—no, that other one. My company Veracode is hosting its ninth Hackathon this week, and it’s been interesting. The theme is 90s Internet Hackers, or as we say in my house, “Saturday.” Seriously: putting together the radio station was just a matter of looking in my iTunes library, and my programming skills aren’t too much more current than the 1990s. (Applescript, anyone?)

Between the bake sale, the people doing caffeine hacking at a table in the cafe, the puzzle hunt, and everything else, it’s … interesting around here.

Funkin’ for Bernie

bernie_Cover_Front_970_970_80

David Byrne: Keep On Funkin’. Speaking of David Byrne and Bernie Worrell…

I was saddened to hear back in January that Worrell, who I’ve loved since falling upon his collaborations with George Clinton in Parliament, had been diagnosed with stage four lung cancer. Byrne participated in a fundraiser concert on Monday to raise money to help pay Bernie’s medical bills (aside: with Bootsy Collins, George Clinton, Living Colour, Jonathan Demme, Meryl Streep, Rick Springfield, Maceo Parker, Steve Scales, Bill Laswell, Mudbone, Fred Schneider, Bernard Fowler, Leo Nocentelli, Ronny Drayton, Melvin Gibbs, Jerry Harrison, Screaming Headless Torsos, The Woo Warriors, Nona Hendryx, Sarah Dash, Nelson George, Marc Ribler, Paul Shaffer, and the Black Rock Coalition Orchestra in the house, I’d have loved to have been there).

Yesterday Byrne offered up a pair of remixed tracks of a song he wrote and performed with Bernie a while back. Is “How Does the Brain Wave?” the equal of Byrne’s early 1980s collaborations with Worrell, which include The Catherine Wheel and Remain in Light? Well, no, but they’re funky, so donate already.

The Catherine Wheel

I fell behind this week—thank our surprising April snow. So this is being posted on Wednesday and I’ll catch up.

David Byrne’s The Catherine Wheel is one of those works that pulled me all the way into pop music. If I had heard of Byrne or the Talking Heads before, it was picking up Remain in Light or hearing “Once in a Lifetime” on the radio. Then my friend Catherine gave me a mix tape that had “Combat” on it. I had to find more.

I turned up a copy of the CD after some searching (this was the early 1990s) and was hooked. I put “Ade” on a mix tape myself. And then I kind of forgot about it.

I went back last week and started listening to the album with new ears. It’s still amazing after all these years. A lot of insane Adrian Belew guitar, yes, but also some really crazy Bernie Worrell keyboard, and those drums…

And then there’s the performance context. The Catherine Wheel was composed as a ballet score for Twyla Tharp, and the video above has the whole blessed thing. I don’t know enough about modern dance to know if this is any good, but it pushes a lot of the same buttons for me that Home of the Brave does, and that’s a good thing. So enjoy.

Slouching toward spring

  
It’s April 4, the day on which we remember the passing of Martin Luther King, Jr. So of course it’s snowing. 

This has been a weird winter—very little precipitation, freezing days and 70° days. And now that spring is (calendrically) here, the weather is determined to make up for it. It snowed four inches before noon yesterday, then the sun came out and melted most of it. Now it’s snowing again, hard, and will for most of the day. 

I’m having a hard time getting in the mood for spring. Even the thought of going to Charlottesville in a little over three weeks to celebrate the Glee Club’s 145th doesn’t cheer me up. Well, much. I need this snow to be done. 

Friday Random 5: Catching Up Edition

Looks like, in my illness last week, I missed the Friday Random 5 and didn’t even remember it. Today I’m stuck at the car dealers again while they fix my air conditioning, so it’s time to write that catch-up post.

  1. Handel Concerto No. 4 in F: I. Allegro – Virgil Fox (Virgil Fox Encores)
  2. Born Again – Mark Sandman (Sandbox)
  3. Listening Guide: Have You Seen the Bright Lily Grow – Sting (Songs from the Labyrinth)
  4. Ghost Train – Straight No Chaser (Best of BOCA: The First 20 Years)
  5. Lithium (Acoustic Version) – Nirvana (Lithium (Acoustic Version) – Single)

Handel Concerto No. 4 in F: Is there anything better than starting the morning off with organ music? No, I don’t think so either.

Born Again – Really just a one-liner, but what a one liner. “I hope I don’t get born again, ’cause one time was enough.”

Listening Guide – Have You Seen the Bright Lily Grow – while I appreciate the thought of providing audible liner notes, I really don’t like them cluttering up my iTunes library. I’m glad more albums don’t do this.

Ghost Train – I like this album for some of the tracks that provide an innovative approach to a cappella. This one is much more straightforward but very effective.

Lithium (Acoustic Version) – The lead single off the With the Lights Out box set, this is solo Kurt Cobain. Great track.

Concerts I have seen

Inspired by the Reverend Fiesta, here’s the list of all the (non-classical) concerts I’ve gone to, as far as I can remember. I thought I had written down this list once before, but am not finding it, so here we go. Links go to set lists if the Internet has them, or to blog posts by me if not. In many cases I was at these shows with people who I can’t remember; mea culpa. In fact, I’m also sure that I’m forgetting some shows I went to, so this will be a live page.

Sting, Nothing Like the Sun tour, William and Mary Hall, January 29, 1988. My very first show. I remember very little from the performances, just how amazing it was to be there.

10,000 Maniacs (Lone Justice opening), William and Mary Hall, 1989. The “Blind Man’s Buff” tour, I went to this with my sister and with Unchu Ko.

Branford Marsalis, Waterside, Norfolk, August 18, 1989. Honestly, all I remember about this performance is how hot it was, how interesting the jazz was, and how quiet the crowd was.

Paul McCartney, Flowers in the Dirt tour, RFK Stadium, 1990. With my sister and Christina, a long long drive in a non-air-conditioned 1970s Cutlass Supreme. But “Live and Let Die” in that stadium was incredible.

Don Henley, End of the Innocence tour, Virginia Beach, 1990. With my sister and Pam, I think. And I remember Don Henley sitting down at the drums for “Hotel California.”

Wynton Marsalis, Albemarle High School, 1990. Mostly what I remember about this show is mutes: how many Wynton brought, how much he used them. There was very little about his sound with this band that didn’t rely on mutes in some fashion or other.

Sting, The Soul Cages tour, Hampton Coliseum, 1991. On a bus from the University of Virginia. I remember he played a cover of “Purple Haze,” but not much of the rest of the show.

Hall and Oates, Newport News/Williamsburg International Airport, July 4, 1991. A special festival to welcome returning Gulf War I troops.

Paul Simon, Rhythm of the Saints tour, Hersheypark, 1991. A fun show, with my sister, and, I think, my aunt.

UVA Jazzfest, 1992: Max Roach, Jackie McLean Quartet, Jack DeJohnette’s New Directions with Lester Bowie, Mingus Dynasty. Yeah, it was an amazing, amazing weekend.

Tori Amos, Little Earthquakes tour, Old Cabell Hall, University of Virginia, September 7, 1992. I wandered into the hall for Glee Club rehearsal one night and there was a ticket sales desk. I had heard the show was happening but assumed it would be sold out. I got a ticket and went to the show after rehearsal. It was amazing. So intense. There’s more to the story of the show; another time…

The Village People,  Yellow Journal Disco Ball, Memorial Gym, University of Virginia, 1992. There is no documentary evidence of this performance and I had almost forgotten about it, but the experience of watching the aging disco superstars open their set with a cover of “Gimme Some Lovin’,” complete with pelvic thrusts, and then completely slaying the crowd with the rest of their set is something I will never again forget. 

Sting, Summoner’s Tales tour, May 30, 1993, Richmond (Dada opening). With my sister, Christina and Jeremy. In which we sat close enough to the front that we were able to make the band do double takes with our ability to head-bob in 7/4 time.

They Might Be Giants at Trax, Charlottesville, VA, September 24, 1993. The TMBWiki says that Pere Ubu opened for them. I don’t remember that, but I do remember my sister and Derek Ramsey being there with me.

UVA Jazzfest, 1993:Elvin Jones Jazz Machine with Ravi Coltrane, Roy Haynes. There were other bands but I split the tickets with Bernie Fallon and so never got to see Archie Shepp. But Roy Haynes was a great show, and Elvin was amazing.

UVA Jazzfest, 1994: Milt Hinton, Dave Holland, Charlie Haden’s Liberation Music Orchestra.

Tori Amos, Under the Pink tour, Richmond, July 24, 1994. A less intimate and more upbeat show than the OCH one, but that’s to be expected given that the first show was in an 800 person venue. Much of the show was still in the acoustic vibe, though, which made the sudden transitions to full band on songs like “God” and “Cornflake Girl” kind of jarring.

Love Spit Love, free show, Washington DC, 1994. Just Richard Butler and a guitarist, and the crowd was completely quiet except for one hippie dancer, who only danced during the radio single “Am I Wrong.”

Shannon Worrell, summer 1994, Charlottesville. I’m not sure exactly when I saw this show, at an outdoor front porch venue with Matt Vanderzalm, but I’m pretty sure it was after the release of her first album, and I had already seen her play a couple of sets at various Corner venues with Kristin Asbury.

Cracker, Waterside, Norfolk, VA, 1996. Free show; attended with Jon Finn.

Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, late 1996 (I think?), Washington DC.

Sonic Youth, A Thousand Leaves tour, 9:30 Club, May 6, 1998. With Craig Pfeifer. I was so not ready for how brilliant this show was.

Liz Phair, whitechocolatespaceegg tour, 9:30 Club, October 7, 1998. I remember very little about this show except that Liz seemed like she was in complete control and enjoying the hell out of herself.el

Bob Dylan and Paul Simon, Nissan Pavilion, July 16, 1999. How weird that I remember so little of this show, except for the superb version of “Tangled Up in Blue” that I could have sworn was the opening number but the set list says was 4th. They dueted on “The Sound of Silence.”

Parliament/Funkadelic All Stars, 9:30 Club, November 13, 1999. With Craig Pfeifer. I’m pretty sure it was this show I saw and not one of their two shows at the 9:30 Club in 1998. What an amazing performance, and I couldn’t even stay for the whole thing.

Beck with Beth Orton, Patriot Hall, George Mason University, February 19, 2000. Can I get with you and your sister? I think her name’s Debra. And Beth Orton’s brutally cute penguin joke (“Why do penguins walk softly?”). With Craig Pfeifer.

Twinemen, Mr. Airplane Man, Mark Sandman Tribute, Cambridge, August 2000. An interesting afternoon of local musicians paying tribute to the recently deceased frontman of Morphine, at an outdoor venue near the Middle East club in Central Square.

Spain with Miranda Lee Richards, the Crocodile Club, June 15, 2001. With Arvind and Kim.

Radiohead, Amnesiac tour, The Gorge, Washington, June 23 2001. With Lisa.

Isaac Hayes, Blind Boys of Alabama, Youssou N’Dour, Kathryn Tickell, DJ Peretz, the Neville Brothers, Peter Gabriel, Afro Celt Sound System; WOMAD, August 2001. I wrote extensively about this show back in the day.

Ani DiFranco, Bumbershoot, August 31, 2002. Does being in the same outdoor performance venue as the performance count? I only caught a few songs of this one.

Sonic Youth with Modest Mouse, Bumbershoot, September 1, 2002.

Pernice Brothers with Jose Ayerve, Sparrow, and Warren Zanes, the Tractor, July 11, 2003.

New Pornographers, Bumbershoot, September 1, 2003.

Wilco, Bumbershoot, September 1, 2003.

R.E.M., Bumbershoot, September 1, 2003.

Lou Reed, Moore Theater, June 29, 2003. This is essentially the show that was presented on the Lou Reed: Animal Serenade live album.

Elvis Costello, Benaroya Hall, March 8, 2004. I had completely forgotten about this show.

Sonic Youth, Showbox, July 19, 2004.

PJ Harvey, Avalon, October 9, 2004.

Pixies and Mission of Burma, Tsongas Center, December 2, 2004.

Justin Rosolino, Club Passim, December 13, 2004.

Sonny Rollins, Tanglewood, September 5, 2005, with Lisa.

Neko Case, Willard Theatre, April 5, 2006.

Elvis Costello with Marian McPartland and Diana Krall, Tanglewood Jazz Festival, September 2, 2006, with Lisa. I went to this show and never wrote about it, which is a shame because it’s the last non-classical performance I went to for almost nine years.

Bruce Hornsby, Cary Memorial Hall, October 17, 2015, with Lisa.

The Chieftains, Chevalier Theatre, Medford, March 1, 2017, with Lisa.

Branford Marsalis Quartet with Kurt Elling, Cary Memorial Hall, April 28, 2017, with Lisa.

Pixies, House of Blues, Boston, May 20, 2017. With Cymbals Eat Guitars.

Mavis Staples, Cary Memorial Hall, June 2, 2017, with Lisa.

Cécile McLorin Salvant and Aaron Diehl, Jordan Hall, February 7, 2020, with Lisa.

Genesis, TD Garden, December 16, 2021.

Cowboy Junkies, Cary Memorial Hall, April 14, 2022.

Tears for Fears with Garbage, Leader Bank Pavilion, June 22, 2022, with The Girl.

Branford Marsalis Quartet, Berklee Performance Center, January 28, 2023, with The Girl.

The Cure with The Twilight Sad, Xfinity Center, June 18, 2023, with Joy.

Herbie Hancock, The Cabot (Beverly, MA), June 21, 2023, with Lisa.

Lyle Lovett and Leo Kottke, Cary Memorial Hall, October 19, 2023, with Lisa.

Cécile McLorin Salvant, Sanders Theatre, February 2, 2024, with Lisa.

Alan Cumming, Sanders Theatre, March 15, 2024, with Lisa.

Finding no takers

WaltKelly_VirginiaSpectator_Feb1952_100

Doing my look back post, I found one link I never followed up, in which I talked about a plan to restore the Pavilion gardens (wonder what happened to that?), and noted a rare Walt Kelly cover for the Virginia Spectator that I had seen reproduced in black and white but not (yet) in color. In the intervening years, fantastic Pogo blog Whirled of Kelly posted a high resolution scan of the cover, which I include here to close the loop on my reference all those years ago.

This is one of two issues of the University of Virginia’s magazine (variously titled the Spectator, the Virginia University Magazine, etc.) for which I would pay a high high price. The other, of course, would be a copy of the January 1871 edition that gives us the founding date for the Virginia Glee Club.

Today in my blogging history

I sometimes forget to take a look back at things I’ve written—forgivable if you ignore the almost fifteen years of blog history here. For all that, my beats have remained relatively steady, as a look back at March 30 in my blog’s history reveals. Going backward, we have:

That strange fragile feeling

This has been a winter of illness, unusually so for me. Between Thanksgiving and New Years I was down for almost six weeks with a hacking cough that started with a week of fever and was so hard-pressed to clear stuff from my lungs that I ended up fracturing (or at least pulling) a rib. And now at the end of the winter or beginning of spring I was laid low for several days with another fever + upper respiratory condition, just in time for Easter.

And man, I had forgotten how logy I get when I have a fever. I’m three days on from the last fever and still tired around the edges.

It reminds me of the summer after my third year at the University of Virginia. I had just finished my first summer away from home, doing a lab internship, and I headed back to my family home and slept. For like a day. That in itself was not so unusual, but the fever was. The doctor confirmed that I had finally contracted mono. My third year roommate had had a bad case of it before we went home for break, so apparently it incubated over the summer and then started out slowly.

The end result was brutal. I had enough energy to do a few things, if I forced myself, but then had to sleep for hours. I pulled myself together well enough to get back to the University of Virginia, where the truly painful part of the sickness revealed itself: I was going to have to tough it out without air conditioning, since I was living that fall in a Lawn room in Mr. Jefferson’s original part of the University Grounds. So there were a great many afternoons spent exhausted, sweating, sleepless. And, reinforcing the ambience, I was reading Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s The General In His Labyrinth, about Simón Bolívar’s dying journey down the Magdalena River. Languishing in the August (and September) Charlottesville heat, I felt as the Liberator must have felt.

I still feel little echoes of that day any time I spend more than a few days sick, as though I’m preparing to return to that sweat-dampened bed with barely enough energy to stand. At this point in my life I know that one day, I hope many years from now, it’ll be a return for good. These illnesses, inconsequential as they are, are just brief glimpses of that ultimate end.

—And that’s why men have a reputation for being bad patients.

Eastertide

Geese at Peepers Pond.

Geese at Peepers Pond. Full size at Flickr.

Another Easter has come and gone. This year I was sick, with a bad cold that came on suddenly after our first performance of the Kancheli “Dixi” and didn’t abate until partway through the day… after I had sung two services at church. There is something restorative about singing the Hallelujah Chorus, if it doesn’t kill you first.

I’ve been thinking a little about something one of our student ministers said yesterday to the children. He talked about Easter and the opening of the cave as a promise from God to us that we can all have that resurrection experience—not just in the context of literal resurrection, but as a second chance, as the removal of the metaphorical stone keeping us in whatever cave we currently occupy. I think about that as I look out on a cold, drizzly spring morning. I’d like to find some sunshine.

Cocktail recipe: Woodsy Owl

The Woodsy Owl

It’s a concert week, so I thought in lieu of a proper blog post I’d share this cocktail recipe I invented a year or so ago. Enjoy!

This is the Woodsy Owl. It’s a little like an Allen Cocktail, but the combination of sweet vermouth and Cardamaro gives a slightly sweet herbal flavor to what would otherwise be a less bitter variation on the Negroni.

Woodsy Owl

  • 1 oz gin (recommend Plymouth)
  • 1 oz sweet vermouth
  • 1 oz Cardamaro

Combine and stir over ice. Strain into a coupe glass. Garnish with lemon peel (optional).

It’s about Sorry

I’ve been making more of an effort to write about music and recently accepted a challenge to post an 80s song a day on Facebook. This post (which I’m posting a day late, but which was actually written on the 23rd) comes from that effort.

I was listening to this track with The Boy today. He asked, “What’s this song about?”

I replied, “Well, I’m not sure. He sings about waiting for a call, and about choices, and says he’s sorry. But he lets us make up our own minds about what the song is about.”

The Boy said firmly, “It’s about Sorry.”

I said, “Yes, it’s about Sorry.”

And then we talked about apologies, and what it means to accept an apology.

Thanks for that, Michael Stipe.

RIP Andy Grove

Andy Grove, courtesy Esquire
Andy Grove, courtesy Esquire

CNN: Andy Grove, former Intel CEO and personal computing pioneer, dead at 79. It’s worth taking a second this morning to think about why we remember what Andy Grove did when other pioneers of silicon are mostly forgotten.

Motorola, Texas Instruments and others built chips. Andy built an ecosystem.

While Wintel may rightly be regarded as an example of a noxious monoculture, mostly because of the Windows side of the equation, Andy recognized the potential for personal computers and ensured that they would run on his chips. And he recognized that Wintel was only one ecosystem that could have been built with Intel as its foundation—witness his convincing Steve Jobs to shift the architecture of Macs away from PowerPC to Intel chips in 2006.

I had an opportunity during the 2001 MIT Sloan Tech Trek to meet Andy. He spoke with a bunch of MBA students for a few minutes, and took questions. He struck me as a long thinker, so I asked him a long thought question: how long could Moore’s Law continue to hold before the physics of small matter caused it to bottom out? He was airy as he said it was a “20 year problem.” And he was right: he knew that there was plenty of room to continue innovating on the silicon. He didn’t say it, but I suppose he was more focused on the business of the ecosystem; even then you could read the writing on the wall that the antitrust suit, a resurgent Apple, and mobile computing were about to take the wind out of Microsoft’s sails.

I don’t know that I’ll ever get to talk to a more brilliant man (not counting Bill Gates, but I never got a chance to ask him any questions as an intern). Rest in peace.