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Vassar Clements no longer old or in the way

Listening to:	Anita Baker
Reading:	Chronicles
Weather:	69! blessedly overcast

Vassar Clements, smokin bluegrass and newgrass fiddler, died this morning at age 77 of lung cancer. Vassar deeply sweetened the greatest produced live acoustic album of all time, Old and In The Way. That pick-up band included Jerry Garcia on banjo, David Grisman on mando, Peter Rowan on guitar, and exquisite high lonesome vocal harmonies. I love this album. Midnight Moonlight, how awesome. And their bluegrass arrangement of Wild Horses is just stellar. Goodbye Vassar, it was good knowing you.

I'm all into audio books. I've been a subscriber of Audible[dot]com for at least 3 years, since I got my first PDA. It's great, $13.95/mo for any two audiobooks. Any two, including the really expensive like $50 unabridged 23 hour books. All good, right? Wrong, because they use their own stinking proprietary format, so you can't play the files on a computer or device that you have not "activated" with them, and there's a limit on how many. What if you're at your mom's for a week and want to download another book for the ride home? You're screwed.

But finally a program that will crack that shit. GoldWave. It can read audible's file format, and permits you to convert it to .mp3 or .wav or whatever. Sweet. Now I can download a book to an SD card to put in my PDA even if I'm at home and my PDA cradle is at work (I've got an SD drive in my desktop). No I'm not pirating, not illegally sharing, I'm just listening to the books I already paid for.

If you like the great 80's britpop band Squeeze I highly recommend their singer and songwriter's new solo album The Incomplete Glenn Tilbrook. And do yaself a favor and get the Japanese import version which has 4 extra tracks, including the clever and tasty little pop gem I Kiss You By the Light of the Cash Machine. This record is chock full of the harmonically-complex, lyrically-witty, tightly produced bopping tunes you'd expect from half of the great songwriting team Difford and Tilbrook. Plus some beautiful melodies. If you don't like it, cat will buy your copy from you.

Acetamenophen and ibuprofen cause high blood pressure. Sucks for all you junkies. Lay off that shit, it's bad for your liver, too.

The weather broke today. Still heavy humidity, but the temp was so comfortable and the sky overcast all day. A welcome little respite, temps expected to go back up in a day or two. Will it be a wicked winter? Here are few clues: 1) my apple trees are about falling over with fruit, 2) the groundhogs are fat as shit this year, 3) I saw a yard full of leaves today, yes leaves. What kind of tree, I'm not sure, not a maple or oak or something common, but two giant deciduous trees had littered the whole yard, and still had plenty more to drop.

permalink posted by cat 6:49 PM

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