A good listen for a rainy day

Here's the new album from Dave Alvin with his new band The Guilty Women, an all-woman backing band featuring Cindy Cashdollar. Cindy used to be in The Cardinals with Ryan Adams (a founding member, actually) and is arguably one of the best pedal steel players out there today. I believe she plays the Lowell Folk Festival every few years, or, at least, last year.

Considering checking this band out at Regattabar in a few weeks.

Massive nostalgia attack

...can't...breathe...feel...old...

Every Man Needs A Hero

Thank the lord for that

50 years ago today, Waylon Jennings did not die.
Waylon, who Buddy Holly produced a bit early on, was in Holly's band in 1959. The man who would become a critical Nashville outlaw - scratching for studio control and fighting against the predominant 'Nashville sound' - gave up his seat on a plane out of Iowa to the Big Bopper (J.P. Richardson), who had come down sick.

The plane crashed, the musicians died and, in 1971, Don McLean recorded 'American Pie,' which was probably the worst part of the whole ordeal.

Alright, that's wrong. Madonna's cover was the worst part of the whole ordeal. Oh, and Jennings died Feb. 13, 2002.

The NASCAR part is best

And then, because, I typed in this paragraph from "Willie Nelson: An Epic Life," Joe Nick Patoski's excellent, if occasionally overstating biography of Willie:

Willie had reached the pinnacle of celebrity. Two weeks after the release of Stardust, he had performed at the White House for President Jimmy Carter. Jimmy regarded Willie so highly that he invited him back for a private performance in September. While the president was away at Camp David, trying to broker a Middle East peace agreement, Willie played a show on the White House lawn for NASCAR, singing a duet with First Lady Rosalynn Carter. That night, before retiring to the Lincoln Bedroom, where he and Connie spent the night, he climbed on the roof of the White House and smoked a joint with one of the Carter Boys.

And then there's the overstating part:

And without Willie covering his song, Townes [Van Zandt] would have likely died unrecognized and unappreciated.

Yeah, I've got an army of Texas songwriters that would say differently. Willie's probably one of them.

Adrenaline will always be my first love

Dear people of the world,

Why the hell aren't we listening to Deftones anymore? Why did I not even have the band's 2006 album until tonight? And how come Chi Cheng is still in a coma?

We must forgive ourselves for this tragic lapse in attention. We must move forward. To do that, here is a video of the 'tones killing it on 'Nosebleed' in Australia in 2003. Where it is summer in January. Nice lei, dude.

Title Frustrations

I wanted to call this thenextbigthing.blogspot.com.

But I couldn't. Because about six years ago some guy couldn't sleep. Jerk.

See, it was supposed to be a comment on how we constantly reassess popular music to determine what is important right now. Or it's the title of an MXPX song. You decide.

This will have to do.

(twss)