Oasis does finally learn to don't look back in anger.

We saw an early screening of Oasis: Don't Look Back In Anger last night and we both walked out having really enjoyed the film. 

I laughed, I cried, I got chills, and I felt a greater understanding of the band dynamics that had long been more of a mystery to me. 

And I was honestly surprised by how surprised both Gallaghers were by the genuine reactions to their tour all over the world, and their reactions to that. Even the Gallaghers seem to grapple with the unanswerable question of why it was these guys and those songs that conquered the world, and made Oasis into OASIS.*

The movie opens wide tomorrow! And it appears to be playing in quite a few theaters. But if you can't make it out during its run, the film will eventually come to Disney+/Hulu, however I really recommend catching it on a big screen in a theater with a kick-ass sound system if you can. 

*But isn't that the eternal mystery of music? I've spent decades of my life watching people try to apply formulas to decide which band will be big and worth an investment and which won't. And the truth is it all comes down to luck, timing, talent...and did I mention luck and timing?

A light Labor Day recap with some urgent suggestions for the artistically curious.

While we did not avoid all labor this long holiday weekend, our labors were richly rewarded. We managed to balance rest and recuperation with reenergizing activities and knocking a few long-staring items off various to-do lists.

A particular highlight was catching the Willem de Kooning exhibit at the Art Institute before it closes in a few weeks.* I'll be posting something on Instagram about that later this week. But if you haven't seen it yet and I've in the area, I found it a really rewarding and revealing look inside a person's work I've been so familiar with for so long, but I've never had the chance to see so much of his stuff that clearly displayed his evolution over the years, transforming what appeared to me as quantum leaps before into more logical paths of pursuit, connecting dots I had never seen before.

In other words, it's pretty frickin' good!

However the highlight of the weekend was probably our little family BBQ on Monday, and not just because of the delicious cookie cake. 

But the cookie cake certainly didn't hurt!

*I also just discovered the mammoth Paradise Lost piece by Raqib Shaw that I've seen a few times, and had anticipated spending years going through and picking apart all the teensy tiny details within, is only on temporary loan to the Art Institute and leaving in November! I don't know if it's moving elsewhere or if Shaw intends to add to the piece and then loan it out somewhere else, and there doesn't seem to be any verifiable answer to that question. The important thing is that it's leaving soon, so I need to get another few visits in, and if you haven't seen the piece at all, I strongly urge you to make immediate plans to do so.

One more sneaky suggestion, just under the wire.

I wrote up a Quick Spins that will go live in a bit went up today for Bandcamp Friday, but I was shocked at the number of albums I'd originally wanted to write up that don't come out for another couple of weeks...so I guess I'll just have to do another Quick Spins in a week or two!* But if you're the sort who's willing to take a chance on a pre-order before hearing the whole thing, and you're looking to help support a truly independent musical group, might I suggest adding Perennial's forthcoming Modernism to your consideration set?

It's non-stop, energetic fun!

*I love getting music months before it's released, but it is a sweet kind of torture to have to sit on stuff that gets you fired up from months as well. And sometime I get confused and assume something I've listened to for months must be out by now, only to discover nope; you gotta wait another couple of weeks.

Ready for a photo round-up of recent activities? Of course you are!

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Earlier in the week we used the tickets Nora's sister gifted her and checked out the Balloon Museum. I usually approach art pop-ups as being traps form Instagram influencers, however while I did capture some fun photos of our experience, the exhibits were far more rewarding when you interacted with them than  captured objects that just looked good in a photo.

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We closed out our busy week with a few excellent musical experiences at both Old Town School of Music (inspiring solo sets by Jessica Dobson and Meg Duffy) and Cobra Lounge (raucous sets by Time Thieves, The Feeders, and Fig Dish), and taking in some outdoor art (and other flora) at the Chicago Botanic Garden.

(And thanks for participating in my experiment to bring some more Instagram content over here without creating super long posts with tons of individual photos.)

Reserver charges full steam ahead on 'Reverser.'

Photo by Dan Wendt.

I popped in the advance of Reserver's debut album Reverser last week, expecting to give it a quick listen and see what they were about. Roughly 20 minutes later I was rushing to my laptop to order my own copy of it. I'm saving a slightly longer review for a future Quick Spins on Third Coast Review, but they play their album release show at Reed's tonight, and I couldn't let that go without at least a little advance buzz to try and get you out to see them.

Reserver's sound channels a bit of Pavement, a touch of The Amps, and a lot of early Dinosaur Jr. on the squalling and snaking guitar front. And on a few songs I even hear the influence of Local H on some of the band's popper excursions. But they keep things so compact that all of that fits into roughly 3 minute bursts, overstuffing your pleasure centers (for those of us who find pleasure in those sounds).

Reserver's music is so catchy, lively, and slathered with so much swinging energy that I'm incredibly eager to see how it all comes together on stage. 

Catching up with recent Third Coast Review activity—Quick Spins and 20 years of OK Go on those treadmills!

If you're looking for 8 solid new music recommendations, I did a Quick Spins last Friday covering recent releases from the Mountain Goats, Paycheque, Mermaid Island, The Format, Primitive Ring, Parts & Labor, Hit Like A Girl, and Tyler Sabbag.

And on the home front, I did a quick little piece celebrating the 20th anniversary of OK Go's Here It Goes Again" video that arguably unlocked the wider success the band still enjoys today.

Sorry I didn't post this earlier in the week!

A glitter-spangled rawkin' banger designed to elicit immediate fist-pumps, party-party partying, and plenty of "oooOOOooo"s.

Photo by CJ Simonson.

One of the reasons I listen to just about everything sent my way (on top of my own constant search for anything new that will hit me just right) is you never know when you’re gonna find a buried gem. While I was enjoying Mac Luster’s debut EP Ritual, my main impression was that it sounded like a nicely solid middle-aged take on emo with a bit of Midwestern grit.*

 

And then the EP's penultimate song “Sofia” crashed into my headphones; an ’80s pop-metal pastiche driven lyrically by a fleeting meeting at a show, and musically by a party bouncing its way through the fretboard and all over the drum kit. 

 

Give it a spin. Since it’s so different from the rest of the EP, I can’t promise it’ll make you a fan of the band, but it might. And at the very least I think it’ll make you a fan of the song, and that’s where it always starts anyway, right?

*I say “grit” but by that I do not mean it’s an irritation, but more a worn-in, welcoming authentic feel that is cozy but not soft. A style which seems to be leaking into more and more music coming out of California these days. Midwestern influence or Midwestern infiltration? Curiouser and curiouser, to me.

A quick jam from deep in the vaults of Big Angry Fish.

A few weeks ago I saw Chicago’s Big Angry Fish as they performed at their now-annual Big Angry Fish Fry at The Montrose Saloon. The band’s history stretches back to the ‘90s and when they get back onstage to play these days, their sets bounce with youthful energy instead of old man sentimentality. 

One song they played this year that I was less familiar with was “Serves You Right,” and I found myself humming its melody long after the show was over. Yet I didn’t remember hearing on any of the band’s earlier CDs, though with some in storage, I couldn’t be sure. But some poking around revealed that it probably hadn’t been on any “official”releases back in the day, but it did appear on a pay-what-you-want Bandcamp compilation members of the group put out in 2018 to clear house of some odds and ends … including “Serves You Right!” I whooped with joy at its discovery!

Give it a play and I predict you’ll be bopping along to it, same as me.

Some brief thoughts on the power of the Mountain Goats as experienced from not quite the outside but not quite the inside either.

Photo of the band at Fitzgerald's by me.

Due to my partner being a huge fan of the band, I have now seen the Mountain Goats an unusually large number of times over the past couple of years for someone who was previously a fan of the band, but in a more detached, intellectual manner. 

For someone like me it’s been both fascinating and rewarding to suss out the group’s connection to its fans on one level while experiencing the band’s rapid evolution mastering a sprawling mélange of styles that often seems like both a burst of curiosity and the increasing means to explore whatever musical corner they want to inhabit at that time.

The audience at a the Mountain Goats show is frequently passionate while remaining exceedingly polite, and I have experienced their honest conduit of shared emotions between the crowd and the band, a positive feedback loop of sorts. Of course, this is what most live music aspires to do, but there’s something in the Mountain Goats that makes that bond seem eagerly effortless and natural. And I have enjoyed being allowed to share in that communion and enjoy the energy, even if I sometimes still feel slightly detached and looking in (which is all me and a result of so many years working in, on, and/or writing about music.

We recently saw the group twice in the last week of June—at Summerfest in Milwaukee and as part of Fitzgerald’s Outdoor series—and the show at Fitzgerald’s was a particularly potent one for me: the crowd, the music, the vibes; everything was perfect. But since I posted about the band yesterday, I was hesitant to share anything from last night. But it was too good not to share SOMETHING and mark the occasion. I could have chosen one of “the hits” but I think you can find a million versions of the band playing “No Children” and “This Year” out there. (I’m sure I have shared a few of them myself.) Instead, I’m posting the super-fun Fitzgerald’s performance of “Charlie Sheen Reaches Out to the Feds” from their forthcoming album ‘Days.’ It rocks, it grooves, it’s ebullient, it’s dark, and it was an early crowd pleaser in the set. I hope some of its magic remans in the video I managed to capture.

The new album is out this Friday and while I am precluded by saying anything much about it until then, I can confirm that it is filled with bangers.

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Y’know, I wrote most of this about a month ago to accompany the Reel embedded above, so I feel the need to add a little extra bonus to this post. (I mean, on one hand I still view this site as the core Tankboy resource, and while I have grown more comfortable cross-posting over the years, I still have the reflexive need to tailor each one slightly for its intended location.) Lemme see…

I’ve got it!

While I focused on the Fitzgerald’s show here, the Milwaukee Summerfest gig was a ton of fun as well, as the band focused their set to festival length due to strict time constraints. And we were treated to something special for a festival gig; a truly unexpected encore. So unexpected that when the band came back onto the stage, the soundman had already left the board. (In their defense, how could they have expected an encore, and how likely was it they were taking a bio break before having to do sound for the next act on that stage?)

The band started playing anyway. I’m still not sure if they knew the house sound wasn’t on at first, but once it became apparent the front speakers were silent, the Mountain Goats kept playing and the crowd stepped in to provide the vocals.

Here is a snippet of that experience I captured, and I can still feel the euphoric rush of the group sing-along, and the rapturous response from the crowd the moment the front speakers finally kicked in. You’ll see. 

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Glorious.

The obligatory 'Odyssey' post.

We saw Christopher Nolan's take on The Odyssey last weekend. It was excellent. Duh. If I had any minor quibble it would be the choice of music playing over the closing credits, but everything prior to that is nigh perfect in its pursuit of epic grandeur balanced by close human moments. 

You know, an epic FILM!

Go see it on a big screen. Don’t get hung up on seeing it in the “perfect format.” Just SEE IT.

POTENTIAL SPOILER ALERT—STOP. HERE IF YOU HAVEN’T SEEN THE ODYSSEY YET:

I know, you can’t really spoil a poem that’s thousands of years old, but you can spoil a director’s take that makes that poem personal and introduce a new perspective that skews the commonly understood interpretations. This is beyond stuff left out of the story or condensed for clarity and such. This is a core reframe, and the thing that turns the mythical into the personal which leads to its embrace as a universal.

Sooooooo:

While at first I did find it curious that Christopher Nolan chose to mix his metaphors by taking the stance that Odysseus opened Pandora’s Box by creating the Trojan Horse, it’s a read I could embrace with more emotion than had the story hinged more on Odysseus’ being the mostly unrepentant jerk he comes across in the original poem as he's constantly locked in battle with the gods (so to speak).

Another summertime, funtime (but honestly anytime) song.

Dug through my email to find this very, very 2011 promo photo used by The Color Bars.

I’m a little shocked I never shared this tune here (though I might’ve on Chicagoist back in 2010 or 2011 when it first came out) but it’s in that category of dependable bangers that will always instantaneously lift my mood, no matter how dark it may be.

"Structupoppie Rally" is an extremely sillily-titled song from The Color Bars’ album Prosopopoeia, but it's just got such a gently driving positive lift propelling it from start to finish, and it has yet to no be 100% effective in giving me a positive lift as well. From that opening burbling bass synth with a sassy little squiggly synth atop it, it's a total gas.

Knowledge gaps and learning that when you're a boy you learn how to be a man.

It never astounds me how much I don't know, even about my favorite things. For instance, it wasn't until this week that adult me discovered there was an amazing cover by Rex Smith of David Bowie's "Boy Keep Swinging" that appeared on a 1985 special hosted by Bob Keeshan (a.k.a. Captain Kangaroo) entitled, wait for it, How To Be A Man.* 

In the past few years it's really grown ever more apparent to me that no matter how much stuff you stuff in your noggin or gather as experiences, there will always be acres of the unknown, even about your absolute favorite things, that will make you feel like you don't know anything at all. But the truth is, you can't even be aware of how vast your gaps in knowledge are until you've spent a long time filling those gaps. So it's all a positive thing in the end, even if sometime I feel like an idiot for just discovering a major network special featuring a song by one of my favorite artists of all time that is this distinctly memorable (and delicious).

*Based on the year and topic, there is actually a decent chance I saw this in real time. But if I did, I clearly don't remember it and even if I did I wouldn't have made the Bowie connection 

Perennial is now! Modernism is now!

Perennial play Chicago for the 1st time. Photo by me!

Nora turned me onto Perennial—she's had an awesome glow-in-the-dark t-shirt of theirs since before I met her—and when I first gave them a spin I was impressed with their incredibly tightly packed little Mod bombs of songs. 

A few weeks ago we both finally had a chance to see Perennial live for the first time at a Sunday night show in a DIY space. While I really enjoyed the compact attack of their records, nothing could have prepared me for the explosion I witnessed that night. Onstage, Perennial is still super-duper tight, but they have a lot more freak-beat funk in their live attack, triggering an even stronger urge in everyone to break out into a dance party. Not a single member of the trio remains still for more than a half a second throughout their entire show, and at every beat they seemed in lockstep, tied together by some telepathic bond between the three of them.

Perennial's new album Modernism is out in mid-September, but I pre-ordered it last week despite being sent a download of the album already. Things this good need to live in your home, not your streaming queue.

Please enjoy this Instagram embed and then consider tweaking some of your settings.

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I hadn't even realized that Instagram had turned off post embeds as a default, so I turned it back on and am testing it with this post of photos that went up just before my birthday. I may consider more frequent cross posting of Instagram posts since those have grown to be almost as long as some blog posts in the last year or so. Haha.

But in important related news, Instagram did add a setting allowing people to remix your content using Meta AI and of course they opted everyone into that without asking. So make sure you go into your settings and shut that down ASAP. 

Friction is...good? The start of a thought in progress...

I think there is grave danger in living a frictionless life. Had the internet existed when I was a kid, and I my druthers, I would have absolutely retreated into that space and avoid annoying humans or topics that didn’t directly cater to my existing interests. 

Instead, I had parents who unleashed me upon whatever I could get my hands on and understand from a very early age. They also taught me that many conflicts in life have an easy way out, but that easy way is usually pretty half-assed and ripe for setting up an even larger future conflict. At least in my experience. 

Then again, my experience is based on a being human being that I have learned does not always present predictably to other human beings in a way that feels “normal” to them.

Regardless, I have applied friction to all parts of my life, often choosing the harder road for myself because I know it’s the correct path to take, for me. And don’t get me wrong, I am not claiming this makes me in some way superior to other people who don’t do this since most people I’ve encountered seem to lead simpler, less complicated lives in general. Here “simpler, less complicated” is meant to denote relative states of existence: everyone feels they lead a difficult life because life is, in fact, difficult. 

There are many reasons I am the way I am, many of which I have not publicly explored. And I’m still sorting this out in my own head, after mulling over my perceptions and cross referencing them with other people’s perceptions of me, so for me this is just a tiny thread of a larger tapestry I’ve decided to publicly start pulling at to understand better.

In the end I do sometimes ask myself what I have to show for this approach. I know more than most people, but I certainly don’t seem as happy as most people, so why exactly do I bother constantly making things “more difficult” for myself? I honestly don’t know the answer to that, but I do know that for me I don’t think there ever was a different path I could take.

Reenergized and heading out on a summer stroll.

I’m coming off a week staycation that was lovely, even if I didn’t feel the creative juices start to flow more freely until…sometime last Sunday afternoon. 

It took me a week of trying to “relax” and focus on more freewheeling creative endeavors before I actually could. Just in time to go back to work and have to give up that newfound mental space as it’s reallocated from personal pleasure to professional pursuits. 

I’m still feeling pretty good though! So to keep the energy moving in a positive direction here’s another tune I think is woefully under appreciated. 

Cretin Stompers’ “Cowboy From Mars” has a real ‘70s-stylee-by-way-of-Lenny-Kravitz groove buried under piles built on shards of distortion. It’s the kind of song that could have been delivered cleanly as a pop hit, but instead chose to bury the pop in chaos. This latter approach allows the song to burrow in and catch a deeper hold as your brain tried to pick out the hook or fish out the melody. But once that brain locks in, the song turns technicolor and you hear everything that was buried in there. 

You’re hooked.

5+ years of 10,000+ steps every single day!

I hit a milestone last week I thought was worth celebrating: I hit a 5-year step streak!

 

I’ve always walked a lot, but over the pandemic walking became more than a mechanism to get me from one point to another. It became a little slice of mental salvation as I explored more areas and beheld new sights. As a result, for the last 5 years, I have gotten in at least 10,000 steps a day (and frequently far, far more than that)!

 

Every. Single. Day. 1,825 days. No excuses.

 

I do confess, part of me wants to break the streak so I no longer feel so tethered to the routine…but knowing me I’ll be wiring up a post in another 5 years celebrating a 10-year streak. Once I lock into a healthy habit, it’s really hard for me to abandon it.*

 

Last Thursday was the official “big day” but it had grown into such a big deal in my head I couldn’t write about it for a few days. I mean, I know it might seem silly to celebrate such a thing, but it hasn’t been easy. For 5 freaking years, without a break, I have gotten in at least 10,000 steps a day. Both times I got Covid? I still got my daily steps in, even when that meant pacing back and forth indoors along the length of my apartment whenever I could muster enough energy. Same goes for some punishing stretches of winter. Or work travel where my schedule was far less in my control (let’s hear it for long hikes around hotels or time furiously spent running in a fitness center just to bank enough steps to offset full days of meetings and such).

 

But no matter what, every day for over 5 years now I got my steps in so my step streak could grow another day. And I'm pretty proud of that accomplishment!

 

 

*I would still be going to the gym 4-6 days a week like I did for 15 years had the pandemic not absolutely decimated that routine and then caused almost every space convenient to my house that conformed to my gym habits to permanently close. While my health routines are nigh unbreakable once they’ve set in, it’s a reminder that those behaviors do take a fair amount of effort to get off the ground and codify into a habitual routine!

 

One thing I am certain of is "If That's The Case, Then I Don't Know."

Behold this ancient photo of the band!

I really need to stop “holding off” writing about things that are constantly present in my life; 19 years after first posting about this song I get around to sharing it again. 

The Electric Soft Parade's "If That's The Case, Then I Don't Know" is one of those rare songs I can never turn off, that always brightens my mood, and that seems to hang suspended in the aether as a perfectly crystallized distillation of itself; the driving beat, the swirling bridge, the living breathing beast of a song. I no longer have many reliable "break glass for predictable emotional effect" songs these days, and I have decided to start recording more often which tunes fall into that category for me.

Sadly there is no Bandcamp download of the album available, so this YouTube video will have to do.* But, as I suspect you will, you enjoy it I heartily recommend tracking down a physical copy (or file) for a dependable jolt of joy to deploy as needed.

*Yes, I am personally anti-streaming and prefer to promote physical copies/permanent downloads, but I’m also a realist and don’t think my personal habits need be adopted by everyone, especially when so many quite simply have never known a music world other than streaming. So please do feel free to hunt this tune down in your favorite streaming service. It’s on there. 

Thank gawd, 'The Vampire Lestat' rawks.

Working in a book store in the late ‘80s, and being a general weirdo, it will not surprise anyone to know I was really into Anne Rice's growing series of Vampire Chronicles books, and I experienced The Vampire Lestat as a relatively new release. I was in the coterie of folks who had high hopes for the Tom Cruise/Brad Pitt movie adaptation, though I walked out of the theater feeling "well, I guess they got as close as a mainstream movie would allow you to."

When AMC announced their Interview With A Vampire series, I largely ignored it until the drum beat of enthusiasm for its first 2 seasons grew impossible for me to ignore. I hadn't been willing to get an AMC+ subscription, and rarely watched terrestrial cable (even though I pay for it), but once both seasons were on Netflix I decided to dive in.

I loved it. More than loved it. They got it! Yes, story points had been changed, and timing of events had been adjusted, but every tweak seemed to allow the spirit of those early, original books to shine through more brightly. And when they announced season 3 would tackle The Vampire Lestat I was very excited ... and very afraid. It would be very easy to ruin the vibe or throw off the balance if the music that Lestat's band plays to launch them into the stratosphere of megastardom didn't feel like music that could become widely popular, the whole thing could end up being super lame, despite the excellent track record for immersion the show had already set thus far. But I wasn't going to miss this I real time and finally signed up for a discounted year of AMC+.

Well, the premier episode of season 3 debuted Sunday, and I have zero reservations now. The structure they've set up to tell this season's story is flexible enough for multiple viewpoints yet durable enough to feel reassuringly consistent. The music takes more of its cues from glam and pop, and thus far the songs Lestat performs have been believable and good enough that I won't be avoiding the eventual soundtrack of collected music from this season. Heck, the signs of this season possibly surpassing prior seasons are so strong I even went and bought a piece of merch. For a TV show! I never do that! Yet here we are.

The vibes seem to be that Interview With A Vampire / The Vampire Lestat is falling into that category of TV shows that look like a million bucks, have incredibly passionate followings, and are largely (and confusingly) ignored or fall under the mainstream radar. Don't be one of those folks who discovered their favorite TV show after it's been canceled and get in on this goodness. Then spread the word. You'll be the coolest if you do.

Letting go and trying out this new thing called listening to what I like(d), for once.

Over the last week I've been treating myself to a sort of "summer break" wherein I listen to older music on my phone instead of feeling like I should spend most of my time ingesting newly released music.* I throw things on shuffle and allow myself to revisit past feelings and rediscover old forgotten favorites. I know, that sounds pretty normal to most, but it's super self-indulgent for me.

Every once in a great while a song comes up that hasn't stood the test of time (and gets removed during the next iTunes/tankPHONE sync), but mostly this has meant I've had a few solid days of wallowing in songs I already knew I liked. And there are a few songs that are like warm, reassuring blankets that I had forgotten about, but know now I can turn to I moments when they'll do the most good.

One of those warm blanket songs that also happens to rock is "Don't Cry" by The Sweet Serenades. The tune was on the Swedish band's 2023 album Everything Dies, and when it played while I was on the road to Wisconsin last weekend, its power came rushing back at me, and I questioned how I could have ever forgotten about this tune!

Wrap yourself up in this cozy rocker.

*O.K., I did listen to the new album from the Mountain Goats. But I can't talk about that for months. Other than giving into that digression, I have otherwise kept up a regular diet of "old faves" for at least the last week.

It just goes on and on and on and on and...

I saw Backrooms over the weekend and enjoyed it. I do love that an incredibly young creator is being given the opportunity to make the jump from online video to the big screen, but if you’ve listened to any interviews with Backrooms creator/director Kane Parsons you understand that he was more than ready for that leap.

As far as transitioning an online series to the big screen, this is a genuine success. I know nothing of the online mythology (which is apparently deep) but Parsons made the right choice to focus on the space and experience over building a cinematic universe (yet).

To an older brain like mine the plot comes across as a mish-mash of books like House Of Leaves and Horrorstör, so while the premise didn’t seem particularly “new” to me, seeing those kinds of spaces brought to life was a bit thrilling. Perhaps the oddest thing was seeing the alternate spaces created by Backrooms and finding them less scary and more cool than I probably should’ve.

To those still interested but on the fence because they keep hearing how scary Backrooms is; it’s less scary than you think, there is almost no visual violence, and I personally found the he overall vibe more meditative than stressful. I’d catch this in a theater while you can, but I also think it will work well on the smaller screen since size and scale are less important than snackable spaces in Parsons’s visual approach.

Welcome back (briefly), Stephen Colbert!

Less than 24 hours after his Late Night sign off, Stephen Colbert popped back up on Michigan public access television to guest host Only In Monroe. With musical director Jack White. And other special guests. And an IRL dumpster fire.

 It was a perfect coda to an emotional week. And you know what? It also felt like a little gift from Colbert to everyone who has perhaps worried about him since it signals he's going to be just fine.

Now if only  I only been paying more attention on the labels on the power boxes (pictured above) during his Late Night series finale...

Good night, Stephen Colbert.

Stephen Colbert has left the late night landscape, and it is a huge loss for all of us. If you didn't watch his full, uncut "Worst of The Late Show" episode, earlier this week spotlighting much of his talented staff, I highly recommend watching the entire thing.

And in last night's series finale, Stephen explored metaphysics and commiserated with his Strike Force Five compatriots.

And the final moments of the finale were so fully "Stephen Colbert" it left me sobbing, and laughing, and feeling all the warm fuzzies.

Bongo dongo, y'all.

The kids are alright.

When we were recently in New York, one of the more delightful surprises was stumbling across the Escanaba Marching Band (from the UP!*) playing a truly enjoyable lunchtime performance at the Naumburg Bandshell in Central Park. It was so entertaining, and the song selections were so satisfying, we stuck around for their entire set. Their rendition of Ozzy Osbourne's "Crazy Train" was a particular highlight for me (even if I missed the very beginning of it with the entire ensemble vocalizing the "Ay! Ay! Ay!" intro in a most excellent manner).

*That's the Upper Peninsula in Michigan for you non-Midwesterners.
 

Sweaty, funky soul.

Photo by Whitney Pelfrey

While it’s true I did clear The Note of the more adult contemporary funk and jazz groups that played there prior to my stint as talent buyer, it’s also true that I love both funk and jazz music, particularly the styles that feel closer to the ground and gritty versus the glossier flavors of those genres. 

One funk band I did book frequently while I was there was Sugarman 3, a sax- and organ-driven trio that delivered what I considered in the early aughts to be “real funk.”* Their shows were always something I looked forward to, and I enjoyed working with them. 

The organist from the Sugarman 3, Adam Scone, currently plays in Parlor Greens, another trio mining old school soul and channeling it into the modern era while embracing many of the sonic (and production) indicators that hang off the music more like dripping sweat than reflecting a glossy sheen.

Parlor Greens recently dropped their sophomore album Emeralds and I found it creeping back into my listening rotation more often that I expected, which means it's probably pretty dang good and worth sharing with you. Lemme know if I'm right,

*This is a very subjective measure, to be sure.