Push?

My little sister who texts me while in labor prolly doesn't think me quoting Bill Cosby — "Push 'em out! Shove 'em out! Waaaaay out!" — is as funny as I do, but that's okay.

Today's addition makes me the proud uncle of 19 nieces and nephews, the newest not even having a name yet. I think he ought to be a Bob, but they don't seem to care for my thoughts on the matter. For now, I suppose he's just The New One or No-Name or Hey, You!

More to follow.

You make my dreams come true (woo hoo).

Warning: The following sentence is poorly constructed. I know this.

Is it weird that today, when I was sorta wishing and hoping that Hall & Oates were on tour, that, after checking out their schedule and learning that THEY ARE in fact on tour this very weekend and that they'll be playing a short three hours away in Pompano Beach, that I just might be considering paying them a visit? I've decided it's not. It's beautiful, that's what it is.

cover song of the day.

"Cause we all have wings, but some of us don't know why."

Record Club: INXS "Never Tear Us Apart" from Beck Hansen on Vimeo.

a little more conversation.

less conversate

it’s on a sunday night, one so disguised as summer
a balmy hug of an orlando spring
when the receiver is passed to the two-year-old
she who’s mastered a language
she’s written (though she’s yet to write)
one aptly translated by her mom
(she providing the spoken subtitles)

she wants me to come over to her house
or even her friend alison’s,
and I promise I will from 2,000 miles away,
her mom detailing that happy face
the “o” for a mouth
chubby handclaps
the ones that never make it through the phone

the sentences come without structure,
or periods, much clarity
more bent on sharing,
no sense correcting
this triggered enthusiasm

ah, this niece who calls me by my brother’s name
9 times of 10,
this 37-lb wonder who wears the biggest diapers
they looking like french-cut bikini bottoms,
this baby of a girl who absolutely believes I live
with mickey mouse, no reason to believe I’d lie

this girl I know I love and am in love with
and not just in the moment she says “DainonIloveayou,”
another word from her hodgepodge vocabulary
that dialect constructed of feelings
they holding the most importance

But it's no obsession.

There’s a reason a woman falls apart when you ask for her foot and go after it a while with some lotion and a couple of strong hands. Sure, it has something to with the touch and act of tackling something few actually dare to. It also speaks to your accepting them, every last piece of who they are, exactly as they are at that moment. Even if it’s a foot that may have been inside a high heeled shoe, one that might be a little bit damp and not have a perfect sheen of toenail polish to boast.

Even it. Even then.

Wordless Tuesday.

'Scuse me, sir, may I have another?

There's no reason to post another of these, none at all, but I'm just doing as the Talking Heads have directed me. Remember when they said to Stop Making Sense? Of course you do. This man, of course, is my inspiration. Obviously.

Baby, I'm Yours. from Dainon Moody on Vimeo.

Happy birthday, DJ.

It's my little brother's birthday today and I'm remembering him tonight from far, far away. I've looked at so, so many photos and remembered, relived memories and had some good, long laughs. In that respect, it's almost like he's here with me. I've no children to call mine, but I so like being so connected to this man I've known all my life. I want him to become so much, to grasp at dreams and see them realized. Those are givens, perhaps. But, today, I just celebrate him. The day is his. Thanks for the ride thus far, little brother. Here's to lots more years, ones we can hopefully file under the good ones, even the great ones. I sure like having you around, even from a couple thousand miles away.

Follow your dreams.

There I was, nekkid as a jaybird (except for my cap), looking for the microphone, when the old, crusty sort who owned the karaoke diner joint took one look at me and said, "Well ... I can see the family resemblance." Aaaaand scene. My dreams ought to be in movies.

World News.

Local Natives are what's hot right now. Or maybe they're just the band who has a CD I can't stop listening to right now. One or the other.

This unfinished dream business.

What of this unfinished business then? And it wasn’t the job that’d eked to its natural stop or the beautiful raven-haired girl in a woman’s body who was so much part of my winter nights, but there was a dream I didn’t get round to finishing or fulfilling, probably because it’d get forgotten about as much as it’d resurface. So goes the ebb and flow of my having lived a largely distracted life. In fact, even now, this dream is only half-realized, partially understood on the one hand and felt so viscerally on the other. It’s the fault of the song. Or ought I call it The Song? See, I lived for five years as a DJ for the radio station, voluntarily making aural mix tapes for the valley week after week. I played for the congratulatory drunkards and excitable college kids and more, both those who loved and those who berated. I played for that one nameless woman many years older than I, the one who discovered Bon Iver a year into the band’s career, unable to pronounce the band’s name, and she offered up a brand of enthusiasm so authentic, I believe I may have wanted to high five her through the telephone line. I lived for the times we’d share and reminisce and discover together, disc jockey and listener. It was like we were running side-by-side, really. Those moments fueled me on the unprepared nights and got me through a couple heartbreaks and eventually caused me to crumble into a heap of a blubbering man, song after song, on what was my final go-round in radio land.


So, you do see it wasn’t that? I got to live that one. That bird came and left and isn’t real likely to make a return visit as I’m in Orlando for this new spell, this re-imagining of a life so lived inside a mostly-giddy (good) once-rut (bad). This new place has one crusty jazz station worth listening to in the mornings, which I do, waking up to the sun slipping down cobblestoned Church Street, making good on another “mostly sunny” day. But that’s it. There’s no creativity in the other stations, not that I’ve found and, for the time being anyway, no proverbial torch for me to run with. But, music. Music and song and rhythm. All are still deeply embedded in this soul. It’s what drives me to peek into the occasional concerts; the ones so integral to my fleshing out my existence, helping me understand my world through passionate screamed and whispered verse-chorus-verses. It’s why I buy CDs, long after they’ve been replaced in popularity by the pirated mp3s and resurgence of vinyl: I just can’t play records in my car. I need a soundtrack to go with my commute, to keep me company for my 10 minutes to the grocery store and back. And, though they take up so much wall space in my place, how is it an almost-wooden floor and concrete ceiling can transform this rented thousand something sq. ft. into a concert hall? These discs have rarely sounded better, whether it’s my singer-songwriter friend Sam Bailey in my ears or this Jazz For When You’re Alone compilation (its version of “’Round Midnight” currently playing nearly two-and-a-half hours before that blessed hour) or either volume of Glade’s creations, that old-sounding Utah great I only really allowed myself to discover after packing up and leaving. Ironic, that.


And, with that, I’ve set this semi-configured stage of this dream I keep trying to put across, the one I think about sometimes. I thought about it today. It’s not a particularly enthralling one, mind you, but mostly involves my somehow attaching myself to that world of music created by so many bands in the Utah area, specifically Salt Lake City. I watched them play so much, followed them from Urban Lounge to the State Room to coffee shops and radio stations and art festivals and more. I urged others in the direction of their shows, wanted them to hear all I heard. I bought their albums and asked for song demos before proper releases had formed and always, always wanted them to put out something new. So … that’s only part of it. This dream, then, involves my wanting to actually adhere myself to that musical process somehow, even if I was just in that background, looking in. If the music was partly what made me me, if it filled my thoughts and fueled a good lot of my waking hours, why not move towards making it more than it already was? Would it be so wrong to co-write a song with those attempting to perfect their art or just sit in on band practice and offer crazy-good suggestions here and there, filling that Rick Rubin role? That may be a bit much to wish for. Maybe it’s even just being a part of their lives beyond what they played for the scattered crowd of kiddies finding themselves on guest lists and sucking back green LEVs and paying that blessedly affordable $5 cover charge. Maybe going out on tour to document those behind-the-scenes situations in words or photographs, the ones not entirely told or shared or even cared for, simply because nobody knows to care about them yet. I mean, doesn’t everybody love a good back-story? Does it mean I want to ride bicycles with the Devil Whale’s Brinton Jones or sit in on a quiet night of dinner with the Andrew Shaw (The Platte) family, following it with a rousing game of Scrabble? Maybe it does. Perhaps it’s a part of wanting to discover what drives them to continue, even if they haven’t become what they want to be yet. Is there an end goal in sight? Is it a continually fed desire to create? Eh, maybe I’d just finished dating their albums and wanted to move on towards defining the relationship. Does that make me sound like I’m simply a sucker for all I perceived to be the good stuff (and I do trust these too-small ears, I really do) or does it make me out to be a crazed concert stalker from 2,000 miles away? Whichever it is, it’s a dream that doesn’t seem so off to me. It doesn’t make a world of sense, but, then again, what does? In 35 years, I haven’t come across much that falls into that realm.


I was listening to The Devil Whale’s lovely new “Barracudas” on the way home from this workday, this Monday, and it made me remember this crazy dream that I never made good on. And I’m not one prone to rehashing regrets. I consider a lot of those Utah musicians and bands friends on some level, whether they actually knew me or simply regarded me as that guy who stood in the backs of places, beaming with a kind of Utah pride I didn’t share for much else in my decade there. Listening to Brinton’s recording made me think of David Williams’ colossal beard and his classic “Echo” which led (naturally) to the Band of Annuals, the group that no longer sounds like Ryan Adams and his Heartbreaker era to me, but just sounds like, well, them. Sanded and crafted and sepia-toned and so filled with the guy-girl harmonies that still manage to wreak all kinds of havoc on my emotions on the right days. I wrote a silly little song for that band once that actually proposed this idea of getting married to one of their songs—if it was ever read by any in that camp, it was quietly dismissed—but it, too, managed to chip away at this yearned-for reality that never was. Call me one of those selfish sorts if you like. I choose to just chalk it up to, once in a very blue moon, knowing what it is I like. I may be absolute crap at getting a relationship with a woman down pat, it all sputtering stops and starts, but I can fall hard for my Utah bands and music and understand it as real love (or even a fat dose of that happy lust). It’s why I have a bundle of the new stuff delivered to me as it gets released this year, Slowtrain receipt still inside: I need my fix. Not want, either. Need.


Some Utah musicmakers not referenced but vividly remembered:

Vile Blue Shades — so many on stage, so much beautiful, crunchy mad-noise, face paint, big men in overalls and more. Like watching a carnival, minus the clowns. I even had a dancer sit on my lap after one show. I won’t forget that moment.
Paul Jacobsen — Nicest guy on that scene. Best red beard in it, too. And, as much as I liked his last album, I’m all the more eager to hear his next stab.
Theta Naught — I never did make it to a Christmas show of theirs, though I’ll promote their instrumental rock improved cello stringed madness until I can’t any longer. Nobody does what it is they do.
GIANT — I can’t name a song. I can remember the Wall of Sound, however, with a giddy Will Sartain of a conductor, leading them in a kind of beautiful Polyphonic Spree direction.
Cub Country — The time they opened for Centro-Matic years ago, was anybody else there? Their songs in the tune of loud, bombastic classic rock? Mind blown.
Tough Tittie — Green lantern outfit + oversized skull mask + smoke everywhere = easily the best spectacle death rock in the city on any night they play, no matter who else is playing.

Polly Wolly Doodle All The Day.

My habit has fallen by the wayside, this one-time music reviewing that I used to do. That said, I’d be remiss if I didn’t say a couple few words about the Leon Redbone show I flew out to see in Denver last weekend. I used to annoy him on a fairly regular basis to come to my city and, two months after moving from it, he lands there, with hardly a hint of fanfare. I missed it, obviously, but Colorado beckoned a couple weeks later and I just didn’t want to miss my shot. Luckily, this time, I didn’t.

The classic (at least in the minds of a handful) singer some used to think was either Frank Zappa or Andy Kauffman all trussed up in some kind of disguise played to a sold-out crowd on Saturday night at Swallow Hill. It wasn’t a bar by any stretch or a venue that could house more than a few hundred but in essence, more of a town hall. With the aid of his guitar, a particularly skilled piano player (who sounded like he’d been plucked from a saloon) and a nearby dim lamp, Leon took to the crowd and immediately came across as the perfectly hospitable gentleman he must be in real life. Opting to go with sunglasses and black suit this go-round instead of the traditional Col. Sanders/Kentucky Fried Chicken ambassador getup, his less than 90 minutes of a set was a casual stroll of sorts through his fairly vast catalog of the old and particularly obscure.

Among so many others, then, he gave us “Polly Wolly Doodle,” “Diddy Wa Diddie,” “I Ain’t Got Nobody,” “Champagne Charlie” and “Shine On Harvest Moon.” He didn’t care to stop at simply rifling through his songs and offering up the smattering of hits that never really were. There were long guitar interludes that seemed to lean in the Django Reinhardt direction rather easily and so much whistling, both Andrew Bird and birds in general (cockatiels in particular) would likely have left feeling a bit threatened by his ability.

The feeling was that he’d invited us to his time gone by: it was like clambering into a time machine. Like Tiny Tim before him, his desire to expose music that was no longer heard and rarely played (much of it coming right out of the 30s and earlier) seemed to cast him as someone stuck in an era most in the crowd either hadn’t experienced themselves or had forgotten about. And he did it in such a way that we felt he belonged exactly where he was. He wasn’t a new musician playing old songs as much as he was a well-preserved musician playing what came the easiest.

And, for a recluse of a singer with the voice that occasionally sounds like he’s got a frog permanently lodged in his throat, the intrigue factor was high. Yes, we enjoyed and smiled our faces off, especially when he’d continually joke that the next song was a sing-a-long number (though none ever really were). Even those working the merch table (with no new album to offer up) were wont to ask those in the room how old he was, a bit of information he’s deliberately chosen to never reveal. And, in the end, it didn’t much matter.

With a few tips of his hat using his cane and a quick grin before he disappeared, we left knowing little more about him than we did before he appeared. Still, that was okay. For the time we had him around, we may as well have all been gathered in front of a large radio in the pre-TV era, soaking it all in. We’d come for a show and Leon gave us one.

Fair Thee Well, indeed.

And now, for something completely different.

And, of course, what I mean by different is, well, this rules. I amaze myself with my profundity.

A few to chew on.

The comfort of feeling safe with a person.

Having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words,

but to pour them all out, just as they are.

Certain that the faithful hand will take and sift them.

Keep what is worth keeping,

and blow the rest away.

— George Eliot

A Mustachioed Tale.

In all my years as a man who has enjoyed growing hair on his face, I have yet to walk into a barbershop and ask for a mustache. At least I could have said that before the evening of May the 4^th, just a couple days back. The recent history is written all over my face. I suppose now, in addition to calling me a mustachioed man, you could call me one of those changed men as well.

At the recently discovered Platinum Barbers, just a few minutes’ drive from where I work in Lake Mary, I was able to walk in on Tuesday and have Lou kill my beard for me right before quitting time. Just outright kill it. Put it right down. It was hard to do, too, as it was a good beard. I’d spent two wonderfully lazy months building something all kinds of salt-and-peppered lumberjack beautiful. And it’s not that I haven’t killed a good number of beards in my time—I have—I just felt like putting my annual traditional mustache into the hands of a professional this time around. I wanted to let skilled fingers, razors and scissors go where my bumbling hands and untrained eyes couldn’t. I also wanted one of those hot towels, a big vat of shaving cream and a straight edge razor to be part of my immediate future.

I guess one of the three beats none at all, right?

There was definitely a straight razor. There were also clippers and scissors and electric razors and some kind of a skin-softening lotion that made me smell impossibly shower fresh until bedtime. Sadly, though, some of those old barbershop traditions had been left by the wayside. Lou, who had absolutely no hair atop his head and only a bit of an odd goatee growing out of the underside of his chin, was indeed good at what he did. And, well, I should have expected he’d take off more than I thought he might, passing right by handlebar mustache territory and straight into a land I hadn’t known with my upper lip. That was okay with me, mind you, I just didn’t know he’d do what he did. I’d sorta allowed him free reign. How do I explain it properly, anyway? I can say that I looked like a Mexican from the top of that same lip to the bottom of my nose and that’d be okay, right? He’d carved out his version of a mustache and, to be truthful, only with the briefest hint of a hesitation. In fact, when I told him what I wanted, he looked at me for a second, paused and said, owning up to a fairly thick accent: “You’re gon’ look deefren’, man.” And, with that, he was all business. He did what I was paying him to do.

And, yeah, I did look different. Lou’d foretold my future. In fact, in addition to that Mexican mustache, he’d gone ahead and turned that blonde tuft of a soul patch below my mouth into an upside-down triangle. When I looked into the mirror afterward, I no longer saw what had once been a finely rounded beard. Instead, I saw Don Quixote without his suit of armor. Or, according to that artist of a man, Lou, I just looked ... weird. At least he recognized me as one who didn’t need that boost of self-confidence to continue on with the rest of my night. All’s I needed was his honest opinion.

It was largely due to this kind of honesty that I was willing to go above and beyond that $6 he had charged me and give him a 10-spot instead. With trumpet-ridden Latin music having had played the entire time my cheeks and chin were being properly re-exposed to the bright light of this world (with what can only amount to being a Farmer’s Tan, just on my face) and now owning one fine mustache, I was shaved and readied for Cinco de Mustache. With it, I could take on the world.

Blurred images.

I used to wonder why people couldn't seem to keep track of new music and albums as they were released. I used to wonder why people couldn't possibly seem to stay on top of the blogs of their friends and any other blogs they may have been following. I wondered why people didn't read the newspaper and know what was going on in their world. I even wondered how people could go about losing track of their friends and, yes, even family.

Well, I don't really wonder any of that anymore. Life comes at you fast. It moves and you move with it. Just hang on tight, right?

Happy Cinco de Mustache!