NPR : Buddy Holly’s Little-Known Encore

Here it is… Dale talks about Buddy Holly’s final recordings, unreleased demos cut in his apartment in NYC just before he died.

The NPR site linked above includes three of the songs in realaudio format.

The world’s longest Jason Webley interview.

I hope you enjoyed it. I enjoyed having the conversations with him, less so the transcription labor.

So what was happening while I was running this interview? My brother-in-law was called to fire duty in California and spent several days in the mountains near Big Bear. He is a firefighter in Orange County. As you can imagine, we followed the fire news with interest. We just heard Sunday that he’s back home safely.

On Sunday we caught Alien, finally. I laughed when I noticed that the name of the company is spelled W-e-y-l-a-n Yutani when it appears on screen. No doubt they added the D sometime before Ripley gets picked up.

Also, I was sad to not be able to link to the fabulous B²‘s Halloween blogbash, NaDruWriNi, or National Drunken Writer’s Night.

I got an early start and scheduled the night as we knew we were headed to a party – so I published a couple of the stories from the location of the party we attended (I was Heat Miser, an experience I recommend). I came home mildly impaired and poured a big glass of vodka, which not only ultra-impaired me, it led to this and this. It’s interesting that the prior entry to these two by me was made literally only minutes previous and while I did experience a typo that I was too crosseyed to correct, it’s at least coherent (See below, under “Nevermore,” the second link).

Fortunately, I redeem myself with these entries:

Uncoded: A horrible tale of drink-induced blackouts and… well, it’s a technical matter.

Gumby Bare: A large bar patron expresses frustration for his unrequited lust.

Bum Poo: A teaser for Bum Poo 2.

Xombies: I like this one a great deal. It’s concise!

Chloe: why blog canonical cat pictures, when you can write a horror story about said feline instead? Spot the physics reference!

Nevermore (props to Matty! See also here.) An idea whose time has come, and yet strangely never sufficiently hailed as genius.

Bum Poo 2. Noted reviewer B² reviewer raves, “I have seen the true face of horror.”

The Black-Crowned Night Heron, Part I: in which the mascot of some eco-lobby group is revealed to be an hideous criminal mastermind stalked by someone whose name rhymes with Seagull and his pal, Joe.

Apple – iBook G4: out now. Ships with Panther. Base $1099.

Can you say “G5 Powerbooks”? I knew you could.

The NecroKonicon I’ve never met Jon Konrath. But I know his canvas, which is partially my hometown. This, certainly, must be a pinnacle of his life’s work.

Jon’s done something slightly similar previously in his archaeology of UCS project, but that was focused on computers rather than college hijinx.

As someone who has scanned entire runs of zines about cough syrup and posted them, I must say I have an understanding of this.

Local hero Anita Rowland faces some hard news on the health front (this is actually the second bad bit of health news to float by this week; the other, however does not concern a blogger and so I’m shushed on the topic).

Good luck, Anita and family. And good luck to my anonymous friend.

I had cause to Google on some of Jason’s lyrics and found some stuff I’d not seen before, maybe it’s new to you as well:

Laying Down by the Tracks, by Sergio Pastor – reflection and narrative on Halloween 2001, one which I found moving and which I think is a more careful and personally emotive piece of writing about that show than my own.

Jason Webley is a track selection review of songs from the show that Pastor describes by an East Coaster who hopefully made it to the NYC shows that Jason put on this summer.

Seattle Weekly‘s preview for that same Halloween, 2001 show.

A Seattle Times piece previewing the November 2002 show (I had spotty luck with the Times, with the link sometimes working and sometimes not. Also, they’ve just added an NYT-style reg-req).

Lukewarm review of Counterpoint at Delusions of Adequacy.

Ken had his day brightened this weekend when I called him seeking wise commentary on the spectacle of tag-team wrestling in the context of a major league baseball playoff. He cleared any number of things up for me, ranging from the designated hitter rule to the flinging 72-year-old crazy men to the turf rule, and hung up happy as a clam, having shared his copious knowledge and obscurantist jargon with me until his li’l heart sang, sang, SANG with joy.

Fast forward.

Tuesday night, I’m tenderly simmering the machine-masticated turkey bit that will shortly form the basis of a truly fine spaghetti sauce, gently tipping the sliced mushrooms into the garlic, basil, and fennel-scented meat, carameled with countless slivers of finely-pressed and olive-oil browned garlic, when the phone rings.

It’s Ken. he strongly encourages me to turn the game on, as an overzealous Cubs fan has just knocked an easy pop-fly out of the glove of a Cubs player, leaving the game tied with the bases loaded in the top of the eighth (I’ve had K-Donk review this for usage and accuracy).

As he talks to me on the phone, the score changes to 8-3 Florida.

Then, the phone went dead.

Frantically I attempted to get word to Chicago, to no avail. Several messages left for my pal Dave yielded no return call, and certainly not before the end of the game. It’s clear to me that had Dave been doing his job, Ken wouldn’t have had to call me as he did.

the Worst Halloween Costumes of All Time at Retrocrush (tossed off by the fab-u-lous April Winchell – tossed off, get it? ah, ha ha I kill me) led me to the horrific pipe-cleaner man (Not safe for children of uptight parents, but no actual nudity or dead people). Pipe cleaner man, got that?

The best part is that the website author found it amidst his dead relatives’ material, foreshadowing the dilemma more and more of us will face with the passage of time: what to do with the porn?

Baretta with the damn bird appliqued to his freakin’ “leather jacket” sums up everything that is wrong, WRONG WRONG with corpocratic merchandising!

Where is Raed ? resumes publication after a book tour. I regret missing his bit on Fresh Air.

This weekend we were in Barnes and Noble for a minute on our way to the movie and I saw Salam’s book, in paperback, on the new arrival table upstairs. I can’t describe the surreal feeling of picking up a book, opening it to a page at random, and knowing

a) where you were when you first read the sentence you flipped to
b) where the author was when he wrote the sentence and
c) where you were when the event described by the author was happening.

It was like picking up a book that consisted of pages that were mirrors reflecting specific temporally-bound memories into my head. Very Phil Dick, you know?

MT-Blacklist is out now.

Have at it!