A Bloy and his Blog

For you Neil Young fans out there, That Truncheon Thing (an excellent music blog) has posted a bootleg of Neil Young’s Chrome Dreams.

Chrome Dreams is described as “one of those great lost albums, from the further reaches of rock history, that never saw the light of day, except to boot collectors.”

This particular bootleg also includes a “select batch of bonus cuts to give you a further taste of just how creative Neil was during this fertile period” (the mid 1970’s).

Definitely worth downloading. Share and enjoy.

Yesterday I visited Parfrey’s Glen, a State Natural Area close to Devil’s Lake State Park.

read the rest of: Parfrey’s Glen

I’ve been looking forward to seeing Ryan Adams in concert since I first heard his outstanding release, Gold back in 2001. Last night that six year wait was over, when Ryan Adams and the Cardinals played a sold-out show at Madison’s Barrymore Theatre.

The band started the concert with a amazingly tight version of “Goodnight Rose.” Toward the end of the song, they jammed a bit, started fading out and sang the word “goodnight” in an almost mantra-like manner. I expected the song to continue to fade out and finish, when the band crescendoed and launched into the final chorus of the song. Wow! This is going to be good, I thought.

read the rest of: Ryan Adams and the Cardinals in concert

Many years ago, I had a film single lens reflex camera. SLRs are great for their flexibility, allowing you to change lenses, add filters, and manually adjust settings. For a while now, I’ve been wishing for some of that flexibility in a digital camera, and have been thinking about buying a digital SLR. Early last month, a local camera store was having a sale on the Nikon D40 — a deal I couldn’t pass up.

read the rest of: The Nikon D40

Earlier this week I upgraded this website to version 2.3 of WordPress.

A great new feature that comes with the new version is native support for tagging (a very flexible system that lets me assign “tags” to each entry). I spent the last couple of days assigning tags to each and every one of my posts. To work with and manage the tags, I’m using the very nice Advanced Tag Entry Plugin. I also set up a tag cloud on the archive page.

As long as I was updating that archive page, another addition I made was a link that will let you browse chronologically through all of the posts. Something that wasn’t available before.

Found via Stephen’s Lighthouse.

Very sad news in the music world today. South African reggae musician Lucky Dube was shot dead in an attempted carjacking.

Lucky Dube’s music was just a joy to listen to. His beautiful tenor voice singing along with those reggae rhythms was something special. True to reggae traditions, his songs often had a strong social message, singing against things like apartheid, social injustice, violence and crime, and the epidemic of AIDS. The folks who run Lucky Dube’s website wrote “the death of Lucky Dube leaves a great void in the music industry, as 25 years of music suddenly ends in tragedy.”

read the rest of: Lucky Dube, 1964-2007

read the rest of: Autumn lake

About once a week or so, I eat some version of beans and rice. Many years ago my friend Sharon gave me the following recipe and it’s one of my all-time favorites. It’s what I made for supper tonight. As I was eating, I thought this is such a good recipe, I should share it with the world.

This version of Red Beans and Rice has great flavor, it’s very filling, very heart-healthy (if you use olive oil to sauté), and best of all it’s easy to make. Have this with a salad, and you’ve got a great meal.

read the rest of: Red beans and rice

Even after the oak tree looses its colorful autumn leaves, it’s a beautiful thing.