Jukebox In My Head

A volcano along the Aleutian chain erupted, this one on Unmak Island. Unless there is loss of life, these kinds of stories pass quickly through the news cycle. But with friends in Anchorage and Homer, I always want to find out more.

This one was far enough away from either of those places to have much impact. And the residents of the island, apparently less than a dozen people, were plucked quickly from the island and moved to nearby Dutch Harbor.

A volcano blowing its top is another chance to learn a little geography, and my first choice to get beyond the news story, so to speak, is to do a little exploring on my own. My first destination is Google Earth, the software program that allows you to fly over the planet at any height and see geographical features three-dimensionally. I find it infinitely useful for many things: in this case, to get a closer look at the topography than I can get from the news story or photograph.

After reading the Associated Press story -- in my local hard-copy local newspaper by the way -- I fired up Google Earth and typed in "umnak island, ak." Actually, I misspelled it and the program asked me if I wanted the correct spelling. I clicked yes and soon was hovering over the island. Zooming to a lower altitude, I easily discerned a couple of volcanic peaks covered in snow at one end and a battered caldera at the other. By that time, I had the A.P. story in another window, and read that it was the Okmok Caldera that blew.

Google hasn't finished mapping the entire planet up close, though it updates the images as the satellite (it uses the Quickbird satellite owned by DigitalGlobe in nearby Longmont and is the same technology that gave us those clear images of Baghdad in the lead-up to the Iraq War). But the caldera has a newer image that allows me to fly right into it and hover just above the lake in the middle.

Remembering, of course, that the features I am seeing, high ridges and ash flows down one side, vegetation around the edges, are all now gone or altered forever in the blast, which apparently happened without warning soon after an earthquake hit the area.

A regular Google search gives me a page that says the caldera has erupted regularly in history since at least 1805, and the last one was in 1996. Most are ash emissions and some lava flows, which are easily visible in Google Earth from the top of the volcano to the ocean below.

I click on a purple dot near the caldera and it brings up a Wikipedia page that says the caldera is at the top of a shield volcano and that it once was filled with a lake 500 feet deep which eventually drained out through a notch on the northeast rim. The notch is easily visible, and if you zoom in close you can see rapids flowing down the flanks.

Another purple dot near the caldera brings up a WP page that describes Cape Field at Ft. Glenn, aka Umnak Airport, a WWII historical site for "for providing defensive cover for the U.S, bases in Unalaska Bay." It is also described as the most intact WWII base in the Aleutian chain that, at one time, housed more than 10,000 people.

The base is about 12 or 13 miles from the caldera. It will be interesting to find out in coming days whether the base is still intact or now covered in ash. I'll put an RSS search on some keywords and see what I can find out.

Posted by Leland Rucker at 08:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

One of the most interesting things about this year's tour is that, with all the brand names and dopers out of the picture, we are watching a new generation, as it were, of new coming into their own that will guide the destiny of tours future.

At the top of the list would have to be Riccardo Ricco, a 24-year-old rider who took the peleton at the end of Stage 5 on Super Besse and again waited until just the right moment to strike (he is called the Cobra) as he outlegged the peleton over the second high mountain of the day and led the way into the finish line at Bagneres de Bigorre.

There were reports insinuating Ricco had been targeted by the drug squad. He also crashed hard at the end of Stage Eight, which left questions about his health.

He answered both today, Ricco was superb. He stayed with the main peleton, which included all the favorites playing their usual game of watching each other and staying together, went over the first climb, the Col de Peyresourde, without gathering attention to himself.

The riders dropped quickly off the first mountain and almost immediately hit the Col de Aspin, not quite as bad as the Peyresourde, but one in which the gradient becomes progressively steeper as it gets higher. Ricco waited patiently for the steepest part of the road to kick in – about three miles from the summit – and shot off the front of the pack like a rocket.

Accelerating at a pace I have rarely seen on a nine-degree slope, Ricco passed Sebastian Lang, who had led since near the beginning of the race, like he wasn't even moving, went over the top and was never again seen by the rest of the riders during the 16-mile descent to the finish line.

Ricco, in his second tour, said in an interview a couple of days ago that he was here to learn the tour, not to win. With one of the tour's most difficult stages tomorrow, we will see how this day affects his legs, but you have to think that Ricco is pretty darned close to being ready. He is still no threat to the leaders – he's moved up to 21st, 2:35 behind – but he's somebody to watch for.

Also impressive has been Stefan Schumacher, who lost the yellow jersey when he fell near the top of the climb to Super Besse and is currently standing 4th, 0:56 behind leader Kim Kirchen. Obviously still bothered by that incident, he ran another strong race today. He might not be as ready as the better-known riders, but he's definitely, for now, in the running.

All in all, there are 23 riders within two minutes of the leaders. Let's see whether the most difficult Pyrenean stage tomorrow will change those numbers while we watch somebody, anybody, attack in the high mountain passes.

The leaders play cat-and-mouse up mountains, while the rest of us beg for the leaders to challenge each other. So far, that hasn't happened. The only significant event today was when Cadel Evans, hands-down the favorite in the general classification, had an apparently ferocious crash halfway along the course that bounced his head on the pavement, cracking his helmet. Cameras didn't catch the incident, but later footage showed a huge gash down the back of his jersey and with many visible bruises and cuts. All indications from the team are that Evans, who finished the stage with the rest of the leaders, is all right. That could have implications with Monday's difficult Pyrenean stage looming, however.

Manuel Beltran was thrown off the tour and suspending from his team after testing positive after the first stage for EPO. While this actually put the tour on the front page of American newspapers, which generally ignore or give lip service to the race unless drugs are involved, there is a change in attitude this year.

One of the problems with cycling and doping is that riders have kept a code of silence in talking about other riders. This year the riders themselves are on record against dopers; the general attitude the next day in interviews was, "Fuck Beltran and his cheating ways." I might be wrong about this, but I think the tour has turned a corner in the fight against doping.

I am also reminded that the tour is one of the only sports that is actually trying to do something about drugs. No American major-league sport has taken the action cycling has taken, yet cycling is generally seen (if you read headlines) as a tawdry sport. As this year's version proves once again, the race is still a unique and amazing spectacle. Onward to Hautacam.

Posted by Leland Rucker at 09:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The sixth stage of Le Tour de France 2008 is in the books, and one image has dominated the coverage so far. It's an advertisement from Versus, the station that carries the tour for American television, that shows, among others, Jan Ullrich, Alexandre Vinokourov, Michael Rassmussen and Floyd Landis, all major riders caught cheating in tours past. The film runs backwards, so that it looks like Landis is actually having the yellow jersey TAKEN OFF his shoulders.

It's a powerful icon, and Take Back the Tour is most definitely the message of the 2008 race. It's the only time that Versus mentions doping in its coverage. There are no references to Ullrich, or Rasmussen or Landis in the telecasts, and it's obvious that everybody has their fingers crossed that no test comes up positive.

Except for dancing around the subject of doping, the tour has been splendid thus far. Tour officials change the rules and routes every year. Nearly every tour we have seen began with several days on flat roads, so this year the race started in Brittany along the west coast, and riders spent three days battling the wind, rain and elements as well as challenging courses that didn't necessarily set up well for sprinters. Thor Hushvov grabbed Stage Two, but there wasn't a pure sprint until Stage Five, when the whole pack thundered across the finish line on the wide streets of Chateauroux Wednesday.

One of my favorite things about the tour is watching individuals or small groups that beat the peleton across long stretches or attack on high mountains. Physics has proven that a large group of riders in formation can overcome large time gaps, and computers can calculate how long it will take the peleton to overtake attackers. So far at least, the computers can't judge the quirks or subtleties of humanity, so watching whether breakaways succeed can be the biggest thrill of many sprint stages.

Stage Three included a breakaway in the first couple of miles started by Will Frischkorn, a Boulder resident in his first tour, that actually defeated the peleton and successfully broke away, giving Samuel Dumoulin the stage win and Romain Feillu the yellow jersey in the general classification race. The trio beat the pack by more than two minutes! Frischkorn paid for his frivolity in the time trial the next day, but I can't imagine the thrill he had putting the pedal down on an angry peleton that blew it badly on his third tour stage.

In a footnote, the end of Stage Five showed what a bitter poison the tour can be for those who challenge the peleton. A three-man breakaway early on proved troublesome, and the peleton didn't catch Agritubel's Nicolas Vogondy until just meters from the finish. After leading for more than 200 kilometers, his legs gave out ten seconds before he might have grabbed the stage victory.

Today's stage brought the first drama in the race for the yellow jersey. It was a half-mountain stage that wound first through fields and among ancient volcanoes now covered with grass and ended with two second-category climbs, first up the Col de La Croix Morande and then almost straight up a two-kilometer 10-percent gradient to the ski village of Super Besse.

Attacks began early on the last 2K climb, which just kept getting steeper the higher the riders went, began early. This kept the pace high, although every attacker was hauled in. Versus announcers Phil Liggett and Paul Sherwen kept saying that the leaders were watching CSC's Alejandro Valverde, who was bandaged up after a fall Wednesday and needs to catch up some time on favorite Cadel Evans. But as it turned out, all the favorites stayed bunched together and Valverde and Evans came in second and third, strong races for both.

Stefan Schumacher, the man wearing the yellow jersey for the second day today, lost it, in another ironic twist, after he claimed he hit the rear wheel of Kim Kirchen just below the finish line. When all was said and done, Kirchen, who didn't fall, wound up wearing the yellow on the podium. Schumacher now is in third, 16 seconds behind Kirchen.

Posted by Leland Rucker at 06:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I was at home in Kansas City, must have been 1970 or 1971, flipped on the television. It was The Lawrence Welk Show. Myron Floren introduced Gail and Dale to sing one of the "newer songs," and they performed, in perfect harmonies, Brewer & Shipley's "One Toke Over the Line."

Welk came out afterwards and called the song "a modern spiritual," which was enough to make me guffaw even harder. I couldn't believe it. Aunt Nez, our guardian, used to make us watch Lawrence Welk while scoffing at our predilection for rock'n'roll. This was fair retribution.

Brewer & Shipley were based in Kansas City when they had their day. I was pretty proud that two local long hairs had the biggest doper hit of the period. One summer I worked for a farmer's co-op near the tiny village of Staplehurst, Nebraska, where Tom Shipley grew up. I talked often with his mother, who ran the general store in Staplehurst in 1970.

The Welk Show memory became the basis for one of my favorite "strange juxtaposition" stories: an obvious drug song misread as a spiritual on the Welk show, of all places. Welk's people, in a sincere attempt to hook with the younger audience, might have passed over "toke," but they sure as hell knew what "sweet Jesus" meant.

I told lots of friends the story. After awhile, I began to wonder if it were true or if I had been toking myself and perhaps just imagined it. Michael Brewer, who co-wrote the song with Shipley, confirmed it during an interview for the Kansas City Times in the early 1980s.

And there it stood until last week. I was catching up on the latest posts on my friend David Menconi's weblog at the Raleigh News & Observer, and I found this.

Good old Youtube. Thanks for the memory, dude. "Uh-one and uh-two."

While we're at it, check out Welk in another episode spoofing Sonny Bono.

Posted by Leland Rucker at 06:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

A friend of mine, Jason Bennett, a talented songwriter who lives in Colorado Springs, recently got a call from The Bob Dylan Radio Hour, a program hosted by Michael Tearson on the Sirius Satellite Radio network, asking for a couple of his recordings for possible inclusion on a upcoming show.

Excited, and deservedly so, Bennett sent an email blast to his mailing list. Like me, he is a fan of Bob Dylan. Though we have never met, we have been exchanging emails for five years now, dating back to when I was a disc jockey on KCUV-AM and we were Colorado's Underground Voice!

Bennett had misunderstood and thought the call was from Theme Time Radio Hour, the XM satellite program hosted by Bob Dylan. Which is understandable and which is what he said in his email.

Bennett is still waiting to hear if "Let Me Die in My Footsteps" or his cover of Dylan's "Shooting Star" will be heard on the Sirius show.

But it was the mass email about being on Dylan's program that brought on a heavy case of déjà vu.

It all started when I got a phone call the first week of April, 1980, from Rose Ricciardella, managing editor, pop product, for CBS Records editorial services. She told me that Bob Dylan wanted to print five reviews, including one I had written, on the inside sleeve of his new album, due in the late spring. Would I be interested?

At the time I was working at The Kansas City Times, as a news clerk who also wrote about music (this was just before most newspapers began employing full-time rockcrits). I had reviewed the first show of Dylan's three-night stand at the Uptown Theater in late January. The dates were part of a tour of small theaters in support of his divisive Slow Train Coming album. He had sold more than 10,000 tickets in Kemper Arena not two years before, and this time he couldn't sell half that number for the three nights.

Dylan played no songs except from the gospel bookends Slow Train Coming and Saved. There was no "Like a Rolling Stone," no "Masters of War," not even in encore. To say many paying customers were disappointed would be putting it mildly. Some fans I knew were heartbroken.

His excellent band of southern soul veterans and gospel singers took these songs, pardon the pun, to a higher level. I had never seen a performer of his stature play a concert that the audience, to put it mildly, wasn't expecting. It was a full-blown gospel show, and easily the gutsiest performance I had ever seen, in my mind comparable to the then-bootleg recording I had of a 1966 English audience taunting him for doing what came natural to him, in that case switching to electric guitar.

But I digress. Would I want my work on the cover of a Dylan record? Does the pope … ? All I asked Ricciardella was where I needed to sign. Dazed, I checked the legalities with the attorney at The Kansas City Times, who gave his approval. Ricciardella sent a letter a couple days later that gave CBS “permission to reprint the article on Bob Dylan” and promised two copies of the album when it was released. I sent it back.

Between then and June 20, when the album eventually titled Saved was released, I told every one of my friends and relatives to go out and buy the new Dylan album and see a big surprise on the inside cover.

The big surprise came, when the album came out sans the review, or any review, for that matter. Instead, the sleeve contained a line drawing of Dylan playing harmonica onstage. Everybody hated the album.

Visibly upset, I called Ricciardella. “Bob changed his mind.” Sigh. I didn’t get two copies of the record, either.

Answering the inevitable phone calls from my friends who bought Saved was as humiliating as it sounds, my first real taste of crow – and certainly not the last.

I have tried to stay true to the second thing I learned, with varying degrees of success: Keep your yap shut until after the album comes out.

Only later did it really dawn on me that Dylan, probably sitting there in the dumpy, old President Hotel in downtown Kansas City, where he stayed those nights, had actually read and liked the review that I wrote in 35 minutes on a typewriter for the next morning's edition. Somehow, today, that's more than enough.

Oh, and I need to mention that Bennett's new album, Slow It Down, Take a Step Back, which is well-titled and which he says is about "rain, fog, love, the first hundred miles, too much paperwork, being a daddy and shooting stars," comes highly recommended, too.

Here's the image that replaced the reviews on the inside cover of Saved.

And just for kicks, here's the review:

Dylan Uptown Theater 1.28.80
Published: KC Times 1.29.80

By Leland Rucker
A Member of the Staff

There have been a lot of questions concerning Bob Dylan’s state of mind the past couple of years. Stories have appeared that he is now a “born again” Christian, and his latest LP release, Slow Train Coming, confirmed that suspicion. But a record is only a piece of vinyl; it’s the live presence that shows what a performer is all about.

For those expecting a run-through of old hits, there might have been disappointment. Likewise, those thinking he would try to convert the audience Billy Graham style might have been disillusioned. But for those interested in a magical musical experience, the results were spectacular.

The tone of the show was gospel and blues, from the black female vocal quartet that opened the show to the last inspirational rock song. As in the past, when Dylan gets involved in an idea or concept, he does so with complete abandon.

Regina McCreary began by telling a story about a woman trying to ride the train to see her son one more time, which became an analogy for the whole show. This led into a soulful rendition — complete with letter-perfect harmonies — of a song with a chorus that went: “If I’ve got my ticket can I ride/Ride up to heaven in the morning.”

The foursome, in sequined outfits that sparkled in the spotlights against the sides of the theater, proceeded to do a six-song gospel set accompanied only by their tambourines and pianist Terry Young. Their final number, the well-known folk song “This Train” served as an apt introduction for the main event.

Dylan began with “Serve Somebody,” also the opening cut on Slow Train Coming. Dressed in a black leather jacket, white shirt and black pants, with his tousled curls and wispy thin beard encircling his face, he looked no different than he did ten years ago.

As expected, he performed all the songs from Slow Train Coming, plus several new ones. There were a few calls for oldies, and it takes a rare performer not to fall back on familiar melodies in concert. For me, this was a wise move; Dylan has performed and recorded his older songs enough times by now to not continue to have to rely on them.

In a sense, Slow Train Coming is not really that distant from Highway 61 Revisited or The Times They Are a Changing. There is the same reliance on apocalyptic ideas, though they are now flavored with more Old and New Testament images instead of the street-wise lines that characterizes his older material.

Besides, everyone looks upon Dylan as more than just another musician anyway. Slow Train is actually “Desolation Row” tempered with experience and faith instead of youth and chaos.

The railroad image works for the music as well. Dylan’s musicians this time are the cream of the studio crop, and they make music that thunders like shiny wheels on steel tracks. Jim Keltner and Tim Drummond provide the bottom end, while Spooner Oldham, Fred Tackett and the girls’ pinpoint harmonies produce the frills behind Dylan’s sometimes petulant, often whining nasal drawl.

At its strongest moments, during “When You Gonna Wake Up,” “Precious Angel,” “Slow Train” and a few of the new numbers, it was as turbulent and moving as anything Dylan has ever produced. Only on the silly reggae number, “God Gave Names to All the Animals,” did the set lose its spirit. The rest had all the qualities of a gospel revival tent show. Dylan even got into the spirit of things by dancing, playing harmonica and clapping his hands.

Actually all the mention of Dylan’s conversion and/or personal beliefs is purely academic. Put quite simply, he is making some of the best music of his entire career. Judging from the abundance of new material, he is obviously enjoying it, and the enthusiasm is contagious. The audience cheered wildly from beginning to end, especially at the recognizable cuts from Slow Train, and I heard no boos or catcalls throughout the more-than-two-hour performance.

As he says, “there’s either faith or unbelief, there’s no middle ground.” Dylan has found his ticket to heaven, and his slow train this night was a sight to behold.

Posted by Leland Rucker at 08:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

Joe Ely & Joel Guzman
Live Cactus
Rack 'Em Records 003

Songwriter Joe Ely and accordionist Joel Guzman are no strangers. They have played together on many stages in different configurations for many years. Recently, they have teamed up for a series of duets in concert halls around the country. It's an interesting concept: Ely's plaintive songs, shorn of all instrumentation beyond an acoustic guitar strum, joined by perhaps the most lyrical accordion player in Texas. There isn't a note of lead guitar or a bass run to be heard in the entire set.

They recorded one night in 2007. It isn't that you haven't heard these songs before. If you're an Ely fan, you probably have; four of the 13 songs were included on 2000's Live at Antone's. But there is no "Dallas," no "Must Notta Gotta Lotta," no "Everybody Got Hammered" here.

This is more reflective material, an hour's worth of poems of the west Texas prairie. Lyrically, the elements are up front; several prominently employ the wind as a metaphor. "Because of the Wind," "Winds Gonna Blow You Away," "Up on the Ridge," "Ranches and Rivers" and "I'm a Thousand Miles From Home" connote wide-open spaces and roads that go on forever even in their titles.

And here is where the magic happens. Those seemingly lonely, empty landscapes seem to give flight to Guzman's creativity, and it is a joy to hear his poetic squeezebox dance around Ely's simple, insistent, ever-so-slightly-shifting rhythms like wind devils skittering across the dusty fields. "Slow You Down," "All That You Need" and "Letter to Laredo," favorites all for Ely fans, have never sounded lovelier.

It's a good time for Ely to look over his canon and revisit his songs with fresh eyes and ears. In this context – guitar, accordion, two voices -- understatement becomes a virtue.

(This review appeared in Stereophile magazine, April 2008.)

Posted by Leland Rucker at 06:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The story didn't even merit the front page.

"Colorado Daily to Move Into Camera's Building," read the headline in the April 24 Daily Camera. Prairie Mountain Publishing, which owns both papers, is selling off the Daily's building on east Pearl street and consolidating both staffs into the Camera building at 11th and Pearl streets.

Camera Publisher Al Manzi says that the move "allows us to realize some operation synergies that were not possible in their current location." Which means that the parent company will make some money off the real estate and that the Daily staff will take up a few of the many empty desks left in the Camera building.

The story followed by only two weeks the departure of Camera Editorial Page Editor Clint Talbott, who left for a position in the publications department at CU. This was a particularly rich irony, as anybody who has read local newspapers the last couple of decades well knows. Talbott had kept CU on his editorial hot seat during that time, roughly half with the Daily and half with the Camera, for the institution's haughty lack of transparency and basic fiscal irresponsibility, especially in the athletic department.

But I'm guessing that more just this reader laughed out loud remembering the days when Talbott was editor of the Daily and we had such fun mocking the Camera as Brand X Newspaper. The Daily's dissolution and Talbott's departure are significant, like tacking a big -30- at the end of the story of a distinct period of newspapering in Boulder.

More than a century old and for many decades the official campus newspaper, the Daily kept its offices on campus but split from CU under the leadership of Tim Lange beginning, I think, around 1971, and he led the paper, more or less, until he left Boulder for Los Angeles in 1985. The Daily didn't make a dime, but under Lange, it was an offbeat, gleefully pro-Sandinista, anti-Reagan newspaper. That era would be a great tale in itself.

The period of which I speak began in the 1980s and ended with the current decline in newsprint readership and revenues as newspapers migrate to the Internet. It was a spurt of growth responsible for USA Today and color weather pages and free-standing sections for business and celebrity gossip into your daily newspaper.

Boulder in the early 1980s was a two-newspaper town. The Camera was a powerhouse, profitable and bursting with staff writers. The features section was heavy with critics in full-time positions, the sports section the envy of every other small paper in the state. There was a Sunday features magazine. The comics pages could be read without magnification.

After Lange's departure in 1986, the Daily was reeling. Audience, its weekly arts and entertainment magazine (which had given me my first local writing gig), had been shuttered, and the Daily itself came dangerously close that summer to closing itself. Publisher Dennis Dube hired Talbott as editor, who in turn hired Paul Danish as layout editor and me as Means & Media editor/news copy editor.

As we assembled the first of many Back-to-School issues, we wondered aloud just what we would be covering and held our breath and waited for the students to return in August. Soon, our reporters were in the middle of student protests that turned violent over CIA recruitment on campus and, as they say, we were off.

Like all papers, the Daily moved into the computer age in the late 1980s. Our city coverage was enough that the sales staff was able to sell the paper as "your campus paper" to Hill businesses and "your alternative to the Camera" to businesses on Pearl Street.

Under Talbott, it was a great time to work at the Daily. We weren't bound by the family-newspaper constrictions of the Camera, revenues grew and we delighted in skewering our much larger competitor two blocks east of us whenever possible.

By the early 1990s the Daily faced more competition for ad dollars, first from the Onion and then the Boulder Weekly. Talbott moved to the Camera's op/ed pages. I didn't always agree with his opinions, but I appreciated his arguments and admired his spare, efficient prose.

The Daily was almost sunk by a felonious employee in the 1990s, but was bought by Randy Miller, who sold it to the Camera's owners last year. This spring it will be dissolved into the bowels of the Camera. Daily editors will claim autonomy, but it just won't be the same.

Perhaps it deserves no more than this, a fond memory on an old journalist's webblog. This is the way an era ends – not with a bang but a whimper.

P.S. Here's the view from the Means and Media editor's desk at the Colorado Daily offices at 9th and Pearl streets circa 1990. That's ace reporter Ron Baird on the left and Mike Sandrock in the center (I can still smell Hannah's hummus on his desk).

Posted by Leland Rucker at 06:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)