It was like Christmas last Thursday with Nick Cave, Space Cadet and AFI all dropping new music. Nick Cave was a complete surprise - a full album of wonderful goodness. Just the thing for being cooped up during Mud Season.
The Space Cadet song is next in line, so good, wonderful post punk with some guitar work by the iconic Brian Baker. Their full album drops in March, can't wait.
Space Cadet
AFI dropped 2 songs, one of which was released as a single with a video of sorts. One was really good, the other, well, kinda meh and the weakest of the four songs released so far in my opinion.
'Begging for Trouble' is the better of the two, perhaps my favorite of all four. Catchy, melodic, I dunno, just all around good. It's a great showcase of Davey Havok's wonderful vocals as well. I'll put it on my mp3 player so I can take it running with me if I can figure out how to buy a downloaded mp3 of it.
The other song, 'Looking Tragic', is the single and, well, I dunno, not my favorite thing. Kinda too rocky, the vocals back to that stoccato thing I don't care for, or something. It's a terrible earworm too. Not bad but not great. But in the cold harsh light of 2021 I guess I'll take what I can get. It's hard to fault them for the video, trying to shoot a music video during a pandemic is challenging at best and clearly they were trying to do the responsible thing by staying socially distanced so you have to give them points for that. But I'm not a fan of those quick, seizure inducing cuts. Which perhaps comes from being 90 million years old though as I recall I hated them back in the day as well. Davey Havok's pouting at the camera brings to mind Hanoi Rocks somehow, don't ask me how, but that old much maligned 80s band somehow sprang immediately to mind out of the dusty depths of my memory. That pink mic stand though! It almost makes up for everything. Almost.
Also, maybe it's just the hypnotherapist in me but I think it's maybe not the best idea to start a song with, 'Wait a minute, this may be boring. Is it less than a total mess?' According to their press release, ' " 'Looking Tragic' addresses the theme of overstimulation resulting in
desensitization. Melodic and driving, the song came to life quickly and
immediately stood out as a track to make bodies, if not sentiments,
move." ' In plainer words, it has a good beat and you can dance to it, and social media sucks. Which is ironic because for reasons I can't fathom, the bass player decided to go after two fans discussing their disappointment in the new song on the band's own social media, making fun of them in a sarcastic way that made the innocent bystander think, 'Man, what a dick.' Ah the train wreck of social media, it's so hard not to stop and watch even though you know you shouldn't.
And just for laughs I had to go look up Hanoi Rocks to see why they popped in my head and, yeah, I'm not crazy. At least not for this anyway. The pouty lips, the tiger striped shirt, memory is a funny thing. I haven't thought about Hanoi Rocks in a million billion years.
I took the bike out for a spin yesterday, exploring some nearby back roads. The lower elevation trails are a muddy mess and I can't imagine the higher up trails are in great shape for fat biking so I decided to keep it local and rode from the house. The views did not disappoint.
Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona all in one photo.
Mesa Verde
La Platas
Sleeping Ute
These dirt roads are in a subdivision that's supposedly the first 'archeological subdivision' in the U.S.
It's a beautiful area with 35 acre lots most of which are currently undeveloped so it's very sparsely populated. And many of the residents are part time. I rarely see people or cars. I have mixed feelings about it though, the archeological sites are Native American ruins and it's great that they've been preserved but . . . these are mostly huge fancy houses, very wealthy people living here who've taken over ruins that really ought to belong to the Native Americans. But yeah, that's not going to happen and at least the area and the ruins have been preserved. Still hard not to feel some second hand guilt. But I'm so very thankful to have this area so close by, great for biking, running, dog walking.
The other exciting news for the week is that I finally got my meat back from the processor. We drove an hour to Utah to get it, took forever to load it onto the truck then even longer to get it in the freezers in some kind of orderly fashion. Then a day later the processor called and said they found more of our meat and we had to go back. The butcher never cut up the bones so I have whole legs and spines that I have to deal with now, way too big to fit into a crock pot for broth or to give to the dogs. I had to buy a bone saw from Amazon, we'll see how this goes. And who knows what kind of watch lists I'm on now.
Our first chuck roast. After 30 years of vegetarianism it took me a long time to be able to eat meat again and even longer until it actually started to taste good. I'm so grateful to be in a position now that I can raise my own meat and take ownership of it. It tasted as good as it looks.
I suppose I'd better stop stalling and get to my weight lifting. It looks like Xterra racing may be a likelihood this summer. Arizona hosted the first Xterra of the year yesterday and apparently it went down o.k. Only 100 people allowed but it was something I guess. Maybe I'll get a vaccination by April? I haven't been in the pool for over a year, it's going to be ugly and hopefully that'll be enough time to prepare for a summer race or Nationals this fall. I guess I'll wait and see just like everyone else, wondering when life will start to return to somewhat normal.
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