Let’s drop in on Chicago, shall we? Fourteen years ago today we are there, at the Cabaret Metro, with Rick Brown & Sue Garner. Taking Ernie Banks’s advice, we’ve decided to play two; tweaking his recommendation, we’re playing consecutive days and not a doubleheader. This is night two, with Brokeback on the bill as well. We encore with “Come On, Come On.” (Before I continue, a Chicago baseball digression, as we wish a happy birthday to Lou Brock, whose misguided trade from the Cubs to the Cardinals smoothed the way to another few years of Cubs mediocrity.) Two years ago, we are back in Chicago–it’s the first day of our Fade recording session with John McEntire at Soma. Can’t recall precisely what we worked on that day, but I can all but guarantee we ran into Pat Sansone at Big Star.
June 18 looms large in the lives of Michael (and Heather) from Gloucester, Massachusetts: In June of 1997 I asked my wife to marry me while walking through the Maudslay estate in Newburyport MA one afternoon. We decided to walk our highly emotional selves through town later that afternoon and have some fun before dinner, which for me meant visiting the record store. I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One just looked really appealing on the shelf, and I had read a few things about it, so I bought it without having heard a note. It was a “stare-at-my-speakers-for-a-week” event after I put that CD on. This kind of event has only happened a few times in my life, and I’ve listened to a lot of music. The record is deeply and permanently integrated with that moment, and even that period, of my life, which was one of my happiest, and since then I’ve looked under every rock for every scrap of YLT material I could find, and had the pleasure of seeing YLT play many times. A few years later I wrote the band a note telling our story and I got a card back from Ira, which I will always appreciate.
Maybe not the most unique story, but momentous in its own way. Thanks for such great music.
And it’s the anniversary of Roger Ebert’s birth, too.