Years

Consider these songs:

1492 - Counting Crows
1865 - Third World
1921 - The Who
1934 - The Connells
1941 - Nilsson
1945 - Social Distortion
1957 - David Doucet
1959 - Patti Smith
1960 - America
1960 - Eno
1961 - Nick Heyward
1963 - New Order
1964 - Too Much Joy
1967 - Adrian Belew
1969 - The Stooges
1970 - The Stooges
1972 - Josh Rouse
1972 - Giant Sand
1973 - James Blunt
1974 - Robyn Hitchcock
1974 - Ryan Adams
1975 - Gene Clark
1976 - Alan Jackson
1977 - The Clash
1978 - Liliput
1979 - Smashing Pumpkins
1981 - D-Generation
1982- Randy Travis
1983 - Jimi Hendrix
1984 - Spirit
1984 - Eurythmics
1985 - Paul McCartney and Wings
1985 - Manic Street Preachers
1987 - Minus 6
1989 - Clem Snide
1990 - The Temptations
1992 - Blur
1994 - Loudon Wainwright III
1995 - Luna
1998 - Rancid
1999 - Prince
2000 (AD) - The Rezillos
2112 - Rush
2020 - Prince

I think I've found the worst possible compilation concept.

What am I forgetting?

Edit: I will take all suggestions and update this list. Bring it on.
Edit 2: This is looking great, a natural for Rhino, right?

The Coyote Lounge is now open

Our bank account is a couple hundred dollars lighter as of about five minutes ago, when I sent Tim Walker from Animals Be Gone on his way for assessing then addressing a raccoon problem in our attic. And yet, I'd have paid him more if we'd needed to.

I'm not keen on woodland creatures, especially ones who make their way into my home and make ominous noises in the night. Smart Wife isn't a big fan either, and today she undertook the journey through the tiny trap door into our unfinished attic. I'd actually been up there a week ago, looking around to see if we could potentially add a couple rooms there in the near future. Even took photographs of the place:


But I saw no evidence of anything living up there. (I did see a lot of light coming through spaces between roof and walls, which probably happened/happens when the house's foundation settles. It's through these entrances and a few places where the squirrels in the neighborhood have gnawed through boards that our guests have arrived.)

So when Smart Wife went up there this morning, I heard her holler "Well, it's a raccoon. I'M COMING DOWN NOW" and I rushed to steady the ladder for her descent. She had spied him, little masked face staring back at her in the beam of her flashlight. She replaced the panel that covers the entry to the attic, changed her clothes and washed her hands thoroughly.

I called the Durham animal control center who does not do this kind of removal service "unless the animal is in the living quarters." Shudder. No ma'am, he's in the attic. I had Animals Be Gone recommended, and I called them immediately. Smart Wife decided to go for her run with the baby and stroller while the situation was brought under control.

Tim Walker, who runs the company with his brother, showed up around 1:30pm. He told me he'd grown up around animals and had also spent many years in construction, thus making this job a great combination of his two passions.

We took a walk around our old house, and Tim pointed out the huge gaps that were where the animals were getting in. He, too, went up the ladder to the attic. On his way up, Tim mentioned that, if we had raccoons in the attic this time of year, it was probably a mother and her babies. "And you don't want to remove the mama, 'cause then the babies'll just starve and stink up the attic in a couple of weeks." No, that sounds like a good reason to leave her alone.

"Peter, do you have a garbage bag you could send up to me?" Oh sure. Hell, why not just toss 'em down the hole toward me, and I'll scamper after them as they flee? I thought.

Turned out that what had probably been up there was the father raccoon, eating one of the babies. Tim described it in perhaps more detail than I would have liked, but I certainly now understand another not-very-cuddly aspect of the animal kingdom I was not really in touch with before.

"I'll show it to you when I get down the ladder." Er, that's okay, Tim. "Sure you don't want to confirm?" I'll take your word for it.

After disposing of the mauled carcass ("just skin and skull, really") in the back of his truck, Tim returned with some meat-fed coyote scent which he sprayed throughout the attic, at least in all the places he could get to. That was to discourage the mother from bringing her babies back up there. He let me smell the scent, and I definitely wouldn't hang out in a room that smelled like that either.

Tim explained that we probably will hear sounds tonight, which would be Mom checking the place out and then dispatching hastily from the Coyote Lounge up there; but it shouldn't be more than a couple nights. I told him we'd call him on Monday whether we heard activity or not, maybe only to hear Tim's soothing voice again.

I don't think we're going to mention the raccoon to the four-year-old. He spent a lot of time hunting down and hugging Flattop, the Merlefest raccoon mascot; I don't imagine he'd want to know how Flattop spends time with his runty children.

A small satisfaction

Moments ago, I did the nightly ritual of checking the four-year-old's lunchbox for debris. Usually there's part of a sandwich, or the juice box crumpled inside. For the past couple days, the three carrots seemed to commute from home to school, ignored. Whatever matter is left in there has a few hours to marinate before I remember to purge the contents. We air the lunchbox out overnight.

This morning, I decided to vary lunch from peanut butter and homemade strawberry jelly with carrots to peanut butter and banana with a tiny pack of raisins.

Opening the box, I was nervous like Geraldo with Capone's vault. But unlike that story, I was elated to find an empty lunchbox on my hands. I punched the air and said 'alright' to no one in particular.

Just a little change-up...

Sometimes, that's all it takes.

Bouncing

We performed a corporate show in San Diego early this week, at the Convention Center. Most convention centers are designed to fit a maximum amount of people into a minimum amount of space, with lots of headroom above them, and San Diego's is no exception.

I walked out a little before the show to change a couple settings on my keyboard rig and stood transfixed for a moment at the roar of the voices. It was constant, like an eternal wave crashing on a nonexistent beach. The pitch of the pink noise was steady, rising and falling only slightly.

By the time we marched to the stage, the clamor had become more amped with presumably more alcohol in the attendees' systems. Makes sense; people are stuck in meetings all day, getting lectured about ways to improve their performance, to better their line-toeing, to focus their abilities toward increasing the company's bottom line. I mean, who wouldn't want to party down to a rock band after that?

We started our show and got about four songs in. What began as foot-tapping, I assume, on the part of the audience progressed into bouncing, not quite pogoing but steady and rhythmic and ever-increasing in force. The stage and the floor beneath it began to bounce as well.

It could well be due to my short residency in Los Angeles, but when floors start shaking, I start worrying. It's also due to a memory of a club that The dB's played at a bunch in the 1980's called Ocay'z Corral in Madison, Wisconsin. Our guitar tech, the uber-talented Jimmy Descant, who also roadied for the late, great Royal Crescent Mob, reminded me why (thanks, Jimmy!):

"The stage was in the front against a big picture window, and the dressing room downstairs in the basement. The place was packed and about a half hour into (the RC Mob's) set, I saw a dip in the heads in the audience, and soon realized they just weren't short, they were low! Went down and the rafters were cracking! Then the smell of natural gas!

"Packed up some guitars and went to another club, told the crowd, and took off, after getting paid of course!

"A couple years later someone got killed outside when a semi- went off the road and slammed into the front of the building. I think it burned down a couple years after that."

So as the bouncing continued, I began replaying that scene in my head and projecting into my immediate future. A gigantic hole in the floor that would suck down Hammond organs, drum kits and singers, just the same. I mentally wrote my will and said my goodbyes. At least I'd die doing what I loved, a small consolation for the oncoming end time.

Apparently, the audience in whatever state of revelry they were in must have thought of the same thing, as the bouncing abated by the next song. By the time the set was over, I was already plotting my escape to the hotel. Nobody went through the floor, but I was certainly not going to stick around to see if it happened.

May Day

Sorry to be away so long, did you miss me?

Time for a little shameless self-promotion again.

For those of you who remember 1978, a little 45 that I recorded and released that year has been anthologized with a massive amount of weird, wonderful stuff on a CD from Ace Records called Rock On. Rock On is the name of a famous record store in London, a collectors' store by which collectors' stores are judged. Somehow, "Big Black Truck" ended up on this compilation, and its heavy-handed slapback echo seems to fit right in alongside such ringers as "Cast Iron Arm" by Peanuts Wilson (a fave of Mitch's and mine from the MCA Rockabillies series), "Linda Lu" by Ray Sharpe and "Slipping and Sliding Sometimes" by Link Davis (Cajun fiddle and bongo drums). If your tastes run toward the darker corners of rockabilly and r 'n' b, then you'll want to own this fine collection as soon as you can convert pounds sterling to yankee dollars.


And for my book-buying friends, there's a new anthology of pieces by musicians and writers from the Carolinas called Making Notes. Sure enough, I'm among the fifty contributors. It's exciting to have my writing considered good enough to make it into a book of this quality. Making Notes will be available to the general buying public Wednesday May 14, and there's a party at the Visulite Theatre in Charlotte to mark its release (which I unfortunately won't be able to attend--however, I will be at the one in Quail Ridge Books in Raleigh, Thursday June 5 at 7:00pm, guitar and Sharpie in tow).

And there may be some more good news in the pipeline, but I will wait until it's a fact and not an apparition.