Nedrock 2

This post originated as an email to Julie Unruh. She had plans to jam with some friends and asked me to recommend a song or two that she could take with her, preferably post-2000.

Here's the thing about me and new music. Since the collapse of radio, I haven't really listened to new music much. I've never had a subscription to Sirius, and the times I've been on Spotify there's just been too much to sift through. I really miss the days of shared cultural experiences. As I've written about before, the last great heyday of rock music was the nineties, and in Charleston we had one of the best rock stations in the country. Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Screaming Trees, Counting Crows, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Soundgarden, Smashing Pumpkins, Green Day, Radiohead, U2, R.E.M., Kristin Hersh, Natalie Merchant, Matthew Sweet, Hole, Beck, Indigo Girls, Elliott Smith, the list goes on and on, were "alternative" artists who broke through on the national level. (Eddie Vedder was on the cover of Time magazine.) I mean, if you look at the pop charts from those days, very few of these artists appear, and yet they were well-known by the broader culture. And this is the reason many of them are still able to tour to this day, because they still have a sizeable fan base. Today, I can't name a single rock band, much less a song by one. 

A few years ago I had to work at the local Food Lion as a side hustle. The satellite radio they played was mostly pop—every once in a while you'd hear a song by Dave Matthews or Edwin McCain or Muse or even U2—but mostly it was pop music that I had never heard. In fact, some of it was so bad, so generic sounding, that I seriously thought that it was the modern-day equivalent of Muzak: pop-sounding music that was created by studio musicians. Then I heard a song that I thought might be by Katy Perry, and when I got home and Googled the lyrics I found that I was right. Gradually I began to recognize that these were all top pop songs of the day. (Thank god the manager chose this "station"; other stores played the country station, or the oldies station.) There began to be a few songs that I really liked, and when I asked one of the kids working at the store who they were by, they looked at me like I was from Mars (not really; they all liked me, they just knew I was old); most of these songs that I found I liked turned out to be by the same artist, Taylor Swift. "Trouble When You Walked In"; "22"; "Love Story"; "You Belong With Me"; "Red"; "Shake It Off"; and "Blank Space," which is my favorite TS song and one of the best songs of the decade. There's a version of her playing it on acoustic guitar at a Grammy event. For those who might think Swift doesn't have a real singing voice, this performance puts that to rest. Also, there's a D chord in the chorus that she left out of the studio recording, and the first time I heard it it knocked me out.

Of course, my favorite songs from the last couple of decades are my own! A good one for you and your mates to jam on might be "You Know What?" The verse is just two chords. The first chord is A. The second chord is the D confinguration (see what I did there!) on the seventh fret (the second dot on the neck; the note is actually something on the G scale). The chorus is D and A, finishing on E. Then back to A. I'll give you the lyrics in a Word document attached. Sorry, the video cuts off at the very end, but that's the end of the song anyway. As you'll see in the lyrics, I substitute "but it's too late" for "a little sooner." There's a live version with this ending, but I like my home version better; there's an extra couple of bars between the verses in the live version that I don't care for.

Sketch group 2

This post originated as an email to Kieran Kramer.

When I first heard about the sketch group and decided to join, I went all in! First I went to llbean.com to find just the right chair. My first thought was a straight-back camp chair, mainly because I figured this was the only kind they made, but I thought I'd never be able to sit upright like that for two hours. I figured I'd have to set it against a wall, but I knew there wouldn't always be a wall. But then I saw this reclining chair and it is perfect. It's funny. Most everybody either uses the straight-back chair or even just a stool, but I have broken the paradigm, and I think it's just one of the reasons they think I'm cool (if I may say so myself). 

Then I started thinking about my wardrobe. I haven't done anything socially for a while, so I thought maybe I could spruce up my look a little bit. You've seen my new T-shirts. I also bought another pair of Adidases, white leather with black stripes, and some new jeans to go with them. When I got the first notification of the week's location, they said to bring your own seating, water and hat. The only hats I had were baseball-type caps. There's an outdoor outfitters-type place just a couple of blocks from my apartment, so I walked down there and found a hat. It's a Tilley, which evidently is a well-known hat among outdoorsmen and hat aficionados. They had about thirty, all different styles and sizes, and I feel like I got a good one. I know it's rude to talk about money, but this hat cost a hundred dollars. The hat cost more than the chair!

One of the ladies in the group recently took my picture and I didn't even realize it until she sent it to me in an email:

Sketch group

This post originated as an email to David Summers.

Hi, David. I just wanted to share a couple of things with you. I recently joined a sketch group. It happened completely fortuitously. I was in the waiting room at the auto mechanic's when another person waiting on her car walked in and started sketching. I struck up a conversation with her and she said she was a member of a sketch group here in Staunton that meets once a week around town for two hours to sketch. The more she told me about it, the more I thought to myself, "Yes, this is what I need." I've been wanting to sketch for years but never got up the gumption to do it. Having a group to do it with at a set time makes it easier to commit.

I took a drawing class in college (at the College of Charleston), and I was kind of the "artist" in my family as a kid, working mainly in felt pen and copying MAD magazine covers! I don't have any innate talent, I'm mainly doing it for the therapeutic benefits, and for the fellowship. It's nice to get out and meet some new, like-minded people!

Like Vincent, I have to "wrestle with nature," looking closely at my subject and focusing on drawing what I see (not what I think I see). My basic method is to draw one small element at a time, making sure that each next element is in proportion to the last. The fun part is seeing if things match up when I get back around near my starting point!

I hope you and yours are doing well.

View looking south from the corner of N. Washington and W. Frederick streets.

The view from Bluestone Vineyards outside of Bridgewater.

Along Church Street. I'm obviously not real pleased with the way I drew the power lines!

Looking south down New Street, from E. Beverley St. Here's an example where things don't quite match up. The two front buildings, left and right, are on the same plane in reality.

Cars, for some reason, are a challenge! Fortunately, that's not what this picture is about.

Thanks for looking!

Click on images to enlarge them.