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* "fill it up to the brim...."

Just continuing the lyric from the subject-line of Grant's blog this morning, fyi. (And, yeah, Ted Hawkins for me too. That's the first version I ever heard, on a cold Seattle night at the old Ballard hotspot the Backstage -- December 1, 1994, according to my logs, with San Francisco's Stephen Yerkey opening. Must've been an early show because my logs indicate I also played a set of my own later that night at the Owl & Thistle, along with my pals Kitchen Radio.... Hawkins, by the way, died exactly one month later, on New Year's Day 1995 -- the year we started ND. And exactly two years to the day before Townes Van Zandt passed away, on New Year's Day 1997. There stands the glass, indeed.)

Had you caught me when my own glass was filled (with champagne) last night, just past midnight, I probably would've spilled out all sorts of thoughts and recollections and ruminations -- as I did, in fact, to my wife, who kindly and patiently listened to all the stories and back-stories and side-stories as we moseyed through the page-proofs of #75, which went to the printer this morning. A survey of the tabletops in the living-room indicates we also consulted issues 2, 4, 5, 6, and 7 in the process, though I don't recall just now what we were digging up from those pages. Pretty much everything tied in some way to #75, which proved a remarkably reflective final bow, when it was all said and done (even though it wasn't a "special" or "commemorative" issue, but rather just 144 pages of pretty much what we've always done). We hope you'll like it. I'm pretty sure you will.

Surveying the tabletops in the office, by the way, I find the evidence of what we listened to last night, after I decreed it should be a vinyl-only passage. The artifacts: Uncle Tupelo's No Depression (side one), Son Volt's Trace (side one), Wilco's Being There (side two of four), the Scud Mountain Boys' Pine Box (both sides), T Bone Burnett's self-titled album (both sides), Rank And File's self-titled album (side one), X's See How We Are (side one), and The Original Carter Family: From 1936 Radio Transcripts (side one). Lisa asked me where I got that last one, and I showed her a sentence in the handwritten note I happened to receive about a month ago from Flo Wolfe of the Carter Family Fold in Virginia: "In Aug. 1997 you ordered my very last Original Carter Family album with the song No Depression." Yeah, that's where I got it, all right.

adios,
peter

Posted by peter on April 7, 2008 7:19 AM | Permalink