doublepower: October 2005

halloween

Big thanks to Kevin & Michelle for hosting the swell Halloween party last weekend.

Roving reporting Veronica Corningstone covered the event for local TV...

...and with celebrities like United Nations Special Ambassador Angelina Jolie in attendance (along with her UN escort) it's easy to see why.

Add to that the high-octane rock & roll of the Rheas and you've got yourself a party!

(thanks for kurt and jeremy for additional photos)

In keeping with the spirit [insert fiendish laughter] of the season, today's spooky track, "Werewolf" from Cat Power:

Cat Power - Werewolf
(Buy it)

CSI: "Laisse-Moi - Chantal Goya"

It was a hard choice but this week's current song infatuation is Chantal Goya's "Laisse-Moi". It's been a good couple weeks for new music (that HypeMachine music blog aggregator is trouble, man, trouble), but with that insistent Farfisa, the French girl's voice right up front in the mix; I just couldn't resist.

Laisse-Moi - Chantal Goya
(Buy it)

"I think I'll order the duck..."

Niall Ferguson's op-ed piece in Monday's LA Times offered a veritable Chinese menu of great quotes. Tough to choose, but I think I'll order the duck:

"(If) his most trusted advisor goes down, the president will not merely be a lame duck. He will be a Peking duck. His enemies will be able to flake him off the bone and wrap him in Oriental pancakes."

"Board up the windows in D.C."
Niall Ferguson, LA Times, October 24, 2005

Tofino

Just returned from a lovely weekend in Tofino on the west coast of Vancouver Island. If you're looking to indulge yourself, the Wickaninnish Inn is tough to beat. Superb service, first-class food, amazing accommodations and amenities.

The inn is right on the shore of Chersterman Beach, a popular surfing spot.

The inn provides free guided nature walks with bona fide naturalists. (Our fellow walkers were surprisingly uniformed about the natural world. Lisa and I zoomed to the top of the class by correctly identifying...a barnacle. The fact they neglected to bring their own raincoats for a trip to the west coast of Vancouver Island in late-October might have tipped us off that these are people who don't spend a heckuva lot of time outdoors.)

We took a self-guided hike along one of the rain forest trails in Pacific Rim National Park.

The view from the little deck off our room. For real.

Walking along the beach was endlessly entertaining. Especially at sunset...

CSI: "Out In The Street" - Blondie

If you would have been along for the ride with me this past weekend - driving around doing errands and such - you would've heard this track, oh, about half a dozen times. Maybe more. My current song infatuation, Blondie's version of the Shangri-Las' classic "Out In The Street":

Out In The Street - Blondie

Her voice on this early demo recording is so lovely, so fragile. And I love the '50s greaser imagery applied to '70s punk rockers:

He don't comb his hair like he did before,
He don't wear those dirty old black boots no more...

Devastating.

"business as usual..." - autumn '05

With the turning of the leaves a young man's musical tastes turn from the frisky beats of summer to the more downbeat vibe of autumn.

The new doublepower mix for autumn '05, "business as usual, on the streets and highways that God built":

1. Ate-Eu - Baden Powell
2. Cosmic Dancer - T. Rex
3. Woncha Come on Home - Joan Armatrading
4. Ohio - Damien Jurado
5. Ram On - Paul McCartney
6. Papaya Freeway (Cowboy Mix) - World Standard
7. Holland - Sufjan Stevens
8. Tiny Cities Made Of Ashes - Sun Kil Moon
9. Thicker Than A Smokey - Gary Higgins
10. Out In The Streets - Blondie
11. Don't Fight It Baby - Anita Humes
12. Bientot Tu L'Oublieras - Jacqueline Taïeb
13. Someone I Know - Margo Guryan
14. Isn't It A Pity - Nina Simone
15. Greensboro Woman - Townes Van Zandt
16. Two Seconds - Laura Cantrell
17. Reynardine - June Tabor
18. Dead Man's Will (w/ Calexico) - Iron & Wine
19. Don't Have to Be So Sad - Yo La Tengo
20. Nighttime Gals - Ryan Adams
21. Still Love You So - Johnny Ace
22. These Foolish Things - Clifford Brown & Max Roach

Oh Tiny Happy Day!

Not only did I just findout that the new Sun Kil Moon record, Tiny Cities, is out Nov. 1, but also that it's a cover record of Modest Mouse songs (!).