No Redwoods so far. Only Oregon desert. I took a bunch of photos and there’s some explanation there too.

Click here for a bunch of photos.

There will be little, if any, internet contact from here until Sunday.

Edit:

Was woken up last night by what seemed to be (and probably was) hundreds of coyotes serenading me all around the tent. They howled for about a half hour and then stopped. It was one of the coolest things I ever heard.

Herc: “Hey smartz, wake up. Do you hear the coyotes?”
…
Smartz: “Yeah. I heard it but I just thought I was whistling through my nose.”

Ok, it’s really not as impressive as it sounds. Originally, Jimmie Rodgers released everything on 78s. I don’t have those. But what I do have now (thanks to a lucky find at the local Everett record shop) is the late 50s, early 60s LPs that reissued all of his songs over an eight year period.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Jimmie Rodgers is known as the father of country music. He recorded from 1927 to 1933. In just over six years, he laid down 110 songs. Before his music career, he worked on the railroad, making ends meet for his family. In 1924, at the age of 27, he contracted Tuberculosis. Because of the illness, he had to quit the railroad, but was somehow able to organize a traveling roadshow (basically a tour) which went well until a tornado destroyed his big top.

He returned to working on the railroad in Miami and Tuscon, but lost both jobs due to his illness. Trying to find work in North Carolina, he was finally able to record his first two songs on August 4, 1927. These were “The Soldier’s Sweetheart” and “Sleep, Baby, Sleep.”

Over the next few years, he worked with other country personalities like the Carter Family, jazz musicians like Louis Armstrong, toured with Will Rogers and recorded in New York City.

In fact, that’s where his final recordings were made. In May of 1933, growing weaker and weaker due to his TB, he traveled to New York to record, completing four songs on the first day. He took a day off to recover, returning to the studio the day after. He rehearsed a few songs and recorded one – he was unable to stand and returned to his hotel room to again recover. A few days later, joined by a couple of session musicians, they recorded another song, Jimmie having to lie down on a cot in between takes. For his last song on May 24, 1933, he recorded “Years Ago” by himself. Two days later, he was dead at the age of 35.

I got into Jimmie Rodgers when I was living in West Virginia. The local library had a small record collection and I found a wonderful compilation called Country Music South And West, which featured two Jimmie Rodgers songs (“Blue Yodel No. 11″ and “Dreaming With Tears In My Eyes”). I’m not sure what drew me to them, but I had to hear more.

Thankfully, the library also had a Jimmie Rodgers “Greatest Hits” compilation. I don’t remember which one is was, but it had 15 or so songs on it and I loved every one of them.

When the file sharing thing took off, I download all 110 songs (plus some outtakes and some stuff Chet Atkins overdubbed in 1955). But as I got into vinyl, mp3s became mere shadows of what music should be. That’s when I discovered at all 110 songs were released by RCA Victor from 1956 to 1964, spread across seven LPs. The songs are out of chronological order (which does bug me a bit), but they’re all there from “The Soldier’s Sweetheart” to “Long Ago.”

The releases are:

Never No Mo’ Blues (1956)
Train Whistle Blues (1958)
My Rough And Rowdy Ways (1960)
Jimmie The Kid (1961)
Country Music Hall Of Fame (1962)
The Short But Brilliant Life Of Jimmie Rodgers (1963)
My Time Ain’t Long (1964)

They followed it up the next year with The Best Of The Legendary Jimmie Rodgers which contains 12 of his best songs including “T for Texas” and “Mule Skinner Blues.” Ten years later, they put out a double LP of songs and the year after that a split release by Jimmie and Hank Snow called All About Trains, which highlighted five songs by each artist all about trains.

I’m sure there have been other greatest hits comps over the years, but now that I’ve got all 110 songs on vinyl, I guess I don’t have much need for them.

Would you like to hear some of my favorite Jimmie Rodgers songs? Take a listen…

The Soldier’s Sweetheart (his first song)

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Mother, Queen of My Heart

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T for Texas (Blue Yodel No. 9 with Louis Armstrong on trumpet)

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Frankie and Johnny (this one’s pretty violent!)

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Dreaming With Tears in My Eyes

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In the Jail House Now

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TB Blues

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Hobo Bill’s Last Ride

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Long Ago (his last song)

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These are but a small sampling of my favorites. I hope you enjoy them.

I used to be a little ashamed about my love for trains. These days, I guess I just don’t care. I don’t mind who knows that given half a chance, I’d stay overnight in a caboose.

This was, of course, not just some broken down caboose on some sidetrack, this was a refurbished caboose at Red Caboose Getaway Bed & Breakfast in Sequim, Washington – a town known more for its lavender than for its trains.

Needless to say, I took a ton of pictures and most of the story can be told there.

All you need to know is that I was fairly ecstatic to be spending the night in a caboose.

Here are the pics!

I posted not too long ago about the death of Fugs’s co-founder, Tuli Kupferberg. It must have been because of this that Smartz, for some birthday thing or something, picked up a copy of The Fug’s First Album for me. Thanks!

When I opened it, I must have gotten an “oh crap” look upon my face because she said, “you already have this, don’t you?”

And it’s true, I did. Or so I thought.

What she handed me was The Fugs First Album in Stereo. What I had was in Mono. Oh neat, right? Most folks really don’t care about this stuff, but I certainly do. I’m not a fetishist when it comes to record collecting, but different mixes always interest me.

So with a bit more digging, I found out some more things. So here we go.

The first Fugs’s release wasn’t The Fugs First Album. Not really, anyway. Their first release was called: The Village Fugs Sing Ballads of Contemporary Protest, Point of Views, and General Dissatisfaction. It was released by the Broadside record label as Broadside 304. It was also given a Folkways listing, but it’s not really clear if Folkways ever actually released it.

It was then, a few months later, re-released with a name change to The Fugs First Album by ESP Records as ESP 1018 (the first version may have been a blue-tinted cover). That was also mono and was probably the same mix as the Broadside release. After a pressing or two (no idea), the album was remixed, edited and used a different take of the song “Swinburne Stomp.” They also released a Stereo version of it, though three of the songs are “dual track monophonic.”

Other variations can be found here.

ESP also rereleased it again a few years later with a psychedelic wizard cover that looks pretty dumb, in my opinion.

I guess that makes five releases with three different mixes (first mix mono, second mix mono and second mix stereo). After a quick check, it turns out that my mono mix is the second mix mono. The first mix mono as released by Broadside (The Village Fugs…) is quite pricey. It usually goes for $200. I have found it for $75 and though it’s tempting, it really can’t be anywhere near justified at this time.

I was even hoping to post a couple of examples of the different mixes and the alternate take for “Swinburne Stomp,” but I can’t even find mp3s of the first mix. That’s pretty surprising. Even things labeled as “The Village Fugs” on file sharing sites are really just the second mix mislabeled.

Maybe someday I’ll round up the scratch to buy The Village Fugs…

The 150th anniversary of the American Civil War is next year. The war started in 1861 and lasted until 1865. That’s 150 years as of 2011.

I wanted to do something to commemorate that. I thought about visiting each major battlefield on its own anniversary, I thought about doing some big Civil War tour, I thought about a lot of fun ideas. And who knows, maybe I’ll even do some of them.

But still, even though these ideas were fun, it just wasn’t quite what I wanted. Then, while reading (well, listening to) Shelby Foote’s three-volume classic, The Civil War: A Narrative, I was amazed how so many events, large and small, happened on the same day. In fact, over the four years of the war, nearly every day held some heroic or tragic exploit.

Wouldn’t it be interesting to follow the war, day-by-day, as it unfolded, as it trudged bloodily through the years through victory and defeat? And wouldn’t it be even more interesting to write about it myself?

That’s when I decided to start (and try to keep) the Civil War Daily Gazette. It will be a blog follows the war, 150 years later. Each day’s post will be a recalling of what happened on that day during the war. This will be more than just a sentence or two with a few random battle names. Hopefully, this will give a better picture of how the war and time flowed.

I was unsure when to start. The first major battle was Manassas on July 21, 1861. That’s a logical start date. The firing upon Fort Sumter was even earlier, on April 12 – also a nice start date. But that would miss the build up, the secession, the election of Lincoln.

So maybe that’s it! Lincoln was elected on November 6, 1860. The day after that, all hell broke loose. Over that fall and winter, America was torn in two. The seeds of this rebellion were planted as long ago as the Revolution, it’s true. But the straw that brought it all down was the reaction to the election of Abraham Lincoln.

November 6, 2010 will be the 150th anniversary of the election of the 16th president of the United States. He would not take office until March 4th of the next year. These months are extremely important, not only to the war, but to the history of America. How can any study of the Civil War not include them?

And that is where I’ll start. November 6, 2010 will be my first (official) post on CivilWarDailyGazette.com. I’ve got research, organization, research, planning and research to do prior to that date.

My biggest concern is whether I’ll be able to keep it up until the end of the war.

There will be more about this as I go, I’m sure. But for now, I just thought you should know.

So in the middle of all this moving stuff, I attempted to start the Vespa (Ruby) only to find that she wouldn’t start. I would turn the key, hit the start button and nothing. The electronics were working fine, but the starter motor would not engage.

This sounds like a battery issue, however, it’s not. I got a new battery (which I needed anyway – I still had the original one from three-ish years ago), installed it and same problem.

We moved to the new place, leaving Ruby in the garage. Today, we had to clean the apartment in some vein attempt to get the security deposit back. I took the opportunity to get the scooter towed to Big People Scooters in south Seattle.

That’s where she is now. They need the master key from me – I only had a copy, which isn’t the matter. So now I have to mail them the key (Big People Scooters is about 30 miles away on the other side of Seattle, which is a very long drive due to traffic).

No idea how long it will take to get her back and even less of a clue what is wrong with her. It could be something as simple as the key. See, the master key allows you (well, someone, not me) to program stuff. The nonmaster keys allow it to start, etc. There are chips in all of them and if the nonmaster key becomes demagnetized (or whatever), it won’t work. I’m hoping this is the problem.

Anyway, I’m having another crappy riding summer. I’m basically not riding at all. Hopefully the move to Everett will at least change that a bit.

I’m dead tired after spending the past two days doing not much else aside from moving. Tonight was to be the big move. I got a 10′ truck from U-Haul, which turned out to be a bit too small. So now (at $1 a mile plus gas) we’ll have to head back to Seattle.

Everything is still on the truck and will be unloaded tomorrow morning, bright and early. Then it’s back to Seattle (25ish miles) to get the rest of the stuff and then back to Everett to unload it and then to the U-Haul place. All before 1pm.

I should have gotten a bigger truck.

Anyway, here are a bunch of pictures of the new place and some of moving stuff. Enjoy!