Sunday music

Why Does Love Got to be So Sad? - Derek and the Dominos



~*~

Namesake of this blog, Uncle Dave's Dead Air, featured this gem last week:

The Other Side Of This Life - Jefferson Airplane



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Hope you are all having a lovely sabbath too!

PS: Map of where the week starts, worldwide. (that's just the sort of Tumblr-nonsense I end up lost in, for alarmingly long periods.)

Tuesday Tunes

Bad Sneakers - Steely Dan



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It's a long instrumental, but its real purty, too. ("Richard Betts pickin on that red guitar!") Relax, breathe, and visualize yourself right next to a waterfall.

It won't be hard to imagine at all.

High Falls - Allman Brothers Band



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I've heard this one a lot on this blog's namesake, the indispensable Uncle Dave's Dead Air. GREAT STUFF!

Ride Mighty High - Jerry Garcia Band

This is your cat on catnip

Internet connection woes have plagued me for days now. Days. Bah.

Sorry about that.

Here is our recent show on WOLT-FM, have a listen. After the show, we chowed down at The Red Bowl, which has the greatest sauce (for my veggie lo mein) in the entire universe. I regret to say I don't even know what it's called. If I knew how to make it myself, I would dump it all over everything and eat it daily.

Right now: enjoying the dapper Anderson Cooper and the spirited CNN discussion about women in combat. My mother once told me that if women were ever required to register for the Selective Service (military draft) en masse, you'd see a baby-boom the likes of which this country has never seen. I always wondered if she was right. But allowing women in combat is still a long way from forcing them to register for the Selective Service. (more discussion here)

Mr Daisy is currently listening to the namesake of this blog, UNCLE DAVE'S DEAD AIR, and I am getting ready to join him.

But first, thought you should see this Public Service Announcement. I already posted it on Facebook, just to get the word out.

Get your cats and make em watch! The life you save may be theirs!

This short, seven-minute film (by Jason Willis) debuted at the Sundance Film Festival this year. Truly inspired!

CATNIP: EGRESS TO OBLIVION?

Move On Up

I heard My Morning Jacket's cover of "Move on up" last night on this blog's namesake, Uncle Dave's Dead Air. I then decided to look up Curtis Mayfield's original, which I have always loved passionately. And virtually simultaneously, Tami posted her last blog post, titled "Movin On Up."

Cosmic synchronicity!

Good luck Tami, wishing you all the best in your new endeavors. I will miss your blogular brilliance.

And Curtis, as always, we miss you.

~*~

Move On Up - Curtis Mayfield (1970)

Moment of Panic

Uncle Dave played this great tune last night on the radio-inspired namesake of this blog, Uncle Dave's Dead Air.

Airplane - Widespread Panic

Your moment of Panic

I know, I know, I have posted this song twice before. I'll probably post it a million times, if my blog lives long enough.

Because sometimes, as Uncle Dave says, you just need a moment of panic. :)

Ain't Life Grand - Widespread Panic

[via FoxyTunes / Widespread Panic]

Darkness, Darkness

Presenting one of my all-time favorite songs... I first heard it when I was 12 years old. It touched me in that deep, deep place you can't verbally express ... and it always has.

As a child, it articulated my fears of unpredictable adults and their behavior at night, when the whiskey came out. I would often pretend to be asleep when I wasn't. Darkness, darkness, be my pillow, is a calming mantra I actually used before I even understood what I was doing. I can well remember edging into sleep while repeating the words to myself in my head, like prayers.

Uncle Dave played it some time ago on Uncle Dave's Dead Air, namesake of this blog. I was so thrilled to hear it again. I've also enjoyed other versions, by Mott the Hoople, Richie Havens, Cowboy Junkies and others.

But this is the perfect one.

The song was much-beloved by US infantrymen serving in Vietnam; many felt it perfectly described their fear of nightfall.

PS: There are still soldiers in Iraq. Bring them home now.

~*~

(written by Jesse Colin Young)

Darkness, Darkness
Be my pillow
Take my hand
And let me sleep
In the coolness of your shadow
In the silence of your deep

Darkness, Darkness
Hide my yearning
For the things I cannot be
Keep my mind from constant turning
Toward the things I cannot see now
Things I cannot see now
Things I cannot see

Darkness, darkness
Long and lonesome
Ease the day that brings me pain
I have felt the edge of sadness
I have known the depth of fear
Darkness, darkness, be my blanket
Cover me with the endless night
Take away, take away the pain of knowing
Fill the emptiness of right now
Emptiness of right now, now, now
Emptiness of right now

~*~

Darkness, Darkness - The Youngbloods (1969)

Fire on the Mountain

In every blogger's life, stuff happens that you just can't write about... and I am there right now. Lots of interpersonal strangeness on my job, people unexpectedly coming and going, and I'm sorry to say I can't tell you about any of it.

In any event, what would I do without my UNCLE DAVE? Relaxing last night and drifting off to sleep listening to his excellent jams. Decided to share one of those songs with you here. Not the best visual quality, but it sounds pretty good.

It just seemed appropriate right now:

Almost aflame still you don't feel the heat
Takes all you got just to stay on the beat
You say it's a living, we all gotta eat
but you're here alone there's no one to compete
If mercy's in business I wish it for you
More than just ashes when your dreams come true

~*~

Fire on the Mountain - Grateful Dead

Is it like today?

Uncle Dave played this last night, on the namesake of this blog, Uncle Dave's Dead Air. (HI UNCLE DAVE!)

And I dreamed about it, woke up with it... gonna kill him. Earworm city!

As yall know by now, when I can't get a song out of my mind, of course, it goes up on the blog. Enjoy it or be cursed with it, as I am.

~*~

How could it come to this?

World Party - Is it like today?

DEAD AIR'S FIRST BIRTHDAY!

Left: This lovely photo of Elizabeth Kucinich accounts for the highest number of image searches I have had on one single photo; I had over 500 in one day, and the total number now reaches into the thousands. Ohhh, to be a tall, stunning, winsome, British redhead!!! (Oh, and there's Dennis, too.)

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Happy Birthday to DEAD AIR!!! It's my BLOGGIVERSARY!

Amazingly, this blog is now a whole year old. It's a terrifying thought.

A year ago, after my very first post, I actually decided blogging was a waste of time (maybe it is?) and didn't post again for three weeks. Then I slammed my car into an SUV on Laurens Road, was somewhat shaken up, and wanted to write about it. I realized: this is why people blog. Later, I saw Valerie Bertinelli on TV, complaining about being fat, and wanted to say something about that, too.

That was it, I was hooked.

Yes, it starts out small at first. (The first one's always free!) I can't say when I crossed the line into addiction, but it happened. Of course it did. It always has.

OFFICIAL BLOG STATISTICS--as of this minute:

VISITS

Total 75,558
Average Per Day 321
Average Visit Length 2:17
Last Hour 8
Today 124
This Week 2,247

PAGE VIEWS

Total 109,224
Average Per Day 436
Average Per Visit 1.4
Last Hour 11
Today 172
This Week 3,051

Plus 413 visitors before joining Site Meter on July 28, 2007

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Keep in mind that I didn't count stats until July 28th, because I didn't know how. (The "413" figure was the number of profile-views I had accumulated up to that date.) The true numbers are undoubtedly higher, since I only started counting stats during my first major flame war. I knew people were reading, because they were posting. Otherwise, might not have occurred to me to count--but I was curious.

And curse those nasty stats! It's worse than the bathroom scale--AVOID, AVOID! (Victoria Marinelli has sworn it off!!) For awhile, I was filled with raging jealousy for the Big Bloggers, until I had my first astronomically-popular post (by my standards, anyway) on April 22nd of this year. My post titled "On having a black name"--went through the stratosphere (approx 25,000 hits, total, and still coming in) and was linked on Big Blogs like MetaFilter and Jezebel. And in the process, I was spooked bigtime. I received numerous strange, semi-romantic emails ("You are a very well-preserved 50-year-old, or is that an old photo?") and heard from various bizarre sub-categories of rightwingnuts. My spam filter was overloaded with winning lottery tickets from Sierra Leone and offers to buy furniture. I even heard from an ex-coworker I never liked, assuring me that my name isn't THAT black! (accompanied by at least a dozen disconcerting correspondents demanding to know just what my name really is--and not in a good way!) ...they all came out of the woodwork. Yow!

Is THIS what internet-fame is really like? Ick.

And so, I have backed off the numbers obsession. The first step is admitting you have a problem!

~*~

I first named this blog after a four-hour Grateful Dead-oriented radio show titled UNCLE DAVE'S DEAD AIR (and yes, sister and brother Deadheads, I have heard from the mysterious Uncle Dave!)--a necessary spiritually-centering exercise and crucial repetition of my week. (Note: DEAD AIR SPACE is also the name of Radiohead's official blog, which I didn't realize at the time.)

DEAD AIR technically refers to a radio broadcast that has gone "dead"--or, one could say, DEAD AIR means one is "broadcasting nothing"--which I think describes a whole lot of Blogdonia. Thus, the name reflects my low expectations for the blog. I was afraid I wouldn't have anything to say, and I would therefore ALSO be "broadcasting nothing."

In addition, at the time I was reading Robert (Uma's dad) Thurman's translation of the TIBETAN BOOK OF THE DEAD, so that cinched the deal.

I like the alliteration of Daisy's Dead Air (just like Uncle Dave), and I think an identifiable motif makes a blog more memorable. I love stealies, so that made it an easy decision. And besides that, once I got the name into my head, I simply couldn't think of any others. I don't think I could change my blog name at this stage of the game.

Thanks for visiting and reading. If you lurk (and I can SEE that some of yall DO! Don't fib to me!)--how about saying hello, just this once? (On the other hand, if you lurk primarily because you hate me, please forget I asked.)

We'll see what the next year brings. I never expected it to last this long.