the frig blig

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer reports this morning that the Crocodile Cafe has closed its doors and told its employees not to return to work. Thus ends another classic Belltown establishment; I recall similar feelings of shock and dismay when Sit & Spin closed, and the 211 Club.

Fun bands I saw at the Croc over the years include the Model Rockets, Huge Spacebird, and Martin Sexton. The joint will be missed by legions of music lovers.

Jimi Hendrix was born 65 years ago today, and shockingly, this fact does not appear on Wikipedia’s front-page ‘On This Day’ listing.

His music has and will continue to be discussed to death (NPI) but as I was in highschool when he died, allow me the following reminiscences:

1. I can’t do any better than to quote my friend Tim who upon first hearing Are You Experienced, recalled intense puzzlement, thinking “What the hell was that?”, followed by immediately replaying the album. The sound was that new.

2. I recently discovered quite by accident that prior to going to England he had a band for a few months in New York city, Jimmy James and The Blue Flames. I learned about this while researching Randy California, after listening to an old Spirit CD and wondering how he got that name. Turns out there were two Randys in the Jimmy James band and to distinguish between them Jimi called them Randy California and Randy Texas. The moniker stuck (and when Are You Experienced came out, 15-year-old RC was surprised to learn Jimi’s last name wasn’t James).

3. I gave away my copy of ‘Hendrix in the West’ to my highschool friend and Hendrix fan Tripp Anderson way back when; I hope you got lots of listens out of that disk Tripp! Regards whereever you are.

4. Who would have guessed that I’d end up living in Hendrix’s hometown umpteen years later?

Eight-year-old P from Corvallis was painting watercolors and S asked her for some ‘refrigerator art’. Here’s P’s resulting masterpiece:

We had a great time playing host to our friends from Corvallis and Beaverton this weekend.

Loyal and attentive reader J. congratulated the blig on it’s one-year anniversary a few days ago (thanks for noticing!). Looking back to it’s beginning in November 2006, the fourth-ever posting was ambushed-by-chum. This morning we (S&F accompanied by friends J&P, R and C) returned to the scene of the chum where I’ll be danged if they weren’t back at it again, swimming upstream in the creek to lay and fertilize their little eggs. The fish were too quick for my trigger finger, so instead of a picture of spawn-frenzied salmon I offer you the above photo of frost-encrusted leaves near the banks of the creek.

Peak Park was officially opened this afternoon. Your intrepid bligger enjoyed the sunshine, vista and music, including a kids’ marimba band with all sizes of locally-made marimbas! (The band pictured above is different, of the oompah variety.)

It’s that time of year again. I shot this video with my phone on Lewis & Clark campus.

Here’s the youtube link:

And here’s the blig link — much higher quality but it’s a huge mp4 file; consider downloading before viewing it:

Chris Cornell’s performance at the Paramount last night was pure quality entertainment. He had a great band, had a blast onstage, and his voice is as powerful as ever. He performed three Temple of the Dog tunes, and many Soundgarden songs. He covered an acoustic version of ‘Billie Jean’ and the band’s final encore was ‘Whole Lotta Love.’

Warmup NYC trio Earl Greyhound wasn’t too shabby either.

If you like Soundgarden and this tour comes to your town, I say don’t miss it. I’m still hearing his tunes in my head.

S and I alternately laughed and cried watching the film Outsourced last night at the Majestic Bay. Locally produced with lots of assistance from India, the film tells the story of a call-center manager who has to lay off his entire staff and then travel to India to train his replacement. We award it five bindis.

I got my brand-new vanity license plates in the mail and excitedly opened the envelope to admire them. While I’m proud to display my new moniker, when I swapped my old car tags out it became disappointingly obvious that the quality of the plates has dropped dramatically. The letters and numbers which were embossed on the old tags are printed flat on the new ones. The font is thinner and the color has changed from dark blue to black. And finally, the background image of Mt. Rainier is lower resolution.

Very sad; they look like cheap imitation tags which could have been generated from a computer.