Annual Phish summer pilgrimage starts today. After seeing the band in New York, Indiana, and Michigan, it’s time to add Georgia to the list. According to at least one expert, the group has been on a real tear during this second leg of their summer tour, so I have very high hopes.
For live setlist updates and high-quality photos, follow @Phish_FTR. For weakly insightful observations and low-quality photos, you know where to find me.
Commodawg sent me a quick email containing only a url link and a note: “I’m guessing this is in your wheelhouse.” The link led to an ESPN/Outside the Lines feature, “The Long, Strange Trip of Dock Ellis.” Commodawg was right: I am never not on drugs when working on this website, an admission that likely comes as no surprise to ALDLAND’s reader(s), so this piece is pretty squarely in my wheelhouse.
I’ve read all the stories about Ellis. I’ve seen all the videos, including the one everybody considers high art (no pun intended, seriously; it’s way overrated, its only redeeming aspect being the employment of actual audio of Ellis) and the one of former Deadspin editor A.J. Daulerio’s less entertaining stunts, in which he attempts to pitch a no-hitter in a video game while under the influence of LSD. Save yourself some time and watch neither.
The only real rub in the Ellis story at this point is whether Ellis really was on acid when he pitched that no hitter. Some recent writers (again, I’m sparing you the links) have advanced a view of Dock that suggests he was good at making up and perpetuating stories to fuel a love of the spotlight, implying that the most famous story about him was such a fabrication. Obviously that’s a boring road to go down.
This ESPN/OTL piece by Patrick Hruby and Joe Ciardiello blows right by all of that, though. It’s transcendent not because it’s about drugs, but because it transcends the debates and localized tropes that bring people to Ellis and tells a real story that answers all of these lightweight questions without even asking them because it starts with little baggage. It just tells the story of the man. Don’t feel bad if you found your way to Ellis, even to this post, because you kinda want to find out what it’s like to take LSD– that’s the reason anybody who didn’t know him or isn’t a weirdo fan of the Pirates finds their way to him– but know that your preconceived inquiries will be both resolved and shown to be irrelevant. The digital design features of the piece play no small part in contributing to this article and deserve separate comment from someone authorized to make such comments, but they extremely appropriately add to the experience, both visually and substantively.
Rereading what I just sputtered, maybe this one does convey what it’s like to be on acid after all.
http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/eticket/story?page=Dock-Ellis
(HT: Commodawg)
The B-List Band of the Week feature returns today after an extensive hiatus. Again, the point here is not to present second-rate writing about second-rate musicians, but rather to briefly highlight artists existing out of the spotlight, perhaps in an attempt to identify why they are so located. Last time, the focus was on The Outlaws, a group that, on paper, had all the makings of one Lynyrd Skynyrd but failed to materialize as such. Today, it’s on Dave Mason, a guitarist and singer frequently on the fringe of rock and roll’s main scene, particularly in the 1970s, and who continues to perform today.
In recanting Mason’s story, it should first be acknowledged that he’s unlikely to have gained the notoriety that he has without his association with the band Traffic. As it were, Mason actually came to work with Jim Capaldi before either became involved with Steve Winwood, when Mason and Capaldi became members of the same band in the mid-1960s. Mason would meet Winwood when the former became road manager for the latter’s Spencer Davis Group, eventually joining him, Capaldi, and Chris Wood as founding members of Traffic. Mason’s first hit would be the band’s second single, “Hole in My Shoe,” a Harrisonian-Indian pop-psychedelic bit that would eventually appear on the band’s self-titled release in 1968, its second album. Between Traffic’s first album, 1967’s Dear Mr. Fantasy, and Traffic, Mason would leave and rejoin the band, adding another Britpop-style song in “You Can All Join In” and his biggest hit, “Feelin’ Alright?”, to the ’68 effort.
Mason was out of Traffic for the second and final time in 1968, making his way to Los Angeles and into one of the greatest and most embryonically formative touring bands ever recorded, Delaney & Bonnie. Keep reading…
Earlier this evening, bpbrady sent me a piece of investigative twit-journalism that demonstrates beyond a shadow of a doubt that items 1 and 2 above have merged into one truth: like in 2011, the NBA offseason will be more interesting than the regular season, and Harden has taken it upon himself to make it so.
James Harden seems to be enjoying his summer, the appropriately unassuming title reads, and now all the rest of us can enjoy his summer too.
I’m getting ready to slide out of work and slide into an evening of outdoor music featuring two fine ladies, Mavis Staples and Bonnie Raitt. Here they are in reverse order, Bonnie with one of her biggest hits, and Mavis discussing my favorite album of hers:
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Previously
Mavis Staples at Hangout Fest
Bonnie Raitt with Bruce Hornsby
As a kid, watching the Olympics was an extremely happy event. To go from cheering for the dismal and dully colored home teams to watching this bright spectacle, along with a very successful team to call my own, was a lot of fun, and a lot of the competitors are kids too, which makes it pretty neat. They were competing in some sports and events we didn’t get to watch regularly, and there was a fun simplicity that flowed from the amateurism and unity of the whole thing.
The Olympics, as an event, really aren’t that simple, though. Munich happened. Boycotts of one kind and another happened. Protests were staged. Athletes were deemed unclassifiable. And that’s all before we get to the sports-related controversies of the familiar and unfamiliar variety. Most of these complicating events and issues are sociopolitical matters having little to do with sport as such, yet they still play out in meaningful ways at the Games.
This summer in London was no exception, of course. I’d like to highlight two items, one of which has not been the subject of substantial media coverage, and one of which has. Keep reading…
Lest the recent hype, comparative success, and sort of Bad Boy image fool you, the Detroit Lions are still the Detroit Lions, which means you should expect them to have crippling injuries at all times. Add in the context of a preseason game, and it should be no surprise that they’ll be without ten players for tonight’s game against Cleveland. Still, let’s take a look at that injury report:
Safety Louis Delmas, who underwent knee surgery on Tuesday, running back Mikel Leshoure (hamstring), receiver Ryan Broyles (knee), defensive tackle Sammie Hill (back), safety Don Carey (hamstring), offensive linemen Jonathan Scott (knee) also will not play tonight.
Running back Jahvid Best (brain) and cornerback Chris Greenwood (abdomen) remain on the physically unable to perform list.
What??
Head injuries are serious, and so is mental illness, but what does that even mean? Is that what we’re calling concussions now?
UPDATE: It looks like the answer is yes.
ESPN Dallas/Fort Worth reports that Rafael Palmeiro, apropos of nothing at all, said that Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens belong in the baseball Hall of Fame. Palmeiro certainly doesn’t have any personal interest in Bonds’ and Clemens’ induction. It’s not as though, if Bonds and Clemens don’t get in, Palmeiro has no shot at all, or anything.
Palmeiro was voted on just 11 percent of the ballots in his first attempt at the Hall of Fame in 2011. He received 12.6 percent in 2012, well short of the 75 percent needed from voting members of the Baseball Writers Association of America to make it in.
Oh well. Maybe he wasn’t going to make it anyway, regardless of what happens to those who rode the PED wave to higher heights than he. Why he wants to cast his lot with these two is beyond me, though, as is how exactly we let him finger-wave his way back into the news, if only for a moment.
ALDLAND 