Two months away! Sorry!

Hey, folkses - I've been a long time away from this thing, so I apologize for that. Not much new has been going on musically, as I've been working my ass off and then taking vacations - that happened two months in a row - March and April - I work without regard for anything else going in life, get a week off, then I'm back to working without regard for life for three weeks, in order to prepare for my next vacation, then it's back to relaxation. The vacations were nice, but that's not the way to live. I don't usually take that many vacations in a row, either, but it had to do with company policy and that stuff and that's dry and boring.
Musically, I have my tickets and I'm ready to rock out on June 30 at the Tweeter Center in Mansfield, Mass., for Pearl Jam (and Ted Leo and the Pharmacists - I'm going to have to listen to them on MySpace or something, see if they're worth getting to the show on time for). That's certainly a big show, so far my 'big show' for 2008. Bonnaroo was my 'big show' for 2006, and come to think of it, I'm not sure if I even went to a 'big show' in 2007 - those were probably the two free outdoor Cat Empire shows in Portland and Boston last year.
As you know from any previous writings on this blog (yeah, like I've got readers!), I've found My Morning Jacket to project the most original music with a great mix of high instrumental skills and imaginative songwriting - i.e., I'm a big fan. Their new album Evil Urges hits stores (and hopefully iTunes) on June 10, and it seems to be a good one. If you go on YouTube, and type in My Morning Jacket in the search bar, there will be some videos by a guy calling himself 'breakfastontour' and those were filmed in Houston in March and feature several of the new songs. They're not hi-fi recordings, but they hold up, and you can get a sense for the sound of the new songs - Sec Walkin, Highly Suspicious, Smokin from Shootin are three that I've gotten to like early on here.
For those who live west of the Mississippi River, especially, I just wanted to say that someday you should take a copy of the The Samples' 1993 album The Last Drag and drive out to the most open landscape you can find. The sound of the album echoes around the Great Plains like a coyote howl. In my humble opinion, I don't think they ever 'caught it' again like they did on this album. Their pre-1993 stuff, songs like Giants, My Town, Feel Us Shakin, Another Disaster, Seany Boy, are all good stuff, but the songs from after 1994 fell into a mid-tempo, uninteresting slump - I don't take it as much of a surprise that they're back to playing bars now. I think only Sean is still left from the original lineup anyways. I almost sued them for damages when they re-recorded some of the Last Drag songs and re-tooled them, mostly for the worse, on their 1997 double-live/studio mix set Transmissions from the Sea of Tranquility.
I can easily say that The Last Drag is one of my 10 'Desert Island Discs' as the old saying goes. It just has a mystique thread throughout the album that few artists can conjure. MMJ did it on 'Z' and, after listening again last night to it, Blind Melon hit it on their self-titled debut. The Melon has a new singer and a new album out, and from their MySpace samples of it, it's not too bad. It's on my 'to be considered' list for buying, I suppose. Anyways, I'll come up with something interesting at some point in the future. I just wanted to basically say 'Hi'