The Paper Raincoat opened for Vienna Teng when we saw her at the Roxy back in April. I liked them enough to not only buy their EP, Safe in the Sound, at the concert, but sign up for their mailing list. “Brooklyn Blues” kind of reminds me of Fountains of Wayne in their quieter moments, like “Valley Winter Song,” and “Sympathetic Vibrations” gets stuck in my head on a regular basis. I’m not sure how to classify the style (modern folk rock?), but Katie compares them to Guster.
Now the band has a full album coming out.
Better yet, the preorder page is offering a free song, “Right Angles,” in MP3 format. I’ve only listened to it once (I’ve been playing the new Vertical Horizon album), but I like the sound and there’s some nice wordplay in there. (There’s some nice wordplay in Burning the Days, too, actually.)
And hey, it’s free!
Probably the influence of the Hawai‘i sign across the street, but I could swear the song on the radio was “My Kind of Lava”
I still think this Aimee Mann lyric should be:
Got out of Phoenix
Just in time
A box of Kleenex
For the rhyme
…instead of the real words, which finish with “for the ride.”
“Weird Al” Yankovic’s song “Skipper Dan” has been stuck in my head on-and-off all weekend. Living near Disneyland makes it that much more funny. And did I mention there’s a video?
We went to the Orange County Fair on Saturday afternoon. Most years we end up going to at least one of the Pacific Amphitheater’s summer concert series, which includes fair admission, so we just combine it into one trip. This year it was Melissa Etheridge, and we also had another goal: Al’s Brain.
We started by grabbing some water and (in my case) a chocolate milkshake (because I wanted some ice cream, dangit! and drinkable made it easier), then wandered through the arts and crafts displays, where they showed prize-winning jewelry, crochet, display models, dresses, origami, etc.
Then we made our way to the back of the fair, where they had set up a portable theater for Al’s Brain (in 3-D!). There was a huge sand sculpture out front of “Weird Al” Yankovic holding out a brain in his hand. An animated question mark and exclamation point would occasionally pop out the top of his head, and smoke would pour from his ears.
“Weird Al” has actually had a long association with the Orange County Fair, often doing free concerts on multiple nights during the run. We’ve seen him there at least twice, possibly three times. One year there was a “Weird Al” museum of sorts. This year, he got involved in a short 3-D educational film (comedic, of course) about the brain.
