Thanks for your support, we shall wear it often!

I removed the poll results, because, you know, the number of entries had stopped a while ago. I thought it was surprising that Dirty Old Town beat out Teenage Failure for most wished for addition to the set list, though either of them would be fine with me.

I think I first heard Dirty Old Town through Chad & Jeremy's version, and though the song was written in 1949, it only became popular in 1964 through a hit by the Spinners, a 60's folk group from Liverpool (not the Spinners from Detroit). One of the best parts of the song for me was the great harmonica part that is so reminiscent of Toots Theilemans (listen to the wonderful Theme from Midnight Cowboy sometime for an example). There are no musician credits on the Yesterday's Gone LP, so I don't know who was playing on this song, and need to remind myself to ask Chad sometime whether he was the one playing it. You know, the next time I run into him :).

Teenage Failure just has gotten a bad rap. The first issue of Crawdaddy from February of 1966 called it "finky," though they did like the arrangement. Finky is such an odd word to use when describing a song, no? Well, yes. I think they missed the point. No, it probably wasn't as well written as "Homeward Bound," and you no doubt know that story, but if you take it in the same vein as, say, Summertime Blues, as a rocking type of novelty song, there's not a thing wrong with it. "Sit still or I'll smash your face in" still works for me, in a Mad Magazine sort of way.

Either song works. Though I must say that the recently added The Water Is Wide would be a nice permanent keeper.

Belated Happy 4th. Finally some nice weather in CT, and for this holiday weekend.

Oh, and one of the nice things to having one's own blog is the ability to do shameless self-promotion. At Mohegan Sun this past April, I asked Chad and Jeremy to autograph a photo my wife took of us at Mohegan Sun in 2008. Chad's note is the heading to that shot on the right :).