I returned Wednesday from a week in Philadelphia and eastern Pennsylvania where I was attending a conference followed by a trip to spend some time with family. Philly was was fun, although the conference was a bore. My first night there I met up with Nick, a listener from NJ, across the river from Philly. We had good night out hoisting a few beers and geeking out about music. I've had the pleasure of meeting a few LOTD listeners over the years and it has always been fun. Good music taste is obviously a marker of good people. Later in the week I had the good fortune to go see Neko Case play at the Trocadero, conveniently located only 5 blocks from my hotel. I always try to catch a show when I travel and my luck is usually good. She was angelic as expected.
I've written briefly about My Dad Is Dead in a previous post. MDID is essentially Mark Edwards, originally from Cleveland and now in North Carolina, but over the years he's added various backing musicians. Over the last several albums his rhythm section has been Chris Burgess on bass and Scott Pickering on drums, both previously from the Cleveland band Prisonshake. My favorite Cleveland musician, Doug Gillard, has also played with him in the past. MDID has always been known for dark and gloomy lyrics (the band name was inspired by his father's death), but over the years the sound has brightened considerably. I've posted "Black Cloud" from the first MDID album "And He's Not Going To Take It Anymore" and two songs from the recent (late 2005) album "A Divided House." This juxtaposition makes the evolution most obvious and he seems to in a much better place these days.
Tonight I'm going to see Portland favorites Quasi, who have recently released the new album "When The Going Gets Dark."