Crabb Bits:Iowa City Music Fest , GF, Even More Brains/Delta Moon

On the subject of:

This year's Iowa City Music Fest, slated for June 4 has got to be one of the all time best that they ever put together.  I thought the Richard Thompson 2006 show was the be all well, this year his son Teddy Thompson will be playing there.  Along with The Bottle Rockets (EEEEEK!) and the legendary Alejandro Escovedo, one time Rank And File and True Believer and now having a cult status as a solo artist (his last album Street Songs Of Love highly recommended) will be here on that Saturday.  Weather permitting and with or without my GF I'm going.

Which brings us to the shock of the week. My girlfriend of almost a year and a half called up and said that she found a job down here and is moving down here on Sunday, which is today, which is I'm still in shock of having this come about.  Never mind the fact that it has been a long distance relationship to which we would see each other every five months and then keep it up by email tag and the internet.  The original plan was to have her here around July, hopefully past our peak printing season and she couldn't pick a more inconvenient time to do this although the Texas project got finished up to the point that I didn't have to work Sunday.

This is a new beginning for me.  For years I have had relationships that last three weeks at most.  The one that lasted the longest 3 years almost ended up getting me in the poor house with a shit credit rating.  The last woman I was with had snakes for pets and a nasty drug habit she couldn't break out of and it eventually ended in the chatroom where she was telling whoever was listening that I left her for somebody else and I confronted her about that.  Basically that was it, I wasn't going get myself into another going nowhere relationship to which the bottom line was money grabbing druggies or two timers or golddiggers trying to get dollars out of me and only getting pennies and nickels.  The only exception was Nicole and I banked on the fact that I was too old for her at that time we got together at a singles party in 2000, when she was with somebody else and I was with Snakelady.  But we kept in touch throughout the years, even after when our collective significant others moved on.   I have to say that Nicole was chasing me more than I was with her. In my time of isolation, I was comfortable in my surroundings of being in the basement out here in the country and the usual bargain hunts and summer trips out to Vegas or Phoenix. Not having a GF was high on my list of things.

Till Nicole decided to take things up a notch and see where it lead.  So in 2009 after a late night chat she decided that she wanted to be a bigger part of this life than she's actually was.  So we threw a dart in the US Map and it landed on St. Louis and we met there in September of 09 and to my surprise she became the next significant other.  And now she's moving down here to be with the love of her life.  Which will lead us down the road to togetherness.  She's a stubborn woman to the point of giving her life up in Michigan to be down here in Cowpie Iowa with a cantankerous Crabb with a penchant for the bargain hunts and buying 2 dollar albums and cd's and making a blog about it.  I know I have to change some part of my thinking.   It's not going to stop me from hitting Madison from time to time but anything else we'll wait and see how its done.  I'm sure I may have uproot my surroundings for a place for her and I to be in together.  So many decisions to be happen in the coming summer but it won't mean the end of the Crabb Blog of Music Top Ten and Forgotten Bands Appreciation Society.   It's only the beginning..........

With all the ratings going on for The Brains segment that's been out for over 3 and a half years it has now made it's way into the top 5 all time and setting its sights on the Best Of 2009 and the famous My GF Thinks I Should Blog More Often bitchfest which has been either 1 or 2 before the explosion of Best Of 2010 overtook it.  It's a big deal to me when I get comments from musicians that I have loved and respected from listening to their albums.  I know in 2006 when the internet became a vast information of the lost and forgotten and while talking to Margaret who maintained The Brains' My Space Website that she sent me some old demos of The Brains recordings of the past.  Since Universal has sat on the 1980 album for so long, I ended up just copying a cassette copy into CD with Dancing Under Streetlights and Tanya for bonus tracks and lived with that instead.  In the end Margaret kept in touch for a while but I haven't been on My Space at all and whatever My Space touts as The Brains music, ended up to be two other bands, one punk and one Limp Bizkit like nu Metal, these are not The Brains of Money Changes Everything.

In the CD era, The Brains are long forgotten whereas Motley Crud gets their albums reissued every other year, we get expanded editions of other bands.  Hell, even Scott Wilk & The Walls and Gary Myrick got their albums reissued on CD whereas Universal doesn't seem to care anything about The Brains which really rakes the fans off.  I actually emailed Andy McKaie, the dude behind the reissues of Hip O/Universal (which controls Mercury Records) if you just reissue 1,000 copies or even 2500 I would probably spring for about 100 of them and I know other collectors would do the same.  But in typical major label attitude, he never replied or see the need to.  However, hardcore collectors will not let The Brains die for there are plenty of their songs on You Tube (but be careful, The other Faux Paus Brains bands are on there too).  Through Margaret she did introduce me to Charles Wolff one day and he did wished me a happy birthday in 2007.

The music world is a messed up biz.  We pay too much attention to the overexposed and not enough for the ones that got me through my life.  Motley Crue didn't save my life, neither did Radiohead or the pop tart autotuned rats of today.  The lesser known such as Paul Collins Beat or Treat Her Right or The Godz and The Brains kept my world rocking long after the mainstream gave up on them.  In 2006, while looking up whatever happened to the members of The Brains, took me to Delta Moon and the reinvention of Tom Gray to National Steel Guitar but by then Delta Moon had been around for most of that time.  And got me reconnected with him and the band once again.  Yes there is life after The Brains but you would never hear that from Rolling Stone or Spin or Pitchfork.  Or Bob Lefsetz for that matter.  In the case of Delta Moon I discovered them from the internet and by accident.  And judging by the spike of people reading The Brains piece that was written almost four years ago, fans and the hardcore don't forget.  And if Andy McKaie don't get it when people email him about reissuing Money Changes Everything the Album, the hell with him.  In fact, Tom Gray did redid Money Changes Everything in a smokey blues setting and it sounds as good as the original.

Being a music fan, discovering all the side bands, did make me check out The Swimming Pool Q's who made a few albums for A & M and DB/Capitol in the late 80s and still play today.  Delta Moon continues to defy the mainstream with their back to basics rock and blues.  If it takes a small blog from a music bargain hunter to get the word out, I'm honored to do so.  Blog writing is usually hit and miss but when it strikes a chord with somebody and the ratings go up, then the blog takes a meaning of its own.  And when I get a comment from on my favorite bands, then it really makes my day.

And it really did.  Thanks Tom!

Working on the next Top Ten which will deal with Bob Dylan's 70th Birthday bash and some of the songs that made him what he is today.  I'm sure mine will be a bit different than the Rolling Stones 70 Greatest Songs Of Dylan, might even include something from Down In The Groove just to piss them off.  So there.

Update: Rock n Roll And The Brains are flying past the top ten at number, ready to overtake My GF Thinks I Should Blog blogsprout.  Still it's got a long way to before overtaking the number 1 post of Best Of 2010.  Thanks for reading folks.  When you read them, you're supporting forgotten music.

Update 2: The Brains blog has overtaken the second spot and is within 18 spots from the number 1 position.  I can't imagine where everything is coming from but still amazed of how many fans of the band are reading this three year old  piece.  Now if Universal would get off their fat major label ass and reissue The Brains.....

FINAL UPDATE: The Brains blog has taken over the top spot of all time most read. I'm sure some of y'all Delta Moon fans had something to do with this.  The Best Of 2010 seemed to be forever on top but it has been knocked down to 2nd.  Somewhere out there Margaret is smiling.....