Over the course of our Steel theme, we have heard an awful lot of music played instruments which are variants of the guitar. This is not surprising, but there are other instruments which also fit. To most minds, the harp is probably not one of them. The harp, like the classical guitar, is usually played with nylon strings. Of course, nylon was only invented in 1935, but the mellow sound we think of for harp music was played instruments strung with gut strings before that. Steel strings are far more unusual in harp music. In fact, Mary MacMaster of the Scottish folk duo Sileas is the player I know of who plays a steel stringed harp. What difference does it make? I could try to explain, but Sileas gives the best possible explanation through their music. That’s because the other member of the group, Patsy Seddon, plays the more typical nylon strung harp. The Pipers is a tune that presents the contrast in the two sounds to great effect.
Seddon and MacMaster first came together in a group called Sprangeen, which stayed together for two years, and made their only album in 1984. By the following year, that group was done, and MacMaster and Seddon had become the duo Sileas. They would eventually be inducted into the Scottish Traditional Music Hall of Fame, despite having only made four albums together as a duo. That’s because their other larger group, The Poozies, has proved to be far more stable than Sprangeen, accounting for another seven albums. Seddon and MacMaster are both also fine traditional singers in both English and Scots Gaelic. At least back when I first saw them in 1986, they were also wonderful live performers.
purchase [ Leo Kotke 6 & 12 String Guitar ] The only 12-string guitars I have ever seen (or played) were steel stringed. Probably something about the tension/configuration. The one I owned had serious bridge problems - 12 strings of metal pulling against a wooden bridge had bowed the whole thing into contortions, making it almost impossible to fret/play. It was back about the time I picked up this instrument that I was listening to Gordon Lightfoot, maybe a bit of Simon and Garfunkle, John Fahey and Leo Kotke. There is a full-ness to the sound of a 12-string that - even with today's options of pedal effects and studio editing - is tough to replicate. The instrument rings like nothing else. (But, for some reason, brings to mind Doublemint gum - double the sound, double the effort) The richer sound comes about from the configuration of pairs of strings that are an octave apart: you're hitting an A, but there are two of them and they are an octave apart (one a higher/lower sound than the other). As a player, (if you are right handed) your left finger needs to depress both strings together and your right hand needs to figure out if you want to hit the higher or lower sound first. Maybe not quite as complex as a pedal steel style, but presenting more complexity than the standard 6-string version. I came across Kotke's 1969 <6 and 12 String Guitar> album about the same time I found Lightfoot's <Sit Down Young Stranger>. They are both from about the same year (69/70). Lightfoot struck me as more romantic. Kotke as the more accomplished guitar player. (Check out his version of Bach's <Jesu>, which I still perform in my own variation.)
a selection of other Kotke performances:
(above 6 strings, but it's Allman Brothers!! Little Martha)
(above <8 Miles High>one of his signature tunes - but as he says :I haven't done this in a long time. However, it is fairly recent - showing that he still does his thing)
listen to the 12 strings on this version of Deep River Blues.
What would Lynryd Skynyrd have sounded like if it was fronted by a kid from Jersey named Springsteen? Check out “He’s Guilty” by Steel Mill, a band from 1969-70 featuring Bruce Springsteen on vocals and guitar, future E Street Band members Danny Federici on keyboards and Vini “Mad Dog” Lopez on drums, and “Little” Vinny Roslin on bass.
Bruce’s first band was The Castiles. When that band broke up, he joined a hard rock band called Earth, then formed Child, which then became Steel Mill, when another band had already registered as Child. As Springsteen described Steel Mill in his excellent autobiography Born To Run:
It was blue-collar, heavy music with loud guitars and a Southern-influenced rock sound. If you mixed it up with a little prog and all original songs, you had Steel Mill . . . you know, STEEL MILL . . .like LED ZEPPELIN… elemental-metal-based, bare-chested, primal rock.
After becoming a big deal in Jersey, and somewhat surprisingly, in Richmond, Virginia, the band decided it needed to head to San Francisco and teach the hippies about rock n’ roll. Auditioning at the Matrix (the club co-founded by Marty Balin of the Jefferson Airplane) they got a gig opening for Boz Scaggs, Elvin Bishop and Charlie Musselwhite. Steel Mill was apparently good enough that a critic from the San Francisco Examiner wrote, “Never have I been so surprised by completely unknown talent.” Shades of Jon Landau’s famous quote from a few years later, "I saw rock and roll's future and its name is Bruce Springsteen.” You can hear a bootleg of one of the Matrix shows here.
Steel Mill got to play a few shows at the legendary Fillmore (where Bruce heard future band mate Nils Lofgren’s band Grin perform), and were well enough received that Bill Graham offered to record demos, one of which was “The Judge Song.” But nothing happened. Instead, they returned to New Jersey, where they could make a living.
Over the next few years, Steel Mill went through personnel changes (including a period with Steve van Zandt on bass). Springsteen explored different musical styles in bands named Dr. Zoom & the Sonic Boom (early- to mid-1971), the Sundance Blues Band (mid-1971), and the Bruce Springsteen Band (mid-1971 to mid-1972), before getting signed to Columbia Records and, ultimately forming the E Street Band.
“He’s Guilty” was never officially released until last year’s Chapter and Verse, the companion musical collection to the autobiography. The official version is edited down a little from the original, which can be found on some bootlegs, but I couldn’t find one online to post.
Back when I was in college, early to late 90s (I stuck
around to take a few extra classes) there was a neo/retro-lounge music craze
that kicked off. For me, the whole soft bubble keys and castanets movement
started with Esquivel. Juan Garcia Esquivel was a Mexican bandleader, and his Esquivel! or Space-Age Bachelor Pad, re-released along with a lot of other
music on Bar None, was the height of easy listening. Space age pop, exotica,
lounge: it all meant the same thing.
The music goons and college DJs and bar band bums that made
up my crew got into it, thought that sleazy lounge nostalgia pop made us
sophisticates. We bought a bartender's book and learned how to mix fancy
drinks. We hit up the Goodwill and bought the snazziest polyester duds we could
and threw Lounge Lizard parties. Our first one was a smashing success. Some
tools tried playing 80s music, nostalgia for the ‘80s becoming a real fad
itself about that time. But, we insisted: lounge or nothing.
From there on it
was Sinatra, Sammy Davis, Herb Alpert, Combustible Edison, Dezi Arnez, The Squirrel
Nut Zippers, Southern Culture on the Skids, the very Reverend Horton Heat, Les
Baxter, Elvis movie soundtracks, Ennio Morricone, Stereolab, Paul Anka, Canada’s
crown prince of the languid orchestral swing. Understand, we were making our
own definition of lounge. It didn’t matter if we were throwing in Big Band, Rockabilly,
or Barry Manilow: sweet and easy
listening meant being silly chic and suave in a way that let us push the furniture
against the wall, put on our dancing socks and glide sliverswift across the
floor with the few girls we had convinced to
come to our one of a kind Odd Ball.
It didn’t matter that we were mixing in multiple
genres—Tarantino was making great soundtracks with AM radio gems that would
never have been any one single radio programmer’s play list. And we took our inspiration from him and the record bins at the local CD shops (Vinyl was making a big comeback as as fad about this time, too). We made up
our own playlists and bought even better records at those same thrift stores. We were chasing a kooked up, weirded-out
vibe, where sound was blatantly old, odd, but fun, without any pretension, full
spectrum color that came from a time we didn’t really know, but wish we had.
This was the early ‘90s, right? I said that? Nirvana was
magic, but the spell hadn’t quite taken full effect. So flannel and Doc Martens
hadn’t taken up so much room that those natty, mis-matched suits bought at the thrift store were out of our wardrobes quite yet. Eventually, those two sartorial elements would merge
together, and velvet jackets, ratty, off-labeled t’s and thick soled suede
wingtips would all somehow look good together. That, a superior hair.
I miss dressing like that. I also miss those parties, where our
social existence was an un-ironic Halloween bash every weekend, while we swilled
well-vodka martinis and cruised, strutted and cut a rug like we were some variation
of George Lazenby James Bonds, full of the kind of exuberant camp, quirk and
whimsical bliss that space-age pop music, with all those Batman and Robin zings
and zangs and zooms and booma boom booms sound effect graphics, brought to glorious,
techni-color life.
So, Paul Anka—I dubbed
him the crown prince of Lounge, with a capital “L”. Today, I ask you to pull
out your snazziest duds, get dolled up and hit the dance floor with your very
best gal, and ring a ding ding to the glorious sound of “A Steel Guitar and a Glass of Wine.” Dig it and dance on, space traveler...
In 1927, the invention of the electric guitar was still many years away. This was a problem for players who wanted to use guitars in the dance music of the day. The guitar was a relatively quiet instrument, but you needed volume to play lead lines in the dance bands of the day. The invention of the National Steel Guitar was the first solution to that problem. The steel body and the resonator cones inside it gave it the volume needed to stand above the musical fray. The inventors of the instrument were thinking that white dance band musicians would be their main customers, and they also thought they might sell some in Hawaii. What they did not expect was that black blues musicians would also be great customers. Blues in those days was largely played solo or in very small groups. What the National Steel Guitar Company did not realize was that many of these artists played in juke joints. These were noisy places where the music had to cut through loud conversation and get people to dance. Today, the National Steel is generally thought of as a blues instrument. That has a lot to do with the work of early players such as Bukka White and the Reverend Gary Davis. Colin James features the sound of the National Steel in his song of that name, which is also a fine tribute to the power of the instrument.
The invention of the dobro followed in 1928, and was meant to address some of the same problems. But, as you can see, only part of the body of a dobro is steel. The dobro also has only one resonator cone where the National Steel has three. The result is an instrument that still stands out in a crowd, but has a mellower sound than the National Steel. This makes the instrument more versatile. Today, the dobro is mainly found in bluegrass and country music, but Abbie Gardner shows off the bluesy and soulful aspects of the instrument. Gardner would later record this song with her group Red Molly, and that version is well worth seeking out. But this solo version highlights the sound of the dobro better.
purchase [Sit Down Young Stranger] Steel strings on a guitar take a lot out of you: they're harder to depress and they end up putting calluses on the tips of your fingers. You need to keep at it on a daily basis. For this reason, I more or less gave up playing steel string guitars a few years back. It may be because I can't afford a decent guitar (better quality = less effort), but it may also be on account of all that metal - it cuts into your fingers something bad. I'm now a nylon man - with a lot of respect for thems that bend the steel around. It looks like the only other time SMM has mentioned Gordon Lightfoot is back in 2008. Away back in 2008 Paul -no longer an active SMM contributor- included Lightfoot in a post about a <History> theme. Myself? Gordon Lightfoot's 1970 "Sit Down Young Stranger" was a favorite. No ... more: a starting point for a budding guitar player. Someone to emulate. As I look back over the song list from the album after many years away, there isn't one that doesn’t bring back memories - a most powerful album (and his best-selling one). He's got Ry Cooder, John Sebastian, Van Dyke Parks and Randy Newman with him on the album. The Wiki says that maybe Kris Kristofferson also contributed. Pretty impressive. I guess (among all the good ones) it is the title song, Sit Down Young Stranger, that rings best: the steel strings are obvious here. The story is poignant. The quality of the vocals fits Lightfoot's folk-rock style. I read somewhere that Dylan thought this was Lightfoot's best - there are certainly a number of parallels: guitar style, vocal style and - to some extent, the lyrical/poetic message.
But I have chosen a different Lightfoot song to more closely match our theme and it's from a different album - his 1966 "Lightfoot!". If you look closely at the "Steel Rails" clip, you'll see that he has picks on his fingers - perhaps the true sign of a steel string player - if you want to make the strings ring, you kind of have to add some additional steel. Oh, and he's doing a variation of the "Travis" pick I mentioned earlier. The steel rails, as per the ticket the girl sends, are the railroad tracks - made of steel. A bit thicker than the strings on his guitar, but made of the same material, capable of singing their own song.
To pinpoint one song in the vast pantheon that Guided By Voices has
written and recorded over 30 years is a little like that proverbial needle that
got lost in the haystack.
“Lips of Steel” comes from their second album, 1987’s Sandbox,
and stands as the perfect introduction to GBV’s unique, and now singularly
owned style and sound. At 1:33 playing time, the song is: lo-fi, guitar-driven,
amped up and hook-laden power pop, recorded through a tape player and sounding
as if being played at the world’s greatest underwater stadium, by an oddly
unique version of every great arena-rock band you've ever fist pumped along to, who just happened
to have bought their instruments at the toy store on their way to a Dungeon’s
and Dragons tournament being held in the dingy backroom of a great ABC store. Beer
soaked, impossible to truly define, led by a former middle school teacher,
covering a vast and vastly odd exhibition of acid-trip, tongue-tied, four-eyed
images and ideas, GBV is a puzzle in a maze in a cork-screw universe of every
teenage boy’s tennis-racket guitar and hairbrush microphone bedroom fantasy
concert. To see them live is to be a convert; to introduce them to the
unbaptized makes one a beneficent saint.
Guided By Voices? 25 albums, 39 singles and EPs, 7 box
sets. 2 books. 2,000 plus songs. A lovingly devoted following of numbers-obsessed statisticians/fans (GBVDB.com). GBV occupies a universe of its own unique universe. Their just released August by Cake is lead singer Robert
Pollard’s 100th studio album and the band’s first double album. Prolific
is a failure of semantics. Not everything is great, nor could it be with this
much material. But when GBV hits the mark, it’s electric. If you’ve never
listened to GBV, start anywhere, work your way through in any order. You’ll
find a least a few ear-worm favorites; you’ll recognize not a few rock clichés redone
to perfection; you’ll discover a universe of music you never knew could
happen. For the uninitiated, “Lips of Steel” is a great starting point. Happy
traveling.
"Pity them who see him suffer, Pity poor old Steeleye Span; John Bowlin's deeds they will be remembered; Bowlin's deeds at Horkstow Grange"
So goes the lyric of the broadsheet ballad, 'Horkstow Grange' made more famous by english composer Percy Grainger, and, irrespective of what or who it applies to, from this comes the name of the UK's 2nd best known folk-rock originators. I think many will be aware of venerable stalwarts, Fairport Convention, if only through these posts, but almost always held in the same breath, if not regard were/are Steeleye Span.
Indeed they have a shared history, the one seguing from the other, with occasional tendrils propagating back and forth, as they derive from the same founding member, one Ashley Hutchings.
Having pulled Fairport together in 1967, inventing a british folk-rock soon thereafter with 'Liege and Lief', he promptly left. The folk-rock of Fairport wasn't pure enough. Too much rock. This didn't mean a return to unaccompanied ploughboys singing to sparse instrumentation, or not entirely. Hutchings still wanted electricity, just a greater otherwise traditional purity. So he hooked up initially with two existing singer partnerships, Tim Rice and Maddy Prior, and Gay and Terry Woods. This was 1969 and it was Steeleye Span.This short-lived line-up produced but one album, before the Woods departed, being replaced by Martin Carthy, iconic even then, erstwhile duo partner with Fairport's Dave Swarbrick. Fiddle player Peter Knight was drafted in alongside, this, my favourite version lasting all of 2 albums, including the magisterial 'Please To See The King.'
As seemed normal with bands at that time, change came as routine, Carthy and Hutchings both then leaving, Hutchings moving on to a varied career of founding further bands, usually with 'Albion' in their name. Carthy returned to the folk clubs and an ever enhancing reputation, solo and with his wife and their family. Steeleye, like Fairport ahead of them, on the loss of their founding father, decided to make a go of it, going from strength to strength. recruiting Bob Johnson on guitar and Rick Kemp on bass. This line up even produced a UK (christmas) hit single in 'Gaudete.' With robust management, they also attracted guest musicians such as David Bowie and comedian Peter Sellars, the latter on ukulele. Not bad for a folk band. (Actually it was.....) They even added a drummer by their 6th recording, hitherto having been avowedly against, give or take the occasional guest right back on their initial outing.
Along the way they endeavoured a wider appeal, invoking 'Wombles' producer, Mike Batt, giving them a 2nd hit, 'All Around My Hat', so one more than "rivals" Fairport. Not their finest moment, perhaps, in terms of authenticity, but tell that to their bankers. Knight and Johnson, leaving not so long after, left the rest in a pickle, Martin Carthy rejoining in order to fulfil contractual obligations, along with accordion maestro, John Kirkpatrick. This was destined not to last, and the band more or less fell into disarray, even when Knight and Johnson returned. Hart, then Nigel Pegrum, the drummer left, with Kemp hors de combat due to a shoulder injury. Confused?
New musicians joined, but not until their 25th reunion gig was the die cast for a more solid future. Now with Tim Harries on bass and Liam Genockey on drums, Gay Wood rejoined, the band temporarily again having 2 female leads. But not for long, as Prior, the focus for so long, promptly left. Surely this was the end, but the band limped on. Since then Woods has left again, Kemp has rejoined, left and joined again, Johnson has retired hurt, being replaced by Ken Nicol, himself then leaving after a few years. Stalwart Peter Knight finally left, in, now, 2013, yet still the band plays on, now a core of Prior, Kemp, Genockey and whoever else is currently depping. With 22 past and present members, over 23 albums it is hard to keep up. Yet somehow there remains a signature sound, usually centred around muscular guitar chords, soaring fiddle and the unmistakeable vocal of Ms Prior.
Joni Mitchell released Cold Blue Steel and Sweet Fire on her album For the Roses in 1972, and I must have first heard it close to that time for the first time. I turned twelve that year, so I had no idea what the enigmatic lyric was about. To me, it was an enticing dark fantasy that might involve a deal with the devil. I understood Hotel California in the same way, picking up on the undercurrent of seductive danger, but not the context. Now I know and can clearly see that both songs are about drug addiction. In particular, the cold blue steel in Joni Mitchell’s title is a heroin needle. So my deal with the devil idea wasn’t really wrong; I just didn’t know the identity of this particular devil.
Joni’s original recording of this song serves as an interesting marker for where she was in her musical career at the time. The song begins with little more than voice and guitar, harkening back to the folk period Mitchell was leaving at the time. But gradually, the arrangement fills out, until the song finishes in a much jazzier territory that Mitchell would explore over her next several albums.
When Joni Mitchell finished her run of jazzy albums, she began to explore electric rock. If she had recorded a version of Cold Blue Steel at that time, it might have sounded something like Tim Curry’s recording of the song. It’s a shame that Curry is best known as Dr Frankenfurter from The Rocky Horror Picture Show. This performance strips away the campiness of Frankenfurter, and finds the sense of menace in a blistering rock version of the song. Curry never was a major hit maker, but he was serious about his music.
I found this version of Cold Blue Steel while researching for this post. Boi Akih gives the song an interesting jazz treatment that might have been what Joni’s song would have sounded like if she had not written it until the Mingus album. This version emphasizes the seductiveness of the lyric, while the dissonant musical elements preserve the sense of danger.
Make a motorcycle
sound with your lips. My 1 1/2 year-old son does it whenever he sees a motorcycle, bike or
scooter.
Leave the saliva on
your mouth for the rest of the article. Let it dribble down.
The audacious industrial
label Wax Trax is one of Chicago’s most important contributions to music
history. Two Wax Trax bands especially-- Ministry and the Revolting Cocks-- are/were
revolutionary groups that were crowded under the industrial umbrella as a
result of their drum programming and sampling and the bands they toured with,
though neither band threw themselves entirely into the clank-on-steel sounds of
bands like Nitzer Ebb or Einsturzende Neubaden, the latter which literally
played with junkyard steel on stage.
Ministry followed
an interesting trajectory, from moody, funky synth-pop (Revenge), to nihilistic industrial (Land of Rape and Honey) and then onto industrial-metal (The Mind is a Terrible Thing to Taste
and New World Order) before sliding
into stolid, straightforward metal on ensuing albums. They were/are politically
vitriolic and have always had a decent sense of humor, though they were never as
smart as they wanted to be. But at least in the 80s and early 90s, they were pull-your-pants-down-in-front-of-a-cop
reckless and a couple pints in front of everyone else who had cloudy visions of
making the industrial dance/metal music Ministry and Revco were at the time.
And it’s a hell of a testament to the creative talents in both bands that they
were as prolific as they were despite taking tons of drugs.
Each band had an
adventurous mixed cocktail of members throughout their tenures, though
mainstays were guitarist/vocalist Al Jourgensen and bassist Paul Barker.
Revco--the side project- was sleezier and dancier than Ministry, but far more formidable
than an alter-ego. As much as Al (referred to as “Uncle Al” in many circles)
proclaims to hate the nascent stage of Ministry and its funky synthpop (once
saying that most bands sell out after their first record but he sold out before
he even got started), the first three Revolting Cocks albums (1986-1990) and
parts of Finger Lickin’ Good (1993, “Cracking
Up” and “If Ya Think I’m Sexy”) pump a smug affection for dance music, though
Revco was always plunge- yourself-into-a-barrel-of-tahini and do a lap dance
kind of dance music more than chart busting stuff. Maybe this is Barker more
than Jourgenson for after Barker left Revco, Revco left the dance party and
settled for simple and tame electro-metal rather than anything with a unique,
dancy vision.
So let’s talk Barker
as Al gets most of the attention. He was tall with curly black hair and glasses
whereas other members of the two bands were in dreadlocks, mohawks , gelled
crew cuts or sometimes shaved clean on the crown. Barker came across like a
young, cool professor who preferred his students to his colleagues. His bass
lines were catchy, dark and eternally simple, the nerve from which every 5-8
minute Revco song was energized.
Revco was one dirty
bacchanalia and ever body was welcome, including their sometimes topless
dancers the Revolting Pussies. A few of the many contributors include Skinny
Puppy’s Nivek Ogre, NIN’s Trent Reznor, Chris Connelly, drummer William Rieflin
(now of King Crimson and REM), Belgium’s inimitable Luc Van Acker and Front
242’s Richard 23. The best exhibition of Revco’s wildness and rabid bite is the
live You Goddamned son of a Bitch (1998), the extended version including a
cover of PiL’s “Public Image” and two songs off of Beers Steers and Queers including the crotch-hammering “Stainless
Steel Providers.”
“Stainless Steel
Providers”, which debuted on You
Goddamned…. before showing up on 1900’s underappreciated Beers Steers and Queers is kick started
with the revving up of a motorcycle, a sound which sparks the rhythm
throughout. On the live version a menacing industrial din moans underneath.
Vocalist Chris Connelly, who includes the song on his personal favorites (Initials C.C. Outtakes and Rarities Volume 1),
delivers more attitude than on the album version. He’s a tripping and pissed
off neurotic delivering a diatribe on a couple empty cases of Old Milwaukee at
a party. And what’s it all about?
Quick locate and
detonate your public enemy
Stainless steel,
believe it’s real
It’s all you mean to
me
What’s that sound,
what’s that sound
It bleeds efficiency
Guns?
Steel. Revco and
Ministry usually paraded around in cowboy hats and leather. In some of their
videos they fired around Chicago in motorcycles, such as in the video for Ministry’s
“Stigmata” where Jourgenson is being dragged by a rope attached to a shiny,
steel hog driven by a near giggling Barker.Vrrrroooom Vroooooom. I wondered if they actually rode motorcycles or if
it was some kind of irony being as close as they were to Milwaukee’s Harley
Davidson Plant. Motorcycle gangs and cowboys--two groups whose image exudes
maximum masculinity. But the two bands have always dressed like this. Al even
talked about retiring, moving to Texas and playing country music. But how long
can you be ironic until it becomes you?
In my late 30s,
some friends of mine started a bowling night on Sundays. They dressed in loose
and long polyester shirts, donned Blatz hats and drank Pabst Blue Ribbon. After
a few months, Sunday Bowling Night became Friday Bowling Night. They started betting
on their scores. They stuck by PBR while pale ales started becoming popular.
Then they stopped going to shows. Bowling was easier and more interactive. They
got home earlier and could watch tv.
My friends with a
broad taste in music don’t get this band. I have one high school buddy who
loved their work enough to pump it in his car on cruises past Dairy Queen and
McDonalds through our tiny downtown on Friday nights. He dug industrial music
but in truth, he loved anything with a huge bass: “Well, you might say this
song is tits Becker but lets see how its bass checks out on my speakers!” And
in his Honda Civic we’d go, me always in the back seat, where I felt more
comfortable than the shotgun in the front everyone competed for. I connected
with him for the first time in 20 years this summer and he still listens to
industrial music.
I never saw Revco
though I saw Ministry three times. Rieflin, Connelly, Luc Van Acker, Barker and
Richard 23 apparently did a short 6-date tour a couple years ago as just “The
Cocks”. I checked out the clips. Though it wasn’t as reckless as the 80s and
90s, you could sense a belief in the tunes endurability. Luc Van Acker was
comfortable in his royal tubbiness. Richard still had the gelled crew cut and
Kojak shades.Barker still geeked around
in back, hunched over the bass.
On the record, I
never saw the problem with bowling. I liked the dark lighting, the streaks of
neon, the smell and the clatter of pins knocking around. I think it’s a fine
way to spend a Wednesday night.
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