Today I took the afternoon off and took a long bike ride. It was a warm day even though the sun is starting to do that horrible thing it always does at the beginning of October at the 45th parallel. A young and glamorous couple was sitting in the sun in the yard of my wife's old elementary school, bare midriffs, smoking. More bare midriffs at the used tire store. I grew impatient with people doddering in the bike lane, but at the exact moment I realized that I was going faster than everyone else, I was passed by a stealth bro, somehow going twice as fast as I was despite exerting zero effort. (Not an ebike.) With long hair flowing in the autumn breeze, he sat up hands-free and disappeared off into the distance, young and infinitely powerful.
I had a hankering to get some stuff from My Vinyl Underground/Jigsaw Records for the first time since the cooooooovid hit. I got a bunch of tapes (gotta love the $5-7 price point in 2020) and put them in my bike bag to head home. One of the tapes is a lovely thing by a couple Australians whose work has been there for me in weird times. I'll write about said work next.
Another thing I got was Elton Britt's Yodel Songs because the light this time of year always reminds me of my dad (it's almost been ten years) and because at one point when I was in high school, he and I and Bob from our church formed a yodeling country band for a talent show. My dad did the yodeling and he was good. We did a song called "That's How the Yodel Was Born" which is somehow not the same "That's How the Yodel Was Born" that is found on Mr. Britt's LP. Somewhere I have a tape. It was a struggle to keep my hyper young fingers playing I-V-I-V on the bass guitar, but somehow I did it.
