Blinded By The Light (or the bug spray, as the case may be)

I know what you’re thinking.

That E, with all his “lists” and “links” and such, what a lazy sunofabitch.

And you’d be right on the money.

The normal excuses abound: work is crazy, the kids are a handful, the yard work is a nightmare and work…well, it’s crazy.
Adding to my lackadaisical attitude on blogging and listless demeanor (in general) of late is the fact that I’ve been planning a camping trip to the mountains of Northern California for the last few days with my wife and two daughters. Those of you with kids know just what a chore that can be. I won’t bore you all with the details because, after all, this IS a music blog. It’s not called “Uncle E’s Family Nightmares” although I do have plenty of past memories to fill a blog entitled as such.
Didn’t think about music too much on the trip, but I will tell you that my wife nearly blinded me by accident (I hope) by squirting bug spray in my eyes, and that my little iPod cigarette lighter FM ‘port’ thingy friggin drove me bananas on the ride up there.
Ever use one of these things? I’m not fortunate enough to own a vehicle with an MP3 jack, so this is all I’ve ever used with my iPod. You need some clear FM frequencies to get a semi-clear sound and believe me when I tell you that there ain’t many of those travelin’ up old interstate 5 to Mt. Shasta! I kept hitting the search button, it’d get better for a song or so, then…STATIC. When it got to the point where all I heard was static I yanked it out and threw it down on the passenger’s side floor mat and went searching for some home burned CD’s. The problem was since I haven’t used my CD player in my car for a very long time I didn’t have much of a selection. And those that were decent were scratched all to hell.
So I was buggered for music on the trek North. When I got there, however, I took out my headphones, found my campfire play list and shared the tunes with my family. Just in case you’re curious, here’s a snippet from the play list . Bear in mind that my family doesn’t necessarily share my eclectic taste in the musical arts, but rest assured I got some subversive cuts in there anyway:

Iron And Wine, The Devil Never Sleeps
Primal Scream, Higher Than The Sun
Jack Johnson, People Watching
M Ward, Chinese Translation and Magic Trick
A3, Speed At The Sound Of Loneliness (acoustic version)
AIR, La Femme D’Argent
Flying Burrito Brothers, Hot Burrito #2
Frank Sinatra, One For My Baby (And One More For The Road)
Lambchop, The Man Who Loved Beer
Jackson Browne, Doctor My Eyes
Gordon Lightfoot, The Wreck Of The Edmund Fitzgerald (come on, I’m ½ Canuck! You gotta have some ‘Foot!)
The Replacements, One Wink At A Time
Roxy Music, While My Heart Is Still Beating
John Prine, The Sins Of Memphisto
The Beatles, Norwegian Wood