Hello friends,
Thanks for stopping by the home of ThirdRail Productions. If you’ve been by before, you will of course notice that our look has changed significantly. We’re still doing the same stuff: creating quality audio and visual content . . . however, the new blog format will give us the ability to post more cool stuff in a more readily accessible format.
Trying to keep it simple,
Rich Blatt
It’s not often that I just post a link…however I will make an exception for this collection of photography.
I am completely humbled. If you are reading this, you should click on this link right now. I promise, you will be blown away.
Lately I’ve been getting into Wilco. It started out innocently enough with me reading the story of how they “got screwed by ‘the man’” when their record label (at that time) dropped them when they turned in their second to most recent album, “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot”. That story (recounted in the book “Learning How To Die”) set off a flurry of used-and-new record buying on my part. (Being There, Summerteeth, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and even a record by a former bandmate: Son Volt’s debut, called Trace.) Last night I got a chance to see them play live at Austin City Limits, which is a club in Austin TX. Unfortunately they were opening for a much less interesting group of songwriters, so they only played four or five songs. Very interesting performers. Talented, musical, tight, and not a one of them a plastic-pop manufactured star.
These guys are probably not for everyone, but if you’re into checking out music that’s a little off the beaten path, and you don’t mind old-school country-style musical influences…
(but thankfully not the pathetic “my wife left me for another man and shot the dog on her way out past the fourteen dead cars in our front lawn” kind of country)
…you ought to check them out.
Oh, and their lead singer, Jeff Tweedy, gives both Keith Richards and Iggy Pop a run for their money for the “ugliest man in rock and roll” title. 
No offense, Jeff. You rock, man!
Wednesday night Karen and I ate at a restaurant called “The Boathouse”, which overlooks the English Bay. We split an order of their fish and chips. My comment to Karen was: if I walk out of here tonight and get hit by a bus I can die a happy man.
Best. Fish. And. Chips. Ever.
Wow.
Something about rainy weather makes you crave English food. Funny how that works, huh?
So, as we were walking down Denman Street after getting lost in Stanley Park (which is awesome, and yes I have pics, and yes I will post them…but not tonight…) [edit: new pics posted below! 1/22/05] on our way to said fish and chips dinner, we passed AT LEAST a dozen restaurants that I want to try. I guess that seals it. We HAVE to move here now.
Stanley park pics (resembles the forest moon of Endor for a very good reason…they shot Return of the Jedi in a similar kind of forest in N. Cal):
And now the fun part. The restaurant at which we experienced this transcendant English cuisine? Recommended to us by an Air Canada pilot on a shuttle bus from plane to plane in Toronto Airport. (Frickin’ 4 degrees F in Toronto…blech…) Way to go Air Canada, eh? Heh.
