The Midget's the Baby's Daddy

I must be about the last person to have found out about this. My friend Ellen brought Trapped in the Closet—R. Kelly's R&B opera—to my attention recently. It is utterly addictive and every chapter ends on a preposterous cliffhanger.

The Best Music in the World

Colonialism is a hairy subject which I won't write off as "good" or "bad," or even simply "complicated." Politics aside, western influence in countries like Ghana has produced some of the most interesting guitar music (I won't say "hybrid" music, because it's more than the sum of its influences), from Afrobeat, to highlife (see E.T. Mensah, (1919-1996) who pioneered brass band highlife), to palmwine guitar. This is one of my favorite albums in any genre:

Vintage Palmwine

There are precious few recordings of original palmwine guitarists, but thankfully this album is available on the web and through iTunes.

New Movie About Two of My Favorite Topics: Dogs and Mongolia

I'm so excited to see Cave of the Yellow Dog
I loved The Story of the Weeping Camel and watched it multiple times before I went to Mongolia this summer. I found the combination of documentary/drama so absorbing that I forgot I was watching a movie at all, and felt like I was observing real people. This looks like another promising work, and the dog in the trailer looks strangely familiar:

Sean Hayes

It seems that one of my favorite musicians, Sean Hayes , is not nearly as popular as he should be (that is, outside of his core group of fans that faithfully help sell out all his Bay Area shows). I named this blog after one of his songs. My friend Erica saw him play at Burning Man in 2005 and came back raving about him. We went to see him at Café du Nord, and I've been hooked ever since.

At first he might seem like your run of the mill Dylan wannabe (in fact he covers Dylan's "Walking Down the Line" on his album Alabama Chicken), but upon closer listen he distinguishes himself as one of the more original, lyrical and musically gifted performers in a class with Jolie Holland, Etienne de Rocher and the like (I have seen him perform with both of these musicians and it's clear that San Francisco has a vibrant songwriting community).

Check out "Here We Are," "Alabama Chicken," "Calling All Cars," and "Rosebush Inside" for a sampling of the versatile artist that is Sean Hayes.

Photos From My Trip to Asia: July 2006

This summer I went to Asia for a month with a friend I met while studying abroad in Ghana back in 2002. We hung out in Beijing for a week, taking in all the tourist sites, which were awe-inspiring. We then flew to Ulaanbataar, Mongolia to catch the annual Naadam festival, which includes wrestling (in tiny jackets, briefs and boots, as we found out), archery and horse races. I enjoyed the capital city but was itching to see the countryside, which is why a westerner goes to Mongolia in the first place. We set off for 18 days in a Russian-built van with an Italian couple, a translator/guide, and what we soon found out was the best driver on the entire planet. We stayed in gers, tents, and spent one night in a room in a museum in the middle of the Gobi desert. In my three weeks there, I found Mongolia to be a country of horses, dogs, yaks, friendly people, and vast expanses of steppe, desert, rolling hills, and alpine-like forests. I rode some ornery horses, ate fried mutton, and played a game of luck which involved rolling giant handfuls of sheep vertebrae. It was a blast.

From China:








From Mongolia: