Song of the Week - Lawyers, Guns, and Money by Warren Zevon

I never get tired of this song. This is a pretty good live version.

Random Cards From My Collecton #15

Card #4595
2002 Diamond Kings Diamond Cut Collection #49 Marlon Byrd

A nice card to start with. I always liked the Diamond King relic cards. Very solid feeling. I like that they show a picture of the actual jersey that the swatch came from on the back.

Card #5663
1989 Score Rookie/Traded #88 Jim Abbott

Abbott is a Player I Collect that I featured in a post sometime last year. He was 12-12 with the Angels in his first season as a professional baseball player. He is one of the few players to be drafted out of college and go directly to the majors.

Card #6824
2006 Fleer Tradition #113 Ryan Zimmerman

The first year that Upper Deck owned Fleer produced this colorful set. Lots of yellow, like on the 1991 Fleer set. But after 26 years, it will be the end of the Fleer name in baseball cards.

Card 29857
2011 Topps Stickers #76 Mike Moustakas

Did you like these last year? I can't say I was in love with them. I bought a handful of packs just to have a few, which is not a ringing endorsement. If they don't come back this year I won't miss them.

Card 17678
2007 Upper Deck Future Stars #64 Alex Rodriguez

Why was this set called "Future Stars"? I only bought a few packs, I have 48 cards in all. You would think that a set called "Future Stars" would have a high percentage of rookie cards or maybe draft picks. In 48 cards I got exactly one rookie card. Also, I am ambivalent about cards with abstract background like these. The design is way too busy for a base card.

Card #31699
2012 Topps Timeless Talents #23 Edgar Martinez/David Ortiz

Hey, a 2012 card! I don't have too many of these as yet. One of the myriad inserts to 2012 Topps.

Card #29922
2011 Topps Update #49 Rickie Weeks

In the 2011 All-Star Game, Weeks was 0 for 3 but got on in the 5th on a fielder's choice, stole second, and scored the Nationals 3rd run on a single by Ethier.

Card #20309
1990 Topps #356 Randy Ready

Could 1990 Topps be the ugliest set they ever produced? The ugliest set anyone has produced? And as if the set isn't bad enough, I have to post one of the cards which has a purple border. Purple has no place on a baseball card.

Card #18613
2010 Topps Allen & Ginter #245 Michael Dunn

OK, maybe the cumulative weight of Allen & Ginter cards makes up for 1990 Topps.

Card #1163
1997 Ultra #525 Sid Fernandez

Sid only managed to appear in one game for the Astros in 1997 but got on two 1997 cards as an Astro. This one and 1997 Fleer. He threw 5 innings on April 5, 1997 and got a no decision. It was his last game. Sid had played for the Phillies in 1995 and 1996, making the Phillies the only team in baseball to have had two Hawaiian natives play. I made that up, but it could be true.

Song of the Week - Wine Red by The Hush Sound

I have 6,034 songs in iTunes. If you're paying attention you'll notice this is a big jump. Over the Thanksgiving Holiday (when I had the whole week off), I copied about 35 albums to mp3 with my new USB turntable.

Steve, over at The Easy Life had posted some baseball cards he was willing to trade. Since there was a Phillie and an Astros auto which I didn't have I made him an offer. He got this nice Mike Piazza card for the autos. But in addition to the cards he sent a CD full of tunes. Tunes I didn't already have.

The first on the disk is something called "Wine Red" by The Hush Sound. This is a quartet from the mid-West and I really like them. There are a few of there videos on You Tube. They formed in 2004 and have 3 CDs out. This song is from their 2006 album called Like Vines. You can read about them here.

Song of the Week - Time Won't Let Me by The Outsiders

I have 5,690 songs on my iTunes. This is one of them.

In my alphabetical quest through my iPod library, I listened to "Time" songs this week:

Time - The Alan Parsons Group
Time - David Bowie
Time - Pink Floyd
Time and A Word - Yes
Time for Livin' - Association
Time Has Come Today - Chambers Brothers
Time is a Lion - Joe Henry
Time is Time - Yes
The Time it is Today - Association
Time Out of Mind - Steely Dan
Time Stands Still - Rush
Time to Heal - Midnight Oil
Time Won't Let Me - The Outsiders
Timebomb - Old 97's
The Times They are a Changin' - Bob Dylan
Until It's Time For You To Go - Buffy Sainte-Marie
Until the End of Time - Sarah Brightman
The Very Last Time - Todd Rundgren
Who Knows Where The Time Goes? - Judy Collins/Fairport Convention

I picked this song because I was surprised to find a video of it. The Outsiders had a big hit with this song in 1966. There is a long article in Wikipedia about them if you care to read it. Especially long for a band that only had one hit. The video is from a mid-sixties television show apparently from Boston. The video quality is poor, it looks like it was filmed with a Brownie camera. But it sounds good. Enjoy.

Song of the Week - Take On Me by A Ha

This is just for fun. I wasn't planning on featuring two 1980s songs in a row but my daughter brought this to my attention and it's too good to pass up.

This is the literal video version of "Take on Me". There are a handful of videos like this on YouTube, but I think this one is the best.

Song of the Week - You Spin Me Right Round by Dead or Alive

I have 5,540 songs on my iTunes. This is one of them.

I just spent about 30 minutes trying to find a good video for a piece from the musical Hair called "The Flesh Failures/Let The Sunshine". This is the finale of the show. It cycled up on my iPod this week. I am an unabashed child of the 1960s and this is a good song from then. I even actually saw the show in it's original Broadway run in 1972. But all the videos were terrible, or in Dutch. So I started twirling through my iTunes library until something caught my fancy. Here we go into another 1980s tune. This song came out in 1984, the year my first child was born. My wife and I married in 1980, and although I can't say we went out clubbing a lot, we did did hang out with a younger crowd of people from where I worked and since it was a fun time, I really like 1980s music (either punk or New Wave). So enjoy.

Song of the Week - Tonight the Streets Are Ours by Richard Hawley

I have 5,541 songs in my iTunes. This is one of them.

I never listen to music on the radio anymore and I pretty much can't stand to watch music video shows (I can't understand how kids can watch these shows since they have so many commercials), so where do I hear new music? One good source is podcasts. I currently subscribe to Minnesota Public Radio's Song of the Day podcast and the KEPX Song of the Day podcast. KEPX is a public radio station operating out of the University of Washington in Seattle. There is a lot of great music being made by people I never heard of and I get some of it delivered right to my computer everyday for free. You can easily find either of these by doing a Google search. Every once in awhile, when the podcast bin starts to get full, I listen to the first 30 seconds or so of the song. If it grabs me, I keep it, if not, I dump it. I tend to keep most of the songs. I sometimes change my mind on subsequent listening, then I dump it.

Richard Hawley is a British singer who's been working since the mid-1990s in various bands and solo efforts. The song is a great pop tune which sounds like a lot of other great pop tunes but plesently so. You can read his Wikipedia entry here. If I had to guess, I'd say that Hawley wrote the entry himself. The video is just about incomprehensible to me.

Song of the Week - My Father's Piano by Kristina Olsen

I have 5,460 songs in my iTunes. This is one of them.

This is a song that I really like by an artist I know little about. I'm not even sure where I acquired the song, as it is the only song by her I have. Wikipedia has next to nothing about her but she does have a web site. I still don't know much about her. The song is from her 1992 self titled album. Sorry, no lyrics, I couldn't find any. But the song is easy to understand. I think the song resonates with me as my was part time musician. His instrument was the stand-up bass but he could play piano and other instruments as well.