Thursday, Oct. 28, 2004
Patti Rothberg, posted at 7:59 p.m.
Epiphany in Baltimore has moved to epiphanyinbaltimore.blogspot.com I woke up today to find an e-mail in my box from Patti Rothberg. If you've never heard of her, she was discovered in 1996 playing in a subway. EMI/Interscope signed her, and she was (unfortunately) marketed as another young female rocker in the Lilith Fair / Alanis style. She sold 300,000 copies of her very good album, Between the 1 and the 9, and had a (minor) hit single, but the label went out of business and she went independent. The hit single, "Inside," was enough to get her on Letterman and Conan and karaoke lists, but not enough to keep her on a major label.Anyhow, I like her a lot - her voice is smoky, gutsy, sexy, soothing, and her music - all cranky acoustic guitar and drums, with the occasional big greasy electric guitar riff, delivered in catchy, sub-3 minute power pop gems - is bluesy with a garage band looseness. And she wants to play a house concert at my place. That's really exciting. I guess she doesn't mind going from playing Letterman to gigging in a shitty house in Baltimore.
I'm really glad I got back into the house concert thing this year. WTMD also e-mailed me today, about a story they're doing on them that they want to air. Wally Pleasant's gig on Nov. 19 will be huge. If Patti does January and Teddy Goldstein does February, then we're looking at a pretty solid start to 2005.
Speaking of other pleasant surprises in my inbox, I had a message on my voicemail when I left school today in a deeply cute Polish accent, from, of course, the the Polish girl: "Epiphany, I just got off of work, and I have nothing to do, and I was wondering if, um, you might want to go do something. We could go get a salad (at Thirsty Dog)! Give me a call, okay?"
Alas, she hasn't returned my return call yet. I'm not giving up hope, though.
***
Today I had a problem. So, I've heard of this Simpsons episode in which they parody The Lord of the Flies. Some easy Internet research revealed that the episode is called Das Bus and it was season 9, episode 2. This season, nor this episode, has not been released commercially in the US; I think they're only on season 4. However, some intense searching revealed that I could buy a compilation off of UK Amazon that contained the episode. I paid $15 in euros for it, and it arrived yesterday. However, it will not play in the VCR at school or at home. I assume there is a different VHS format here than in the UK, although I didn't think of this when I ordered it (and can't find any marker on the actual tape that would indicate there's a difference). Does anyone have any ideas for me? I think the kids would really like to see it, and I could certainly justify spending 22 minutes of their time showing it as a reward for their hard work on the novel. This is ideas for playing the tape, or for finding the episode.