Grant Hart: iconic musician, drive-in operator, giant slide greeter

Last night I dreamt that Grant Hart owned a drive-in movie theater.  We all went as a family -- Arie, Éiden, Haddayr and I -- because it was a family drive-in.  Grant liked to show movies for all ages.  We also went because there was a giant slide Grant had built.  Apparently, this was a regular excursion for us.  Before the movie, while it was still light out, Grant would spin records in a dj booth.  Anyone who came was free to peruse his record collection which seemed to consist mostly of cut-outs and Hüsker Dü compilations.  After a while, he would leave the booth and climb a long set of  stairs to the top of his slide  At the top was a clubhouse he'd built and he'd sit inside waiting for the kids. The kids in the audience could then go up, say hello to Grant, and then go down the slide.  Arie and Éiden were very anxious to go down the slide.  "Ok," I said, "Remember, do we mess around with anything in the clubhouse?"  "Nooo,"  they answered.  "Do we try to take anything off of the walls?"  "Nooo."  "Just go on up, say hello to Grant, and then come down the slide, ok?"  "Ok," they smiled and ran to the top of the slide.

Bela Lugosi's Dead and I wish he'd stay that way

So Bauhaus has not only reunited, they've also recorded their first studio album in 25 years.  Never has one band gotten more play off of one song since Iron Butterfly's "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida."  

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I recently found a vinyl copy of The Faces' Long Player from 1971 for $2.99 at Electric Fetus in Minneapolis.  I don't usually shop there for used records, instead preferring Hymie's over on Lake Street, but I went to pick up a cd for a friend's birthday and checked out the used lp's.  What a really great album, bluesy and kind of sloppy, some great guitar lines, and hearing Rod Stewart makes you kind scratch your head and wonder what happened to him later in his career.  If you listen to anything he's done from the late 70's to the present you tend to forget what a great rock vocalist he could be.  The Faces, on a whole, though, seem to be one of those bands  whose sum is greater than their parts.  Listen to anything any of the individual members did post-Faces -- Ron Wood in the Stones (his arrival coincided with their decline), Kenny Jones with The Who (clearly the wrong choice of drummers for that band), solo Ronnie Lane (for the most part), and Rod Stewart solo, excluding his first couple of albums -- and none of  it really matches up with what they accomplished together.  It's too bad their short career (and their predecessor, Small Faces with Steve Marriott on vocals) has been overshadowed by other British rock giants liike the Stones, the Who, and Led Zeppelin because, at their best, they could be one of the great rock and roll bands of their era.