Billy Bragg and Wilco - Mermaid Avenue

This may be breaking the rules, but I am going to count Volume 1 and 2 of Mermaid Avenue as one record, even though they came out a year or so apart (volume 1 was so successful that they decided to keep it going). They, is Billy Bragg the great English socialist singer/songwriter and alt rockers Wilco. The what is even more interesting. Woody Guthrie's daughter found 100's of unrecorded songs in the old apartment they lived in on Mermaid Avenue and thought it would be cool to set the words to music. Enter Bragg and Wilco. They each wrote music to go with the lyrics they found as well as taking turns on lead vocals. Vol. 1 also features a couple of great guest appearances from Natalie Merchant.

I am a big Woddie Guthrie fan, but I have to admit these songs take his music to another level. It's a little like Jimi Hendrix doing a Bob Dylan song, you love the original because the man is a great writer, but everything else is so sparse you sometimes long for more. Mermaid Avenue is that more. Also, if you are a fan of Billy Bragg or Wilco, I think you will find these records are a vital addition to the collection.

So again, buy these two records together. It'll save you a trip to the store.

Pebble Beach

Last weekend, Barbara and I took a trip to Pebble Beach for a little golf outing. It was Barbara's first time there and my second. We were very lucky as the weather was great, the sun was out and it was in the mid-60's all weekend after 12 straight days of rain.

I got to play three rounds of golf on Spanish Bay, Spyglass and Pebble Beach. Barbara missed out on the Spyglass round, but she made up for it with a trip to the spa.

We also spent most of the day Saturday and half the day Sunday at the AT+T Classic watching the pro-am. We were on the front lines when Philly Mic shot an 11 on #14, and we got to see George Lopez up close. His second shot on 14 landed at our feet. When he arrived to play the shot he pulled out a glove and autographed it for a guy in a wheel chair. He hit a great third shot onto the green and started dancing around, then he grabbed the lady next to me and kissed her. The CBS cameras were rolling while all this was happening, so I am guessing I might have been on TV.

Monday morning after the tournament we all played Pebble Beach. The course was in great shape and the weather was great, but it was a slow round. It took just over six hours to play. It is hard to get in a rythm when you have to wait a lot, but the great views more than make up for it.

While the Pebble Beach resort is ridiculously expensive, it is a great golf experience. If you go, I would recommend staying at Spanish Bay (it is quiter than the lodge at Pebble) and make sure you play Spyglass Hill as well as Pebble Beach. Also, if you can, rent a car and drive along 17 Mile Drive into Carmel and Monterey, both are worth checking out.

Pink Floyd - The Wall

Darkside of the Moon is one of the greatest records of all time, so I am sure this will cause some controversy. But let's remember The Wall was more than a record, it was a movie, an opera, and a concert event (where the band only played the songs from this record as they built a wall around them on stage) that became a second movie. Plus Darkside was already out and famous before I was buying records, I was not part of the phenomenon like I was for The Wall. In fact, we skipped school on a Friday so we could see the very first showing of movie version of The Wall ever played in Houston. It was amazing and took the music to a new level. Now that we have iPods, you can program all 26 songs to play in a row. An amazing delight.

The Match: The Day the Game of Golf Changed Forever by Mark Frost

If you are not a golfer, I don't think you could ever imagine reading a book about golf. Even more challenging this book is about one round of golf. I have played my entire life and just couldn't believe all the great reviews this book has received. In fact this is the second of three amazing golf books by Mark Frost, a novelist (The List of Seven), television producer (Twin Peaks) and scriptwriter (Hill Street Blues). The first book, The Greatest Game Ever Played deftly tells the story behind the legendary 1913 U.S. Open, in which Francis Ouimet, a 20-year-old golf amateur from Massachusetts, shocked the golf world by defeating British champion Harry Vardon, the most famous pro golfer of his time.

In his second book, The Grand Slam : Bobby Jones, America, and the Story of Golf, he re-creates another classic episode in golf history: the Grand Slam won by Bobby Jones in 1930, the only time the U.S. Open, U.S. Amateur, British Open, and British Amateur tournaments were ever won by the same person in the same year.

The third book, and the one we are now finally going to talk about, The Match is a little more obscure. It covers an event that only a few hundred people saw, but is now ledgendary among golf insiders. Basically, two very wealthy men, Eddie Lowery and George Coleman make a bet: my two guys can beat your two guys. Lowery's two guys are Harvie Ward and Ken Venturi, the two best amater golfers in the game, who have not lost a match play event as a pair in four years. Coleman's two guys are Ben Hogan and Byron Nelson, who should need no introduction. The story is enhanced by the fact that the match is played on America's premier golf course, Cypress Point. The story of the match and the descriptions of the course are gripping in and of themselves, but it is the back stories of all those involved and the understanding of golf (and life) in 1956 that is Frost's genius.

I think Ken Venturi's quote sums it up best. "The Match was a dream I never thought would come true. If I hadn't been there I wouldn't believe it myself, and if you know anything about sports or the game of golf, once you pick up this book you won't put it down. No one will ever see an event like this again. Fiction can't touch it."