RAS

On this day Haile Selassie was born in Ethiopia... and so was my wife, also in Ethiopia. So for her birthday we met her folks at an Ethiopian restaurant that we hadn't been to yet. The food at RAS is excellent and is served in great portions. It is a bit spicier than other restaurants in the are that we used to frequent. There is an abundance of space inside the facility as well as for parking behind the building. Access is very convenient right off of West 7th or coming in from Davern. The owner was extremely friendly and has been in St. Paul for twenty years. His family opened RAS three years ago and has seen great business. He is sure to get more from our family. We were quite impressed.

www.rasethiopian.com

Father & Son and Fight Test

Here's a post with a bunch of good and similar music...





Wayne Coyne (of the Flaming Lips) said this of the two songs:

I want to go on record for the first time and say that I really apologise for the whole thing. I really love Cat Stevens. I truly respect him as a great singer-songwriter. And now he wants his money. There was a time during the recording when we said, this has a similarity to "Father And Son". Then we purposefully changed those bits. But I do regret not contacting his record company and asking their opinion. Maybe we could have gone 50-50. As it is, Cat Stevens is now getting 75 per cent of royalties from "Fight Test", We could easily have changed the melody but we didn't. I am really sorry that Cat Stevens thinks I'm purposefully plagiarising his work. I am ashamed. There is obviously a fine line between being inspired and stealing. But if anyone wanted to borrow part of a Flaming Lips song, I don't think I'd bother pursuing it. I've got better things to do. Anyway, Cat Stevens is never going to make much money out of us.'

It's my (probably bias) opinion that the Flaming Lips song is the greater of the two. It seems to me the Coyne's spirit about it all is the better one.

Ten

I found myself between audiobooks and looking for something to listen to quickly. The first CD that came to my hand was Pearl Jam Ten. It's been a long time since I gave the album a good listen. Sadly it's lost a lot of the magic it held for me back in 1992. And it held a lot of magic for me then. It's angry tone meshed well with my angsty high school dramas (which weren't that many, really). To me this was THE ALBUM of the Seattle music scene. And I loved every moment of the CD. My music interest has come a long way from those days. Now the album is rather dull- not interesting enough. I have a much more critical ear for production and Ten's production level seemed standard, not too creative. I'd like to know what my opinion would be if I could somehow listen to Ten for the first time now. Or is it's place in my history an inseparable part of my music opinion and interest now? This I do not know.

Pearl Jam's predecessor, Mother Love Bone, is the better band in my opinion. The music was more interesting and had an element of humor that Pearl Jam lacked. Mother Love Bone was essentially a '70s glam rock band in the '90s and this is probably why I like them better. Pearl Jam took themselves too seriously, at least for the debut album. I dismissed all albums by Pearl Jam after this one as I was moving on in my music interest and they were not living up to what Ten was to me. It's clear now that this was no fault of theirs and entirely mine. To which I conclude that I ought to give the rest of Pearl Jam's catalog another try.