It's a Big Red Letter Day

Today truly is a big one for my sisters Kathy and Clair. Happy Somethingth Birthday!!!

I'm much too much of a gentleman to tell their ages, but I did manage to get this picture of Kathy's birthday cake.

Cue the music!

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Albums: Buffalo Tom, Big Red Letter Day, 1993 and Buffalo Tom, Sleepy Eyed, 1995


Acquired: I bought both at the Record Exchange in Blacksburg

Best Tracks: "Dry Land" and, um, I'll have to get back to you on this one


Lasting Memories: What I most remember about Big Red Letter Day is having to wait almost a year after first hearing the single "Sodajerk" in early 1993 before I could buy the album. I spent most of the fall of 1992 and the spring and summer of 1993 irregularly employed, shiftless, and broke. I actually got skinny that year, but I can honestly say that I beat anorexia.

I was well back on my way to being well fed when Sleepy Eyed was released in 1995, and what I'll always remember about that album is that it was the first cassette my grad school classmate Carmen and I played when we left Blacksburg to drive to Toronto for an STS students' conference. In three days, I saw the ice shelf over Niagara Falls, got loaded on LaBatt's Bleu while watching a Leafs game in a pub in downtown Toronto, gave my first academic paper, and somehow didn't get killed on the Detroit beltway when Carmen's car died in the center lane during Monday rush hour. Good times.

It was not good times, though, when I went to listen to these cassettes this past Sunday. Only half the songs on my copy of Big Red Letter Day play, and the magnetic tape on Sleepy Eyed is torn at the beginning of side A.

Broken tapes make for broken dreams.

Which is just one of the reasons that cassettes very quickly gave way to the hardier CD format for recorded music. In fact, I'm pretty sure that Sleepy Eyed is the last cassette I ever purchased. At some point during the mid-1990s, I just didn't see them in record stores any more. I was dragged kicking and screaming into the digital music age, and while I still prefer tapes to disks, I do like how the CDs are all shiny.

Since I was unable to give either of the Buffalo Tom albums a proper listen, I will have to forgo my usual brilliant critique. Suffice it to write that the band rocks pretty good. The fast tunes are a mix of power pop and low-fi, and the slow songs are all listenable. No Scorpions-esque "Winds of Change" balladeering for these boys from Boston.

The lyrics tend toward semiclever wordplay, as evidenced by this bit from Sleepy Eyed's "Tangerine," which may actually be haiku in some parts:

It's just a little haiku
To say how much I like you
It's just a little haiku
To say how much I like you
It's just a little haiku

Also take for example this nice little snippet from Big Red Letter Day's "Dry Land":

With heaven beside me
There is no one can do me harm
But the devil inside me
At least then I can stay warm

A final reason to like Buffalo Tom -- the cherry on top of the slice of birthday cake, if you will -- is that the band's lead singer and chief songwriter has red hair. That is something I've always identified with, and it might go some way toward explaining why Buffalo Tom has been a guest on Late Night with Conan O'Brien so often.

Listen to a clip from "Dry Land"

Watch the video for "Tangerine"

Up Next: Jimmy Buffett, Changes in Attitude, 1977

Word Count to Date: 15,813