Rainer Ptacek tribute

I was digging through the piles on and around my desk again on Monday, and ended up tossing most of it, but I did find this really wonderful album called The Inner Flame, which is a tribute to Rainer Ptacek, who co-founded Giant Sand with Howe Gelb. Ptacek died a long time ago -- 1997 I think -- and the album was recorded to help him and his family meet the medical expenses of his first bout with a brain tumor in 1996. He got the chemo and lived for another year, then had a recurrence, very sad...

Ptacek was an extremely talented guy -- and you can hear him either solo or with other artists on a few of these tracks. He also commanded immense respect among a broad range of musicians-musicians types. among the people who contribute here are Gelb, Calexico, Lucinda Williams, Emmylou Harris, Jimmy Page (!!), John Wesley Harding, Vic Chestnutt and others. The record originally came out in 1997 and was, apparently, reissued by Fire almost exactly one year ago. (I've got to clean off my desk more often.) So it's too late to do much about it, except maybe say, briefly, how god-damned beautiful it is.



I'm off for our final big track meet of the year, scheduled to last from 3:45 to about 10 p.m. and including 28 teams. It's super hot today. We will definitely be going out in a blaze, if not of glory, at least of heat and light.

Have a nice weekend then.