You're A weird Child

From Amy's Blog:
Wednesday, December 28, 2005

winning Current mood: chipper
i am one of those. A winner. A champ, champion, conquering hero, conqueror, first, hero, king, master, medal winner, medalist, number one, numero uno, prizewinner, title-holder, top dog, vanquisher, victor.i just won tickets to rob Dickinson, the private show at the friars club in Beverly hills thrown by indie 103.1. i told brandon that i was going to win them for him for christmas. i bought rob's new cd as the door prize until i could come through with the real thing. i also told him that i thought we, shitting glitter, should tour with him as support after hearing the cd. i guess you'll believe me if i win that too, now that you know.

Sheesh! I'm very excited now. A little background for your enjoyment.
I became acquaintances with Catherine Wheel when the video for "Way Down" found it's way into semi-heavy rotation on MTV. My first reaction wasn't HUGE, but I did enjoy the song. On a whim I purchased "Happy Days", the album that spawned "Way Down". Being a young dumb Kansas boy did not help my early appreciation of Catherine Wheel. I recall Listening to "Way Down" a fair amount, and Liking "Eat My Dust You Insensitive Fuck", and "Judy Staring at the Sun". I never really gave the album as a whole much thought and eventually the poor disk found it's way to the bottom of some stack of cds, where it sat for a great undisturbed while.
My real love of the wheel came from an excellent used cd sale at GB Records and tapes in Hays, Kansas where I thumbed across a greatly discounted promo copy of CW's "Adam & Eve", I probably would not have given the purchase much thought but it was marked down to $1 or something ridiculous. Since I had liked a few songs off "Happy Days" I decided it was a worthy purchase. I also purchased a used copy of Bob Dylan's "Time out Of Mind" that day.
I left the record store with my good friends Jason and Dan and we proceeded to take a little drive. We listened to the Dylan album first while we drove out to Horse thief Canyon, then we headed back and I dropped the others off and put "Adam & Eve" in the player for my own ride home. I didn't go directly home then, I drove around a bit listening to the album until it was finished. I was shocked, I kept thinking "How could I have a cd by this band and not realize how great they are". I listened to Adam & Eve over the next few days, while digging around in my cds trying to even locate Happy Days, eventually I found it, and started that disc from the beginning, instead of at the single... And there by I'd had it. When I revisited "Happy Days" in my new frame I heard it for what it was and is, I was assured in my love of Catherine Wheel. Within the Next two weeks I ordered every other album in the bands catalog taking my own sweet time getting to know each disk. Chrome is my favorite, but there are moments on all of them that toss my pink skirt far up above my noggin.
Chrome brings me to another blog entry all together, which I will need to touch on it's on, in it's own special places, a special post called "Green Vista Point" or GVP for those in the know. All of that will be dispensed with later.
I'll hike the short way back to this evening, and the new record from the lead singer of Catherine Wheel, Rob Dickinson.
I must admit with some guilt that I didn't have the means to purchase "Fresh Wine for the Horses" when it first became available, like a fool I let it go for months, until Amy had the sound idea to get for me as a present, just last weekend. I opened the dear package on a certain pagan holiday which I spent with Amy and her family in Albuquerque. It was on the long drive from Albuquerque to Flag Staff where I had my first opportunity to listen to "Fresh Wine for the Horses". My first reaction was odd, it was nice to hear Rob, and I could still hear approximations of the last CW record, but I was thrown a bit too. Hearing rob croon about love so openly and unabashedly was at first a tinge difficult for me. I think perhaps my mind has not bloomed in the way that Rob's seems to have bloomed in the last 5 or so years, and it took me several listens to understand this. This element, which Catherine Wheel was already heading towards, the emotional exceptional Rob is a bit at odds with my old feelings about Rob as the voice of Catherine Wheel. I always felt that in many ways Rob was a bit of a villain, even though there is much open warmth and love flowing through the entire Catherine Wheel catalog, there was in his voice an edge, a pointedness. Where other front people write spooky lyrics and yarl them with all their might in attempts to be dark, Rob more often than not restrained the overt darkness and tried to improve. There are great moments of reveal, where this darker Rob takes the fore front, and it is in these moments where I first really swallowed Catherine Wheels offer, and rather hard did I swallow at that. Where I am now, on the morning of my first ever real life glimpse at the man who's music has meant so much to me is, is right here, happy that Rob seems to be triumphant, and impressed that as an artist he was able to merge his and control both sides of the man, with a subtle hand and delicate touch, without ever making me cringe at the trite.