Come With Me If You Want To Live
As some of you may or may not know, I have recently acquired a pristine vinyl copy of John Tesh’s magnum opus, “Tour De France”. The album was supposed to arrive 3 weeks ago but because of an international ban on all music composed and performed by John Tesh, the gentlemen who smuggled it into the country demanded THRICE their agreed upon wages! After several haggling sessions, a compromise was reached and the precious album made its way into the Hawley offices. Not wanting to deprive you, loyal reader, the unmitigated joy of Tesh’s music, I shall endeavor to have the album converted to MP3 form by midweek. In all honesty, I have never listened to this album but from what I have read and necromancied, this album is somehwere in between “Unknown Pleasures” and “Straight Outta Compton” on the greatest debut albums of all time list. I shall now predict which songs will soon find heavy rotation in my I-Pod by TITLE alone!
1. “That Ole Demon Madness” The total absurdity of this song title intrigues me. How does this relate to cycling? How does this related to Tesh? Some sort of France allusion? Gargoyles? The black arts? Questions abound. But to quote Jack’s father from the finale of “Lost”, I need to stop asking questions and “just… let go”.
2. “Bordeaux” I like wine and I like towns that make it. That being said, I try and avoid listening to songs with the letter “x” in them. Too racy. But this song is bound to provide the extra push I need when the bike riding tank is running low and the head is full of thoughts relating to “cycling” and “red wine hangovers”. Could get the most plays when it’s all said a done. Did I mention I avoid songs with the letter “x” in them? Pretty much rules out 30 percent of Chinese pop music.
3. “Mike Mercurie” How could I not love a song named after the vice president of sales and marketing for Sram? Oh wait, Mike spells his name without an “e”? Huh. Well, I’ll side with Tesh in this dispute. Doesn’t really matter as this thing is bound to rock harder than a thousand Slayers mixed with a thousand Cranberries. Guaranteed…. in blood!
4. “Olympus 8008″ This song title has everything I’m looking for in a song title: A vague reference to Greek mythology or a camera company, a palindromic number that when spelled on a calculator is guaranteed to blow the mind of any nearby 3rd grader (as it did mine) and little if any relevance to cycling. Pretty sure this will be the tune Tesh “brings it on home”. Huge synth crescendo to bombastic zither shreddin’ followed by 16 minutes of uninterrupted snare drum solo. It shall be the pick of the litter. 
In other, non-Tesh related news, Kevin from the shipping department (K.F.T.S.D.) grabbed the Blog’s arm rather brusquely Friday afternoon to inform him of his beloved Pake’s debut on the Portland Design Works blog. After recovering this weekend from Kevin’s mauling with copious bags of ice and bowlfuls of laudanum sherbet to dull the white-hot pain, I duly checked the PDW site and sure enough, after an affected eyerub and “S’Blood!” oath, there it was in all it’s HTML glory. Congrats to Kevin for breaching the PDW website…
Also, this nugget of awesomeness was found in the library whilst searching for my first edition of St. Gregory of Nazianus’s “Poemata Arcana”. May it serve no other purpose other than to bring levity and a feeling of well being to you on this most oppressive of Mondays… (click on the link on the next page to view the short clip)
