The Living Bubba

... or why rock 'n roll matters (from Paste Magazine)

I wake up tired and I wake up pissed
wonder how I ended up like this
I wonder why things happen like they do
but I don't wonder long cuz I got a show to do

I'm sick at my stomach from the A.Z.T.
Broke at my bank 'cause that shit ain't free
but I'm here to stay (at least another week or two)
I can't die now cuz I got another show to do

Don't give me no pity don't give me no grief
Wait till I die for sympathy
Just help me with this amp and a guitar or two
I can't die now cuz I got another show to do

Don't give me no preachin' no self servin'
I ain't no angel but nobody's deserving
I can dance on my own grave, Thank You!
but I can't die now cuz I got another show...

Some people keep saying I can't last long
but I got my bands I got my songs,
liquor, beer, and nicotine to help me along
and I'm drunk and stubborn as they come
chain smoking, guitar picking, til I'm gone gone gone

I ain't got no political agenda
Ain't got no message for the youth of America
'cept "Wear a rubber and be careful who you screw"
and come see me next Friday cuz I got another show...

Some people stop living long before they die
Work a dead end job just to scrape on by
but I keep living just to bend that note in two
and I can't die now cuz I got another show...
-- Drive-By Truckers, "The Living Bubba"

In 1997, Drive-By Truckers played Bubbapalooza for the first time. An annual festival at Atlanta’s immortal Star Community Bar in Little Five Points, Bubbapalooza was a three-night showcase for a tragedy-laden little movement called “The Redneck Underground.” The movement was named and originally led by a performance artist named Deacon Lunchbox, who’s rising star was cut way too short by a horrific van accident that also claimed the life of half of Atlanta’s fantastic, The Jody Grind. Surviving members Kelly Hogan and Bill Taft went on to become vital members of the Atlanta and Chicago music communities in the years to come. Bubbapalooza itself was the brainchild of doomed Cabbagetown guitarist and songwriter Gregory Dean Smalley.

In 1995, I had been employed as a sound guy for a small club in Athens, Ga. called The High Hat Club. I was a fan of one of Greg’s bands, The Diggers. They were everything I needed at the time—rude and loud and very belligerent. If Greg were to cover “Shoot Out the Lights,” he’d probably introduce it as a song “by my favorite wife beater.” Towards the end of many a night, Greg ended up on stage butt-naked. He wasn’t a particularly handsome man before he got sick. Unfortunately, by ’95, Greg was dying of AIDS. He responded to his death sentence by joining several more bands and playing constantly, sometimes several nights a week.

On any given night, I’d head to work at 9pm to sound check whatever band was playing. On the other hand, if Greg was playing, I always headed in an hour early to make sure I had everything in proper order for him. If this f---er could get up there and play in that condition, he certainly wasn’t going to have to wait around for me to get my shit together. Most of the times he played there, he was fronting a rag-tag outfit called Gregory Dean and the Bubbamatics. They played a mixture of Greg’s songs from various bands he’d been in, a few songs by some of his friends (including Scott Miller), a few rambunctious country covers by the likes of Waylon Jennings and Johnny Cash, a blistering version of Georgia Satellites’ “Six Years Gone” and a bluegrass version of Jimi Hendrix’s “Third Stump From the Sun” (sic).

Some of his antics were silly and seemed ridiculous, except that Greg had only weeks to live. He was a true believer. His songs cooked under their seemingly funny surface to reveal the same ageless longings that have earmarked great rock ’n’ roll songs since the beginning of the form. He would sound check, then head upstairs to High Hat’s cramped little office, where he would rest until showtime. Some nights, it would take him what seemed like an eternity to climb those stairs, and he would seem totally drained by the time he reached the top. I’d take him a joint I brought from home, in case he wanted it, and he was all too happy to light it up.

We’d sit there and have a little idle chatter. We weren’t close friends by any stretch; I hardly knew him before that time. I was, however, blown away by his conviction and what he was doing. It made me question and eventually reaffirm my own convictions and beliefs. Usually we just talked about surface stuff. The time he opened for Hellhounds, how he loved the Georgia Satellites and hated Gram Parsons. Greg was very opinionated and relished a good disagreement. It sometimes felt like he was giving you the flinch test. He’d tell an offhand joke about his condition and then measure our response. He didn’t want pity and by his very actions he commanded respect.

Some nights, he’d place a barstool on stage behind where he stood to prop him up for the set. When he wasn’t singing, he would lean back on that barstool and play his ass off. He would lean forward semi-upright and sing in that raggedy voice and crack nasty jokes between songs, occasionally looking like he was about to fall off the stool and drop dead on stage, but he stayed on his feet and never went down. As the terrible disease progressed, he got worse and worse. But the shows stayed consistently rock solid.

These were not packed houses, mind you. Some nights there wouldn’t be but eight or nine people in the audience. That wasn’t the point. The point was the playing. The Rock. By that time, it was what he was living for. It was the point of his existence.

I need to reiterate that I didn’t really know Greg well—not his hopes or dreams, not his family. I only knew a few of his friends and I was just getting to know them. And they weren’t all that informative. Greg did seem prone to self-mytholization (who ain’t), and, whether intentional or not (again, I don’t really know), his larger-than-life persona combined with his tiny physical stature made him the kind of man myths revolve around. On top of all this, he loved a good story and would certainly not hesitate to exaggerate if it enhanced the entertainment value. He was, as I said, a true entertainer and was constantly performing—whether it was on stage or in that tiny office.

I didn’t know either of Greg’s wives, and have still never met his son. I know he loved him, because folks who knew him better said so, and I certainly never saw any hint of a guy who would ever feel otherwise. But I was just a hired soundman with a beer and a joint. I was the guy you tell to turn up your monitor, someone who you might talk about a rock record with. Not someone you confide in or share your personal feelings with. Greg wasn’t that type anyway, and he just didn’t know me that well.

The next to last time he ever played the High Hat, he was feeling a little better and was “on” as shit. He played one of the most amazing rock shows I have ever seen in a small club (and Lord knows that’s where the best rock shows live). He and his band were all obviously having a great time. I was thrilled I’d thought to bring my boombox so I could at least get a good room tape of the show. Unfortunately, the boombox was very old and decided to crap out and eat my tape that night, so the show only lives in my memory (which is probably alright anyway).

Three weeks later he returned, but it was all different then. He looked 90 years old, and his weight had fallen to well below 100 pounds. Death was definitely closing in on him and he knew it. As we were smoking upstairs, he suddenly looked me square in the eyes and said, “You know, I’m dying, man.” “Yeah,” I said. There wasn’t really anything else to say, but I guess he just needed to verbally acknowledge it.

I did manage to get that night’s show on tape, and it’s one of my prize possessions. Technically, it wasn’t nearly the equal of the one that got away. The show was, however, even more miraculous, given his deteriorating condition. After the show, Greg went ahead and booked the band for another show the next month. He also asked me if I wanted to open for him at a show in Atlanta.

Later, after Greg’s death, another member of “The Redneck Underground,” Redneck Greece compiled a CD of Greg’s songs (Bubbapalooza Volume 2). Most were covered by other people, as Greg didn’t get to record nearly enough during his too short life. They did use one of my “boombox recordings” (Smalley’s gnarly “State of Co-Dependency”) from that evening.
I was still in the process of putting together my band, Drive-By Truckers (our first show was still three months away), and I was picking up gigs whenever and wherever I could with a band called The Possibilities. They had been together for years by that time, and would sometimes, as a side project, back me up on my own songs under the name The Lot Lizards. (Lot Lizard is trucker slang for a prostitute who sometimes frequents truck stops and rest areas, providing her service for lonely truckers).

The show was at a small dive called Dottie’s and it was my first time ever playing in Atlanta with a band. Greg was playing that night with Redneck Greece under the name Small Greece. It turned out to be his last live performance. We played a hard rocking set and were quite well received. Small Greece was excellent. There was a better crowd than any of the High Hat shows and Greg, although not feeling well, was in better spirits.

During a rambunctious cover of a Waylon Jennings song (forgive me for not remembering which one), Greg had a coughing fit and had to skip a verse. Annoyed, at the end of the song, Greg snarled into the microphone “Sorry about that second verse but I didn’t wear a rubber.”

You could hear a pin drop in the crowded club that moment. But Greg just laughed then launched into another rocker. Unapologetic and unflinching. Anyone else’s awkward discomfort was not his concern. He had the meanness and a job to do. He didn’t have time for that shit. He only had a little bit of time left and he had a lot he still wanted to do.

A few days later, my band and I were invited to play Bubbbapalooza. Greg had arranged it. I called him to thank him, but his wife answered the phone. She said that Greg was very sick and was back in the hospital. This time he probably wouldn’t be coming out. I felt bitch-slapped and went out to walk my dog. While out in the field behind my house, a song hit me and I ran back inside to write it down before it slipped away. I wrote it in about the same length of time it takes to play it live.

Greg passed away a few days later. He went home and died at his mother’s house. Many of his closest friends were there by his side holding him in their arms. Only hours before he passed he was playing his guitar and watching “Raising Arizona.” A couple of days later, the show he had booked at the High Hat became a memorial show in his honor. It was packed with friends as well as folks who had never seen him in his lifetime. Redneck read a letter from his son Raymond (then about 9 or 10 years old) and everyone had tears rolling down their faces. There was much partying and much good rock played that night. Somewhere, he was smiling and making shit-eating remarks about how much better he was already drawing in death.

We played Bubbapalooza that May 25th at 6pm in front of about a dozen people. It was The Lot Lizard’s last gig. I already had the lineup together for my new band, but alas, fate had to jump in one more time. Late that night, my good friend and soon to be band-mate Chris Quillen was killed in a car accident.

Over the course of the next year, Drive-By Truckers did some recording, picked up as many shows as we could and began building a following, particularly in Atlanta at Dottie’s and The Star Bar. I was, at first, hesitant to play “The Living Bubba” live, as I really didn’t know Greg all that well and felt I had no right to write anything so personal (from his point of view, no less). But I did confide it to a few close mutual friends who were always very complimentary and all said I should play it for Greg’s Mama.

In May of 1997, we played Bubbapalooza in front of a packed house that included “Mama” (as everyone affectionately called her). As we began “The Living Bubba” she walked up to the front of the stage and stared me square in the eyes as I sang Greg’s song. When it was over, she walked up on stage, threw her arms around me and said “You done my boy right.” No review or compliment that my band or me ever get will ever equal that. - Patterson Hood, lead singer/songwriter for The Drive-By Truckers - May 29, 2003

Sufjan Stevens, Chuck Norris, and Steven Seagal

From a review of Sufjan Stevens’ album Seven Swans on amazon.com: “Sufjan Stevens could calm even Chuck Norris down with the sound of his voice.”

Now, this is a fairly audacious claim. Chuck Norris is the most easily excitable man in the universe, and he could kick your sorry butt if he was a quadriplegic, so it would take something far more powerful than Sufjan’s admittedly pleasant voice, something along the lines of half a dozen elephant darts filled with the most powerful sedatives known to man or beast and fired directly into Chuck’s bulging pecs, to calm him down. And even then he could still fend off several Ninjas and/or terrorists if the need arose.

In a more realistic comparison, Sufjan Stevens could almost certainly calm Steven Segal with the sound of his voice.

From Steven Seagal’s Lightning Bolt Energy Drink Asian Experience web site:

Cold Weather Alert: Due to the cold temperatures of the winter months, customers have been experiencing exploding Bawls. We at Xoxide are very concerned for the safety of our customers and do not wish for their Bawls to freeze. We recommend that if the ambient temperature of your area is at or below freezing, that you refrain from ordering carbonated caffeine beverages during this time. Customers who wish to place orders for these products may do so at their own risk. Neither Xoxide nor UPS will replace, refund, or process any claims for broken Bawls, exploded Rocket Fuel, or any other damaged beverage during this time.

I’ve seen strong, virile men erupt in exploding bawls at Sufjan concerts; overcome with great, heaving sobs as Sufjan sings of John Wayne Gacy Jr. and his friend who died on Casimir Pulaski Day. This seems to be a natural, although heretofore unexplored, connection that Sufjan may want to investigate. The Stevens/Steven connection is almost assuredly a heavenly sign. The whole Sufjan Stevens Energy Drink angle probably merits some attention as well, and may sell particularly briskly in Reformed church youth groups or warmer climates.

Find Your Blog Cloud

What is a blog cloud? It's an analysis of all the words used in your blog, displayed as a cloud graph in which the most frequently used words appear in a larger point size than the less frequently used words.

So what do you really talk about on your blog? Find out here.

The words that appear most frequently in my blog: Album, Andy, Emily, God, Good, Jesus, Life, Like, Love, Kate, Music, People, Rachel, Time, Years. I can live with that.

Steve Earle and Scott Miller

Steve Earle might have been the best rock 'n roll songwriter during the Clinton administration, and he had a run of six albums that started with 1995's Train a Comin' and ended with 200o's Transcendental Blues that was as great as the legendary string of releases put together by The Beatles and Bob Dylan in the '60s, Van Morrison from the late-'60s to the mid-'70s, and Bruce Springsteen from the mid-'70s through the early '80s. Then George Bush got elected, Steve got pissed off, and his once-finely-nuanced lyrics turned all mushbrained and self-righteous.

Here's his incisive political commentary on Condoleeza Rice from his latest album The Revolution Starts Now:

Oh Condi, Condi I’m talkin’ to you girl
What’s it gonna hurt come on give me a whirl
Shake your body now let me see you go
One time for me Oh Condi I love you so
Skank for me Condi show me what you got
They say you’re too uptight I say you’re not
Dance around me spinnin’ like a top
Oh Condi Condi Condi don’t ever stop

For the (Congressional) record, I am no fan of the Bush administration in general or Condoleeza Rice in particular, but this kind of condescending smarminess is distasteful at best, and at worst the kind of misogynistic shite that gives men a bad name. So until Steve recovers his brain (probably after the 2008 presidential election, assuming a Democrat is elected), I'm going to pass on future releases and look for solace elsewhere.

And recently I've found it in an unassuming guy named Scott Miller. Scott is the former leader of a band called the V-Roys, who put out several good to great albums in the late nineties and the early part of the oughties. He was signed to Steve Earle's Artemis label for good reason; he sounds just like Steve Earle. And more importantly, he still writes songs like Steve Earle used to write, like this one from his brand new album Citation, which covers the same overheated territory as Steve's Condi song, but which does it much more poetically, and with some evidence that its author has been taking his cues from Bruce Springsteen rather than Michael Moore:

Back when freedom was a stranger
But it was something we felt
I found myself a girlfriend
I couldn’t believe it myself
We took a Chevy Citation
That a friend would let us use
When we got tired of waiting
For what we wanted to do
I had her crawling up the window
She had me shaking in my seat
I could smell her on my fingers
She said I tasted so sweet

Just some West Virginia back roads
There never was much else
Jam a tape into the player
I couldn’t believe it myself
Those drums they shook the speakers
The bass it shook me to the core
If the Boss had been a preacher
He could ‘ve led us to the Lord
She knew all the lyrics
And they sang so true
Just two rock n’ roll spirits
With nothing better to do

Now the past it is a stranger
And I found someone else
Got car payments and a mortgage
I can’t believe it myself
But I don’t mind getting older
If you get smarter when you do
And the burdens that you shoulder
Well, that’s what defines you
I’m sure they crushed the Citation
I know the 8 track broke
We’re such a complicated nation
But I still got rock n’ roll

Yeah, I've got the English degree, and like flowery odes to sunsets. But you still can't beat songs about cars and girls. And since Steve is only writing about girls in power, and since Bruce is driving a luxury SUV, I'm going to stick with blue collar Scott Miller and Chevy Citations.

Paste Issue #21

The new issue of Paste Magazine is out, with The Flaming Lips on the cover. There are great stories on the Lips, Built to Spill, and one of my musical heroes, Alejandro Escovedo. I have a column on the late, great bluesman Chris Whitley, and about half a dozen album reviews.

And while I always appreciate the accompanying CD and/or DVD, let me note that this issue has both, and they are both superb. Usually the hit/miss ratio on the CD is about 50/50 for me, but this time it's about 75/25, with absolutely great songs from Built to Spill, Rhett Miller (of the best cowpunk band in the world, The Old 97's), Guster, The Wood Brothers (of Medeski, Martin, and Wood), Teddy Thompson (son of Richard and Linda), Donald Fagen (the mastermind behind Steely Dan) and Norah Jones' side project The Little Willies. The DVD might be even better, and features 30 music videos (as eclectic a bunch of videos as you'll ever find, including Johnny Cash, Bright Eyes, Beth Orton, Merle Haggard ("Mama Tried"!), The Decemberists, Amos Lee, The Arcade Fire, and Bloc Party), a batch of fine short indie films, and a video record of the fact that the editors really do appear on CNN once per week.

What, you're not familiar with Paste? Then hie thee to your neighborhood Barnes and Noble or Borders, or if you're feeling lazy and don't want to venture out into the snow, as I'm feeling today, you can always subscribe here.

Embracing Suffering

One of the hallmarks of my church, and one I very much appreciate, is its focus on embracing suffering. The idea is that where there is brokenness, darkness, dysfunction, that is where the church should be. I’m thankful for the many people in my church who lay it on the line daily, often at great risk to themselves, and who strive to be light in the midst of sometimes overwhelming darkness. They do it within our church community in ministering to the broken people in our midst (pretty much all of us, as best I can tell), within our local community as a whole, and indeed throughout the world. They do it by reaching out to those who reside in a nursing home for the destitute in Columbus, Ohio, by bringing life and love to orphans in Cambodia, by offering healing and wholeness to kids sold into sex slavery in Thailand. It’s not about writing checks. It’s about being there, in person, and being the face and arms and legs and heart of Jesus for real, tangible human beings of infinite worth.

I confess that I often feel inadequate and overwhelmed by such a focus. I like my nice, comfortable suburban life. Confrontations with the Boss from Hell often seem like all of the spiritual drama I need during any given week, and I have no great desire to ratchet up the level of warfare. Embrace suffering? Maybe I’ll just write about it. Let’s call it a big blog hug and be done with it, okay?

Without going in to too many gory details, my family history, what I lived with growing up, included adultery, alcoholism, mental illness, emotional and physical abuse, suicide attempts, ambulance lights flashing in the driveway in the middle of the night. You would think that someone in his fifties ought to be over it by now, but I am not. My natural inclination is still to run from it, and in the past I’ve chosen some fairly unhealthy ways of running. My family coped, if you can call it that, by ignoring the madness. We never talked about it, and we studiously avoided any mention of the insanity. Pay no attention to that slavering, fanged monster over in the corner.

I used to think that no one could have possibly experienced some of the things I’ve experienced. I told myself that somehow the level of suffering I encountered was enough for anyone in one lifetime, that I’d had my quota, and that nobody would understand me or believe me if I shared my story anyway. I’ve since come to realize that my story is far from unique, that many people have experienced variations on the Theme from Terror World, and that what I encountered was only a tiresome repetition of an old, sad story.

And so on some level I came to an uneasy truce with my past. I recognized it for what it was, found some level of healing and wholeness, and experienced some degree of real freedom and joy in my new life with my wife and kids. I figured that I’d carry the shrapnel around until I died, but at least I wasn’t going to die from my wounds.

Over the course of the last year the shrapnel has flared up again, and old wounds that I thought were healed have become infected and inflamed and angry red. I don’t know of a powder or pill for this, but I do know of a church, and a counselor, who have proved invaluable in helping me. And so, last Saturday, I sat down with my father and had the first real conversation I’d had with him in more than thirty years. We talked about the past, about the big, fanged monster, and I called it by name, and didn’t flinch, and spoke from a place of brokenness, because that is who and what I am. I spoke not to blame, but because I wanted to embrace suffering, to tell him that all of that pain and remorse can be healed, and that it hurts like hell but that it’s worth it.

And he talked. It was like the floodgates were opened. It wasn’t magical. Nothing can restore the past that is gone. But at least it was honest, and he talked about remorse, and he apologized, and I talked about forgiveness, and I hugged him for the first time in decades and didn’t feel like I was embracing raw sewage. Why is it that I can readily believe that some unknown, anonymous kid in Cambodia is of infinite worth, while I can’t believe that my parents are worth the time of day? But I at least caught a glimpse of the truth. Even him, Lord. Please redeem him.

I don’t know if I’ll ever go to Cambodia. Maybe I will. But I do know that last weekend I went to a place that I had never gone. It was a risky journey, one worth mentioning and commemorating. For those of you who are praying types, please pray that I’ll make the return trip, and that I’ll find it in my heart to embrace suffering.

I Have Succumbed

To this.

And this.

For those of you too lazy to follow the links, that's a 30 GB iPod With Video Playback (Black) and an Altec Lansing InMotion IM7 Portable Audio System. The iPod will be fun, but the little earbud is a serious problem (particularly when you've already got a hearing aid in your ear), so I'm most excited about the iPod cradle/docking station/speakers. First, the contraption looks like a big mortar shell, so if you can't drive particularly annoying people crazy through the music you play, you can actually lob the device at them and cause serious damage. Second, I was amazed by the quality of sound that comes out of that little mortar shell. I compared it to the better-known and higher priced Bose SoundDock, and thought it blew the Bose out of the water.

I'm a happy guy. Anybody know an easy way to convert vinyl --> .wav files --> MP3s --> the IPod?

An Uncool Rant

Some anonymous person sent me a nasty e-mail message that accused me of trying desperately to be cool, and that essentially stated that fifty-year-old rock 'n roll critics were kind of pathetic. I should apparently take up mahjong or bingo and eventually just quietly shuffle off to the nursing home.

For all you inquiring minds out there, I am a fifty-year-old balding guy with a beer gut and a hearing aid. If I have ever been cool, it was sometime back in the Nixon administration. And if you think I am currently laboring under the delusion of being cool, I will be happy to introduce you to my wife and daughters, who will be more than glad to share my many uncool moments with you, some involving flatulence and drool (although never at the same time, to my knowledge).

It is apparently scandalous to some people that a middle-aged geezer should like rock 'n roll. If I were acting my age, I would limit my conversation to golf, fertilizer, and my 401K plan, and if I wanted to talk about music, I could occasionally bring up Lawrence Welk or wistfully look back on Beatlemania. Well, I plead guilty. I have never stopped caring about music. More true confessions: I have also never stopped reading or going to the movies, juvenile though these activities may be. I have never figured out that at some age, apparently now long past for me, "maturity" is supposed to set in and I'm supposed to become a Boring Old Fart and stop engaging my mind. If that is immaturity, then I'm willing to live with it.

None of it has a thing to do with being cool. It has to do with being human, and being alive. So look at me, Mr. Anonymous Critic, being uncool by blowing my cool. If that helps to reinforce your stereotypes, then I'm happy to oblige.

What I Am Missing

This.

"In its 19-year history, it has grown from being a jolly spring get-together for a few hundred US indie labels and musicians in search of a deal, to an international gathering that is the most important date in our music industry calendar." The Guardian, March 25, 2005

1,400 bands. Sixty stages. Six days of dawn-til-dawn general musical mayhem, non-stop concerts, schmoozing with the industry movers and shakers, free beer and barbeque all week long just for flashing the shiny press badge, backstage passes and interviews with my favorite musicians in the world, and a chance to hang in one of the coolest cities on the planet, Austin, Texas.

Every year I delete all my e-mail invitations, don't send away for the press badge that could be mine, decline my Paste brethren's gracious invitations to attend, and remain in Columbus, Ohio instead, earn a paycheck, put the kid (soon kids) through college, and write, at least this particular year, the J.P. Morgan Chase Network Node Manager (NNM) Installation and Configuration Guide. Hmm, The New Pornographers, Belle and Sebastian, and Mogwai, all on the same stage at the same tiny venue, or more documentation on the Duplicate Message Reduction dedup.conf tool? Choices, choices.

I will not be bitter. I will not envy my Paste brethren and their damned short sleeves in the seventy-degree weather and their hospitality tent featuring free beer and barbeque and performances by Richard Julian, Collin Herring, Amos Lee, World Party, The Plimsouls (The re-formed Plimsouls! With Peter Case! Good God.), and The Go! Team. I will not grow resentful over the Ohio sleet and the NNM Installation and Configuration Guide. I will be a happy corporate boy and sit on my swivel chair in my cubicle and think happy corporate thoughts.

Current Listening

What has caught my ear of late …

Van Morrison – Pay the Devil – Van could sing the proverbial phone book, and I’d be hanging on his every digit. Here he’s singing country classics from the likes of George Jones and Hank Williams, complete with sobbing pedal steel and hoedown fiddles. It’s not as incongruous as it sounds. Van may be a classic soul/R&B singer in the vein of Ray Charles (insert bad heroin addiction joke here), but George and Hank had soul to spare as well, and these songs translate well. Thankfully, Van makes no attempt to replicate the twang in his vocals. He simply sounds like Van Morrison, and when he bites down hard on a bluesy, boozy 3:00 a.m. torch song like “Big Blue Diamonds,” he simply owns the material. It’s another fine album from a restless musical spirit who can pretty much do whatever he pleases.

Sun Kil Moon – Ghosts of the Great Highway – This album is several years old now, and I keep coming back to it. It’s probably been in the CD player more frequently than any other album during that time. Mark Kozelek, former lead singer and songwriter for Red House Painters, has always had a serious Neil Young fixation, both in the high-register whine of his vocals and in the sonic shredding of his electric guitar. The shredding is still in evidence, particularly on “Salvador Sanchez,” but he mostly dials it back on this pensive, introspective, and frequently beautiful acoustic set. It’s a classic sound, Neil in Harvest mode more than Crazy Horse mode, but what really wins me over are the songs, which are uniformly well written, full of longing and remorse and not always happy memories, a guy wrestling with creeping mortality and the ghosts of loved ones.

I put my feet up on the coffee table
I stay up late watching cable
I like old movies with Clarke Gable
Just like my dad did

I think I’ve seen that movie, and I think I’ve lived that memory. So maybe this is my soundtrack to my fifties. I surely love the album.

Iarla O Lionaird – Invisible Fields – The best album I’ve heard in this still young year. Irishman O Lionaird sings in Gaelic, and these ballads in lesser hands could induce the Snorin’ o’ the Green. Fortunately, he has a spectacular tenor that can raise the hairs on the back of your neck. Even more impressively, O Lionaird is a sonic adventurer, not content to regurgitate traditional sounds. What he does with synthesizers and harmoniums here is akin to what Sigur Ros does with the electric guitar, and the slowly building whisper-to-a-scream crescendos will remind you of Iceland’s most famous sons. This is ravishingly lovely music, the kind you put on when the cherubim drop by for a pint of Guinness.

The Weakerthans – Left and Leaving and Reconstruction Site – I’m not sure what it is about Manitoba. It’s got to be one of the most godforsaken regions of the world, full of snow eight months per year and wheat and little else the other four, and the only reasonably close place to vacation is Fargo. One might think that the provincial pastime would be suicide. But tenaciously life affirming poetic souls seem to spring up there just the same, first Joni Mitchell and Neil Young, now John Samson, lead singer and songwriter for The Weakerthans. Samson can do introspective navel gazing like Joni, but on songs like “Aside” and “The Reasons” he updates the venerable genre and still rocks like crazy, something of which Joni could never be accused. He mixes it up with elements of power pop, punk, country rock, and folk. The only constant is the consistently excellent writing. These two albums are like old friends, and the literate, power-chord loving Samson sounds wise beyond his years.

Rock Kills Kid – Are You Nervous? – Yes, this is a blatant U2 knockoff, and there are times you’d swear that you’re listening to a previously unknown outtake from Boy or War. But previously unknown outtakes from those albums still sound like a better idea to me than, say, Zooropa or Pop, or about 90% of the music released these days. It’s derivative, but at least they’re stealing from the best. A recent appearance on “The OC” and the currently #1 requested song on KROQ also tell me that they’re going to be huge with the Abercrombie and Fitch set. I’ll try not to hold that against them.

Kocani Orkestar – Alone At My Wedding – A billing as the best Macedonian brass band in the world makes me wonder about the competition. I don’t really know much about Macedonian culture, and maybe the residents of Radovis and Strumica go apeshit over dueling darbukas on Balkan Idol. But the makeup of this band still intrigues me -- two gypsy singers, accordion, darbuka, banjo, clarinet, saxophone, and four, count ‘em, four tubas. Here in Big Ten country we put those folks out on a football field. And really, this album does have the feel of a Gypsy Marching Band. It’s strange, otherworldly, and often great fun. Give me an S. Give me a K. Give me an O-P-J-E. What’s that spell?

Casimir Pulaski Day

With apologies and condolences to Erik, who reminded me of what day it was yesterday, and why it matters.

Section 1. The first Monday in March of each year is a holiday to be observed throughout the State and to be known as the birthday of Casimir Pulaski. – Public Act 80-621, Illinois General Assembly, September 13, 1977

Golden rod and the 4-H stone
The things I brought you
When I found out you had cancer of the bone

Your father cried on the telephone
And he drove his car to the Navy yard
Just to prove that he was sorry

In the morning through the window shade
When the light pressed up against your shoulder blade
I could see what you were reading

Oh the glory that the Lord has made
And the complications you could do without
When I kissed you on the mouth

Tuesday night at the bible study
We lift our hands and pray over your body
But nothing ever happens

I remember at Michael's house
In the living room when you kissed my neck
And I almost touched your blouse

In the morning at the top of the stairs
When your father found out what we did that night
And you told me you were scared

Oh the glory when you ran outside
With your shirt tucked in and your shoes untied
And you told me not to follow you

Sunday night when I cleaned the house
I find the card where you wrote it out
With the pictures of your mother

On the floor at the great divide
With my shirt tucked in and my shoes untied
I am crying in the bathroom

In the morning when you finally go
And the nurse runs in with her head hung low
And the cardinal hits the window

In the morning in the winter shade
On the first of March on the holiday
I thought I saw you breathing

Oh the glory that the Lord has made
And the complications when I see his face
In the morning in the window

Oh the glory when he took our place
But he took my shoulders and he shook my face
And he takes and he takes and he takes
-- Sufjan Stevens, “Casimir Pulaski Day”

As a young Christian in college, a friend handed me a stack of books written by the Reformed theologian Francis Schaeffer and assured me that they would provide a better intellectual foundation for my faith than anything else. And to some extent he was right. But in one of those books Schaeffer took on the Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard, who wrote about “the leap of faith.” Schaeffer, following Descartes, went to great lengths to emphasize the rational nature of the Christian faith, to assert emphatically that it makes sense, that it holds together in the light of the most rigorous intellectual questioning. And he took Kierkegaard to task for the seemingly irrational response of “the leap of faith.”

I never bought Schaeffer’s argument, and here is why: he never knew Sarah Scott.

Sarah Scott was four years old when she died. She was the daughter of my friends Paul and Shirley Scott. She was a “surprise” baby; one of those kids born when her parents were close to 40. And her conception was only the first surprise. Upon her birth, Sarah showed all the evidence of having Down’s Syndrome, which was confirmed within hours of her birth.

There were many other surprises along the way. I watched my friends closely, watched their initial shock and dismay turn to unconditional love, watched what initially seemed to be a great burden turn to many moments of joy and deep pleasure. And it wasn’t hard to understand why. Sarah herself loved unconditionally. In a world where everyone else’s efforts seemed halting and stumbling, Sarah simply loved everyone she encountered, in the most natural and unforced way imaginable. She had a big smile and a hug for everyone she met. I believe I learned more about love from her in her short life than anyone I’ve encountered.

Then one normal, mundane Monday afternoon her mom put her down for a nap. She woke up, somehow got her head caught in between the bars of her crib, and in her efforts to extricate herself, strangled to death.

I heard the news and reacted the way countless others have reacted through the millennia. You’ve probably experienced it. The air is sucked out of your lungs. You feel like you’ve been sucker punched, and that you may never breathe again. There is a hole in your soul, and all the finest sentiments in the world cannot address it, because you cannot replace what cannot be replaced. And I found that death wasn’t abstract at all. It was very, very personal. A little girl named Sarah was gone, and the million things that made her special, that made her unique, were gone with her, and the hundreds of well-meaning friends did not and could not help at all, for the simple reason that they were Not Sarah. I felt that, and despaired. I truly cannot fathom what her parents must have felt.

At her funeral members of my church said the kinds of pious platitudes that only made things worse. “She’s in a better place now,” they told Paul and Shirley, who were overcome with grief. “God wanted her to bring joy to the angels.” I bit my tongue and sat on my hands, for fear that I would use them to punch some well-intentioned, clueless brother or sister. I didn’t say anything. There was nothing I could say, and there was nothing I could do to stop from crying, crying that just seemed to go on and on, without respite.

In these times the idea of a loving God seems like a cruel illusion, and I frankly wondered if Schaeffer had ever experienced the death of someone close to him. Because in those situations, Christianity is anything but rational. It is the difference between the logical C.S. Lewis of The Problem of Pain, with its nice, neat arguments, and the undone C.S. Lewis of A Grief Observed, a great, aching mess of a book, the story of a mere thinking, feeling man, not a theologian, dealing with his wife’s protracted and painful death from cancer.

For what it’s worth, I am a firm proponent of the leap of faith. And make no mistake. It is a leap across a great chasm. Sometimes it seems a lot like pedaling your bicycle as fast as you can to the edge of the Grand Canyon, and flying off, and believing that you’re going to sail all way to the other side, defying gravity. It seems to me that there are only two options if one is intellectually honest (hi, Mr. Schaeffer). One can believe that senselessness has the last word, that people simply die – brutally, inexplicably, without meaning or purpose – and that is all there is. Or one can believe that the senselessness will one day make sense, that we really do live in the shadowlands, that real life is yet to come, that every tear will be wiped away, that there will be no more death or mourning. I believe the latter. I hold on to that truth. But surely the author of the Book of Hebrews is right: faith is the evidence of things not seen. And I profoundly distrust anyone who tells me that the Christian faith makes total sense in this life. It does not. They either have not thought enough, or they haven’t lived enough, and time will bring them to that place of the silent scream that they have not yet experienced.

On Casimir Pulaski day I remember a great song, and a great loss, and the great hope that still some days doesn’t make sense.

Transfiguration

It has seemed to me sometimes as though the Lord breathes on this poor gray ember of Creation and it turns to radiance -- for a moment or a year or the span of a life. And then it sinks back into itself again, and to look at it no one would know it had anything to do with fire, or light. That is what I said in the Pentecost sermon. I have reflected on that sermon, and there is some truth in it. But the Lord is more constant and far more extravagant than it seems to imply. Wherever you turn your eyes the world can shine like transfiguration. You don't have to bring a thing to it except a little willingness to see. Only, who could have the courage to see it? -- Marilynne Robinson, from Gilead

Kent State University, which has been around for a hundred years, and has paraded forth a million or so graduates during its time, is most famous for gunfire. On May 4th, 1970, after several days of intensifying confrontations between anti-war protesters and local police, the National Guard was called in and opened fire on the protesters, killing four young men and women. Two of them were Kent State students who were strolling between classes on a bright spring day, minding their own business, thousands of feet away from the violent confrontations.

I remember the times quite vividly. In Columbus, Ohio, where I lived, the Ohio State University closed its doors a month early. It just shut down and sent everybody home. Kent State touched off an inflammatory outpouring of grief and outrage at Ohio State and many other universities, and there was every indication that the students, had they stuck around, would have burned the whole damn campus to the ground. Neil Young wrote an anthem about it, and it was better than the Star Spangled Banner, more biting, more full of howling anger and pain, and nobody forgot the words:

Gotta get down to it, soldiers are cutting us down
Should have been done long ago
What if you knew her and found her dead on the ground?
How can you run when you know?

Now my daughter strolls those Kent State walkways, and I worry. Anything can happen. Probably not gunfire from soldiers, although my paranoid mind refuses to dismiss the possibility. But just about anything else; rape, robbery, deadly bird flu sweeping the campus, food poisoning from the cafeteria, a broken neck from slipping on the ice, pneumonia from the chill Lake Erie winds. Worry. Fear. Paranoia. Welcome to my life.

So Kate, Rachel and I ventured up to Kent, Ohio last weekend to survey the potential carnage. From the very start my innate sense of melodramatic catastrophe was dealt a severe blow. Emily appeared to be suspiciously healthy and happy. She had an active social life, and her grades were good. She informed us that she had decided to change her name to Katryn, which is her middle name. Cool. First Kate, now Katryn. I’m thinking about changing my name to Kateman. But other than that little surprise, she seemed remarkably upbeat and confident, and unremarkably funny, because she’s always funny. The kid makes me laugh, and it was great to see her.

We wandered the campus, and it was cold; the coldest day of the winter, in fact. Everyone else had the sense to remain indoors, but we strolled the campus walkways, scanned the shops in downtown Kent, ventured in to a few stores as much to warm up as to shop. Then the three Whitman women spotted the vintage clothing store, which was my signal, as it always is, to get lost for a couple hours and fend for myself.

So I did. I found my way to Spin-More Records on Main St., down a block or so from the vintage shop, and found a little slice of vinyl heaven. There was the usual assortment of beat-up Peter Frampton and Eagles albums from the seventies, but a little digging also uncovered some hard-to-find Johnny Burnette rockabilly records from the fifties, and a Cannonball Adderly album I’d never seen, and some Moby Grape and Electric Prunes albums that must have provided hippie solace at one time, maybe even around the time of the Kent State shootings. Over in the corner, behind a glass case, were some old 45s, one of which appeared to be the Johnny Cash single “Get Rhythm” on Sun Records.

“Is that really an original Johnny Cash single on Sun Records?” I asked the owner, a grizzled old geezer named Phil. “Of course,” he said. “Want to see it?”

Does Johnny love June? So Phil unlocked the case and gingerly passed the sacred single over to me. “Damn,” I said, which is short for “I cannot believe I’m holding one of the rarest records in the world in my hands.”

“How much?” I asked him.

“Not for sale,” Phil told me. “It’s like that American Express commercial. Some things money can’t buy. This is one of them.”

Yeah, I understand that, Phil. So with an approving nod I passed the record back to him, being careful to hold it along its edges, making sure my fingerprints remained far away from those precious vinyl grooves. Go ahead and lock it away in that ancient reliquary of a dusty glass case. I get it. It’s like a splinter from the holy cross, a remnant of the chalice used at the Last Supper, a little chip of a martyr’s bone, something old and hallowed and precious beyond words. And so I bought a bootleg Pogues record from Phil, but I touched the hem of Johnny’s greatest single and lived to tell about it.

I rejoined Kate and Rachel and Em, er, Katryn and we headed to Starbucks. We procured our steaming cups of coffee and a giant cookie that we split four ways, sat down at a corner table and caught up on life. We talked about classes, and music, and roommates, and that moment where a kid catches the vision, when “what I want to be when I grow up” becomes more than a hazy future hope, and when the plan to get there starts to fall into place. We talked about everything and nothing. We were noisy, and we laughed a lot. We were a family.

Kate has had a recurring dream in which the four members of our family are simply sitting together, laughing with one another. If you’re going to have a recurring dream, that’s not a bad way to go. Some days, some months, that vision has seemed far removed from reality. But there we were, sitting in a Starbucks in frigid Kent, Ohio, laughing loudly, drawing disapproving stares from the studious types around us, being disruptively boisterous and silly, and I realized that the dream had taken on substantial flesh and bones. For a moment, for the space of a fading late afternoon in northeast Ohio, all creation had turned to radiance. Anything can happen. The shit can hit the fan at any time. But it occurred to me that at that moment I was perfectly, unreservedly happy.

Sometimes I think only the most devout saints or the craziest of men and women can live this way; live in this hypercharged, sacramental reality where the mundane world is touched with flame, where a Johnny Cash relic unites two musical pilgrims, where a Starbucks latte becomes a communion cup, an overpriced cookie becomes something like the bread of life. I am not a devout saint, and I don’t think I’m crazy, but I’m grateful for the glimpses. They don’t last, but they are worth taking out of memory’s pocket, holding them up to the light, examining them and savoring them. And all the way back home, on that long, boring stretch of I-71 between Cleveland and Columbus, I thought about the goodness and sweetness of life.

Joy and Sorrow

It was just another normal extraordinary day.

Yesterday my friends John and Kori received news about the little baby girl they’ve been waiting to adopt. They know her name, they’ve seen pictures of her, and in less than two months they will be able to travel to China and hold her in their arms. This is a wonderful thing, even a blessed thing, and I’m very thankful for them and for the palpable joy they communicate in loving this little girl.

Yesterday I also heard from my friend Paula in Colorado. Her (now ex) husband left her a year ago, moved in with a woman twenty years younger than himself. But he continues to harass her, verbally abuse her, threaten her. She’s trying to raise two teenaged sons, playing supermom when she’s scared and lonely and fragile, working to earn money that never quite adds up to what is needed, dealing with a hole in her soul that no one else wants to deal with. “Get over him,” her friends tell her. “He’s an ass.” And I want to strangle people I don’t even know.

After work I drove up to Amity, Ohio, to visit the farm home of my friends Don and Joyce. Joyce has bone cancer, and has been in remission for the past couple years. Over Christmas her condition rapidly deteriorated. Now she can hardly walk. She’s weak, and sleeps most of the day. The doctors have offered the less-than-comforting options of three different kinds of aggressive chemotherapy treatments whose side effects are almost as bad as the disease itself. They have decided to forego all of those options and focus on a more natural cure, which apparently consists of various vitamins and nutrients in powder form, stirred into gallons of carrot juice every day. I want to shake my head. But mostly I want to cry. I’m not sure I would do anything different if I were in their shoes. Desperate times call for desperate measures. What the hell. Guzzle that carrot juice. It’s got to be better than constant vomiting and diarrhea.

Mostly I listened to them, listened to the litany of medical woes, names of medications, names of vitamins and gluco-nutrients. Then I hugged them and prayed for them. They’re grasping at anything, desperate for anything that might work. And I prayed for healing, prayed that God would work a miracle. And I believe that God can do those things. But I also wanted to bludgeon my head against the wall. I hate this. I cordially hate it.

I got home at 10:30 after having been gone for 15 hours. I didn’t want to see my family, although I dearly love them. I didn’t want to talk to anybody. I felt exhausted. No, maybe not exhausted, because I didn’t feel physically tired. But I felt weary. I had a soul ache. I wanted to punch somebody. I wanted to punch Death, but he seemed to be out of easy reach. And so I went to bed, and punched my pillow, and prayed some more, and tossed and turned until 3:00 a.m.

So this is how I talk about it. Sometimes it helps to write. Sometimes it doesn’t. I still want to bludgeon my head against the wall.

Punk With Thesaurus

One of my favorite bands hails from the godforsaken wasteland of Winnipeg, Manitoba (home of The Guess Who). They are called The Weakerthans. They play loud, raucous rock 'n roll, and they have a lead singer/songwriter who consistently amazes me with his words. Behind the bluster and the attitude lies the heart of a romantic poet. His name is John Samson, and these are some of the things he writes about.

Measure me in metered lines, in one decisive stare,
The time it takes to get from here to there
My ribs that show through t-shirts and these shoes I got for free;
I'm unconsoled, I'm lonely
I am so much better than I used to be

Terrified of telephones and shopping malls and knives,
And drowning in the pools of other lives
Rely a bit too heavily on alcohol and irony
Get clobbered on by courtesy, in love with love, and lousy poetry.

And I'm leaning on this broken fence between past and present tense.
And I'm losing all those stupid games that I swore I'd never play.
But it almost feels okay

Circumnavigate this body of wonder and uncertainty.
Armed with every precious failure, and amateur cartography,
I breathe in deep before I spread those maps out on my bedroom floor

And I'm leaning on this broken fence between past and present tense.
And I'm losing all those stupid games that I swore I'd never play
But it feels okay

And I'm leaving. Wave goodbye.
And I'm losing, but I'll try, with the last ways left, to remember
Sing my imperfect offering
-- "Aside"


late afternoon another day is nearly done
a darker grey is breaking through a lighter one
a thousand sharpened elbows in the underground
that hollow hurried sound of feet on polished floor
and in the dollar store the clerk is closing up
and counting loonies trying not to say
i hate winnipeg

the driver checks the mirror seven minutes late
crowded riders' restlessness enunciates
the guess who suck, the jets were lousy anyway
the same mood every day
and in the turning lane
someone's stalled again
he's talking to himself
and hears the price of gas repeat his phrase
i hate winnipeg

up above us all,
leaning into sky
our golden business boy
will watch the north end die
and sing 'i love this town'
then let his arching wrecking ball proclaim:
i hate winnipeg
-- "One Great City"


So the fields are stubble,
the garden is done where the scary scarecrow stands
and sees her holding up horizons with her hands.
She's so tired of reading Daddy's lips -- that essay on a frown.
Watch her memories of human voices drown.
Let horsey bray break between the thunder boom.
Make grasses swish meet the cricket's ring.
Let every sound consecrate our whispering words
that Betta never heard.

The backlanes tie the city down; a mess of dirty string.
Winter dies the same way every spring.
As the sky tries on its uniform of turned off t.v. grey,
and the way we watched her watch us walk away,
let every rain clatter down at groaning streets.
Make footsteps tick, talk to echoed walls.
Let every sound consecrate our whispering words
that Betta never heard.

Let every wind howl and creak the creaking doors
to rooms that too much has happened in.
Let every sound consecrate our whispering words
that Betta never heard.
-- "Elegy for Elsabet"

Sigur Ros Speaks (in English, no less)

Sigur Ros played two concerts at Calvin College last weekend. Calvin has a wonderful tradition of inviting visiting musicians to talk about whatever they want to talk about with the college students on the afternoon before a concert. Here is a link to the conversation with Sigur Ros. Click on the MP3 of the Week at the bottom left corner of the page to listen in.

Here they talk about their music, their beliefs, Hopelandic, their collaborations with other artists, and, yes, Lionel Richie.

A Quick Music Update

Crawling out from under the mound of new music, I'm updating a post from a few days back.

6) Hank Williams III -- Straight to Hell -- Hank sounds more like his grandaddy than his pappy. That's a good thing. One of the two songs I listened to contained the immortal chorus, "I'm here to put the dick in Dixie/And the cunt back in country/'Cause the kind of country I'm hearin' nowadays/Is a bunch of fuckin' shit to me." Yee haw. Whatever happened to cheatin' hearts and pickup trucks?

I miss those pickup trucks, it turns out. Hank has plenty of attitude, but after about the seventh song about snortin' coke, smokin' dope, and general hippie hell raisin', I started to yawn. Didn't the New Riders of the Purple Sage do this thirty-five years ago, anyway? Somebody slap some sense into Hank and tell him that Neil Young did the "better to burn out than to fade away" routine a long time ago, and that Neil is still alive. Don't bet on the same for Hank. But then again, he's got those hellraisin' genes to live up to. Somebody should also tell him that some legacies are worth leaving in the dust.

11) Scott Miller and the Commonwealth -- Citation -- From the former leader of the V-Roys, I'm told. I remember the V-Roys. Great band. Legendary Memphis producer Jim Dickinson helps out. This could be very good.

And it is very good. Miller's a fine raspy vocalist, with a bit of John Mellencamp and Springsteen in him, and this is fine heartland roots rock. Bonus points for the great cover of Neil Young's "Hawks and Doves," one of Neil's lesser-known songs from one of his lesser-known albums, and a handful of smart, bittersweet songs about growing older but not growing up.

14) Sussan Deyhim -- Madman of God: Divine Love Songs of the Persian Sufi Masters -- What it says, with contributions from former John Coltrane bassist Reggie Workman. Could be bizarre and impenetrable, could be absolutely wonderful.

It's not impenetrable at all. It's frequently beautiful. And although Deyhim is clearly the star here, the ethereal accompaniment and amazing polyrhythms often recall Peter Gabriel's soundtrack to The Last Temptation of Christ. In other words, this is distinctly non-Western music, but with concessions thrown in to lure the rock 'n rollers. Like me.

19) Gus Black -- Autumn Days -- I listened to two of the songs. Gus sounds a bit like Cat Stevens, a bit like Sufjan Stevens. No evidence of Connie Stevens.

I missed the Donovan influence last time. But it's there; fortunately more in the vocals than in the trippy subject matter. Otherwise, these are primarily well written, highly melodic folk songs, with occasional forays into some noisier fare that recalls Pete Yorn.

23) Hillstomp -- The Woman That Ended the World -- One guy with a g uitar and a slide. One guy with a drum. See The White Stripes, above. Or The Black Keys. But supposedly more of a Mississippi Delta influence this time. I like it in theory. Again, we'll see.

The reality: much more Robert Johnson and Skip James than The White Stripes. And that's fine. But this is a blues record, not a rock 'n roll record, and it's about as raw and unpolished as they come. Why use three chords when two will do? That's not a criticism, by the way. Two chords, a bottleneck slide, and a growl can carry you a long way, and these guys take the tradition on down the line.

Julie Andrews

The first great, unrequited love of my life involved a nun, specifically Julie Andrews as Sister Maria in The Sound of Music. I was nine years old, and the only nuns I had encountered up to that point all taught at my elementary school and wore black and white robes and strange, towering headdresses that gave them a shape that somewhat resembled a hulking linebacker. So Julie Andrews on the big movie screen at the new Northland Mall was quite a revelation.

But there was Julie, all sweetness and goodness and something achingly indefinable that already made my nine-year-old body tingle, throwing her arms wide and belting out “I go to the hills when my heart is lonely,” and I was quite prepared to succor her in her loneliness, plead my case as a worthy suitor, and help her make the big break from the convent.

She could play the guitar and sing, too, which made her all the more attractive. A couple years before The Sound of Music a cultural phenomenon known as The Singing Nun had invaded America in general and Catholic America specifically. The Singing Nun’s big hit, called “Dominique,” was de rigueur listening in every Catholic home, including mine. And so I spent night after night of my early childhood listening to a nun in full linebacker regalia sing in French and strum her acoustic guitar. It was nice, but Julie opened up a whole new world.

Julie, in fact, could sing the most mind-numbing drivel and melt the hearts of little children. “Doe, a deer, a female deer,” she sang, “Ray, a drop of golden sun,” and little Franz and Rolfe gawked like they were sitting at the feet of Jesus, listening to the master drop pearls of eternal wisdom. Far be it from me to complain. Never had the C major scale sounded so daringly playful and provocative. Julie had the entire wholesome Catholic package. She was sweet, she was lovely, she wore a modified veil that made her look demure but which didn’t obscure that cute little English bob haircut, and she was just rebellious enough to tweak the Mother Superior and make every Catholic boy think unholy thoughts.

So sixteen years went by and I married a woman who looked like Julie Andrews. Sort of. Okay, Kate is taller. And she had dark brown hair instead of light brown hair. And she couldn’t fake an English accent worth a damn, even though I coached her and encouraged to her say words like "Edelweiss" in that charming Julie Andrews way. But she had the Julie bob when I met her, and that wholesome, apple-cheeked Julie goodness about her, and she was so darn cute that I could hardly stand it, and was ready to break out into a duet with her at a moment's notice.

“Would you like to sing “The Lonely Goatherd?” I asked her early in our dating relationship. “Maybe yodel for a bit?”

She thought I was kidding. But I would have done it, and it would have been a gloriously transcendent moment.

Julie turned seventy a few months back. She’s mostly out of the entertainment industry now, preferring to spend her time writing children’s books and working for a variety of charitable causes. But she continues to cast her magic spell. Joshua Neds-Fox recounts the tale of how his two-year-old son is now enamored with The Sound of Music. Watch out, kid. It’s insidious. And delightful. And good. Who knows what might come of this?

This Week in the Mailbox ...

... or why it's so hard to keep up with contemporary music.

This is what has shown up, unbidden, in the mailbox this week. I open it up, and music falls out. Unfortunately, work, family, and relationships have a way of getting in the way of listening time. Well, not really. It's all good. But it does make it difficult to keep up. Thus far I've made it through one of these albums in its entirety a couple of times, and about four songs on two of the other albums. There's probably some great stuff here. Maybe I'll find out. And maybe I won't.

1) Holly Brook -- Like Blood Like Honey -- Billed as a cross between Joni Mitchell and Fiona Apple. Probably not a roaring good time, but maybe poetic and insightful.
2) Susan McKeown -- Blackthorn: Irish Love Songs -- Sung in what appears to be Gaelic, if titles like "An Droighnean Dann" are any indication. No idea yet, but her last couple albums have been great. This is one I'll eventually listen to.
3) Milton and the Devil's Party -- What Is All This Sweet Work Worth? -- Billed as literary rock 'n roll made by a bunch of English professors in Pennsylvania who are enamored with Blake, Milton, Elvis Costello, and The Kinks. Sounds too good to pass up. I'll definitely listen, but at this point I can't comment.
4) Margot and the Nuclear So and So's -- The Dust of Retreat -- on Steve Earle's Artemis label. I'm expecting something rootsy, maybe country. We'll see. Named for the Gwyneth Paltrow character in The Royal Tennenbaums, so they win on style points alone.
5) Donald Fagen -- Morph the Cat -- This is the album I listened to twice, mainly because I had to review it for Paste. It sounds like Steely Dan, possibly because it was made by the main singer/songwriter for Steely Dan.
6) Hank Williams III -- Straight to Hell -- Hank sounds more like his grandaddy than his pappy. That's a good thing. One of the two songs I listened to contained the immortal chorus, "I'm here to put the dick in Dixie/And the cunt back in country/'Cause the kind of country I'm hearin' nowadays/Is a bunch of fuckin' shit to me." Yee haw. Whatever happened to cheatin' hearts and pickup trucks?
7) Sean Watkins -- Blinders On -- The guitarist in Nickel Creek, who is apparently trying his hand at Beatles/British Invasion power pop tunes.
8) Lila Downs -- La Cantina -- A self-described Deadhead who followed the band around in a VW bus, Lila's music apparently "digs deep into her indigenous Mexican roots, but with North American sonorities." Si, senorita. What a long strange trip this album sounds like. Again, we'll see.
9) The Roy Hargrove Quintet -- Nothing Serious -- Straightforward post-bop jazz from one of the world's finest trumpet players. I'm looking forward to hearing this one.
10) The RH Factor -- Distractions -- Hargrove's musical alter ego, this time showing off his P-Funk leanings. Okay.
11) Scott Miller and the Commonwealth -- Citation -- From the former leader of the V-Roys, I'm told. I remember the V-Roys. Great band. Legendary Memphis producer Jim Dickinson helps out. This could be very good.
12) Taraf de Haidouks -- The Continuing Adventures of Taraf de Haidouks -- And here I didn't even know they'd begun. Billed as the finest, wildest, and most soulful Balkan Gypsy band in the world. Includes a DVD, and an audio CD. It's a Balkan Gypsy multimedia extravaganza.
13) Kocani Orkestar -- Alone At My Wedding -- "A mighty Macedonian brass band" augmented by "vocals, clarinet, banjo, etc." I wonder what "etc." means.
14) Sussan Deyhim -- Madman of God: Divine Love Songs of the Persian Sufi Masters -- What it says, with contributions from former John Coltrane bassist Reggie Workman. Could be bizarre and impenetrable, could be absolutely wonderful.
15) Mark Pickerel and His Praying Hands -- Snake in the Radio -- The first solo album from the former Screaming Trees drummer. On Bloodshot Records, which usually means raw and rootsy, not what I would have necessarily expected from a former Seattle Grungehead. Again, we'll see.
16) The Pogues -- Complete Radio Sessions -- My favorite band of the '80s. A bunch of mid-'80s radio sessions recorded for the BBC. Should be wonderful.
17) Peter Walker -- Young Gravity -- No press kit. No info on the album cover. God only knows.
18) Tres Chicas -- Bloom, Red, and The Ordinary Girl -- Their first album was great. Caitlin Cary, former member of Ryan Adams' band Whiskeytown, is the main attraction here. I'm not really familiar with the other dos chicas.
19) Gus Black -- Autumn Days -- I listened to two of the songs. Gus sounds a bit like Cat Stevens, a bit like Sufjan Stevens. No evidence of Connie Stevens.
20) J. DiMenna -- Awkward Buildings -- Again, no PR materials. No idea.
21) 44 Long -- Hangover Heights Part 2 -- Apparently influenced by Neil Young/Crazy Horse, Son Volt, and Wilco. With those influences, it's worth a listen.
22) Soledad Brothers -- The Hardest Walk -- Detroit roots/blues stuff. Which could be great. A little local band called The White Stripes works the same territory. Lesser knowns The Detroit Cobras are even better, in my opinion. We'll see.
23) Hillstomp -- The Woman That Ended the World -- One guy with a guitar and a slide. One guy with a drum. See The White Stripes, above. Or The Black Keys. But supposedly more of a Mississippi Delta influence this time. I like it in theory. Again, we'll see.

That's the haul this week. I love my life.

Fool's Gold

Is it just me, or is the current crop of U.S. Winter Olympians particularly skewed toward unlikable people? NBC is working overtime to give us the usual fuzzy, feelgood stories that we’ve come to expect in those Up Close and Personal Moments. And they’re dishing out the typical cornpone shtick: Orphaned at two, young Golda Meddle was adopted by a struggling but kind family of ski bums. Skiing to preschool down the precipitous mountain near her glacier home by the age of three, Golda was winning international competitions at the age of five, and already dreaming of Olympic Glory. Blah blah blah.

But just look at the raw materials with which they have to work.

Here’s U.S. speed skater Shani Davis on why he elected not to participate in the team (note that word carefully, sports fans) pursuit race: “I worked to be here. None of my teammates worked to get me here. My dream was to be a short-track and long-track skater, not to skate in the pursuit. People can say what they want. I'm upset that they're upset. I've been skating since I was 6. This is the fruit of all the labor I put in for years. It's my choice, and I choose not to. The only things I care about are the 1,000 and the 1,500.”

There’s no “I” in “Team” you say? You wanna bet?

Then there’s U.S. figureskater Johnny Weir, who in one of those Up Close and Personal interviews described the tempo of a competitor's short program as "a vodka-shot, let's-snort-coke kind of thing." He concluded, ““I’m not for everyone. I’m me. I don’t front. I don’t put on a face. I don’t make statements just to make them. I mean every word I say, regardless if it’s offensive or mean-spirited. I’m not going to sugar coat it.” So bravely, quintessentially American, n’est pas? I’m me, and if you don’t like it, fuck you. No wonder the rest of the world perceives us as boorish and arrogant.

Finally, we have downhill/slalom/giant slalom skiing “legend” Bode Miller, the face of the U.S. Winter Olympic team, who has been a certified bust thus far, failing to win a medal in his two competitions, and being disqualified from the combined event on Tuesday after he decided to ski through rather than around a gate. Here’s Bode:

“This year I just want to enjoy myself. I could give up tomorrow without having the slightest regret. I could keep away from this world for a year and then perhaps start to feel the desire to prove something to myself again.”

What the hell. No sense in getting worked up about the Olympics. Or training. Or staying out of the local Torino bars at 2:00 a.m. the morning of a competition. Here’s the take I read a couple times today from various Internet pundits: Why sweat it? People are too uptight, man. If a guy wants to torpedo his career, you gotta admire him for that, right?

Wrong. Since when is being an irresponsible, selfish prick a virtue?

NBC prefers to present these athletes as “colorful.” Sure, just like NBA player Latrell Sprewell, who colorfully tried to choke his basketball coach to death, or Phoenix Coyotes assistant coach Rick Tochet, currently in hot water for consorting with various colorful Mafia characters. It is really, really hard to cheer for this bunch to win, and everything in me wants to cheer for them to lose. Maybe tonight I’ll watch a sitcom. Or read a book. Or write a poetic ode to the Olympic ideal that would make NBC blush with pride. Anything instead of these USAssholes. I’m not so proud to be an American.

CCM and Broken Plaster

This is something I wrote on an early Internet newsgroup, oh, about 16 years ago. In some ways I've changed. In other ways I haven't. Here is one area where my views have not changed.

-------------------------------------------------

The CCM industry, like every other industry, exists to make money. We can put a noble face on it and talk about the Christian witness provided in the music, but historically those Christian musicians whose witness hasn't led to increased album sales don't get the chance to keep on witnessing via recorded music. The bottom line is and always has been this: witness all you like, and be as artistic as you like, as long as you make money.

Certain concepts are intrinsic to the operation of the CCM industry, namely that Christian music is a ministry, and Christian musicians are ministers (in the church leadership sense) who are accorded the same privileges and responsibilities as pastors. I think these are highly debatable assumptions, but for argument's sake let's assume that they're true. My question, then, is this: is there something inherent in those assumptions that would promote and lead to higher profits in the CCM industry?

I would argue that there is. The alternative to the "ministry" view is that Christian musicians are Christians with musical abilities. Nothing more and nothing less. They compete in the marketplace with other people with musical abilities, some of whom are Christians and some of whom are not. However, CCM labels are at a distinct disadvantage in this competition. Their CDs sell for, on average, $15 - $16, while those of their competition (non-CCM labels, or, if you prefer, secular labels) sell for, on average, $12 - $13. How, then, do you convince the music-buying public to pay that extra $3 per CD?

I think you do it by promoting the uniqueness and the exclusive nature of Christian music. CCM musicians are more than Christians with guitars. They're ministers. They're annointed. They're called by God. They feature evangelistic messages designed to lead people to God (this despite the fact that the overwhelming evidence shows that it is Christians, not non-Christians, who listen to CCM). Furthermore, those musicians who don't record for CCM labels are *not* ministers. They may be Christians, but they haven't been zapped in the same way. This is the special "oooomph" that CCM needs to compete in the marketplace. Never mind that Brother X might be a brand new Christian who was signed because of his abilities to sing, play the guitar, and string together rhyming words like "loss" and "cross." If he records for Word or Myrrh then he's a minister.

How do you get people to buy this stuff? You simply tell them that the music is annointed. You emphasize the (false) dichotomy between "Christian" music and "worldly" music. You carefully control your product so that only overtly religious material or upbeat, wholesome material is released. You carefully control your artists so that they are presented as larger than life and Superstars of Holiness, and you ensure at all costs that their sins are kept hidden from their followers. And if one of them slips up and lets his sin become known, you have no choice but to boot him out of the club. How do you justify the extra $3. Simple. You tell people that they're not only getting music, but music from Giants of the Faith. And God help the poor wretch who doesn't live up to the image.

More and more I believe that the CCM world is absolutely based on a lie. That's not to say that God can't and won't use it. He does. But He uses it in spite of the wrong motives and untruthful messages, not because of them. The vast majority of CCM artists are no different from you or me except in one area: they have musical abilities. Setting them on a pedestal will inevitably lead to broken plaster. It also leads to bigger bucks for the CCM labels. These profits are made at the cost of the truth and the lives of those who swallow the whole pathetic charade. Is it worth it?

Sigur Ros in Columbus

I don’t know what heaven will be like. There are angels there, I’m told. There is some biblical evidence that they sing. And if they sing, then what comes out of their seraphic mouths is probably representative of some extraterrestrial musical genre that has no counterpart on earth. God knows we’ll have had enough of the usual gangsta rappers and pop tarts and earnest singer/songwriters when we get there, and it will be a relief to hear something different. But I’d still like to believe that the angels will brandish electric guitars. There is some good here on earth, common grace abounds, and there’s no sense in the wholesale banishment of the familiar from the afterlife. The music will be new, but it will retain echoes of what was good and glorious on this earth.

And if I’m right, then I suspect I got a preview of the heavenly host last night. Sigur Ros came to town and played like garage band cherubim, making a holy racket, sculpting a wall of noise that was simultaneously soothing and soaring and teeth-rattling. It was a beautiful, gloriously loud hymn of praise, whether they intended it that way or not, and more than a few of us religious types confessed afterwards to experiencing something remarkably like worship. If this is what it’s like around the throne of God, I can’t wait.

Lead singer/cherub Jonsi played his electric guitar with a bow, like a mutant cello, and made unearthly sounds with his voice. “Eeeeeuuuuu Syyyyyy Ohhhhhh” he sang on at least six songs, his falsetto soaring impossibly upward. It’s Hopelandic, a made-up language based on nonsense syllables and his native Icelandic, but I’d prefer to think of it as the angelic dialect of the heart. That mysterious phrase, repeated many times, sounded at various times like longing, yearning, grief, sorrow, joy, the unanswerable questions you hurl at God when your best friend dies of cancer, the wordless cry of joy when you witness the birth of your child, a thousand other moments of spiritual combustibility and incandescence that cannot be contained by cognitive knowledge and understanding. If it sounds trippy, it is. The gauze curtain that the band sometimes played behind, accenting shimmering shadows and spectral shapes, and the late ‘60s Pink Floyd freakout lightshow, only added to that impression. But that’s the territory explored by this band. It has nothing to do with objective communication, and everything to do with hotwiring the soul to the ineffable and the sublime.

On a more mundane, terrestrial level, we heard about half of Takk, the band’s latest album, several songs from the unpronounceable ( ), and, best of all, several new songs not yet released. For those of you familiar with the albums, take everything you know and ratchet it up several levels. “Glossoli,” from Takk, which opened the show, went from a brooding but serene placid beauty to a crescendo so intense that my body was literally shaking from the sound. Chalk it up to the booming bass if it makes you feel more in control. String quartet Amina, who opened the show, played several songs with Sigur Ros, and the coda to the haunting “Gong” faded so slowly and beautifully that the rowdy, beerswilling audience (this being Cowtown, after all), numbering in the thousands, was utterly silent. The encore’s closing song, Untitled #8 from ( ) (wow, is that a weird phrase to write), was a triumph of thunderous percussion and rapturous beauty, the music building and building until you were convinced that it could not possibly achieve a greater crescendo, and then building some more.

Then the band left the stage with a wave, and Jonsi uttered his only spoken words of the night. “Takk,” he said, Icelandic for “Thanks.” I muttered it under my breath myself, but it seemed inadequate compensation for what had transpired. Just what is the proper expression of gratitude for a rock ‘n roll seraph?

My New Hero ...

... is an Olympic athlete. But he's not a hero for the reasons you might imagine.

--------------------------------------

From today's New York Times:

Joey Cheek of the United States arrived at the starting line for the first of his two heats in the 500 meters Monday with a strategy, which was unheard of. Most long-track speedskaters will tell you that the shortest race on the Olympic program is over too soon to scheme for anything other than a fast start and a clean trip around the oval.

Cheek's design, it turned out, was grand. Bonnie Blair, a three-time Olympic gold medalist in the 500, was among those at the Oval Lingotto who marveled at how relaxed Cheek looked en route to winning the gold medal in a rout.

On the strength of two nearly flawless races, Cheek finished with a combined time of 1 minute 9.76 seconds, which was 0.65 faster than Dmitry Dorofeyev of Russia.

Casey FitzRandolph of the United States, the defending Olympic champion and one of Cheek's closest friends, stumbled a few meters after the start of his first race and could not make up the lost time, finishing 12th.

Cheek said he had "kind of been plotting a little bit in my head" since winning the World Sprint Championships last month. His plan came out in the news conference afterward, when he politely interrupted a moderator who had opened the floor for questions.

"Before we do that, can I make a statement?" Cheek said.

Speaking at nearly as fast a clip as he had just skated, Cheek said, "I have a pretty unique opportunity here so I'm going to take advantage of it while I can."

Noting that he had a human tailwind behind him of family, friends, coaches and countrymen during the 12 years he pursued his Olympic dream, Cheek said, "I always felt like if I ever did something big like this I wanted to be prepared to give something back."

He then announced he would donate his $25,000 gold medal bonus from the United States Olympic Committee to a humanitarian organization, Right to Play. Cheek said he would funnel his money to a program to help refugees in Chad.

"I thought about this for a while," Cheek said. "I won World Sprints and I thought: 'Jeez, I might actually have a shot of doing something great in the Olympics. If I do, I want to make it meaningful.' "

He observed the Olympic production in 2002 when he won a bronze medal in the 1,000 meters in Salt Lake City. He saw the attention paid to the stars on such a stage.

"I learned there's a gold medalist tonight," he said. "And tomorrow there's another gold medalist. So I can either take the time and just gush about how wonderful I feel or use it for something productive."

It is not a coincidence that Right to Play is the pet cause of another Olympic speedskater, the Norwegian superstar Johann Olav Koss. Winning three gold medals in the 1994 Winter Games in Lillehammer, Norway, Koss inspired Cheek, then a 14-year-old living in Greensboro, N.C., to switch from inline skating to speedskating.

Cheek's mother, Chris, recalled wandering into the living room one night during the Lillehammer Games while Koss was being profiled and Cheek saying, "Mom, that's what I want to do next."
Two years later, after cramming to finish high school early, Cheek moved to Calgary, Alberta, to train year-round. While there he lived in a couple's basement.

"I never hesitated over letting him go," Chris Cheek said. "If it's a dream they've got, you've got to let them go."

She added, "Joey's always been someone who picks something he wants to do and then figures out, how am I going to get there?"

Inspired by Koss's altruism, Cheek, 26, searched out the Right to Play office in the athletes' village shortly after settling into his room. He pored over the organization's literature and liked what he read. Through contacts he made there, Cheek was able to arrange to meet with Koss a few days ago for coffee, an experience Cheek called surreal.

"The things that he has done for other people has been an absolute inspiration for me," Cheek said. "Now I have an opportunity to do something similar. It's my hope that I can assist some people and maybe walk in his large shoes."

Before heading to the ice rink for his event Monday morning, Cheek was looking for the right frame of mind and he found it in the Right to Play office.

"I think on some level it is empowering to think of someone other than yourself," he said.
When he was introduced before his first heat, Cheek smiled broadly and waved to the crowd. He would say later that he never had felt more relaxed.

He posted a time of 34.82, which was 42-hundredths of a second faster than his closest challenger, Dorofeyev.

Only needing a time of 35.58 in his second heat to win, Cheek finished in 34.94. He was the only skater with times under 35 seconds.

Cheek admitted that his blueprint for success was not a sure thing. What if he had not skated well enough to have the news media hanging on his every word?

"A little risky, don't you think?" he said.

Cheek laughed and acknowledged it crossed his mind that he might be jinxing himself. "Yet I just wanted to be prepared if the stars aligned and God blessed me with the races I got," he said.

Win or lose, Cheek recognized that he was richly blessed.

"What I do is great fun," he said. "I've seen the entire world and I've met amazing friends. But it's honestly a pretty ridiculous thing. I mean I skate around on ice in tights, right?"

A Grand Slam

Friday night was the quarterly Jazz Poetry Slam at the Columbus Music Hall. For those who may not be familiar with this phenomenon, a poetry slam is competitive poetry. Yes, at the end of the night a poet walks away with a cash prize. Think of the Beat poets reading at City Lights Bookstore, but with judges holding up scorecards to rank their efforts, a la Olympic figure skating. But this time there was no international conspiracy, and no one whacked a competing poet on the knee. That was good. And although not all slams follow this format, the poets Friday night were accompanied by a live jazz trio (organ, guitar, drums), playing everything from Coltrane to Gershwin, improvising to follow the flow and the meaning of the poetry. When it works (and it works surprisingly often) it is thrilling. More than 150 people showed up, standing room only, and I found myself marveling at the surreal nature of the scene. People were standing shoulder-to-shoulder, craning their necks to watch, yep, poets. This could only happen in some alternative but felicitous universe in which people genuinely value artistic expression. The world may not be quite as desperate as I thought.

This Friday I got to play Judge, a role for which I am eminently suited. Just ask my kids. And it was considerably more difficult than I had envisioned. There are no guidelines on how to weigh the various factors that make up a poet’s performance. And make no mistake, these are performances more than readings, and they are as far removed from a staid, placid English classroom as they can be. Poets strut, shout, sing, whisper, harangue and cajole, and the audience is right there with them, shouting out affirmation or catcalls, applauding, laughing. It’s part fire-and-brimstone sermon, part hip-hop throwdown, and part literary salon reading. Good luck trying to sort out that particularly confusing combination.

But it’s mostly just fun, and I tried to approach it as such. For better or worse, I tried to focus on the quality of the poetry. And although T.S. Eliot and Sylvia Plath are not in imminent danger of being dethroned anytime soon, the quality of the poetry was surprisingly high. No one embarrassed himself or herself, and everyone offered something with substance and style. Overall, I give the whole experience a 9.0. It had a good beat, and you could both dance and think to it.

I was also struck by how eclectic, in every sense, the occasion was. Probably a third to half the audience was from my church, and many of the poets and musicians were as well. I love my church. I love the fact that most people there are very interested, even passionate, about the arts. That’s a rare thing, and I don’t take it for granted. But I also appreciated that this was not about religion, or faith, at least in any overt sense. It was just a bunch of people – Christians and non-Christians, whites and African Americans, political conservatives and liberals -- who care about the arts, finding the common ground, hanging out together and having a good time over, of all things, poetry. Maybe we could bottle it and ship it to the Middle East. Put down your guns and go sling some words around. For one night, at least, my world was characterized by peace and joy.

Tagged

Okay, I' ve been tagged by Teddy. Here you go:

Four Jobs I've Had:

1. Web Developer
2. Computer-based Training Developer
3. Music Critic
4. Orderly at OSU Hospitals Dodd Hall for treatment of quadriplegics

Four Movies I Could Watch Over and Over:

1. Monty Python and the Holy Grail
2. The Godfather (I & II)
3. Lost in Translation
4. The Lord of the Rings trilogy

Four Places I've Lived:

1. Westerville, OH
2. Park Forest, IL
3. Athens, OH
4. Ely, England

Four Television Shows I Enjoy:

Hmm.

1. The Amazing Race
2. Twin Peaks (that was a long time ago, but I'd watch the re-runs)
3. Old Warner Brothers cartoons featuring Bugs, Road Runner, etc.
4. Whatever is on ESPN as long as it involves a ball of some sort and doesn't involve ice skating, gymnastics, dogs, pool, or poker

Four Places I've Vacationed:

1. Germany and Switzerland
2. All over California
3. Breckinridge, Colorado
4. New York City

Four Favorite Foods:

1. Kate's chimichangas (better than any Mexican restaurant I've encountered)
2. Gyros from Yanni's
3. Fish and Chips from Old Bag of Nails
4. Fajitas from El Vacquero

Four Websites I Visit Daily:

1. cnn.com
2. pastemagazine.com
3. all the CV bloggers
4. artsandfaith.com

Four Albums I Adore:

1. Sonny Rollins, "Saxophone Colossus"
2. Tonio K., "Life in the Foodchain"
3. Joni Mitchell, "Blue"
4. Van Morrison, "St. Dominic's Preview"

Four Other Albums I Adore:

1. Miles Davis, "Kind of Blue"
2. Steve Earle, "El Corazon"
3. Bob Dylan, "Highway 61 Revisited"
4. Sigur Ros, "Takk"

Four Other Other Albums ...

Man, it's so hard to stop.

Four Most Fabulous Concerts:

1. Bruce Springsteen, Athens, Ohio, April, 1976
2. Muddy Waters, Columbus, Ohio, November, 1981
3. Sam Phillips/Bruce Cockburn, Cincinnati, Ohio, May 1992
4. Bob Dylan, Akron, Ohio, 1980

Four More Fabulous Concerts:

1) Ronald Koal and the Trillionaires, various OSU dive bars, multiple times throughout 1980 - 1982
2) Old 97's, Cleveland, Ohio, January, 2004
3) The Ramones, Columbus, Ohio, July, 1981
4) Sigur Ros, Columbus, Ohio, 2/13/06? I don't know. I'll find out.

Trials and Tribulations of Adolescence

My daughter Rachel, 16, is a member of the Westerville North High School Mock Trial team. She and a number of her schoolmates are being trained to be junior lawyers, and they take part in a simulated trial competition with teams from other high schools. I don't understand all the labyrinthine rules, but basically the teams that are most authentically lawyer-like in their defense and cross-examinations and rebuttals move on to the next round, where they then compete at a district level, then a regional level, and eventually the state level. The winner of the state competition goes on to the national competition in D.C., where they get to imitate Dick Cheney and Condoleeza Rice, gradually perfecting their stonewalling and obfuscation tactics as they move up the competitive ladder.

It's a dubious honor for many reasons. First, the world needs more lawyers like it needs more cockroaches. But beyond that, and at a more personal level, these kids work their litigious butts off, often at the expense of the rest of their lives. The pressure is intense. These are driven, smart, highly competitive kids who are often not very nice to one another (great training for the real legal world), and they are capable of reducing any sentient being with a heart and a soul to tears. Last year the WNHS team made it to the state competition level. This year the expectations are just as great, if not greater, and these kids work incredibly hard. Most of them, including Rachel, are also immersed in a bunch of honors/AP classes that involve mounds of homework on a daily basis. In short, they don't have lives outside of school.

And I want Rachel to have a life; really have a life. It's an odd predicament. With her older sister Emily, Kate and I had to regularly crack the whip. No, you can't go out until your homework is finished. No, you can't invite seventeen friends over on Friday evening. It is just the opposite with Rachel, who is hyer-responsible and a caricature of the Type A Overachiever. "Blow off your homework," we tell her. "Who cares if you get a B on that upcoming quiz? We don't care. Go out with your friends. Get out of the house. Don't come home 'til 2:00 a.m. Be wild and go crazy. Live a little."

Parenting is such a humbling experience. I have two wonderful daughters who could not be less alike. What worked for one does not work for the other. It has always been that way. As Rachel navigates the treacherous waters of adolescence, I pray that she will understand in deep ways her value as a human being, a value that supersedes achievement or lack of achievement. That is my prayer for her. The world tells her that she has to earn everything. And she does not. She's my daughter. She's a child of God. She has value because of who she is, not because of what she does.

The latest round of the Mock Trial competitions starts today. I watched her march off this morning to the Ohio State Capitol building in her middle-aged lawyer suit. I deeply desire that the real verdict will sink in, regardless of the outcome of the competition -- Trial Dismissed. Found Guilty, But Forgiven by Reason of Grace and Mercy and Love.

The Grammys

I do it, and I hate myself in the morning. I know it's going to be insipid, and then it is, and I kick myself for being sucked in.

What does it say about an annual awards show that bestows five little phonograph statues on an album released two calendar years before the ceremony? Counting, what a great life skill.

I predict great things for this hot new band The Rolling Stones at next year's Grammys.

In my defense, I didn't watch all of it, but I did watch snippets. It's like rubbernecking as you pass a car wreck. You don't want to look, but the prospect of juicy carnage draws you in. This year the most notable carnage occurred during a Jay-Z, Paul McCartney, and Linkin Park collaboration on Paul's old Beatles chestnut "Yesterday," surely one of the most surreal moments in musical history. Yesterday, word, all my troubles seemed so far away. Unh. Unh. Truly bizarre. Maybe next year we can witness a 50 Cent, Marilyn Manson and Debbie Boone collaboration on "You Light Up My Life."

The horror. The horror.

Secrets

“For it is shameful even to mention what the disobedient do in secret.” (Ephesians 5:12)

“I have become its servant by the commission God gave me to present to you the word of God in its fullness— the secret that has been kept hidden for ages and generations, but is now disclosed to the saints. To them God has chosen to make known among the Gentiles the glorious riches of this secret, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.” (Colossians 1:25-27)

Another friend has been found out. Strip away the Christian happy face façade, and pull the curtains back to reveal just another guy addicted to pornography. It started with Playboy Magazine as a teenager, and all those salacious centerfolds. It continued with the Internet, where instant fantasy is only a mouse click away, and you don’t have to hide anything under the bed.

You just have to hide it from God, and your spouse, and yourself, never quite admitting what you know to be true, always caught in a losing battle between what you know to be right and good and the incessant, leering demands of lust, always being led by your head, but the wrong one. And now all hell has broken loose. His wife is angry, hurt. He is ashamed. Their kids are confused. And his life is in a terrible place of reckoning.

I feel great sympathy for my friend. There are only two kinds of men when it comes to pornography – those who have indulged in lust, and those who lie about it when they tell you they haven’t. It’s the American way. But I have a great sense of hope for him at the same time. I don’t doubt that he feels terrible. I don’t doubt that his wife feels terrible, and I have great sympathy for her as well. But his secret is out. All the guilt he has carried around for decades, all the mental and emotional energy he has expended in hiding and rationalizing his secret sins, can now be brought into the floodlights of God’s grace and mercy.

But they are floodlights. And they seemed damned, uncomfortably bright. Those images that he looked at furtively on the computer monitor are suddenly displayed on a big projection screen, and it seems like the whole world is looking on. And the temptation is to run away, to deny, to rationalize, to blame. It takes a man to admit that he, and no one else, is a royal fuckup, and that’s not the American way.

More and more I am convinced that addiction is the great American affliction. It may be the great human affliction; I don’t know. But somehow I can’t imagine the natives in Papua New Guinea bookmarking the porn sites on their Internet browsers for easy reference and retrieval. We live in a culture that offers instant pleasure, and if you can’t find it through digitized sex, then you can find it more directly through a bottle or a joint or a line or a pill. We do anything and everything to stifle the great, yawning void of another grey February day in the cubicle jungle of corporate America, another thankless day at home, stuck with demanding kids, another night of nothing more adventurous than Dancing With the Stars or Survivor. And we think we’ll do a little something to ease the pain and the crushing boredom, and the little something ends up doing us.

My friend is not a bad man. He’s a good man. He loves his wife and kids. He’s kind, caring, giving. But he’s in a terrible place right now. He’s lived a double life, this Agent 777; on one hand sincerely desiring to love and serve God, on the other faced with the constant awareness that there is a corner of his existence that he wants to wall off from God and others. It was just his little secret.

But he has another little secret, one that gives me hope. He serves a God who loves assholes, and died for them. It is true for him and it is true for me. And he serves a God who is in the business of change, for whom it is never too late to turn around, for whom redemption is not just pie in the sky, but right now, today. It is an amazing thing to be guilty, guilty, guilty, and forgiven, and filled with the hope of glory.

And so I have hope for him. And for me. I cannot provide any personal details, but if you’re the praying type, I’m sure he and his family would appreciate your prayers.

Paste Wins PLUG Award

It's kind of a big deal, and worth putting on the Indie Resume, that is if indie types have resumes. Maybe resumes are too unhip.

More details here.

What Good Are The Arts?

From Michael Dirda's review of John Carey's book What Good Are the Arts?

All too often, reverence for the divine Mozart or a heavenly Vermeer tends to reduce the rest of us to interchangeable extras on life's stage, unimportant and quite expendable. This is a monstrous way to regard people. Instead of approaching artworks as showpieces, concludes Carey, we would be better off emphasizing personal participation in the arts. The activity itself matters more than the quality of the end product. Art should be "something done, not consumed, and done by ordinary people, not master spirits." It should result in community, not a fatuous sense of superiority. After all, we descended from hunter-gatherers who worked with their hands, and something in our genes still hungers for such manual activity. "It is not what you paint on a piece of canvas that counts," Carey argues, "but what painting a piece of canvas can do for you." Such focused acts of attention may, for instance, develop qualities of character like "self-discipline, patience, and delay of immediate gratification." Carey ringingly concludes the first half of his book with these words:"

The religion of art makes people worse, because it encourages contempt for those considered inartistic. We now know that it can foster hideous and earth-shattering evil. It is time we gave active art a chance to make us better."

I don't really understand this argument. Certainly everyone can and should be encouraged to create art. We can value the attempt, even if the results are not particularly noteworthy. And contempt, in any form, is not good.

But I don't agree with Carey's contention that the activity itself matters more than the quality of the end product. Nope. Not true. We don't apply this philosophy to any serious discipline; why should we apply it to art?

You want to be a doctor? What a nice goal. So maybe read a few books on medicine, make a couple attempts at curing people, and that's all that matters. We'll applaud your efforts. You want to be a commercial airline pilot? Good for you. Just think about how much fun you'll have, maybe practice a few times on a virtual flight simulator, and have at it. It's the attempt that counts.

Would you visit that doctor if you were sick? Would you strap yourself in to that pilot's airplane?

Carey is also conflating two very different purposes of art. There is value in creating art for its own sake. If people write poetry, paint pictures, compose music, then these activities have intrinsic value for the reasons Carey describes. But once those works of art enter the public marketplace -- once somebody tries to sell them -- then the quality of the art matters very much. It is not only appropriate, but it is absolutely necessary to evaluate the quality of the art, and that evaluation goes on whether it comes through a formal juried art show or an album review or simply through informal discussions and bull sessions in dormitory rooms. If you don't want your art to be evaluated, then your only alternative is to keep it to yourself.

The dichotomy that Carey presents is also ridiculous -- Mozart and Vermeer on one side, all the other insignificant unwashed artistic mediocrities (and worse) on the other. Who believes this? Who teaches this? No one I know. The closer one gets to a particular art form, the more deeply one becomes immersed in that form, the more evident it becomes that there are an almost infinite number of gradations in quality, and that there are so many criteria that go in to making up "quality" that it is very, very difficult to make categorical statements. But the solution, then, is to not make categorical statements; to qualify our judgments so that they are tempered by as many facets of the artistic work as we can communicate. The solution is to think more clearly and critically, to weigh those varying and occasionally conflicting criteria more carefully, not to throw up our hands and state that we can't comment about artistic quality. This is the counsel of despair.

Some art really is better than other art. That view need not be communicated contemptuously. But it should be communicated. I fervently hope that people -- all people -- continue to create art. And I fervently hope that people -- all people -- will continue to discuss what makes some of it more worthwhile than others.

Paste Magazine and the Village Voice

For those of you who care about such things, there is a new issue of Paste Magazine out today. It features a fine cover story on actor Philip Seymour Hoffman (Capote), lengthy features on Patti Smith and The Avett Brothers, and the annual roundup of the best albums, films, and books of 2005. Guess who got the #1 album? Let the moaning commence. Ready. Set. Go.

There are the usual 100+ album, film, and book reviews, about a half dozen of which are mine, and my regular back-page column, which has now been dubbed "Listening to My Life."

Can I just say that I love this magazine? Yes, I'm biased. But I'm also a fan.

And rumor has it, although I haven't yet seen it, that I'm in the current issue of The Village Voice, adding my $.02 to the contentious chorus of music critics in their annual Pazz and Jop Poll.