Pulling Up the Drawbridge

There's an interesting discussion underway at the Arts and Faith forum. It's the age-old conundrum of how much we, as Christians, should allow the surrounding culture to influence our lives. Typically, this discussion breaks down along fairly predictable lines. The conservatives/fundies accuse everyone of being worldly and having lost their salt and light, the rock 'n roller moviegoers accuse the convervatives/fundies of being narrow-minded, judgmental, and out of touch, and the non-Christians look on in disgust and thank the Higher Power As They Understand Him/Her/It that they are not Christians. I'm thankful to report that, for the most part, the current discussion has not degenerated along the predictable lines.

There is a tension here that will never entirely disappear. Nor do I think it should disappear. It is evidence of the struggle that we face as Christians; trying to follow Christ, and being acutely aware of our own proclivity to give in to temptation and to sin.

I do think that the whole focus on evil being “out there” is fundamentally misguided, though. The problem isn't movies, or rock 'n roll. You can retreat from all media influence (or limit that influence solely to the “wholesome” Christian cultural ghetto), hole up in the fortress, pull up the drawbridge, fill the moat with pirahnas, and still find evil, because we cannot escape from ourselves. The problem is “in here,” not “out there,” and until we start to address that we’re focused on the wrong things.

But I think it would be disingenuous to claim that the culture doesn’t influence us, sometimes in negative ways. I love rock ‘n roll, and I write about it for my living (or at least part of my living). I obviously find value in that, and yes, I find value as a Christian. But I’ve also struggled with some addiction issues in my life, including some years when I was a Christian. How did that happen? Because of my own inherent weakness and proclivity to sin, because of genetic disposition, because of peer pressure, because of the lure of idolotry and the promise of an instantaneous buzz instead of the hard work of spiritual transformation. Take your pick. Probably all of the above. But also because I listened to Grace Slick telling me to “feed my head,” and because I watched a bunch of crazy hippies in Michael Wadleigh’s documentary of the original Woodstock Music Festival and thought to myself, “hey, I think I’d like to do that the rest of my life.”

Jefferson Airplane didn’t make me do those drugs, nor did Michael Wadleigh. But it would be silly for me to deny that they influenced me. And so, to this day, I am careful about what I allow myself to be exposed to in music and in film. I can handle a lot of things, and shrug it all off in the name of art and believe (rightly, I think) that art is made by broken people and experienced by broken people, and that it is still possible to find great beauty and insight in the midst of the carnage. But as one of those broken people, I can’t watch movies that feature drug use, nor can I listen to music that advocates drug use[1]. I simply can’t go there because I’ve gone there in the past and almost destroyed my life.

It is not true that Anything Goes, although I think we should be very careful about proscribing what goes and does not go in a group setting, including the church. We need to leave enough room for the Holy Spirit to work in individual lives, and trust that individuals are sensitive enough to know what they can experience as worthwhile and praiseworthy, and cannot experience because it would be detrimental to their souls, if not their marriages, and their very lives.

Do I think it's okay for churches to show films, or to sponsor rock 'n roll shows? Sure I do. At the same time, I want to leave room for people to opt out of the proceedings without fear of judgment. The problem is not “out there.” The problem is me. But sometimes what is out there can undo whatever spiritual transformation has already taken place. And nothing is worth that, not even rock 'n roll.

[1] Don't you hate it when the footnote is longer than the original post? Me too, but you're gonna have to deal with it. I think it's important to note here that tone and context is everything, and just because a film/song contains references to drug use, that does not necessarily mean that said film/song is advocating drug use.

Take, for example, virtually every song recorded by my favorite rock 'n roll band, The Hold Steady. There are drug references galore. But you'd have to twist the meaning of those songs quite dramatically to believe that songwriter Craig Finn is advocating drug use. And because I will go to great lengths to work in Hold Steady lyrics into any form of writing I engage in, including recipes and directions to a friend's house, here's an example of what I mean:

I was not involved at the northtown mall
as a matter of fact i didnt even know that's where it happened

i was france ave when they came out dancing
i was lyndale south. i was kicking it with cousins
we were talking about going clubbing
instead we just started drinking

i've been straight since the cinco de mayo
before that i was blotto
i was blacked out. i was cracked out
i was caved in.you should have seen all these portals
that i've powered up in.

we started recreational
it ended kinda medical
it came on hot and soft and then
it tightened up its tentacles

i wasnt there
i was blind high
i was scared. i was lake and columbus
i was cutting off all my hair
i was unfurling a flag of defiance
aimed at my guidance guy

so this is it
this is the end of the session
i ain't gonna be taking any more questions
i think my attorney's gonna second that notion

it started recreational
it ended kinda medical
it came on hot and soft and then
it tightened up its tentacles

the band played screaming for vengance
and we agreed, this world is mostly manacled
it started ice cream social nice
it ended up all white and ecumenical

there are guys
with wild eyes when they ask to get you high
there are girls
that will come to you with comfort in the night
that's right

we started recreational
it ended up all medical
it came on hot and soft and then
it tightened up its tentacles
the band played sabbath bloody sabbath
you thought it was stoney and adorable
it started in the vestibule
it ended in the hospital

there are guys
with the wild eyes when they ask to get you high
there are girls
that will come to you with comfort in the night
there are nights
where it all comes on a little bit too bright
there's a cross
and in the center there is a hot soft light
-- The Hold Steady, "Hot Soft Light"

The Mendoza Line -- Thirty Year Low/Final Remarks of the Legendary Malcontent

I've been spending more time with The Mendoza Line's Thirty Year Low/Final Reflections of the Legendary Malcontent, the band's upcoming 2-CD swan song. The more I listen, the more I like what I hear. The only bad news (other than the obvious marital crash and burn that is well documented here) is Timothy Bracy's Dylan impression that occasionally borders on parody. But he's a fine writer, and the manic guitars cover the multitude of drawn out, nasal vowels.

And Shannon McCardle? Wow. If Bracy tends to cushion his sorrows in poetic ways, McCardle goes straight for the jugular, snarking about the picture of the kitty on her rival's sweater, and offering sweet little vignettes like this:

Come on over honey
Grab your pens and get your shit
She's drawin' blueprints, layin' marble,
Built a shrine around your dick

Hell hath no fury. McCardle's songs are white hot, furious, and absolutely great. I hate divorce. I don't wish it on anyone. At the same time, I'm thankful for the superb art that sometimes emerges from the crucible of pain. This is bitterness and recrimination set to a backbeat, and in its voyeuristic way it's brilliant. My sympathies to Timothy and Shannon. My thanks for creating such a wonderful album.

I Hate Blogs

Not all the time. But many days.

Here's how it works:

1) You post some lovingly crafted tome of cultural analysis, or some agonized personal reflections. Nobody responds.

2) You read your friends' blogs, who post about breast feeding, or the baby's hard turd. Four hundred forty seven people respond, and share their own loving baby poop stories.

3) You get depressed.

Today I hate blogs.

My kids used to poop in their pants. No kidding. Not for a long time, though.

Being Bob

Nobody but Bob Dylan can be Bob Dylan, but you can’t blame a songwriting guy for trying. In order for this to work, you have to simultaneously sound profound and utterly inscrutable. The response that you’re aiming for here is a sage nod of the head, even as each audience member secretly thinks, “umm, just what the hell was that about, anyway?” So here’s Adam Duritz of The Counting Crows, pulling it off better than most.

I woke in mid-afternoon cause that's when it all hurts the most
I dream I never know anyone at the party and I'm always the host
If dreams are like movies, then memories are films about ghosts
You can never escape, you can only move south down the coast

I am an idiot walking a tightrope of fortune and fame
I am an acrobat swinging trapezes through circles of flame
If you've never stared off in the distance, then your life is a shame
and though I'll never forget your face, sometimes i can't remember my name

Hey Mrs. Potter don't cry
Hey Mrs. Potter I know why but
Hey Mrs. Potter won't you talk to me

Well, there's a piece of Maria in every song that I sing
And the price of a memory is the memory of the sorrow it brings
And there is always one last light to turn out and one last bell to ring
And the last one out of the circus has to lock up everything

Or the elephants will get out and forget to remember what you said
And the ghosts of the tilt-a-whirl will linger inside your head
And the ferris wheel junkies will spin there forever instead
When I see you a blanket of stars covers me in my bed

Hey Mrs. Potter don't go
Hey Mrs. Potter I don't know but
Hey Mrs. Potter won't you talk to me

All the blue light reflections that color my mind when I sleep
And the lovesick rejections that accompany the company I keep
All the razor perceptions that cut just a little too deep
Hey I can bleed as well as anyone, but I need someone to help me sleep

So I throw my hand into the air and it swims in the beams
It's just a brief interruption of the swirling dust sparkle jet stream
Well, I know I don't know you and you're probably not what you seem
But I'd sure like to find out So why don't you climb down off that movie screen

Hey Mrs. Potter don't turn
Hey Mrs. Potter I burn for you
Hey Mrs. Potter won't you talk to me

When the last king of Hollywood shatters his glass on the floor
and orders another, well, I wonder what he did that for
That's when I know that I have to get out cause I have been there before
So I gave up my seat at the bar and I head for the door

We drove out to the desert just to lie down beneath this bowl of stars
We stand up in the palace like it's the last of the great pioneer town bars
We shout out these songs against the clang of electric guitars
You can see a million miles tonight But you can't get very far
Oh, you can see a million miles tonight But you can't get very far

Hey Mrs. Potter I won't touch
Hey Mrs. Potter it's not much but
Hey Mrs. Potter won't you talk to me
-- Counting Crows, “Mrs. Potter”

People Take Warning

I realize that there are only about a thousand people on the planet who would be excited by such things, but I am one of them. Somebody should write a song about bridges in Minneapolis.

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People Take Warning! Murder Ballads & Disaster Songs 1913-1938
Landmark 3CD Box Set Coming September 25th, 2007

"In the late 1920's and early 1930's, the Depression gripped the Nation. It was a time when songs were tools for living. A whole community would turn out to mourn the loss of a member and to sow their songs like seeds. This collection is a wild garden grown from those seeds."
- Tom Waits, from the Introduction

Songs of death, destruction and disaster, recorded by black and white performers from the dawn of American roots recording are here, assembled together for the first time. Whether they document world-shattering events like the sinking of the Titanic or memorialize long forgotten local murders or catastrophes, these 70 recordings - over 30 never before reissued - are audio messages in a bottle reflecting a lost world where age old ballads rubbed up against songs inspired by the day's headlines.Featuring beautifully remastered recordings by the some of the cornerstones of American vernacular recording such as Charlie Patton, Ernest Stoneman, Furry Lewis, Charlie Poole and Uncle Dave Macon, these songs tell of life and death struggles forever immortalized on these rare and compelling 78 rpms.

Produced and annotated by Grammy winning team of Christopher King and Henry "Hank" Sapoznik with an introduction by Tom Waits, the accompanying 48- page three-CD anthology designed by Grammy award winning Susan Archie brims with many eye- popping historic images never before reproduced.

People Take Warning! Murder Ballads & Disaster Songs 1913-1938 TSQ 1875
Release Date: September 25th, 2007

The Appetite for Difficulty

I was struck by New York Times film critic A.O. Scott’s appreciation of the great Swedish filmmaker Ingmar Bergman, who died earlier this week. Like fellow searcher/director Michelangelo Antonioni, who died the same day, Bergman asked the tough questions and probed the great mysteries in his films. They were not easy going, these films. They were dark, obtuse, freighted with symbolism that asked the viewer to actually work at its meaning, and that implied that it might take more than one viewing, and a fair amount of thinking and discussion, to adequately explore that meaning.

Scott wrote, in part:

There was, among certain filmgoers in the 1960s, an appetite for difficulty, a conviction that symbolic obscurity and psychological alienation were authentic responses to the state of the world. More than that, the idea that a difficult work had special value — that being challenged was a distinct form of pleasure — enjoyed a prestige, at the time, that is almost unimaginable today. We would rather be teased than troubled, and the measure of artistic sophistication is cleverness rather than seriousness.

Given all that, it may be hard for someone who wasn’t there — who never knew a film culture in which “La Notte” didn’t already exist — to quite appreciate the heroic status conferred on Mr. Antonioni and Mr. Bergman 40 years ago. I don’t believe that the art of filmmaking has necessarily declined since then (I’d quit my job if I did), but it seems clear the cultural climate that made it possible to hail filmmakers as supreme artists has vanished for good. All that’s left are the films.

It was and is an utterly radical proposition: that enlightenment and entertainment were not mutually exclusive concepts; that one could come blinking into the sunlight from a darkened theater and emerge not numbed, not mollified, but as a better human being.

A comparable movement was underway at the same time in the world of popular music. In the same years that Bergman and Antonioni were at the peak of their considerable powers, The Beatles were redefining what was possible in pop music with Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, and Marvin Gaye was probing the incongruities of Black Power and life in the ghetto, and Bob Dylan was spinning out couplets like these:

Inside the museums infinity goes up on trial
Voices echo this is what salvation will be like after a while

Now we get:

I’m hot coz I’m fly
You ain’t coz you not

Yeah, okay, I’ve stacked the deck, and I’m picking examples that suit my argument. And yes, there are exceptions. Don’t get me wrong. I don’t view the sixties as some sort of mythic golden age in the history of music. I was there, and I had my ear to the radio, and I’m here to tell you that there was as much musical swill then as there is now. But what was different is that complex, innovative music and culturally engaging lyrics could still find a mass audience – even when that audience had to listen to the songs three or four times before even conjecturing on their meaning.

The wonder is not that music such as Sgt. Pepper’s … or Marvin’s What’s Goin’ On? or Dylan’s Blonde on Blonde could be made. People are still making comparably challenging music today. The wonder is that it could achieve mass acceptance, that people – a large number of people, at that – actually listened to these albums, really listened to them, sat around and pondered lyric sheets and debated rhyming couplets, and that people like Bob Dylan could have #1 hits on the Billboard charts. The miracle is that Bob Dylan was utterly inscrutable, and yet he was a certifiable rock star who sold millions of records.

We could debate endlessly about why we, as a culture, no longer have an appetite for difficulty. We could toss around terms like “MTV” and “video games” and “American Idol” and engage in hand wringing over the cultural lobotomization of America. And that’s a fun game. I’ll be sure to play it next week. But for right now I’d simply like to salute what was, and what may never be again. Bergman and Antonioni are gone, and so are Lennon and Harrison and Marvin Gaye. They made me a better human being. They made a lot of people better human beings. And they miraculously entertained us in the process.

Unfiltered Camels and Jack Daniels Roundup

It’s been a mediocre year for the usual Americana suspects. Lucinda Williams and Son Volt delivered disappointing efforts, and Emmylou, Neko, Gillian, Buddy Miller and John Prine have been missing in action. Except for the ever-delightful Patty Griffin, the latest from The Avett Brothers, Devon Sproule’s wondrous Keep the Silver Shined and Ryan Adams’ surprisingly consistent Easy Tiger, nothing has really wowed me. Until the last few weeks, that is. Steve Earle’s latest, Washington Square Serenade, due out in a couple months, is a fine return to form. And these three albums, all made by relative unknowns, make me remember why the genre will always be one of my favorites. They are gems, one and all, but they’re not polished gems. These are songs honed around kitchen tables filled with overflowing ashtrays and covered by stains from whiskey glasses. And these voices are rough, ragged, and just about perfect.

Chris Knight – The Trailer Tapes

Chris Knight’s four alt-country/rock albums are very fine, but nothing prepared me for the power of the utterly unadorned Trailer Tapes. Originally recorded as demos in his single-wide Kentucky house trailer in 1997, Knight brings a ravaged voice, a fine eye for detail, a compassionate heart, and a sardonic wit to the proceedings:

You say you're from college
But you don't seem too bright
You just brung a switchblade
To a pistol fight

These are tales of small town losers and drifters, little-girl ballerinas who turn into strippers to make ends meet, women who murder their abusive husbands, lost good ol’ boys adrift in big-city canyons. It’s just Chris’s acoustic guitar, his brutal songs, and that plaintive rasp, which is a dead ringer for Steve Earle. But it’s no crime to do a Steve Earle impersonation, particularly when you’ve been doing Steve Earle better than Steve Earle over the past four or five years.

Diana Jones – My Remembrance of You

Diana Jones, like Gillian Welch and Iris Dement, has the uncanny ability to write original songs that sound like they originated a couple centuries ago in some backwoods West Virginia holler. There’s an untamed blue yodel to her voice that will be offputting to some, but she can sit and sing for a spell on my front porch any time. And the eleven original songs here are gorgeous; plainspoken and straightforward, but probing the depths of complex relationships and an unnameable angst:

When you see me sliding fast
When you see it come over me
You don’t need to swear and break down the door
You just need to use the key
And lay me down

Mother Maybelle never sang about that stuff.

There’s no question that the image makers have been at work here. Diana’s got the thrift store Dust Bowl dress, and the hair pulled back in the prim bun. But some things can’t be faked. And in a world where “country” masquerades as aerobic instructors in Stetson hats, it’s great to hear the real deal.

Tandy – To a Friend/Did You Think I Was Gone?

Tandy is Brooklyn singer/songwriter Mike Ferrio and an ever-shifting lineup of bandmates. Named not after the Radio Shack folks, but after a character in Sherwood Anderson’s bucolic Winesburg, Ohio, the band’s been around for ten years, released a few albums, and probably sold a few hundred of them (and by a few hundred I mean a few hundred; none were printed in batches larger than 500). The two albums here, one old (2004) and one new, should go a long way to erase that anonymity.

Aided and abetted by Ana Egge and the great Malcolm Holcomb, Ferrio sings like John Prine, plays looselimbed, ragged country rock, and writes some of the damndest lyrics I’ve ever heard. That Sherwood Anderson reference is surely deliberate, because Ferrio perfectly captures the stifling boredom and ennui of smalltown life in tiny, telling details:

The Dream Superette sells soda, beer and cigarettes
They got bread and ice and plastic cars and almost everything
They got AC and TV and CDs in there
And action man toy handcuff sets
I’m waitin’ in the parking lot for the fuckin’ phone to ring
And a bus goes by on 29 headin’ for the interstate
Leaves a black cloud that hangs there in the air
If I hurry up I’ll catch me one ‘fore it’s too late
By tomorrow I could be anywhere

I’ve been in that store. You probably have, too. There are over two hours of music here, and not a minute is wasted.

If I Were You

I've been listening to Chris Knight's The Trailer Tapes pretty much non-stop all day. Knight's a great, gravel-voiced folkie with a twang, Bob Dylan with a Stetson, but unlike Dylan he's considerably more plainspoken, if no less intense. He's got four good alt-country/rock albums that are well worth your time, but these trailer tapes (yep, recorded in the living room of his single-wide in Slaughter, Kentucky) are something else again, raw and plaintive and stripped down to the bare essentials, including the lyrics. It's just Chris, his acoustic guitar, and his piercing words. Here are some of them:

If I were you
I would gladly loan to me
A dollar or two
So I could eat yeah and maybe
Get just one good night of sleep
But I'm not
And I'm stranded like a castaway in this town
And you seem so unwilling to help a fellow
When he's down

If I were you
Thats what I'd do

If I were you
I wouldnt be out on these streets
The whole night through
Yeah I'd have a job
And a pretty wife that
I could come home to
But I don't
And I have twenty cents left to my name
And you're the only one left here
That I have to blame

If I were you
Thats what I'd do

Sir it's not my way
To take from you
The things I haven't earned
Wish I could go back and heed
The lessons I have learned
But I can't
So you gladly put your money
In this sack
Yes sir this thing is loaded
And I have the hammer back

If I were you
That's what I'd do
If I were you
That's what I'd do
-- Chris Knight, "If I Were You"

Good News for Led Zep Fans

If I were granted two wishes, my first would be that I could be just like Jesus. The second would be that I could look and sing like Robert Plant circa 1971, which would allow me to wail like a banshee, grow my hair long and curly (enough of this pathetic furze), and walk around with the top three buttons of my shirt unbuttoned and not incur startled looks and chortles.

For others like me, there is good news.

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MOTHERSHIP

Comprehensive Two-CD Led Zeppelin Collection FeaturesTwenty-Four Remastered Studio Tracks; The Very Best of Led Zeppelin Available In Multiple Configurations

Remixed And Remastered Deluxe Reissue of The Song Remains The Same
Soundtrack Includes Previously Unreleased Tracks

The Song Remains The Same Landmark Concert DVD In Limited Edition,HD-DVD And Blu-Ray Disc From Warner Home Video

Available November 13 and November 20

(Los Angeles, July 27, 2007) -- After nearly forty years, Led Zeppelincontinues to inspire generations with their groundbreaking blues-infused,guitar-driven rock 'n' roll. Arguably the biggest rock band in the worldthroughout their 12-year reign, they remain one of the most influential andinnovative groups in music history. With over 200 million albums soldworldwide, their catalog is one of the most enduring bodies of musicalcomposition to come out of the 20th century.

Available November 13, Atlantic Records/Rhino Entertainment will honor theRock & Rock Hall of Famers with the release of Mothership, a 24-track,two-CD comprehensive collection that spans their illustrious career. Alleight of the band's classic studio albums are represented here, with thetracks being personally selected by Jimmy Page, Robert Plant, and John PaulJones. Mothership includes landmark songs such as "Whole Lotta Love,""Immigrant Song," "Kashmir," "Rock And Roll," "Dazed And Confused," and"Stairway To Heaven." The set will also include new liner notes by famedrock writer David Fricke.

Available at all physical retail outlets and www.ledzeppelin.com,Mothership collectible packages will be available in multipleconfigurations:

+ Standard Package -- 2-CD set ($19.98 SRP)
+ Deluxe Edition -- 2-CD/ 1-DVD featuring the premiere-version (90minutes) of live performance footage culled from the Led Zeppelin DVD($24.98 SRP)
+ Collector's Edition -- 2-CD/1-DVD ultra-deluxe, collectible limitededition ($TBA)
+ Vinyl Edition -- 4 LPs, high-end, audiophile quality vinyl withcollectible memorabilia ($74.98 SRP)

Originally released in 1976, The Song Remains The Same soundtrack album ofthe concert film features songs from the band's three-night stint atMadison Square Garden in July 1973. On November 20, The Song Remains TheSame soundtrack gets the deluxe reissue treatment, with the band membersoverseeing the remixing and remastering of the original release. The newversion of the soundtrack includes six songs that were not on the originalrelease -- "Black Dog," "Over The Hills And Far Away," "Misty MountainHop," "Since I've Been Loving You," "The Ocean," and "Heartbreaker," plusnew liner notes by Academy Award-winning director Cameron Crowe (AlmostFamous).

Slated for a simultaneous release, Warner Home Video debuts brand-new DVDeditions of The Song Remains The Same, now for the first time with all 14songs from the original concert. The DVD features newly remixed andremastered sound, 5.1 Dolby Digital surround sound, and boasts more than 40minutes of added bonus material*, including never-before-released performance footage of "Over The Hills And Far Away" and "Celebration Day";plus performances of "Misty Mountain Hop" and "The Ocean"; a rare 1976 BBC interview with Robert Plant and Peter Grant; vintage TV footage from theDrake Hotel robbery during the New York concert stand; and a Cameron Croweradio show.

The discs will be available as follows:

+ Deluxe Edition DVD -- ($19.97 SRP*)
+ Deluxe Edition HD DVD and Blu-ray -- ($28.99 SRP each*)
+ Limited Collector's Edition -- 2-disc set includes collectible vintage T-shirt with original album artwork design, soundtrack CD, lobby cards,reproductions of original premiere invites, tour schedule, and more ($TBA*)

"We have revisited The Song Remains The Same," says Jimmy Page, "and can now offer the complete set as played at Madison Square Garden. This differs substantially from the original soundtrack released in 1976, and highlights the technical prowess of Kevin Shirley, who worked with us on How The West Was Won. When it comes to The Song Remains The Same, the expansion of the DVD and soundtrack are as good as it gets on the Led Zeppelin wish list."
For additional information regarding Mothership or The Song Remains The Same soundtrack, please contact Lellie Capwell in Rhino Entertainment'sMedia Relations Department at 818-238-6246 or Lellie.Capwell@rhino.com.

For additional information regarding Led Zeppelin: The Song Remains TheSame DVD, please contact Ronnee Sass in Warner Home Video's Media RelationsDepartment at 818-977-6439 or Karen Penhale or Suzie Cornell at CarlSamrock Public Relations at 818-260-0777 or karenpenhale@cs-pr.com orscornell@cs-pr.com.

MOTHERSHIP Track Listing:

Disc One
1. Good Times Bad Times
2. Communication Breakdown
3. Dazed And Confused
4. Babe I'm Gonna Leave You
5. Whole Lotta Love
6. Ramble On
7. Heartbreaker
8. Immigrant Song
9. Since I've Been Loving You
10. Rock And Roll
11. Black Dog
12. When The Levee Breaks
13. Stairway To Heaven

Disc Two

1. Song Remains The Same
2. Over The Hills And Far Away
3. D'Yer Maker
4. No Quarter
5. Trampled Under Foot
6. Houses Of The Holy
7. Kashmir
8. Nobody's Fault But Mine
9. Achilles Last Stand
10. In The Evening
11. All My Love

THE SONG REMAINS THE SAME Track Listing

Disc One

1. Rock And Roll
2. Celebration Day
3. Black Dog*
4. Over The Hills*
5. Misty Mountain Hop*
6. Since I've Been Loving You*
7. No Quarter
8. The Song Remains The Same
9. Rain Song
10. The Ocean*

Disc Two

1. Dazed And Confused
2. Stairway To Heaven
3. Moby Dick
4. Heartbreaker*
5. Whole Lotta Love

* Not on original soundtrack release

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I haven't heard the previously unreleased material, and, in general, more Zeppelin is almost always a good thing. But it should be noted that of the three officially released live albums, The Song Remains the Same is by far the worst. I look forward to hearing the new material, but I doubt that it can fully redeem what was an uninspired effort.

In contrast, The BBC Sessions has some great live material, and a couple songs that are available in no other place. And the quite belated How the West Was Won, from 2003, is finally the live album set that Zep fans have clamored after for decades. It's one of the best live albums I've ever heard, and it's what should have been released instead of The Song Remains the Same way back in 1976.

Lindsay Lohan and Change

A noted alcohol/drug counselor on what Lindsay Lohan needs to do:

""Whatever you have done in the past, do a 360-degree turn and go the other way," Sands said Wednesday."

This is much harder to do than it sounds.

Fragile

We interrupt this musical lovefest to bring you an important announcement: people get sick. And when they get sick, sometimes you want to bludgeon your head against the wall.

Four people I know and love have gotten sick within the past couple weeks. And they’re very sick. My friend Fred had a mental breakdown, and will be hospitalized for the foreseeable future. My cousin Pam was diagnosed with breast cancer. My niece Sheila was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. And my dad was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s.

In theological terms, these events often precipitate a crisis of faith based on theodicy, or the problem of evil. Basically, the argument goes like this: if God is so good, then why does such horrid shit happen to people? It’s a fair question, and if you’ve never lain awake at 3:00 a.m. and asked it, you will. Just give it time, because time is the great leveler of the just and the unjust, the blithely optimistic and the cynically jaded. I used to ask the Big Theodicy Question a lot. I don’t do it as much anymore, partly because I’ve experienced the reality of the goodness of God many times, partly because I’m perhaps not quite as stuck on myself as I once was, and am content to leave some mysteries alone. But maybe it’s just the nature of time. Because when you live long enough you get plenty of practice at this sort of thing, and although it never gets any easier, it does get more familiar. You find yourself sniffing, “what, a mere four life-changing catastrophes at one time? Mere child’s play.” But then there’s that 3:00 a.m. sucker punch, when you find yourself wide awake and staring at the ceiling. The questioning seems less intense. The sadness doesn’t, though.

On Monday I visited Fred over my lunch break, then headed back to the “real” world of Network Infrastructure Architecture. Fred sees theological significance in numeric patterns right now. At 12:15 I was contemplating the nature of the Trinity with Fred (sparked by his observation that there were three of us sitting around in a waiting room, drinking three cups of water), doing my best not to break into tears. At 1:15 I was in the middle of a meeting where people were shouting at one another, on the verge of apoplectic seizures because the Interactive Voice Recognition application did not work!!!! Instead of picking up a telephone and calling an insurance agent, people can now use the Internet and stare intently at an insurance company website and say “I want to talk to an agent,” and an agent will call them back. But it wasn’t working!!!! And people were ready to have coronaries over it.

I wanted to shout back, but I had nothing I wanted to add about Interactive Voice Recognition. I wanted to scream, “What’s wrong with you people? Don’t you have a clue about what is important and what is not important?” I didn’t. I bit my tongue, and did my very best Technical Writer Engaged with the Technical Proceedings impression, acting for all the world like I would toss and turn at night, deeply concerned because the poor, perplexed customer couldn’t talk to his computer monitor. But that’s not what I tossed and turned over later that night. I tossed and turned over Fred, and Pam, and Sheila, and my dad.

We are so fragile, terminal cases one and all, and the fucking Interactive Voice Recognition application isn’t the only thing that’s broken. Our bodies and our minds are broken. The whole world is broken. There’s nothing new or insightful there. This is an old, old story, dating back to a garden and a serpent, but it’s played out in countless variations every day, all over the planet. But sometimes the planet gets smaller, and less abstract. Sometimes the problem of theodicy is a local one, and becomes Fred’s problem, or my dad’s problem. I pray for mercy, for wholeness, for healing. I don’t know how else to pray. I pray for the ability to care, not to become jaded in the face of overwhelming need. And I pray for the ability to juggle those overwhelming needs with the ridiculous activities that take up our time and energies, for the ability to focus on Interactive Voice Recognition software when I think we should be working on trying to develop our God and Suffering recognition radar. I’d like to develop a project plan for that one. But there is no plan, or if there is, it is an inscrutable one. All I know is we’re all on the critical path, and I’d like to finish a little less broken than when I started.

5-Star Albums of 2007?

Yeah, I know, I just wrote that there haven't been any.

But there is one. The problem is that you can't buy it because it doesn't even exist in any official form. It's the debut album from Son Lux. If/when Ryan Lott finds a label for it, it will be my album of the year. It's a dark, brooding, uplifting, soaring beautiful mess of electronica and Radiohead angst and Bible verses. It's Lectio Divina with a beat. In the same way that Lectio Divina focuses on a small portion of the Scriptures, and that portion unfolds in new ways as you encounter it over time and in different circumstances, so too Ryan's music cycles through a phrase, a sentence, repeated again and again as the music shifts and shimmers behind him. It's brilliant. You'll hear truth and beauty in a whole new way. You should buy it. When you can.

A Down Year for Music?

It's been a year without masterpieces, the critical consensus moans. And the critical consensus is right. The Shins didn't change our lives, and Modest Mouse disappointed. Arcade Fire came through, sort of, and certainly didn't embarrass themselves. But nobody's released a certifiable 5-star album thus far in 2007, at least to my ears.

So has it been a disappointing year in music? Not at all. If no one has released a perfect album, many artists have come close. Here's a list of albums that are in 4- to 4.5 star territory for me, all of them released in the past seven months (or, in a few cases, about to be released). If I wouldn't take them to the mythical desert island, I'm still happy to have them near at hand, close to the CD player in the suburban den.

Panda Bear — Person Pitch
Frog Eyes — Tears of the Valedictorian
Devon Sproule — Keep the Silver Shined
Richard Thompson — Sweet Warrior
Arcade Fire — Neon Bible
Loudon Wainwright III — Strange Weirdos
Future Clouds and Radar — Future Clouds and Radar
Hallulujah the Hills — Collective Psychosis Begone
Antibalas — Security
The Clientele — God Save the Clientele
Graham Parker — Don’t Tell Columbus
The Weakerthans — Reunion Tour
Patty Griffin — Children Running Through
Wilco — Sky Blue Sky
Ryan Adams — Easy Tiger
Dungen — Tio Bitar
The Twilight Sad — Fourteen Autumns and Fifteen Winters
Rickie Lee Jones — Sermon on Exposition Boulevard
Michelle Shocked — ToHeavenURide
Joe Henry — Civilians
Peter Case — Let Us Now Praise Sleepy John
The Mendoza Line — Thirty Year Low
Grinderman — Grinderman
John Reuben — Word of Mouth
Steve Earle — Washington Square Serenade
John Vanderslice — Emerald City
The Safes — Well, Well, Well
Damien Dempsey — To Hell or Barbados
The Broken West — I Can’t Go On, I’ll Go On
Linda Thompson — Versatile Heart
The Bad Plus — Prog
The National — Boxer
Metric — Grow Up and Blow Away
Do Make Say Think — You, You’re a History in Rust
Pentangle — Now is the Time
Spencer Moore — Spencer Moore
Miranda Lambert — Crazy Ex-Girlfriend
Galactic — From the Corner to the Block
Mavis Staples — We'll Never Turn Back
The Frames — The Cost
John Abercrombie — Third Quartet
The Avett Brothers — Emotionalism

And I'm still holding out hope for the new Radiohead and New Pornographers albums.

Steve Earle -- Washington Square Serenade

Some preliminary thoughts on an album that won't be released for a couple months ...

This is a very nice album, and a fine return to form.

Steve Earle is one of my favorite singer/songwriters, and the string of albums he recorded following his release from prison and his newfound sobriety in the mid-'90s right up through the early years of this decade rank among the most dazzling runs anybody's ever committed to recorded media. Train a Comin', I Feel Alright, El Corazon, The Mountain, and Transcendental Blues are all in 4- to 5-star territory, and showcase both his poetic sensibilities and his uncanny ability to integrate folk, country, bluegrass, and raging rock 'n roll into a volatile stew. When he was on, he was brilliant.

But a funny thing happened around the turn of the new millenium. George W. Bush was elected president, a blow from which Steve Earle still has not recovered. And like many of his peers (one of whom actually recorded a song called "Fuck George Bush"), Steve started to mistake vehemence and obnoxiousness for social protest. There have been exceptions (check out the latest albums from Chris Smither or Graham Parker for examples on how to do it right), but the protest music spawned by the current administration has reached a new nadir in terms of articulate argument and wit, and Steve Earle was right at the head of the lobotomized class. Jerusalem, the follow-up to Transcendental Blues, had its moments, but ultimately drowned in a sea of cliches so earnestly banal that they hadn't been uttered since the High Holy Days of the Summer of Love. And The Revolution Starts ... Now was even worse, and was lowlighted by the misogynistic, leering "Condi Condi." Instead of one of our finest songwriters, Steve sounded like a petulant 14-year-old who had just figured out that he could yell "Fuck" in public and draw attention to himself.

He's not brilliant on Washington Square Serenade, but he's much better. A move from Nashville to New York City, a new wife (alt-country singer Allison Moorer, who also sings on the album), and a broader social perspective have all helped. There's still plenty of pointed commentary on songs such as "Oxycontin Blues" and "Down Here Below," but this time Steve's adopted the much more comfortable role of Champion of the Downtrodden. There are no presidents or presidential advisers in fingerpointing sight. Steve claims that his new urban setting has affected his music, and that the new album is much more beat-centered than his previous work. I honestly don't hear it. It sounds like a Steve Earle album to me, which means that it mixes ballads, sturdy roots rock, twang, and some great male/female country duets. If there's anything lacking, it's the crushing piledriver of a rock song like "NYC" or "The Unrepentant" from earlier efforts. But it's a minor quibble. Steve Earle is back, and it's great to hear him engaged without foaming at the mouth. Washington Square Serenade is far from his best effort, but it's a good one.

Paste #34

Paste #34 (August, 2007) is out now, with a cover shot of Jack and Meg White in all their red and white glory. There’s more White Stripes glory on the inside, too, and my bud Jason Killingsworth conducts a quite insightful interview with the band, wherein Jack expounds on big capital-letter themes like God and Truth as well as engages in the usual musical shop talk.

There’s a great feature article on Bad Religion frontman Greg Graffin which explores the conundrum of how a frothing-at-the-mouth punker can also be intrigued by early 20th century Appalachian music and earn a Ph.D. in Biology from Cornell. And there’s a heartwarming article (hey, she appeared on Oprah, okay?) on one of my favorite singer/songwriters, Lori McKenna, who has found a way to raise five kids and still record a handful of great albums.

You want album reviews? There are about fifty of them. Movie reviews? Check. Book reviews? Check. Video game reviews? Got those too. Humor, pathos, incisive commentary, flippant obnoxiousness. It’s all here. Plus a CD with 21 songs from the most eclectic record collection imaginable. For $6.95. That’s right, the price of one Jersey Mike’s Italian Sub. Ridiculous, I say, and less caloric.

I have a column on The Summer of Love and suburban lawnmowing (yes, there is a connection), and reviews of new albums from Luke Brindley and Linda Thompson.

The Case for the Cases

It’s possible that there are people named Case who are tone deaf and who couldn’t put together a rhyming couplet involving the words “moon” and “June.” But I haven’t found them. So here’s a handy rule-of-thumb: if you find an album by anyone with the last name of Case, buy it. Here are three reasons why, from best known to least known.

1. Neko Case

Neko Case is the best musical redhead in the world (sorry, Bonnie Raitt; Danny Bonaduce, you weren’t even in the running). Possessing a voice that is a force of nature, equal parts Patsy Cline and Patty Griffin, Neko could sing the Tacoma phone book and I’d be happy. But she’s also a wonderfully evocative and enigmatic songwriter. Last year’s Fox Confessor Brings the Flood was one of the most widely hailed albums of the year, and with good reason. Her songs are as memorable (and frequently as inscrutable) as the title would suggest.

My true love drowned in a dirty old pan
Of oil that did run from the block
Of a Falcon Sedan 1969
The paper said '75
There were no survivors
None found alive

That’s how one of them starts out, before evolving into a very non-linear fever dream. It’s country music from the Twilight Zone, where all the truckstop jukeboxes play Hank Williams and mid-‘60s Bob Dylan, and where the nightmares roll off the tongue like poetry. Her previous albums The Virginian, Furnace Room Lullaby, and Blacklisted, are just as good. And don’t miss her in The New Pornographers, the best, quirkiest power pop band going, and whose new album Challenger is my most anticipated release of 2007.

2. Peter Case

I’ve been writing about Peter Case for Paste Magazine. And that’s allowed me to plunder an extensive back catalogue that is an embarrassment of riches. I started with Peter’s old early ‘80s band The Plimsouls, who made great roots rock, and one certifiable jangly guitar classic in “A Million Miles Away.” Then I moved on to the vast solo catalogue, where Case occasionally rocks, but more frequently alternates between early ‘60s Bob Dylan folkie protest mode and mid-‘70s confessional singer/songwriter mode. He’s adept at both, but I’m particularly drawn to the confessional songs, where Peter displays a knack for great metaphors, and a penchant for nailing the particular malaise of our times:

Mixed up kid is here to join the crowd
The ones who only fit where they’re not allowed
You’re out on the streets and feelin’ blue
Travellin’ light
With a hole in your soul that the wind blows through

Then there’s “Cold Trail Blues,” an existentialist crisis disguised as a deceptively lovely folk song, wherein Peter expresses the conundrum of every person who has ever wavered in his or her faith; when it’s 3:00 a.m. and you’re wide awake, and the prayers and unanswered questions are pinballing off the ceiling, and you’re faced with the certain knowledge that the person you are is not the person you intended to be:

It’s almost like you never came
I swear I almost lost your name
Once you meant so much to me
I thought your love would set me free

Cold trail blues
I could use
Any kind of sign
That you’re still on the line

He’s a great, criminally ignored songwriter, and his new album Let Us Now Praise Sleepy John, due out in a couple weeks, is ongoing proof that all you need is one guy, a guitar, and a batch of songs that will break your heart.

3. Ann and Phil Case

Ann and Phil Case live outside of Dayton, Ohio, where they work regular jobs, go to church, and live the shy, retiring midwestern life. Occasionally they venture out and record some of the most breathtaking old-time country duet records you’ll ever hear. They’ve just released The Old Step Stone, so there are four of those records now, and each one is chock full of Phil’s delightfully unassuming guitar, mandolin and clawhammer banjo work, Ann’s gorgeously soaring folk soprano, a wagon load of angelic harmonies, and songs that would have fit in perfectly on the O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack.

Taking their cues from The Carter Family, The Delmore Brothers, and The Blue Sky Boys, Ann and Phil harmonize like Gillian Welch and David Rawlings and make music that conjures up images of dirt roads and Model Ts, general stores and revival tent meetings. They sing old hymns, murder ballads, and lovesick laments, almost all of them from early 20th century Appalachia. And yes, they do it as well as Gillian and David, and yes, that’s high praise indeed. Don’t look for them at Wal-Mart or Best Buy, but by all means look for them, starting right here.

Nick Lowe on Parenting

English rocker Nick Lowe became a father at age 56. This makes me smile.

I know people who keep Mommy Blogs who lovingly document every breast feeding and potty training moment. That's great, and I'm happy for them, and their ecstatic child-rearing epiphanies. Truly. It's just that their experience doesn't match mine. Nick Lowe's does. And here's what he has to say.

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CNN: I understand you have a 2-year-old child now?

LOWE: Yes, he suddenly turned up, quite unexpectedly. Well, not entirely unexpectedly.

CNN: Does that give you new energy or drain your energy, having a little one around?

LOWE: Well, it's an absolute drain on the energy. He's a blooming nuisance, let's face it. There's a tremendous amount of nonsense talked about the joy of childbirth. (mock anger) But especially [for] someone like myself who's led an almost entirely selfish existence up until this time -- I came and I went as I pleased, I answered to nobody -- and all of a sudden along he comes, AND his dear ma-ma. Suddenly, I have to worry about what THEY'RE doing ahead of myself! This is outrageous.

(laughs) He's absolutely super. I adore him, of course I do. But it is strange how nature has it, that you fall in love with this creature because if you didn't, you would just sort of chuck it out or leave it by the side of the road or something, because they're such a nuisance and tiresome. But instead, you can't remember any of the horrible stuff. There I am, changing nappies with a whistle and a smile on my face, which I never, ever thought would happen. ...

So it is quite late in life, along comes my boy. His name is Roy. Royston for posh, but Roy he will answer to.

Spencer Moore -- Hot New Talent

There is something to be said for delayed gratification. I've been thoroughly blown away by the eponymous album by Spencer Moore. In a year in which folks such as Ralph Stanley, Charlie Louvin and Porter Wagoner have taken the youngsters in cowboy hats to school (a one-room schoolhouse, no doubt), Moore fits right in with the educational theme. He's got an ancient, craggy voice that oozes more soul than any ten Nashville hats/aerobic dancers of your choice, and he sings blood-chilling mountain ballads like "The Lawson Family Murders" and "Little Rosewood Casket." Spencer played a tent show with the Carter Family back in the thirties, and Alan Lomax tracked him down with his field recorder in the late fifties, but this is the first album he's ever recorded. He is 88 years old.

Million Dollars Bail

For George W. Bush and Scooter Libby ...

She dialed 911 but the cops didn't come on time
They found her on the marble with a bullet through her eye
He was weavin' back and forth, foamin' at the lips
So they took him in for questioning and inked his fingertips

There's two kinds of justice everybody knows
One for folks up on the hill, the other's down below
Everyone is talkin' 'bout the night he spent in jail
Today he's free out walkin' on a million dollars bail

They said she was a single girl who lived a double life
He met her at the hatcheck stand and took her home that night
And no one knows what happened; no one else was there
No trial date was ever set; no one seems to care

There's two kinds of justice everybody knows
One for folks up on the hill, the other's down below
Everyone is talkin' 'bout the night he spent in jail
Today he's free out walkin' on a million dollars bail

They tell us all the world is small, and life is sellin' cheap
Anything can happen when you're walkin' in your sleep
The court took charge and eyed the facts; they were set at one cool mill
Calls were made and debts were paid, the lawyers worked with skill

Eternity is longer than one night inside a box
And if you're heading for the jailhouse, now's the time to pick the locks
But there's a sentence passed on every soul; someday we all must die
When the question's not who pulled the switch but how you lived and why

There's two kinds of justice everybody knows
One for folks up on the hill, the other's down below
Everyone is talkin' 'bout the night he spent in jail
Today he's free out walkin' on a million dollars bail
-- Peter Case, "Million Dollars Bail"

The Death of Local Radio

Switching it over to AM
Searching for a truer sound
Can't recall the call letters
Steel guitar and settle down
Catching an all-night station somewhere in Louisiana
It sounds like 1963, but for now it sounds like heaven
-- Son Volt, “Windfall”

It occurred to me a while back that I never listen to the radio. This is an odd thing for a music reviewer to admit, but there you go. I simply never turn it on in the car, or when I’m at home, although I’m listening to new music all the time. And it’s a bit of a sad realization, because I grew up with the little white earbud of my aqua transistor radio more or less permanently affixed to my ear, right up until the time when underground FM radio and real stereo receivers supplanted the AM Top 40, and then I listened to Chicago’s WXRT for my daily musical fix. But not anymore.

To paraphrase Homer Simpson, they’ve got music on computers now. And when I’m not attempting to crawl out from under the pile of new CDs from music publicists, I’m inclined to tune in Seattle’s KEXP or Santa Monica’s KCRW, Philly’s WXPN, or Laura Cantrell’s old time country radio program out of Jersey City’s WFMU, or Paste’s own Internet radio station. I don’t touch that dial because there’s no dial to touch. The old boundaries and categories have disappeared. And the losers, for me at least, are every radio station in or around Columbus, Ohio.

I don’t mean to badmouth Columbus. It’s a nice, liveable city full of straight-shootin’, friendly midwesterners. And the radio scene isn’t nearly as bad as it is in many other places. There’s a good-to-great NPR station that plays a nice assortment of world music and earnest folky singer/songwriters. There’s an okay “indie” station that plays new music about 25% of the time, in between bouts of The Cure and Nirvana. And there’s the usual assortment of old sixties and seventies hippies, Nashville hats, former American Idol contestants, robodivas, and misogynistic thugs that fill out the Buckeye musical spectrum. It’s not great, but it could be, and is, a lot worse in many other cities. But I’ve discovered that I have little reason to seek any of it out. In the world of Internet radio and iPods and instant playlists, it’s too easy to play my own private DJ, spinning the hits on WHIT, man, where the music is guaranteed to please.

But that’s only part of the story. With the exception of that NPR station, which is run by people who sound like they’re actually engaged with the music they play, local radio isn’t local at all. It is dominated by bland, faceless non-personalities whose playlists match exactly what you’ll hear in Indianapolis, Indiana or Tampa, Florida or Omaha, Nebraska. They could be anywhere, or nowhere.

One of my favorite musical memories involves a former Columbus DJ whose nom de rock was Rick West. Rick worked for the local “underground” FM station in the late seventies, right at the time when the station’s format was changing from the chaotic musical free-for-all that had characterized its early years to the much more narrowcasted format of non-stop Eagles, Boston, and Fleetwood Mac. And Rick wanted none of it. On the first day of the new and “improved” format (ironically, the new format’s slogan was “more variety, all the time,” thus presaging the era of Reagan doublespeak), Rick barricaded himself in the studio, locked the door, got stoned, and played Captain Beefheart, Albert Ayler, and Bill Monroe back to back to back. Twenty minutes into the proceedings a manager found the spare studio key, and Rick was summarily relieved of his duties. But for those twenty minutes local radio was in full flight. Rick West, whoever and wherever you are, I salute you.

Not much has changed in the intervening thirty years. There are still outposts of light, and now you can find them on the Internet. And the iPod, file sharing, and good old sampler CDs in magazines now make one of radio’s former primary purposes – exposing listeners to new music -- largely superfluous. I miss Rick West. But I don’t miss the Columbus/Tampa/Omaha playlists, and I don’t miss the dumbing down of all that used to be exciting and vibrant. In the meantime, I’ll focus on my iPod. Can’t recall the call letters because there aren’t any call letters. But it still sounds like heaven.

Chicago Tribune on Paste

Paste Magazine has once again made The Chicago Tribune's annual list of their 50 favorite magazines. Here's what the Tribune had to say:

"Paste continually surprises with elegantly designed, thoughtfully written pieces that ponder the direction of the culture. "

You can read the entire article here.

Cruise with Emmylou and Andy Joe

I am not making this up:

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Cruise through the Caribbean with Lyle Lovett and Emmylou Harris! Sixthman invites Paste readers to take advantage of a special pre-sale opportunity on this unique musical experience.
Cayamo: A Journey Through Song is the ultimate vacation for any passionate music fan. The six-day (Feb. 4-10, 2008) cruise also features Shawn Colvin, Patty Griffin, John Hiatt, Buddy Miller, Brandi Carlile, Edwin McCain, Shawn Mullins and more! This inaugural songwriters cruise aboard the luxurious Carnival Victory sails from Miami and stops in Cozumel, Cayman Islands and Jamaica. Cruise fare starts at $799 per person, based on double-occupancy.
Join Paste and Sixthman for a magical vacation. Visit www.cayamo.com/paste and click BOOK NOW to learn more about getting on board before the public sale.

When it's time to book your trip, be sure to let Sixthman know that Paste referred you! You'll gain access to an exclusive onboard party with other Paste readers! We'll see you on the ship!

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I need to get in on this racket. With that in mind, I announce the inaugural Banks of Ohio Cruise: A Journey in a Minivan with me, your host, Andrew J. Whitman, M.B.A. Banks of Ohio is the ideal vacation getaway for CPAs, loan officers, tellers, or fiduciary professionals of all types. The three-day (August 17-19, 2007) cruise is highlighted by:

• Tour of Fifth Third National Bank Headquarters, Cincinnati, Ohio
• Panoramic roadside view of some of the taller King’s Island Amusement Park roller coasters, Mason, Ohio
• Overnight stay at the historic (1968) but contemporary Knights Inn in Westerville, Ohio, only 12 miles from the heart of downtown Columbus, Ohio.
• Tour of Huntington National Bank Headquarters, Columbus, Ohio
• A stop at the Bucyrus Bratwurst Fest, where over 27 tons of open-fire roasted bratwurst are consumed in a two-day period
• Scheduled restroom breaks
• Overnight stay at the Holiday Inn, Parma, Ohio, a mere 13 miles from the Rock ‘n Roll Hall of Fame
• Tour of National City Bank Headquarters, Cleveland, Ohio
• Tour of site where Cuyahoga River once caught on fire, with Randy Newman CD playing in the minivan

Cruise fares start at $399 per person (compare to Cayamo above), based on six-person van occupancy, seven if somebody doesn’t mind squeezing in between the third row of seats and the hatchback.

Visit www.banksofohiocruise.com to register now! And when you book your trip, be sure type in the special password “cheeto”. You'll gain access to exclusive onboard van snacks! I’ll see you in the minivan!

Hallelujah the Hills, The Mendoza Line, The Safes, Richard and Linda Thompson

Hallelujah the Hills – Collective Psychosis Begone

Post-modernists will love Boston’s Hallelujah the Hills. "Made inventions, broke conventions/Raised a glass to new pretensions/Meta-meta-meta-and the novel is dead” singer/songwriter Ryan Walsh shrieks, and hipster literature professors will rejoice worldwide. The good news is that rock ‘n roll fans will rejoice as well. HtH exhibit the kind of madcap free-for-all egalitarianism that characterizes bands like Arcade Fire. The band mixes equal parts fuzzed-out guitars, cellos, trumpets and synths. They chant in unison. They write songs with Sufjan-like titles such as “It’s All Been Downhill Since the Talkies Started to Sing” and “Slow Motion Records Broken at Breakneck Speeds.” And unlike Sufjan, they make an unholy racket. It’s a ramshackle, lo-fi, amateurish indie mess, but Walsh’s off-kilter David Byrne warble and the band’s unerring pop sensibilities combine to forge something that is both accessible and bracing. I’m hoping that the collective psychosis sticks around for a long time.

The Mendoza Line – 30 Year Low/Final Remarks of the Legendary Malcontent

Maybe it’s twisted, but divorce albums frequently make me very happy. Here are a few that have brought me great joy in the midst of profound relational misery: Bob Dylan’s Blood on the Tracks, Richard and Linda Thompson’s Shoot Out the Lights, Van Morrison’s Hard Nose the Highway, Exene Cervenka’s Old Wives’ Tales, and Bruce Cockburn’s Humans. And now we can add The Mendoza Line’s 30 Year Low to the list. Co-leaders Tim Bracy and Shannon McCardle recently split up after ten years of marriage, but they left a scorcher of a record in their wake, equal parts poetic grace and bitterness and recrimination. Bracy handles the poetic grace department, and his spare, Dylan-inspired folk songs are fragile and delicate and achingly sad. But it’s McCardle who stuns here, unleashing a snarling, barely contained rage on tracks like “31 Candles” that is frightening in its wrathful intensity. Don’t mess with this chick. Final Remarks of the Legendary Malcontent, the accompanying odds ‘n sods collection of live tracks and covers, is just fine, but it’s 30 Year Low that is truly worthy of your intention. Hurts so good.

The Safes – Well, Well, Well

The Louvin, Everly and Wilson clans have already taken this band of brothers concept as far as it can possibly go, but Frankie, Michael, and Patrick O’Malley – collectively known as The Safes – do nothing to damage that great sibling legacy. Taking their cues from The Kinks and The Who, they bash their way across ten short power pop anthems that clock in right at the thirty minute mark, just like ten great radio-ready singles should. There’s absolutely nothing innovative here, but as long as massive hooks, power chords, singalong choruses, and sweet brotherly harmonies ring out over boomboxes and iPod earbuds, there will always be an exalted place for songs like these in my musical pantheon. As one of the titles proclaims, “Cool Sounds Are Here Again.” Indeed they are, and this is perfect summertime music.

Richard and Linda Thompson – I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight/Hokey Pokey/Pour Down Like Silver/First Light/Sunnyvista/Shoot Out the Lights

Both Richard (Sweet Warrior) and Linda (Versatile Heart) have new or about-to-be-new solo albums out now, and they’re very, very good. But the new music has prompted me to revisit the six albums they recorded as husband and wife between 1974 and 1982. And I’ll just come out and say it: this is as fine a musical run as you will find in contemporary music, equal in substance and quality to what The Beatles and Dylan did throughout the sixties, what Van did from the late sixties through the mid-‘70s, what U2 did from the early to the late ’80s, what the newly sober Steve Earle pulled off from the mid ’90s through the early oughties, and what Radiohead has accomplished throughout their restless career. In other words, this is as good as it gets in terms of sustained greatness.

Bookended by the masterpieces they recorded at the beginning and the end of their tempestuous marriage, these six albums could loosely be categorized as “folk rock,” but any label is inadequate, and doesn’t begin to account for the sandpaper and sweetness of the harmonies, the jaw-dropping guitar work, the compassion of the social outlook, or the clear-eyed honesty of the love songs and anti-love songs, the ongoing chronicle of two people who loved and hated one another. In a more just universe, Richard Thompson would be widely heralded as one of the greatest songwriters and guitarists on the planet, and Linda Thompson would be justly celebrated as one of our finest singers. But the universe is not just, at least when A&R men and American Idol ratings and Soundscan totals are involved. So don’t look for them on a VH1 “Behind the Music” special anytime soon. Instead, revel in the wonder of two consummate musicians who sparked and burned and created timeless, beautiful, and harrowing music.

Romance is in the Air

Romance is in the air. Oh, yes it is. For the first time in memory, both of my daughters have boyfriends at the same time. One daughter with a boyfriend is challenging, but manageable. Two daughters dating simultaneously, potentially endangering their futures by hanging out with wanton, horny liberal arts majors, is nigh on to impossible. I quickly turn into my father-in-law, who grilled me mercilessly when I told him that I wanted to marry his daughter. My father-in-law was an engineer. I wanted to write the Great American Novel. As you can imagine, it did not go well.

So here I sit with my Creative Writing degree (but with my far more pragmatic Education and M.B.A. degrees too, I hasten to add), nearly apoplectic at the thought of my daughters married to waiters who can quote Shakespeare. One waiter-to-be is, in fact, a Creative Writing major. Oh, the irony. The other young gentleman has taken a slightly more pragmatic approach and majored in journalism. Alas, they will both end up as waiters. Or network infrastructure architects churning out Visio diagrams with servers and routers and firewalls on them. I know it. This is what becomes of poetic young souls who long to transform their inchoate longings into sonnets. “You can’t actually live this way,” I want to tell them. “You can be the bohemian in the attic garret for exactly two months, at which point the food stamps run out, and then you will become a waiter. You might as well skip the outrageous tuition payments and head directly to Applebee’s.”

Of course, I am aware that my younger self would have chafed at such a conclusion. I still chafe at it. I wouldn’t want to be a waiter, either, which is why I mess with Visio diagrams all day and indulge those creative writing/music reviewer fantasies at night. It’s not that the 20 to 1 pragmatic to artistic income split is totally satisfying. It’s just that it pays better than the alternative, and involves fewer food stains. And as frightening as it seems, I really have come to value things like the ability to pay bills, and I have come to view my father-in-law less in terms of his steel-hearted insensitivity and more in terms of his concern for the welfare of his daughter. It’s funny how this works when the shoe ($79 per pair, on sale) is on the other foot.

Will I say any of this to the young, idealistic, and undoubtedly horny boyfriends? Nope. Not yet, anyway. I’ll give it time and see what happens. But it has me worried. And happy for my kids, and happy for two very lucky young men, who had damned well better know how great they have it.

Summer '07 Mix

I made a new mix CD for Erik. It's a random collection of songs from the first half of 2007. The common denominator? I like 'em all. It's fairly obscure stuff, but not intentionally so. These just happen to be the songs that have impressed me the most over the past few months. Every song here comes from the past six months with the exception of the Pentangle song, which was recorded in 1970. But since I just heard it on the recently released Pentangle box set, I'm going to declare it to be a contemporary track as well. There's a bit of an Ohio flavor, too, with tracks from local heroes (to me, at least) The Receiver and Son Lux.

What's here? Lots of indie rock. Some neo-soul (The Soul of John Black). A heavy metal song performed on three cellos (Rasputina). Some Nigerian jazz (Antibalas). Some electronica mixed with an operatic diva (Son Lux). Some stoner country rock (Blitzen Trapper). An ancient folk song (Pentangle). A Beach Boys song (Dave Alvin). And really, really loud, dirty guitars (just about everything else).

If anybody else wants a copy, let me know.

1. Wave Backwards to Massachusetts -- Hallelujah the Hills
2. Swamp Thang -- The Soul of John Black
3. Suffering Time -- Bottom of the Hudson
4. Let Me Get Your Coat --- Future Clouds and Radar
5. Dress Sharp, Play Well, Be Modest -- Devon Sproule
6. Beautiful Machine Parts 1 - 2 -- Apples in Stereo
7. Beautiful Machine Parts 3 - 4 -- Apples in Stereo
8. Parker's Mood -- Joe Henry
9. Little Lover's So Polite -- Silversun Pickups
10. Lord Franklin -- Pentangle
11. Untitled #9 -- Son Lux
12. Country Caravan -- Blitzen Trapper
13. Take Pills -- Panda Bear
14. Down in the Valley -- The Broken West
15. Draconian Crackdown -- Rasputina
16. In Tunnels -- The Receiver
17. Filibuster XXX -- Antibalas Afrobeat Orchestra
18. Surfer Girl -- Dave Alvin

High Hopes and the Lowest Common Denominator

"America's future rests in a thousand dreams inside our hearts. It rests in the message of hope in the songs of a man so many young Americans admire: New Jersey's own Bruce Springsteen." – Ronald Reagan, 1984

I suspect the golden age of political campaign songs has passed us by. It’s not like it used to be back in 1960, when John F. Kennedy enlisted his pal Frank Sinatra to stump for him and sing “High Hopes” with new lyrics:

K--E--DOUBLE N--E--D--Y
Jack's the nation's favorite guy
Everyone wants to back -- Jack
Jack is on the right track.
'Cause he's got high hopes
He's got high hopes

It may have been corny, but Sinatra brought that ring-a-ding swagger to the convention hall, and made it work.

And it sure as hell isn’t like what it used to be back in the halcyon days of the summer of 1984, when Ronald Reagan, the old rock ‘n roller, appropriated Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the USA” for his re-election campaign. Never mind that the song was written from the viewpoint of an alienated Vietnam veteran. For a few weeks there we had yuppies in yellow ties pumping their fists and acting like crazed frat boys, and music fans from the Redwood forests to the Gulfstream waters chortled in the giddy hope that music could change the world, or at least provide a decent soundtrack to the political chicanery.

This week Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton announced her theme song for the upcoming 2008 presidential campaign: Celine Dion’s “You and I.” You may know the song as a commercial jingle for Air Canada, with Celine shilling for airline tickets. That should probably tell you all you need to know, but just in case you want the sordid details, here’s the chorus:

You and I
Were meant to fly
Higher than the clouds
We’ll sail across the sky
So come with me
And you will feel
That we’re soaring
That we’re floating up so high
‘Cause you and I were meant to fly

I don’t know about you, but my heart isn’t exactly swelling with patriotic fervor. Although it’s a song that could inspire any fan of unicorns or rainbows, it seems to be lacking in that pragmatic grounding that could animate potential voters to get behind a candidate who must deal head on with terrorist attacks and melting polar icecaps. And as poetry it absolutely sucks, expressing sub-greeting-card sentiments that even the Hallmark Company would have the good sense to reject.

But you can rest assured that we’ll be hearing it, ad infinitum, for a long time to come. It’s going to be a long seventeen months, and I’d prefer to skip the whole sordid American Idol Goes to Washington extravaganza if I could. At least in that sense, the song achieves its original goal. It makes me want to travel abroad.

Star Wars References in Rock Music

And no, I'm not talking about a Han solo, either. I'm looking for authentic, arcane, certifiably nerdy references to all things Star Wars in rock 'n roll music. Here's my favorite. For some reason, it was never a hit, possibly because it doesn't have a singalong chorus. Or even a singer who can sing. But it's been a month or more since I've written about The Hold Steady. Too long. Why? Because they're the best rock 'n roll band in the world.

Pills and powders baby, powders and pills
We spent the night last night in Beverly Hills
There was this chick that looked like Beverly Sills
We got killed. Tights and skirts baby. Skirts and tights
We used to shake it up in Shaker Heights
There was this chick she looked like Patty Smythe
She seemed shaky but nice

She said my name's Rick Danko
But people call me one-hour photo
I got some hazardous chemicals
So drive around to the window
She said my name's Robbie Robertson
But people call me Robo.
I blew red white and blue right into a tissue
I came right over the counter just to kiss you

Ginger and Jack and four or five Feminax
Psycho eyes and a stovepipe hat
A ray of light in white rayon slacks
We got cracked. Shoes and socks baby. Socks and shoes
We spent the night last night in Newport News
This chick she looked just like Elizabeth Shue
We got bruised

She said my name's Steve Perry
But people call me Circuit City.
I'm so well connected
My UPC is dialed into the system
She said my name's Neil Schon
But some people call me Nina Simone
Some people call me Andre Cymone
I've survived the 80s one time already
And I don't recall them all that fondly

It was a blockbuster summer
Moving pictures helped us get through to September
They made a movie about me and you
It was half nude and half true
It was a bloodsucking summer
I spent half the time trying to get paid from our savior
Swishing though the city center
I did a couple favors for some guys
Who looked like Tuscan Raiders[1]
-- The Hold Steady, "The Swish"

[1] In the "Star Wars" movies, the nomadic, caftan-wearing inhabitants of Tatooine, the sandy planet that Luke Skywalker calls home in the original trilogy. They are not the most attractive creatures.

New All Music Guide Reviews

Rasputina -- Oh Perilous World
Straylight Run -- The Needles The Space

Old Friends

Can you imagine us years from today,
Sharing a parkbench quietly
How terribly strange to be seventy
-- Paul Simon, “Old Friends” (1967)

MONTREAT, N.C. - Ruth Graham, who surrendered dreams of missionary work in Tibet to marry a suitor who became the world's most renowned evangelist, died Thursday. She was 87. Graham died at 5:05 p.m. at her home at Little Piney Cove, surrounded by her husband and all their five children, said a statement released by Larry Ross, Billy Graham's spokesman.

"Ruth was my life partner, and we were called by God as a team," Billy Graham said in a statement. "No one else could have borne the load that she carried. She was a vital and integral part of our ministry, and my work through the years would have been impossible without her encouragement and support. I am so grateful to the Lord that He gave me Ruth, and especially for these last few years we've had in the mountains together. We've rekindled the romance of our youth, and my love for her continued to grow deeper every day. I will miss her terribly, and look forward even more to the day I can join her in Heaven."

My daughter Katryn is home for the summer and working at an assisted living facility, which is a polite euphemism for what used to be known as a nursing home. She returns from work and regales us with tales of what happened on the job that day. Almost all of her stories involve old men who bellow out their thoughts.

“WE TOOK A POLL, AND WE VOTED YOU THE PRETTIEST!,” one of them told her. Apparently the old geezers fancy themselves the judges at the Miss Bedpan Contest. Another, a confused old man who sometimes can’t remember his name, seemed to wake from a stupor and roared, “DO YOU EVER THINK ABOUT BEING CREMATED?” She finds these stories hilarious, and we do too. At least until I start to really think about them.

When I was a kid my parents used to take me to my visit my dad’s aunt, Aunt Annie. She was an old, old woman in a nursing home when I met her, and she didn’t know who I was. I remember passing open doors full of old people in bed, dozing, or staring blankly into space. They were tiny, shriveled, more than a little scary, and as alien as Martians. I couldn’t wait to go home. And when Aunt Annie died it was a relief. There would be no more trips to Pleasant Valley, or whatever that hellhole was called. Pleasant Valley had about it the stench of death, and I wanted to avoid that at all costs.

Our former pastor in Mount Vernon used to preach regularly about the twin themes of holding on lightly and letting go. He told us, Sunday after Sunday, that we would either learn the lessons the easy way, as we incorporated those notions into our day-to-day lives, or the hard way, when we were old and had no choice. Getting old, he informed us, was hell. You lost your youth, your good looks, your career, your friends, your spouse (or your spouse lost you), the use of your limbs, your bladder and sphincter control, and maybe, perhaps mercifully, your mind. Forget the movies, he told us. Ignore what our culture tells us about the slow, glorious coda of the American Dream. Old age was a cruel mockery of the notion of the Golden Years. Maybe you could delay the inevitable for a while by riding in a golf cart in Florida, but your prospects were dire. You started out in diapers, and you ended up in diapers, moving from dust to dust.

So I think about those things, and pray for Billy Graham, a man I greatly admire, and for solace and hope in a loss I cannot really fathom. It’s too painful to contemplate for long. And I pray for old guys named Harold and Marvin, judges in the Miss Bedpan Contest, who cannot remember their names. But I remember them for them.

Kate and I watched our youngest daughter Rachel graduate from high school last Saturday. I don’t feel like I’m ready for Pleasant Valley, but you can’t go through something like that and not be astonished. Our kids are all grown up now, and for the life of me I can’t figure out what happened to the time. The unfathomable becomes all too real, and all you have to do is keep waking up in the morning. Paul Simon, who couldn’t even imagine what it would be like to be seventy years old, is now sixty-five. And an old man of God, walking hand in hand with his closest friend for six decades, is now bereft of the love of his life. “If our hope in Christ is for this life only, we are of all men most to be pitied,” the apostle Paul wrote. Those of us who have ever known that kind of loss, that dizzying and horrifying sense of the loss of relational equilibrium, will know that his words are true.

Hot Fun in the Summer Sun

I blame it all on Max Yasgur. Max is the guy, way back when, who agreed to lease out his farm in upstate New York for a little soiree called Woodstock. And ever since then hordes of young adults have labored under the illusion that it’s a great idea to try to watch a rock concert in 100-degree heat, half a mile from the stage.

This curious notion seems to be undergoing a renaissance in recent years, as once-small festivals mushroom (even the non Deadhead ones) into mammoth multi-day events. You all know the litany – Coachella, Bonnaroo, Glastonbury, Lollapalooza, Austin City Limits, and many, many more. It’s possible to see 80 or 100 bands at these events. There’s only one problem. You can’t actually see them.

Don’t get me wrong. God knows I love live music. I’d spend my life in some dive bar if I could, hanging out with a couple hundred other people, reveling in the wonders of some new or up-and-coming band. There’s little in life that I enjoy more. But it’s precisely because I enjoy that interaction that I’m mystified by the appeal of the mammoth festivals.

I’ve given it the ol’ college try, and the post-college try. Before that I gave it the ol’ high school try, and had my first experience at such an event in July, 1970 when Sly Stone failed to show up for a free concert in Grant Park in Chicago, at which point there was a riot goin’ on, and I ended up trying not to breathe tear gas as I ran away from police who were firing rubber bullets. That was a rollicking good time. I’ve watched The Rolling Stones in their heyday along with 80,000 people in old, rusting Cleveland Stadium, and heard later about some kid who sailed out of the upper deck and landed on the infield below. I’ve sat in the midst of a sea of wasted humanity many, many times, everybody completely oblivious to the music. Are we havin’ fun yet? But, you know, I actually kinda care about the music.

Columbus, Ohio, where I live, has its own corporate version of Yasgur’s Farm; a former cornfield transformed into a concrete amphitheater and named after a local car dealership. It is one of the most soulless places in the universe. Usually it is home to Styx/Foreigner/REO Speedwagon packaged nostalgia, Genesis reunion tours, and overpriced burritos and watered-down beer. Thanks very much, but I’ll pass. But occasionally it tempts me. I forget myself, forget the lousy times I’ve invariably had in similar environments, and somehow succumb to the notion that this time it will be different. So when Farm Aid came through Columbus a few years ago, I naively forgot 35 years of my musical history.

Up there on the stage, theoretically, were a lot of people whose music I loved – Willie Nelson, Neil Young, Emmylou Harris, Buddy Miller, John Mellencamp. But back on the lawn seating it was hard to tell the Emmylou speck from the Willie speck. Giant jumbotron screens on either side of the stage projected the faces of the musical performers, but from where I sat the giant jumbotron screens looked like 12-inch TV sets. So I watched Willie and Emmylou on the little TV set, was mildly entertained by the sea of wasted people around me, sweated in the sun, got drenched by the late afternoon thunderstorm, and groused at the prospect of an $8 watered-down Coors. Are we havin’ fun yet?

So enjoy the festivals, ye neo-hippies. Be safe. I’ll catch you again in the fall, when musicians return indoors, and I can actually bear to pay money to watch them again.

Paste Saves the World

Paste Issue #33 is out. I couldn’t even begin to describe the cover; you just have to see it. But a cartoon version of Bono can be found there. And Emmylou Harris, also in cartoon form. And some sort of a robot/lizard hybrid monster that you wouldn’t want to encounter in a dark laboratory. The caption on the cover says “Can Rock Save the World?”

I’m betting on “No.” How about you? But I’m betting it can change the world, because it already has, and the bulk of this issue is focused on highlighting the many good causes that rock ‘n roll has brought attention to and raised money for through benefit concerts over the years. It is easy to become cynical about such things. After all, is there anything more ludicrous than a pampered rock star arriving by limousine to sing about famine in Africa? In spite of the sordid trappings, rock has somehow managed to promote positive change in the world, sometimes in spite of giant stages with jumbotron screens projecting every sensitive facial expression of an overemoting prima donna. More significantly, there are many people involved in the music business who quietly go about the hard and unrewarding work of making the world a better place, and Paste highlights those folks as well. Throughout the issue there are links to websites where you can find out more information about how you, gentle reader, can help change the world as well. And there’s an announcement about an upcoming benefit concert sponsored by Paste, the proceeds of which will be used to help end child slavery throughout the world. This is called putting your money where your mouth is, and I couldn’t be happier to do my little part to promote such an event.

This is also Paste’s five-year anniversary issue. Five years ago I procrastinated in writing my first article about Bill Mallonee and Vigilantes of Love, not really certain what I was writing for in the first place. A month later a magazine – a real magazine – showed up in my mailbox. It was the product of three guys who maxed out their credit cards and worked 100-hour weeks and slept on couches in the office during the month prior to publication. Since then Paste has gone from quarterly, to bi-monthly, to monthly, and it’s now the best-selling music magazine in Barnes and Noble Bookstores. It’s won scads of awards, has been written about in glowing terms in places like The New York Post and The Chicago Tribune, and I’ve had the surreal experience of watching my friends Josh and Nick pontificate about their favorite music on a weekly TV show on CNN. On a personal level, I’ve had the great joy of writing 150 feature articles and reviews, meeting some of my favorite musicians in the world, and receiving truckloads of free music and music DVDs, far more than I can even remotely begin to take in.

And I’m thankful. It’s been a wild ride, one for which I still frequently shake my head in disbelief. I’m doing what I love to do, and people are actually paying me to do it. So give it up for Paste, buy the new issue (or, better yet, subscribe), and, more importantly, check out those links and do what you can to support that Paste benefit concert. There are more important things than rock stars, and magazines about rock stars. But that doesn’t mean that I’m not grateful that both are around.

What's in a Name?

Sometimes when you google yourself you find things like this:

MBC 휴먼다큐 '너는 내 운명' 반프상 심사위원 특별상 수상 인터넷뉴스팀 2007/06/12 16: ... 상의 진짜 주인은 진정한 사랑의 존재를 일깨워준 정창원씨와 고(故) 서영란씨라고 생각한다. 그들에게 이 상을 바친다”는 소감을 밝혔다. 심사위원 앤디 위트만(Andy Whitman)씨는 “인간의 존엄성과 진정한 사랑의 의미를 세심하게 다룬 훌륭한 작품이었다. 심사위원들 모두 눈물을 참기 힘들었고, 상을 당연히 받아야 한다고 의견을 모았다”며 “프로그램을

And now I'm really curious.

Harry Potter, Al Qaeda, and Global Warming

I am always glad when someone takes my political and social conscience to heart, and tells me how to think and how to vote. Thank God there are people who can help me navigate this confusing morass of complex issues and who can cut through the pettifoggery and zoom in on the real culprits. So you can imagine how relieved I was to receive the following commentary:

America is on a path to a greater threat then we thought. It is those wicked Harry Potter books. The reason why Harry Potter is a terrorist threat, for the spells in the books are speical codes for terrorist groups in the middle east. The characters represent well known terrorist who have attack our borders. This is why we should ban these books from our schools. So, that no child would be influence by these materials of mass killings on a free country. There is also popular podcast like PotterCast, MuggleCast who are spreading words of prasie to this horrible book of evil. And they must be stop, so that they won't brainwash anymore children with their terrorist views and support. They are the reason for the VT shooting, causing that boy to commit an act of mass murder all because of a internet show that talk about the evil that is in Harry Potter.

This is all great stuff, but the author forgot to mention the clear link between Harry Potter and global warming. If suggestions are in order, I'd recommend an amendment something like this:

"Also, for the spells in the book are rising the global thermeter, and are caused great natural clamerties such as the Hurrican Katreeena. Harry Potter and Al Gore am behind this. They are the reasons there is no more Pandas. This is another reasoning why we should band these books from our schools. I have hear that there is a evil man name C.S. Lewis who has also writing about witchcrafts. He should be band to."

Parker's Mood

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: there is no finer songwriter working today than Joe Henry. He wrote the definitive song about Richard Pryor. Now he’s done it again with Charlie Parker.

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Parker's soaring, fast, rhythmically asymmetrical improvisations could amaze the listener. His harmonic ideas were revolutionary, introducing a new tonal vocabulary employing 9ths, 11ths and 13ths of chords, rapidly implied passing chords, and new variants of altered chords and chord substitutions. His tone was clean and penetrating, but sweet and plaintive on ballads. Although many Parker recordings demonstrate dazzling virtuoso technique and complex melodic lines — such as "Koko," "Kim," and "Leap Frog" — he was also one of the great blues players. His themeless blues improvisation "Parker's Mood" represents one of the most deeply affecting recordings in jazz, as fundamental as Armstrong's "West End Blues."
-- from the Wikipedia article on Charlie Parker

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Where’s my sock?
And where’s my other shoe?
I didn’t know what time it was
When I came to
The only light in here is my flickering TV
Watching back at me
Oh, my love is here to stay
Oh, my love is here to stay

Saints alive
And all the saints we praised
I see them all around me now
For they've been called and raised
Their jaws have all gone slack
Their yellow nails are long and curling back
To scratch the phantom ache
Of our lost days
Oh, my love is here to stay
No matter what you say

Well I came home this morning I was dead on my feet
Drunk on the victory of my own defeat
Now I’m reeling on the ceiling
But what Yardbird law is this
When a heart in chains is what remains
The prelude to a kiss?

God is in the details of the smoke in the air
The devil he’s a pauper prince nesting in your hair
The things we put together
Ah, the world will tear apart
Well I beat them to the start
Along the way
Oh, my love is here to stay
Oh, my love is here to stay
-- Joe Henry, “Parker's Mood"

Worst Album Cover of All Time

John started it. But this one gets my vote. It's got the whole package -- the smoldering insouciance, the come-hither bedroom eyes, the flute thrust provocatively over the shoulder, the chest hair, and the receding hairline.

The seventies were a dire decade. No one -- especially perfectly respectable flautists -- should be subjected to these things.

Lord Franklin

British Rear Admiral Sir John Franklin, born on April 16, 1786, discovered the Northwest Passage, but disappeared in the course of the exploration. After serving (1836-43) as governor of Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania), Franklin was sent in search of the Northwest Passage in 1845. His ships, Erebus and Terror, were last seen in Baffin Bay on July 25 or 26, 1845. When nothing was heard from the party, no fewer than 40 expeditions were sent to find him. In 1854, Dr. John Rae of the Hudson's Bay Company found the first proof that Franklin's vessels had sunk. In 1859, Leopold McClintock, commanding Fox, a search vessel outfitted by Lady Franklin, discovered a cairn that revealed Sir John had died on June 11, 1847, in King William's Land and had, in fact, found the Northwest Passage. Further expeditions were sent to the Arctic, but they simply confirmed the earlier discoveries.
-- from Wikipedia

Sometime during my high school years I discovered the traditional folk songs of the British Isles. While almost everybody else I knew was debating the various and sundry interpretations of “Stairway to Heaven,” I and a few of my friends were checking out bands such as Fairport Convention, Steeleye Span, Planxty, and Pentangle, who were singing songs that were centuries old and tarting them up with a backbeat and electric guitars. If you’re unfamiliar with the concept, try to think of roll ‘n roll versions of “She’ll Be Comin’ Round the Mountain” or “Home on the Range.” Except instead of musical American cheese, think of good songs featuring meaningful lyrics, great storytelling, and heartbreakingly beautiful melodies.

In preparation for a review for Paste, I’ve been listening to a recently released box set of material from Pentangle, some of which is known to me, and some of which is not. But I’m discovering all over again how much I love this music. There’s a good reason why these songs have survived for hundreds of years; they sock you in the gut. They touch on themes that still sound all too relevant and contemporary. In this case, death, and grieving over the death of friends, never seems to go out of style, and our children’s children’s children will still be making up new songs that will simply be variations on a theme. This particular Pentangle song is from the early 1850s – relatively recent as Trad material goes. But it sounds as ancient as David’s psalms, and as contemporary as a downed Apache helicopter in Baghdad.

‘Twas homeward bound one night on the deep
Swinging in my hammock I fell asleep
I dreamed a dream and I thought it true
Concerning Franklin and his gallant crew

With a hundred seamen he sailed away
To the frozen ocean in the month of May
To seek a passage around the pole
Where we poor seamen do sometimes go

Through cruel hardships they vainly strove
Their ships on mountains of ice was drove
Only the Eskimo in his skin canoe
Was the only one that ever came through

In Baffin Bay where the whale fishes blow
The fate of Franklin no man may know
The fate of Franklin no tongue can tell
Lord Franklin along with his sailors do dwell

And now my burden it gives me pain
For my long lost Franklin I would cross the main
Ten thousand pounds would I freely give
To say on earth that my Franklin do live
-- Traditional, “Lord Franklin”