My favorite singer/songwriter these days is a guy with the unassuming name of Joe Henry. He started in the late '80s as an alt-country/rootsy troubadour, and recorded several excellent albums with The Jayhawks as his backing band and with T-Bone Burnett producing. But in the mid-'90s he took a left turn into an atmospheric mix of folk and funk and soul and jazz that defies easy categorization. It's late-night lounge music of a sort, a mix of Sinatra salloon singer and Dylanesque surrealism, but it's way, way off kilter, as if the lounge might exist on one of the outer moons of Saturn. It's eerily beautiful, and always, always, always, just slightly bent. Just when you think he's going to come up with a hummable chorus, he throws in yet another dischordant note. I love his unpredictability.
He's also an amazing lyricist. If Dylan hadn't shown the capacity to occasionally rouse himself and produce great music in his dotage, I'd tell you that he's the logical successor to Dylan. As it is, Joe Henry is brilliant and disturbing, spinning out the stuff of nightmares, but with startling imagery and beautiful insight. Here are the lyrics to two songs about addiction. He doesn't only write about addiction. But if you're going to put together a soundtrack for Addiction: The Movie, I can't think of two better places to start.
Sometimes I think I've almost fooled myself
Sometimes I think I've almost fooled myself--
Spreading out my wings
Above us like a tree,
Laughing now, out loud
Almost like I was free
I look at you as the thing I wanted most
You look at me and it's like you've seen a ghost
I wear the face
Of all this has cost:
Everything you tried to keep away from me,
Everything I took from you and lost
Lights shine above me, they're like your eyes above the street
Lights shine below me, they're like stars beneath my feet
I stood on your shoulders
And I walked on my hands,
You watched me while I tried to fall
You can't bear to watch me land
Take me away, carry me like a dove
Take me away, carry me like a dove
Love me like you're lying
Let me feel you near,
Remember me for trying
And excuse me while I disappear
-- Joe Henry, “Richard Pryor Addresses a Tearful Nation”
You wild beasts and you creeping things
Get down in your place,
Down with all the absolutes
And God's awful grace.
Who wants to see this coming?
Who wants to think you do?
Better to be blind
when I'm
Falling for you
Go and tell old Pharaoh
His time has come about,
His pretty houseboys laugh and sing
As they're filing out.
They set fire behind them
I see it burning into view,
High upon the mountain
where I'm
Falling for you
All manner of abandon
Is just the thing we need,
Get ready for the country, boys,
The town has gone to seed.
The telephone line is sagging
With word coming through:
Put your head between your knees, I'm
Falling for you
I can quit this anytime,
It's just to help me sleep,
It stops the tiny voices
And strange hours that they keep.
Who wants to hear them bleating on,
And have to answer too?
Better to be dumb
when I'm
Falling for you
So you ladies and you gentlemen--
Pull your bloomers on,
Swing up on the highest beam
And let the floods come on.
Who wants to be there wondering,
When the Wonders rage on through?
Better to say never
when I'm
Falling for you
-- Joe Henry, “Tiny Voices (Falling For You)”
Monday, October 31, 2005
Thursday, October 27, 2005
America's Next Top Muppet
Finally, a reality TV show I can get behind: http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117931517?categoryid=1236&cs=1
This opens up many new intriguing entertainment possibilities:
This opens up many new intriguing entertainment possibilities:
- Yoda Millionaire -- Everyone's favorite green furball wines and dines 43 gorgeous babes, whittles down his choices to one Jedi-like mate, yes, then marries her he does in a beautiful double-ring, double-sunset ceremony on Tattoine.
- Survivor: Felt Factory
- The Real World: Sesame Street -- Seven normal nubile young adults (two gay, one bi-sexual, one former Miss Condom Awareness, two former frat boys, one puppet) move into a 23.5 million dollar home, copulate, drink themselves silly, learn how to count and spell with the help of the puppet, and call it Real.
Friday, October 21, 2005
Music Mix, Family Values Edition
I am not the only person in my family who listens to music, although I probably have the distinction of playing it the longest and loudest. So here’s a sampling of what’s been playing in my house of late, some of my choosing, some not.
Mike Oldfield – Tubular Bells, Hergest Ridge – It’s not Mike Oldfield’s fault that his music will forever be associated with the movie The Exorcist and Linda Blair’s spinning head and projectile vomit. Tubular Bells, the 1973 soundtrack to the movie, has held up remarkably well over the years, and stands on its own as perhaps the first New Age album ever released. But unlike the soporific qualities that the New Age label often suggests, Tubular Bells is consistently complex, involving, and evolving, an exceptional extended composition that mixes elements of folk, rock, and classical minimalism. The tubular bells of the title still ring eerily and majestically. Hergest Ridge, from a year later, is more of the same, slightly more pastoral and contemplative, but no less of an accomplishment for that. Oldfield moved into much more mainstream pop territory in the ‘80s and ‘90s, but these two albums will forever stand as his masterpieces. They remain supernaturally evocative and strangely beautiful.
Julie Miller – Blue Pony, Broken Things – Kate loves these albums, and pulls them out to listen to them fairly regularly. Fortunately, I love them too. There is something oddly endearing about Julie’s little-girl breathiness and her worldly wise, grace-filled lyrics, as if Flannery O’Connor had been squeezed into Shirley Temple’s prepubescent body. On these albums Julie sings about brokenness and sorrow and mental illness, orphans and misfits and children of God. She consistently finds the right balance between sentiment and schmaltz, deep truths and cliché, and she never crosses the line. The heartland rootsiness of husband Buddy’s backing guitar work and superb harmonies are an added bonus. These songs sound real, raw, and poetically beautiful. “Orphan Train,” in particular, still moves me after six years and hundreds of hearings. Put your ear to the track and you can hear your name.
Steeleye Span – Live at Last – When everybody else in my high school was listening to Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin, I was listening to Fairport Convention and Steeleye Span, fostering my love of traditional English ballads, and dreaming of rescuing damsels in distress. Groovy hippie damsels, but still. Steeleye Span were the foremost proponents of English ballad boogie, singing centuries-old folk songs about fairies and elves and obscure monarchs and tarting them up with electric guitars and a backbeat. If the marriage of AC/DC and Tolkien sounds contrived, just listen to their extensive catalogue from the ‘70s. It still sounds wondrous, at least if you used to play Dungeons and Dragons.
Live at Last, recorded in 1978 and long out of print, just happened to be the hole in my Steeleye Span collection. And a beat-up, used vinyl copy just happened to be at Lost Weekend Records a few days back. In truth, it’s only fair, and the band had seen better days and recorded better songs. But Maddy Prior, the raven-haired hippie chick who sang most of the songs, still sounds sweet and worth rescuing from any castle turret, and the band still boogies along in its Foghat-meets-Frodo way. Where’s my cape?
Johnny Mathis – The Christmas Music of Johnny Mathis – A few years ago the Whitman family staged the Great Christmas Music Rebellion. “Listen to Bruce Cockburn do this Huron Indian Christmas song from the 17th century,” I’d tell my family as we decorated the tree. I’d wax rhapsodic about Beausoleil putting a Cajun spin on “Christmas on the Bayou” or Elvis Presley’s lascivious sneer on “Santa Claus is Back in Town,” a sexually charged anthem to stuffing stockings and other things. Finally they had had enough. “We need some decent Christmas music,” they told me, “or you’re on your own when it comes to decorating the tree. We need something we can all relate to.” Okay. So, much to my chagrin, I went out and picked up Johnny Mathis and Nat King Cole. Conform to the masses, and all that.
Everybody’s heard Johnny Mathis Christmas music. It blares from department store speakers starting about Halloween and doesn’t let up until after the New Year. This album collects all the department store favorites. It’s light on the traditional carols and heavy on the consumer schmaltz, featuring “Winter Wonderland,” “A Marshmallow World in December,” “It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas,” and Johnny’s signature Christmas tune, “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year.” I loathe the marshmallow tune, but some of these songs are comforting in the same way that meatloaf is comforting. I tolerate it, even when my daughter Rachel plays it at decidedly non-Christmas times of the year, such as mid-October. But there are compensations. Come December I’ll get to sleep in the same bed with my wife, who will have no occasion to mock “Iesus Ahatonnia,” that wondrous Huron carol.
Mike Oldfield – Tubular Bells, Hergest Ridge – It’s not Mike Oldfield’s fault that his music will forever be associated with the movie The Exorcist and Linda Blair’s spinning head and projectile vomit. Tubular Bells, the 1973 soundtrack to the movie, has held up remarkably well over the years, and stands on its own as perhaps the first New Age album ever released. But unlike the soporific qualities that the New Age label often suggests, Tubular Bells is consistently complex, involving, and evolving, an exceptional extended composition that mixes elements of folk, rock, and classical minimalism. The tubular bells of the title still ring eerily and majestically. Hergest Ridge, from a year later, is more of the same, slightly more pastoral and contemplative, but no less of an accomplishment for that. Oldfield moved into much more mainstream pop territory in the ‘80s and ‘90s, but these two albums will forever stand as his masterpieces. They remain supernaturally evocative and strangely beautiful.
Julie Miller – Blue Pony, Broken Things – Kate loves these albums, and pulls them out to listen to them fairly regularly. Fortunately, I love them too. There is something oddly endearing about Julie’s little-girl breathiness and her worldly wise, grace-filled lyrics, as if Flannery O’Connor had been squeezed into Shirley Temple’s prepubescent body. On these albums Julie sings about brokenness and sorrow and mental illness, orphans and misfits and children of God. She consistently finds the right balance between sentiment and schmaltz, deep truths and cliché, and she never crosses the line. The heartland rootsiness of husband Buddy’s backing guitar work and superb harmonies are an added bonus. These songs sound real, raw, and poetically beautiful. “Orphan Train,” in particular, still moves me after six years and hundreds of hearings. Put your ear to the track and you can hear your name.
Steeleye Span – Live at Last – When everybody else in my high school was listening to Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin, I was listening to Fairport Convention and Steeleye Span, fostering my love of traditional English ballads, and dreaming of rescuing damsels in distress. Groovy hippie damsels, but still. Steeleye Span were the foremost proponents of English ballad boogie, singing centuries-old folk songs about fairies and elves and obscure monarchs and tarting them up with electric guitars and a backbeat. If the marriage of AC/DC and Tolkien sounds contrived, just listen to their extensive catalogue from the ‘70s. It still sounds wondrous, at least if you used to play Dungeons and Dragons.
Live at Last, recorded in 1978 and long out of print, just happened to be the hole in my Steeleye Span collection. And a beat-up, used vinyl copy just happened to be at Lost Weekend Records a few days back. In truth, it’s only fair, and the band had seen better days and recorded better songs. But Maddy Prior, the raven-haired hippie chick who sang most of the songs, still sounds sweet and worth rescuing from any castle turret, and the band still boogies along in its Foghat-meets-Frodo way. Where’s my cape?
Johnny Mathis – The Christmas Music of Johnny Mathis – A few years ago the Whitman family staged the Great Christmas Music Rebellion. “Listen to Bruce Cockburn do this Huron Indian Christmas song from the 17th century,” I’d tell my family as we decorated the tree. I’d wax rhapsodic about Beausoleil putting a Cajun spin on “Christmas on the Bayou” or Elvis Presley’s lascivious sneer on “Santa Claus is Back in Town,” a sexually charged anthem to stuffing stockings and other things. Finally they had had enough. “We need some decent Christmas music,” they told me, “or you’re on your own when it comes to decorating the tree. We need something we can all relate to.” Okay. So, much to my chagrin, I went out and picked up Johnny Mathis and Nat King Cole. Conform to the masses, and all that.
Everybody’s heard Johnny Mathis Christmas music. It blares from department store speakers starting about Halloween and doesn’t let up until after the New Year. This album collects all the department store favorites. It’s light on the traditional carols and heavy on the consumer schmaltz, featuring “Winter Wonderland,” “A Marshmallow World in December,” “It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas,” and Johnny’s signature Christmas tune, “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year.” I loathe the marshmallow tune, but some of these songs are comforting in the same way that meatloaf is comforting. I tolerate it, even when my daughter Rachel plays it at decidedly non-Christmas times of the year, such as mid-October. But there are compensations. Come December I’ll get to sleep in the same bed with my wife, who will have no occasion to mock “Iesus Ahatonnia,” that wondrous Huron carol.
Monday, October 17, 2005
Miracle Cars and Miracle Cures
He is a friend, a hero, a husband and father, a musician with roots in the American Deep South who is never home. Ten years ago his songs were all over the radio, and his band played in front of thousands. Tonight he is playing alone in front of forty or fifty people in a busy coffeehouse in Columbus, Ohio. Some of the people are here for the music. Many are here for the coffee and conversation. He is a fifty-year-old rock ‘n roller on the road, and it is all he knows. There never was a tour bus. There used to be a van. Now there is a 1986 Honda, a miracle car he calls it.
“A friend sold it to me for one dollar,” he tells the audience. “It has 160,000 miles on it, and it still gets 34 miles to the gallon. So far I’ve driven it 20,000 miles from town to town, night after night, and I haven’t had any major repairs.”
He plays mostly new songs, tales written from the road over the past year or two. But the biggest crowd response still comes from the old songs, the band songs, the Greatest Hits that never were, but which still resonate deeply. And even on the new songs, the post –9/11, post-band, post-record-deal songs, he still exudes a weary hope:
flowers growing out of the desert
flowers out of parched ground
flowers coming right up through the cracks
of the pavement in your old town
flowering's not a science
it's more like a fine art
flowers coming right up through the cracks
of our broke up little hearts
we all need new beginnings
the first steps make you better
maybe you're just a prayer away
from getting your shit together
You never know. That half century of muddled relationships and indifferent success might suddenly change for the better. America might one day wake up from its Britney/Madonna stupor and figure out that it should pay attention to people who actually have something to say. Maybe. It’s worth another tour, another two months away from home. It’s worth another trip in the beat-up Honda. The miracles might extend beyond the car.
He used to cushion the private references in flowery metaphors. Now he doesn’t even try to hide the autobiographical details.
“This is a new song about my son,” he says. “He’s eighteen years old, and he’s in a rehab facility because he’s addicted to cocaine. He’s been in there about six months. We’re hoping he can come home soon.” He strums his guitar, waits in vain for the conversations to die down, finally launches in to Tasteful Background Music for Coffee Drinkers:
from a simple plant that was long growing there
from the king of the world to your worst nightmare
got you an old recipe and some chemicals to stir
it might have felt just like God once but now it's Lucifer
oh to be clean
and you know the thing is sleeping, a scratch below your skin
and God knows if you wake it up you gotta calm it down again
and I wonder what it felt like when the waters flooded in
and it got too hard to swim
it feels just like a hunger but you cannot feed the thing
it always wants a new song that you can't really sing
it never shows you the whole truth till the poison's leaking through
and what you thought you were doing, well now it's doing you
and it could take a few years to dig out of this mine
what with a shaft so deep and dark it might take a lifetime
the choices they're like diamonds you found down there one night
you gotta grab the one that's your true self and bring it to the light
oh to be clean
and you know the thing is sleeping, a scratch below your skin
and God knows if you wake it up you gotta calm it down again
and I wonder what it felt like when the waters flooded in
and it got too hard to swim
Like most of his best songs, this one is a wondrous, terrible thing, a great howling mess of brokenness and sorrow and bone-marrow truth. He is a thousand miles from home on a lonely Saturday night, and the espresso machines are whirring in the background as he sings his voice raw, and the regular customers are wondering who the hell this morose folksinger is if they think about him at all, and he gamely plugs away at the tiny, insignificant task of unveiling his heart for public display.
Afterwards, he sits at a back table, sells a few CDs, chats with anyone who wants to talk. He looks like he hasn’t slept in days, but there is also a weariness in his eyes that sleep won’t take away. I watch the young women come up to him, tell him how much they love his music, pass along their cell phone numbers. I want to kick him in the balls, hard. I want to shake him. I want to hug him.
“You don’t have to do this, you know,” I want to tell him. “You can go home, be with your family. You can lay down the guitar, forget the suffering artist persona, and deal with the real suffering you’re facing. There’s real pain there. You need to do more than write a song about it.” But I don’t say anything.
Outside in the parking lot we engage in the kind of careful small talk that is designed to guard our hearts. I tell him that it was a great show, because it was. He tells me that it’s always great to see me. We hug. We tell each other to stay in touch. He gets in the ’86 Honda and drives away, off to find another miracle.
“A friend sold it to me for one dollar,” he tells the audience. “It has 160,000 miles on it, and it still gets 34 miles to the gallon. So far I’ve driven it 20,000 miles from town to town, night after night, and I haven’t had any major repairs.”
He plays mostly new songs, tales written from the road over the past year or two. But the biggest crowd response still comes from the old songs, the band songs, the Greatest Hits that never were, but which still resonate deeply. And even on the new songs, the post –9/11, post-band, post-record-deal songs, he still exudes a weary hope:
flowers growing out of the desert
flowers out of parched ground
flowers coming right up through the cracks
of the pavement in your old town
flowering's not a science
it's more like a fine art
flowers coming right up through the cracks
of our broke up little hearts
we all need new beginnings
the first steps make you better
maybe you're just a prayer away
from getting your shit together
You never know. That half century of muddled relationships and indifferent success might suddenly change for the better. America might one day wake up from its Britney/Madonna stupor and figure out that it should pay attention to people who actually have something to say. Maybe. It’s worth another tour, another two months away from home. It’s worth another trip in the beat-up Honda. The miracles might extend beyond the car.
He used to cushion the private references in flowery metaphors. Now he doesn’t even try to hide the autobiographical details.
“This is a new song about my son,” he says. “He’s eighteen years old, and he’s in a rehab facility because he’s addicted to cocaine. He’s been in there about six months. We’re hoping he can come home soon.” He strums his guitar, waits in vain for the conversations to die down, finally launches in to Tasteful Background Music for Coffee Drinkers:
from a simple plant that was long growing there
from the king of the world to your worst nightmare
got you an old recipe and some chemicals to stir
it might have felt just like God once but now it's Lucifer
oh to be clean
and you know the thing is sleeping, a scratch below your skin
and God knows if you wake it up you gotta calm it down again
and I wonder what it felt like when the waters flooded in
and it got too hard to swim
it feels just like a hunger but you cannot feed the thing
it always wants a new song that you can't really sing
it never shows you the whole truth till the poison's leaking through
and what you thought you were doing, well now it's doing you
and it could take a few years to dig out of this mine
what with a shaft so deep and dark it might take a lifetime
the choices they're like diamonds you found down there one night
you gotta grab the one that's your true self and bring it to the light
oh to be clean
and you know the thing is sleeping, a scratch below your skin
and God knows if you wake it up you gotta calm it down again
and I wonder what it felt like when the waters flooded in
and it got too hard to swim
Like most of his best songs, this one is a wondrous, terrible thing, a great howling mess of brokenness and sorrow and bone-marrow truth. He is a thousand miles from home on a lonely Saturday night, and the espresso machines are whirring in the background as he sings his voice raw, and the regular customers are wondering who the hell this morose folksinger is if they think about him at all, and he gamely plugs away at the tiny, insignificant task of unveiling his heart for public display.
Afterwards, he sits at a back table, sells a few CDs, chats with anyone who wants to talk. He looks like he hasn’t slept in days, but there is also a weariness in his eyes that sleep won’t take away. I watch the young women come up to him, tell him how much they love his music, pass along their cell phone numbers. I want to kick him in the balls, hard. I want to shake him. I want to hug him.
“You don’t have to do this, you know,” I want to tell him. “You can go home, be with your family. You can lay down the guitar, forget the suffering artist persona, and deal with the real suffering you’re facing. There’s real pain there. You need to do more than write a song about it.” But I don’t say anything.
Outside in the parking lot we engage in the kind of careful small talk that is designed to guard our hearts. I tell him that it was a great show, because it was. He tells me that it’s always great to see me. We hug. We tell each other to stay in touch. He gets in the ’86 Honda and drives away, off to find another miracle.
Thursday, October 13, 2005
Sweat and Dust
“To Adam he said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not each of it,’ cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return." – Genesis 3:17-19
This Hunter-Gatherer, a descendent of Adam, has turned into a madman with a keyboard. It’s how I earn my living, if not by the sweat of my brow, then at least by the sweat of my brain. From 8:00 a.m. until the early evening I sit in the midst of very smart, very technical people and try to translate their technobabble into something resembling the English language. “There are four main tables in the database schema and about 50 utilities,” one of them says, “and we need ERDs for each of them by the end of the month.” I nod my head sagely, acting for all the world like I both know what he is talking about and care about his intent.
But I don’t. Or, more correctly, I don’t, but I need to know what he is talking about, and very quickly, and I need to care, because my paycheck is dependent on my ability to absorb highly technical information and turn it into understandable prose. Note to self: look up ERD.
In many ways I’ve spent the last 23 years of my life enacting an elaborate charade. I am not a TechnoGeek. Far from it, in fact. I’m an English major. I have a degree in Creative Writing. I keep trying to deny it, keep going back to school and tacking on more degrees – in Education, in Theology, an MBA, for God’s sake. And the bottom line (ooh, a nice business reference there) is that I want to write poetry. I sit in endlessly droning technical meetings and listen to talk about Nodes and all too quickly tune out and start composing Ode to a Node in my head.
I’ve learned to fake it pretty well, and they pay me a great salary to figure out what ERDs are and somehow “do” (whatever do means in this context) fifty or more of them by the end of the month. I’ll do it. I always do it. But at the end of the day I go home and wonder why I’ve just spent ten or eleven hours of my time simultaneously bored out of my skull and frantically scrambling to get more work done than I can realistically accomplish. It’s a tug of war in which my soul is caught in the middle.
I just turned 50, which qualifies me for reduced fares on city buses I never ride and a discounted membership to AARP, which I don’t want to join because it makes me feel old. I have friends and cohorts who are seriously talking about retirement. I’m still trying to figure out what I want to be when I grow up, still trying to make the transition from my interests and passions to a viable career. I don’t think I want to be an ERD Specialist when I grow up, whatever that might entail, but I think I might just become one anyway out of necessity. I look on the pragmatic side, which is tougher than you might think for a hopelessly romantic idealist who writes Odes to Nodes. There’s something to be said for regular paychecks, especially on cold winter nights. I am living the American Dream[TM], which affords me a nice 4-bedroom, 2.5 bath suburban house with screened-in porch and finished basement and plot of land, two cars, all the trimmings, two daughters who will soon be college educated, and exotic toys like leaf mulchers and snowblowers, which clutter the two-car garage. I love my wife, I love my kids, I love my friends, I love my church. I get to engage the Creative Writer side by writing for a couple magazines and seeing my words in print. Life is good. I am blessed. So why do I feel that sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach every time I get in the car to drive to work? And the theology major in me wonders if this is what God intended.
I also wonder how much of this is simple whining, the product of Baby Boomer navel gazing and an insistence on My Happiness. I wonder what the feudal barons in 13th century France would have said when the serfs in the fields complained about a lack of self-actualization and the angst and malaise that accompanies being stuck far down the rungs of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Would they have sent them to therapy? Or would they have called them scurvy knaves and smote them on the backsides with their swords? I think I know the answer. Those feudal lords hated Maslow.
I wish I knew the answers. In the meantime, I have to work on ERDs for the next few hours and then mow the lawn when I get home. In nice, neat diagonal suburban swaths, of course.
This Hunter-Gatherer, a descendent of Adam, has turned into a madman with a keyboard. It’s how I earn my living, if not by the sweat of my brow, then at least by the sweat of my brain. From 8:00 a.m. until the early evening I sit in the midst of very smart, very technical people and try to translate their technobabble into something resembling the English language. “There are four main tables in the database schema and about 50 utilities,” one of them says, “and we need ERDs for each of them by the end of the month.” I nod my head sagely, acting for all the world like I both know what he is talking about and care about his intent.
But I don’t. Or, more correctly, I don’t, but I need to know what he is talking about, and very quickly, and I need to care, because my paycheck is dependent on my ability to absorb highly technical information and turn it into understandable prose. Note to self: look up ERD.
In many ways I’ve spent the last 23 years of my life enacting an elaborate charade. I am not a TechnoGeek. Far from it, in fact. I’m an English major. I have a degree in Creative Writing. I keep trying to deny it, keep going back to school and tacking on more degrees – in Education, in Theology, an MBA, for God’s sake. And the bottom line (ooh, a nice business reference there) is that I want to write poetry. I sit in endlessly droning technical meetings and listen to talk about Nodes and all too quickly tune out and start composing Ode to a Node in my head.
I’ve learned to fake it pretty well, and they pay me a great salary to figure out what ERDs are and somehow “do” (whatever do means in this context) fifty or more of them by the end of the month. I’ll do it. I always do it. But at the end of the day I go home and wonder why I’ve just spent ten or eleven hours of my time simultaneously bored out of my skull and frantically scrambling to get more work done than I can realistically accomplish. It’s a tug of war in which my soul is caught in the middle.
I just turned 50, which qualifies me for reduced fares on city buses I never ride and a discounted membership to AARP, which I don’t want to join because it makes me feel old. I have friends and cohorts who are seriously talking about retirement. I’m still trying to figure out what I want to be when I grow up, still trying to make the transition from my interests and passions to a viable career. I don’t think I want to be an ERD Specialist when I grow up, whatever that might entail, but I think I might just become one anyway out of necessity. I look on the pragmatic side, which is tougher than you might think for a hopelessly romantic idealist who writes Odes to Nodes. There’s something to be said for regular paychecks, especially on cold winter nights. I am living the American Dream[TM], which affords me a nice 4-bedroom, 2.5 bath suburban house with screened-in porch and finished basement and plot of land, two cars, all the trimmings, two daughters who will soon be college educated, and exotic toys like leaf mulchers and snowblowers, which clutter the two-car garage. I love my wife, I love my kids, I love my friends, I love my church. I get to engage the Creative Writer side by writing for a couple magazines and seeing my words in print. Life is good. I am blessed. So why do I feel that sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach every time I get in the car to drive to work? And the theology major in me wonders if this is what God intended.
I also wonder how much of this is simple whining, the product of Baby Boomer navel gazing and an insistence on My Happiness. I wonder what the feudal barons in 13th century France would have said when the serfs in the fields complained about a lack of self-actualization and the angst and malaise that accompanies being stuck far down the rungs of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Would they have sent them to therapy? Or would they have called them scurvy knaves and smote them on the backsides with their swords? I think I know the answer. Those feudal lords hated Maslow.
I wish I knew the answers. In the meantime, I have to work on ERDs for the next few hours and then mow the lawn when I get home. In nice, neat diagonal suburban swaths, of course.
Wednesday, September 28, 2005
Scorsese and Dylan
I don't know how many of you caught Martin Scorsese's film on Bob Dylan that was broadcast on PBS the last couple nights. But if you missed it, you missed something special. What a great film. I was impressed by how coherent and forthcoming the present-day Dylan is in his comments. He seems to be past the point of feeling the need to play games with interviewers.
But I certainly gained a new appreciation for why he felt the need to play those games in the first place. Scorsese's collage of the '66 European tour, where he showed Bob answering the same inane press questions again and again, made me appreciate how truly wearying it must have been to face that interviewing onslaught day after day.
And even though much of the '66 concert footage is readily available in D. A. Pennebaker's Don't Look Back, I was thrilled to see and hear those monumental songs again. Others have frequently complained about Bob's offputting howl, but I have to say that I love that howl. Hearing Dylan respond to the boos and catcalls with "Something is happening/And you don't know what it is/Do you, Mr. Jones?" is still the best upraised musical middle finger I've ever heard.
In retrospect, it is easy to understand the bewilderment and hostility of the audience. Aside from the folk scene "betrayal" issues, Dylan's music in '66 was an absolute sonic pummeling -- loud, abrasive, and so densely packed lyrically (even when the audience could hear the lyrics) as to defy instant comprehension. It must have sounded as foreign and alien to his audiences as Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music would sound to the recent escapees of the Mickey Mouse Club at an Ashley Simpson concert. Amazingly, Dylan persevered through it. But Scorsese's film reminded me just how utterly revolutionary Dylan's music was at the time. He busted the doors wide open, and music has never been the same. I thought Scorsese captured that moment just about perfectly.
But I certainly gained a new appreciation for why he felt the need to play those games in the first place. Scorsese's collage of the '66 European tour, where he showed Bob answering the same inane press questions again and again, made me appreciate how truly wearying it must have been to face that interviewing onslaught day after day.
And even though much of the '66 concert footage is readily available in D. A. Pennebaker's Don't Look Back, I was thrilled to see and hear those monumental songs again. Others have frequently complained about Bob's offputting howl, but I have to say that I love that howl. Hearing Dylan respond to the boos and catcalls with "Something is happening/And you don't know what it is/Do you, Mr. Jones?" is still the best upraised musical middle finger I've ever heard.
In retrospect, it is easy to understand the bewilderment and hostility of the audience. Aside from the folk scene "betrayal" issues, Dylan's music in '66 was an absolute sonic pummeling -- loud, abrasive, and so densely packed lyrically (even when the audience could hear the lyrics) as to defy instant comprehension. It must have sounded as foreign and alien to his audiences as Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music would sound to the recent escapees of the Mickey Mouse Club at an Ashley Simpson concert. Amazingly, Dylan persevered through it. But Scorsese's film reminded me just how utterly revolutionary Dylan's music was at the time. He busted the doors wide open, and music has never been the same. I thought Scorsese captured that moment just about perfectly.
Tuesday, September 27, 2005
Paste Issue #18
You know, I think this is a pretty spiffy magazine. Have I ever mentioned that?
The current issue features a cover story on film director Cameron Crowe (Almost Famous, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Jerry Maguire), and follows Crowe around as he directs his latest movie Elizabethtown (Kirsten Dunst and the omnipresent Orlando "Legolas" Bloom). Crowe started writing for Rolling Stone Magazine when he was 15 years old, and interviewed folks like Bob Dylan, Van Morrison, and Paul McCartney. And speaking of Paul McCartney, there's also a lengthy interview with him in this issue as well. And stories about bands Sigur Ros, My Morning Jacket, and (the reunited) Big Star. And 100+ album reviews. And tons and tons of film reviews. And book reviews. And a great article called "Them's Fightin' Words: A Tour of American War Fiction." And, for what it's worth, six articles/reviews from me.
There's also a 21-song CD featuring rock, alternative rock, blues, folk, bluegrass, hip hop, and Shel Silverstein, however he might be categorized. Folks who have songs on the CD include My Morning Jacket, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, Death Cab For Cutie, David Gray, Dungen, Broken Social Scene, North Mississippi Allstars, Leo Kottke, Blackalicious, Jose Gonzalez, Ozomatli, and Shemeika Copeland.
There's also a 4+ hour DVD featuring music videos from The Flaming Lips, Josh Rouse, Nickel Creek, OK Go, The Pixies, Kathleen Edwards, The Deathray Davies, Jamiroquai, Supergrass, New Order, Elbow, Dan Zanes, and yes, Emerson, Lake and Palmer (with infamous flying, rotating piano, no less). And a few more. And 8 short films, and 9 theatrical trailers of upcoming movies.
This issue's cover painting, by the way, was done by Joni Mitchell, probably best known for other things, but a fine artist too.
My name also appears in the masthead as "Senior Contributing Editor." That's a new thing, and a good thing. I am so blessed.
The current issue features a cover story on film director Cameron Crowe (Almost Famous, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Jerry Maguire), and follows Crowe around as he directs his latest movie Elizabethtown (Kirsten Dunst and the omnipresent Orlando "Legolas" Bloom). Crowe started writing for Rolling Stone Magazine when he was 15 years old, and interviewed folks like Bob Dylan, Van Morrison, and Paul McCartney. And speaking of Paul McCartney, there's also a lengthy interview with him in this issue as well. And stories about bands Sigur Ros, My Morning Jacket, and (the reunited) Big Star. And 100+ album reviews. And tons and tons of film reviews. And book reviews. And a great article called "Them's Fightin' Words: A Tour of American War Fiction." And, for what it's worth, six articles/reviews from me.
There's also a 21-song CD featuring rock, alternative rock, blues, folk, bluegrass, hip hop, and Shel Silverstein, however he might be categorized. Folks who have songs on the CD include My Morning Jacket, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, Death Cab For Cutie, David Gray, Dungen, Broken Social Scene, North Mississippi Allstars, Leo Kottke, Blackalicious, Jose Gonzalez, Ozomatli, and Shemeika Copeland.
There's also a 4+ hour DVD featuring music videos from The Flaming Lips, Josh Rouse, Nickel Creek, OK Go, The Pixies, Kathleen Edwards, The Deathray Davies, Jamiroquai, Supergrass, New Order, Elbow, Dan Zanes, and yes, Emerson, Lake and Palmer (with infamous flying, rotating piano, no less). And a few more. And 8 short films, and 9 theatrical trailers of upcoming movies.
This issue's cover painting, by the way, was done by Joni Mitchell, probably best known for other things, but a fine artist too.
My name also appears in the masthead as "Senior Contributing Editor." That's a new thing, and a good thing. I am so blessed.
Monday, September 26, 2005
Sergeant Pastie's Lonely Hearts Club Book
The new issue of Paste just arrived. I haven't really had time to check it out. But four words. Five words. Whatever. Here they are: Exclusive Interview with Paul McCartney. How cool is that? Check it out.
Friday, September 23, 2005
Paul Simon: Pondering an American Tune
A new article for the end-of-the-year issue of Paste Magazine ...
-------------------------------------------------------------
It is a restless 3:00 a.m., the most melancholic hour for insomniacs. And it is a month near the dispirited end of a hellish year in which too many people have died. Sometimes I can block it out, and sometimes I can’t. The thoughts that swirl around my brain tell me that tonight I can’t.
The house settles around me. Everyone else is asleep. It is a Thursday night; work beckons again in just a few short hours. But sleep is not going to come, at least for a while, and so I wander downstairs, check my e-mail, read the CNN headlines, and look out my window at the few lights still on in my neighborhood, wondering who else is up and prowling their hallways. I put on the headphones and settle back with an old, familiar friend, Paul Simon’s “American Tune.” It is the perfect late night musical accompaniment to insomnia; its somber, stately melody cribbed from a J.S. Bach chorale, Simon’s gentle, hushed delivery unsuccessfully masking the images that churn with nocturnal disquiet:
I don't know a soul who's not been battered
I don't have a friend who feels at ease
I don't know a dream that's not been shattered
or driven to its knees
but it's alright, it's alright
for we lived so well so long
Still, when I think of the
road we're traveling on
I wonder what's gone wrong
I can't help it, I wonder what's gone wrong
It is an American tune from the early 1970s, conceived in a far different world that still encompassed Ho Chi Minh and Richard Nixon, the fresh memories of Kent State and My Lai, but it is a sentiment that must sound all too contemporary to those who descend daily to London tube stations, who fearfully cross Baghdad streets, or who inhabit the splintered ruins of hundreds of Asian villages and towns inundated by tsunami. It must ring in the ears of those who endure genocide in Darfur, in those who suffer from the AIDS plague throughout sub-Saharan Africa. Death carries no passport, and it is no respecter of nations. And we too here in America have heard that insistent refrain. Poor New Orleans, pummeled and drowned, struggles to return to something approaching normal life. Where I live, in Ohio, a Cleveland suburb loses 14 of its young men in one bloody day in Iraq, and a community seeks to comprehend the gaping hole at its heart. Even closer to home, my father-in-law lies in his newly dug grave, and two dear family members battle cancer. And at 3:00 a.m., I can’t help it. I wonder what's gone wrong.
We come on the ship they call the Mayflower
We come on the ship that sailed the moon
We come in the age's most uncertain hour
and sing an American tune
Oh, and it's alright, it's alright, it's alright
You can't be forever blessed
Still, tomorrow's going to be another working day
And I'm trying to get some rest
That's all I'm trying to get some rest
We cross the oceans and send rockets hurtling to the moon, planting our flag on whatever scrap of rock we can find, claiming the land and its allegiance as our own. But it is not our own. We are misfits and strangers here, still apt to be blown away by winds or bullets, always voyaging, never able to escape from ourselves or the inevitability of our demise. And there are days when it appears we have learned nothing, least of all how to love. Just turn on the news. Or take a look at my heart. I think of the words I have spattered this year like bullets, fired willy-nilly out of anger, arrogance, stupidity, even naivete, always amazed that the gun goes off when I pull the trigger, always slightly stunned when that smell in the air turns out to be gunpowder and not the sweet perfume of the roses I scatter in my mind. It is the shock of recognition, the one clear moment that comes only when all the distractions and entertainments have faded, when there are no more excuses, when the mirror reflects back our true image. What can you do? In my case, you pray. And you play the single greatest song of a singularly great American songwriter. You shut up and listen. Some nights that’s the best thing you can do.
And in my case I sit in my office, bathed in the blue glow of a computer monitor in a darkened room, pounding out this grim end-of-the-year reckoning. I will not be sad to see the end of 2005. Auld Lang Syne, and good riddance. We traffic in sorrow, the real hard coin of the realm, and music sometimes speaks hard truths. Tonight I listen to Paul Simon, to a beautiful melody and words that sting, and ponder the minor miracles: how we manage to rise above the broken heartedness and our own damned culpability, how we somehow find the strength and courage to get up, bleary eyed, and do it all over again.
-------------------------------------------------------------
It is a restless 3:00 a.m., the most melancholic hour for insomniacs. And it is a month near the dispirited end of a hellish year in which too many people have died. Sometimes I can block it out, and sometimes I can’t. The thoughts that swirl around my brain tell me that tonight I can’t.
The house settles around me. Everyone else is asleep. It is a Thursday night; work beckons again in just a few short hours. But sleep is not going to come, at least for a while, and so I wander downstairs, check my e-mail, read the CNN headlines, and look out my window at the few lights still on in my neighborhood, wondering who else is up and prowling their hallways. I put on the headphones and settle back with an old, familiar friend, Paul Simon’s “American Tune.” It is the perfect late night musical accompaniment to insomnia; its somber, stately melody cribbed from a J.S. Bach chorale, Simon’s gentle, hushed delivery unsuccessfully masking the images that churn with nocturnal disquiet:
I don't know a soul who's not been battered
I don't have a friend who feels at ease
I don't know a dream that's not been shattered
or driven to its knees
but it's alright, it's alright
for we lived so well so long
Still, when I think of the
road we're traveling on
I wonder what's gone wrong
I can't help it, I wonder what's gone wrong
It is an American tune from the early 1970s, conceived in a far different world that still encompassed Ho Chi Minh and Richard Nixon, the fresh memories of Kent State and My Lai, but it is a sentiment that must sound all too contemporary to those who descend daily to London tube stations, who fearfully cross Baghdad streets, or who inhabit the splintered ruins of hundreds of Asian villages and towns inundated by tsunami. It must ring in the ears of those who endure genocide in Darfur, in those who suffer from the AIDS plague throughout sub-Saharan Africa. Death carries no passport, and it is no respecter of nations. And we too here in America have heard that insistent refrain. Poor New Orleans, pummeled and drowned, struggles to return to something approaching normal life. Where I live, in Ohio, a Cleveland suburb loses 14 of its young men in one bloody day in Iraq, and a community seeks to comprehend the gaping hole at its heart. Even closer to home, my father-in-law lies in his newly dug grave, and two dear family members battle cancer. And at 3:00 a.m., I can’t help it. I wonder what's gone wrong.
We come on the ship they call the Mayflower
We come on the ship that sailed the moon
We come in the age's most uncertain hour
and sing an American tune
Oh, and it's alright, it's alright, it's alright
You can't be forever blessed
Still, tomorrow's going to be another working day
And I'm trying to get some rest
That's all I'm trying to get some rest
We cross the oceans and send rockets hurtling to the moon, planting our flag on whatever scrap of rock we can find, claiming the land and its allegiance as our own. But it is not our own. We are misfits and strangers here, still apt to be blown away by winds or bullets, always voyaging, never able to escape from ourselves or the inevitability of our demise. And there are days when it appears we have learned nothing, least of all how to love. Just turn on the news. Or take a look at my heart. I think of the words I have spattered this year like bullets, fired willy-nilly out of anger, arrogance, stupidity, even naivete, always amazed that the gun goes off when I pull the trigger, always slightly stunned when that smell in the air turns out to be gunpowder and not the sweet perfume of the roses I scatter in my mind. It is the shock of recognition, the one clear moment that comes only when all the distractions and entertainments have faded, when there are no more excuses, when the mirror reflects back our true image. What can you do? In my case, you pray. And you play the single greatest song of a singularly great American songwriter. You shut up and listen. Some nights that’s the best thing you can do.
And in my case I sit in my office, bathed in the blue glow of a computer monitor in a darkened room, pounding out this grim end-of-the-year reckoning. I will not be sad to see the end of 2005. Auld Lang Syne, and good riddance. We traffic in sorrow, the real hard coin of the realm, and music sometimes speaks hard truths. Tonight I listen to Paul Simon, to a beautiful melody and words that sting, and ponder the minor miracles: how we manage to rise above the broken heartedness and our own damned culpability, how we somehow find the strength and courage to get up, bleary eyed, and do it all over again.
Wednesday, September 21, 2005
Journey and REO Speedwagon in the Rock 'n Roll Hall of Fame
Not yet. Maybe next year.
The latest crop of nominees for the Rock 'n Roll Hall of Fame was released yesterday. Heading the list (are you ready for this?): John Mellencamp. Heading the list. I don't hate John Mellencamp. But he's a distinctly second-tier rocker whose music doesn't even begin to hold up against similar and better roots rockers such as Bruce Springsteen, Creedence Clearwater Revival, and Neil Young. Of course, those folks are already in the Hall, so we're now down to the second-tier artists across the board. I'm telling you, Steve Perry's day will come.
Other nominees: Miles Davis, Blondie, Cat Stevens, The Stooges, and The Patti Smith band.
Miles? Miles is a giant, no question. In the jazz world. Yeah, I know, he invented jazz-rock fusion, and he occasionally employed rock-oriented folks such as John McLaughlin in his band. But if "Bitches Brew" is rock 'n roll, then I'm Mick Jagger.
Blondie? A couple big hits. A very photogenic lead singer. Deserving of a place alongside The Beatles and Dylan? Are you kidding?
Cat Stevens? Actually, I'll buy that one. I suspect it's only dear Yusef's ties to Islam and the Salman Rushdie fatwah that have kept him out this long. But at least he's musically deserving.
And here's what I love: The Patti Smith Band and The Stooges. I do love them, truly. But we're now at the point where the vast majority of Americans, even those who follow music to some extent, will be completely unfamiliar with and underwhelmed by inductees into the Rock 'n Roll Hall of Fame. Ask Bubba and Wanda to name a single song recorded by either The Patti Smith Band or The Stooges. You'll either get a blank stare, or the comment, "I didn't know those guys made music, but I love their movies. Nyuck, nyuck, nyuck."
So how many years before the real musical versions of Moe, Larry, and Curly (Michael Stipe) can be inducted into the Hall?
The latest crop of nominees for the Rock 'n Roll Hall of Fame was released yesterday. Heading the list (are you ready for this?): John Mellencamp. Heading the list. I don't hate John Mellencamp. But he's a distinctly second-tier rocker whose music doesn't even begin to hold up against similar and better roots rockers such as Bruce Springsteen, Creedence Clearwater Revival, and Neil Young. Of course, those folks are already in the Hall, so we're now down to the second-tier artists across the board. I'm telling you, Steve Perry's day will come.
Other nominees: Miles Davis, Blondie, Cat Stevens, The Stooges, and The Patti Smith band.
Miles? Miles is a giant, no question. In the jazz world. Yeah, I know, he invented jazz-rock fusion, and he occasionally employed rock-oriented folks such as John McLaughlin in his band. But if "Bitches Brew" is rock 'n roll, then I'm Mick Jagger.
Blondie? A couple big hits. A very photogenic lead singer. Deserving of a place alongside The Beatles and Dylan? Are you kidding?
Cat Stevens? Actually, I'll buy that one. I suspect it's only dear Yusef's ties to Islam and the Salman Rushdie fatwah that have kept him out this long. But at least he's musically deserving.
And here's what I love: The Patti Smith Band and The Stooges. I do love them, truly. But we're now at the point where the vast majority of Americans, even those who follow music to some extent, will be completely unfamiliar with and underwhelmed by inductees into the Rock 'n Roll Hall of Fame. Ask Bubba and Wanda to name a single song recorded by either The Patti Smith Band or The Stooges. You'll either get a blank stare, or the comment, "I didn't know those guys made music, but I love their movies. Nyuck, nyuck, nyuck."
So how many years before the real musical versions of Moe, Larry, and Curly (Michael Stipe) can be inducted into the Hall?
Wednesday, September 14, 2005
Sufjan Stevens in Cleveland
The three of us – Nick, Jeff, and I – hit the road by 5:30, right on schedule. It was Boys Night Out, and the boys, two slouching into middle age, one right on the verge of AARP eligibility, were embarking on a five-hour round trip to a late night rock show. Why grow up now?
When I saw Sufjan Stevens back in April at Calvin College he wore a swan costume and played before a hushed, attentive audience. No one snickered, although there were times when I had to stifle the urge, and I looked around incredulously, thinking surely that some smartass undergraduate with less decorum than my reserved, AARP-ready self was going to beat me to it. But no one did, and after five minutes I was won over. The swan costume looked more like angel’s wings, the perfect visual prop for music so fragile and ethereally beautiful that it had to be produced by a graduate of Seraph State. We got mostly songs from Michigan and (of course) Seven Swans that night, with a teaser from the upcoming Illinois album. It was gorgeous – audaciously gorgeous – music, and I vowed to follow Sufjan any time he came within about a 150-mile radius of home.
He barely made the cutoff point. Last night in Cleveland, 146 miles from home, we got raucous kitsch instead of ethereal fragility, and the crowd, primed for a pep rally, responded with rowdy enthusiasm. You Sufjan fans probably know the drill by now – the cheerleader costumes, the pom poms, the numerous Illinois-themed cheers/chants that serve as the between-song banter. It was fun the first couple times, mildly annoying after the eighth. But it was no big deal. The songs – overwhelmingly from Illinois this time, naturally – were performed flawlessly. I was particularly impressed with “The Predatory Wasp …,” wondering how Sufjan could possibly pull off that complex orchestral arrangement in concert. It helped to have eight people on stage – horns, guitars, keyboards, and those fine ‘60s girl group backup vocalists (The Swanettes?) singing marvelous counterpoint. We heard most of the Illinois album, minus the U.F.O and John Wayne Gacy Jr. songs. We heard “A Good Man is Hard to Find” and “The Trees of the Field Will Clap Their Hands” from Seven Swans, “For the Widows in Paradise …” from Michigan. Most curiously and chillingly, we heard the crowd sing along with “Casimir Pulaski Day,” the first feel-good crowd pleaser about bone cancer I’ve ever heard. We witnessed a very fine concert – very different from but just as compelling as the one I witnessed in April.
Opener Laura Veirs left me cold. Sorry. There was some occasionally interesting feedback squall, but otherwise her songs weren’t memorable either musically or lyrically. Midway through her set my friend Jeff and I wandered over to the record store next to the concert venue, chatted with the owner for a bit, and bought a couple of new CDs. All in time to make it back easily before Sufjan’s set.
And after Sufjan we drove back home, had more great conversation, and I was snug and in bed by 3:15. And then Kate wanted to talk about her day.
I’m paying for it today, of course, living with the cumulative effects of two and a half hours of sleep and a 50-year-old body, precariously functioning thanks to copious amounts of coffee, ready for another fine day in corporate America. It is the abuse we endure for music and friendship and marriage. I love it, am incredibly thankful for the whole messy, exhilarating, joyous thing. I’d gladly do it again – in a month or two.
When I saw Sufjan Stevens back in April at Calvin College he wore a swan costume and played before a hushed, attentive audience. No one snickered, although there were times when I had to stifle the urge, and I looked around incredulously, thinking surely that some smartass undergraduate with less decorum than my reserved, AARP-ready self was going to beat me to it. But no one did, and after five minutes I was won over. The swan costume looked more like angel’s wings, the perfect visual prop for music so fragile and ethereally beautiful that it had to be produced by a graduate of Seraph State. We got mostly songs from Michigan and (of course) Seven Swans that night, with a teaser from the upcoming Illinois album. It was gorgeous – audaciously gorgeous – music, and I vowed to follow Sufjan any time he came within about a 150-mile radius of home.
He barely made the cutoff point. Last night in Cleveland, 146 miles from home, we got raucous kitsch instead of ethereal fragility, and the crowd, primed for a pep rally, responded with rowdy enthusiasm. You Sufjan fans probably know the drill by now – the cheerleader costumes, the pom poms, the numerous Illinois-themed cheers/chants that serve as the between-song banter. It was fun the first couple times, mildly annoying after the eighth. But it was no big deal. The songs – overwhelmingly from Illinois this time, naturally – were performed flawlessly. I was particularly impressed with “The Predatory Wasp …,” wondering how Sufjan could possibly pull off that complex orchestral arrangement in concert. It helped to have eight people on stage – horns, guitars, keyboards, and those fine ‘60s girl group backup vocalists (The Swanettes?) singing marvelous counterpoint. We heard most of the Illinois album, minus the U.F.O and John Wayne Gacy Jr. songs. We heard “A Good Man is Hard to Find” and “The Trees of the Field Will Clap Their Hands” from Seven Swans, “For the Widows in Paradise …” from Michigan. Most curiously and chillingly, we heard the crowd sing along with “Casimir Pulaski Day,” the first feel-good crowd pleaser about bone cancer I’ve ever heard. We witnessed a very fine concert – very different from but just as compelling as the one I witnessed in April.
Opener Laura Veirs left me cold. Sorry. There was some occasionally interesting feedback squall, but otherwise her songs weren’t memorable either musically or lyrically. Midway through her set my friend Jeff and I wandered over to the record store next to the concert venue, chatted with the owner for a bit, and bought a couple of new CDs. All in time to make it back easily before Sufjan’s set.
And after Sufjan we drove back home, had more great conversation, and I was snug and in bed by 3:15. And then Kate wanted to talk about her day.
I’m paying for it today, of course, living with the cumulative effects of two and a half hours of sleep and a 50-year-old body, precariously functioning thanks to copious amounts of coffee, ready for another fine day in corporate America. It is the abuse we endure for music and friendship and marriage. I love it, am incredibly thankful for the whole messy, exhilarating, joyous thing. I’d gladly do it again – in a month or two.
Tuesday, September 13, 2005
Sigur Ros' "Takk" -- Cherubim Rock
If the cherubim form garage bands (and one can only hope they do), then surely this must be the sound they make. I've only made it through one complete listen, most of it in the car, so I'm sure I've missed many of the nuances of this album. The usual criticisms -- the bombast, the pretension, the unrelenting elven tweeness of Jonsi's falsetto -- could probably be leveled against Takk. Who cares? The music is so gloriously sweeping and panoramic and downright spiritually uplifting that there were times when I had difficulty not raising my hands from the steering wheel, not a recommended practice when driving a minivan. I love the strings. I love the brass band. And I love the vision of a band that simply wants to make transparently beautiful music. They succeeded.
A new Sigur Ros album today and Sufjan Stevens in Cleveland tonight. It doesn't get much more beautiful and beatific than that.
A new Sigur Ros album today and Sufjan Stevens in Cleveland tonight. It doesn't get much more beautiful and beatific than that.
Monday, September 12, 2005
Two Beatific Sightings in One Day
Tomorrow I expect to be the recipient of two beatific visions. This could be better than Lourdes and/or Fatima. I'll let you know how it turns out.
1) The new Sigur Ros album (Takk) will be released, the first since the unpronounceable ( ) and the only album with any real shot for me of displacing Sufjan Stevens' Illinois as Best Album of 2005. I expect to listen to the angelic warblings at full volume as I race up the freeway tomorrow night to see and hear:
2) Sufjan Stevens, who will be playing in Cleveland. The last time I saw Sufjan was in April, when he cocked his head slightly in a beatific way and played the banjo while wearing a swan costume, an event which inexplicably did not cause me to bludgeon my head against the nearest hard surface. It was, in fact, beatifically beautiful, and I'm expecting more of the same, only in a University of Illinois cheerleader outfit this time. Given that, he'll have to work hard to achieve the beatific vision, but with that music, he's got a shot. I'm really getting too old to do these roadtrips, arriving home at 3:00 and rising at 6:00 to go to work. But one does what one has to do for the beatific visions.
1) The new Sigur Ros album (Takk) will be released, the first since the unpronounceable ( ) and the only album with any real shot for me of displacing Sufjan Stevens' Illinois as Best Album of 2005. I expect to listen to the angelic warblings at full volume as I race up the freeway tomorrow night to see and hear:
2) Sufjan Stevens, who will be playing in Cleveland. The last time I saw Sufjan was in April, when he cocked his head slightly in a beatific way and played the banjo while wearing a swan costume, an event which inexplicably did not cause me to bludgeon my head against the nearest hard surface. It was, in fact, beatifically beautiful, and I'm expecting more of the same, only in a University of Illinois cheerleader outfit this time. Given that, he'll have to work hard to achieve the beatific vision, but with that music, he's got a shot. I'm really getting too old to do these roadtrips, arriving home at 3:00 and rising at 6:00 to go to work. But one does what one has to do for the beatific visions.
Currently Playing ...
The New Pornographers -- Twin Cinema -- A.C. (Carl) Newman is a pop genius. Sure, Neko Case has a great set of pipes, and Dan Bejar contributes a few decent songs, but this is Newman's album, and he continually amazes me with his ability to turn the most tired power pop conventions inside out. Yes, you'll hear echoes of The Kinks and The Who, but it still sounds remarkably fresh. If it weren't for the three slightly inferior Bejar songs, Twin Cinema would be right there with Sufjan Stevens' Illinois as my choice for Album of the Year.
Son Volt -- Okemah and the Melody of Riot -- Which, if I do say so, plays rings around the latest disappointment from Wilco. As far as I'm concerned, Jay Farrar has always been the winner in the great Uncle Tupelo schism, but his solo albums have been meandering, noodling affairs featuring a few good songs surrounded by filler. Not so this time. The songwriting is much more tightly focused, the newly revamped Son Volt plays some righteous rock 'n roll ("6 String Belief" is an absolute anthem), and Farrar's vocals sound passionate and soulful. A wonderful return to the form that produced Trace, and easily the second best album in the Son Volt catalogue.
The Clientele -- Strange Geometry -- Gently melodic English folk rock, as filtered through a decidedly '60s sensibility. I hear echoes of Van's Astral Weeks and Nick Drake's Five Leaves Left mixed with the more baroque tendencies of Anglophiles such as The Left Banke. It's all pretty and it's all feathery light until you start listening to the lyrics, which are uniformly thoughtful, if a bit downbeat. But it's literate loveliness, and that's always in short supply.
Jose Gonzalez -- Veneer -- And speaking of Nick Drake ... Gonzalez has certainly spent his time with the Drake catalogue, and this album comes closer to recapturing that beautiful, hushed, doomed sound than anything I've heard in a long time. Gonzalez is not as mopey as Elliott Smith, and his accomplished fingerpicking compares favorably to Drake's innovative guitar work. What's not to like?
The Wild Tchoupitoulas -- The Wild Tchoupitoulas -- Poor, poor New Orleans. They play party music at funerals down there, so I've been playing this 1975 funk masterpiece from The Wild Tchoupitoulas, a loose collective of New Orleans R&B greats made up of members of The Meters and The Neville Brothers. It doesn't get any tighter or funkier than this.
Son Volt -- Okemah and the Melody of Riot -- Which, if I do say so, plays rings around the latest disappointment from Wilco. As far as I'm concerned, Jay Farrar has always been the winner in the great Uncle Tupelo schism, but his solo albums have been meandering, noodling affairs featuring a few good songs surrounded by filler. Not so this time. The songwriting is much more tightly focused, the newly revamped Son Volt plays some righteous rock 'n roll ("6 String Belief" is an absolute anthem), and Farrar's vocals sound passionate and soulful. A wonderful return to the form that produced Trace, and easily the second best album in the Son Volt catalogue.
The Clientele -- Strange Geometry -- Gently melodic English folk rock, as filtered through a decidedly '60s sensibility. I hear echoes of Van's Astral Weeks and Nick Drake's Five Leaves Left mixed with the more baroque tendencies of Anglophiles such as The Left Banke. It's all pretty and it's all feathery light until you start listening to the lyrics, which are uniformly thoughtful, if a bit downbeat. But it's literate loveliness, and that's always in short supply.
Jose Gonzalez -- Veneer -- And speaking of Nick Drake ... Gonzalez has certainly spent his time with the Drake catalogue, and this album comes closer to recapturing that beautiful, hushed, doomed sound than anything I've heard in a long time. Gonzalez is not as mopey as Elliott Smith, and his accomplished fingerpicking compares favorably to Drake's innovative guitar work. What's not to like?
The Wild Tchoupitoulas -- The Wild Tchoupitoulas -- Poor, poor New Orleans. They play party music at funerals down there, so I've been playing this 1975 funk masterpiece from The Wild Tchoupitoulas, a loose collective of New Orleans R&B greats made up of members of The Meters and The Neville Brothers. It doesn't get any tighter or funkier than this.
Friday, September 09, 2005
Do You Know What It Means To Miss New Orleans?
“New Orleans is a city surrounded by water -- Lake Pontchartrain, the Mississippi River, and myriad bayous, canals and waterways. Because we are below sea level, we need complex systems of levees, drainage canals, spillways and pumping stations to keep the life-giving water from killing us.” – from http://www.gumbopages.com
I’ve never been to New Orleans. I’ve never seen the French Quarter, eaten a beignet or a King Cake, or joined in the Mardi Gras revelry. My knowledge of the city is based on photographs, movies, and the lively images I’ve conjured in my own mind. It is a composite formed by PBS documentaries on Louis Armstrong and Jelly Roll Morton, John Kennedy Toole and Walker Percy novels and Tennessee Williams plays, and the Mardi Gras debauchery in Easy Rider and the bordello scenes in Pretty Baby. And by music, of course. Lots of music. Corrupt and decadent, florid and outsized, and unlike any place else on earth, New Orleans has always typified for me everything that is simultaneously seedy and exotic and alluring in American culture. It was always on my list of future vacation destinations. One day I would visit there, take it all in. The images, real or imagined, would become reality.
And now a different set of images emerges. They call it the Big Easy, a name that surely must leave a bitter taste in the mouth these days. There is nothing easy about New Orleans in this late summer of 2005, nothing remotely hospitable and welcoming about drowning and starvation and E. coli bacteria. The dead float in the canals and streets, unreachable, human buoys bobbing on the surface. Fires rage in the drowned city, and there is no water pressure to put them out. People die shockingly, casually, by the sides of impassable highways, and they are simply moved aside and covered with dirty blankets. It is too much to take in. It is Hiroshima and Auschwitz and the Twin Towers, misery compounded by horror, and it is live and in color from the birthplace of jazz.
I cope by doing what millions of other Americans do. I pray. I write my checks to the American Red Cross. I worry and fret, feel helpless, angry, and very, very sad. “Can you believe what is happening in New Orleans?” I ask a co-worker. He shrugs his shoulders and mumbles noncommittally. “Yeah, they’re screwed,” he says, and I want to punch him, slap some sense, or at least some common decency and compassion, into him. Apparently I am not coping all that well. I need a better strategy.
And so I play music, in this case the music of New Orleans. Sometimes it helps, sometimes it doesn’t, but it reminds me of the greatness of what has been and of what may be no more, and of the faint flickering of what may one day rise again. And it gives me hope. God knows I need that. And God knows there is a lot of the music to play – the great zydeco recordings of Clifton Chenier and Queen Ida, the rich Cajun gumbo of Beausoleil and Marc and Ann Savoy, the incomparable R&B/funk of The Meters, The Neville Brothers, The Wild Tchoupitoulas, and Doctor John, the superb blues recordings of Professor Longhair, Lightnin’ Slim, Irma Thomas, and Slim Harpo, the early rock ‘n roll of pioneers such as Fats Domino, Lee Dorsey, and Lloyd Price, the modern-day contributions of stalwarts like Lucinda Williams, The Subdudes, Sonny Landreth, and Jon Cleary. New Orleans natives or residents, one and all. And that list doesn’t even begin to account for the kaleidoscopic innovations of New Orleans jazz, from Kid Ory and Sidney Bechet through Wynton Marsalis and The Dirty Dozen Brass Band. At the center of those vast changes, and emblematic of that creative ferment, is Louis Armstrong, and I play his music more than that of any other New Orleans musician – the Hot Fives, the Hot Sevens, and, with increasing frequency, a sweetly sentimental song that has taken on its own pathos in the past few days:
Do you know what it means to miss New Orleans
And miss it each night and day
I know I'm not wrong, this feeling's gettin' stronger
The longer I stay away
It is the song that links the man with the place. Louie Armstrong recorded better songs. But nowhere else did he come closer to the intersection of his own life and the sense of loss that fueled his greatest music. Louie didn’t write the song, but he owned it as surely as Sinatra owned New York. And now I listen to it and try to own it myself, try to find the point of connection that will help me process this unfathomable loss.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
And all too quickly the urgency turns to schmaltz:
Miss them moss covered vines, the tall sugar pines
Where mockin' birds used to sing
And I'd like to see that lazy Mississippi
Hurryin' into spring
The moonlight on the bayou,
A Creole tune that fills the air
I dream about Magnolias in bloom
And I'm wishin' I was there
Perhaps it is inevitable. The beauty of a real, vibrant city turns to cliché and sloppy sentimentality. The dirty, smelly, in-your-faceness of the French Quarter is transfigured into dreamy Creole tunes and hopelessly saccharine romanticism, mockingbirds and magnolia blossoms and moonbeams. Louie always was the master of cornpone.
And just as quickly the churn in the gut turns to dispassionate observation, political debate, the detached study of two-dimensional images and sound bytes. I am suffering from informational and emotional overload. Not only my brain, but my heart, has started to shut down. New Orleans is becoming simply “news” to me, something to be digested for half an hour before bedtime.
I hate this. I hate the fickleness of my own heart, which breaks for a few days, and then is bored and ready to move on to a new tragedy. I hate how quickly I become the co-worker I despise, with his flippant dismissal, his blatant disregard for basic human kindness. And I hate how easily sidetracked I can become when a very real, enormous tragedy becomes little more than flickering images on a screen. Apocalypse in New Orleans? Yeah, that’s big, but the Cleveland Indians are playing the Detroit Tigers.
I play New Orleans music in order to remember, but all too quickly I forget, grow calloused. Even the Mardi Gras funk and party music of Bourbon Street sounds unreal and forced to me, unintentionally ironic. “Meet the boys down on the battlefront,” The Wild Tchoupitoulas chant, one of the great fanny shakers and party tunes of all time, and I envision troops in their Iraq combat gear trying to evacuate the refugees at the Louisiana Superdome. “I was in the right place/But it must have been the wrong time,” Doctor John sings, and I wince when I hear it. No kidding. He didn’t intend it that way, but now it sounds prophetic.
There are a million displaced, homeless persons, thousands dead, every one of them with their own stories, their own hopes and dreams, now gone. I cannot fathom millions. I cannot fathom thousands. But I can imagine a face, just one face. And I need to find that face, I need to find that point of personal connection. For the sake of my soul, I need to cling to the urgency.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Do you know what it means to miss New Orleans
When that's where you left your heart
And there's one thing more, I miss the one I care for
More than I miss New Orleans
It happens over Labor Day. I’ve never been to New Orleans, but New Orleans has come to me.
In spite of the soaring price of gasoline, my family has decided to visit my brother-in-law and sister-in-law. And so on the Sunday of Labor Day weekend I sit in a church pew in Muncie, Indiana, a thousand miles and a million sorrows removed from the Big Easy. I listen to a terrified woman named Mercedes talk about her family. Mercedes is now a professor at Ball State University, but she grew up in New Orleans. And now she misses the ones she cares for. “They thought they could ride it out,” she tells the congregation, weeping. “And I haven’t heard from them since last Sunday. I don’t know where my mother is, where my father is, where any of them are. I don’t know what’s happened to any of them. I’ve heard nothing.”
This is a Presbyterian Church, which prides itself on doing all things decently and in order, but there is nothing decent or orderly about the emotional wreckage on display this Sunday morning. The pastor has handed over his pulpit to someone with a raw, gaping wound of pain and uncertainty, grief and terror. Surrounded by stained glass windows and a fifty-foot pipe organ and polished hardwood pews, it is evident that this poor, distraught woman wants to scream. Listening to her, feeling my heart ripped open against my will, so do I. But five minutes of agony is sufficient, and we return to the liturgy – safe, comforting, predictable.
But I cannot forget her face. There is nothing else to do but drive home on Monday, pray for this frightened woman and her family, for a city of sodden, homeless, desperate people, and play Louie Armstrong once again. How can I miss what I have never known? But I do. And I listen to Louie’s old song, listen past those campy vocals, past the cornball verses, strain to hear something good and lasting and true. And it is there, as it always is, in the sound of the horn. It is an insistent cry that cannot be smothered, that cannot help but sound blue, even in the slightest of pop songs. Yes, there it is: it’s the horn.
And so I talk to God about the ache in my soul, about Mercedes, about the dead with their names and their individual stories, bobbing in the chemical-filled waters. I close my eyes and listen and imagine Louie’s glorious trumpet notes floating free over a ruined city; finally, at long last, something good that floats.
I’ve never been to New Orleans. I’ve never seen the French Quarter, eaten a beignet or a King Cake, or joined in the Mardi Gras revelry. My knowledge of the city is based on photographs, movies, and the lively images I’ve conjured in my own mind. It is a composite formed by PBS documentaries on Louis Armstrong and Jelly Roll Morton, John Kennedy Toole and Walker Percy novels and Tennessee Williams plays, and the Mardi Gras debauchery in Easy Rider and the bordello scenes in Pretty Baby. And by music, of course. Lots of music. Corrupt and decadent, florid and outsized, and unlike any place else on earth, New Orleans has always typified for me everything that is simultaneously seedy and exotic and alluring in American culture. It was always on my list of future vacation destinations. One day I would visit there, take it all in. The images, real or imagined, would become reality.
And now a different set of images emerges. They call it the Big Easy, a name that surely must leave a bitter taste in the mouth these days. There is nothing easy about New Orleans in this late summer of 2005, nothing remotely hospitable and welcoming about drowning and starvation and E. coli bacteria. The dead float in the canals and streets, unreachable, human buoys bobbing on the surface. Fires rage in the drowned city, and there is no water pressure to put them out. People die shockingly, casually, by the sides of impassable highways, and they are simply moved aside and covered with dirty blankets. It is too much to take in. It is Hiroshima and Auschwitz and the Twin Towers, misery compounded by horror, and it is live and in color from the birthplace of jazz.
I cope by doing what millions of other Americans do. I pray. I write my checks to the American Red Cross. I worry and fret, feel helpless, angry, and very, very sad. “Can you believe what is happening in New Orleans?” I ask a co-worker. He shrugs his shoulders and mumbles noncommittally. “Yeah, they’re screwed,” he says, and I want to punch him, slap some sense, or at least some common decency and compassion, into him. Apparently I am not coping all that well. I need a better strategy.
And so I play music, in this case the music of New Orleans. Sometimes it helps, sometimes it doesn’t, but it reminds me of the greatness of what has been and of what may be no more, and of the faint flickering of what may one day rise again. And it gives me hope. God knows I need that. And God knows there is a lot of the music to play – the great zydeco recordings of Clifton Chenier and Queen Ida, the rich Cajun gumbo of Beausoleil and Marc and Ann Savoy, the incomparable R&B/funk of The Meters, The Neville Brothers, The Wild Tchoupitoulas, and Doctor John, the superb blues recordings of Professor Longhair, Lightnin’ Slim, Irma Thomas, and Slim Harpo, the early rock ‘n roll of pioneers such as Fats Domino, Lee Dorsey, and Lloyd Price, the modern-day contributions of stalwarts like Lucinda Williams, The Subdudes, Sonny Landreth, and Jon Cleary. New Orleans natives or residents, one and all. And that list doesn’t even begin to account for the kaleidoscopic innovations of New Orleans jazz, from Kid Ory and Sidney Bechet through Wynton Marsalis and The Dirty Dozen Brass Band. At the center of those vast changes, and emblematic of that creative ferment, is Louis Armstrong, and I play his music more than that of any other New Orleans musician – the Hot Fives, the Hot Sevens, and, with increasing frequency, a sweetly sentimental song that has taken on its own pathos in the past few days:
Do you know what it means to miss New Orleans
And miss it each night and day
I know I'm not wrong, this feeling's gettin' stronger
The longer I stay away
It is the song that links the man with the place. Louie Armstrong recorded better songs. But nowhere else did he come closer to the intersection of his own life and the sense of loss that fueled his greatest music. Louie didn’t write the song, but he owned it as surely as Sinatra owned New York. And now I listen to it and try to own it myself, try to find the point of connection that will help me process this unfathomable loss.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
And all too quickly the urgency turns to schmaltz:
Miss them moss covered vines, the tall sugar pines
Where mockin' birds used to sing
And I'd like to see that lazy Mississippi
Hurryin' into spring
The moonlight on the bayou,
A Creole tune that fills the air
I dream about Magnolias in bloom
And I'm wishin' I was there
Perhaps it is inevitable. The beauty of a real, vibrant city turns to cliché and sloppy sentimentality. The dirty, smelly, in-your-faceness of the French Quarter is transfigured into dreamy Creole tunes and hopelessly saccharine romanticism, mockingbirds and magnolia blossoms and moonbeams. Louie always was the master of cornpone.
And just as quickly the churn in the gut turns to dispassionate observation, political debate, the detached study of two-dimensional images and sound bytes. I am suffering from informational and emotional overload. Not only my brain, but my heart, has started to shut down. New Orleans is becoming simply “news” to me, something to be digested for half an hour before bedtime.
I hate this. I hate the fickleness of my own heart, which breaks for a few days, and then is bored and ready to move on to a new tragedy. I hate how quickly I become the co-worker I despise, with his flippant dismissal, his blatant disregard for basic human kindness. And I hate how easily sidetracked I can become when a very real, enormous tragedy becomes little more than flickering images on a screen. Apocalypse in New Orleans? Yeah, that’s big, but the Cleveland Indians are playing the Detroit Tigers.
I play New Orleans music in order to remember, but all too quickly I forget, grow calloused. Even the Mardi Gras funk and party music of Bourbon Street sounds unreal and forced to me, unintentionally ironic. “Meet the boys down on the battlefront,” The Wild Tchoupitoulas chant, one of the great fanny shakers and party tunes of all time, and I envision troops in their Iraq combat gear trying to evacuate the refugees at the Louisiana Superdome. “I was in the right place/But it must have been the wrong time,” Doctor John sings, and I wince when I hear it. No kidding. He didn’t intend it that way, but now it sounds prophetic.
There are a million displaced, homeless persons, thousands dead, every one of them with their own stories, their own hopes and dreams, now gone. I cannot fathom millions. I cannot fathom thousands. But I can imagine a face, just one face. And I need to find that face, I need to find that point of personal connection. For the sake of my soul, I need to cling to the urgency.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Do you know what it means to miss New Orleans
When that's where you left your heart
And there's one thing more, I miss the one I care for
More than I miss New Orleans
It happens over Labor Day. I’ve never been to New Orleans, but New Orleans has come to me.
In spite of the soaring price of gasoline, my family has decided to visit my brother-in-law and sister-in-law. And so on the Sunday of Labor Day weekend I sit in a church pew in Muncie, Indiana, a thousand miles and a million sorrows removed from the Big Easy. I listen to a terrified woman named Mercedes talk about her family. Mercedes is now a professor at Ball State University, but she grew up in New Orleans. And now she misses the ones she cares for. “They thought they could ride it out,” she tells the congregation, weeping. “And I haven’t heard from them since last Sunday. I don’t know where my mother is, where my father is, where any of them are. I don’t know what’s happened to any of them. I’ve heard nothing.”
This is a Presbyterian Church, which prides itself on doing all things decently and in order, but there is nothing decent or orderly about the emotional wreckage on display this Sunday morning. The pastor has handed over his pulpit to someone with a raw, gaping wound of pain and uncertainty, grief and terror. Surrounded by stained glass windows and a fifty-foot pipe organ and polished hardwood pews, it is evident that this poor, distraught woman wants to scream. Listening to her, feeling my heart ripped open against my will, so do I. But five minutes of agony is sufficient, and we return to the liturgy – safe, comforting, predictable.
But I cannot forget her face. There is nothing else to do but drive home on Monday, pray for this frightened woman and her family, for a city of sodden, homeless, desperate people, and play Louie Armstrong once again. How can I miss what I have never known? But I do. And I listen to Louie’s old song, listen past those campy vocals, past the cornball verses, strain to hear something good and lasting and true. And it is there, as it always is, in the sound of the horn. It is an insistent cry that cannot be smothered, that cannot help but sound blue, even in the slightest of pop songs. Yes, there it is: it’s the horn.
And so I talk to God about the ache in my soul, about Mercedes, about the dead with their names and their individual stories, bobbing in the chemical-filled waters. I close my eyes and listen and imagine Louie’s glorious trumpet notes floating free over a ruined city; finally, at long last, something good that floats.
Tuesday, September 06, 2005
Jesus in New Orleans
Some songs are best heard in a live setting. This is one of them. Kate and I saw Over the Rhine in Columbus Friday night, and Karen Bergquist sang this song. I know it from Over the Rhine's album Ohio, but I was unprepared for the detonation that would go off in my heart in light of Hurricane Katrina. Obviously OTR didn't write the song with those circumstances in mind, but the song took on whole new shades of meaning, and I don't know if I've ever heard a vocalist put quite so much soul and passion into a performance. It was obvious that the song had taken on a new meaning for the band as well.
The last time I saw Jesus
I was drinking bloody mary's in the South
In a barroom in New Orleans
Rinsin' out the bad taste in my mouth
She wore a dark and faded blazer
With a little of the lining hanging out
When the jukebox played Miss Dorothy Moore
I knew that it was him without a doubt
I said the road is my redeemer
I never know just what on earth I'll find
In the faces of a stranger
In the dark and weary corners of a mind
She said, The last highway is only
As far away as you are from yourself
And no matter just how bad it gets
It does no good to blame somebody else
Ain't it crazy
What's revealed when you're not looking all that close
Ain't it crazy
How we put to death the ones we need the most
I know I'm not a martyr
I've never died for anyone but me
The last frontier is only
The stranger in the mirror that I see
But when I least expect it
Here and there I see my savior's face
He's still my favorite loser
Falling for the entire human race
Ain't it crazy
What's revealed when you're not looking all that close
Ain't it crazy
How we put to death the ones we need the most
Let the politicians cast their recriminations and point their fingers. We have better things to do. Today there are a hundred thousand faces of Jesus in New Orleans. Some of them are handing out food and water, and some of them are wearing faded blazers with the lining hanging out, and are only too happy to be clothed and fed. They are all important. Every one of them.
The last time I saw Jesus
I was drinking bloody mary's in the South
In a barroom in New Orleans
Rinsin' out the bad taste in my mouth
She wore a dark and faded blazer
With a little of the lining hanging out
When the jukebox played Miss Dorothy Moore
I knew that it was him without a doubt
I said the road is my redeemer
I never know just what on earth I'll find
In the faces of a stranger
In the dark and weary corners of a mind
She said, The last highway is only
As far away as you are from yourself
And no matter just how bad it gets
It does no good to blame somebody else
Ain't it crazy
What's revealed when you're not looking all that close
Ain't it crazy
How we put to death the ones we need the most
I know I'm not a martyr
I've never died for anyone but me
The last frontier is only
The stranger in the mirror that I see
But when I least expect it
Here and there I see my savior's face
He's still my favorite loser
Falling for the entire human race
Ain't it crazy
What's revealed when you're not looking all that close
Ain't it crazy
How we put to death the ones we need the most
Let the politicians cast their recriminations and point their fingers. We have better things to do. Today there are a hundred thousand faces of Jesus in New Orleans. Some of them are handing out food and water, and some of them are wearing faded blazers with the lining hanging out, and are only too happy to be clothed and fed. They are all important. Every one of them.
Friday, September 02, 2005
Burnout
I'm tired. Work deadlines have contributed to a succession of 12-hour workdays this week. I've been dealing with crazy/sad decisions that some friends have made, decisions driven by brokenness and an inability to cope in healthy ways. No finger pointing intended, but it's a draining and sad time, and it takes its toll on one's emotional and spiritual wellbeing. On top of that, we're occasionally casting glimpses at the TV, where all I see is unremitting despair and gloom from New Orleans and vicinity. I pray. I write my checks. I try to be a friend. I try to get my work done. One thing I don't do is sleep much. I want to curl into a fetal position and declare a moratorium on life and its insistent and sometimes impossible demands. I'll be okay. It's just the normal stresses that come from living on a fallen planet. But some days all I can do is groan. Please excuse my groaning.
Saturday, August 27, 2005
The Americana Mix
Following Dan's lead, I offer the Americana Mix, free to all takers:
1. Carry Me Ohio -- Sun Kil Moon (6:21)
2. Foreign Lander -- Tim O'Brien (4:36)
3. Rock Salt and Nails -- Buddy and Julie Miller (4:16)
4. Bandages and Scars -- Son Volt (3:22)
5. Bible Song -- Lori McKenna (3:48)
6. Party Time -- Caitlin Cary and Thad Cockrell (3:24)
7. The Living Bubba -- Drive-By Truckers (5:56)
8. If I'm Gonna Sink (I Might as Well Go to the Bottom) -- Neko Case (2:54)
9. Sandy Ford (Barbara Lee) -- Jim Lauderdale (4:48)
10. Killing the Blues -- Malcolm Holcombe (3:32)
11. In Town -- Todd Fancey (4:19)
12. When the Earth's Last Picture is Painted -- Milton Mapes (6:00)
13. Take It Down -- John Hiatt (4:00)
14. If the World Should End in Fire -- The Handsome Family (1:09)
15. Wondrous Love -- Ann and Phil Case (3:17)
16. Beyond the Shore -- Willard Grant Conspiracy (3:14)
A little commentary: I love country music -- at least the kind that emanates from some holler in West Virginia or some honky-tonk in Blue Collar, U.S.A. Can't stand the Gnashville variety. This mix is heavy on the first two flavors, with big-time twang, distorted electric guitars, and weeping pedal steel well to the forefront.
Those of you with astute ears or who paid attention to '70s rock will pick up on my Neil Young fixation. What can I say? I'm a sucker for whiny, nasal vocals and loud, distorted guitars. To that end, Sun Kil Moon, Son Volt, Drive-By Truckers, Milton Mapes (that's a band name, not a person, kinda like Jethro Tull, only louder and rootsier) and John Hiatt fit the bill quite nicely. I also love the classic sound of male/female country duets. Think George Jones and Tammy Wynette, Johnny and June Carter Cash, and Gram Parsons and Emmylou Harris. Here, Buddy and Julie Miller, Caitlin Cary and Thad Cockrell, and Columbus' own Ann and Phil Case carry on the tradition. Lori McKenna, Jim Lauderdale, Neko Case and Malcolm Holcombe have soul oozing out of every pore, and the sound of their voices is enough to send me into paroxysms of delight (you don't want to be around me when this happens; I hear paroxysms are contagious). Todd Fancy plays in the indie rock band The New Pornographers. Here he sounds like a cowboy Brian Wilson, with his triple- and quadruple-tracked Beach Boys harmonies. Love that pedal steel, too. The Handsome Family are a strange lot; I love this song, though. Apocalypse Now, yeehaw!
Finally, Tim O'Brien's "Foreign Lander" is an Irish Folk song as transplanted to Appalachia, and goes back a few hundred years. It's one of the prettiest songs I've ever heard. There's a reason why some of these songs last hundreds of years. "Beyomd the Shore" is a special song for me. I listened to it a lot during the time my brother-in-law was dying of cancer about a year and a half ago. I don't know his religious convictions. I know he loved his wife and kids, and I know he knew something of shame's great load. So I played this song for him and prayed this song for him during those dark months when he was dying. Now I pray that I'll see him again beyond the shore.
1. Carry Me Ohio -- Sun Kil Moon (6:21)
2. Foreign Lander -- Tim O'Brien (4:36)
3. Rock Salt and Nails -- Buddy and Julie Miller (4:16)
4. Bandages and Scars -- Son Volt (3:22)
5. Bible Song -- Lori McKenna (3:48)
6. Party Time -- Caitlin Cary and Thad Cockrell (3:24)
7. The Living Bubba -- Drive-By Truckers (5:56)
8. If I'm Gonna Sink (I Might as Well Go to the Bottom) -- Neko Case (2:54)
9. Sandy Ford (Barbara Lee) -- Jim Lauderdale (4:48)
10. Killing the Blues -- Malcolm Holcombe (3:32)
11. In Town -- Todd Fancey (4:19)
12. When the Earth's Last Picture is Painted -- Milton Mapes (6:00)
13. Take It Down -- John Hiatt (4:00)
14. If the World Should End in Fire -- The Handsome Family (1:09)
15. Wondrous Love -- Ann and Phil Case (3:17)
16. Beyond the Shore -- Willard Grant Conspiracy (3:14)
A little commentary: I love country music -- at least the kind that emanates from some holler in West Virginia or some honky-tonk in Blue Collar, U.S.A. Can't stand the Gnashville variety. This mix is heavy on the first two flavors, with big-time twang, distorted electric guitars, and weeping pedal steel well to the forefront.
Those of you with astute ears or who paid attention to '70s rock will pick up on my Neil Young fixation. What can I say? I'm a sucker for whiny, nasal vocals and loud, distorted guitars. To that end, Sun Kil Moon, Son Volt, Drive-By Truckers, Milton Mapes (that's a band name, not a person, kinda like Jethro Tull, only louder and rootsier) and John Hiatt fit the bill quite nicely. I also love the classic sound of male/female country duets. Think George Jones and Tammy Wynette, Johnny and June Carter Cash, and Gram Parsons and Emmylou Harris. Here, Buddy and Julie Miller, Caitlin Cary and Thad Cockrell, and Columbus' own Ann and Phil Case carry on the tradition. Lori McKenna, Jim Lauderdale, Neko Case and Malcolm Holcombe have soul oozing out of every pore, and the sound of their voices is enough to send me into paroxysms of delight (you don't want to be around me when this happens; I hear paroxysms are contagious). Todd Fancy plays in the indie rock band The New Pornographers. Here he sounds like a cowboy Brian Wilson, with his triple- and quadruple-tracked Beach Boys harmonies. Love that pedal steel, too. The Handsome Family are a strange lot; I love this song, though. Apocalypse Now, yeehaw!
Finally, Tim O'Brien's "Foreign Lander" is an Irish Folk song as transplanted to Appalachia, and goes back a few hundred years. It's one of the prettiest songs I've ever heard. There's a reason why some of these songs last hundreds of years. "Beyomd the Shore" is a special song for me. I listened to it a lot during the time my brother-in-law was dying of cancer about a year and a half ago. I don't know his religious convictions. I know he loved his wife and kids, and I know he knew something of shame's great load. So I played this song for him and prayed this song for him during those dark months when he was dying. Now I pray that I'll see him again beyond the shore.
Monday, August 22, 2005
Life Without the Fashion Queen
Five thousand diaper changes, a thousand rides in the stroller, five hundred trips to the playground, two hundred band concerts, piano recitals and volleyball games, fifty horrid Disney movies, fifteen family vacations, four Great Prom seasons, and it comes down to this: my daughter Emily is leaving for college, for another city, on Wednesday morning. It happens. All you have to do is keep waking up in the morning, doing your part as the semi-dutiful father, day after day. Just be there, quality time be damned. Quantity time is where it’s at. But it still boggles my mind.
Emily arrived on the scene with the fanfare that befits her personality, sirens sounding and lights flashing. And maybe that set the tone for an in-your-face life. She decided to show up on a crisp fall Saturday morning in Columbus, Ohio, amidst 100,000 people all trying to get to the same place – Ohio Stadium, to watch the Ohio State Buckeyes play a football game against the University of Illinois. Two people – Kate and Andy Whitman – were trying to get to the Ohio State University Hospitals to deliver a baby. It was not a happy confluence. I was stuck in college football gridlock, bumper-to-bumper traffic that was not moving, with a wife who was going into labor, and I had visions of Emily arriving in the back seat of our car. Fortunately, we spotted a highway patrolman pulled off on the side of the road, flagged him down, and explained our situation. “You’ve got to help us; my wife is having a baby,” I frantically exclaimed. Wow, that was cool. I’ve always wanted to do that, and I got to do it. And we cruised into OSU hospitals with our own private police escort, sirens and lights leading the way.
And it’s been a noisy, bright, in-your-face life ever since. Born to two introverts, Emily hit the ground running, a strong-willed, fun-loving extrovert, a pint-sized Ethel-Merman with a spotlight that seemed to follow her around. She didn’t sing when she sang; she belted. She didn’t merely talk; she demanded attention. Parents often speak about the need to shape their kids, to provide the right kind of environment and values and boundaries to influence a life. What they rarely talk about is the fact that their kids shape them, turn them into different, hopefully better people than they were before. And I’d like to think that has happened with Emily. Starting out as a rule-oriented control freak, I have been forced to become something different, because the rule-oriented, control-freak approach simply didn’t work with my daughter. The more I dug in my heels, the more Emily dug in her heels. And so, early on, and with lessons that continue to this day, I learned (Kate thankfully possessing a more flexible personality than mine) what it meant to be a parent of someone who was very different from myself, who had her own personality, a personality that I could attempt to bend and break, but which in the process I would destroy. And so I’ve learned to lighten up, to choose my battles, to let a lot of things slide that are against my nature, and to love and appreciate Emily for the unique human being she is.
And who she is is a pretty remarkable young woman. She’s one of the funniest, wittiest people I know, and she cracks me up several times per day. She’s remarkably friendly, and has found ways to connect with every in-group and out-group of people in her social sphere. She is astonishingly indifferent to popularity and coolness, preferring instead to simply like people for who they are, and regardless of where they are categorized and pegged in the unforgiving suburban adolescent caste system. And she is a suburban punk fashion queen, with her nose and lip piercings and her ability to combine seemingly outrageous combinations of clothes into something that often looks stunning and original and uniquely Emily. She is, most of all, herself. I thank God for her. And now she will continue to pursue her interests as a Fashion Merchandising major at Kent State University. It is, umm, somehow fitting. She has a dad who wouldn’t know an Armani from an Armenian. Take after the old man? Why start now?
And yet, and yet … she does take after me. She’s opinionated, like me. When we butt heads I hate this; only later do I realize that she’s acting out the peculiar Whitman obstinacy a generation down the line, and that she’s not going to change her mind just because some so-called authority figure tells her what to think. And in my better moments I am simply thankful to be her dad, and not an authority figure. She’s passionate about music, just like me, and I love the times when we’ve roadtripped to Cleveland together to see a concert and arrived home at 3:00 in the morning, schoolnight be damned, because some things are more important than first period Algebra. And I love the person she’s becoming. As the hormones settle down, as adolescence gives way to young adulthood, I see more and more glimpses of the young woman she is becoming – confident, caring, a natural leader, content to be no one but herself. And I love what I see.
So Wednesday is coming, too fast. I keep reminding myself that this is good. It is what is supposed to happen. I am so happy for her, and so proud of her. But I am dreading Wednesday as well. We will drop Emily off at the dorm, help her unpack, set up the computer, go to the bookstore and help her locate her books. And then we’ll drive home. Emily will be on her own, and we will be on our own, two introverted adults and only one introverted, occasionally obstinate adolescent. And I will have no control over what happens in Emily’s life, and God will remind me that I’ve had precious little control all along, and that it’s worked out fine thus far. But I will miss all the noise, all the brightness in our lives. I’ll probably mope for a few days, sit around the house and listen to the phone not ring, and the stereos not blare. And I’m dreading that, too. For those of you who are the praying types, please pray for Emily. Come to think of it, pray for the three remaining introverts as well.
Emily arrived on the scene with the fanfare that befits her personality, sirens sounding and lights flashing. And maybe that set the tone for an in-your-face life. She decided to show up on a crisp fall Saturday morning in Columbus, Ohio, amidst 100,000 people all trying to get to the same place – Ohio Stadium, to watch the Ohio State Buckeyes play a football game against the University of Illinois. Two people – Kate and Andy Whitman – were trying to get to the Ohio State University Hospitals to deliver a baby. It was not a happy confluence. I was stuck in college football gridlock, bumper-to-bumper traffic that was not moving, with a wife who was going into labor, and I had visions of Emily arriving in the back seat of our car. Fortunately, we spotted a highway patrolman pulled off on the side of the road, flagged him down, and explained our situation. “You’ve got to help us; my wife is having a baby,” I frantically exclaimed. Wow, that was cool. I’ve always wanted to do that, and I got to do it. And we cruised into OSU hospitals with our own private police escort, sirens and lights leading the way.
And it’s been a noisy, bright, in-your-face life ever since. Born to two introverts, Emily hit the ground running, a strong-willed, fun-loving extrovert, a pint-sized Ethel-Merman with a spotlight that seemed to follow her around. She didn’t sing when she sang; she belted. She didn’t merely talk; she demanded attention. Parents often speak about the need to shape their kids, to provide the right kind of environment and values and boundaries to influence a life. What they rarely talk about is the fact that their kids shape them, turn them into different, hopefully better people than they were before. And I’d like to think that has happened with Emily. Starting out as a rule-oriented control freak, I have been forced to become something different, because the rule-oriented, control-freak approach simply didn’t work with my daughter. The more I dug in my heels, the more Emily dug in her heels. And so, early on, and with lessons that continue to this day, I learned (Kate thankfully possessing a more flexible personality than mine) what it meant to be a parent of someone who was very different from myself, who had her own personality, a personality that I could attempt to bend and break, but which in the process I would destroy. And so I’ve learned to lighten up, to choose my battles, to let a lot of things slide that are against my nature, and to love and appreciate Emily for the unique human being she is.
And who she is is a pretty remarkable young woman. She’s one of the funniest, wittiest people I know, and she cracks me up several times per day. She’s remarkably friendly, and has found ways to connect with every in-group and out-group of people in her social sphere. She is astonishingly indifferent to popularity and coolness, preferring instead to simply like people for who they are, and regardless of where they are categorized and pegged in the unforgiving suburban adolescent caste system. And she is a suburban punk fashion queen, with her nose and lip piercings and her ability to combine seemingly outrageous combinations of clothes into something that often looks stunning and original and uniquely Emily. She is, most of all, herself. I thank God for her. And now she will continue to pursue her interests as a Fashion Merchandising major at Kent State University. It is, umm, somehow fitting. She has a dad who wouldn’t know an Armani from an Armenian. Take after the old man? Why start now?
And yet, and yet … she does take after me. She’s opinionated, like me. When we butt heads I hate this; only later do I realize that she’s acting out the peculiar Whitman obstinacy a generation down the line, and that she’s not going to change her mind just because some so-called authority figure tells her what to think. And in my better moments I am simply thankful to be her dad, and not an authority figure. She’s passionate about music, just like me, and I love the times when we’ve roadtripped to Cleveland together to see a concert and arrived home at 3:00 in the morning, schoolnight be damned, because some things are more important than first period Algebra. And I love the person she’s becoming. As the hormones settle down, as adolescence gives way to young adulthood, I see more and more glimpses of the young woman she is becoming – confident, caring, a natural leader, content to be no one but herself. And I love what I see.
So Wednesday is coming, too fast. I keep reminding myself that this is good. It is what is supposed to happen. I am so happy for her, and so proud of her. But I am dreading Wednesday as well. We will drop Emily off at the dorm, help her unpack, set up the computer, go to the bookstore and help her locate her books. And then we’ll drive home. Emily will be on her own, and we will be on our own, two introverted adults and only one introverted, occasionally obstinate adolescent. And I will have no control over what happens in Emily’s life, and God will remind me that I’ve had precious little control all along, and that it’s worked out fine thus far. But I will miss all the noise, all the brightness in our lives. I’ll probably mope for a few days, sit around the house and listen to the phone not ring, and the stereos not blare. And I’m dreading that, too. For those of you who are the praying types, please pray for Emily. Come to think of it, pray for the three remaining introverts as well.
The Top Songs of 1973
Taking the baton passed from Karen ...
It was my high school graduation year. And, as in most years since 1968 or so, it was filled with musical tripe and mediocrity. The best-selling songs:
1. Tie A Yellow Ribbon 'Round The Ole Oak Tree, Tony Orlando and Dawn
2. Bad Bad Leroy Brown, Jim Croce
3. Killing Me Softly With His Song, Roberta Flack
4. Let's Get It On, Marvin Gaye
5. My Love, Paul McCartney and Wings
6. Why Me, Kris Kristofferson
7. Crocodile Rock, Elton John
8. Will It Go Round In Circles, Billy Preston
9. You're So Vain, Carly Simon
10. Touch Me In The Morning, Diana Ross
11. The Night The Lights Went Out In Georgia, Vicki Lawrence
12. Playground In My Mind, Clint Holmes
13. Brother Louie, Stories
14. Delta Dawn, Helen Reddy
15. Me And Mrs. Jones, Billy Paul
16. Frankenstein, Edgar Winter Group
17. Drift Away, Dobie Gray
18. Little Willy, Sweet
19. You Are The Sunshine Of My Life, Stevie Wonder
20. Half Breed, Cher
21. That Lady, Isley Bros.
22. Pillow Talk, Sylvia
23. We're An American Band, Grand Funk Railroad
24. Right Place, Wrong Time, Dr. John
25. Wildflower, Skylark
Aside from the soulsters/funksters (Marvin Gaye, Dobie Gray, Stevie Wonder, Isley Bros., Dr. John), this is an excruciatingly bad list. Not much has changed with the Top 40 since then, either. Tony Orlando and Dawn, Helen Reddy, Cher, soft porn from Diana Ross, total schlock from Elton John and Paul McCartney, who at one time had talent. It is not a pretty sight. What made it worse is that I worked as a busboy at a Holiday Inn throughout that year, a Holiday Inn that featured a particularly egregious lounge band with the requisite Helen-Reddy-wannabe vocalist, so I not only had to put up with this crap on the radio, but I then had to hear it over and over again on Friday and Saturday nights as the lounge band "entertained" the patrons who were already in a food-and-alcohol-induced coma. I'd like to think that those are the only reasons why they didn't simply leave or stick around and throw the high-priced bananas flambee.
I note with some interest that "Hocus Pocus" by Focus actually made it all the way to #68 on the charts that year, perhaps the only hit song in which yodeling is prominently featured.
What was I listening to instead? Jethro Tull ('73 was the year Passion Play was released, although Aqualung and Thick as a Brick were still in heavy rotation), Traffic (Low Spark of High Heeled Boys), a hippie folkster named Shawn Phillips, early Fleetwood Mac (the blues-based band, well before Stevie Nicks, The Embraceable Ewe, arrived on the scene), Wishbone Ash, Paul Simon, Led Zeppelin, and megadoses of Pink Floyd (the most apt metaphor, unfortunately; Dark Side of the Moon was released in '73 as well, but I was particularly into Ummagumma, Atom Heart Mother, and Meddle). And Focus. I thought the yodeling was cool. Or at least different.
It was my high school graduation year. And, as in most years since 1968 or so, it was filled with musical tripe and mediocrity. The best-selling songs:
1. Tie A Yellow Ribbon 'Round The Ole Oak Tree, Tony Orlando and Dawn
2. Bad Bad Leroy Brown, Jim Croce
3. Killing Me Softly With His Song, Roberta Flack
4. Let's Get It On, Marvin Gaye
5. My Love, Paul McCartney and Wings
6. Why Me, Kris Kristofferson
7. Crocodile Rock, Elton John
8. Will It Go Round In Circles, Billy Preston
9. You're So Vain, Carly Simon
10. Touch Me In The Morning, Diana Ross
11. The Night The Lights Went Out In Georgia, Vicki Lawrence
12. Playground In My Mind, Clint Holmes
13. Brother Louie, Stories
14. Delta Dawn, Helen Reddy
15. Me And Mrs. Jones, Billy Paul
16. Frankenstein, Edgar Winter Group
17. Drift Away, Dobie Gray
18. Little Willy, Sweet
19. You Are The Sunshine Of My Life, Stevie Wonder
20. Half Breed, Cher
21. That Lady, Isley Bros.
22. Pillow Talk, Sylvia
23. We're An American Band, Grand Funk Railroad
24. Right Place, Wrong Time, Dr. John
25. Wildflower, Skylark
Aside from the soulsters/funksters (Marvin Gaye, Dobie Gray, Stevie Wonder, Isley Bros., Dr. John), this is an excruciatingly bad list. Not much has changed with the Top 40 since then, either. Tony Orlando and Dawn, Helen Reddy, Cher, soft porn from Diana Ross, total schlock from Elton John and Paul McCartney, who at one time had talent. It is not a pretty sight. What made it worse is that I worked as a busboy at a Holiday Inn throughout that year, a Holiday Inn that featured a particularly egregious lounge band with the requisite Helen-Reddy-wannabe vocalist, so I not only had to put up with this crap on the radio, but I then had to hear it over and over again on Friday and Saturday nights as the lounge band "entertained" the patrons who were already in a food-and-alcohol-induced coma. I'd like to think that those are the only reasons why they didn't simply leave or stick around and throw the high-priced bananas flambee.
I note with some interest that "Hocus Pocus" by Focus actually made it all the way to #68 on the charts that year, perhaps the only hit song in which yodeling is prominently featured.
What was I listening to instead? Jethro Tull ('73 was the year Passion Play was released, although Aqualung and Thick as a Brick were still in heavy rotation), Traffic (Low Spark of High Heeled Boys), a hippie folkster named Shawn Phillips, early Fleetwood Mac (the blues-based band, well before Stevie Nicks, The Embraceable Ewe, arrived on the scene), Wishbone Ash, Paul Simon, Led Zeppelin, and megadoses of Pink Floyd (the most apt metaphor, unfortunately; Dark Side of the Moon was released in '73 as well, but I was particularly into Ummagumma, Atom Heart Mother, and Meddle). And Focus. I thought the yodeling was cool. Or at least different.
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