Steve Earle -- Washington Square Serenade

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

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

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

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

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

Paste #34

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

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

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

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

The Case for the Cases

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

1. Neko Case

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

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

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

2. Peter Case

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

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

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

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

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

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

3. Ann and Phil Case

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

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

Nick Lowe on Parenting

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Spencer Moore -- Hot New Talent

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

Million Dollars Bail

For George W. Bush and Scooter Libby ...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Death of Local Radio

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chicago Tribune on Paste

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

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

You can read the entire article here.

Cruise with Emmylou and Andy Joe

I am not making this up:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hallelujah the Hills – Collective Psychosis Begone

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

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

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

The Safes – Well, Well, Well

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

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

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

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

Romance is in the Air

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

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

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

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

Summer '07 Mix

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

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

If anybody else wants a copy, let me know.

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

High Hopes and the Lowest Common Denominator

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Star Wars References in Rock Music

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

New All Music Guide Reviews

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

Old Friends

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hot Fun in the Summer Sun

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Paste Saves the World

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

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

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

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

What's in a Name?

Sometimes when you google yourself you find things like this:

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

And now I'm really curious.

Harry Potter, Al Qaeda, and Global Warming

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

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

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

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

Parker's Mood

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Worst Album Cover of All Time

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

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

Lord Franklin

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Best Albums of the First 4.9 Months of 2007

Dave Marsh, my #1 rock ‘n roll critic of all time (#2 some days, depending on whether I’m enchanted by or annoyed with Lester Bangs), loves lists. He once wrote a book called The Heart of Rock and Soul: The 1,001 Greatest Singles Ever Made where he ranked his favorite songs from #1 to #1,001. I find this oddly endearing, and can envision Dave agonizing over whether some old Little Willie John track should come in just ahead of Ruth Brown at #972, or should slip down to #973. Decisions, decisions. I also love the overwhelming scope of his undertaking. Why stop at a Top 10 or a Top 100 when you can do a Top 1,000? Better yet, a Top 1,001. The sheer extravagance is dizzying.

In that spirit, I offer you my list of the Top 10 Albums (Plus Honorable Mentions) of the First Four and Nine-Tenths Months of 2007. Why? Because

1. It’s almost the end of May, surely enough time to form some tentative impressions of the musical year as a whole
2. Everybody loves to label the frontrunners, and
3. We haven't had any good musical arguments since Paste Magazine left off Peter Gabriel and Joe Henry from their list of the Top 100 Living Songwriters. What were they thinking? And didn’t Paul McCartney die in 1968 anyway?

#1 -- Frog Eyes -- Tears of the Valedictorian

Weird, brilliant, and unsettling, Tears of the Valedictorian is notable for two reasons: Carey Mercer’s songs of madness, and his oddly compelling querulous yelp that emerges midway between David Bowie and Jimmy Swaggart. Mercer’s reptilian cohorts whip up a fine Tom Waits clanging trashcan symphony, but Mercer steals this freakshow, declaiming sermons about God knows what. “The wheat’s got to last/London, you’re cold, but the wheat’s got to last!” he shrieks. Easy there, dude. I suspect there is medication for this sort of thing, but Mercer’s poetic unraveling is both exhilarating and disturbing.

#2 -- Panda Bear -- Person Pitch

Mr. Bear is part of the freakfolk Animal Collective, but he’s got a serious Beach Boys fixation on his second solo album. The melodies and harmonies are worthy of Pet Sounds. Okay, not quite. But toss in the heavy reverb, the tape loops, the samples, and the electronic blips and beeps and this album answers the intriguing question of what would music sound like if Brian Wilson met Beck.

#3 -- Future Clouds and Radar -- Future Clouds and Radar

A brilliant, frustrating album. First, what band disgorges two discs and 27 songs on its debut release? And it's as bloated as that sounds. A quarter of these songs aren't merely filler; they're embarrassingly bad. But the other three-fourths comprise the best pop music I've heard this year -- perfectly written little power pop ditties that recall early Elvis Costello and the Attractions, Guided by Voices, and, above all, John Lennon and the late-period Beatles.

#4 -- Loudon Wainwright III/Joe Henry/Richard Thompson -- Strange Weirdos

You know, I once had a dream that Loudon Wainwright, one of my favorite singers, would sing a song written by Joe Henry, my favorite songwriter, and that Richard Thompson, my favorite guitarist, would provide the accompaniment. And my dream came true.

#5 -- Devon Sproule -- Keep Your Silver Shined

Devon Sproule’s music resides at the intersection of folk, country, and jazz. Pedal steel collides with clarinets. Sproule elongates her vowels and stretches out like a young Billie Holiday as she sings an old song associated with The Carter Family. And she writes a batch of sharp, finely delineated tunes about falling in love and getting married, finding joy in the simplest acts of life. There have been better musical albums released this year. But none have put a smile on my face like this one.

#6 -- Arcade Fire -- Neon Bible

Okay, let the coronation begin. Can I say that it’s a foregone conclusion that this album will end up at the top of most music critics’ lists? And I can’t quibble too much. It's very good, it's stirring, it's thought-provoking, and Win Butler captures the fine art of emoting better than anyone since the young Bono. But it's not as good as Funeral, and maybe, when the furor dies down, people will hear the awkward rhymes.

#7 -- The Clientele – God Save the Clientele

The Clientele wrote the quintessential soundtrack for 3:00 a.m. mopery and regret in Strange Geometry. And if God Save the Clientele isn’t quite that seamless masterpiece, it has the dinstinction of almost rocking in places (to the extent that twee tea drinkers can rock), and thus of being a more varied and wide-ranging effort. But no one does wistful melancholy as well as Alasdair MacLean, and on songs like “From Brighton Beach to Santa Monica” and “No Dreams Last Night” he’s damned near perfect.

#8 – Do Make Say Think – You, You’re a History in Rust

It’s the usual post-rock slow build from pastoral quiet to shrieking wall of noise, and it’s a trick that is getting a little tiresome. But in the absence of new music from Sigur Ros or Godspeed You! Black Emperor, it should be noted that Do Make Say Think is getting better and better, and that they are unique among their glacial cohorts in incorporating jazz elements into their music. This is their finest album.

#9 -- Antibalas – Security

Afrobeat jazz with wicked political commentary. If this were Bruce Cockburn I'd be slamming him for the sloganeering simplicity of his political songs, but somehow equating G.O.P. with Greedy Old Politicians works for me when it's combined with a strutting horn section and a singer who takes his cues from Fela Kuti.

#10 -- Graham Parker – Don't Tell Columbus

The former angry young man is now well into his middle age, but that doesn’t mean that he’s let up on the vitriol, and this is finest batch of songs in 25 years. If it’s not quite Howlin’ Wind or Squeezing Out Sparks, it’s close.

Honorable Mentions

Wilco – Sky Blue Sky
The Safes – Well, Well, Well
The Broken West – I Can’t Go On, I’ll Go On
John Reuben -- Word of Mouth
Patty Griffin – Children Running Through
The Twilight Sad – Fourteen Autumns and Fifteen Winters
Grinderman – Grinderman
Rickie Lee Jones – The Sermon on Exposition Boulevard
Dungen – Tio Bitar
Richard Thompson – Sweet Warrior

Jerry Falwell -- The Legacy

A quick chronology:

1977 – Jerry Falwell founds the Moral Majority
1977 – 1.31 million abortions performed in the U.S.[1]
2006 – 1.29 million abortions performed in the U.S. [1]
2007 – Jerry Falwell dies

Yes, I’ve heard the old saw about lies, damned lies, and statistics as well. But in this case the numbers surely tell us something. And it must be stated at the outset of any overview of the life of the recently deceased Reverend Jerry Falwell that the cause for which he labored so passionately was an abject failure. In terms of effecting social change, it simply didn’t work. It didn’t work in 1977, and it didn’t work in 2006. It didn’t work much in between, either, in the years when the Republican Party that Jerry Falwell championed controlled the White House for 20 of the past 28 years.

In the middle – in the thirty years that that admittedly skewed chronology skips over – was a life. It was a life characterized by private grace and public pugnaciousness, one of the many conundrums that those who seek to understand this complex man will need to address. Falwell was capable of blaming "the pagans, the abortionists, the feminists, and the gays and lesbians” for the September 11th attacks, and of labeling warnings about global warming as "Satan's attempt" to turn the church's attention from evangelism to environmentalism. He could also be generous with his time and money, and gracious to those with whom he disagreed. The Rev. Al Sharpton and pornographer Larry Flynt called him friend, a fact so startling that it should give pause to those of us in the Church family who disliked him. He started with a tiny congregation and turned it into a megachurch and multimedia conglomeration. He founded a thriving Christian college. And he very nearly singlehandedly lit the fire under the dormant derriere of the evangelical church and caused it to rise from its private, pietistic stupor and to scream out in pain and cultural indignation. There is much to admire. But oh, that cultural indignation.

The language that he used in his public pronouncements – that of the warrior, the battlefield, the crusade, the myriad enemies – tells us a lot about his worldview. For Jerry Falwell, the “world” wasn’t the field of lost souls, the unharvested crops waiting to be loved unconditionally into the Kingdom of God. The “world” was the adversary, full of secular humanists and relativists opposed to eternal truth, butchers and baby killers, queers and godless liberals. And if Jerry Falwell never abandoned the language of the evangelist, his was an evangelism by eradication.

Early on he crawled in bed with the Republican Party, and persuaded millions of other evangelical Christians to play the whore. It’s nothing personal, you Republicans. I would say the same thing if Jerry had crawled in bed with the Democrats. Predictably, the Republican Party used him, tossed him a few dollars every once in a while, and conveniently ignored him. Look at those abortion statistics again. This is Jerry Falwell’s great failure; his inability to differentiate between God’s eternal truths and the inevitable compromises and concessions that come with any political party bent on power and its own perpetuation. Jerry certainly read the Bible, and quoted from it liberally, ironically enough. Sadly, he never seemed to read the whole Bible, and he missed the parts about caring for the poor and oppressed, about sitting down and reasoning together, about a gentle answer turning away wrath.

And now he is gone. I couldn’t stand the man, although I admit my grudging admiration for some of the things he accomplished. He stood for some things that were right, and he stood for some things that were wrong, but at least in his public life he mostly stood up and yelled shrilly. For what it’s worth, I have the same tendencies. Speaking the truth in love is the damndest thing, and I frequently fall on one side or the other, and often enough fail at both. I suspect he was a great man, in both the great good and the great evil he accomplished. God grant him peace and eternal life. I hope and I pray that I am nothing like him, and I see every day how much I follow in his footsteps.

[1] National Right to Life Website

The Hold Steady, Part VI

Hearkening back to that golden musical age when bands still used Roman numerals in their album titles ...

Yes, I still I love The Hold Steady, and at least at this point I'm not wavering in my fanaticism. To be sure, there's an element of calculated hyperbole in Craig Finn's songwriting that is probably intended to appeal not only to rock critics, but also to anyone who actually had a misspent youth, or would like to imagine that they did. It rings a little false and hollow. Quite simply, he plays the "I partied 'til I almost died" trump card a few too many times, and I don't believe him anyway. You did not, Craig. You were flippin' burgers at McDonald's.

But he's such an amazing songwriter, and his bandmates are such unassuming yobs (they'd be content playing for Pabst Blue Ribbon money at the local tavern) that I can't help but love the lot of them. I thought Amanda Petrusich's cover story in the latest issue of Paste really nailed the appeal of the band. Amanda posited a 33-year old with a desk job as the prototypical fan. All I know is that it works at 51 as well. This is the band -- and Boys and Girls in America is the album -- that I foist off on all my Boomer friends who stopped listening to the radio when all that weird punk shit started happening, and who despair that there hasn't been any good music since the debut Boston album. And it's interesting to me that the Boomers hear what they want to hear. Everybody hears Springsteen. And some people hear The Who, and Thin Lizzy and AC/DC. The ones who were still paying attention in the '80s hear The Replacements. And the almost universal reaction is, "I'd still be buying music if I knew there was more stuff like this."

The other factor -- and it's huge for me -- is the appeal of the gutter poet. It's a persona with Craig Finn, I have no doubt -- a role much like The Crazed Madman is for Ozzy Osbourne -- but it's such a mythic part of America and the history of rock 'n roll that I'm almost always glad when somebody dons the mask. There's a noble lineage there that stretches from Rimbaud and Baudelaire to Kerouac to Dylan to Springsteen to Cobain. It's the doomed romantic in a leather jacket, the outsider with a drink in one hand and a pen in the other, scribbling on the bar napkin.

I also think that Finn's songs capture a sense of place very well. It's all in the details, and nobody piles detail upon detail the way Craig Finn does. Sometimes the places are named -- Minneapolis, Brooklyn, Ybor City. Sometimes they're not. But Springsteen's "Backstreets" didn't name its town either, but I've been there all the same. I recognize the scenery. And I do in Craig Finn's songs as well.

Oh, and one more thing ... Craig Finn is my favorite lapsed Catholic. That's a factor that can't be emphasized enough in appreciating his songs. There's self-destruction everywhere in every Hold Steady song, but there's also an underlying sadness, an acknowledgement of the hound of heaven even as these desperate characters do whatever they can to obliterate their consciences. There's also a fair amount of hope; hints of glory shining through the wreckage. Listen to "How a Resurrection Really Feels" from Separation Sunday. It's probably my favorite song from the oughties, or whatever the proper label is for the decade in which we currently find ourselves. I don't know if Craig Finn is a Christian. I have no idea what he believes. But if I could offer a model for how Christians should write songs, that would be it.

"Damn right, I'll rise again."
-- The Hold Steady, "Your Little Hoodrat Friend"

In Search of the Perfect Playlist

I am an incurable creator of iPod playlists. What used to take days (mix tapes) or hours (mix CDs) now takes mere minutes, and I can’t resist the opportunity to create esoteric connections between songs.

“Listen to this,” I say to my wife. “See if you can spot the theme.” Then I play The Byrds’ “Eight Miles High” and Pink Floyd’s “Comfortably Numb.”

“Umm, songs about drugs?” she ventures cautiously.

“Nope,” I tell her, “songs written by people named Roger.” She then typically leaves the room.

But I can’t help it. This is the brave new world of the iPod, a world in which the most tenuous connections are only a click away. And I take full advantage of the opportunities afforded by a big music collection and a hyperactive, widely ranging mind. Recent playlists have included the Songs About New England States Mix, the Gloria Mix (with outstanding contributions from Bach, Vivaldi, Van Morrison, and Patti Smith), and the Notes and Letters Mix, featuring songs with references to Don DeLillo, Flannery O’Connor, Jack Kerouac, Thomas Pynchon, and many more erudite 20th century writers. Okay, maybe I have too much time on my hands. I admit this with some trepidation, having fully outed myself as an obsessive nerd. But it’s also great fun, at least in the weird little world I inhabit, and it’s not uncommon for me to spend my Saturday mornings musing over the thematic links between, say, B.B. King and Queen (they both feature songs about fat-bottomed girls). Hey, it makes my rockin’ world go ‘round.

More than anything else, though, I look for the sonic connections. It’s what I listen for in reviewing albums, and it’s what I automatically gravitate toward when left to my own obsessive devices. I grew up with The Beatles and The Byrds, and I’ve followed the far-reaching threads of their music through Big Star and Badfinger and The Raspberries, REM and Robyn Hitchcock, The Posies and Matthew Sweet and Teenage Fanclub. More than forty years after four young men from Liverpool remade the musical world in their own image, I still hear their reverberations everywhere. And they still sound bracing and invigorating. I am in a constant search for new power pop gems for the simple reason that the world can never have enough great three-minute pop songs with loud, ringing guitars and sweet harmonies.

And so, after much deliberation, analysis, and fretting, I offer the perfect power pop mix, circa 2005 and 2006. There were only two rules. First, all songs had to conform (more or less) to the hallowed mid-sixties power pop template. Second, all songs had to have been recorded in the past two years. And here it is:

1. The Safes – Cool Sounds are Here Again
2. Johnny Society – Don’t Talk Me Down
3. Richard X Heyman – Stockpile
4. The Broken West – Down in the Valley
5. Mas Rapido! – Girl du Jour
6. Pete Yorn – Georgie Boy
7. Fountains of Wayne – Someone to Love
8. Lemonheads – Pittsburgh
9. Apples in Stereo – Beautiful Machine, Pts. 1 – 4
10. Sam Roberts – When Everything Was Alright
11. The Sails – Peter Shilton
12. Matthew Sweet and Susanna Hoffs – And Your Bird Can Sing
13. The Essex Green – Don’t Know Why (You Stay)
14. Andy Partridge – My Train is Coming
15. Deathray Davies – Plan to Stay Awake
16. The Detroit Cobras – Cha Cha Twist
17. Graham Coxon – Freakin’ Out
18. A.C. Newman – Secretarial
19. The Orange Peels – Circling the Sun
20. Nada Surf – Always Love

This particular mix is bracketed by echoes of The Beach Boys and The Beatles. In between are sonic reminders of the early Who and The Kinks (you think Deathray Davies picked their name randomly?), two forays into late-sixties psychedelia, and two brief sojourns into the seminal garage rock of virtually forgotten bands such as The Easybeats, The Nightcrawlers, and The Shadows of Knight. But above all it’s the kind of sturdy, guitar-driven, and highly melodic stuff that has formed the backbone of rock music for the past forty-four years. What goes around comes around. The miracle is that, now well into the sixth or seventh popular wave of this music, it still sounds absolutely fresh and vital.

Like all such mixes, this one is very subjective and highly debatable. You would probably end up with a different mix, and I’d encourage you to come up with your own, assuming that you have an obsessive personality and a remarkably understanding spouse who tolerates long stretches of daydreaming in front of iTunes. But it’s my list, and it’s my story, and I’m sticking with it. At least until next week, when I’ll feel the need to come up with another playlist, perhaps a Best Songs About Sports Cars mix. Ah, the ways we fend off the midlife crisis.

5-Star Albums from the New Millenium

A friend asked me a couple days ago if I thought that the overall quality of popular music had declined in the past twenty or thirty years. I told him “No” because I don’t think it has. Although I know plenty of boomers my age who lament that it’s all been downhill since Led Zeppelin stopped releasing album titles with Roman numerals, this guy is not one of them, and he stays fairly current on popular musical trends and innovations. But he did start me thinking. Are there as many great albums being released now as there were during, say, the supposedly halcyon days of the 1960s (funny how everybody forgets Herman’s Hermits and Freddie and the Dreamers)? And I don’t know the answer to that question. Part of the dilemma is that hindsight is a great teacher, and artists who were virtually ignored when their music was initially released (e.g., Nick Drake) are now justly recognized as the innovators they were. So it’s entirely possible that some obscure band in Vancouver or Omaha will be heralded as musical geniuses in 2030.

But I certainly believe that great music is being made these days. You have to dig a little deeper for it than you did thirty years ago, when you could actually hear it on the radio in most major American cities. That’s no longer the case. But there are ways to find it. Think Paste Magazine. Paste is your friend.

For what it’s worth, these are, in my opinion, the 5-star albums that have been released since 2000:

Radiohead – Kid A
Sun Kil Moon – Ghosts on the Great Highway
Sigur Ros – Agaetis Byrjun
The Arcade Fire – Funeral
Camera Obscura – Let’s Get Out of this Country
Drive-by Truckers – Southern Rock Opera
Brad Mehldau -- Places
Godspeed You Black Emperor! – Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven
Sufjan Stevens – Come on Feel the Illinoise!
Bob Dylan – Love and Theft
The Hold Steady – Boys and Girls in America
Konono No. 1 – Congotronics
Kate Rusby – Underneath the Stars

That’s my list. What’s yours?

Word of the Week

Hey, I wrote the Word of the Week.

Hope Dies Hard

Burn on, big river, burn on
Burn on, big river, burn on
Now the lord can make you tumble
And the lord can make you turn
And the lord can make you overflow
But the lord can’t make you burn
-- Randy Newman, “Burn On, Big River”

I am a lifelong fan of Cleveland professional sports teams. For those of you who follow such things, this is a little like admitting that one votes for perennial U.S. Labor Party presidential candidate Lyndon LaRouche – distasteful to some, irrelevant and pointless to most. The last time the Cleveland Indians won a world championship, Harry S. Truman was president and people still drove Packards and Edsels. Hell, for all I know, the women all wore bonnets and crossed the country in Conestoga wagons. The last time the Cleveland Browns won a Super Bowl .... wait, the Cleveland Browns have never even appeared in a Super Bowl. The Cleveland Cavaliers? No appearances in the NBA Finals, no NBA championships.

To add to the ignominy, these teams play in Cleveland, where it snows from October to May, and where the clouds are a continuous ashen gray except for the nights when the old steel mills spew their orange smoke in the air and the spacious skies take on a hue that resembles something out of Dante’s Inferno. You know the jibes: The Mistake on the Lake, The City of Burning Rivers. They are, alas, all true. No one wants to live in Cleveland. Cleveland will let you down every time. To quote an old Howlin’ Wolf blues tune, I asked for water and you gave me gasoline.

Still, it’s home, hellish landscape and all. Except it’s not – not quite – and therein lies the mystery. I live near Columbus, midway between Cleveland and Cincinnati. And Cincinnati, in addition to occasional blue skies, also boasts some sports teams that occasionally win. So explaining my lifelong allegiance to Dante’s teams is a little perplexing. All I know is that the allegiance is there, and that hope springs eternal. It is a flaming river that is never extinguished. And so I hope. And this year, almost in spite of myself, I find myself hoping more than usual.

Here’s the deal: the Cleveland Cavaliers are two wins away from reaching the NBA East Finals. The Cleveland Indians are in first place with a 20 – 10 record, and this looks like the year when all those promising young kids finally come into their own. I should know better. I’ve been here many times before, and I’ve seen it too many times. I think back on the Cleveland Browns disasters that are known simply by the monikers The Fumble and The Drive, the Indians meltdown in 1995, when they were clearly the best team in baseball but were done in by David “There Is No” Justice and the Atlanta Braves. I think back on that damned Jose “Costa” Mesa (as in “You put me in the game, and I’ll costa great team the world championship”) in 1997, the heinousness of Art “Satan” Modell slinking out of town with the Browns in 1999 and instantly turning our beloved team into the Baltimore Stealers. There is a lot of grief. But I can’t help myself. It’s spring. The snows have melted. The skies are threatening to turn blue. The Cleveland Cavaliers are still playing basketball, and the Cleveland Indians are in first place. Hope dies hard here in the heartland. Pity me or pray for me. But don’t you dare tell me I’m deluded.

Current Faves

Some newly released (or about to be released) albums that have been floating my catamaran (perfect for summertime sailing):

The Clientele – God Save the Clientele

XTC. Crowded House. The Pernice Brothers. What that disparate group of musicians has in common is that they know how to write a perfect pop song. Add The Clientele to the list. 2005’s Strange Geometry was a classic of 3:00 a.m. mopery and regret, a pop symphony to lost love, complete with heavily reverbed guitars and weepy strings. The new one is just as good, albeit a little more varied. “The Garden at Night” actually rocks, something altogether strange for this rather twee band, and opener “Here Comes the Phantom” comes close, but far more typical are the wistful“From Brighton Beach to Santa Monica” and the gorgeously aching“No Dreams Last Night.” A few folks from Wilco and Lambchop stop by to play, and the album was produced in Nashville. But make no mistake, The Cliente is the brainchild of one very British Alasdair MacLean, and he’s again created the aural equivalent of fog lying low over the Thames; thick, mysterious, eerily lovely music.

Devon Sproule – Keep Your Silver Shined

I don’t know if this is the best album I’ve heard this year. It’s close. It’s easily the most joyous. Devon Sproule’s music meets at the intersection of folk, country, and jazz; clarinets colliding with pedal steel, old-time country songs that sound like they could come from The Carter Family subverted by some Django Reinhardt gypsy guitar work. Sproule’s songs are something to behold: Victoria Williams’ playfulness and spunk meeting up with Joni Mitchell’s confessional songwriting chops. To top it off, this is the sexiest, sultriest southern album since Lucinda’s Car Wheels on a Gravel Road. Is that good? What do you think?

Scissors for Lefty – Underhanded Romance

So file this one under Guilty Pleasure. I have no defense. The music is derivative in the extreme, and the lyrics veer between meaningless and silly. Mix some Cars new wave synths, some Robert Smith vocal histrionics, and some dance floor beats and angular guitars courtesy of Franz Ferdinand. The thing is, when I listen to the absolutely ace singles “Ghetto Ways” and “Mama Your Boys Will Find a Home” I find my middle-aged body moving involuntarily, more or less in rhythm. Don’t tell the wife and kids.

The Traveling Wilbury’s – The Traveling Wilbury’s Vol. 1/The Traveling Wilbury’s Vol. 3

I was never much of a Tom Petty or Jeff Lynne/Electric Light Orchestra fan. George Harrison was great -- from 1963 to 1970. Roy Orbison was past his prime, and Bob Dylan was in the worst funk of his career. Given the era and the massive egos, it shouldn’t have worked. But it did. And if you missed it the first time in the late ‘80s, you can catch it again when Rhino Records rereleases the two Traveling Wilbury’s albums in a few weeks. What you’ll discover is that all of that musical talent and all of those raging egos came together in the most unassuming ways imaginable; these are the kinds of lowkey, relaxed songs that friends play while sitting around on the front porch. And it works for precisely that reason. Vol. 1 is a minor classic; the guys trading off on verses when they feel like it while collectively writing some of the best songs of their storied careers. And if the incongruously named Vol. 3 is missing the spark (not to mention the recently deceased Roy Orbison) from Vol. 1, it’s still good, clean, friendly fun. As an added incentive, let this Dylan fan note that these are Dylan’s best songs from the ’80s.

The Orphans of God

Sometimes I lose my patience. Sometimes I fear that "America" and "Christianity" are so inextricably linked that it is impossible to separate one from the other, that Godncountry is just one big, unwieldy word, and that our particular brand of materialistic consumer religion is too overpowering to fight against, and that I should just resign myself to the notion of Jesus the Helper of Dieters and the Divine Investment Counselor.

Then I listen to Mark Heard, who understood those feelings as well, and I feel better.

I will rise from my bed with a question again
As I work to inherit the restless wind
The view from my window is cold and obscene
I want to touch what my eyes haven't seen
But they have packaged our virtue in cellulose dreams
And sold us the remnants 'til our pockets are clean
Til our hopes fall 'round our feet
Like the dust and dead leaves
And we end up looking like what we believe

We are soot-covered urchins running wild and unshod
We will always be remembered as the orphans of God
They will dig up these ruins and make flutes of our bones
And blow a hymn to the memory of the orphans of God

Like bees in a bottle we are flying at fate
Beating our wings against the walls of this place
Unaware that the struggle is the blood of the proof
In choosing to believe the unbelievable truth
But they have captured our siblings and rendered them mute
They've disputed our lineage and poisoned our roots
We have bought from the brokers who have broken their oaths
And we're out on the streets with a lump in our throats

We are soot-covered urchins running wild and unshod
We will always be remembered as the orphans of God
They will dig up these ruins and make flutes of our bones
And blow a hymn to the memory of the orphans of God
-- Mark Heard, "The Orphans of God"

Llife Bites

It's minor in the grand scheme of things, but for those of you who are praying types, I'd appreciate your prayers. Kate and I had to cancel a trip out of town this weekend to see our friends Phil and Lauren because I spent most of Friday night awake, moaning, and holding my jaw, which ached like crazy.

Then I spent five hours at an emergency dental care facility today, and emerged with a root canal. Right now the whole left side of my face feels like it's been crushed by a sledgehammer, which is about how it felt before the root canal. It will get better, I'm told. But I'm bummed because we missed out on seeing friends, and I'm bummed that my face hurts. So prayers are appreciated.

Announcing the Campaign to Obliterate Offensive Language (COOL)

I’d like to start a campaign to remove certain words from the English language. They are either too offensive (e.g., ho; yes, I’m talking to you, Don Imus), too gross (e.g., pus), or too meaningless (wait for it) to retain their pathetic existences. Today’s offensively meaningless word is: indie.

How about we just do away with the label altogether? Can I get an “Amen” from the hipsters? Does "indie" music refer to music released on a particular label not affiliated with the major-label conglomerates? A particular sound? A movement first associated with college bands in Boston in the 1980s? Unsigned bands/artists? Some band that only eleven people have ever heard of because they've only played one show for their friends and grandmothers in some dank basement in Seattle? All of the above? None of the above, and something else entirely?

From what I can tell, "indie" is used above all as a marketing term. It's a code word for "cool" and "hip". It's the same idea that is used to sell designer jeans with pre-ripped holes in them and Camel cigarettes. And frankly, I can't stand it. "Indie" is a label that can mean anything, and nothing.

So I asked a friend about it. And he told me that “indie” music refers to any music "not coming from within the walls of the Hollywood or Nashville music ghettos." Good enough as far as it goes, but it still doesn't really tell me anything. It tells me what the music isn't, but it doesn't tell me what it is. Thelonious Monk, Bill Monroe, and Bjork all fall outside the realm of the Hollywood or Nashville music ghettos, but a music label that would lump these folks together as "indie" would convey absolutely nothing about the very different types of music they
play(ed).

He also told me that “indie” has an ideological component. Yeah, buddy. And let me tell you, I'm very wary of the ideological connotations of the word. "Indie" music plays up the anti-industry, anti-authority angle pretty heavily. But here's a musical marketer's dream: a million kids all buying the same album, each thinking that his or her little hip group of friends is onto something special that they and a few others have discovered. This is, in fact, pretty much the ideal scenario that music labels would like to create in the minds of music consumers. Tacking an "indie" tag onto a particular album is a great asset in this process.

So here's today's conundrum: What does it mean for someone who "fits that anti-music-industry sound" to sell 500,000 albums? Pretty soon the anti-industry, anti-establishment, anti-authority hordes will descend on places like Bonnaroo, and 100,000 identically clad rebels in tie-dyes will groove to their favorite indie bands. Rebellion has been big business for the past forty years.

Today’s true ideological lesson: we should be aware of and think about the images that are being marketed to us. And "indie" is an image that I find particularly problematic.

Marketing Mythtakes

The consumer gods would like me to buy this:

Zane: World Lit: Greek Mythology 2 (Software)

Embrace the heroic ideals of Greek mythology through five myths and legends. Soar with Daedalus and Icarus as they attempt to fly on wings of feather and wax. Elope with Helen, wife of King Menelaus, as she sets in motion events that cause the Trojan War. Delight in the touching story of Baucis and Philemon. Take arms with Theseus as he battles the mighty Minotaur. Review the story of Perseus. Includes a 48-minute presentation and 180 photos. Windows 95/98/Me/2000/XP/Vista and Mac.

Perhaps there is a bull/minotaur market for this sort of thing, and little Kaitlyn and Logan regularly pester their third grade teacher to regale them with the touching story of Baucis and Philemon. But if I’m right, and I’ll bet you five drachmae that I am, then this may be one of the worst marketing decisions ever made in the IT industry. Developing multimedia presentations is a costly endeavor. I’m not sure what marketing genius persuaded the corporate powers at Zane Software that there were thousands of little girls and boys out there who sat around dreaming about eloping with Helen, wife of King Menelaus, or (in a total failure of imagination) reviewing the story of Perseus. At any rate, it didn’t sell. Shocking, I know. And now it can be mine merely for the price of shipping. I’m thinking about having it shipped by air, as long as the flight involves feathers and wax.

Death by Suburb

“The suburbs weather onr souls. That is, there is an environmental variable, mostly invisible, that oxidizes the Christian spirit, like the metal of a car in the elements.”
-- David Goetz, Death by Suburb: How to Keep the Suburbs from Killing Your Soul

I will confess that I cordially hate the title of David Goetz’s book. Oh, good. Another smug hipster who can’t see because of the plank in his own urban eye. Suburbs bad. City good. Sure thing, Mr. Metropolis. Excuse me while I go fertilize my lawn.

Fortunately, that’s not what David Goetz is saying, and his argument is far more nuanced. Goetz argues that the danger of suburbia is that one will succumb to a life of comfort and ease; that the pull of the SUV and the Golden Retriever and the two kids running around on the well-manicured lawn is real precisely because it is good, that it represents an idealized sort of existence to which most people aspire.

My take: don’t worry about it, David. The “good life” is a mirage. It’s as illusory as any other vision of Utopia that crumbles in the light of harsh reality. It will sustain you for a while if you let it. But here’s a partial list of what you’ll find in suburbia: cancer, Alzheimer’s, alcoholism, drug addiction, mental illness, marital infidelity, job firings and layoffs, kids who break their arms when tumbling on the well-manicured lawns, Golden Retrievers who are run over by the SUVs. I don’t doubt that many people escape to suburbia with the goal of living a comfortable and protected life. But it won’t and can’t last, and people in suburbia are subject to the same senseless tragedies and self-inflicted wounds as any other demographic representation of humanity. This is because the world we live in is fallen and broken, and is apt to bite us in our well-padded asses even when we pretend that we can control it.

What is unique about suburbia is the degree of self-deception that often accompanies the lifestyle choices. Life in the ‘burbs is all about controlling what can be controlled – relative safety, retirement investments, the quality of our childrens’ educations, dandelions and grubs. And because people are more apt to function believing that they are in control, the degree of shock when it all falls apart may actually be greater in suburbia than in places where chaos and lack of control are woven into the daily non-routine.

I don’t think it particularly matters, from a Christian standpoint, whether people live in the city or the country, the ghetto or the ‘burbs. One lifestyle choice is not holier than another, at least in this area. But where it does matter is that when the shit hits the fan in suburbia, people are more likely to find themselves in a state of shock and disbelief; I live a protected life, and this can’t be happening to me. But it is. In those situations, I would like to think that Christians have a timely answer that both acknowledges harsh reality and offers a real sense of hope. That’s when suburban Christians need to put down their fertilizer spreaders and simply be neighbors and friends, to enter in to the pain and the confusion and the grief of those around them.

And honestly, that’s the most challenging aspect about living in suburbia. The ‘burbs encourage isolation. They foster a world where relationships with neighbors consist of waving from the front seat of the minivan or SUV as automatic garage doors go up and down. It takes intentional effort to break through that. But you can engage suffering in a house with a security system and overly-mulched flower beds just as well as in a shelter for the homeless or a nursing home for the destitute. One is not better than the other, because suffering is an equal-opportunity afflicter of humanity. Both are good, and both are needed.