Making Room

So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem the town of David, because he belonged to the house and line of David. He went there to register with Mary, who was pledged to be married to him and was expecting a child. While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born, and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn.
-- Luke 2:4-7

Pain makes you selfish. I’d like to put a spiritual spin on that, but that’s the bottom line. If there is a universal principle here somewhere it roughly translates to this: when your penis hurts, it’s difficult to think about anything else.

Meanwhile life (and death) goes on. I walked (like John Wayne) into work this morning to be handed several impossible deadlines, all of which need to be met in the next few days. My sister-in-law, who is a damned good teacher, and head of an award-winning program that teaches art to high school kids in the hood, was informed Friday that her position is being eliminated. Apparently ghetto kids don’t need art. Our friends Matt and Quenetta welcomed their baby girl, their first child, prematurely to the world yesterday afternoon. She lived for three hours and died in their arms. My California brother-in-law Mark called me earlier this morning to inform me that his father had just passed away from cancer, and that he and my sister will be in Columbus most of this week. They need all the support we can give them.

And I only know one thing: my penis hurts, a lot.

Adrienne said in her sermon yesterday that God loves us perfectly, and that we cannot be loved any more than we are. I heard this, agreed with it in theory, and wondered what it meant for somebody who pees blood instead of urine. I’m looking for the perfection. I don’t mean that in a snotty way. I mean that I really do want to come to an understanding, even if it is a dim and imperfect one, of what the perfect love of God means in the midst of suffering and great pain, mine and others.

The current Pope, Benedict XVI, doesn’t like popular music. He’s made a series of inflammatory statements that infuriate me, and remind me how much damage those who are clueless and who wield great power can unleash. But he’s recently released an encyclical called SPE SALVI facti sumus (In Hope We Were Saved) that amazes me and heartens me, and reminds me that the aesthetically challenged can still have great spiritual insight. Benedict wrote, in part:

All serious and upright human conduct is hope in action. This is so first of all in the sense that we thereby strive to realize our lesser and greater hopes, to complete this or that task which is important for our onward journey, or we work towards a brighter and more humane world so as to open doors into the future. Yet our daily efforts in pursuing our own lives and in working for the world's future either tire us or turn into fanaticism, unless we are enlightened by the radiance of the great hope that cannot be destroyed even by small-scale failures or by a breakdown in matters of historic importance. If we cannot hope for more than is effectively attainable at any given time, or more than is promised by political or economic authorities, our lives will soon be without hope. It is important to know that I can always continue to hope, even if in my own life, or the historical period in which I am living, there seems to be nothing left to hope for. Only the great certitude of hope that my own life and history in general, despite all failures, are held firm by the indestructible power of Love, and that this gives them their meaning and importance, only this kind of hope can then give the courage to act and to persevere.

And this is what I am called to do, painful penis and all. I am called to be an ambassador of hope at a specific time -- today, this week -- to specific people who may, and probably do, feel hopeless. The timing is bad. But the timing is never good. It’s never convenient. But we make room. We open up the dirty, uncleaned room at the back of the inn of our hearts, and we open up the windows and haul in a mop and a broom and we say “No, you don’t need to leave. You’re welcome here.” We make room for hope. We make ourselves available, in all our inadequacy and incompetence, to be agents of hope. A world in darkness sees a great light. We, if are faithful, reflect the light: dimly, but consistently, and perhaps never more importantly than when we don’t feel like shining at all. God, help me. And help them to see the hope to which we are called.

Best of 2007 Music Lists

You could troll the Internet, searching for Best of 2007 music lists. But why? Right here on the Paste website you can find all the variety you need, including the official "Paste Top 100 Albums" list, plus individual Top 10 lists from various staff members and writers. And if you act now, you can vote on your own choices for Best Albums of 2007.

What is glaringly obvious from these lists is that the music world is more fragmented than ever, and that there is no clear-cut consensus on "Best of" anything. Out of approximately thirty lists, I don't think the same album appears twice in the top spot.

Here's my list, by the way, which shouldn't contain too many surprises for anyone who's been paying attention to this blog.

1. Ezra Furman and the Harpoons -- Banging Down the Doors
2. Southeast Engine -- A Wheel Within a Wheel
3. Devon Sproule -- Keep Your Silver Shined
4. Joe Henry -- Civilians
5. Bruce Springsteen -- Magic
6. Frog Eyes -- Tears of the Valedictorian
7. Peter Case -- Let Us Now Praise Sleepy John
8. Arcade Fire -- Neon Bible
9. Anders Osborne -- Coming Down
10. Future Clouds and Radar -- Future Clouds and Radar

Watermelon Slim

I don't know if there are many blues fans here, but this guy Watermelon Slim is one Delta Mack Daddy, the most exciting and authentic blues performer I've heard in years. Surely the ghosts of Muddy and the Wolf are smiling. Mr. W. Slim is one William P. Homans of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma -- Vietnam veteran, truck driver, forklift operator, sawmiller, firewood salesman, collection agent, funeral-parlor director, small-time criminal, watermelon farmer, college graduate times three, and member of Mensa. You can hear all that and more in his songs, which have justly made him famous at an advanced age, almost forty years after he recorded his first album.

The three albums you're likely to find -- Up Close and Personal, Watermelon Slim and the Workers, and The Wheel Man -- are as raw and as viscerally moving as any blues albums I've ever heard. This is no dilettante dabbling in some ancient, petrified musical genre. He's very much invested in the proceedings, he's one hell of a bottleneck guitarist, and he's got that cry in his voice that only the greatest singers in the genre have had before him. In short, he's the real deal. He covers Muddy, the Wolf, Sonny Boy Williamson, and Mississippi Fred McDowell, and he writes originals that can hold their own with the classics. And yes, he wrote most of those originals while behind the wheel of his big rig. He's got a big, raw sound, equal parts Mississippi Delta acoustic and Chicago electric. He's fabulous. You should check him out.

Adoration of the Storm Troopers*

On coming to the manger, they saw the child with his mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshiped him. Then they opened their treasures and presented him with gifts of light sabers and oxygen masks and black rubber gloves. And having been warned in a dream not to go back to Darth Vader, they returned to their planet by another route.
-- 1 Tattooinians 2: 4-5

* With thanks to Karen, from whom I shamelessly stole the photo.

In Praise of Obscurity

In the current issue of Paste, esteemed music critic Geoffrey Himes laments the decentralization of the music industry, and points out that his favorite album of 2007 will go unnoticed, even by most ardent music fans.

And I’ll see Geoffrey’s obscure artist and raise him two: my three favorite albums of 2007 are by a Boston wunderkind named Ezra Furman, a bunch of Ohio indie rockers called Southeast Engine, and a Virginia country/folk neo-hippie named Devon Sproule. Who? Are those albums better than the ones released by Bruce Springsteen, Arcade Fire, and The National, the albums that occupy the top three rungs on Paste’s Best of 2007 list? Sure. At least I’d argue that they are. But nobody’s heard them, and even when it’s your business to pay attention to new music, as it is to the staff of Paste Magazine, it’s impossible to cover all the worthy music released each month. It’s inevitable that some gems fall through the cracks. There are a million bands with their self-produced CDs and their MySpace pages. Ninety-eight percent of them are utterly forgettable. And a few of them are astoudingly great, and undeservedly obscure.

The problem, as Geoffrey points out, is one of promotion and distribution. You can’t buy an album you can’t find. And you can’t find an album if you don’t know to look for it. And in an era when big music labels are fighting for their very lives, and responding to sluggish sales by employing increasingly conservative tactics to sell the same tired old musical formulas, it’s almost impossible for new and innovative bands to get noticed. Geoffrey is absolutely correct, and the old fart Baby Boomers I relate to every day are wrong. There’s no lack of great music being made these days, and no, it hasn’t been all downhill since John married Yoko and Led Zeppelin stopped using Roman numerals in their album titles. The ratio of greatness to crap hasn’t changed significantly from the supposedly halcyon days of the sixties. What has changed is the ability to hear the great music.

The downbeat news for all those wonderful but obscure musicians and bands: don’t give up those day jobs. It’s harder than it’s ever been to secure the big break. If the big break is your goal, then sign up for American Idol and practice your Motown covers. But if you can live with the notion of making music because you love it, you’ll do fine. Music blogs like this one and music magazines like Paste will continue to champion your work. And there will be an audience for what you do. Just don’t be surprised if some nights there are only twenty people in the club.

Deer Season

Today is the start of gun deer season in Ohio, a high holy day for Bubba and Wanda and their progeny. Schools are closed in many counties in southeastern Ohio, not because of weather or natural disaster, but because the savvy superintendants have learned that little Maideen and Bubba Jr. are going to be out hunting with pa, and won’t be bothered by little things like homework. Supper’s on the line.

And so I bring you a very special high holy day playlist:

1. Twin Killers – Deerhoof
2. Sun – Lost Fawn
3. Peace and Quiet – The Rifles
4. Meat is Murder – The Smiths
5. There’s a Hole – John Doe
6. A Devil in the Woods – Gun Club
7. These Old Shoes – Deer Tick
8. No Smoke Without Fire – James Hunter
9. Buckaroo – Buck Owens
10. Southern Comfort – Shooter Jennings
11. Pathetic – Venison
12. Lake Somerset – Deerhunter
13. Hungry Like the Wolf – Bambi and the Boys
14. In the Snow – The Antlers

Thanksgiving

This song doesn't reflect my experience (at least not for this particular holiday). But there's a lot of truth here. As he usually does, Loudon cuts through the schmaltz to find the bittersweet core. For anyone out there who understands the sense of something lost, it's my hope and prayer that this Thanksgiving you will find something -- or somethings -- for which to be grateful.

Lord, every year we gather here
To eat around this table
Give us the strength to stomach as much
As fast as we are able
Bless this food to our use
Though communication's useless
Don't let me drink too much wine
Lord, you know how I get ruthless

Let us somehow get through this meal
Without that bad old feeling
With history and memory
And homecooking redeeming
Remind us that we're all grown up
Adults no longer children
Now it's our kids who spill the milk
And our turn to want to kill them

I look around and recognize
A sister and a brother
We rarely see our parents now
We barely see each other
On this auspicious occasion
This special family dinner
If I argue with a loved one, Lord
Please make me the winner

All this food looks and smells so good
But I can hardly taste it
The sense of something has been lost
There's no way to replace it
After the meal switch on the game
There's just a few more seconds
But after the meal I need a nap
The guest bedroom beckons

I fall asleep, I have a dream
In it is the family
Nothing bad has happened yet
And everyone is happy
Mother and father both still young
And naturally they love us
We're all lying on the lawn at night
Watching the stars above us

Lord, every year we gather here
To eat around this table
Give us the strength to stomach as much
As fast as we are able
-- Loudon Wainwright III, "Thanksgiving"

Random Musical Notes

Soundtracks

I don’t have one, maybe for the first time in my life. For more than forty years I’ve been able to conjure up a playlist to fit my every mood. Not this time. I could go with the usual emo whiners and sadsack romantics, but they don’t really capture my peculiar little world. Besides, I’m not sure that a song could accurately capture just what it’s like to feel knitting needles probing one’s inner organs.

Worst Christmas Album of All Time

I recently received Conway Twitty’s 1983 album A Twismas Story with Twitty Bird and Their Little Friends. This just may be the nadir of recorded music. First, Conway sounds like he’s been pulled away from the honky-tonk to fulfill some contractual obligations. Various reindeer songs appear, as do songs about snowmen, as does a song about someone called “Happy the Christmas Clown.” A vocal group that may be The Ray Conniff singers accompanies Conway, and adds that special holiday schlock to the proceedings, chiming in with “like a lightbulb” after Conway tells us that Rudolph had a shiny nose. But the real piece de resistance here is the inclusion of Twitty Bird, a chirpingly upbeat little avian friend with a lisp, who routinely crashes the musical proceedings to offer, “Mawwy Twismas, evwybody!” Sounding somewhat like Alvin from Alvin and the Chipmunks, there are times when Twitty Bird’s duets with Conway are tinged with the surreal, as on the aforementioned “Happy the Christmas (Twismas) Clown,” when man and munk entwine their voices to bring us the tale of the clown “a winkin’ and a blinkin’ at you and me.” This is either the best album or the worst album I’ve heard in the new millennium.

Thanksgiving

Every year we gather here to feast around this table
Lord, give us the strength to stomach just as much as we are able
-- Loudon Wainwright III, “Thanksgiving”

Many people dread the holidays. I don’t. Or at least not this one. For the past thirty years, and long before I arrived on the scene, Kate’s family has filled up a bunch of cabins in Old Man’s Cave State park in southeast Ohio, where they hike, eat and drink their way through three days of the festivities. I won’t be doing any hiking, but I’ll be there. The nieces and nephews are all grown up now, and have toddlers of their own, but they still get in their cars and drive long distances to make it to the proceedings. There will be about thirty of us this year, and four generations. In what may be the closest thing to a miracle that I’ll ever experience, I get to hang out with a functional family. People seem to genuinely like and love one another When I think about reasons to be thankful, I won’t have to look far. I’ll just look around the room.

Family Bonding

Rachel’s back from Ohio U. for the start of her Christmas break. And what better way to get in that family bonding time than by hanging out in a local bar listening to some great local bands? Saturday night we saw Columbus’ Spanish Prisoners and The Whiles and Athens, Ohio’s Southeast Engine. Very good stuff. I am becoming a major Southeast Engine fan. Not only does the band have a great sound – simultaneously raw and melodic – but lead singer/songwriter Adam Remnant’s songs keep opening up in new ways for me. At one point, in the same song, I heard oblique references to the Bible, Abraham Lincoln, and T.S. Eliot. This is an English/Theology major’s dream come true.

Positive Proof that Music Publicists Don’t Know Who They’re Dealing With

I just received the new Celine Dion album in the mail.

You Can't Fail Me Now

My virtual friend, e-mail pal, and songwriter extraordinaire Joe Henry doesn't think he writes prayers, but he does.

I know that fan is moving air
I can see it in your hair
But I can’t bear to breathe it in somehow
I’ll rise and fall with you ‘cause you can’t fail me now
I’ll rise and fall with you ‘cause you can’t fail me now

Salt is sweet upon my mouth
And dark throws sparks against my house
The state of love is a smudge on my brow
But you see through me and you can’t fail me now
When you see right through me you can’t fail me now

I’ve bit off more than I can chew
It’s something that I tend to do
When fewer words are what we need and how
Well, you bite my tongue and you can’t fail me now
I rant and rail but you can’t fail me now

I’ve lost the thread among the vines
And hung myself in story lines
That tell the tales I never would allow
God knows the name of every bird
That fills my mind like angry words
But you all know my secret heart avows

We’re taught to love the worst of us
And mercy more than life
But trust that mercy’s just a warning shot across the bow
I live for yours and you can’t fail me now
I live for your mercy and you can’t fail me now
-- Joe Henry, “You Can’t Me Now”

Today's Playlist

I haven't listened to much music in the past two weeks. I haven't had time. But when I have listened, these songs have dominated the CD player and the iPod. Music really is the soundtrack to life.

What Do You Want From Life? – The Tubes
Don’t Eat the Yellow Snow – Frank Zappa
Hospitals I’ve Visited – Jerry’s Kids
Bring Me the Head of Jerry Garcia – Iron Prostate
Piss Factory – Patti Smith
Urine Palace – Tiger Lillies
Pissing in the Wind – Badly Drawn Boy
Pack Up Your Troubles In Your Old Kit Bag – Red Foley
Hospital Vespers – The Weakerthans

Southeast Engine

Southeast Engine are a band from my old stomping grounds of Athens, Ohio, the best place in the world to spend the years 18 - 22. They've released one of my favorite indie/Americana albums this year, a little gem called A Wheel Within a Wheel. For you Bible scholars, that's a reference to the Book of Ezekiel. I don't know anyone in the band, nor do I know what any individual members may believe. I do know that they make wonderfully melodic, sadsack indie rock, and sound a lot like early Wilco.

So imagine Jeff Tweedy, his voice cracking in all the right places, accompanied only by an acoustic guitar and a mournful cello, and singing this little straightforward repentance song:

If I return would you take me back?
Teach me to learn to face the facts?
I’m so sorry for all I did
Oh God, let me back in

When I was a child I believed in you
A simple thing for a child to do
I could see the sky and my mind was set
I could feel okay when I was so upset
But as I grew it was so easy to forget
Oh God, let me back in

Because I’ve taken for granted all that you gave
I threw away what I was supposed to save
So if you would erase my doubt
And let me appreciate what I’ve got left
And be here in the moment
Oh God, let me back in

‘Cause I’ve been so selfish, toneless and cruel
I’ve done whatever I wanted to
So if you would forgive my sin
I won’t be who I have been
I’ll put my stock in you not them
If you let me back in

For so long now I’d just like to know
I’ve sawed off the branch that I was resting on
And as I fell from limb to limb
I found I was no real exception
So here I’m beggin’ for redemption
Oh God, let me back in
Oh God, let me back in
-- Southeast Engine, "Oh God, Let Me Back In"

Normally I'm a metaphor and simile guy. There's no great poetry there. But sometimes you just have to cut to the chase. I've sung that song. Maybe you have too.

The band is playing at Scully's Saturday night and celebrating their CD release on Misra Records, one of my favorite indie labels. I'm going to be there. Y'all are welcome to join me.

Connections

I had a terrible weekend. I had a great weekend. Let me explain. Physically, I had a terrible weekend. I feel like crap. I still don't know what's going on with my prostate/bladder/whatever else may be affected/infected, and I still have that #%$!@ catheter, which still hurts like nothing I've ever quite experienced. I was told by my doctor that I might experience some "discomfort." Does "discomfort" include wincing every two minutes, involuntary grunting in pain every five minutes, and a general feeling of having a razor-sharp knife on the inside of your body? Because that's what it feels like.

So I spent most of Saturday morning in a grunting, depressive funk. I tried praying, and I did, but my prayers quickly devolved from the the highminded and Elizabethan "Oh Lord, let thy servant grow closer to you through mine own suffering" to "Father, if it be your will, taken this cup (or attached bag, if you prefer) away from me" to "Shit, this hurts," and "Help me, help me, help me."

Saturday afternoon and early evening we hosted a marriage mentoring session at our house, with three other couples/marriage mentors discussing intimacy. I started out cynical (Helpful suggestion #1: Avoid a tube in your dick), but ended in a better place. It's hard to stay cynical when you're relating with six people, all of whom have come close to shipwrecking their marriages, and who genuinely desire to help others navigate the treacherous shoals and pointy rocks. It was good. I love these folks, and feel honored to be a part of a bigger calling.

Yesterday morning was church, and I felt like crap. But it was good to worship, to acknowledge that God is good, and in control, even when I don't see it. And I do acknolwedge that. I am so thankful to be a part of a church where we are known, and cared for, and I deeply appreciated the people who prayed for me, who were concerned about how I was doing, and who didn't try to put on a pious front. "That sucks" is a perfectly acceptable response as far as I'm concerned, because it does. But these people do not suck, nor does the church as a whole.

Yesterday evening we had dinner with our friends Tim and Beth, and that was good, and affirming. The Indian food was first rate, the conversation both silly and deadly serious, and it was good to be reminded that there are people who are facing far more serious issues than I am, and that infected bladders/prostates have nothing on Stage 4 cancer.

Life is difficult. It just is. We get brief respites from the gloom, and then we are blindsided by our own inadequacies and incompetence, or by the latest senseless tragedy or health crisis. The good news is that we get to experience these things together. I don't take that for granted. I'm hanging in there.

David Foster Wallace

Are there any David Foster Wallace fans out there? He's probably my favorite contemporary writer, a dazzling stylist who works the postmodern metafiction territory of Pynchon and Barthelme, but who tempers his cynicism and "look ma, no boundaries" zaniness with a surprisingly compassionate vision.

His best known work is probably his 1996 novel Infinite Jest, which is utterly uncategorizable, but which the Wikipedia article bravely attempts to summarize as follows:

The book's plot centers on a lost film cartridge, titled Infinite Jest by its creator James Incandenza, and referred to in the novel as "the Entertainment" or "the samizdat". The film is so "entertaining" to its unwitting viewers that they become lifeless, losing all interest in anything other than endless viewings of the film. In the novel's future world, North America is one unified state composed of the United States, Canada, and Mexico, known as the Organization of North American Nations (O.N.A.N.). Corporations purchase naming rights to each calendar year, eliminating traditional numerical designations; e.g., "The Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment," "The Year of Dairy Products from the American Heartland." Much of what used to be the northeastern United States and southeastern Canada has become a massive hazardous waste dumping site known as "The Great Concavity"/"The Great Convexity."

And that doesn't begin to tell the story. It is, for example, the best and most realistic study of addiction I've ever read.

I've been reading Wallace's 2004 collection of short stories called Oblivion. There's a story there called "The Soul is Not a Smithy" that is set in Columbus, Ohio in 1960. I've lived in Columbus, Ohio most of my life, including as a first-grader in 1960. The story takes place in an elementary school classroom and on the streets of Columbus. Foster, who to my knowledge has never lived in Columbus, not only accurately captures the zeitgeist of specific Columbus neighborhoods at the fag end of the Eisenhower era, but perfectly recreates a 1960 classroom, including the way the desks were bolted to the floor, and the pattern of the tiles on the ceiling. In true metafiction fashion, there's nothing straightforward about any of this. The story also contains a chilling description of a substitute teacher's mental breakdown in front of his students, and a young boy's gentle, lyrical reminiscence of his father's soul-sucking life, stuck in the headquarters building of a downtown Columbus insurance company, doing menial work for day after day, year after year, until he was a hollow shell. I don't know. Maybe it's because I know Columbus, and I know the neighborhoods Foster describes. Maybe it's because I'm currently stuck on the 16th floor of a downtown Columbus insurance company building, using my Creative Writing degree to write about database capacity planning and forecasting. But it hit me in the gut. It's an astonishing piece of writing. But then again, he regularly astonishes me.

As an added bonus, he's also written the only commencement speech worth reading, which he delivered to the assembled graduates of Kenyon College in 2005. As a general rule, don't waste your time reading commencement speeches. But read this one.

Sometimes I play the "if you could meet anyone alive right now, who would it be?" game. My answer varies, but I know who it would be today.

Today's Favorite Band ...

... is Seattle's The Catheters.

I don't know if any of you guys have ever sat around and wondered, "Hey, what's it like to have a tube up your dick?" I know I never did. But now I know. Wonder no more. It hurts just like you would think it would.

So I have an infected prostate glad that landed me in the hospital last night. But hey, given the tube and trusty legbag, I'm back in business. How humiliating. I'm walking like John Wayne, but I don't feel like him.

Malcolm Holcombe -- Gamblin' House

I've been enthralled with North Carolina singer/songwriter Malcolm Holcombe since I heard his debut album A Hundred Years back in 1999. Subsequent appearances have been infrequent, but memorable. On an otherwise forgettable soundtrack to the forgettable movie The Slaughter Rule, Holcombe simply astonished with his take on "Killin' the Blues," a feral country lament last heard on the recent Robert Plant/Alison Krauss duets album. Quite simply, he's a phenomenal singer. But to put it mildly, he won't appeal to everyone's tastes. If Tom Waits sounds a little too smooth for you, he might. Otherwise, you might want to give his music a pass.

But I love his voice; a big, gruff, soulful mess of a thing, and I love the sound he gets out of his band, who play dobros and mandolins like rock 'n roll instruments. The end result reminds me of what a homeless wino poet from Appalachia might sound like if he put down the bottle long enough to stumble into a recording studio. And yes, for those of you who feel adventurous, that's a strong recommendation.

His new album Gamblin' House is due out in January. It's a killer; English-major poetry set to raw, plaintive Appalachian melodies, with that voice growling and insinuating murder and mayhem. Holcombe can sing an innocuous lyric like "I'm goin' downtown to see the Christmas lights" and make it sound a menacing threat. He's weird, he's wild, and he's great.

Megahits and Bands Past Their Prime

Okay, I have a theory, made up of equal parts music snobbery and jaded listening habits, that states that a band's biggest/most popular album (or their "breakthrough" album) is always always inferior to albums that have come before it. Some examples:

Bruce Springsteen -- Born in the U.S.A. (compare to Born to Run)
U2 -- The Joshua Tree (compare to War)
R.E.M. -- Out of Time, Automatic for the People (compare to Murmur)
Death Cab for Cutie -- Plans (compare to We Have the Facts and We're Voting Yes)
Wilco -- Yankee Hotel Foxtrot (compare to Being There)

Now, before I am inundated with indignant replies, let me note that I think all of these albums fall under the "Okay" or "Pretty Good" categories. None of them are stinkers. But I also think that all of these musicians/bands did far better work on earlier albums (specfically, the ones mentioned above). And I'm sure there are exceptions, but honestly I can't think of them. Why is it that most albums that go Platinum strike me as toned down/dumbed down when compared to the artists' best work? And why is it that the exceptions, such as Yankee Hotel Foxtrot (which hardly strikes me as toned down or dumbed down) merely strike me as indulgent wankery? Anyone have any insight into my twisted musical mind?

The Funky Western Civilization

I see that the traveling edition of "So You Think You Can Dance?" was at the Schottenstein Center last night, featuring many of the amateur dancers who are now celebrities on your TV screen. To mark this momentous occasion I offer you one of my favorite dance tracks:

come on everybody
get on your feet
get with the beat
there's a brand new dance craze
sweeping the nation
and it's called the funky western civilization

well there's a riot in the courthouse,
there's a fire in the street
there's a sinner bein' trampled by a thousand pious feet
there's a baby every minute bein' born without a chance
now don't that make you want to jump right up and start to dance?

let's do the funky
the funky western civilization
it's really spunky
it's just like summertime vacation
you just grab your partner by the hair
throw her down and leave her there

they put jesus on a cross,
they put a hole in j.f.k.
they put hitler in the driver's seat
and looked the other way
now they've got poison in the water
and the whole world in a trance
but just because we're hypnotized,
that don't mean we can't dance

we've got the funky
the funky western civilization
it's really spunky
it's just like summertime vacation
you just drag your partner through the dirt
leave him in a world of hurt

you get down, get funky, get western
(own up to it boys and girls)
and if you try real hard maybe you can even get,
you know, kinda civilized

(mesdames et messieurs, bon soir. this is joan of arc. tonio has asked me to personally deliver a rather special message. he say he just cannot get enough of my 15th-century wisdom. he say he loves it when i talk with him like this. and after many a saturday night of doing ze funky western civilization together, i know for a fact he agrees with me when i say [in french]:you can bullshit the baker and get the buns, you can back out of every deal except one)

this is the funky
the funky western civilization
it's oh, so very spunky
it's just like summertime vacation
all's you gotta do is find some little kid somewhere
and throw him way up in the air (never mind the parents)

yes it's a funky
a funky western civilization
and it may seem kinda skunky, you know
but it's hitting every nation (all across the universe)
that's 'cause all's you gotta do is grab your partner by the hair
throw her down and leave her there
-- Tonio K., "The Funky Western Civilization"

The Hold Steady/Art Brut

Saturday night I went to see The Hold Steady, the second time I've seen the band in the past six months. Anyone who has read this blog for any length of time knows that I have an ongoing love affair with The Hold Steady. They are, without question, my favorite rock 'n roll band working today, and their concert back in March was easily one of the highlights of my year. So it pains me to write that Saturday night was a letdown. Maybe my expectations were too high, but I don't think so. I know what this band is capable of delivering. And they simply didn't deliver. On the positive side, let me extend kudos to guitarist Tad Kubler, who is my power-chord hero. Kubler alone almost carried the show. But overall I have to confess to some disappointment, primarily because singer/songwriter Craig Finn appears hellbent on living up to the self-destructive lifestyle he writes about. Staggering about on stage, forgetting a quarter of the lyrics, and mistiming your vocal entrances isn't my idea of a musical good time.

What is? How about Art Brut, who opened for The Hold Steady and blew them off the stage. I had heard a couple tracks from their first album, but really hadn't paid much attention to them. My mistake. These guys (and girl) are cheeky, droll, witty, and very loud, always a good combination. "Look at us/We formed a band!" goes Art Brut's semi-hit, and that's as concise an encapsulation of what they're about as you will find. Featuring songs that sound like they were each written in ten minutes (and probably were), their set consisted of fifteen three-minute pop/punk anthems overflowing with references to popular culture, about being young, in love, and in love with pop music. Lead singer/songwriter Eddie Argos was part punk, part buffoon, and I loved him. In a world of deadly serious, earnest guys with poetry and guitars, how refreshing to find someone who still thinks that rock 'n roll is fun. Art Brut reminded me of the early B52's, but without the beehive hairdos. They write wonderful songs, and their two (and only two) albums just rocketed to the top of my "Must Acquire Soon, Maybe Today" list.

Coheed and Cambria, I'm Not There Soundtrack, John Fogerty

Coheed and Cambria – No World for Tomorrow

There are concept albums, and then there are meta-concept musical careers. NYC’s Coheed and Cambria are now four albums into an ongoing saga about something or other, revisiting musical motifs and lyrical themes that all vaguely seem to tie in to Rush’s 2112 and dystopian visions of a dark future. Be very afraid. To their credit, these guys have the prog-rock chops to pull it off, and lead singer/songwriter Claudio Sanchez has clearly absorbed some valuable histrionics lessons at the Shrine of St. Geddy Lee. But for better or worse, this music makes me want to go hibernate in the basement and play Dungeons and Dragons, not shower for days, and subsist on Mountain Dew and Cheetos. It’s best if I pass. My wife agrees.

Various Artists – I’m Not There Soundtrack

About fifteen years ago one of my friends, an avid Dylan collector, sent me eight ninety-minute cassette tapes chock full of Dylan covers. They ranged from the obvious (The Byrds, Jimi Hendrix) to the painfully obscure (Joey Powers, Moose), from the sublime (Johnny Winter, Van Morrison) to the ridiculous (Mae West, Lawrence Welk, William Shatner). I didn’t realize at the time that that was just the tip of Quinn the Eskimo’s iceberg. To give you some idea of the magnitude of the issue, The Bob Dylan Covers website currently lists 5,870 unique covers of 350 Dylan songs by 2,791 artists. And the website hasn’t been updated since 2002. All of which begs the question: do we really need another 34 Dylan covers?

Thankfully, the answer is yes, as the soundtrack to Todd Haynes’ upcoming film I’m Not There readily attests. For starters, music superviser Randall Poster has assembled an indie dream team for the soundtrack, enlisting the services of Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy, Pavement’s Stephen Malkmus, The Hold Steady, Iron and Wine, Sonic Youth, Sufjan Stevens, Yo La Tengo, Antony and the Johnsons, Cat Power, The Black Keys, and Calexico, along with wily veterans Roger McGuinn, Willie Nelson, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, and Richie Havens. Second, he’s mostly avoided the obvious song choices in favor of a wildly eclectic mix from throughout Dylan’s career, including several obscurities/outtakes that will be familiar to only the most diehard Dylan fans. Third, he’s involved the maestro himself, uncovering a previously unreleased Dylan and The Band Basement Tapes chestnut (the title track) to wrap up the proceedings.

Not all of it works. Callow surfer dude Jack Johnson thoroughly botches his cover of “Mama, You’ve Been On My Mind.” The usually reliable Sufjan Stevens offers a woeful misreading of “Ring them Bells,” a dirge when it originally appeared on Oh Mercy, here transformed into the usual Fourth of July marching band set piece. But there are many, many delights and surprises, starting with Tweedy’s soulful reading of “Simple Twist of Fate,” Malkmus’ letter-perfect sneer on “Ballad of a Thin Man,” My Morning Jacket frontman Jim James’ and Calexico’s rootsy take on “Goin’ to Acapulco,” Sonic Youth’s spooky, feedback-drenched version of the title track, and The Hold Steady’s raucous cover of the Highway 61 Revisited outtake “Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window.” The house band, featuring Television’s Tom Verlaine,Wilco’s Nels Cline, and Sonic Youth’s Lee Ranaldo on guitars, and Medeski, Martin, and Wood’s John Medeski on keyboards, is dazzlingly inventive throughout.

Like the song selection itself, Poster’s musical direction splits the difference between safe, familiar arrangements and more radical, risk-taking moments. The end result is endlessly satisfying, and will appeal to longtime Dylan fans, and a new generation of fans attracted by the indie lineup. Forty-five years down the line, the music of Bob Dylan matters more than ever. It’s gratifying to hear that musicians the age of his grandkids are onto that fact as well.

John Fogerty – Revival

John Fogerty can do anything and everything except write a decent song. His voice, one of the greatest in the history of rock ‘n roll, is still miraculously intact at 62. His swamp rock guitar work, often imitated, is still as dirty and gritty as can be. But bad things happen when he opens his mouth:

But if tomorrow everybody under the sun
Who's happy just to live as one
No borders or battles to be won
But if tomorrow everybody was your friend
Happiness would never end
Lord, don't you wish it was true

Fogerty unhappily marries the worst of sixties sunny utopianism, man, with rhymes that the Hallmark Company would have the good sense to reject. It’s a deadly combination, one that mars the otherwise excellent Revival. Fogerty namechecks his old band (and its sound) on “Creedence Song,” updates “Fortunate Son” with a new and great political screed called “Long Dark Night,” and steals the guitar riff from “Sunshine of Your Love” on “Summer of Love,” giving the aging hippies two nostalgic thrills for the price of one. All of which is fine, or would be fine, if the lyrics weren’t so hamfisted and inarticulate. Once upon a time Fogerty’s songwriting could be considered bracingly straightforward. Now it seems merely straightforwardly awkward. I dreamed John’s rhymes still sounded new. Don’t you wish it was true? Lord, I surely do. I bet you do too.

Name Your Price

=NAME YOUR PRICE!!
PASTE Magazine Subscriptions On Sale For, Well,
Whatever You Want...

“the best among American music titles”
– The Wall Street Journal

Decatur, GA (October 29, 2007) – Beginning today, and continuing for the next two weeks, PASTE magazine will be offering one-year subscriptions—and readers can name their price! New subscribers can sign up, and loyal subscribers can renew online at www.pastemagazine.com for a minimum payment of $1, though all are encouraged to pay what they think the subscription is worth. Anyone paying more than the $19.95 PASTE typically offers for a one-year (11-issue) subscription will be thanked in print, in a future issue of PASTE.

The campaign came about from a casual conversation at the PASTE offices discussing the recent Radiohead campaign and the Jim Collins book, Good to Great. “We were curious to know what our customers thought we were worth. And what better way to find out, than to let them tell us,” explained PASTE President/Publisher Tim Regan-Porter. “While it’s certainly a bit unconventional, we also see it as a chance to get our product in the hands of people who could become lifelong fans. It’s been our experience that once people become familiar with PASTE, they turn into loyal readers,” added Regan-Porter.

Interested readers can order multiple subscriptions to PASTE, as long as there is a valid mailing address, so even gift subscriptions are encouraged. Each issue of PASTE comes with a CD sampler, so one subscription will give you 11 CDs of great music, in addition to the award-winning writing and entertainment coverage.

Voted “Magazine of the Year” by the PLUG Independent Music Awards for 2006 and 2007, and having won the Grand GAMMA Award (along with 4 Gold awards and 1 Silver award) at the 2007 GAMMA Awards, Paste is rapidly emerging as the go-to source for music and film aficionados.

Favorite Songs of 2007

Yeah, I know, there are still two months left in the year. So things could change. But it just seemed time for a new list because:

1) Lists are fun.
2) Lists are educational, and
3) Lists provide the illusion of order and objectivity to our increasingly chaotic and inscrutable lives.

So this is the 4-CD box set, complete with 64-page illustrated book and collectible "Best Songs of 2007" stamps. I dearly love all these songs, all of which have been released this year. And since they cross genres and moods, I won't even begin to try to fit them into some sort of coherent/consistent mix. Here they are, in alphabetical order.

CD 1
1. Filibuster XXX – Antibalas Afrobeat Orchestra
2. Beautiful Machine, Parts 1 – 4 – Apples in Stereo
3. Keep the Car Running – The Arcade Fire
4. Direct Hit – Art Brut
5. For Agent 13 – The Besnard Lakes
6. Fiery Crash – Andrew Bird
7. Country Caravan – Blitzen Trapper
8. Suffering Time – Bottom of the Hudson
9. Down in the Valley – The Broken West
10. Melody Day – Caribou
11. Ain’t Gonna Worry No More – Peter Case
12. Brighton Beach to Santa Monica – The Clientele
13. Maasai – Damien Dempsey
14. It’s Natural to be Afraid – Explosions in the Skies
15. My Moon My Man – Feist

CD 2
1. Scar That Never Heals – Jeremy Fisher
2. Long Dark Night – John Fogerty
3. People Get Ready – The Frames
4. Bushels – Frog Eyes
5. American Highway – Ezra Furman and the Harpoons
6. Hurricane Judy – Future Clouds and Radar
7. Everything in its Right Place/Maiden Voyage – Robert Glasper
8. Trapeze – Patty Griffin
9. No Pussy Blues – Grinderman
10. Wave Backwards to Massachusetts – Hallelujah the Hills
11. You Can’t Fail Me Now – Joe Henry
12. Downtown – Malcolm Holcombe
13. Wonderful World – Jolie Holland and Booker T. Jones
14. Enemy – Jesca Hoop
15. Goin’ to Acapulco – Jim James and Calexico

CD 3
1. All My Money on You – Diana Jones
2. If I Were You – Chris Knight
3. 31 Candles – The Mendoza Line
4. Fake Empire – The National
5. Place to Be – Christopher O’Riley
6. Spotlight – Anders Osborne
7. Bros – Panda Bear
8. Lord Franklin – The Pentangle
9. Young Folks – Peter Bjorn and John
10. Killing the Blues – Robert Plant and Alison Krauss
11. Bodysnatchers – Radiohead
12. Draconian Crackdown – Rasputina
13. Put a Penny in the Slot – Fionn Regan
14. Make Money Money – John Reuben
15. To the Dogs or Whoever – Josh Ritter

CD 4
1. Chemicals – A.J. Roach
2. Cool Sounds Are Here Again – The Safes
3. Rainy Day Man – Patti Scialfa
4. Swamp Thing – The Soul of John Black
5. Oh God, Let Me Back In – Southeast Engine
6. You Got Yr Cherry Bomb – Spoon
7. Long Walk Home – Bruce Springsteen
8. Dress Sharp, Play Well, Be Modest – Devon Sproule
9. Superette – Tandy
10. Beauty – Linda Thompson
11. Dad’s Gonna Kill Me – Richard Thompson
12. Grey in L.A. – Loudon Wainwright III
13. Utilities – The Weakerthans
14. 300 M.P.H. Torrential Outpour Blues – The White Stripes
15. Let It Roll – Willard Grant Conspiracy

Music Publicists

It's a strange, lonely world. And the drugs must be plentiful. How else to explain this:

"Lion Land" (the name of the album) is basically an e-card sent to grandma back in Africa from a tribe of lions on their first visit to Disneyworld/Kissimmee St. Cloud Florida. Damns and whirlpools of itchy frightening frequencies tenderly romance lyrics that orbit the worlds of ecstatic parochial school patriotism and junglebook moral codes. Industrial beats are stocked by hems of cinematic synthesizers suckering you, as a sunset might, into having an emotional moment. Quinn's feral musicianship flows freely through every anthem and a warm, howling wave of screams and whispers and pounding drums will feel at times like fuzzy hugs, at other times feel like the result of letting a blind lion cub into the kitchen to invent a new recipe for lasagna."

Jesus and the T-Rex

Some images require no commentary. With thanks to Joshua Neds-Fox, who spotted it first.

Five More Days

Your little hoodrat friend makes me sick but after I get sick I just get sad.
Because it burns being broke and it hurts to be heartbroken
But always being both must be a drag.

She's been calling me again. She's been calling me again.
Your little hoodrat friend's been calling me again.
And I can't stand all the things that she sticks into her skin.
Like sharpened ballpoint pens. And steel guitar strings.
She says it hurts, but it's worth it.

Tiny little text etched into her neck it said "Jesus lived and died for all your sins."
She's got blue black ink and it's scratched into her lower back.
It said: "damn right I'll rise again."
Yeah, damn right you'll rise again.

I've been dusted in the dark up in Penetration Park.
I've been plastered. I've been shaking hard and searching in a dirty storefront church.
I've been plowed, but I ain't ever been with your little hoodrat friend.
What makes you think I'm getting with your little hoodrat friend?

Your little hoodrat friend got me high though.
We were 17 and stuck up in Osseo.
She said it's funny even true love gets troubled by Stillwater
and washed up in the Mississippi River.
Her claddagh ring was pointed at the people.
She said "St. Theresa comes to me in dreams."
She said "I ain't gonna do anything sexual with you.
I'm kinda saving myself for the scene."

I've been dusted in the dark up in Penetration Park.
I've been plastered. I've been shaking hard and searching in a dirty storefront church.
I've been plowed, but I ain't ever been with your little hoodrat friend.
What makes you think I'm getting with your little hoodrat friend?

She said: City Center used to be the center of the scene.
Now City Center's over, no one really goes there.
Then we used to drink beneath this railroad bridge.
Some nights the bus wouldn't even stop.
There were just way too many kids.
I was waiting for my ride and I got jumped from behind.
I got punctured. I got stopped by the cops.
They found it in my socks, and I got probed.

But I ain't ever been with your little hoodrat friend.
What makes you think i'm getting with your little hoodrat friend?
-- The Hold Steady, "Your Little Hoodrat Friend"

The Year of the Runner Up

• January, 2007 -- The Ohio State Buckeyes lose to the Florida Gators in the NCAA Football Championship Game
• April, 2007 -- The Ohio State Buckeyes lose to the Florida Gators in the NCAA Basketball Championship Game
• June, 2007 -- The Cleveland Cavaliers lose to the San Antonio Spurs in the National Basketball Association Finals
• October, 2007 -- The Cleveland Indians lose to the Boston Red Sox in the Major League Baseball American League Championship Series.
  
  You can tell a lot about a city by its airport(s). I recently traveled to Europe and witnessed this firsthand. In Atlanta’s Hartsfield airport, where I had a three-hour layover, I could wander the concourses, shop for clothes, grab a quick meal from one of 100 restaurants, browse in several bookstores, and surf the net throughout the Wi-Fi enabled facilities. In Paris’s Charles de Gaulle airport, where I had a two-hour layover, I could order a baguette, buy some fromage, and wander the futuristic concourses and marvel at the architectural wonder of a building that, in fact, looks like an airplane. In Columbus, Ohio, my departure and termination point, I could surf the net in the five-foot-by-five-foot Wi-Fi enabled zone called Wai Fai Beach, complete with plastic palm tree, eat stale nachos at the Buckeye Hall of Fame Café, and buy an Ohio State Buckeyes – 2002 National Championship t-shirt. We take our Buckeyes seriously in these parts. It’s all we’ve got. That, and corn, and insurance salesmen.
  
  It’s been a tough year to be a Buckeye and a Cleveland sports fan. I have a degree from The Ohio State University, but I was in my mid-twenties and had already graduated a couple times from other colleges before I showed up on campus, so I never really viewed my OSU years as part of my true college experience. I worked full time, went to classes, and drove home. Maybe that explains my ambivalence toward the spectacle that is Ohio State sports. I have witnessed the phenomenon of middle-aged women dressing up in cheerleader uniforms in corporate America, shaking their pompoms in the midst of the cubicle farm, and leading the faithful programmers and software architects and project managers in a rousing rendition of the Buckeye Battle Cry. “O H,” one side of the cubicle farm chanted. “I O,” the other side chanted back. It was one of the more surreal moments of my life.
  
  But I have been touched by the madness as much as anyone. I grew up in Columbus, where toddlers are taught to venerate the memory of the legendary football coach St. Woody Hayes, and where two-time (and the only two-time, mind you) Heisman Trophy Winner Archie Griffin is mentioned in the same breath as Abe Lincoln and Jesus. I grew up loving the Cleveland Browns, and the Cleveland Indians, and later, after a bout of NBA expansion, the Cleveland Cavaliers. These passions are embedded deep within my DNA. You can’t live here and be unaffected by it. Even the insurance salesmen drop their actuarial tables and turn into raving lunatics on football Saturdays.
  
  And it’s been a bad year to be a Buckeye. We are experiencing the curse of the Boston Red Sox, the major league baseball team that, for decades, was the perennial also-ran – almost always good, but never good enough to win it all. So I suppose that it’s only fitting that the Indians, who had the best record in baseball this year, should be eliminated from the playoffs by the stinking Red Sox.
  
  Four times this year we have been to the borders of the promised land, only to be turned back. Four times, with the most recent ignominy occurring last weekend when the Indians choked, blew a 3 games to 1 advantage, and lost three straight to the Red Sox.
  
  The current Ohio State football team is 8 and 0, and ranked #1 in the country. Do not be fooled. These people will break your heart, guaranteed. Don’t even start to fantasize. It’s not worth it.
  
  The problem is that it’s all we’ve got. It’s either the Buckeyes or stale nachos and Wai Fai Beach. Maybe it’s time to move to Paris.

Bruce Springsteen Finds the Old Magic

I want a thousand guitars
I want pounding drums
I want a million different voices
Speaking in tongues
-- Bruce Springsteen, "Radio Nowhere"

Me too.

I’ve heard all the arguments: Bruce Springsteen, at 58 years old (with heavy emphasis on “old”), should not be making rock ‘n roll records. There’s something unseemly about it, like Laura Bush wearing a bikini. And he’s made a derivative rock ‘n roll record at that, one that plunders dubious musical treasures such as Tommy Tutone’s “867-5309 (Jenny),” as well as his own back catalogue.

You know what? I don’t care. It’s still Magic. That Tommy Tutone track, the first single which is billed as “Radio Nowhere” on Bruce’s album, makes me want to play air guitar and jump on the couch cushions. And I don’t care if “Livin’ in the Future” sounds just like “Tenth Avenue Freezeout.” You know why? Because “Tenth Avenue Freezeout” is one of the greatest songs ever recorded by anybody, any time, and if Bruce wants to copy himself, he could hardly steal from a better source.

So let’s dispense with the criticisms right away. First, Brendan O’Brien’s wall-of-sound production sounds great when you’re caught in rush hour traffic, forced to listen over the overtaxed minivan sound system (sorry, no rolling down the window and letting the wind blow back your hair on Orange Barrel City freeways these days), but not so great when you’re trying to focus on the individual instruments. Second, the venerable E Street Band members, due to their busy schedules, mailed in their parts piecemeal, and it sounds like it. Band chemistry? Not here.

The good news? The best news, in fact? This is a Bruce Springsteen rock ‘n roll album, a glorious, strutting, anthemic arena shaker, full of big gestures and big statements the likes of which we haven’t heard since Born in the U.S.A. And in truth, we haven’t heard some of these sounds since the Ford administration and Born to Run: Danny Federici’s circus calliope on “Livin in the Future,” Professor Roy Bittan’s lyrical piano intro on “I’ll Work For Your Love,” those impossibly outsized sax breaks from Clarence Clemons, the old trick of kicking it up a notch with a quick key change before launching into one of those patented, wailing solos.

Springsteen, of course, is a long way down Thunder Road from those early evocations of primal joy and angst along the Jersey Shore. Of late – hell, for most of the past twenty years – he’s been working in Woody Guthrie troubadour mode, spinning out modern-day protest music that is occasionally transcendent, but more frequently dour and downbeat. So let me note that those who view Magic as some sort of triumphant return to escapist songs about girls and cars have totally missed the point. It is nothing of the sort. “Livin’ in the Future,” that “Tenth Avenue Freezeout” knockoff, may feature a mindless “Nah nah nah nah” singalong chorus, but the verses are a merciless indictment of an administration driven by fear and lies. Most of this album works on the level of standard boy/girl melodrama, but it also works as an extended metaphor for the uneasy malaise of our times. Almost all of it rocks. Bruce has, in fact, made an album of social commentary you can dance to.

In a political era when protest music has often degenerated into the realm of sputtering, red-faced invective, and when even top-drawer songwriters like Steve Earle are reduced to name calling and insults, it is a joy to hear measured and literate commentary. And on the album’s best song, the lovely, elegiac “Long Walk Home,” Springsteen again assumes the mantle of the blue collar Everyman – that old trick again -- and in that voice he delivers a withering analysis of the state of the union:

My father said 'Son, we're lucky in this town
It's a beautiful place to be born
It just wraps its arms around you
Nobody crowds you, nobody goes it alone.
That flag flying over the courthouse
Means certain things are set in stone
Who we are, what we'll do and what we won't.'
Its gonna be a long walk home.

We’ve heard this – we’ve heard all of it, in fact – before. But we’ve never heard it played this way in the past; flat out, reveling in the din of a thousand guitars and Max Weinberg’s pounding drums, the tongues speaking a cautionary tale in a transcendently joyful language. And that is ultimately the triumph of Magic. It is a sad album, at times even a desperate album. But none of that overrides the couch jumping factor, the desire to propel my sagging, middle-aged body through the air like a rock ‘n roll comet; bright, fading fast, but burning. This is what Bruce Springsteen does for me, what he’s always done for me when he’s at his idealistic, arena shaking best. It is, and always will be, magic.

Levon Helm -- Dirt Farmer

Levon Helm, iconic drummer and singer in The Band, is back with a miracle of an album. I don't think that's an exaggeration, and Helm would surely agree, as his liner notes attest. Helm almost lost his life to throat cancer a few years back. He most assuredly lost his voice. So the fact that he is singing at all is significant. The fact that he is singing this well is almost mind-boggling. The man is 67 years old, has been to hell and back, and he sounds as great as he did on "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down." The timbre has changed a bit (he's more Ralph Stanley caterwaul these days), but there's the same masterful phrasing. And he digs down deep into the loamy dirt.

Listening to Dirt Farmer, Helm's first solo album in 25 years, it occurred to me that this is the album he's been waiting to make all his life. Levon's always had that hardscrabble southern grit and soulfulness that seems to be bred in the soil of Helena, Arkansas, his native town. Here he employs it on thirteen songs, many of them from his childhood. The Carter Family is represented here, and Steve Earle, and Buddy and Julie Miller. There's an old blues tune from J.B. Lenoir, and a half dozen tracks from the ubiquitous "Trad." Frequent Dylan sideman Larry Campbell produces and plays guitars and fiddles, Levon plays mandolin and drums and sings, and daughter Amy from Ollabelle adds some exquisite harmonies that help to soften dad's feral howl. It's great stuff, raw but very accessible, and it makes me want to revisit every note the man has ever sung. He's a national (okay, for your Canadians who want to claim him, an international) treasure, and we should sing his praises while we've still got him.

How I Spent My Fall Vacation

Kate and I are back from our vacation in Italy. Our itinerary took in Rome, Venice, Padua, Florence, Siena, and Rome again. Aside from airplanes and *#$^ Delta Airlines (cancelled flight and a lost vacation day on the front end, lost luggage on the back end), it was a magical experience. Here are some scattered thoughts.

The Maze

You are in a maze of twisty passages, all alike.
-- Zork I

Venice is beautiful. Venice is maddening. Some sadistic Doge, back in the 1400s, conspired with the city planners to make the streets as confusing as possible. There was a certain perverse logic that went something like this:

1) Make no street longer than 200 feet.
2) If possible, ensure that the street dead ends at water (either the Adriatic Sea, or a canal).
3) Even though the streets cannot, by law, be longer than 200 feet, change the street name two or three times along the way.
4) Streets shall not be straight. Curves are good. Circles are better.
5) Add helpful arrows to point to tourist landmarks, such as the Rialto Bridge and San Marco Piazza. But make sure the arrows point in several directions simultaneously.
6) Provide future generations of tourists with a useless map that contains approximately 10% of the streets in Venice. And then watch the ensuing hilarity.

We spent hours wandering around in circles. As a Point A to Point B kind of guy, I found this inordinately frustrating. "Get lost," Rick Steves' travel guide advised us. "You're on an island. How lost can you get?" As it turns out, pretty lost. Venice is also the Niagara Falls of Italy, with tacky T-shirt and trinket shops around every curve, and it's amazing how much alike Venice's Best T-Shirts! on Via Canal dei Francesca can look when compared with Venice's Most Awesome T-Shirts! on Via Canal dei Francisco.

But here's the thing: those canals flow in their fetid fashion through the most gorgeous city you will ever see. Pastel-colored fifteenth and sixteenth century palaces are everywhere, and Renaissance churches overflowing with artistic masterpieces, and delightful piazzas full of bubbling fountains that look like they belong in museums, not slaking the thirst of some soccer-playing kids on the square. So we got lost. So what? It took me a couple days to figure that out, but so what?

You Don't Say

"GRAHT-see," I say to the young woman at the checkout counter.
"GRAHT-see-AY," she corrects me.
"Mi scuzee," I say.
"It's okay," she replies.

It's a good thing that almost everybody in Italy speaks English. I had the best of intentions. A friend loaned out her 24-CD set of Italian language instruction, and I really did intend to listen studiously on my drives to and from work. But there were albums to review, and new albums to listen to, and it didn't happen. And so we arrived in Italy armed with a 30-word vocabulary, including tortellini, gnocchi, mozzarella, and vino.

It turned out that it really didn't matter that much. The Italians we met were friendly, helpful, and more fluent in English than I had any right to expect. Granted, it would have been difficult for them to carry on a conversation with me about, say, the merits of premillenialism vs. amillenialism. But that's some boring shit anyway, and most people were only too happy to assist us with directions to museums, prices, and the location of the nearest WC, which were the things we needed to talk about. Thanks to nothing I did, the language barrier turned out to be no barrier at all.

The Birthday Girl

There are far worse places to spend one's 50th birthday. This is Kate perched atop a piazza overlooking the city of Florence.

Royale With Cheese

Vincent
You know what they call a Quarter Pounder with Cheese in Paris?

Jules
They don't call it a Quarter Pounder with Cheese?

Vincent
No, they got the metric system there, they wouldn't know what the fuck a Quarter Pounder is.

Jules
What'd they call it?

Vincent
Royale with cheese.
-- John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson in "Pulp Fiction"

I swore that I would not be that guy. The ugly American who moans that there's no ice in the water glasses, and that it's impossible to find a regular-sized cup of coffee around here. But I became that guy against my wishes.

Italians do some foods really, really well: pastry, coffee, wine, gelato. And they do some foods really, really poorly, including the ones you would think they would do well: pasta, pizza, and seafood. It's possible that there are random trattorias and osterias out there that prepare and serve these foods in delectable concoctions, but we couldn't find them, at least in Venice. Well, more correctly, we found them, but with ridiculous tourist prices ($70 for a hunk of fish; that's not for the meal, that's just for the piece of fish). With the plunging value of the dollar against the Euro, we decided that we didn't need to indulge that badly.

And that left us with ham and cheese. Here's the deal: the Italians are inordinately fond of the pig. I have nothing against the pig, and have been known to scarf down bacon, ham, sausage, and the occasional pork medallion. But when the only meat you can find on the menu involves the pig, and when every lunchtime panino is some fancy-sounding variation on the serviceable ham and cheese sandwich, you start to long for a little variety.

So I decided to be adventurous. "I'll have a speck panino," I told the guy at the counter.

It turned out that speck is some inedible part of the pig. Intestines. Brains. Something like that. Trust me. You wouldn't like it. And so, out of self defense, we finally located a McDonald's. And yes, I ordered a Royale with Cheese. It was mighty, mighty good, too.

Pissing Away Our Money

Everything in Italy costs money. Everything. It costs $1.50 every time you pee at a public WC. It costs $6.00 for two people to sit down in an outdoor cafe. Just to sit. Food is, of course, extra. We spent a lot more money than we should have. We didn't have many options.

Traveling Companions

Perhaps because we were starved for conversation beyond "Grazie" and "Buon giorno," the normally reticent Andy and Kate became flaming extroverts when they encountered English-speaking travelers. We met Jeremy and Caroline from Manchester, England, in Venice for their honeymoon. We met married doctors Jay and Sandy from Tampa, Florida, who were planning to bicycle through Tuscany. We met Dan and Gloria, from Hollywood, California, whose California mission-style house gets tranformed into a house in Pennsylvania every week on a television show I've never seen. And I met a longtime e-friend, Martin, with whom I've corresponded on various Internet discussion lists for more than fifteen years. Martin lives in Seattle, Washington but our families hooked up in Florence, Italy. Go figure.

Thumbs Up













This is the thumb of St. Catherine of Siena. It has been preserved in a reliquary in a cathedral in Siena for the past six hundred years. We also saw the tongue and vocal chords of St. Anthony of Padua, and the entire grinning skeletal remains of several other saints.

There is a part of me that really doesn't understand the focus on relics. Then I remember that I have traveled to Cleveland and the Rock 'n Roll Hall of Fame to view Eric Clapton's guitar pick, also encased behind glass. So we saw several Saint Hall of Fame locations.

At St. Anthony's stomping grounds in Padua, we saw the devout kissing the good saint's tomb, and rubbing their hands against it. Some people pinned notes to a wall next to the tomb. Some people posted pictures of little kids who had simply disappeared, loved ones who hadn't been heard from in thirty years. St. Anthony is the patron saint of lost things. Watching the devout, some of them in tears, I hope and pray he can help them find their loved ones. I don't fully understand it. But I understand that hole in the soul, that feeling that a big part of your life has been torn away. Please do whatever it is you do, St. Anthony.

All This Useless Beauty

What shall we do do, what shall we do with all this useless beauty?
All this useless beauty?
-- Elvis Costello, "All This Useless Beauty"

Our church meets in the auditorium of an elementary school. Every Sunday we set up the folding Samsonite chairs, and then we take them down at the end of the service. The only art to be found comes from the occasional display from Mrs. Jorgenson's 4th grade class.

I suppose people travel to Italy for different reasons. But for us, it was a chance to celebrate our 25th wedding anniversary. And to see art. And so we spent the time we weren't wandering around lost, or sitting in a cafe or restaurant, touring a dozen world-class museusms and two dozen monstrous cathedrals. We saw a monastery in Florence whose cells were decorated with frescoes by Fra Angelico. The good brother spent the last few decades of his life creating art that he believed only his fellow monks would see. We saw a chapel in Padua that is covered from floor to ceiling with paintings by the early Renaissance master Giotto. We saw Gothic, high Renaissance, and Baroque churches dripping with sculptures from Michelangelo and Donatello and Bernini, paintings from Raphael and Leonardo Da Vinci and Titian and Tintoretto and Veronese, Ghirlandaio and Fra Bartolomeo and Fillipo Lippi. And we saw dozens of works that even I, perhaps the least visually oriented person in the universe, recognize from my meager knowledge of art. If you wanted a crash course in the art of western civilization, at least as created by white guys from ancient Rome through the late Renaissance, you could hardly do better than follow our itinerary.

It was all too much. I couldn't take it in. Consider, for a moment, that the Cathedral of San Marco in Venice is covered -- and I mean that every square inch of the interior of a fifteen-story building is covered -- with millions of tiny tiles that comprise the most majestic mosaics to be found on the planet. Consider that it took a large group of highly skilled artists a couple hundred years to make that happen. And then consider that San Marco was one of several such establishments we visited on one day of a fifteen-day trip, and that I haven't even mentioned the paintings or the statuary or the jewel-encrusted crucifixes, or the mind-boggling architecture of the building itself. Multiply by infinity. Blow your mind.

It was all too much; useless beauty everywhere, an embarrassment of riches, both literally and in terms of the incalculable worth of the artistic vision that found palpable reality. That writhing fellow above is Laocoon, a priest of Troy who warned his fellow citizens about that strange looking wooden horse in Virgil's Aeneid. Here he is assailed by sea serpents. His image, found in the Vatican Museum and carried across the space of twenty-two centuries, still startles. Astoundingly, it is carved out of a solid block of marble. No one knows the name of the sculptor who sat patiently, month after month, year after year, carving those rich details, capturing, impossibly, the look of sheer terror. Out of solid rock.

I don't worship art, although I know people who do. Theologically, I'm part of a good, upstanding Protestant tradition that is suspicious of all the extravagance, all the unnecessary frills. No pomp and ostentation where we come from; no sir. But we're missing something. Maybe you had to be there. I can recognize that a Samsonite chair and a neon-lit elementary school auditorium will do the trick. But I can be thankful for, and amazed by, all the useless beauty.

October

October
And kingdoms rise
And kingdoms fall
But you go on and on
-- U2, "October"

There are ruins everywhere in Rome. There are the obvious tourist traps -- the Colosseum, the Forum. But we were astounded to find a stray column, a random bit of carved rubble, almost everywhere we turned.

It was a sobering thing to see the ruins of a magnificent civilization. In Largo Argentina, a once bustling market square, wild cats prowl around the disintegrating columns. It was once an important center in the most important city in the world. Now it is the denizen of cats.

We touched down in Columbus Saturday night and caught up a bit on the news from Iraq, the baseball pennant races, the ongoing saga of Lindsay Lohan's rehab. It's good to be home. We missed our kids, and we missed our friends. I missed Starbucks, my iMac, and Donato's Pizza. But I remembered those crumbling columns, and I tried to keep it in perspective. I tried to remember what lasts.

Great vacations, sadly, do not. But I am so grateful for the opportunity to see these things.

Rubble

Oh, the streets or Rome are filled with rubble
Ancient footprints are everywhere
-- Bob Dylan, “When I Paint My Masterpiece”

And so they are. In about 6 hours Kate and I will be headed to Rome, the first stop in a 16-day journey that will also take us to Venice and Florence, and perhaps a couple other cities along the way. It’s an impossibly extravagant venture, one we can’t really afford with two kids in college, but you do what you have to do. It’s our 25th wedding anniversary, and somehow a weekend at Lake Erie just didn’t seem quite adequate.

Twenty-five years is a long time. Twenty-five years ago I was skinny and had a lot more hair, and Kate, the silver fox, had dark brown hair. In between we had a couple kids, moved a few times, changed churches a few times (echoing Bono's heartfelt lament, "I still haven't found what I'm looking for," although I think we're pretty close this time), and became different people.

The reasons people marry are many and varied. I wouldn't have stated it this way 25 years ago, but one of the big ones for me is that I was in panting lust with the woman who was to be my wife, and, as a Christian, I had a hard time justifying just hopping in the sack. So I did what good Christian boys are supposed to do. I got married. There was a lot more to it, of course, because there is a lot more to Kate. But that was a big part of it. I was lonely, I was horny, and here was a beautiful, kind, intelligent woman who loved the Lord and who was willing to marry me. Did I mention beautiful?

I think the shit hit the fan about Day 3. And it has flown intermittently ever since, primarily because I've managed to chuck the turds at the rotating blades on a fairly routine basis. It has not been easy to be married to me. Everybody enters marriage with baggage. I came dragging old foot lockers and trunks, carry on bags, an assortment of Samsonite luggage, junk stuffed willy-nilly into plastic totes. The shit was everywhere, and although some of it was out in the open, some of it was buried deep in storage compartments, hidden away under lock and key. And here is one sad but glorious fact: the shit is still there, but 25 years down the line it isn't piled nearly as high as it was. This is because I am married to the woman who said "I do" 25 years ago, and who has lived through days where she has regretted that, but who has never once wanted to say "I don't."

Don't let anybody tell you that this Christianity business isn't hard, or that it isn't fraught with surprise and mystery. One of my friends has recently decided to check out of the business. It's too confusing. You look for God to show up, and when you really need Him to put in an appearance, He's AWOL. I sympathize. He doesn't play by any rules I understand. But I also look around at the people He has brought into my life. They are remarkable. And I know, without a doubt, that the way He seems to work is through those people, through the inexplicable love they have for me when I am not lovable, when I am not kind, when I am only concerned about the ongoing expansion of the Kingdom of Me. You can put Kate at the top of that list.

Because life is one big soundtrack to me, I carry around tunes in my head as I prepare for our trip. One is by Bob Dylan, and is quoted above. The other is by Bruce Cockburn. Bruce Cockburn is a Canadian musician who has been writing the soundtrack to my life since I first discovered his album Night Vision way back in 1974. I haven't missed any of his albums since. And he wrote a song that nailed the strange patterns, the halting little minuet that two non-dancers do when they are still trying to figure out the steps. Sometimes I despair of ever really changing. But sometimes, after 25 years, I survey the scenery and I discover something amazing. The rubble is still there, and it crunches underfoot. The ancient footprints are everywhere. But I look around, and there appears to be a new building under construction. It's not spectacular, but it's held up for a while, and if you squint your eyes it looks kind of pretty. I am 52 years old, graying and balding and fatter than I was back in my youth, and crazy in love. And I know, without a doubt, that God allowed me to marry the right person in spite of myself.

This is how Bruce Cockburn's song goes:

Guess I'd get along without you
If I had no choice
It's taken me this long to find you

Done a lot of getting ready for this
Some things we learn so slow
But look at you, you've got plenty behind you

There's lots of ways to hit the ground
Not many answers to be found
We're faced with mysteries profound
And this is one of the best ones

There are eight million mysteries
In the naked body
Can't even sight on some distant horizon

Like the nine billion names of God
Don't bring you any closer
To anyone you can simply set eyes on

But in the same way it's as real
Don't always recognize what I feel

But of the dancing scenes that life reveals

This is one of the best ones

Say what you will
There's no snake oil or pill
Can make love less painful or fine

There's no theatre

Even of the absurd
Can express what goes on in this meeting of hearts and minds

Guess I'd get along without you
If I had no choice
But please never make it so I have to

Paid a lot of dues to get here
And after all this life
I'm a loser if I don't live with you

There's lots of ways to hit the ground
Not many answers to be found
We're faced with mysteries profound
And this is one of the best ones

And so it is.

Goodreads and Bad Spam

I hate when this happens. And when you combine a technophobic personality (I know; I work in the IT world, but I've been faking it for 25 years) with a basic lack of attention, it seems to happen to me fairly frequently.

Here's the deal: A friend sent me an invitation to be a part of her Goodreads community. "What the heck is a Goodreads community?," I asked myself. So I clicked the handy link in her email to find out. The link informed me that Goodreads is an online community where folks can share with one another the books that have been most meaningful to them. Did I want to see the books that were most meaningful to my friend? Sure I did. So I created a login and a password (Mistake #1), and clicked the "Submit" button (Mistake #2). Up came a list of people with curious checkmarks next to their names. I thought, "Hey, isn't it wonderful that my friend and I know so many people in common?" What can I say? It was late on a Saturday night. I wasn't paying close attention, or I would have realized that my friend, who is from Ohio and 20 years younger than me, probably didn't know my high school English teacher in Crete, Illinois, or the guy who laid the tile flooring in our kitchen. I should have realized that those were my Contacts in that list -- all 438 of them. But I didn't. And so I clicked another magic "Submit" button (Mistake #3, and a big one) because I was impatient to move past the stupid list of names so I could actually see the books my friend liked. And every single one of those 438 contacts received email from me, asking to be a part of my Goodreads community. I'm sorry. I don't want to have a Goodreads community. I love books. I read them all the time. And I love all my contacts. Okay, I respect some of them, and loathe one or two, but they're relatives. But honestly, I have better things to do with my life than assign star ratings to my favorite books.

The good news is that I've now heard from more than a dozen people I haven't heard from in years. Ex-bosses. Former CCM stars. Which is kind of cool. But if you received that email from me, I apologize. I didn't mean it. Some 284 people on that list have added me as a "friend" in the past few days. Again, this is good, I suppose. I was their friend (or respected acquaintance, I reckon), and now I'm their virtual "friend." I've had more than 1,000 books recommended to me. Someone make it stop.

Chip Taylor and Carrie Rodriguez -- Live from the Ruhr Triennale

Chip Taylor has led a nomadic life. The brother of actor John Voight, Chip started off with a less-than-successful stint as a professional golfer, dabbled as a songwriter and did pretty well for himself, writing hits in the '60s for The Hollies, Janis Joplin, and Merrilee Rush, wrote the proto-garage anthem "Wild Thing" (yes, that one, for better and worse), journeyed to Hollywood and acted for a while (Melvin and Howard), and dropped out of the music business for twenty years and survived as a professional gambler. But he saved the best act for last, re-emerging six years ago as a wizened, world-weary troubadour a la Robert Earl Keen and Guy Clark, with young Texas fiddler and Lucinda Williams soundalike Carrie Rodriguez in tow.

Taylor and Rodriguez have recorded five albums now, and they're all worth tracking down. The Trouble With Humans, from 2003, is probably my favorite, but you could do a lot worse than starting with their newly released Live from the Ruhr Triennale. It's a fine compendium of the best songs from the previous four albums, and it's the only place to hear a Chip Taylor career overview, since Taylor includes not only his newer duets with Carrie, but also his own versions of songs that were hits for others ("Angel of the Morning," usually associated with Juice Newton, and yes, the inevitable rave-up closer on "Wild Thing"). There are also great covers of Merle Haggard ("Today I Started Loving You Again') and Johnny Cash ("Big River" and "Long Black Veil"), and a surprisingly effective honky-tonk take on Chuck Berry's "Maybelline." The band is phenomenal -- the Session Men Who Play on Two Thirds of All Recorded Music From the New Millenium (Bill Frisell, David Piltch, Greg Leisz), augumented with Carrie's jumping fiddle and Buddy Miller's twanging guitar work.

Basically, Chip and Carrie cover all the bases. If you're a fan of great country duet singing, telepathic interplay between band members, or great songwriting, there's much here that will delight you. If you happen to like all three, as I do, then you will be grinning from ear to ear.

John Fogerty -- Revival

John Fogerty, Mr. CCR himself, has a new album called Revival due out October 2nd. This one is getting a lot of pre-release hype, and it's being hailed as Fogerty's best work since his Creedence Clearwater Revival days.

Umm, no. It's not bad, and musically it's actually kinda great, but I haven't heard so many wince-inducing couplets since I ... well, since I sang a couple of those Vineyard choruses yesterday morning. Never mind. But if this rock 'n roll thing goes down the tubes, John, you probably have a big career ahead of you rhyming "loss" and "cross" and "grace" and face."

The good news is that Fogerty sounds absolutely fabulous. His voice, which is a force a nature, one of the greatest rock 'n roll sledgehammers ever, is still miraculously in its prime. And certainly he rocks harder here than he has at any time during his sporadic solo career. Fogerty gets in his scathing digs at the current presidential administration and actually conjures up the old dread of "Bad Moon Rising" on "Long Dark Night," the highlight of the album. There are two short rockabilly numbers here -- "It Ain't Right" and "I Can't Take It No More" -- that will have longtime fans recalling "Travelin' Band." And "Creedence Song" (not the only piece of self-referential work on the album) whips up that old, familiar swamp boogie that fueled albums like Bayou Country and Green River.

The bad news is that Fogerty doesn't have a poetic bone in his body, and he can only present ideas in hackneyed Hallmark Card cliches that I would like to think even the Hallmark company would have the good sense to reject. There's a lot of wistful hearkening back to the Summer of Love (including the song "Summer of Love," which manages the considerable feat of stealing the guitar riffs from both Hendrix's "Purple Haze" and Cream's "Sunshine of Your Love"). There's a lot of cowboy imagery, in which John claims that what the country needs is a good gunslinger (which I thought he had labeled as the problem in "Long Dark Night," but maybe it's only a problem when the gunslingers are in the White House). Then there is the album's first single "Don't You Wish It Was True?," in which John opines that it sure would be swell if everybody loved each other. Don't come looking for deep thoughts. Or consistency.

So consider it a decidedly uneven effort. This is one time when singing the proverbial phone book would have been preferable to the actual lyrics.

A. J. Roach -- Revelation

Folksinger A.J. Roach may call San Francisco home, but he’s got the mountains and hollers of his native southwestern Virginia deep in his veins. It turns out he may have other things in his veins as well. And when you put that together, you end up with one hell of an Appalachian confessional album, called Revelation, replete with biblical imagery and harrowing addiction stories set to gentle banjo, mandolin and fiddle accompaniment.

“Revelation” is right. The power of this album lies in the juxtaposition of the traditional mountain gospel accompaniment and iconography with the tales from the gutter. Consider Roach’s alternate take on Psalm 23:

Whiskey is my shepherd; I shall not want
It maketh me lie down in a strange woman’s bed
It maketh me talk out of both sides of my mouth
It maketh me feel like I’d be better off dead

And there’s plenty more moonshine salvation where that came from. As is fitting for someone who hails from the same county that gave us The Carter Family and The Stanley Brothers, Roach has got it, but you just have to hear it to understand. Critics have given it a label, and called it the high lonesome sound, but that doesn’t do it justice. It’s a gentle Scottish burr transplanted to the new world, encountering backwoods ghosts and night terrors, and emerging as something haunted and haunting. And Roach has it in spectral spades. He employs it on tales of sleeping in a freezing car, coming down from cheap cocaine, of walking bleary-eyed through the streets of Omaha. Revelation is a simultaneously grim and lovely album, full of sharp, vivid writing and soulful singing. It’s the southern gothic gospel of the halfway house and the homeless shelter, and it’s one of the best albums of the year.