Southeast Engine

I have a friend who is the director of several homeless shelters in Athens, Ohio. He's the king of a dubious empire, and business is booming. Athens is tucked away in the southeast corner of the state, thirty miles from the West Virginia border. There may be a higher percentage of homeless people in and around Athens, Ohio than in any other town in America. There's a 20,000-student university there, and a few thousand former coal miners who, if they work at all, now work at the Taco Bell on Court Street or the Wal-Mart out on State Street because those are the only jobs to be found. The coal is long gone, and anybody with any sense gets the hell out of Dodge as soon as they clutch that precious degree. It's a wonderful, picturesque college town, and it's a desperate, unforgiving place to make a stand and try to make a life. It's Appalachia and academia, town and tattered gown, and it offers a unique perch from which to articulate the shabbiness.

And perhaps that's why Southeast Engine -- Athens natives a few years removed from the graduation ceremony, and still hanging out in that idyllic little college town -- sound like they do. You can tell that lead singer/songwriter Adam Remnant has his English degree, and he drops enough literary references to make sure you know he’s spent some time in old Ellis Hall. But there’s a restlessness and desperation at the heart of his music that suggests that the old Athens malaise has already set in, and that feeling trapped isn’t the exclusive domain of suburban executives with midlife crises and cherry red sports cars. His band plays what has often been described as Americana, alt-country, roots rock. Pick your label. All I know is that Remnant sounds a lot like Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy, that the soulfulness in his world-weary rasp is palpable, and that his band makes the kind of racket that Tweedy and company did before they decided to get all arty and experimental on us and mix in the radio static and amplifier hum.

There are three albums now – Love is a Murder, a Mystery of Sorts, Coming to Terms with Gravity, and the new one, A Wheel Within a Wheel, which is one of my favorite albums of 2007. A few of the songs try too hard. But most of the time Remnant gets it just right, a smart guy hanging out in a place where religious loonies handle snakes, and where nobody can get a job. He’s longing for truth, longing to be someone better than he is, full of faith and doubt, spooked by spirits and spooked by the image that stares back at him from the mirror. He’s a wonderful songwriter, and Southeast Engine is a very fine band.

We stayed up all night talking
Just to understand what goes on
When you're sleepwalking
What goes through your head
Because you say you don't remember
You were walking through the walls
And like a ghost your heart is ancient
But your mind just can't recall
So cover yourself in a long white sheet
And cut two holes for your eyes
Your spirit weeps when your mouth declares
That this life is just to die

And you will not survive the cost of life
You'll be buried in the ground
Or burned into tiny ashes
And swept across the land
But what matters is bound to show somewhere
Your blood will soon transform
Into another form of life
You don't leave you just return
So cover yourself in a long white sheet
And follow the path to the holy sea
Let the water forgive your sin
Until your mind is totally emptied

It's the father, it's the son, it's the holy ghost
This is what I had feared the most
It's the father, it's the son, it's the holy ghost
This is what I had feared the most
This is joy, this is pain, this is relentless
This is stating the obvious
This is joy, this is pain, this is relentless
This is stating the obvious
-- Southeast Engine, "Holy Ghost"

Lists

Yeah, I know, I said I wasn't going to post anything new today. I lied.

Every year, my favorite/least favorite issue of Paste Magazine is the one where the year's best albums, films, and books are ranked. Every year Paste gets it completely wrong. This is because they don't publish my own rankings. Most people seem to operate according to these sensibilities as well, except they're not me, and therefore I disagree with them. They all suck.

Among the charges leveled at Paste’s recently published list of the Best Albums of 2007:

-- What a lame-ass, mainstream list. Why can’t you be adventurous and cool, like me?
-- Who the hell has even heard of these albums? Why don’t you list something we might have actually heard? Or at least I might have heard?
-- Where the hell was Panda Bear/Menomena/Dirty Projectors/The Bastard Fairies/Aqueduct? How did you manage to forget about the best album of the year, and why are you not Pitchfork?
-- Umm, Paul McCartney? He’s still alive, you know.
-- You hate Britney Spears, just like every other lame-ass, pretentious music publication except Rolling Stone. I love their pictures. And I looooove Britney. She’s talented, she’s a good mom, and she is better off without K-Fed.
-- Charles Mingus released the best album of 2007, even though he’s been dead for 28 years (Editor’s Note: this is actually a correct view).

I could go on and on, but for a fine, entertaining representative sampling of these views, you might want to check out the article and extensive comments section over at stereogum.

There’s a familiar, comforting cycle to these events. Paste and other publications boldly set forth their views. Then the music fanatics get on their blogs and publish their Top 10 Most Overrated Albums of the Year and Top 10 Most Overrated Music Magazine lists, and the aggrieved music critics counter with their Top 10 Most Overrated/Pretentious/Clueless Music Bloggers lists, and the hilarity just goes on and on.

But here are some facts, facts I tell you, that may help you keep it all in perspective.

-- If you check the list of Upcoming Releases on allmusic.com, the most comprehensive music resource on the web, you’ll find that there are approximately 400 - 500 albums released every month. And that doesn’t include the hundreds of albums self-released every month by bands/musicians who have their own MySpace page, an Apple computer with Garageband, and the wherewithal to press a few CDs for their families, friends, and the potentially millions of fans who just need to hear the music to be won over to the cause.
-- Assuming only the 400 – 500 albums per month listed at allmusic.com, there were 5,000 – 6,000 new albums released in 2007. If you listened to the radio in Columbus, Ohio, even to that progressive NPR station, you heard about .1% of the new music released this year, roughly one new song for every 1,000 new songs released. At the other extreme, if you were a music critic who listened to new music non-stop, rarely slept, never bathed, had no social life (related?) and no discernible means of employment – in other words, if you listened to new music 18 hours per day, 7 days per week, without a respite, and without, you know, actually taking the time to write anything about the music you heard – you would have barely been able to listen to all the new music released this year, and you still wouldn’t have scratched the surface of all those self-produced/self-released albums. And you would smell.
-- It’s hard, if not impossible, to take it all in.
-- This is art, not algebra.
-- People are different. This can be a good thing. I learned this from Sesame Street long before I heard that washed-up, worthless old hippie fart Jessie Colin Young and the Youngbloods exhort us all to smile on our brothers and love one another right now. And you see how well the lesson has stuck. But really. People are different.

Just as a footnote, in an article just published at allmusic.com, the fine writers/critics associated with that organization just posted their own lists of their Top 10 albums from 2007. Of the approximately 20 writers/critics and 200 albums represented, roughly 150 of them are unique. Let me repeat that: roughly 150 of them are unique. Nobody agrees with anybody. And you know what my #1 favorite part of the article is?

1) The 50 aggrieved commenters who complain that their own favorites are not represented.

Writer's Strike/Transfiguration

In solidarity with the Hollywood writers and their ongoing strike, there will be no new thoughts today. Instead, we bring you a re-run.

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

Kent State University, which has been around for a hundred years, and has paraded forth a million or so graduates during its time, is most famous for gunfire. On May 4th, 1970, after several days of intensifying confrontations between anti-war protesters and local police, the National Guard was called in and opened fire on the protesters, killing four young men and women. Two of them were Kent State students who were strolling between classes on a bright spring day, minding their own business, thousands of feet away from the violent confrontations.I remember the times quite vividly. In Columbus, Ohio, where I lived, the Ohio State University closed its doors a month early. It just shut down and sent everybody home. Kent State touched off an inflammatory outpouring of grief and outrage at Ohio State and many other universities, and there was every indication that the students, had they stuck around, would have burned the whole damn campus to the ground. Neil Young wrote an anthem about it, and it was better than the Star Spangled Banner, more biting, more full of howling anger and pain, and nobody forgot the words:

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

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

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

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

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

“Is that really an original Johnny Cash single on Sun Records?” I asked the owner, a grizzled old geezer named Phil.

“Of course,” he said. “Want to see it?”

Does Johnny love June? So Phil unlocked the case and gingerly passed the sacred single over to me. “Damn,” I said, which is short for “I cannot believe I’m holding one of the rarest records in the world in my hands.” “How much?” I asked him. “Not for sale,” Phil told me. “It’s like that American Express commercial. Some things money can’t buy. This is one of them.”

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

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

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

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

Hating Led Zeppelin

I hated Led Zeppelin for a long time. Part of it was the presence of those interminable songs about Gollum and Valhalla at every stonerfest, and earnest stoned mystics proclaiming the utter heaviosity of it all. Part of it was my aggrieved sense of injustice, knowing that Page and Plant had ripped off deserving blues musicians wholesale and credited their non-creations to, you guessed it, Page and Plant. And part of it was pure and simple jealousy. Okay, it irritated me that these Viking hippies could have their pick of an unending line of groupies and still have enough testosterone left over to casually toss heavy furniture from hotel windows. It wasn’t fair.

So what did I do? I followed my inner elf. I studiously ingored the Led Zeppelin siren song, proclaimed my independence of stonerfest groupthink, and snatched up all the British Trad rock I could find. Okay, they weren’t exactly equivalent – Fairport Convention’s and Steeleye Span’s songs about woodland nymphs and faerie queens and Led Zeppelin’s thunderous blues anthems. But impossibly the two converged, and my life has never been the same.

The occasion was a song on the Led Zeppelin IV album called “The Battle of Evermore.” The day the album came out, one of my friends, knowing my fondness for all things Fairport Convention, brought over the album. “Listen to this,” he said. And there it was – the exquisite voice of Sandy Denny, lead singer for Fairport Convention, entwined with Robert Plant’s banshee wail, proclaiming yet another Tolkienesque tale of dark lords and ring wraiths and epic warfare. But this time it sounded great.

I didn’t rush out and buy the Led Zeppelin back catalogue. That took almost another 30 years. But I did cautiously explore some of the earlier music, and backed off some of my intractable positions. “Gallows Pole,” a folk song on Led Zeppelin III, had actually been credited (correctly) to “Trad.” I recognized it from a much earlier Leadbelly album, but at least Plant and Page hadn’t claimed it as their own. “Tangerine,” from the same album, actually sounded pretty, a quality I never expected from the Barons of Bombast. I grudgingly admitted my admiration for this music.

And I suppose I just mellowed. Robert Plant was involved in a serious car accident in the mid-‘70s, and lost his young son not long after that. Whatever petty jealousies I might have harbored seemed just that – petty – and not worth holding on to. In spite of that impossibly great mane of hair and outsized ego, he was just a guy, prone to screw ups and inexplicable tragedies, just like me.

Five or six years ago a certain breed of layabout stoner/slacker started hanging out at my house, one generation down the line. They were the friends, and sometime boyfriends, of my daughters. Stuffing down my inner urge to grill them about career goals, I asked them instead about their musical tastes. And it turned out that most of them liked, God help me, Led Zeppelin. “Jimmy Page is godlike,” one of them told me. “’Black Dog’” is the greatest song ever written,” another solemnly intoned. “Nah,” I countered. “’Communication Breakdown,’ that’s the essence of balls-to-the-wall rock ‘n roll.” Touché, dude. It struck me as odd that I was using the phrase “balls-to-the-wall” when discussing music with an acne- ravaged sixteen-year-old-kid, but maybe Led Zeppelin does that to you. I felt like wearing a Viking helmet and throwing furniture.

So I bought the back catalogue. Every studio album, the two live multi-disc albums, the set of outtakes and in-studio appearances from the BBC. I still don’t understand why Robert Plant, he of the fantastic mane and the Viking countenance, was worried about Gollum stealing away with his girl. Relax, man. Toss a couch. But now, finally, I can hear what was there all along. Sure, the band ripped off some of the greatest American music ever made. But they set fire to it and pummeled it and sent it soaring. They might be the greatest rock ‘n roll band, ever.

They just got back together, the three surviving original members, and Jason Bonham, a slacker/stoner one generation down the line, and played an incendiary set in London. Sixty-year-old men aren’t supposed to act like this. But these guys spent their formative years pillaging and plundering, and if they’re older and a bit wizened, they’re still bound for Valhalla. By all accounts they were great. I missed them the first time around, and couldn’t have cared less. Now I’d like to see them, hear that banshee wail before it fades.

Tonio K.

This man is shooting a toilet. I like that.

His name is Steve Krikorian, but he's known in the music world as Tonio K., a name boldly copped from a Thomas Mann short story called "Tonio Kroger." As a teenager he played in Buddy Holly's old band The Crickets, but Buddy had been dead for about fifteen years by that point, and young, impressionable Steve was probably scarred for life by a touring regimen featuring a Buddy Holly impersonator performing old rock 'n roll hits in dive bars and juke joints. Wouldn't you be?

At any rate, he emerged twisted. His first proper album was called Life in the Foodchain and was released in 1978. It's one of the best albums ever made. I'm not kidding. It's funny. It's sad. It's killer rock 'n roll. It's razor-sharp social commentary. And it's evidence of a questing spirit, somebody looking for truth. There are a million and one breakup songs out there. But this is the funniest one, and the one that still sounds closest to actual experience to me:

now i know it's not unusual
it's nothing so unique
there's probably hundreds of wonderful love affairs
that go bad in this town every week
(it's a big town)
but all of them others
them sad-hearted lovers
could cry in their beer, what the hey
it didn't concern me
was none of my business
i never had nothin' to say
but suddenly darlin' the table has turned
you have left me for somebody new
and now it's hard to express the resentment i feel
for the years that i've wasted on you

but let me put this another way ... ok?

i'm full of h-a-t-r-e-d
i'm bitter and malign
you've got me p-i-s-s-e-d off
i'm angry most of the time
why don't you g-o t-o h-e-double"l"
you tramp you philandering bitch
i'm going to k-i-l-l one of us baby
give me time and i'll decide on which

i know i'm acting immature
i know i'm acting like a child
i should display some self-control
instead of going wild like this
and i do wish i could accept all this
as simply "life" which includes pain
and act upon the actual fact
that nobody's to blame
yes i wish i was as mellow as for instance jackson browne
but "fountain of sorrow" my ass motherfucker
i hope you wind up in the ground

i'm so full of h-a-t-r-e-d
i'm bitter and malign
you've got me p-i-s-s-e-d off
i'm angry most of the time
why don't you g-o t-o h-e-double"l"
you tramp you philandering bitch
i'm going to k-i-l-l one of us baby
when i'm sober i'll decide on which
(but then again, maybe with the proper counseling,
we can work this out)

I'm full of H-A-T-R-E-D
What's that spell?
What's that spell?
-- Tonio K., "H-A-T-R-E-D"

Don't look for that on Praise 'n Worship radio. But I truly appreciate the fact that Tonio, best known as a Christian recording artist, will claim that that song was written when he was a Christian. Hey, Christians have bad days and bad years too. About ten years later he was writing songs like this. It's considerably more restrained, but no less powerful. The guy just writes truth, and all of his albums are worth tracking down.

you've been a prisoner
been a prisoner all your life
held captive in an alien world
where they hold your need for love to your throat like a knife
and they make you jump
and they make you do tricks
they take what started off such an innocent heart
and they break it and break it and break it
until it almost can't be fixed

well i don't know when
and i don't know how
i don't know how long it's gonna take
i don't know how hard it will be
but i know you will go free

now you can call it the devil
call it the big lie
call it a fallen world
whatever it is, it ruins almost everything we try
it's the sins of the fathers
it's the choices we make
it's people screaming without making a sound
from these prison cells in paradise where we're chained to our mistakes

well i don't know when
and i don't know how
i don't know how much it's gonna cost you
probably everything
but i know you will go free

you can't see the jailer
you can't see the bars
you can't turn your head around fast enough
but it's everywhere you are
it's all around you
and everywhere you walk these prison walls surround you

but in the midst of all this darkness
in the middle of this night
i see the truth cut through this curtain like a laser
like a pure and holy light
and i know i can't touch you now
and i don't want to speak too soon
but when we get sprung
from out of these cages baby
god knows what we might do

well i don't know when
and i don't know how
i don't know if you'll be leaving alone
or if you'll be leaving with me
but i know you will go free
i know the truth will set you free
the truth about who you are
the truth about who you were always meant to be
-- Tonio K., "You Will Go Free"

Charles Whitman and Other Celebrities

That young, fresh-faced fellow is Charles Whitman. His name is easy for me to remember, for obvious reasons. But a lot of people remember his name. He's a celebrity. In August of 1966 he killed his wife and mother, and then ventured down to the University of Texas, where he climbed the bell tower and started shooting random students traipsing across the campus. All told, he killed 14 people and wounded 31 others. Charles was the first -- or at least the first widely reported -- wacko sniper on the loose.

Yesterday a young kid who had just broken up with his girlfriend and been fired from his job at McDonald's walked into a mall in Omaha, Nebraska and started firing his rifle. Eight people were killed, falling amidst the holiday decorations, before he turned the gun on himself. He left behind a suicide note that read, in part, "At least now I'll be famous." His name was, apparently, Robert Hawkins. And I don't want to know his name.

For what it's worth, this is the fourth time this has happened in a shopping mall in the U.S. this year. I'd advise you all to shop online. And that doesn't include the horrific murders on the Virginia Tech campus this spring, where 33 kids who made the mistake of showing up for their early-morning French and German classes were mowed down by another crazed sniper.

But that suicide note bothers me a lot. It's probably asking too much for CNN and FoxNews to let it go, to not send their reporters scurrying to the scene of the crime, to not interrupt their regular programming to bring us live and up-to-the-minute interviews with terrified shoppers who hid in the clothing racks to avoid being plugged with bullets. But I still hate that suicide note. I don't want Robert Hawkins to be famous. I feel for his family, who apparently didn't feel much for him in the first place. I hate the destruction that brokenness brings. But I don't want him to be famous. Let the names of his victims be famous. Publish them far and wide. And forget about what's his name.

Feel like a failure? Does your life amount to nothing? Just go and shoot a bunch of random people. Then people will know who you are. You'll be famous. You'll be on the front page of the newspaper, and even American Idol winners don't get that kind of treatment. My heart feels sick. Charles Whitman -- and CNN, and FoxNews -- look what you have wrought. I remember the wrong names, and I wish I didn't.

Dude

It used to be that a "dude" was a guy. And only a guy. For instance, once upon a time it would have been appropriate to say, "Dude, Viagra can help that," but not "Dude, are you having your period?" As another example, everybody's favorite grammarians, Aerosmith, once wrote a song called "Dude Look Like a Lady." And this was noteworthy, and worth singing about and writhing on stage over, because most dudes did not.

But now, from what I can tell from my hipster/indie friends who are up on the latest slang, "dude" is a cross-gender noun meaning "person." When did this happen? And why? And what word has replaced the formerly serviceable "dude" to mean "generic male slacker"?

Walk Hard

Good musical parody walks a fine line. Play it too broadly and it’s good for a laugh the first time, and then you never want to revisit it again. Who wants to listen to a comedy routine when you already know the punch lines? Play it too subtly and it’s just not that memorable. Why listen to an imitation of serious artists when you can listen to the real thing?

Walk Hard, the soundtrack to the John C. Reilly spoof of musical biopics, gets it just right. Covering a dizzying variety of musical styles, from ‘50s rockabilly through ‘60s folkie protest to ‘70s disco, Reilly manages to come across as both a first-rate clown and a genuine musical talent. It’s not surprising that these songs are funny. What is surprising is how listenable this album remains long after the jokes have run their course.

The movie’s plot, which traces the career arc of the mythical Dewey Cox, allows Reilly a great deal of leeway in the main role. Loosely based on the life of Johnny Cash, Dewey gets to dabble in early rock ‘n roll, country duets, protest music, sixties psychedelia, bloated countrypolitan schmaltz, and the kind of stripped down, hard-won “wisdom” that characterized Cash’s last few albums on American Recordings. And, of course, every licit and illicit relationship and drug known to man. But because this is a spoof of musical biopics in general and Walk the Line in particular, the results are predictably skewed.

Sometimes Reilly plays it strictly for laughs, as on the winking, double-entendre filled “Let’s Duet,” which probably has Johnny and June rolling over in their graves, or on the faux-protest song “Dear Mr. President,” which skewers both aching sincerity and political correctness. But more frequently the results are more nuanced. “Royal Jelly” is a dead-on Dylan impersonation, with impeccable phrasing, imagery borrowed wholesale from the mid-sixties Dylan catalogue, and off-key harmonica work. It is, of course, also utter nonsense, and that’s what makes it delightful. “(I Hate You) Big Daddy” marries Elvis’s hiccup and sneer with an adolescent diatribe about insufferable parents. “Beautiful Ride,” a big, bloated impartation of life lessons, is so cliched that it revels in the absurdity. But not by that much. I can recall too many songs that were almost, but not quite, just like it in the late sixties. And the disco cover of David Bowie’s “Starman” simply has to be heard to be believed, and recalls Bill Murray in all his SNL lounge lizard glory.

And make no mistake, Reilly is a revelation. He has the voice to pull off these disparate styles, and he’s enough of a musical chameleon to make them all more than believable. And really, that’s the charm of this album. Sure, it’s funny. But all of these songs are almost – almost – thoroughly believable. If you don’t listen closely, you’d swear you’ve heard them all before. And that’s the nature of the best parody. Walk Hard cuts uncomfortably close to the bone. You won’t know whether to laugh or to squirm. And that’s what will keep you coming back for more.

Living Water

On the last and greatest day of the Feast, Jesus stood and said in a loud voice, "If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him."
-- John 7:37-38

Allright, I will readily admit that this is terrible biblical interpretation, but I'm going to acknowledge the connection anyway.

Today, for the first time in more than a month, I've been able to pee on my own. That sounds like a mundane, if somewhat inappropriate, message. It's not. Doctors have told me that it wouldn't and couldn't happen. But it did today. Three times so far. I never thought I'd want to do cartwheels over basic bodily functions. But I do. Praise God. Excuse me. I'm going to drink some more water now just so I can see it again.

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.