Joe Cocker Decrypted

With the 40th anniversary of Woodstock coming up, I thought it was worth noting that decades of dedicated investigative work have now resulted in the decryption of Joe Cocker's legendary performance of The Beatles' "With a Little Help From My Friends." At last the truth can be revealed: "Lord, I know you're a guy. Put on this turban." See, it was a Christian song all along, and nobody even knew it at the time. Oh baby, hoggify.

Chuck Berry

It's all rather passe these days to praise the work of '50s rock 'n roll icons. The 50th anniversary of Buddy Holly's death merited some attention earlier this winter, and Elvis remains a perennial subject of derision and awe, but for the most part the first generation of rock 'n rollers is seen as a quaint reminder of a bygone era, as contemporary as a trip to the drug store soda fountain for a chocolate malt.

And so it was with some surprise that my recent re-exploration of the music of Chuck Berry revealed an artist who still sounds supremely relevant. Chuck, of course, has his share of '50s cultural reference points -- hamburger stands, jukeboxes, long-distance phone operators, American Bandstand shows and Coupe de Villes. In those ways he is perhaps the quintessential '50s rocker. But there is also a timeless and utterly American quality to many of his best songs that extends from his love affair with fast cars (The Beach Boys and Bruce Springsteen obviously took some notes) to the universal celebration of the end of the school and work day, that magical moment when the drudgery is finished and it's time to cut loose and live.

More significantly, Chuck Berry, more than any early rock 'n roller, retained his connection to Chicago blues, and perhaps for that reason his music still sounds utterly contemporary. Chuck, after all, appeared on Chess Records, the label of Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf, and although he undoubtedly took his music in a new direction, he still retained the old-school rawness and grit. It's particularly evident in the piano work of Johnny Johnson, the bass work of Willie Dixon, and the slamming drum work of Fred Below, legitimate blues stars in their own right, who sublimated their substantial egos in favor of laying down the barrelhouse rhythms that propelled these rollicking and often sharply observed vignettes of America on the cusp of change. Lyrically, these songs are poignant, funny, and sometimes devastatingly acerbic (hint: "Brown-Eyed Handsome Man" didn't really have much to do with the protagonist's eyes). But musically it's that rhythm section and Chuck's signature guitar licks that are unmistakable. Sure, it's rock 'n roll. These are songs that pretty much define rock 'n roll. But underpinning it all is the blues, and that's a highway that travels a straight line from Muddy and the Wolf through Chuck through The Rolling Stones and The Beatles right on down to The White Stripes and The Black Keys. It's the most constricted and constrained music in the world, and it will never grow old because the real life is in those rhythms, in the grit.

The Great Twenty Eight, shown above, is still the definitive collection. It's a compilation that's been around for decades, and it's still the best, most concise primer on Chuck Berry's music. Every track is essential. The DNA of rock 'n roll is right here -- girls, cars, the celebration of youth culture, the longing to bust out of the routine, the drab, and to make one's mark as an individual. "I dote on myself, there is that lot of me and all so luscious," Walt Whitman once wrote, and Chuck Berry took those sentiments and wedded them to a backbeat and the most distinctive guitar work in the genre. It's marvellous music. And it deserves to be heard in 1959, more than 50 years after Chuck caught Maybelline at the top of the hill.

Pentangle

Back in Nixon's day, when all pseudo-hippies were listening to Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin, a small cadre of would-be Hobbits discovered the wonders of the folk tradition of the British Isles. One Hobbit (let's call him Pippin; what the hell) found the wondrous album Liege and Lief by Fairport Convention, and passed it throughout the Shire, and soon the little folk were skipping merrily throughout suburban Chicago, singing "hey-nonny-nonny."

More albums followed. What We Did On Our Holidays and Unhalfbricking by Fairport Convention, Below the Salt and Parcel of Rogues by Steeleye Span, Bless the Weather and Solid Air by John Martyn, great but unheralded releases from Tir na Nog and Nick Drake, and, most crucially for this post, Sweet Child, Basket of Light, and Cruel Sister, by Pentangle.

The Hobbits got suckered in by the "fol-de-rol-diddle-a-day" choruses, but I'll give you the straight skinny. Yes, Pentangle borrowed liberally from the Trad songs of the British Isles. But they also borrowed from Delta blues, jazz, psychedelic jambands, and Indian sitar masters. In short, they were utterly unclassifiable. They had a cult following, but they never achieved a huge commercial breakthrough. They were probably too eclectic to pursue it seriously. Honestly, what do you do with a band that records old English murder ballads, Charles Mingus covers, and Furry Lewis blues tunes on the same album? What do you call that? I don't know. "Great" works for me.

I've been listening to much of this music again in my post-Shire life, this time courtesy of a boxed set called The Time Has Come. It was released a couple years ago, and I enjoyed it then, but I simply can't get enough of it now. There is so much goodness here that it is astounding. Pentangle had the requisite pure folk thrush in the person of one Jacqui McShee (every Trad band had one; see Sandy Denny and Maddy Prior for comparison's sake). Jacqui was just fine. But the real fireworks occurred instrumentally. Pentangle had two superb but very different guitarists in John Renbourn and Bert Jansch. Renbourn had the Trad folk background; Jansch wanted to jam on blues riffs. They were both spectacular in their own ways, and when you see a Pentangle song that is 13 minutes long, you can be assured, for once, that the band will be at its best, because Renbourn and Jansch will have plenty of space to solo and then duel with one another. Terry Cox on drums and Danny Thompson on bass essentially comprised a jazz rhythm section. They were five indomitable talents, and it couldn't, and didn't, last all that long. It was inevitable that they would split up and go their separate ways. But from 1968-1973 -- the period of this 4-CD boxed set -- they were one of the best, most creatively searching bands in the world. You owe it to yourself to check out this criminally overlooked band. This is timeless music, and it sounds as great today as the day it was recorded.

Woodstock, 40th Anniversary Edition

Before most of the hippies kick the bucket, we will have to suffer through the ignominy of the 50th anniversary of Woodstock. That will no doubt be a mindblower, man, when it occurs in 2019, and will find the former idealists, now Republicans, in their dotage, but still flying the freak flag and hearkening back to the glorious days of yore.

In the meantime, the 40th anniversary is coming up in just a couple months, and there are plenty of ways planned to nudge you farther along the free love --> capitalist consumer continuum. To help set the mood, Rhino is re-releasing the original soundtrack to the Michael Wadleigh documentary film that made every pre-adolescent kid, including me, long to be a rock star and to try the brown acid, which, although not specifically too good (according to the warning from the stage), was still apparently good enough to make nubile young women dance naked and wave their hands in the air. It was an image that worked for me.

So let's get it out of the way: yes, Woodstock was a landmark cultural event. Two years after the Summer of Love, and long after Haight-Ashbury had descended into anarchy, the film crews captured the commodification of hippiedom, the precise moment when the counterculture became the mainstream culture. After Woodstock, and for at least the next decade, every high school and college in America was dominated by the street(s) that spawned a movement. We thought it was the corner of Haight and Ashbury. Instead, it was just Madison Avenue, and there were tie-dyes and peace-sign earrings to be had at every department store in the land.

The music? You know what? It wasn't very good. Listening to the two hours of music here, forty years removed from its original context, it's apparent how badly most of these legendary bands performed. It was, without a doubt, intimidating to perform in front of 400,000 people. It was, I'm sure, tough to compete with almost half a million people zonked out of their minds, and thunderstorms, and power outages. But, aside from Santana and Sly and the Family Stone, who turned in incendiary sets that still sound great, most of these performances are disappointing. Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young couldn't harmonize worth a damn, and when CSN&Y can't harmonize, there isn't much else to recommend. The Who, who were arguably the best rock 'n roll band in the world at the time, turned in a completely lackluster and ragged version of Tommy (or at least the little bit we get to see in the movie and hear in the soundtrack). John Sebastian, formerly of The Loving Spoonful, sounds like a stoned dipshit. Jimi Hendrix, whose version of "The Star Spangled Banner" closed the festival, surely captured the sounds of bombs bursting in air, but thirteen minutes of bombs bursting in air now sounds like, pardon the pun, overkill. Joan Baez sounds like her lower lip is quivering with indignation, and Country Joe and the Fish still have to be the luckiest band in the world, an otherwise undistinguished and completely forgettable bunch who just happened to be in the right place at the right time. The numerous stage announcements still retain their historical charm, and I still think it's impressive that Wavy Gravy and company found a way to whip up breakfast in bed for 400,000. But, in general, this soundtrack has not aged well at all.

If you haven't seen it, watch the documentary, if for no other reason than to see the naive but admirable idealism. Don't take the brown acid. And don't take any of it particularly seriously. Utopias, this side of heaven, are not a good bet. Altamont, where the counterculture fell apart, took place only four months after Woodstock.

The Rural Alberta Advantage -- Hometowns

I've never been to Alberta, and I've certainly never been to rural Alberta, which I suppose is pretty much the whole province outside of Calgary and Edmonton. I'm not sure why it would be advantageous to hail from there. More moose sightings, perhaps. But Hometowns, the debut album from The Rural Alberta Advantage, a trio of non-antlered bi-peds who have now migrated to Toronto, makes the case that the windswept prairies are a prime impetus behind their creativity.

Here's the good news and the bad news: Hometowns sounds remarkably like Neutral Milk Hotel. That means you get the kind of furious, barely contained folk punk that NMH perfected on albums such as In the Aeroplane Over the Sea, and that means that at times it's very good indeed. You also, per the inevitable Jeff Mangum comparisons, get a lead singer in Nils Edenloff who sings in an off-key nasal yelp. Minus the Salvation-Army-band-on-acid influences that add much needed texture and variety to the NMH albums, Edenloff is left only with that yelp, a bevy of songs that reference western Canada, and the stalwart work of drummer Paul Banwatt, who bashes the hell out of his drum kit on every song. It's not quite enough, although it's impossible not to be impressed by the prodigious racket.

God knows Edenloff wants you to know where he's from. "The Ballad of the RAA," which kicks off the album, recounts the band's journey from Alberta to Toronto. "The Deathbridge in Lethbridge" namechecks a small Alberta city and its most famous landmark. "Frank, AB" references a mining disaster in the town of the same name. "Edmonton" leaves the rural prairies behind and explores the big city. At times the Neutral Milk Hotel influences are overpowering. "Drain the Blood" is an almost note-for-note recapitulation of NMH's "Holland 1945," complete with overamped guitars and my-skull-is-gonna-explode vocals. But Edenloff is at his best when he tones it down just a notch, as on the ramshackle folk rumble of "Rush Apart," a fine approximation of an early Dylan hootenanny. The album peters out toward the back end, but the first half dozen songs throw down the gauntlet, and constitute the best sustained folk punk attack I've heard since the last Ezra Furman album. The yelp will be offputting to some, but I'm impressed with the raw materials here, and I look forward to hearing what these transplanted Albertans will do in the future.

What Color is Your Parachute?

Q: What color is your parachute?
A: There is no parachute. They just push you out of the plane. You might have a backpack that looks something like a parachute, but just trying pulling on the ripcord. What ripcord? you might ask. Exactly.

And so you plummet toward the ground below you, thinking happy thoughts about the days when skydiving was a fun and inspirational activity.

I can already write the 2010 edition of this book. Here's the complete text:

Good God, if you have a job, hang on to it. Of course, this is beyond your control, so just hope for the best. Tens of millions of people have been laid off. Just hope you're not one of them. And if you have been laid off, figure out some way to pass the time. You'll have a lot of time to pass. Some people figure that it's a good time to go back to school. You might as well, because you won't be working. If you already have four degrees, oh well. Perhaps you need to be retrained. Alternately, you could stay at home and blog. There is good money to be made in blogging. Best of luck to you. You're gonna need it.

National Spelling Bee!

Ah, the sweet memories. In seventh grade I won my school's spelling bee, crushing the local competition by correctly spelling the word "irrevocable." Then I was off to the regional competition, where I choked on "phlegm" (the word, not literally), and was eventually eliminated on "occurrence," forgetting the second "r" and vowing to myself that I would never, ever misspell a word again. I have since failed miserably.

And as proof that spelling is very hard indeed, here is a photo from the National Spelling Bee, showing the misspelled state name of one of the contestants.

It is somewhat mind-boggling to me that I once spent months preparing to compete in a spelling bee. But I did. My father dutifully drilled me night after night, carefully checking my spelling against the Official Spelling Bee Speller. Whatever other issues he had, and he had some, I have to give him props. The man spent hundreds of hours preparing his kid for a spelling bee. Greater love than this few people have.

Last night was the intense final in Washington, D.C. The best spellers in the world congregated in the nation's capital (def: a city serving as a seat of government; not capitol) to watch spelling bee veteran Kavya Shivashankar, appearing in her fourth national competition, prevail thanks to a combination of steely nerves, long hours of practice, and an incredible mind for minutiae and ephemera.

Did I watch? Are you kidding? Lebron and the Cavs were fighting for their playoff lives, and I still hold out the slim hope that the beleaguered, championship-starved city of Cleveland will soon have much to celebrate. Sorry, Kavya. But I was pleased to note that Kavya's winning word was "laocidean," meaning "lukewarm" or "indifferent." Bible scholars the world over rejoice. My daughter tells me that the National Spelling Bee is the occasion for drinking games on every college campus in the country. I wouldn't know. But I take a bit of rueful pride in the fact that millions of people now watch these kids compete. Cheers.

American Patriot's Study Bible

No, this is not a hoax.

We all know how this country's forefathers founded a Christian nation that guaranteed freedom and equality for white males. And now we can read about the unexplored parallels between the Word of God and American history in a handy parallel commentary that explains God's approval of Manifest Destiny right alongside the blessed Word. Did you know, for example, that a biblical prophecy ("I will take away the chariots from Ephraim and the war-horses from Jerusalem, and the battle bow will be broken. He will proclaim peace to the nations. His rule will extend from sea to sea and from the River to the ends of the earth" -- Zechariah 9:10) was fulfilled in the person of one Christopher Columbus, who was predestined by God to bring the gospel to an unreached people group (i.e., the Native Americans who, Lord bless 'em, had to put up with a little raping, pillaging, murder and enslavement as part of the good news of salvation). Praise God.

This thing will probably fly off the shelves faster than a new shipment of ammo in a neighborhood in racial transition. Kudos to Thomas Nelson Publishers for having the virile, sanctified American balls to finally publish the Truth. Still, I wouldn't be surprised if some rival so-called "Christian" publisher comes out with just the opposite, maybe a Pacifist's/Commie's Study Bible (Jesus' words in yellow, social justice passages in Bolshevik Red), or something like that. I'd like to see the cage match between those two once the bookstore closes. My prediction is that the American Patriot's Bible would beat the shit out of the cover of the PC Study Bible, and the PC Study Bible would turn its front cover to its back cover, which would then be bitch-slapped by the American Patriot's Bible.

The Receiver -- Length of Arms

The influence of Radiohead is incalculable, and every week I encounter at least one new release that is deeply indebted to Thom Yorke and company. So let's get it out of the way up front. Columbus, Ohio duo The Receiver -- brothers Casey and Jesse Cooper -- have clearly been influenced by Radiohead. Casey's breathy vocals are a dead ringer for Yorke's, and the layered keyboards/synths and skittery rhythms bear the unmistakable imprint of a couple guys who have spent a lot of time listening to Kid A.

A problem? Not really, particularly when that somewhat derivative music is presented this winsomely. The Receiver's 2006 debut Decades revealed a band in love with heady if sometimes insular chamber rock. Musical and lyrical motifs reappeared from song to song, and if the lack of narrative structure suggested that "concept album" was too strong a term, it was still clear that the brothers Cooper were up to something a little more thoughtful and substantive than the usual three-minute mopery. It was an impressive start. The followup, the recently released Length of Arms, is better in every way, and reveals not only the expected Radiohead influences, but a beefed-up synth attack and, God help me, a love of hoary '70s prog rock that only contemporary bands like Arcade Fire and The Decemberists can pull off well. Add The Receiver to that rarefied list.

Like its predecessor, Strength in Numbers is best appreciated in its entirety. That's not to say that individual songs don't stand out. They do. First single "Visitor" features the kind of propulsive dream pop that Blonde Redhead has mastered, and closer "Amazing Thing" recalls some of the more wistful, melancholy, late-summer-turning-to-autumn sounds of Surf's Up-era Beach Boys. If it's not exactly sunny music, it's at least only partly cloudy. But several short instrumental passages ("Hide," "Shimmer," "Dislocation") connect the more substantial songs, and the ever-shifting melodies suggest a musical zeitgeist that used to result, back in the day, in album titles such as Tales from Topographic Oceans and song titles such as "The Revealing Science of God -- Dance of the Dawn."

It's not as dire as it sounds, and there's no need to break out the capes. Yes, the intro to "Little Monster" reveals the classical-music-on-steroids approach that bands like Emerson, Lake, and Palmer and Yes worked, and frequently overworked, to distraction, and "Dislocation" features a mighty pipe organ solo that would have fit in perfectly on The Arcade Fire's "Intervention." But there is a distinct, organic warmth to these tracks, and a focus on song as song, two traits that could never be pinned on the ancient musical wizards. That warmth is most evident in Jesse's insistent drumming (listen to him slam on "Skin and Bone"), and in Casey's introspective, confessional lyrics and surprisingly soulful, soaring vocals. If Thom Yorke is an Ice Prince, then Casey Cooper is the ruler of a realm where spring is just around the corner.

In short, this is a very, very fine album. Call it Kid B if you must. I like to think of it as Hail to the Thieves. They've borrowed the best from the best, and made something entirely their own.

Mediocrity

I listen to a lot of music. Every day four or five new CDs show up in my mailbox. Music publicists send me hyperventilating email messages inviting me to download the latest creations from their clients. And I usually do. Let it be noted that it is impossible to absorb seven or eight new albums per day. The brain (or at least my brain) rebels at the concept. So I'll readily admit that part of what I experience is simple mental fatigue and overexposure.

But here's a fact: the world does not need, and you do not need, 95% of the music released in 2009. Some of it is horrible. But more often than not, it is neither wondrous nor hideous. It is mediocre. Furthermore, the mediocrity crosses all genres and sub-genres. Sure, I have my own likes and dislikes, and some genres approach the 100% mediocre-to-hideous threshold for me. Are you listening, American Idol fans? But even my most beloved genres -- good, old-fashioned power pop, Americana, blues, jazz, folkie singer/songwriters with raspy voices -- offer their share of utterly disposable swill. I love Americana, but I never, ever want to hear another songwriter in a beat-up John Deere cap rhyme "pickup truck" and "out of luck." Get unstuck. Discover new rhymes. Even my heroes are not immune. Bob Dylan, who has written more great songs than any other three great songwriters who have ever lived, offers up this gem on his latest album:

I cross the old schoolyard
Admitting life is hard

What? This is such a headscratcher that I'm not sure I even want to know the connection between Bob's elementary school memories and his creeping depression and ennui. And since the connection is never explored in the song, it seems fair to conclude that Bob was just looking for a lazy rhyme. Apparently "spikenard" and "lifeguard" were already taken. Both would have made as much sense, which is to say that they would have made no sense at all.

Mediocre, mediocre, mediocre. It's everywhere I turn. So why, let me ask you, must album reviews insist on inflating the worth of every album? Take a look at metacritic.com. Scroll down through those album rankings of several hundred albums released this year. Notice anything? How about the fact that lowest rated album released this year has an overall score of 51 out of 100. If you'd like it spelled out differently, that's 2.5 stars out of 5. For the worst album of the year?

I don't believe it. To me, a score of 50 out of 100 means that half the albums released have been worse than the album under consideration, and half the albums released have been better. But clearly, when 51 represents the bottom of the barrel, the results mean something different. There is something amiss when well over half the albums reviewed have received a score of 70 (three-and-a-half stars) or better. Surely there must be a way to say, in polite but firm tones, that this album really isn't worth anyone's time. Right? Life is short. And reviewers do a disservice to their readers if they insist on ranking everything from "pretty good" to "great." "Take a pass" is still a perfectly valid response some of the time. Perhaps even most of the time.

A Plea for Paste

I write for Paste. But if I had never written a single word, Paste would still be my favorite magazine. Seven years ago several of my friends had a vision. They knew there was a whole unexplored world out there, a place that had nothing to do with #1 singles and MTV videos and cellphone ringtones, a place where people made music simply because they loved music and had something to say. And they started a magazine. They worked 100 hours per week, slept on the office couches, maxed out their credit cards, and created something out of nothing. And people responded. The subscriptions followed, first in the thousands, then in the tens of thousands, then in the hundreds of thousands. The New York Post took notice. So did the Chicago Tribune. A bunch of awards were forthcoming. But awards don't pay the bills.

Now there's a recession on, and talking heads debate the meaning of it all, and spout theories, and quote economic indicators. But the best and worst economic indicator I know says that you can take your 20 years of schooling, and nowadays they don't even put you on the dayshift. There is no dayshift. And people who love what they do, and do it very well, are in danger of having nothing to do at all.

If you can help, now would be a good time.

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The Campaign to Save Paste

Dear Paste readers,

We write this letter with great appreciation for all you’ve done for Paste, as well as sorrow that we need to come to you and ask for further support. The economy has taken its toll on Paste, and we need your help to continue.

As the global recession has continued, many of you have written us (especially as ad pages shrunk) to say, “If you ever need help, let us know.” That day has come.

Today, we are launching the “Campaign to Save Paste" to raise money to keep Paste coming to your mailboxes and computer screens. If you are in a position to give even a little, please consider donating. As thanks for your generosity, over 70 amazing artists (including The Decemberists, Neko Case, Bob Mould, Cowboy Junkies, Indigo Girls, The Jayhawks, Brandi Carlile, John Roderick of The Long Winters, Patterson Hood, The Avett Brothers and Josh Ritter—with more to come) have gathered and donated rare & exclusive MP3s for all who join us in the campaign. Here's what artists are saying about why Paste should be saved.

As a completely independent company, Paste has struggled for the past nine months as advertisers have decided to wait out the recession. As most of you realize, magazines are heavily subsidized by advertising. Industry experts estimate that an average subscription for a monthly publication would cost $60-$80 per year without advertising support.

But last month was brutal. Cash received unexpectedly reached an all-time low, and turned a tough situation into a short-term crisis.

Long-term, Paste will emerge in good shape. Even with the fall-off at the end of the year, 2008 was our best year yet—print subscribers, print ads, online readers and online advertising were all at record levels. Readers (print and online) remain strong. And new advertisers have come on board even in the recession, with more ready when their advertising budgets come back.

In the meantime, we’ve adjusted our business to weather this storm. We’ve cut costs, and we developed a robust online business that’s among the best in the industry. Fundamentally, we’re in good shape and won’t need another appeal down the road. But it’s taken us until this point to get there—leaving us critically low on cash, without some large corporation behind us to bridge the gap.

We’ll make it through this short-term economic crisis—but it’s only with your help. Our fate is (and has been and always will be) in your hands. Big-time investors are not “in the game” right now—but readers can rise up and “invest” in Paste’s future. Will you be a part?

We appreciate all of your support so far—everyone who’s subscribed, given a gift, or even read a story online or opened a newsletter. It’s all enabled us to make it this far. Now, we humbly ask you to consider giving a little more.

It doesn’t take much. Every little bit helps and you can be a part of continuing our efforts to help you find signs of life in music, film and culture. If $1 (yes, one dollar) came in from everyone on our e-mail lists (or $10 from 10% or $100 from 1%), we’ll reach our goal and emerge from this recession as a stronger magazine and website. While we’re not a non-profit (this isn’t a tax-deductible gift), know that every dollar you give goes into keeping Paste alive and, ultimately, making it even better.

While you’re at it, also let us know what more you’d like to see from Paste. What should we do (or do better) online to help you discover new music, film and more? As advertising comes back and the magazine thickens, what would you like to see in print?

CLICK HERE to give via PayPal or credit card.

With our sincerest thanks,

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PS. As thanks for your help, a number of our favorite musicians and labels have donated free rare & exclusive MP3s (from artists including She & Him, Arrested Development, Shawn Mullins, Samantha Crain, State Radio, Robyn Hitchcock & The Venus 3, Rogue Wave, Passion Pit, Over the Rhine, The Minus 5 and more) for everyone who donates. And as more artists contribute, you'll have access to those songs as well. We also have a number of goodies (such as signed R.E.M. posters, an ocean-view cabin on next year's Cayamo cruise, and more) to give to donors in random drawings. And, anyone giving $350 or more will receive a lifetime subscription to Paste as a thank you.

You can read more about the drive in our Save Paste FAQs. View all the campaign resources (including banner ads for your website) at the Campaign to Save Paste page.

Blackberry Smoke -- Little Piece of Dixie

The ghost of Ronnie Van Zant must be smiling.

Blackberry Smoke are four righteous southern rockers who wear the uniform with panache; hair down to the middle of their backs, beards down to the middle of their chests, bandannas firmly in place. They've been genetically programmed to carry on the proud good ol' boy tradition and fast-frozen since 1976. Recently thawed, they've unleashed their second album Little Piece of Dixie upon an unsuspecting public that has forgotten the dubious appeal of pickup trucks, coon dogs, rednecks and longnecks, and the sweet charms of the little missus.

This is admittedly not my favorite genre of music, and I hope you'll excuse me if I fail to hearken back to the glory days of the Confederate flag. That said, these guys do it up just the way Ronnie and the Skynyrd boys used to do it, with sturdy southern rock riffs buttressing Charlie Starr's (is that a southern rock god name, or what?) soulful, deep-fried vocals. "Shake your magnolia," one songs proclaims, and the flower of southern womanhood quivers in anticipation. My favorite is the song where the work-weary narrator begs his woman to hold off on the tales of unpaid bills, the woes of the kids, and the news of politics, religion, and war until he can finish his beer. "I'll get to the bottom of that right after I get to the bottom of this," he tells her. Priorities are priorities. If bands like Lynyrd Skynyrd, .38 Special, and Molly Hatchet bring a nostalgic tear to the eye, then Blackberry Smoke will delight you. Just watch what you put on the back of the pickup truck.

Re-Training

About once per week some well-intentioned friend or relative, after inquiring about my still-unemployed person, suggests re-training. Here is a friendly suggestion: do not suggest re-training to me. I do not receive the suggestion well. It is possible that I could learn to wear a bright blue vest festooned with buttons and chirp "Welcome to Wal-Mart." It is, however, highly unlikely.

Aside from that, I find that "re-training" is one of those words that everyone uses, but no one can define in even the slightest meaningful way. "What do you have in mind?" I ask them. They hem and haw. "Oh, maybe going back to college," they suggest. Ah. Perhaps, after studying Creative Writing, Theology, Education, and Business Administration, the fifth degree will be the charm. I want to tell them that I can already write a sonnet on economic recessions, ponder the soteriological implications of bringing nothing to God (easier today than ever before), teach young, unsuspecting college graduates about the pitfalls of the State of Ohio Unemployment Compensation website, and calculate the return on investment (ROI) ratio on an income of $0.00. I can even quote song lyrics. "Nothin' from nothin' leaves nothin'," Billy Preston once sang. That's all the business acumen you need these days.

America, in the fall of 1929, was like a cicada. It had come to an end and a beginning. On October 24th, in New York, in a marble-fronted building down on Wall Street, there was a sudden crash that was heard throughout the land. The dead and outworn husk of the America that had been cracked and split right down the back, and the living, changing, suffering thing within -- the real America, the America that had always been, the America that was yet to be -- began now slowly to emerge. It came forth into the light of day, stunned, cramped, crippled by the bonds of its imprisonment, and for a long time it remained in a state of suspended animation, full of latent vitality, waiting, waiting patiently, for the next stage of its metamorphosis.

The leaders of the nation had fixed their gaze so long upon the illusions of a false prosperity that they had forgotten what America looked like. Now they saw it -- saw its newness, its raw crudeness, and its strength -- and turned their shuddering eyes away. "Give us back our well-worn husk," they said, "where we were so smug and comfortable." And then they tried word-magic. "Conditions are fundamentally sound," they said -- by which they meant to reassure themselves that nothing now was really changed, that things were as they always had been, and as they always would be, forever and ever, amen.

But they were wrong. They did not know that you can't go home again.
-- Thomas Wolfe, from You Can't Go Home Again, 1938

Dave Perkins -- Pistol City Holiness

Three or four years ago I wrote a long essay in Paste on blues music, and its impact on my life. A few weeks later I received a very nice letter from one Dave Perkins, who told me that he also loved the blues, and wondered if he could send me his rough demos of blues recordings. "Sure," I wrote him back. So he sent them. And they were good. Really good. They kicked. So I decided to check up a bit on this Dave Perkins. It turns out that Dave is a Ph.D. student at Vanderbilt’s Center for the Study of Religion and Culture, and currently serves as Administrative Director for Vanderbilt’s Religion in the Arts and Contemporary Culture program. Cool. It also turns out he's a pretty well-known guitar slinger, and has produced and recorded with the likes of Steve Taylor (Chagall Guevera), Ray Charles, Carole King, Papa John Creach, Willie Nelson, John Belushi, Over the Rhine, Squeeze, Lucinda Williams, Dolly Parton, Waylon Jennings, Hunter S. Thompson, Phil Keaggy, The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Ashley Cleveland, and Charlie Daniels. And more.

"Okay," I thought to myself. "I'd like to meet this guy sometime." We exchanged emails from time to time, but I didn't have the chance to meet him until the recently concluded Festival of Faith and Music at Calvin College. Dave was there presenting a paper on rock bands influenced by Flannery O'Connor and southern gothic culture. I was there to play American Idol-like judge in a new bands contest. And we finally met at Calvin and had a wonderful dinnertime conversation over Chinese food, and Dave promised to send off his new album as soon as it was mixed. It arrived today.

Have you ever experienced the sonic equivalent of being slammed against a wall? That's this album Pistol City Holiness. These are the most impolite blues ever performed by a Christian, and I mean that in the best possible sense. Well, maybe Rev. Gary Davis and Blind Willie Johnson are in this rude choir as well, but that's pretty great company. Dave shreds on the guitar and wails like a banshee, and the superb band (Reece Wynans, Richard Price, T.J. Klay, Mel Watts, Ashley Cleveland) absolutely rips it up behind him. This is primal stuff, it rocks like crazy, and it's the unfiltered deal, both sonically and lyrically, featuring tales of knife fights, long gone sweethearts, the Holy Ghost, cherryfish and chicken, tent revivals, unemployment, and mercies that are new every morning. It also features the stellar lines "She's a hell of a woman when she's all dressed up for church," "I would hang with the Baptists if they could get that girl for me" and "I coulda been a preacher man but there's a hellhound on my trail." Amen, brother. You and me and Robert Johnson make three. I don't really qualify, at least on the blues front, but I know I'm in damn good company.

Short Takes -- P Edition

A few quick takes on some fine music, today brought to you by the letter P.

Patrick Watson -- Wooden Arms

Tom Waits trashcan percussion, Thom Yorke moans, and ever-evolving Andrew Bird melodies. No whistling. Darn. But a very fine, atmospheric, and lovely album. Watson's 2006 album Close to Paradise raised some eyebrows by beating out Feist and Arcade Fire for a Polaris Award, Canada's equivalent of the Mercury Prize. This one is better. Watson has lost the Chris Martin/Coldplay affectations, and if he retains the Bird and Radiohead influences, it's hard to fault him for that.

Pine Leaf Boys -- Homage au Passe

Beausoleil gets all the Cajun love, and rightly so. But Pine Leaf Boys are considerably younger and rowdier, albeit equally steeped in the tradition, and the fiddles and accordions jump throughout. If you're still of the opinion that the accordion can't rock, you really need to hear this. There's a bit of rockabilly here, a bit of Hank Williams high lonesome country, and a whole lot of Cajun rocking and reeling. Great stuff.


Patterson Hood -- Murdering Oscar (and other Love Songs)

Sure, there are plenty of echoes of Drive-By Truckers here (how could there not be?), and the DBT folks are out in force, but Hood also enlists his old man David on bass (merely one of the best ever), and Centro-Matic/South San Gabriel mastermind Will Johnson on various stringed instruments and vocals. Most of these songs were written 15 years ago, before the Truckers got it in gear, and a few of them sound tentative. But musically, this is the best smoldering Crazy Horse album since, well, Weld. Do you remember how to do this, Neil?

Jersey Girl

I used to hang out on the Jersey shore. Not that much, and I certainly can't claim any sort of ancestral affinity for the place, or any sort of historical roots. But for about a decade there, when I worked at AT&T Bell Labs, I spent a lot of time in central Jersey -- Red Bank, Freehold, Long Branch, Holmdel, Asbury Park -- and after work my co-workers and I would wander the beach, watch the old Italian guys play bocci, and scour the boardwalk looking for a decent seafood restaurant. This was, of course, back in the days when companies still employed people.

Thanks in no small part to Bruce Springsteen, the place has always had a romantic appeal for me. Bruce immortalized the dingy bars and seedy arcades on albums such as Greetings from Asbury Park and The Wild, The Innocent, and the E Street Shuffle. I never took part in the life on and under the boardwalk, but I did, for a while, date a barefoot Jersey girl who drank warm beer while sitting on the hood of a Dodge, and I've been inside the Stone Pony, where Bruce got his start, so I've always claimed honorary residency. It's a mythic place, at least in song. The reality is probably somewhat different. As far as I know, Lucent Technologies, formerly AT&T Bell Labs, has laid off most of its staff, so there couldn't be that many corporate beachcombers strolling the boardwalk these days. It was all a long time ago.

But it comes back when I listen to Tom Waits' great song "Jersey Girl." Unfortunately, there's no good YouTube version of Tom singing his song, but Bruce Springsteen isn't a bad consolation prize. Here's Bruce conducting a choir of 20,000.

Down the shore everything's alright.
You're with your baby on a Saturday night.

I just found out that the job opportunity I'd pinned my hopes on -- the one I've been holding out for, hoping and praying that it might become a reality -- has been eliminated due to budget cuts. So I could use a strong dose of good, old-fashioned romantic hope today. Sha la la la la la sha la la la.

Paul Potts -- Passione

Before there was Susan Boyle, there was Paul Potts, astounding the world as a chubby little cell phone salesman who could sing opera. Imagine. Fat people could sing. Even on TV.

So there's Paul, on the cover of his second album Passione, which I'm going to take a wild guess is Italian for "passion," looking broodingly out over Venice's Grand Canal. If you had translated Roberta Flack's "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" into Italian, and actually had the audacity to call it "La Prima Volta," you might brood, too. Here's the deal: Italian is cool, and makes people feel all sensitive and sophisticated and brooding. You will be able to listen to this album and instantly feel, like, urbane and cosmopolitan. Even with Andrew Lloyd Webber.

Paul doesn't do much to vary the formula that made his debut album such an international hit: mix in a couple operatic arias, a couple pop staples, and a soupcon of Broadway (okay, sorry, wrong language), slather on the bombastic string arrangements, and belt the hell out of all of them. In Italian. And so we have the aforementioned "La Prima Volta," Nino Rota's "Un Giorno Per Noi" (Italian for "A Time For Us"), Procol Harum's immortal recitatif "Senza Luce" (Italian for "A Whiter Shade of Pale"), and something called "Mamma" (Italian for "mamma"). It will probably sell a zillion copies, and all the PBS listeners will bask in their sophistication and in their support for the underdog. And cornpone is still la cornpone, even when you translate it.

The Present -- The Way We Are

Set the controls for the heart of the sun.

Here's what the press release has to say:

The Present return with an album that delves ever deeper into the human psyche. Like an audio equivalent of Apocalypse Now, ‘The Way We Are’ is by turns terrifying, enchanting, hallucinatory and sharply focused. Like a psychedelic power trio from a mythical dimension, The Present create a music that seems somehow familiar. Like they’ve already seen your dreams and your nightmares.

In order to define the music you’re about to hear it might help to list some of the things it is not: it is not a pop album, neither is it a classical or jazz album. It’s not an ambient album or a rock album either but there are elements of all of these within its dense musical structure.

Touchstones include the music of La Monte Young, Dmitri Shostakovich, Wolfgang Voigt, Cluster, Black Dice, Claude Debussy, Aphex Twin, Can, Arthur Russell, Boredoms and Brian Eno and yet it sounds like none of these.

What it is: a kaleidoscopic trip influenced by New York City, The Ocean, Mountains, The Sun and the Trees, Andy Warhol, Yukio Mishima, David Lynch, Friedrich Nietzsche, Buddhist Mantra, Mass Transit, Cats, Birds and Life. Life in all its myriad complexity and confusions, in all it’s transcendent beauty and it’s horrendous brutality.

Oh my. This is some scary stuff, particularly the references to cats and Friedrich Nietzsche (banjo in the University of Basel Bluegrass Band, as I recall) in a musical context. There are passages that remind me of Gyorgi Ligeti's creepy monolith music on the 2001: A Space Odyssey soundtrack. Others remind me of Ummagumma-era Pink Floyd at their trippiest, with a little Japanese folk song mixed in for good measure. One track is 33 minutes long. You have been warned.

That said, I like it. The Present is primarily the brainchild of one Rusty Santos, who has collaborated with Panda Bear and Animal Collective. This is a strange, eerie, dissonant, and occasionally lovely album.

Old Neil Young

Old man, take a look at my life,
I'm a lot like you were
-- Neil Young, "Old Man," 1971

Comes a time when the hippies start looking old, and for Neil that moment has come. It's okay. He's certainly not going out peacefully or quietly. His latest album, Fork in the Road, reminds me of why I love him. He's cantankerous, ornery, and he plays a great guitar.

There's a bailout comin' but it's not for you/It's for all those creeps hiding what they do," he sings on one song. On another one he asks, "Where did all the money go/Where did all the cash flow?" Let me know if you figure it out, Neil. These rhymes are not going to win him any poetry laurels. But they sure do strike a nerve. I'm going to be reviewing the new one for Paste. Neil hasn't done a thing to impress me in well over ten years, but this one is decent, raw, unpoetic, and pissed off. I'll take that.

I'm also going to be reviewing the long-awaited Archives release. Neil's (reportedly) kept a bunch of goodies in the vault for decades. I look forward to hearing these songs, some of which are legendary.

The Hotel Chelsea, Thomas Wolfe, and the End of Romanticism

And left alone to sleep within a shuttered room, with the thick sunlight printed in bars upon the floor, unfathomable loneliness and sadness crept through him: he saw his life down the solemn vista of a forest aisle, and he knew he would always be the sad one: caged in that little round skull, imprisoned in that beating and most secret heart, his life must always walk down lonely passages. Lost. He understood that men were forever strangers to one another, that no one ever comes really to know any one, that imprisoned in the dark womb of our mother, we come to life without having seen her face, that we are given to her arms a stranger, and that, caught in that insoluble prison of being, we escape it never, no matter what arms may clasp us, what mouth may kiss us, what heart may warm us. Never, never, never, never, never.
-- Thomas Wolfe, from Look Homeward, Angel

Almost a year and a half ago, on a raw January day, I strolled from midtown Manhattan down to Greenwich Village. Subways are great, and no doubt part of the full NYC experience, but for me there is no substitute for walking, for absorbing the sights and sounds, the aromas and the stink, the honking horns, the soft pretzel vendors hawking their wares on every street corner, the army of the corporate drones marching to work, iPod earbuds firmly in place.

One of the places I passed was the Hotel Chelsea. There may be more famous hotels on the planet, but I'm not aware of them. This one has certainly seen better days. It's seedy, tawdry, and full of history, both good and bad. It's housed Mark Twain, Dylan Thomas, William S. Burroughs, Tennessee Williams, Jack Kerouac, and Thomas Wolfe. Stanley Kubrick, Milos Forman, Dennis Hopper, Uma Thurman, and Jane Fonda once called it home. Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, Leonard Cohen, and The Ramones wrote songs here. Sid Vicious murdered his girlfriend here, and caught the place on fire. The Last Outpost of Bohemia, some have called it. Given its subsequent history in my life, The Last Outpost of Romanticism might be more accurate.

If there are ghosts, surely the Hotel Chelsea must have its share. I admire many of them; loathe a few more. But of those many spectral bohemians who have impacted my life, and who have once called the Hotel Chelsea home, it is Thomas Wolfe who haunts me. Because I walked by that old hotel, thought about the one former resident whose words still burn in my soul, and set off on a quest to discover if the old magic was still there.

The way it happened was this: I was sixteen years old. My goals were modest. I wanted to write the Great American Novel, dazzle college-educated audiences as a talking head on various PBS specials, and eventually appear as the question to an answer on Jeopardy. I asked my creative writing teacher a sensible question: who is the greatest American novelist? If you're going to be the best, you might as well understand your competition, right? "Thomas Wolfe," he unhesitatingly told me. "Read a book called Look Homeward, Angel. If you want to be a great writer, you can't do any better than to learn from Thomas Wolfe."

So I did. I read Look Homeward, Angel. Then I read the massive, two-volume Of Time and the River. Then I read the posthumous novels The Web and the Rock and You Can't Go Home Again. And let it be known that there is no more perfect, or no more dangerous, writer than Thomas Wolfe for rhapsodically delirious sixteen-year-old kids. Wolfe's hyperventilating, floridly poetic, impossibly romantic prose was pitched perfectly for hormonal adolescents, particularly the kind who are convinced of their impending greatness and heightened emotional sensitivity. And by the time I was eighteen, I had learned, and I had emulated. Thomas Wolfe was, to quote a phrase that didn't come into vogue for a few decades afterwards, da bomb. His words detonated in my heart. I couldn't imagine a more perfect writer.

There is a famous, or perhaps infamous, story of Thomas Wolfe emerging from his cramped room in the Hotel Chelsea at 3:00 a.m., prowling the streets of lower Manhattan, manuscript in hand, and shouting at the top of his lungs, "I wrote ten thousand words today! I wrote ten thousand words today!" For those who need to translate, ten thousand words is about twenty pages, single spaced, typed. It's a lot of writing. And it is typical of the life of Thomas Wolfe. Thomas Wolfe didn't write. He spewed. Like the big, outsized man he was, Wolfe did everything to excess. He ate a lot, drank a lot, poured forth reams of words in staggering binges. He was the ultimate romantic, and he embodied the stereotype that to produce great art one must suffer. It was all about the pain.

Re-reading his words over the past year and a half, prompted by that revelatory stroll past the Hotel Chelsea, I still understand the fuss. Wolfe's writing is largely discredited these days. He never met an adjective or twenty he didn't like. He was sexist and anti-Semitic. He was, by all accounts, something of an asshole in his personal life. He was most certainly an alcoholic. None of these things speak in his favor. But he was an undeniably powerful writer, capable of spewing forth words of breathtaking beauty, of unmatched pain. There are passages in Look Homeward, Angel that still move me to tears.

But my 53-year-old self now views my 16-year-old self with a bit of mistrust and smirking pity, and the same reaction transfers over to my view of Thomas Wolfe. Sometimes -- many times, actually -- life isn't hypercharged. It's just life. Much of it is merely okay, and even when it's not -- when the days seem particularly glorious or particularly tragic -- it still strikes me that other people go through the same shitty, majestic, mediocre deal, and that the best course might be finding common ground with them instead of searching for evidence of one's heightened, passionate superiority. I'm through with the kind of romanticism Thomas Wolfe embodied. It's the kind of philosophy that can leave you with the DTs, and dead just shy of 38. Such was the fate of one of my idols. I still love him. And I pity him.

For what it's worth, I thought about turning into the Hotel Chelsea, exploring those ghost-haunted rooms. I didn't. I walked past.