Blog on Break

The blog will desist until the flogging commences. Or something that means I'll be suspending my dropping of the science until my schedule normalizes. That will be next Monday.

Faced with the Bob Segerian dilemma of deadlines and commitments, what to leave in, what to leave out, I determined that the blog was the thing that had to give. Just to give you an idea of the kind of week this has been and will continue to be, even though I'll be traveling to and through points north this weekend, I will still have to find time to crank out an article for a client before start of business Monday. I'm not complaining. I'm just saying this is no way to be working as my own boss.

I will make that deadline, though. I'm hot like that.

Apropos of something: Go Navy! Beat Army!

Be sure to tune in next week to read about how I utterly failed to hit the not NaNoWriMo target of 50,000 words blogged in the month of November and how that was really the point of my word counting all along. Plus, all The Call all the time!

The Walls at Least Moved a Little Farther Outward

Album: The Call, Modern Romans, 1983

Acquired: I probably bought this at the Navy Exchange at Little Creek, but I wouldn't swear to that. I do know that Modern Romans is one of the first cassettes I purchased in 1983.

Best Track: "Time of Your Life"

Lasting Memory: Much like I can't remember the details of purchasing this album, I can't point to a single indelible moment I associate with it. Modern Romans, for me, has just always sort of been there. Except when it wasn't.

[WARNING: The following paragraphs contain high levels of unverifiable pseudofacts and unpopular opinions. Proceed at your own risk.]

Back in 1983, rock radio was still essentially AOR -- album-oriented radio. Microformats and supertight playlists hadn't pablumized and pigeonholed popular music yet, and disk jockeys could play pretty much what they wanted. There were boundaries, of course. But those boundaries were pretty wide. Today's classic rock stations reflect this to some degree. For instance, what exactly do Yes' "Owner of a Lonely Heart" and Van Halen's "Panama" have in common besides both being big rock hits in the early 1980s that are still played on your very own hometown's station that never forgets.

That programmatic freedom kept the airwaves open to bands like The Call, which if it would be unfair to call them odd, it would certainly be correct to describe them as something completely different. The best I can do by way of describing The Call's sound in three words or less is "gothic country gospel." I had never heard anything like it when WNOR-FM99 started spinning The Call's "The Walls Came Down" during that summer between seventh and eighth grade. And the video playing on MTV, which like the radio of the time took a much more catholic approach to its playlist, was way cool like the first Apple computer ad. (This ain't the original.)

Modern Romans opened up whole new musical worlds for me. Still, as unique as The Call sounded to me then, and still sounds to me now, the album is as much a product of 1983 as George Brett's pine tar incident and Ronald Reagan's "Evil Empire" speech. Betrayed innocence and deep paranoia are given equal play on The Call's major-label debut, and those were just the right notes to hit at a time when we could all be scandalized by the amount of stick 'um a baseball player used even as we expected the missiles to launch in 15 minutes.

There is one bit of sanctuary to be found on Modern Romans, however. In the closing track, "All About You," Michael Been sings, in clenched-throat scream that might be the sound a man makes just before the guillotine blade hits, "I've never been to wild about politics/ But I'm wild about you" and "I've never been easy with strangers/ But I'm easy with you." Sometimes all a paranoiac needs is love.

Love isn't always the answer, though, as the person being upbraided in "Time of Your Life" finds out when he chose both hugs and drugs:

Saw a bad movie
It was the story of my life
Bad direction
Story of my life

Now I can't hide
I can't move
I can't deliver
What you gonna do

You had the time of your life
You had the time of your life
Oh, how you loved the attention
It was the time of your life
You had the time of your life
Oh, how you loved the applause

Waking in a closed room
Feelings that I can't show
Told myself I don't mind
She says she wants the door closed

I look her in the eye
Tell her what I'm thinking
It doesn't seem to matter
The ship is sinking

You had the time of your life
You had the time of your life
Oh, how you loved the attention
It was the time of your life
But now it's time to go home

I saw a bad movie
I think I had my soul touched
He told me that he might call
He told me that he might call

He said come back
Come back, come back home
Living by your own rules
Means living all alone

You had the time of your life
You had the time of your life
Oh how you loved the attention
You had the time of your life
You had the time of your life
Oh, how you loved the attention
It was the time of your life
You had the time of your life
Oh, how you loved the applause

So what you wanna hear?

It really is your call on what to listen to now because I can't find "Time of Your Life" as a download or a sample anywhere. That's a shame. Rewatch the video above.

Up Next: The Call, Reconciled, 1986 (Yep, it's another theme week-ish. Postings made be irregular over the next seven days.)

Word Count to Date: 20,080

Say It's Your Birthday?

It's my birthday, too!

We're gonna have a good time.

November 26 is when all the cool kids get borned. Happinesses to my sisters Peggy and Susan, my nephew Chris, and the unmatchable Mr. Robert Goulet (R.I.P.).

Astrology.com gives this advice to Sagitarians today:

As much as you may want to hurl a drink in their face, try not to let the arrogance of someone else put you in a sour mood. There are way too many knuckleheads in this world to live life any other way. After all, if you let every jerk affect your mood, you would never be able to relax. Lately there have been an unpleasantly high number of negative-minded people around you, but luckily that is all about to change soon. So just Zen them out and focus on the people who add joy to your life.

Tina Turner, born Nov. 26, 1941, has been known to throw a drink or two in her time. Bob would never lose his cool like that, and he enjoyed his beverage to much to waste it. Be a Bob.

Joke for a Sunday

In honor of the Thanksgiving tradition of getting together with family, I'm posting the following tale of a young man's eventful evening at his ancestral home in the hills of western Carolina. This was told to me by Boy Scout Troop 67 Scoutmaster Jeff Irving. In the spirit of campfire story telling, I have changed and expanded upon the original.

===============

Bob Jones always enjoyed returning to the family farm outside of Boone, N.C. He loved the mountain views, the smells of the livestock and mown hay, and the peace and quiet of being so far from his normal life in the metropolis Charlotte had somehow turned into over the thirty years he had lived there since graduating from Appalachian State.

What Bob especially liked about going back home was sitting up late with Uncle Skeet, sipping some 'shine and hearing stories about the old days. Having majored in English, Bob always meant to write those stories down some day, but his job at Wachovia always seemed to prevent him from getting started on that project.

This particular night, though, Bob just happened to have a notepad and pen in hand when Skeet came in from slopping the Thanksgiving dinner leftovers to the hogs. Bob had been jotting down some bullet points for a meeting on Monday, but he had manners enough to set his work down and accept the mason jar Skeet offered.

As soon as Skeet settled into his chair in front of the roaring fire, he said, "Hear that wind kicking up boy? Makes me think we're due for the first real snow. Also reminds me of another Thanksgiving night in this very house back in, musta been right after the war -- 1946, yeah." Bob knew that Skeet never used the proper name. For his uncle, World War II was always just "the war."

So Bob sunk back in his own overstuffed recliner and prepared to hear about his own father, who had been seriously wounded when fighting through the hedgerows of Normandy alongside Skeet, finally returning home from the soldier's hospital in Washington, D.C., after two years of rehab.

Instead, Skeet started talking about the basement of the farm house. "See that door there, son?" Skeet asked Bob.

"Sure," Bob replied. "That goes down to the old root cellar, right? But I don't know that I've ever seen anybody open it. I know the door's been bolted as long as I can remember, and I was threatened with death itself if I ever tried to open it."

Skeet nodded slowly and then said in a voice almost too low for Bob to hear, "Well, death was the right kinda threat." Before Bob could even ask what that meant, Skeet continued in a louder voice: "That ain't no root cellar, boy. That's the old family crypt. Back when the Joneses first settled this land, the parts that weren't forests was rock. The little land that could be cleared was used for growing food, so the family dug under the house for burying rather than use up good farm land.

Once the road came through around 1940, we could get into town easier, and we started taking our departed kin to cemetery proper. But I reckon there must be five, six generations of Joneses taking their eternal rest not 20 feet beneath where our feet are right now."

Bob was a little unsettled to learn this particular bit of family history, but he was too educated and too much of a city boy by now to feel too superstitious. He fought back the gasp of shock that he knew Skeet was expecting.

Undeterred, even if a little disappointed, Skeet went on: "I never went down there myself, even when it was open. Crypts ain't no place for children, you know. But when I got back from the war, I figured I'd seen just about every evil man can do to man. I reckoned nothing could scare me, and I was naturally curious about what was down through that door.

So after filling my belly with your gramma's turkey and your grandad's whiskey, I threw that door open and tore down those steps. I didn't get five feet before I heard a 'THUMP!' Stopped me cold. And even though I was still close enough to the door to get the light from the living room, I pulled out my matches and struck one to get a better view.

Your grandad handed through a couple of birch switches, and I lit one of those too. I saw that even though the staricase wasn't that long, it had a landing and a full turn about halfway down. I guess some of those coffins musta run to the heavy side, and the bearers woulda needed a break on the way down.

I also saw and felt how the steps was covered with moss since nobody had been down there in so long. I ain't gonna lie. My heart started beating something fierce, and I almost turned around right then. But I was the young, brave war hero. No way I was gonna run from some bones and old pine boxes when I didn't run from living men with guns."

Bob smiled at this. Skeet had never admitted to being afraid of anything.

"Anyway," Skeet continued, pretending not to notice Bob's grin, "I went down to the landing and heard 'THUMP! THUMP!' just as my first torch burned out. I never struck a match so fast in my life. Swiped that matchstick so quick, I nearly slipped on the moss. Still, I wasn't gonna turn back.

I mad a run down the last of the steps and hit the floor of the crypt on my hands and knees, nose to wood with a coffin lid bearing my name, 'Micheal Carter Jones.' And wouldn't you know, my second torch went out right at that moment."

Despite himself, Bob was at the edge of his seat by now. He also realized that he had been scribbling notes on his pad, completely overwriting his bullet points on the risks of subprime mortgages.

Skeet was up out of his chair by now, mimicking his long-ago movements as best as his 86-year-old body would let him. "I scrambled for my matchbox and felt around for my last birch switch as I heard the thumping start up again right by my ear. 'THUMP! THUMP! THUMP!' I had only one match left, and luckily it struck and caught on my torch.

I couldn't believe what I saw. Damned if that coffin with my name on it wasn't raising up off the ground and coming towards me. The lid opened up, and I swear I saw the fires of Hell itself ready to swallow me whole!

I turned and ran, naturally, but that moss wouldn't let me get far. I fell and turned to see that coffin practically on to of me. I was crawling and cursing, and I lost my torch. Pitch black. THUMP! THUMP! THUMP! THUMP! Barely keeping one step ahead of that pine box."

Bob was writing as furiously as his uncle was talking.

"I finally made up to the top of the stairs, but somebody had closed it from the outside. I knew for sure I was a goner. No light, and the coffin not but a few inches from me. I reached in my pocket for anything I could find to fight off that box.

I grabbed the only thing I had -- a tin of Barry's Bronchitis Bromides, and I threw it as hard as I could!"

Bob couldn't contain himself any longer. "What happened, Uncle Skeet?!" he practically shouted.

Skeet, calm as could be now, just said, "Wouldn't you know, those pills did stop that old coffin."

===============

Word Count to Date: 19,257

Mr. Tambourine Spaceman Feels Better as a Rock Star

Album: The Byrds, Greatest Hits, 1983 reissue

Acquired: I bought this from a pharmacy located in a shopping center located across the street from my elementary school, St. Pius X School, in 1985. I was in high school by then, but I got my hair cut in a doo-licious flattop at a barber shop a few doors down from the pharmacy across the street from St. Pius. Don't ask me why I remember this bit so vividly, but I distinctly recall finding this tape on the bottom shelf of the impulse purchase rack in front of the register at the pharmacy. It was one of maybe six cassettes for sale. What it was doing in the pharmacy is anyone's guess.

Yes, I get paid by the pointless fact when I submit these blog entries. All that stuff about the pharmacy should even earn me a double bonus. Twice nothing! I'll be a rich man.

Best Track: "So You Want to Be a Rock 'n' Roll Star"

Lasting Memory: I didn't really get into music until my freshman year of high school. Even though Clair played a little guitar and Mom had a few hundred records from her time working at Capitol Records in New York in the early 1960s, the Lamb house wasn't what anyone on VH-1's Behind the Music would call a "musical household." (Nick Lachey? What the ...)

I didn't really understand how people could geek out over music and musicians until I saw other kids my age and a little older than I was doing it. It seems odd to come to this realization just now, but I can honestly say that I became something of a good music fan only because I saw a bunch of my wrestling teammates seeking out and enjoying good music. Bob Villaflor and Dave Harris, in particular, showed me the aural ropes.

Which finally gets me to the lasting memory part. I carried The Byrds Greatest Hits tape with me to school for about two weeks straight because I was going to trade it with Bob for his The Smith's Meat Is Murder record. Bob never brought in his record, so I still have my Byrds cassette. I wonder how different my life would have turned out if I had begun listening to The Smiths when I was 14 instead of when I was 22 or so. Would I have worn a pompadour instead of a flattop? Would I have stayed thin? Would I have tried to find a girlfriend in coma?

Only the me in the alternate reality where Bob made good on his end of the album swap knows.

But you all know The Byrds, so I won't belabor or rehash any analysis about how seminal Roger McGuinn, David Crosby, Chris Hillman, Gram Parsons, and the other rotating members of the band were in folk, country, and hyphenated rock subgenres. Instead, for the curious, I'll post links to The Byrds' biographies on the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame and the Rolling Stone Web sites. The differences are telling in that the Hall goes out of its way to portray the group in a positive light, while the magazine goes a past showing the band's warts to making you smell the pus. I say don't hide history, but at the same time, just enjoy the songs and let people handle their own drama.

One thing I think both band bios should have done is fully draw The Byrds' family tree, of which one branch of would look something like Byrds --> Buffalo Springfield --> Crosby, Still, & Nash (and sometimes Young) --> Neil Young and Crazy Horse --> Pearl Jam. Another branch would look like Byrds -- > Flying Burrito Brothers --> Emmylou Harris --> Ricky Skaggs & Kentucky Thunder --> Ricky Skaggs and Allison Krauss.

A family tree like that would be fascinating. Feel free to make one and show it to me.

Listen to a clip from "So You Want to Be a Rock 'n' Roll Star

Up Next: The Call, Modern Romans, 1983

Word Count to Date: 17,957

P.S. Virginia Tech 33 UVA 21

Someone Just Might Take a Swing at You

Album: Jimmy Buffett, Havana Daydreamin', 1975

Acquired: Purchased at the Roses at Pembroke Mall, circa 1986. This is the second half of a double-album reissue on cassette that was produced in 1982. This format cum marketing ploy was popular in the mid-1980s; I have similar products featuring the early works of Dire Straits and Van Halen. As near as I can tell without actually, you know, doing the minute and a half of Internet research that would be required to find out whether I was correct or just typing out of the side of my neck, double-album cassette reissues were cheap ways for record companies to profit on established artists' back catalogs when they lost said artists. Does anybody know when Buffett started records under his own label? Does anyone other than Buffett and his accountant care?

Best Track: "Woman Goin' Crazy Down on Caroline Street" (words by Steve Goodman)

Lasting Memory: I can relate all too well to the experiences described and the sentiments expressed in this album's "My Feet Stink, My Head Hurts, and I Don't Love Jesus." Especially when Buffett sings, "Try to tell myself my condition is improving/ And if I don't die by Thursday, I'll be roaring Friday night."

Of course, everyone has had those nights and those morning like the ones Buffett describes, when you go down to the Snake pit just to drink a little beer and wind up throwing down a fifth or more of cheap liquor. Life is funny like that, but in the "odd but relatable and kind of sad" kind of way rather than the "ha ha" kind of way.

Buffett, as with most any singer-songwriter worth his or her saltwater, is good at capturing and conveying the first kind of funny moments. Even when he does score a legitimate laugh line like "She had a ballpark figure/ And he had a ballpoint pen," he does so in the context of a song titled "Cliches" that is about a married couple who travel the well-worn path from happy and partying despite having nothing to show to unhappy and marking time despite finally having achieved some of what society considers success.

Mr. Buffett, if you're nasty, also earns his bona fides as the better sort of singer-songwriter by creating and performing many songs about drinking and its discontents. Havana Daydreamin' even concludes with a lament of the bar band titled "Kick It in Second Wind" in which Buffett wonders how he and mates will make it through the second, third, and fourth sets when "there isn't anymore hope of scoring any more coke." In Buffett's defense, he was recording this particular album in 1975, when cocaine wasn't bad for you.

The absolute divine-ish comedy of drinking is revealed in "Woman Goin' Crazy on Caroline Street":

[Chorus]
There's a woman goin' crazy on Caroline Street
Stoppin' every man that she does meet
Sayin' if you'll be gentle if you'll be sweet
I'll show you my place on Caroline Street

She claimed in a loud voice to be a dancer
But I don't think she's cut a rug in years
Listens to the jukebox for her answers
Slowly guzzles twenty-five cent beers

Talks about the men she's known and then some
She's seen them in her dreams and on the street
She slides her dapper legs from beneath the table
As if to reveal some kind of treat

[Repeat chorus]

Her lover left her stranded in Jamaica
Just right now she can't recall his name
Perceiving she's the center of attention
And all the lurking eyes they look the same

Weather's got the shrimpers in a frenzy
They're horny and don't need a good excuse
Someone yells and things just start erupting
And in a flash all hell has broken loose

[Repeat chorus]

When I woke up and looked around the barroom
She was gone and I was black and blue
So be careful when you go to swing your partner
Someone just might take a swing at you

[Repeat chorus]

Sad, drunk woman? Check. Horny, angry fishermen? Check. A well-meaning if not entirely innocent victim of a bar brawl? Check. A punchline that actually involves a punch and acts as it's own moral? Check? Is this a Bukowski poem or a rock song? Does it matter?

Listen to a clip for "Woman Goin' Crazy Down on Caroline Street"

Up Next: The Byrds, Greatest Hits, 1983 casette reissue of 1967 album (I do look some stuff up)

Word Count to Date: 17,264

Why We Ever Go Home

Album: Jimmy Buffett, Changes in Attitude, 1977

Acquired: Purchased at Roses at Pembroke Mall in Virginia Beach, circa 1986. I miss the old-school discount department stores. Sure, you can buy everything to make a meal at a reasonable price at a Wal-Mart -- from the gun and ammo needed to shoot it and the Sunday-go-to-meeting Dickies to wear to the table to the dishwasher needed to do the dishes afterwards -- but where is the grime and depression that add the necessary edge to real bargain hunting?

Best Track: "Banana Republics"

Lasting Memory: I worked as a bouncer in a long-out-of-business sports bar called Champs in Blacksburg for most of the 1990-1991 school year. It had a jukebox. One of the CDs on that jukebox was Jimmy Buffett's greatest hits collection Song(s) You Know by Heart, which features a live version of Changes in Attitudes' "Margaritaville." I figure I work about 100 shifts on the door at Champs. That would mean, at 11 times a night, I heard "Margaritaville" at least 1,100 times in a nine-month period. I could kill Jimmy Buffett fans. I do believe if I had a time machine, I would use it only to prevent the writing, recording, and performance of "Margaritaville."

But Buffett I'm okay with. Especially after giving his early work a fair listen many years removed from the smoke-filled aquarium fully stocked with drunken Phi Sigs and Tri Delts that was Champs.

I fully realized for the first time how sad, forlorn really, most of Buffett's songs are. "Margaritaville" is about a drunk who knows he's responsible for ruining his life. "Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes" is built around the not-so-original observation that we have to laugh lest we cry. My favorite song off Changes, which is not titled the same as the song in the copy I own, is Hemingway-esque in its debunking of the romance of romanticism:

Down to the Banana Republics
Down to the tropical sun
Go the expatriated Americans
Hopin' to find some fun
Some of them go for the sailing,
Caught by the lure of the sea
Tryin' to find what is ailing
Livin' in the land of the free

Some of them are running from lovers
Leaving no forward address
Some of them are running tons of ganja
Some are running from the I.R.S.

[Chorus]
Late at night you will find them
In the cheap hotels and bars
Hustling the senioritas while they dance beneath the stars
Spending those renegade pesos on a bottle of rum and a lime
Singin' 'Give me some words I can dance to
Or a melody that rhymes'

First you learn the native customs
Soon a word of Spanish or two
You know that you cannot trust them
'Cause they know they can't trust you
Expatriated Americans feelin' so all alone
Telling themselves the same lies
That they told themselves back home

Down to the Banana Republics,
Things aren't as warm as they seem
None of the natives are buying
Any second-hand American dreams

[Repeat chorus]

Down to the Banana Republics, down to the tropical sun
Go the expatriated Americans hopin' to find some fun

(Words by Steve Goodman, who looks like someone I should learn more about.)

These are not the kind of sentiments that should inspire middle-aged white people to call themselves Parrott Heads and party like its 1979. I call it the "Bruce Springsteen phenomenon." Who doesn't love that patriotic anthem "Born in the U.S.A.," or that ode to life just getting better and better as we get older "Glory Days"? With Buffett, people hear "margarita" and stop thinking.

Since Buffett recognizes that running and boozing and alienating are no solutions to one's troubles-- even if his fans don't -- it makes little sense that he ponders in another excellent song off Changes, "I wonder why we ever go home?" He knows exactly why, and he even sings the answer in "Wonder," admitting "The years get shorter, not longer/ The more you've been on your own."

Here's to everybody finding a home tomorrow where their years grow long. Happy Thanksgiving.

Listen to a clip from "Banana Republics"

Up Next: Jimmy Buffett, Havana Daydreamin', 1975

Word Count to Date: 16,514

It's a Big Red Letter Day

Today truly is a big one for my sisters Kathy and Clair. Happy Somethingth Birthday!!!

I'm much too much of a gentleman to tell their ages, but I did manage to get this picture of Kathy's birthday cake.

Cue the music!

================

Albums: Buffalo Tom, Big Red Letter Day, 1993 and Buffalo Tom, Sleepy Eyed, 1995


Acquired: I bought both at the Record Exchange in Blacksburg

Best Tracks: "Dry Land" and, um, I'll have to get back to you on this one


Lasting Memories: What I most remember about Big Red Letter Day is having to wait almost a year after first hearing the single "Sodajerk" in early 1993 before I could buy the album. I spent most of the fall of 1992 and the spring and summer of 1993 irregularly employed, shiftless, and broke. I actually got skinny that year, but I can honestly say that I beat anorexia.

I was well back on my way to being well fed when Sleepy Eyed was released in 1995, and what I'll always remember about that album is that it was the first cassette my grad school classmate Carmen and I played when we left Blacksburg to drive to Toronto for an STS students' conference. In three days, I saw the ice shelf over Niagara Falls, got loaded on LaBatt's Bleu while watching a Leafs game in a pub in downtown Toronto, gave my first academic paper, and somehow didn't get killed on the Detroit beltway when Carmen's car died in the center lane during Monday rush hour. Good times.

It was not good times, though, when I went to listen to these cassettes this past Sunday. Only half the songs on my copy of Big Red Letter Day play, and the magnetic tape on Sleepy Eyed is torn at the beginning of side A.

Broken tapes make for broken dreams.

Which is just one of the reasons that cassettes very quickly gave way to the hardier CD format for recorded music. In fact, I'm pretty sure that Sleepy Eyed is the last cassette I ever purchased. At some point during the mid-1990s, I just didn't see them in record stores any more. I was dragged kicking and screaming into the digital music age, and while I still prefer tapes to disks, I do like how the CDs are all shiny.

Since I was unable to give either of the Buffalo Tom albums a proper listen, I will have to forgo my usual brilliant critique. Suffice it to write that the band rocks pretty good. The fast tunes are a mix of power pop and low-fi, and the slow songs are all listenable. No Scorpions-esque "Winds of Change" balladeering for these boys from Boston.

The lyrics tend toward semiclever wordplay, as evidenced by this bit from Sleepy Eyed's "Tangerine," which may actually be haiku in some parts:

It's just a little haiku
To say how much I like you
It's just a little haiku
To say how much I like you
It's just a little haiku

Also take for example this nice little snippet from Big Red Letter Day's "Dry Land":

With heaven beside me
There is no one can do me harm
But the devil inside me
At least then I can stay warm

A final reason to like Buffalo Tom -- the cherry on top of the slice of birthday cake, if you will -- is that the band's lead singer and chief songwriter has red hair. That is something I've always identified with, and it might go some way toward explaining why Buffalo Tom has been a guest on Late Night with Conan O'Brien so often.

Listen to a clip from "Dry Land"

Watch the video for "Tangerine"

Up Next: Jimmy Buffett, Changes in Attitude, 1977

Word Count to Date: 15,813

Gotta Work Some Time

No post today. Sorry.

A two-day proofreading gig turned into a six-day career, as such things sometimes do. I just wrapped up a 12-hour day of finishing off that project, and now I have to go sit through a two-hour workshop for the wrestling officiating I'm about to start. Just high school for now, but I'm on my way to WWE.

I'll try to get a double post up tomorrow or Wednesday to make up for lost time. I know my fan will be thrilled when I get back on track

By a Mucked Up Lovely River

Album: Greg Brown, Dream Cafe, 1992

Acquired: I taped this off a CD owned by my roommate Toby in 1994. Toby introduced me to several singer-songwriter types. Something about being from Maine must expose you to a lot of music that's excellent but outside the mainstream.

Best Track: "I Don't Know That Guy"

Lasting memory: Toby's brother Chris, who is a professional musician in central Maine, played the song "Spring Wind" from this album during Toby's wedding a couple of years ago. The ceremony was held on a mountaintop just north of San Francisco. Hot as blazes, but the scene and the moment could not have been any more perfect.

Greg Brown is the master of perfectly capturing a moment. His song lyrics don't quite coalesce into the short stories of a Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, or Bill Morrissey, but Brown's lines read like underlined passages from your favorite novels. "Spring Wind" is an excellent example of this:

I lived awhile without you,
Darn near half my life.
I no longer see our unborn children,
Born to you my unwed wife.
But yesterday I had a vision,
Beneath the tree where we once talked,
Of an old couple burning their love letters
So their children won't be shocked.

[Chorus:]
Love calls like the wild birds--it's another day.
A spring wind blew my list of things to do ... away.

My friends are getting older,
So I guess I must be too.
Without their loving kindness,
I don't know what I'd do.
Oh the wine bottle's half empty--the money's all spent.
And we're a cross between our parents
And hippies in a tent.

[Repeat chorus]
In a mucked up lovely river,
I cast my little fly.
I look at that river and smell it
And it makes me wanna cry.
Oh to clean our dirty planet,
Now there's a noble wish,
And I'm putting my shoulder to the wheel
Cause I wanna catch some fish.

[Repeat chorus]
Children go to sleep now--you know it's gettin' late.
I know you don't like to miss nothin'
And school ain't that great.
Oh, I'll dance with you when you're happy,
And hold you when you're sad,
And hope you know how glad I am,
Just to be you're Dad.

[Repeat chorus]
Darlin' it's been a hard go
But I think we'll be okay.
I know I say that all the time
Like everything else I say.
Oh, I've been gone so often,
But every time I miss you,
And I don't really know nothin',
Except I like to kiss you.

[Repeat chorus]

In "Spring Wind," Brown nailed all the elements of what constitutes living a pretty good life. It is remarkably like the life he actually does live now. He has one of the coolest bass/baritone voices this side of Johnny Cash. He is a regular on Prairie Home Companion. He is married to the ethereal and still somehow rooted Iris Dement. They live on Brown's family farm in Iowa, and Brown has three talented and pretty adult daughter, of whom Pieta Brown has made the biggest name for herself.

But Brown knows that he has done plenty of bad stuff along the road to his good life. My favorite track from Dream Cafe shows a man very like Brown trying to put his past behind him by shear denial. Brown's narrator know he's lying, and he knows the people listening know he's lying. Still, there is a spark of hope that he can be the good person he purports to be if everyone -- including himself -- gives him enough tenth, eleventh, and twelfth chances. Check it out:

Me, I'm happy-go-lucky--
Always ready to grin.
I ain't afraid of loving you--
Ain't fascinated with sin.
So who's this fellow in my shoes--
Making you cry?
I don't know that guy.

Who took my suitcase?
Who stole my guitar?
And where's my sense of humor?
What am I doin' in this bar?
This man who's been drinking,
And giving you the eye--
I don't know that guy.

Hey! I've heard him complainin',
'Bout piddly little stuff.
I've watched him do nothin',
And say he can't get enough.
He'll blame his Momma and Daddy,
For the world passin' by.
And I don't know that guy.

There's rain across Kansas,
There's a roadside hotel,
There's a man and a woman,
And things are going well
So why is he leavin',
Without so much as goodbye?
I don't know that guy.

Why can't he come out with it?
Why can't he laugh it off?
Why can't he be a fool like me?
Why can't he be soft?
Why does he run from his lover?
Why doesn't he cry?
I don't know that guy. 'Cause--

[Repeat first verse]

Brown's story does have a happy ending so far, though. Like the minor leaguer in his "Laughing River" who decides to hang up his glove and his spikes after 20 years to settle down in cabin by a trout stream in Minnesota and see about that female friend of his cousin, Brown recognized that life could be simple.

The "so far" in the preceding sentence is the damning note. Brown feels compelled to remind us in "Just by Myself" that too often things just don't work out. If it all should come crashing down, Brown at least has a plan--"And I'll go fishin'/ Get with the flow./ I know a river/ In Idaho./ I'll catch a big trout/ And let him go,/ And I'll be happy/ Just by myself."

Listen to a clip from "I Don't Know That Guy"

Up Next: Buffalo Tom, Big Red Letter Day, 1993

Word Count to Date: 15,181

My Sins Are So Unoriginal

Album: Billy Bragg, Don't Try This at Home, 1991

Acquired: Purchased at the Record Exchange in Blacksburg in 1991

Best Track: "Accident Waiting to Happen"

Lasting Memory: I could go all Morrissey here and say that the line ,"She married him and destroyed all my hopes," from this album's "Mother of the Bride" was running through my head during a wedding I had no way of not attending back in 1999, but that would make me look like a sap. So I won't mention anything about it.

I do catch myself quoting song lyrics to myself--and others--with what is probably annoying regularity. Growing up with little interest in traditional poetry and lacking the stick-to-itiveness to slog through classic literature, I gravitated to song lyrics as the text of my life's story. Plus, pop music has a good beat. You can dance to it. I give it a 37 years and counting.

This worked because all writers write themselves into their texts to some extent. Even dictionary editors rework definitions to account for how "I know I've seen this word used this way." So it is no great insight to note that songwriters, who are trying to express their own experiences and ideas in ways that others can understand and sing along with, are among the best autobiographers and providers of, often rhyming, ways to perfectly encapsulate a moment.

On Don't Try This at Home, Bragg keeps dropping into the first person, and his songs are almost always the better for it. "Tank Park Salute" is Bragg's tribute to his then-recently deceased father. "The Few," which asks of England's soccer hooligans "What do they know of England?" and answers "Only England knows," expresses his personal anger toward the blokes who can't just enjoy a match.

Bragg is at his most self-examinng and -reproaching in "Accident Waiting to Happen":

I've always been impressed with a girl
Who could sing for her supper and get breakfast as well
That's the way I am, heaven help me
He said, "We don't like peace campaigners 'round here"
As he nailed another one to the wall
And that's what gets me in trouble, heaven help me

Goodbye and good luck to all the promises you've broken
Goodbye and good luck to all
the rubbish that you've spoken
Your life has lost its dignity, its beauty and its passion
You're an accident waiting to happen

There you are standing in the bar
And you're giving me grief about the DDR
And that chip on your shoulder gets bigger as you get older
One of these night you're gonna get caught,
It'll give you a pregnant pause for thought
You're a dedicated swallower of fascism

Time up and time out
For all the liberties you've taken
Time up and time out for all the friends that you've forsaken
And if you choose to waste away like death is back in fashion
You're an accident waiting to happen

My sins are so unoriginal
I have all the self-loathing of a wolf in sheep's clothing
In this carnival of carnivores,
Heaven help me

These are the thoughts a person has at 3 am, complete with a rueful pun on a Kinks lyric. And the answers are all too recognizably unwelcome, especially the realization that while you were squandering your chances to make real differences, breaking relationships, and betraying your ideals, you were doing no more and no less than doing exactly what everyone else around you was doing. And has done. And will continue to do.

Then the real shame of it all hits you that what you now regret most of all is that you are not as unique an individual as you imagined yourself to be.

When I have those times, I always think about the Peanuts strip that shows Charlie Brown lying in bed and saying “Sometimes I lie awake at night, and ask, 'Where have I gone wrong?' Then a voice says to me, 'This is going to take more than one night.'”

Watch a video for "Accident Waiting to Happen"

Up Next: Greg Brown, Dream Cafe, 1992

Word Count to Date: 14,235

Joke for a Friday

I'm too busy today trying to find my moral outrage over the Barry Bonds' situation to prepare a proper post today, so I'll give you all a joke. I only hope that laughter can somehow heal a nation torn asunder by an adult accepting some known risks in order to improve his job performance.

Should that not be the case, we can all at least take some comfort in knowing that, sometimes, being a jerk really is a federal offense.

==================

It's another Friday down the pub with Paddy and the lads. Paddy, as usual, is in his cups and telling the most outrageous stories about how strong he was in his younger days, how fast he could run, how much he could drink, and just on and on.

Tom the barman never much minded Paddy's boasts, and his mates were as happy to match Paddy lie for lie as they were to try to prove him wrong.

Except on this particular Friday, Paddy makes a claim Tom just has to call him on.

"I cannot only out drink alla yez even today," Paddy roars, "I can out piss yez all, too!"

Hearing this, Tom rings the bell to get everyone's attention, looks Paddy right in the eye, and says, "No sir, I don't think you are a world class pisser."

"Wha," Paddy blurts, "I'll prove it right now." Not really thinking he'll have to, of course.

But Tom will not be dissuaded. "It just so happens," Tom says loudly enough for everyone in the pub to hear and in his best barrister's voice, "that we have had this out in this very establishment many times. It's been a few years, but we have the winners of past pissing contests marked out back in the alley. Are you man enough to make your play, Paddy?"

Paddy isn't man enough, but he doesn't want to look like a fool either, so he says, "I could be, Tom. I could be. But what'll I get when I put all th' others to shame."

Without missing a beat, Tom says, "Paddy, if you set the new mark, your pints are free every Friday for a year."

"Let's have a go, then," Paddy replies as he polishes off his Guinness for one last good measure.

Sparing the details, Paddy gives the alley his best shot and hits the remarkable distance of 8.3 meters. Almost a full meter short of the mark set 15 years earlier.

Once everyone is back inside, Paddy looks up from his pint and tells Tom, "I just can't believe it. I coulda swore I could out piss anyone."

"Don't beat yourself up, lad," Tom commiserates. "You did yer best. Better than I thought you could, in fact. Tell ya what. This round and the next are on the cuff for a match well played."

"Thanks," says Paddy, "but I don't know if that'll help. I mean, to lose to me own ma!"

==================

The moral is, of course, always be sure who exactly you're getting into a pissing contest with.

Word Count to Date: 13,544

Seeing Phil Ochs Hearing Marx

Album: Billy Bragg, The Internationale, 1990

Acquired: Purchased at the Record Exchange in Blacksburg in 1990

Best Track: "My Youngest Son Came Home Last Night" (by default)

Lasting Memory: Looking at this cassette for the last 17 years and thinking, "Nah, I'll play something else."

I usually listen to each of the albums I'm profiling twice before I start writing about them. I figure two close listens will refresh my memories of the lyrics and melodies, who influenced the artists, and where the artists fit in the universe of recorded music. Two back-to-back listens also allow me to think about how I used to hear the songs and to hear things I have long ignored or never even noticed before. For instance, I never realized before a week ago that David Baerwald has a solid case to make that he is a slightly better version of Don Henley.

Yesterday marked what I would swear where my second and third listens to Bragg's Internationale. I played the 6-song EP once the day I bought it, duly filed it in alphabetic/chronological order in my 100-slot pine cassette box, lugged it around through 6 moves over the past two decades, and made sure to never play it again.

Why? Because, to put a very fine point on it, socialist songs written by socialists and for socialists, suck. I am now convinced that the USSR collapsed solely because the people of Russia, Ukraine, and the other republics decided they would rather risk their lives on barricades staring down tanks than be forced to sing "The Internationale" one more goddamn time.

Have you ever heard "The Internationale?" It is supposed to be a call to arms to the workers of the world to unite and establish a just rule of the proletariat. The anthem even promises victory to the working man. In actuality, "The Internationale" is either the worst college fight song ever, or the most whiny dirge.

That is a statement that could be made about almost all of the songs on Bragg's Internationale, which I imagine he only recorded because he felt so guilty over having scored Top 20 UK hits off all of his earlier albums. Bragg is a true socialist; I'm not accusing him of any hypocrisy. But the crisis of conscience he must have experienced upon becoming a millionaire protest singer could not have been easy to resolve.

Musically, Bragg is fine form on Internationale, going a cappella on the homage "I Dreamed I Saw Phil Ochs Last Night" and turning "The Marching Song of the Covert Battalions," which is about the U.S. government's use of the Marines to keep Mexico and the countries of Central America feudal in the early half of the 20th century, into a campfire rave up.

The only song on Internationale that really stands out for any sort of intrinsic quality, though, is "My Youngest Son Came Home Today." Bragg explained in his liner notes that this particular song was written by Eric Bogle, who also penned "The Band Played Waltzing Matilda" in the surprising (to me anyway) year of 1972. Like "Waltzing Matilda," "My Youngest Son" is about a soldier coming home for the last time, but this time from the Troubles in Northern Ireland and on a caisson instead of in a wheelchair:

My youngest son came home today
His friends marched with him all the way
The fife and drum beat out the time
While in his box of polished pine
Like dead meat on a butcher's tray
My youngest son same home today

My youngest son was a fine young man
With a wife, a daughter and two sons
And a man he would have lived and died
Till by a bullet sanctified
Now he's a saint or so they say
They brought their young saint home today

An Irish sky looks down and weeps
Upon the narrow Belfast streets
At children's blood in gutters spilled
In dreams of glory unfulfilled
As part of freedom's price to pay
My youngest son came home today

My youngest son came home today
His friends marched with him all the way
The pipe and drum beat out the time
While in his box of polished pine
Like dead meat on a butcher's tray
My youngest son came home today
And this time he's here to stay

I learned three undeniable truths while revisiting The Internationale for what I am sure will be my last time. Those lessons are

1. Capitalism triumphed over socialism in large measure because capitalists had better songs. If Russia could have spawned a few more Autographs, we might still be fighting the Cold War.
2. Songs about the human costs of war are always affecting.
3. I like Billy Bragg best when he is singing about the asshole he becomes every time he gets a chance to spend a Sunday afternoon in the warmest room with a girl who can help him with his obsession with the young Susannah York, even if for her has to become the man in the iron mask when love gets dangerous.

Listen to a clip from "My Youngest Son Came Home Last Night"

Up Next: Billy Bragg, Don't Try This at Home, 1991

Word Count to Date: 13.029

Brutality and the Economy Are Related

Album: Billy Bragg, Workers Playtime, 1988

Acquired: I probably received this a birthday or Christmas gift in 1988. While I can't remember who I came this, I do remember my dormmate Barry telling me that I really I needed to add it to my collection when we first saw the video for "Waiting for the Great Leap Forwards," which wasn't this one.

Best Track: Tie: "Little Time Bomb" and "Valentine's Day Is Over"

Lasting Memory: Trying to convince former official of the American Communist Party and then-grad school classmate that Billy Bragg's songs about love were better than his songs about social justice while we were all having too many pints at The Cellar in the fall of 1994.

Bragg devoted most of Workers Playtime to love songs that are in no way, shape, or form playful. He was probably having us on with the title since he does seem to be one of the very few prominent socialists with a sense of humor and a love of sport. Still, he did subtitle the album Capitalism Is Killing Music, so he was serious about something.

On the political side, Bragg gave voice to his pacifism by including "Tender Comrade," which an a cappella rendering of a traditional song about soldiers trying to reenter society after returning from the battlefield. He also had disparaging things to say about the British prison system in "Rotting on Remand," and he upbraided shopping mall revolutionaries in "Waiting for the Great Leap Forwards." In that song, which closes the album, Bragg sings "Join the struggle while you may/The revolution is just a t-shirt away." (Maoism in Peru is a great idea! It could yet work, and nobody'll get hurt.)

Bragg has way more interesting thins to say about love and its pains, though. He loves one woman so much, he'd "walk a mile with a stone in his shoe." The Saturday Boy is now a bookstore clerk whom Mary, who he places "between Marx and marzipan in the dictionary" tells "You know honey it's such a shame/You'll never be any good at this game/You bruise too easily."

Not that love would ever last if it could be found. The two best songs on Workers Playtime describe breakups. The first is how breaking up can just break a man. The second is about how a breakup can make a woman. I can never figure out if one of the letters the man in "little Time Bomb" is reading is the letter the woman in "Valentine's Day is Over" left tacked to the door of the flat. You make the call.

"Little Time Bomb"
One of them's off her food
And the other one's off his head
And both of them are off down the boozer
To drink a toast
To the one that he hates most
And she says there are no winners, only losers

Well if there are no winners
Then what is this he thinks
As he watches her complete a lap of honour
And he sits in the stands
With his head in his hands
And he thinks of all the things
He'd like to bring down upon her

Revenge will bring cold comfort in this darkest hour
As the juke box says 'It's All Over Now'
And he stands and he screams
What have I done wrong
I've fallen in love with a little time bomb

In public he's such a man
He's punching at the walls with his bare and bloody hands
He's screaming and shouting and acting crazy
But at home he sits alone and he cries like a baby

He holds your letters but he can't read them
As he fights this loneliness that you call freedom
You said this would happen and you were not wrong
I've fallen in love with a little time bomb

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

"Valentine's Day Is Over"
Some day boy you'll reap what you've sown
You'll catch a cold and you'll be on your own
And you will see that what's wrong with me
Is wrong with everyone that
You want to play your little games on

Poetry and flowers pretty words and threats
You've gone to the dogs again and I'm not placing bets
On you coming home tonight anything but blind
If you take me for granted then you must expect to find
Surprise, surprise

Valentine's Day is over, it's over
Valentine's Day is over

If you want to talk about it well you know where the phone is
Don't come round reminding me again how brittle bone is
God didn't make you an angel the Devil made you a man
That brutality and economy are related now I understand
When will you realize that as above so below there is no love

For the girl with the hour glass figure
Time runs out very fast
We used to want the same things but that's all in the past
And lately it seems that as it all gets tougher
Your ideal of justice just becomes rougher and rougher

Thank you for the things you bought me thank you for the card
Thank you for the things you taught me when you hit me hard
That love between two people must be based on understanding
Until that's true you'll find your things
All stacked out on the landing, surprise, surprise

Listen to clips from "Little Time Bomb" and "Valentine's Day Is Over"

Up Next: Billy Bragg, The Internationale, 1990

Word Count to Date: 12,155

Pint of Beer and a New Tattoo

Album: Billy Bragg, Talking With the Taxman About Poetry, 1986

Acquired: Purchased at Mother's Record & Tape Company at Military Circle Mall around Christmastime 1989. Who could I hit up to make good on the lifetime guarantee if this cassette ever broke?

Best Track: "Help Save the Youth of America"

Lasting Memory: Playing "The Marriage" as a tribute the nuptials of my friend Wes during my short stint as the Sundaymorning DJ for WUVT during the fall of 1993.

"The Marriage," of course, is not at all an endorsement of that institution. Bragg's male narrator dares his bride to be to wear white, wonders why their living together is a sin, asks how it could make a difference if they were "wearing that bloody, bloody ring," and eventually resigns himself to the fact while "love is just a moment of giving, marriage is when we admit our parents were probably right."

Bragg subtitled Talking With the Taxman as The Difficult Third Album. I can only speculate as to how hard he had to work to write and record the songs on Talking With the Taxman, but the end products come to together to make what for my money is his masterpiece. (Yes, this blog is free, so take my assessment as worth at least that. Do keep reading, though. There's always a slim chance that I might turn an amusing or insightful phrase. One hopes, doesn't one?)

Choosing a single track as the best, which my self-imposed format compelled me to do, was a near impossibility. Any of the ten Bragg originals would do. I originally intended to just make this post a series of lyric quotes, giving a verse or two from each song. I'll link you to Bragg's site instead so you can peruse at your leisure and I can make a pithy observation that I stole from somebody else.

I do have to get in this bit from "Help Save the Youth of America" first, though, how Bragg plays with word forms and images as well as any plain language poet since Robert Penn Warren:

And the cities of Europe have burned before
And they may yet burn again
And if they do I hope you understand
That Washington will burn with them
Omaha will burn with them
Los Alamos will burn with them

In making his third album his best, Bragg was in great company. Jimmy Iovine explains in the excellent if badly in need of editing Tom Petty documentary Running Down a Dream that he has been one of the luckiest producers in the world because he has gotten to work on so many third albums. Two notable thirds Iovine produced are Bruce Springsteen's Born to Run and Petty's Damn the Torpedoes.

Iovine said that thirds are typically best because even though a songwriter spends his or her whole life making the first album, he or she doesn't know anything. Second albums are usually poor products because they are rushed out to capitalize on the public's momentary awareness of an artist and all the songs are written in the distracting environment of the first big tour. The third album comes after the songwriter has learned more than a few musical tricks, as well as some hard lessons about life and the business of making records.

Just the very title Talking With the Taxman demonstrates that Bragg had recognized that his strength and uniqueness as an artist was mixing the personal with the political, the emotional with the ideological. Or sometimes it was about the interplay of sports and sex, like in "Greetings to the New Brunette," where the girlfriend says

Sometimes when we're as close as this
It's like we're in a dream

And the boyfriend complains

How can you lie there and think of England
When you don't even know who's in the team

The boyfriend goes on to consider how "sexual politics has left me all in a muddle" even as he and his girlfriend are "joined in the ideological cuddle." As nearly Communist as he is, Bragg knows that sometimes all the proletariat has to gain are the chains on their hearts.

Up Next: Billy Bragg, Workers Playtime, 1988

Listen to "Help Save the Youth of America"

Bonus video of "Greetings to the New Brunette"

Word Count to Date: 11,245

Snark from Management: I explained in my inaugural post that I would be keeping a running word count throughout this month in dishonor of NaNoWriMo. That's just the kind of ass I am. I feel thousand of words vindicated in my self-righteousness this morning because I read on one of the message boards I frequent that a NaNoWriMo participant had given up his attempt for this year because "it was looking like my story was only going to end up being about 30K. Haven't written anything for a week."

Who is this guy, John Grisham? If word count counts more for you than any pretense of quality, you have no business writing anything. Gaa, I can't stand NaNoWriMo. If you want to write, write. And try to be good at writing. Don’t make a parlor game out of it that you can quit when it looks like you’re not going to “win.”

Looking for a New England and Another Girl

Album: Billy Bragg, Back to Basics, 1987

Acquired: Received as a Christmas gift from a family member in 1988. To whomever I need to thank, I say, "Thanks." I'm nothing if not gracious.

Best Track: "The Saturday Boy"

Lasting Memory: I finally got to see Billy Bragg do a solo concert in 2002. The World Cup was being played, so Bragg, a West Ham supporter, spent a good deal of time between songs describing how being a touring musician was great because he had plenty time to watch the football matches either live or on tape. He also spoke briefly about a clean water for Africa charity (I think) he was donating tour proceeds to, and he introduced "The Saturday Boy" by admitting, "Anyone who knows me knows that I'm an incurable, er, insufferable romantic."

Self-deprecation is as much Bragg's thing as is socialism. For that, one might be tempted to pity poor Billy because there should be nothing sadder than a man who is unlucky in love, war, and politics. Bragg earns only admiration, though, because the third of his songs that are pro-labor, anti-corporate media, and pacifistic are the equal of anything written and recorded by Woody Guthrie or Phil Ochs.

The other third of Bragg's songs that describe love sought, betrayed, lost, or unachieved are the equal of anything produced in the Brill Building by Burt Bacharach, Carol King, or Neil Diamond, as well as the Motown weepers of Smokey Robison and the bluesy proto funk of Philadelphia's own Holland/Dozier.

Those are pantheon names, but Bragg deserves to be put in their company. Want proof? Happy to oblige.

On the political front, consider Bragg's "To Have and Have Not," which takes the Thatcherites to task for breaking the long-observed Labourite social contract of guaranteeing employment for all residents of the United Kingdom (except maybe, you know, the Catholics in Northern Ireland):

Up in the morning and out to school
Mother says there'll be no work next year
Qualifications once the Golden Rule
Are now just pieces of paper

Just because you're better than me
Doesn't mean I'm lazy
Just because you're going forwards
Doesn't mean I'm going backwards

If you look the part you'll get the job
In last year's trousers and your old school shoes
The truth is son, it's a buyer's market
They can afford to pick and choose

Just because you're better than me
Doesn't mean I'm lazy
Just because I dress like this
Doesn't mean I'm a Communist

The factories are closing and the army's full -
I don't know what I'm going to do
But I've come to see
In the Land of the Free
There's only a future for the Chosen Few

Just because you're better than me
Doesn't mean I'm lazy
Just because you're going forwards
Doesn't mean I'm going backwards

At twenty one you're on top of the scrapheap
At sixteen you were top of the class
All they taught you at school
Was how to be a good worker
The system has failed you, don't fail yourself

Just because you're better than me
Doesn't mean I'm lazy
Just because you're going forwards
Doesn't mean I'm going backwards

As evidence of Bragg's prowess with songs about love, I offer "The Milkman of Human Kindness":

If you're lonely, I will call
If you're poorly, I will send poetry

I love you
I am the milkman of human kindness
I will leave an extra pint

If you're sleeping, I will wait
If your bed is wet, I will dry your tears

I love you
I am the milkman of human kindness
I will leave an extra pint

Hold my hand for me I'm waking up
Hold my hand for me I'm waking up
Hold my hand for me I'm making up
Won't you hold my hand - I'm making up

If you are falling, I'll put out my hands
If you feel bitter, I will understand

I love you
I am the milkman of human kindness
I will leave an extra pint

As good as his stand-alone political and love songs are, though, where Bragg really shines is on his songs that combine ideology and emotion. More than half of Bragg's complete discography (shut up, this isn't a math blog) consists of songs that lay bare how all politics is personal and how all personal conflicts are political. In "St. Swithin's Day," Bragg compares a relationship that ended over a silly row with one of the most famous battles in English history. He also works in a rather rude joke about autoeroticism, so score one for the not-always-good guys:

Thinking back now,
I suppose you were just stating your views
What was it all for
For the weather or the Battle of Agincourt
And the times that we all hoped would last
Like a train they have gone by so fast
And though we stood together
At the edge of the platform
We were not moved by them

With my own hands
When I make love to your memory
It's not the same
I miss the thunder
I miss the rain
And the fact that you don't understand
Casts a shadow over this land
But the sun still shines from behind it.

Thanks all the same
But I just can't bring myself to answer your letters
It's not your fault
But your honesty touches me like a fire
The Polaroids that hold us together
Will surely fade away
Like the love that we spoke of forever
On St. Swithin's Day

Billy Bragg's official Web site biography quotes an unnamed person calling Bragg "a one man Clash." The degree of praise fits, but the comparison is inapt. Bragg is every bit of a folk musician in that most of his songs feature new lyrics set to old tunes and each of his studio records -- Back to Basics is a combined re-release of his first two albums, Life's a Riot with Spy vs. Spy and Brewing Up with Billy Bragg -- include his interpretations of (mostly union) standards. And even as late as his fourth full-length release, most of Bragg's tunes are just him and his electric guitar. Low overhead and recycling are the keys to commercially viable folk.

I have four more Bragg cassettes to profile this week, so I'll stop now with one fairly obvious bit of self-reflection and the standard link to the best track. I won't quote "The Saturday Boy" at length because it really does need to be heard to be fully appreciated, especially how Bragg shoehorns the lines "In the end it took me a dictionary/ To find out the meaning of 'unrequited'" into the song's meter and rhyme scheme.

The fairly obvious bit of self-reflection is that I am a HUGE fan of Billy Bragg's music. His work has done a lot to shape my views on politics and relationships. You all who know me can comment on whether Bragg's influence on me has been good or bad, but I am happy to have discovered him. Thanks MTV's 120 Minutes, which played Bragg videos fairly regularly in 1988 when Barry and I would watch it instead of getting enough sleep for our early Monday classes.

Watch a live performance of "The Saturday Boy"

Up Next: Billy Bragg, Talking with the Taxman About Poetry, 1986

Word Count to Date: 10,375

Joke for a Sunday

This is my favorite joke of all time that doesn't end "That's okay. I got to eat a bunch of corn on the cob somebody was throwing out the window, It was buttered and everything." No one should ever tell or listen to that joke. Here's the other one.

====================

Rosie O'Donnell, finally realizing that she just isn't getting the help she needs from her long-time psychotherapist, gets a referral and sets up an appointment with a new guy all her friends say is great.

She is a little worried about how the new sessions will go, but she shows up for her first appointment with Dr. Bob hoping for the best.

"Doc," Rosie begins, "I can't hold a job, the state won't let me adopt any more kids, my brothers and sisters don't answer the phone when I call. Everything's just a mess. You gotta help me."

Dr. Bob is quiet for a minute before he finally says, "Yes. Yes, I see. Let's try something."

Rosie jumps on the suggestion immediately. "Sure, anything. Whatever you say because I'm in really bad shape."

The psychiatrist, encouraged by Rosie's willingness, says, "Okay. What I need you to do is take off all your clothes, get on your hands and knees, and crawl over to that corner," pointing to a spot just under his office window.

Rosie really is willing to try anything she thinks could help, so she strips and goes over to where Dr. Bob said she should.

"No, I don't think that's what we'll need," the psychiatrist mutters. Then, louder, he tells Rosie to crawl over to the far wall by the door under all his framed degrees and licenses. "Better, but still not working," Dr. Bob decides. "Rosie, can you come more into the middle of the room? Like right about ... here?"

Rosie finally starts thinking this is too weird and could not possibly be helping her sort out her personal and professional issues. But she wants to trust the psychiatrist, so she makes one more trip on hands and knees to where Dr. Bob had pointed.

"Yes! That's perfect!" Dr. Bob exclaims. "I believe we're done here, Ms. O'Donnell. You can put your clothes back on, and be sure to check with the receptionist on your way out."

Rosie is beyond confused, angry even. "What do you mean, "We're done?!" she blurts. "We hardly spoke. I was naked and crawling around. How was that supposed to solve any of my problems?"

"Oh," Dr. Bob replies, "There isn't really anything I could do to make you better until you stop being such a hateful person. Your whole problem, which only you can solve, is that you need to be nicer to people and less of a braying ass."

Rosie is really angry now. "But I trusted you! I was naked, crawling! Why did you have me do all that if it served no purpose?"

"It definitely served a purpose," Dr. Bob explained. "See, I'm getting an overstuffed white couch delivered next week, and I needed to see where it would look best."

====================

If that doesn't make your Sunday great, just remember that Virginia Tech beat Florida State in football yesterday, Navy got bowl-eligible by beating North Texas 74-62 in regulation, and military tensions between the United States and Canada remain low.

Word Count to Date: 9,151

That's What "They" Say About Love

Album: BoDeans, Outside Looking In, 1987

Acquired: Purchased from the sound department of the Little Creek Naval Amphibious Base Exchange in 1987

Best Track: "Forever Young (The Wild Ones)"

Lasting Memory: Attending a free concert at the Virginia Beach Oceanfront in late August 2007, Brah!

Seeing the BoDeans earlier this year reminded me that I am no longer forever young in oh so many ways. How do I age me? Let me count the ways.

I first saw the BoDeans when they opened for, I think, the Ramones at Norfolk's Boathouse in the summer of 1986. The Boathouse has since been torn down to make way for a really killer minor league baseball stadium.

The BoDeans have had exactly two hits. "Fadeaway" charted in 1986. "Closer to Free," a.k.a. the Party of Five theme, charted in 1996. Casey Kassem either forgot or chose not to anoint a BoDeans single in 2006, possibly because Ryan Seacrest had smarmily and robotically taken over the Countdown by then. Which all by itself is a tough thing to have pulled off. I mean, you would think the oleaginousness would substitute for a personality, but you'd be wrong. Go figure, and while you're figuring, keep a good thought for Sammy and Kurt to break the Top 40 again in 2016 when they the other proud sons of Waukesha, Wisconsin, who make up the BoDeans will be between the ages of 55 and 57.

Third, I am old. Middle-aged, at least. Certainly not getting any younger. Hey! You kids get off my lawn! What was I typing about again?

Right. What I really came to blog about today is how much the BoDeans love love. Not the emotion, mind you. The actual word "love." Nearly every song on Outside has "love" in its title, and all but two of the songs have the word as at least one of the lyrics. The BoDeans note that it's "Only Love" but also want to know "What It Feels Like" to be in love. The band can be excused for being a little confused because the boys had obviously been listening to too much of what the anonymous but oft-referenced "they" had to "Say About Love."

I approve of these BoDeans lyrics that get delivered over folky electric guitar strumming and liberal use Jew's harps and tambourines. Who am I to say that the word "love" stinks? Nobody, that's who. Even though this my blog and I could rant about how love is a four-letter word that gets used far too often, I won't because "love" is nice. It's also easy to rhyme and be it new, everlasting, tested, or shattered, love is the topic of most great songs.

Just ask Billy Bragg, which I virtually will in all but one of next week's posts. Stay tuned.

Listen to a clip for "Forever Young (The Wild Ones)"

Up Next: Billy Bragg, Back to Basics, 1987

Word Count to Date: 8,592

Two Roads Diverged

Album: Blue Rodeo, Casino, 1990

Acquired: Bought in August 1993 from the 3 for $10 bin at The Wall in a mall in the center of Nashville

Best Track: "Til I am Myself Again"

Lasting Memory: Spending a month with my sister Clair (second post on linked page) driving to appointments she had with state-chartered bank regulators in Tennessee, Georgia, Arkansas, Alabama, Louisiana, Texas, Oklahoma, Indiana, Illinois, and maybe Kentucky right after I finished up my undergrad.

Casino is great driving music and great drinking music. Never drink and drive kids, but once you decide to do one or the other, slip this album into the tape deck or CD player or mp3 dohickamabob and settle in for a trip down the road to the next horizon, as a bottle will get you to tomorrow's sunrise just as surely as any interstate heading east.

I'm hammering on the road metaphor because, like so many great country acts, Blue Rodeo packs their albums with songs about needing to travel to a place where you can settle comfortably and with other songs about being so uncomfortable in your current situation that you just have to head out of town.

"Til I am Myself Again" is the story of a guy who hit the road too soon and has been living with his regret over that decision for too long:

I want to know where my confidence went
One day it all disappeared
And I'm lying in a hotel room miles away
Voices next door in my ear

Daytime's a drag
Nighttime's worse
Hope that I can get home soon
But the half-finished bottles of inspiration
Lie like ghosts in my room

"After the Rain" is the story of a guy who has reached his breaking point with his dead-end, well, everything but can't move on to anything better:

If I had my way
I would never go back
With my back to the wall
I just let myself fall
Watch the days turn black
But now and again I find
You cross my mind

If I was a train
I'd never slow down
With my head in the sky
And the world going by
Every nowhere town

"Montreal" (congrats to my niece Claire, who graduated today!) is about a man and woman who were once happily living together but have come to realize that their break-up happened long before either one of them physically moved out:

We met in Montreal
Far from the crime
....

You wore that dress
From the old market stall
People and places
Said you were forgetting them all
I don't know if I
Believed you or not
....

Late in your bed
You said "Don't you be sad
Think of how lucky we are
For the things that we've had"

I did listen to Casino several time during that 1993 road trip. It just fit the whole mood and motive of the trip. For that August, I was a train that never slowed down. I had finished school, but I had no plan for what to do next. I was physically moving, though, and that was enough for then. The drive was my backpacking trip across Europe, except everybody spoke English and bathed regularly.

I also really liked the album because by 1993, I finally knew that Casino was the kind of album I would like. I had matured enough in my tastes to know that country music was MY music. I might go on to dabble with ska or power pop, but country would always be my musical home. Fortunately, the way I thought of country made it a very big house with no rooms for the Diamond Rios or Big Texases that were topping the charts in the early 1990s.

I do like my genres broad, so I have long considered real country to include everything from The Carter Family through all forms of bluegrass and up to and including groups such as Reverend Horton Heat and Uncle Tupelo. I listened to a lot of Uncle Tupelo during the road trip, too.

Blue Rodeo is very much a traditional country band that plays tunes with a touch of rock. Early Steve Earle and most of the work of Dwight Yoakam serve as good comparisons. Except Blue Rodeo is Canadian. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

I'm going to stretch the road metaphor here, a la Robert Frost, to point out that Nashville had a clear choice to make in the late '80s and early '90s regarding what country radio and country video was going to sound and look like. The record companies could have pushed traditional acts like Blue Rodeo, but they chose to put their money behind acts that were different from those on the Top 40 only in their choice of wardrobe. I blame cable television. Even I'll admit, though, that Shania Twain is way better looking than John Hiatt.

Still, it would be great to be able to get authentic music in mainstream media. CMT does throw real country fans with digital cable a bone, but the pretty boys and girls and their easily digestible sounds play on the radios of the cars cruising along the road most taken. And that has made all the difference for the worse.

Watch the video for "Til I am Myself Again"

Up Next: BoDeans, Outside Looking In, 1987

Word Count to Date: 8,102

Stay True to Your School of Thought

Album: Luka Bloom, The Acoustic Motorbike, 1992

Acquired: Bought in 1992 from the music store that was just off the food court in the New River Valley Mall

Best Track: "Mary Watches Everything"

Lasting Memory: Absolutely blasting the title track of this album while driving west from Blacksburg on VA 460 to interview a biology professor at Bluefield State College during early October 1994. The leaves on the mountainsides were at the peak of their color, and this ode to bicycling through the west central cliffs of Ireland made an excellent counterpoint to speeding through the Eastern highlands of the United States in a 1978 Oldsmobile Delta 88.

I was interviewing the biology professor in West Virginia because he spent a good bit of his free time publicly debating young Earth scientific creationists and trying to debunk the evidence the creationists presented for their claims that our planet is just a little over 6,000 years old (and counting down to Armageddon). I was curious as to why the prof, whose name I can't remember and which would require a couple of hours of digging through old files to find, would choose to reenter a debate that had been all but won by Thomas Huxley more than 100 years before, especially since he could never convince his opponents that they were looking at everything all wrong.

The best and only straight answer I got from the biology professor was, in so many words, "They are misusing science. I have to defend the truth."

It makes sense that the prof would defend capital S "Science" more than evolutionary theory because creationists are not in any way committed to following the scientific method and being bound to accepting the evidence that applying the method turns up. The creationist start with a conclusion rather than a phenomenon and hypothesis and ignore or distort anything that doesn't support their preconception.

What I was also hoping to hear from the biology professor was at least a tiny bit of acknowledgement that committing to science is a pretty big leap of faith in its own right. One must accept the validity of the three laws of thermodynamics in order to conceive of a space shuttle, after all. NASA engineers aren’t going to test the laws; they’re just going to accept them and work from there. Also, and I realize this requires a great deal more discussion, allow me to say, "Show me your quark -- not an equation or a pattern of interference on an electrograph -- an actual quark, and I'll show you my God."

Both the participants in a face-to-face scientific creation-evolution debate are almost always playing fairly and unfairly. The creationist isn't being fair because he is exploiting the audience's deference to and misunderstandings of science to support his argument. He is being fair, though, because he is arguing from faith. He is being true to his school of thought, as it were.

The evolutionist is being fair to herself and the audience by arguing from science and (if she's any good) attempting to use metaphors and examples that make the scientific case clearly understandable to the audience. She will be unfair to her opponent and quite a few in the audiences if she won't admit a role for a divine Creator.

What got me thinking along these lines, in addition to slipping in Acoustic Motorbike, was yesterday's bombshell from Pat Robertson that he is supporting Rudy Giuliani for president. The announcement during a speech at the National Press Club makes Robertson either one of Christendom's great hypocrites or a force for evil in this world great than Steven Spielberg, Oprah Winfrey, and Dan Brown combined.

Robertson portrays himself as a fundamentalist Christian who relies upon the text of the Bible to guide him in living a life free of sin and full of love for his fellow man. I'll resist the temptation to ask what parts of Robertson's Bible sanctioned his business deals with blood diamond mining companies, his ownership of a stable of high-stakes race horses, or his calls for the assassination of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

I will ask how Robertson could have studied the Bible and decided that it made setting up a police state that offers few if any social services to its citizens something Christians should work for actively. Robertson said in yesterday's speech that Christians' "second goal should be the control of massive government spending and crushing federal deficits." He also said Christians should vote for Giuliani because the former New York mayor was "a valiant crime fighter" who "understands the need for a conservative judiciary."

Robertson has either never read or perversely chosen to ignore the text and teachings of the Bible to "render unto Caesar," "be kind to those who hurt you," and "judge not lest you be judged." Admittedly, these ideas come from the New Testament and contradict a lot of what the Old Testament has to say about "eye for an eye," but did Jesus not say, "I come not to fulfill the law but to make a new law?" And hasn't Robertson purportedly accepted Jesus as his personal Lord and Savior?

Worse than intentionally mis-taking the Christian message, though, is that Robertson has made himself an apostate to his own cause by embracing Giuliani's candidacy. Robertson is staunchly antiabortion, while Giuliani supports a woman's right to choose. Robertson is virulently homophobic, while Giuliani advocates equal treatment under law for homosexuals. Robertson is pro-family, while Giuliani is twice divorced and barely on speaking terms with his children. Plus, Giuliani is a mackerel-snapping papist, although he is somewhat less than observant.

At least Robertson and Giuliani both support the death penalty. Robertson must see "Thou shall not kill" as a rule with statutory limitations.

I'm pig-biting mad right now. My keyboard is flecked with the froth flying from my lips. I hope Robertson enjoys his daily commute between the fourth and fifth inner circles of the Eighth Circle of Hell, which a Wikipedia author helpfully describes thusly,

Bolgia 4: Sorcerers and false prophets have their heads twisted around
on their bodies backward, so they can only see what is behind them and not into
the future.(Canto XX)

Bolgia 5: Corrupt politicians (barrators) are immersed in a lake of
boiling pitch, guarded by devils ... . (Cantos XXI through XXIII)

"Okay, Ed," anyone who's still reading must be asking by now. "You think Robertson is a ten-pound turd in a one-gallon Tupperware container without a lid that was left on the kitchen counter in front of the cookie jar. But what do you think about Acoustic Motorbike. You owe me some musical criticism, dammit!"

Acoustic Motorbike is pretty good. If I had to assign it to a subgenre, I'd say it is pop folk along the lines of Shawn Colvin and Edwin McCain. It is worth pointing out that Luka Bloom is the much younger brother of stereotypically Irish Republican folk singer Christy Moore. But like the stage name would indicate, the Bloom is not very much like his brother musically. The biggest difference is that Bloom has a sense of humor. Acoustic Motorbike includes a fairly faithful cover of L.L. Cool J's "I Need Love."

ADDENDA

Pat Robertson obviously has some pull with at least one of the embodiments of good and evil in Western traditions. I had this post all typed out and ready to post about an hour ago, and as I was copying it to paste into Word(!) for spell-checking, it disappeared from my screen altogether. I had to recreate the post from memory. The original jokes and insults were so much better, too. Shame.

Listen to a clip from "Mary Watches Everything"

Up Next: Blue Rodeo, Casino, 1990

Word Count to Date: 7,205