On a Clear Daze

Album: Drivin' n' Cryin', Whisper Tames the Lion, 1988

Acquired: I bought this at a Books, Strings, n' Things. I can't remember which year or whether it was the store in Blacksburg, Charlottesville, or Roanoke. Regardless, score for me.

Best Track: "Catch the Wind"

Lasting Memory: I don't have any specific memories tied to this this album or any of its songs, so let me reflect on the time I saw Drivin' n' Cryin' live in concert in McBride 100, a lecture hall at Virginia Tech. Loud. Check. Rocking. Check. But you haven't really lived until you've seen a country metal act set off smoke pots and work a laser light show on the same stage from which, earlier in the day, you copied slides of the Krebs cycle into your Mead three-subject notebook.

Having played Whisper Tames the Lion through a couple of times this morning, I'm regretting not giving the album more attention over the years. Even more than Scarred But Smarter, Whisper is a split disk of the better sort of hair metal and the best sort of contemporary country.
Ninety percent of the bands that never made it off Hollywood's Sunset Strip in the 1980s wished they could have created "Powerhouse." Whereas John Denver himself never rcorded a better early spring, little too fast drive through the foothills song than "Catch the Wind." And "Can't Promise You the World" does a little bit of rock and a little bit of country.

Up Next: Drivin' n' Cryin', Mystery Road, 1989


Note from Management: Another short post today. I have a bad head cold. It's not flu -- no fever, no coughing, no nausea. But I am muddleheaded and sore-throated, and if I produced any more phlegm, I'd be Mucus Tick. All things considered, though, now is a good time to be down because I have no deadlines until Tuesday.

Waiter, There's a Hair Metal in My Country Band

Album: Drivin' n' Cryin', Scarred But Smarter, 1986

Acquired: I bought this album from the cutout bin of what used to be Tracks at the corner of Granby Street and Little Creek Boulevard shortly after I saw Drivin' n' Cryin' open for R.E.M. at William & Mary in 1987. I'll have more to say about the DnC stage show in a later post, but suffice to say for now that R.E.M. was blown off the stage.

Best Track: "Scarred But Smarter"

Lasting Memory: I twice have had to make the 11- or 12-hour round trip from Blacksburg to Virginia Beach with only Scarred But Smarter for musical entertainment and distraction. I was neither disappointed nor bored either time.

I was scared as hell one time, though.

The exact date of when I did this escapes me, but if you ever have to drive over Afton Mountain at night when the roads are icy, it is snowing, and there is a dense fog, don't.

I came through the experience unscathed and well-rocked, however, because DnC is a genre-hopping band. I could make a case that DnC's nearest stylistic competemporary was X because both bands split the discography between traditionalistic country and hard rock. A difference was that X went fast and sloppy towards punk, while DnC went melodic and bombastic toward heavy metal. Early Uncle Tupelo could be conceived of as being a bastard child of DnC and X.

An excellent précis of what DnC was up to musically just happens to be the title track to the band's first album.

On the country side, here's a love song that is not--I reapeat, NOT--a power balad.

Up Next: Drivin' n' Crying', Whisper Tames the Lion, 1988

P.S. I have a lot of DnC tapes. Consider today's brief post a promise of better things to come.

Sophomore Slumping or Just Moving On?

Album: Dreams So Real, Gloryline, 1990

Acquired: I bought this in a mall in Nashville at the begining of the fabled state bank examiners tour of 1993.

Best Track: "Day After Day"

Lasting Memory: When I found this in that 3 for $10 rack, I thought, "I didn't even know Dreams So Real had even put out a another album besides Rough Night in Jericho." And even though I bought Gloryline, obviously, I've inadvertently contributed to this good band's and decent album's burgeoning obscurity by not listening to Gloryline much over the years.

(Essay Question: Can obscurity burgeon? That is, if acclaim can burgeon, which it most certainly can, can antifame burgeon? For extra credit, explain why Ed likes the word "burgeon" so much. Does he he have a flowering fount of floridity from which to draw?)

Admittedly, Gloryline is not as good as Dreams So Real's major label debut. But it is a solid entry in the genre of Americana rock, and it did not deserve its zero-fanfare release and immediate relegation to the cutout bin. I'd go so far as to argue that Gloryline is the best album John Mellencamp and his brothers Johnny and Cougar never recorded. You might even be able to confirm this assessment for yourself by clicking on this link. (Proof yet again that every band does have Shonen Knife that loves them.)

I have to figure that Dreams So Real suffered the double whammy of the sophomore slump and the gnatlike attention span of record industry executives. A truism of all arts is that the artist spends his or her whole life creating that first commercial success. How can an artist not? Then the next record, book, painting, whatever comes due, and what does the artist have left? The stuff that wasn't good enough to make the cut for the original offering, and a ton of physical, mental, and moral exhaustion from having to pimp the original piece. The follow-up to a breakthrough can't help but be a little disappointing.

The other phenomenon that most assuredly did in Dreams So Real was the shift in focus from college rock in Athens, Ga., to grunge rock in Seattle. Nirvana's Nevermind came out in 1991, and after that, who needed the countrified sounds of bands like Dreams So Real?

A sure sign that Dreams So Real just wasn't ready to play in the louder, dumber alternative rock world ruled by Nirvana and Pearl Jam is that the best track on Gloryline is, by a lot, a sterling cover of Badfinger's "Day After Day." I love that song, and Dreams So Real plays the hell out of it while changing it just enough to make it their own, but it is no "Smells Like Nirvana."

Up Next: Drivin' n' Cryin', Scarred but Smarter, 1986

Someday Always Comes

You think you're disappointed because this marks the seventh day in a row without a new post?

Just wait until tomorrow, when I will put up a new entry.

Then you'll know disillusionment.

Vaguely Biblical, All Arena-Ready

Album: Dreams So Real, Rough Night in Jericho, 1988

Acquired: I owned this when I arrived at Virginia Tech for my freshman year. Seeing the tape's publishing date, I figure I must have picked up Rough Night during the summer of '88. Whoever can figure out where wins the sense of self-satisfaction that comes only from educately guessing completely irrelevant historical facts.

Best Track: "California"

Lasting Memory: I've always associated this album with the welcome break-up of one of my sisters' long-term relationships. I suspect that sharing the identity of that sister and the few details I know would be inappropriate and unappreciated. I know for a fact that completely withholding all the relevant information would lead to much speculation and many rude comments directled at me. So I'll split the difference and just say that Albuquerque in the rearview mirror was one of the prettiest sights we all ever saw. Even though none of the rest of us actually saw it in person.

The song "California" is 100% of the reason I associate Rough Night with that family event. Here is the chorus, because I can't find even so much as a 30-second sample clip for "California" anywhere online (unless this works):

California falls in the sea
That's when she said she'll be coming back to me
California falls in the sea
That's when she said she'll come back to me

There are more than a few other breakup songs on Rough Night, but each, including "California," with its lines about openning up the book of love and quoting the rocking principles and asking to be told what to believe have serious biblical overtones. As a result, that's what I'll be running with in this post.

I'll stop well short of arguing that Dreams So Real was a stealth Christian rock band on the order of The Call, but it would be both difficult and probably missing some larger point to ignore that something religious is going on in "Bearing Witness," for instance.

And the boys from Atlanta/Athens, Ga., get totally eschatological on the title track, salvantion-seeking on "Love Fall Down," and utopian on "City of Love." Then there's what should be just a plain, straight-up unrequited lust song "Melanie," which begins:

(Who is she?)
I don't know
And it drives me insane
All I see is a face and a name

(Where are you?)
In a place where I don't know myself
I can't think now of anything else

(It's Sunday)
Yes, I know 'cause I hear the bells ring
Spirits fly out the door on a wing

(Just one day)
Just one day on a calendar page
I am poor but I'm willing to pay

Melanie, I don't know
Why you do these things to me
I can't explain
Melanie, I don't know

So what I think we had in Dreams So Real was a very much less successful version of U2. Both bands put a Christian subbasement into a house made entirely out of arena rock. I would have loved to see Dreams So Real in a smal club. Play that video for "Bearing Witness" again and imagine how it would sound in the 600-person rooms Dreams So Real played.

That'd have been the old-time rligion, for sure.

Up Next: Dreams So Real, Gloryline, 1990

Hello Strange L.A. Woman: Love Me During the Break in the Roadhouse Fire

Album: The Doors, Greatest Hits, 1980

Acquired: Came to me through the universe, man.

Best Track: "L.A. Woman"

Lasting Memory: Boy, so many. That ride up to the tri meet at Collegiate of Richmond (pretentiousness at a nice price). When the Raven finally put this CD on its jukebox (R.I.P. Shoe and Gay Joseph). That morning in my maid's closet/bedroom at the house on Meredith Road when I finally got, dude really got, "People Are Strange."

The memory I'll go with, though, is from January 1987. That's when I went to the late, lamented Boathouse with Craig Allen and Karen Harris to see The Back Doors. Jim was him, indeed, and while I'll score double hit points on the 20-sided die of lameneness for saying so, the show was one of the best rock concerts I ever witnessed. While the tribute band is remembered fondly by exactly four commenters to seldom-frequented bolgs, those no-longer kids from Minnesota absolutely sold the universal oneness achieved through Jack Daniels rather than LSD. Plus, that show was the first night I ever got drunk off of MD 20/20. Mogen David, l'chaim! (My favorite line from the profile? "Family Friendly: No.")

Christ, was The Doors the soundtrack of every suburban white boy's early teen years or what? Sure there was plenty of other music mixed in, but what other four-to-the-bar bar blues band ever captured the awkardness of a kid's existence better than The Doors on "People Are Strange"? Or expressed that kid's I'll-be-cool-when-I'm-older shtick more drivingly than on "L.A. Woman"?

Nobody.

Except The Smiths. Or Rush, with "Subdivisions." Or just about every other four-to-the-bar bar blues band that's put out an album since 1970.

It's necessary to mention, though, that there would be no Smiths or Rush or Echo and the Bunnymen or et cetera if there had never been a The Doors. Nor would there have been a Back Doors, but maybe that goes without saying.

I typed dismissive things about The Doors in my last music post, and I stand by those comments. I'll even expand on them to opine that the band's appeal lays largely in it's adaptation of church organ to rock and/or roll. Seriously, listen to "Light My Fire" and tell me that the organ line isn't pure fugue. That riff is elemental.

You all know everything else about The Doors that I could tell you, so I'll just sign off with this link so you can feed your head. Come Monday or Tuesday, I'll have things to say about a band that at least one regular blog visitor may know personally. Let the flame wars begin.

Up Next: Dreams So Real, Rough Night in Jerhico, 1988

Ceci n'est pas une primary d'bourriques

With no apologies given to Fall Out Boy, this ain't a primary, it's a god damn landslide.

Check out the vote percentages from the Democratic primaries and caucuses to date. Barack Obama has won more than 15 states by more than 20%. Hillary Clinton has only approached crushing victories in two states. For me, this is the biggest unreported story of the Democratic presidential campaign.

In a very important way, presidential politics is no different from high school student government association elections: It's all just a popularity contest anyway. Obama's snowballing streamroller of a tidal wave in staunchly Republican states like Alaska and Idaho and Kansas and Virginia (since the late 1960s) shows that voters really do like the freshman senator from Illinois.

In another even more important, though, presidential politics is very different from SGA elections in that primaries and caucuses encourage and reward strategic voting. In open primary states like Virginia, Republicans can cast ballots for Democratic candidates and essentially vote "no confidence" on the Democrat they like least. The fact that nearly twice as many Democratic ballots as Republican ballots were counted in the Commonwealth yesterday stands as pretty strong evidence that hundreds of thousands of people went to the polls yesterday specifically to vote against Clinton.

Or, more to the point, probably 150,000 votes for Obama were actually notes to Clinton that read "F.U." Mine kind of was, but the note was a much more polite, "I'm sick of you and your husband shaming the office of the presidency. Stop campaigning now."

Caucuses, whose rules specifically dictate the forming of alliances among candidate blocs based on the Sun Tzu principle of "My friend's enemy is also my enemy," are even more encouraging and rewarding of strategic voting. Closed primaries are slightly discouraging of electoral gamesmanship, but they certainly can't prevent a voter from pulling the lever for Jones just because "There's something I don't like about that Smith guy."

What all of this add up to is that voters like Obama and really dislike Clinton. While CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, The Newshour, and the one-man cottage industry that is Tim Russert are slicing and dicing the demographics and trying to find out if white male rural Catholics between the ages of 30 and 49 who earn less than $50,000 a year are more likely to vote for Obama than are black urban women Protestants over 60 with household incomes of more than $250,000 (there has to be at least one, right?), they are missing the larger point that everyone is more like to vote against Clinton because Clinton is unlikeable.

And while you catch your mind's eye's breath after reading what may be the single longest sentence in blog history, allow me to illustrate my point with an anecdote.

I went to get my hair cut yesterday. My barber is a casually racist white woman of about 50 with generally centrist Democratic views. Except for the casual, reflexive, but not really mean-spirited racism. And that's worth mentioning twice because while my barber is Clinton's wet dream of a potential supporter, my barber flat out told me, "I will vote for Obama as soon as I get off for lunch. I just want her and husband out of my life. This year I'm kind of more for McCain, but I'd vote for anybody to make Hillary go away."

And with that being the huge unmissed story of the Democratic presidential campaign, the speculative questions become the following:

-- Will Clinton realize that Americans are voting in a referendum on her popularity and in huge majorities saying she is definitely not cool?

-- If Clinton realizes this, or even knows it already, will the knowledge drive her to quit the presdiential race, or will she throw a Ted Kennedy in 1980 fit and hamstring her party going into the fall election season?

-- If Clinton does decide to suspend her campaign, will the final shot from her concession speech look like this?

Tomorrow, I make with the music again. I swear. For now, here's a video of that Fall Out Boy song I referenced at the beginning of this post.

Time to Get a Little Exercise

... of my franchise, that is.

It's good to once again be living in a place where I can convince myself that my vote sort of counts. And it's great to have some folks I can be proud to support.

I rarely went to the polls during my 9 years in D.C. because there was really never anything worth voting for (10 candidates for a 9-member city council? I'll pass) or no way my vote would have made a difference (Bush over Gore for the District's 3 Electoral College votes? Good luck with that. And 3! Sheesh). Plus, I couldn't vote in good conscience for either Bush or Kerry in 2004.



Now, I just want to shout

I GOT THE FRANCHISE
YES,I DO
I GOT THE FRANCHISE
HOW 'BOUT YOU?!

Since that would just be silly, and I would never type anything like that, let alone say it, I will instead offer this hamfisted parodic analysis of today's Crabcake Primary:

A Primary Tonight
(Sung to "A Comedy Tonight")

Something familiar
Something peculiar
Something for everyone
A primary tonight!

Something appealing
Something appalling
Something for everyone
A comedy tonight!

Nothing with kings, nothing with crowns
Kick out the lovers, liars, and clowns

Old situations, new complications
Nothing portentous or polite
Conventions tomorrow
Primary tonight!

Okay, so maybe it's not exactly rocking the vote, but it sure beats the hell out of watching Lou Dobbs.

Perfectly Normal Scenes Outside the Gold Mine

Album: The Doors, The Doors, 1967 (cassette reissue)

Acquired: I must have bought this at the Little Creek Navy Exchange sometime in the summer of 1986.

Best Track: "Twentieth Century Fox"

Lasting Memory: What memories? I've found my way to far too many next whiskey bars to have any memories.

That preceding sentence is exactly half true and exactly half false. Which segues smoothly into my observation that The Doors were exactly half the best bar band in the world and exactly half the worst psychadelic band in the world. Who, upon hearing Jim and Ray and John and Robbie invite them to break on through the backdoor, man, and sleep all night in their soul kitchen with a twentieth-century fox, could resist?

One the other hand, who, after sailing the crystal ship all the way to the end, wouldn't be tempted to tell the boys to sober up and get back to their day jobs lighting fires at the end of the night so they could cook up more chicken than any man ever seen?

Nobody, that's who. Certainly X couldn't.

I'll have more to say about The Doors' personal and cultural legacy come Wednesday, when I do a post on the band's first greatest hits compilation. Expect diamond-sharp bits of music criticism like "nice use of church organ." For now, I'll just say that whatever Morrison was hoping to evoke when mumbling about "weird scenes inside the gold mine" in the bridge on "The End" is exactly what 90% of The Doors' discography doesn't deliver. That's a good thing.

Up Next: The Doors, Greatest Hits, 1980

P.S. Thanks for your patience. Last week, I had to write a f'ton of articles and rewrite another slew of them. I figure I cranked out somewhere close to 25,000 words last week. Posts will resume, obviously, but they'll be short until I caatch my rhetorical breath. And just so you know, a metric f'ton is about 1.24 standard f'tons. (DAMN! I thought I had coined a term for the new millennium right there. Alas, no.)

What I'm Giving Up for Lent

Evil jokes. And too-soon jokes. And probably the whole "Joke for a Sunday" gimmick. But until that time ...

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

Did you hear about the shooting at the Lane Bryant outside of Chicago yesterday?

Tragic. Horrible. My heart truly goes out to the victims' friends and families.

But at least give the shooter credit for this: It's hard to miss at a Lane Bryant.

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

If you laughed, you're human. Shame about that.

Sex Sells, But Who's Buying?

Album: Divinyls, Tempermental, 1988

Acquired: I'm not sure where this cassette came from, but I do know that I got it shortly after seeing the video for this album's one and only U.S. single, a remake of the Syndicate of Sound classic "Little Girl" with the clever new title/lyric "Hey Little Boy."

Best Track: "Run-A-Way Train"

Lasting Memory: Tempermental evokes no strong memories from me, but it has always bugged me that the Divinyls got whatever riches and fame they acquired outside of their native Australia because of the novelty song "I Touch Myself," which was the single off the band's follow-up to the vastly superior Tempermental.

I have little to say about the music and lyrics from the Divinyls except that when the band was at it's best, it did a very good job of blending 60s garage band-style rocking with Dusty Springfieldesque pop-blues belting. Check out "Back to the Wall" and "Run-A-Way Train." And I guess I should add that for Australians, their English is excellent.

What I will spend a very little bit of my and your time complaining about is how crap floats to the top. I like the Divinyls, and I never begrudge anyone success, but how tasteless and dumb and easily made giggly are 99% of people that they make a droney and sexless admission of autoeroticism into a big hit but ignore everythig else the Divinyls recorded. The other stuff was worlds better in every way, and lead singer Christina Amphlett looked way hot in every video except the one for "I Touch Myself." What gives?

Theories welcome. Before opening your bluebooks, please know that "People are fucktards" is a tautology and will not earn you any points on this exam.

Up Next: The Doors, The Doors, 1967

First Friday, or Why I My Not Be the Best Catholic Ever

This morning while volunteering at the homeless outreach, I got roped into an extremely preliminary discussion of strategic directions for a group of parishes in Virginia Beach. A major concern for the individual churches is that the dioceses is planning to reassign all of its priests.

The question I and some other folks was asked to ponder was, "What will six parishes do if there are only five priests for our group? How can five priest be made to serve six churches?"

My first thought was ... "Stew."

I mean, you can really make a stew stretch if you chop the priests up fine enough. Throw in a few extra potatoes, another can of chicken stock, you've just created at least six more bowlfuls. And stew'll keep in the fridge for about a week.

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

I'll try to get a music post up over the weekend. Posts will be sparse to nonexistant through next Friday. Sorry.