A Paypal Penny for Your Thoughts

I have no time to share my own thoughts, so I'll post this video from one of my favorite bands, The Old 97s.

The song is about lead 97er Rhett Miller asking his girlfriend to marry him, but its chorus encapsulates an essential exitential poser:

Someday
Somebody's gonna ask you
A question you should say "Yes" to
Maybe tonight
I've got a question for you

What will you say when asked the big question?

If asked today, I'd have to say, "Sorry, I'm on deadline."

Ain't that a shame.

Tim Geithner ... SUPER Genius

The man who let the horses out the barn has just been hired as the world's foremost gate-closing expert.

Confirming Tim Geithner -- shown at left making his "grrrr" face -- as U.S. Treasury secretary makes as much sense as electing John Rambo to be mayor of Hope, Washington.

I'll readily confess that I've drunk three-quarters of a gallon of the Obama Kool-Aid, but I just can't swallow Geithner's nomination and confirmation to the post of financial savior. Unlike most people, I care not a whit that Geithner cheated on his taxes. What makes me pig-biting mad about his ascendancy is that

A. As a Clinton administration official, Geithner played a key role in building the financial house of cards that began collapsing this past summer;

2. The five years that Geithner spent working for the International Monetary Fund were probably the worst half-decade the IMF ever experienced in terms of efficacy and esteem; and

iii. As chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Geithner failed to see, prevent, or stem the tsunami of bank and investment house failures.

How could a man who has done nothing throughout his career but prove his incompetence rise to such a powerful -- and at this moment, world-shaping -- position? Sure, Wiley E. Coyote got a multifilm deal on account of being a colossal screw-up, but I cannot understand why Geithner should be rewarded for failing spectacularly at everything he's ever done in his chosen profession.

All I can figure is that the primarily long-serving members of the U.S. Senate Finance Committee chose not to press him Geithner on his leadership role in putting the world's economy on the brink of unprecedented disaster because they didn't want light shed on their own complicity in setting the stage for the crisis. So dang them all to heck, as well.

Given his track record, my unfortunate prediction for Geithner's run as Treasury secretary is that he will make us pine for the excellence Alberto Gonzales showed at Justice. I hope I'm wrong, but Geithner has demonstrated little to merit such hope.

Did They Get You to Trade?

Album: Pink Floyd, Wish You Were Here, 1975

Best Track: "Wish You Were Here"

Lasting Memory: The summer between my freshman and first sophomore years of college, I worked as a lot attendant for a family friend's budget rental car company.

The work was dirty, hot, and long, as jobs for youngsters with an unearned sense of entitlement should be.

The job was also damp. Very damp.

My principal responsibility as lot attendant was to wash and vacuum out returned rentals. So, of course, I was outside for most of two month, catching backspray from a high-power hose, sweating in the 90-degree/90-percent humidity weather, and getting caught in the regular thunderstorms that crop up during a Tidewater summer.

I also once got my leg stuck in water main access tube, or whatever you call those tiny sewer-like ports on lawns and driveways that house meters. I stepped on the cover of the one for the rental car lot while mowing the grass, the cover slipped, and I found myself thigh deep in a standpipe.

As I recall -- probably incorrectly -- the same day the Norfolk Public Works Department nearly became the permanent proprietor of my right leg, I heard "Wish You Were Here" on the AM-only radio of my parents' second-hand, baby blue 1979 Ford Fairmont while driving home. The radio-static-to-plaintive-piano-chords-played-on-a-guitar fade-in kicked in at the same moment as the sky filled with ominous storm clouds. Nice confluence of mood, music, and setting, that was.

If it, you know, actually did happen like that.

While mulling this post instead of writing it this past week, I got to thinking about how thinking about how you can think ideas into a song. Specifically, I got to thinking about how the lyrics to "Wish You Were Here" could be mapped onto President Barack Obama's Inaugural Address.
I'll spare you the college senior thesis-level of show-offy hermeneutics, but check this out:

Did you exchange
A walk-on part in a war
For a lead role in cage

versus

As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety
and our ideals.

And then there's this:

Can you tell a green field from a cold steel rail?
A smile from a veil?

versus

We will harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our
factories. ... To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the
silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history; but that
we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist.

I'm making two points here. The first is that "everything original's been said much better better years ago by someone else, anyway ... anyway." This, obviously, was said by someone else.

The second point, and I'm a little chagrined to only be fully realizing this now in my fortieth year of hearing stuff, is that the message one takes from what one hears depends nearly 100 percent on the milieu in which it is heard. For example, I can read Obama's messages into a Pink Floyd song because I heard both close together and because I felt some compulsion to opine on both.

Does that mean that my observations carry any weight? Not in itself, but you have to admit that I'm pretty authoritative. Hence, vir bonus dicendi peritus, you should go with me on this.

Or you can go with what Roger Waters had to say about Wish You Were Here and its title track around the time that both were released. But he was probably high at the time.

Up Next: The Plimsouls, Everywhere at Once, 1983

A Teardrop Falls

Kodak commercials aside, I'm not one given even a tiny bit to cheap sentiment or easy emotion. But I'll admit that tears welled when I saw Barack Obama rise to take the Oath of Office as president of the United States.

Too many people much smarter and more eloquent than myself have spilled rivers of ink capturing what Obama's election means for completing the project that is America. All I can add is, "Fuckin' A! Forty years from Martin Luther King's assassination to a black president. Is this a great country, or what?"

Of course, it's easy for me to say that because I have a nice place to live, and overfilled belly, and, for now, money in the bank and work on my desk. Too many people in this country aren't as comfortable. So many people around the world aren't as comfortable that they are probably the ones who should move me to tears.

Electing Obama represents a very small part of what is best about America. To fully realize the American dream, as Obama noted,

There is work to be done. The state of the economy calls for action, bold and
swift, and we will act -- not only to create new jobs, but to lay a new
foundation for growth. We will build the roads and bridges, the electric
grids and digital lines that feed our commerce and bind us together. We will
restore science to its rightful place, and wield technology's wonders to
raise health care's quality and lower its cost. We will harness the sun and
the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories. And we will
transform our schools and colleges and universities to meet the demands of a
new age. All this we can do. And all this we will do.

Accomplishing any one of those things would be a tall order. Indeed, most presidential administrations have failed to even make progress toward a single one of the goals Obama listed.

I got the feeling this afternoon, though, that Congress and most American citizens finally stand ready to make the hard choices and do the hard work to prove that our "ideals still light the world, and we will not give them up for expedience's sake. ... [And] that America is a friend of each nation and every man, woman, and child who seeks a future of peace and dignity, and that we are ready to lead once more."

So God guide you, Mr. President. Make the right choices, and we will follow.

Strawberry Fields for Now

Album: Sam Phillips, Martinis & Bikinis, 1994

Best Track: "Wheel of the Broken Voice"

Lasting Memory: In 1994, back when I still had a social conscience and believed in financially supporting stuff that I could get for free -- you know, when I was in college -- I donated $10 to Virginia Tech's student-run radio station. In return for my minuscule largess, I was allowed to pick any cassette from a USPS tub.

(Aside: WUVT had to give away all the promo cassettes it received because by that point in its evolution, its studio only had turntables, CD players, and a CART deck, which is a slightly fancier version of an 8-track player. The I'm-being-generous-in-a-screw-you-way transaction ran both ways.)

I grabbed Martinis & Bikinis pretty much at random and don't know if I ever played it until this week. I suppose I missed out.

As this slightly too-effusive Rolling Stone reviewer points out, Sam Phillips does a remarkable job of channeling and reinterpreting mid-period Beatles on Ms&Bs. To be honest, I completely failed to catch the Beatles sound on my two plays through the album, thinking the whole time that Phillips' songs slotted right into country-inflected power pop niche created for and by bands like the dB's -- a subgenre some call "jangle pop." I hate the phrase "jangle pop," and I suppose what I really missed was how indebted so many of the bands from the 1980s that I loved were to the Beatles.

Live and be abashed at what you still need to learn, that's my motto.

Anyhow, Ms&Bs is a fine album that I'm still unlikely to listen to ever again. No fault to Ms. Phillips, but there's my whole avoision of female singers thing for me to continue. And then there's always the option of listening to the Beatles when I want to hear music that sounds a lot like the music the Beatles would make.

You are under no such constraints to restrain Sam Phillips from getting her fair hearing, however. If you click over to the Rolling Stone review linked above, you can preview the entirety of Ms&Bs. If you just want to hear the song I tabbed as the best because you implicitly trust my taste and judgment and would blindly follow my musical ear wherever it points,* then go here to hear "Wheel of the Broken Voice."

Up Next: Pink Floyd, Wish You Were Here, 1975

* This metaphor was mixed at 160 beats per minute for your Texas Two-Steppin' pleasure

The Strings on His Axe Go Jangle, Jangle, Jangle

Album: Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Pack Up the Plantation LIVE, 1985

Best Track: "Rebels"

Lasting Memory: Every single gol'durn one

I have so much to say about the music Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers recorded between 1976 ("American Girl") and 1985 ("Southern Accents"), I don't know where to start.

Famous movie director Peter Bogdanovich had so much to say, he didn't know where to stop, stringing together a 4-hour documentary that somehow still doesn't do the subject justice.

Learning from Bogdanovich's noble failure, then, I will just assert that -- rather than try to explain why -- while 'The Waiting" is one of my top-5 all-time favorite songs it doesn't measure up to the live version of "Rebels" on Pack Up the Plantation LIVE.

I'll also pass along the "Rebels" lyrics because I find them funny and sad in equal measure:

Honey don't walk out, I'm too drunk to follow
You know you won't feel this way tomorrow
Well, maybe a little rough around the edges
Or inside a little hollow,
I get faced with some things, sometimes
That are so hard to swallow, hey!

Chorus

I was born a rebel, down in Dixie
On a Sunday mornin'
Yeah with one foot in the grave
And one foot on the pedal, I was born a rebel

She picked me up in the mornin', and she paid all my tickets
Then she screamed in the car
Left me out in the thicket
Well I never woulda dreamed
That her heart was so wicked
Yeah but I keep comin' back
'Cause it's so hard to kick it, hey, hey, hey

(Repeat Chorus)

Even before my father's father
They called us all rebels
While they burned our cornfields
And left our cities leveled
I can still feel the eyes of those blue-bellied devils
Yeah, when I'm walking round at night
Through the concrete and metal, hey, hey, hey

Oh, the stories that man can tell.

Up Next: Sam Phillips, Martinis & Bikinis, 1994

Son of a Son of a Finally Getting Around to It

Album: Ivan Neville, If My Ancestors Could See Me Now, 1988

Best Track: "Not Just Another Girl"

Lasting Memory: Probably more than any other, this album's presence in my cassette case prompted me to pursue the project of listening to every album in my music collection.

By the quirk of the English alphabet, Ivan Neville's If My Ancestors Could See Me Now would always wind up smack dab in the middle of a line up of records, whether the records were filed by artist's first name, artist's last name, or album title's first word. So it was with my collection. And I just never pulled If My Ancestors out and listened to it. Ever.

Conspicuous by its neglect, this album has long made me feel a little guilty about having so much music I could be enjoying but was intentionally relegating to the status of taking up physical space.

I should also mention that If My Ancestors has been playing the role of unheard nag for more than 20 years now. I either purchased this cassette, or received it as a gift, in 1988, and I don't think I've given it a spin since then. I've always meant to play it, but, "Hey, is that Dire Straits? I haven't heard Making Movies since last week."

And so it went, and went, until I finally set the goal of just starting from the beginning and listening to every record I owned from Aerosmith to Zodiac Mindwarp and the Love Reaction. That was most likely in 1991, and achieving the goal also involved doing nothing but driving around the backroads of the United States and creating my own American myth.

I'm still fantasizing about going mobile, but I'm finally well into working through my music, and what is this blog if not a form of self-mythologizing?

Plus, I have at last gotten around to listening to If My Ancetors.

It wasn't worth a 20-year wait. At the the same time, it didn't warrant all the self-castigation.

The songs on the album, recorded by the son of Aaron Neville, range from the one should-have-been-a-hit "Not Just Another Girl" to the nice-but-forgettable "After All This Time" to the should-never-be-heard-by-anyone "Out in the Streets."

Maybe I'll pull If My Ancestors out again in 2018.

Up Next: Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Pack Up the Plantation LIVE!, 1985

What Gives You Nothing Like Your Selfish Television Throwing Things

Album: Ned's Atomic Dustbin, God Fodder, 1991

Best Track: Pick 'em

Lasting Memory: I've owned this cassette since pretty much the day it was released in 1991, but I never realized until this morning that the title God Fodder is a rather poor homophonous pun. Sound it out for yourelf if you want a good groan.

I also learned that homophonous is a real word.

Let's score that a push, with a loss on the pun and a win for learning a very cool word.

I'll score this album a push as well, with two red exes for having a dumb title and being made by a band with an even dumber band name, and two green check marks for being packed with songs that are both rocking and fun.

There's little difference among "Kill Your Television," "Gray Cell Green," "Throwing Things," and "Until You Find Out." There's also a lot to like about that sound, which, according to an unofficial Wikipedia entry is "Grebo" -- " a blend of garage rock, the more alternative forms of rock, pop, hip-hop, and electronica." Fair enough.

The upshot is that if my God Fodder cassette were an old-school vinyl record, I could drop the stylus anywhere and have a good listen for the exact same reason. What I'll term "equiphonism" probably isn't great art, but it's good enough for rock 'n' roll.

Up Next: Ivan Neville, If My Ancestors Could See Me Now, 1988

Living in the Future Tense

It is the fifth day of 2009, which probably doesn't merit a blog post, but I'll give it special attention because it is friggin' 2009.

How futuristic does "2009" sound? Very. To me anyway.

Everyone must have at least one moment in their lives when they look up and say, "How did it get to be XXXX year?! That was so far away."

I had my chronological wake up call today, and it was almost certainly overdue.

So what to do when the time starts to pass like it does in cartoons where the calendar pages fall off the wall -- slow at first, then with increasing speed. This isn't a midlife crisis sort of thing. For starters I'm too young to be middle-aged. Also, there's not much about how I'm living I would change even if I could.

It's more of a "here have all the days gotten to" sort of moment. I've been think that over this morning, but I have no deep insights beyond "time keeps on slippin' into the future" and wondering if I would recognize "the future" if I ever saw it.

I doubt I would because everyday I get out bed is "today." I can makes plans for the future, but once the days come on which I have something planned, those days are inevitably more todays, soon to be a yesterdays.

I know this about as profound as something a high school freshman would say when getting high for the first time. I also know that sharing my sophomoric philosophy with you has helped me get these thoughts out of my head and into yours.

You're welcome.

The last thing I know is that if I ever do get to future, I want a jetpack.