Scott Walker, "The Seventh Seal"

I have finally found a YouTube user who posts excellent homemade music videos. Let's face it, I'm tired of, like, slideshows or nature scenes or whatever with a great song playing over them. I find that sort of thing really irritating. Sure, it probably requires some technical skills that I don't possess, but it doesn't seem to require a whole lot of thought. So thank you, deathbredon925, for making YouTube just a little bit more artistic.

Here's a taste of deathbredon925's work, in the form of an edit of Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal perfectly matched to Scott Walker's five-minute musical condensation of the film. It's pretty cool.

The CD is dying, and yet...

For the CD being all dead and stuff, there's an awful lot of tempting potential purchases on the horizon. I just spent, like, an hour over at Pause & Play looking at forthcoming CD releases:

-Elvis Costello, Secret, Profane and Sugarcane (It's been compared to King of America, which is exciting.)
-Ray Charles, Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music, Volumes 1 & 2 (On CD together for the first time!)
-George Harrison, Let It Roll: The Songs of George Harrison (Flawed, to be sure, but long overdue.)
-God Help the Girl (A Stuart Murdoch girl-group musical thingy. Tee hee!)
-Lulu, Shout! The Complete Decca Recordings (A bit much, perhaps.)
-Tim Buckley, Live at the Folklore Center, NYC - March 6, 1967 (Not my favorite era of Buckley's, but I'm still intrigued.)
-Big Star, Keep An Eye On the Sky (A Big Star box set? From Rhino? Sign me up!)

Not to mention the Neil Young Archives, out only three days from now (and already pre-ordered), which will be better than any of the above, and probably among the greatest CD releases ever.

I've also noticed that in the last year or two - conveniently since I basically stopped buying CDs - there have been a number of girl-group reissues that I probably need to pick up (and which I'm not going to link here, mostly because I'm lazy). The Cookies and Claudine Clark, in particular, available once again!

And Ace Records' new series of songwriter/producer compilations have been coming out at a rapid pace: Jackie DeShannon, Bert Berns, Randy Newman, Mann/Weill, Greenwich/Barry, Phil Spector, Sly Stone, Jerry Ragovoy... WOW. I'll cross my fingers for some sort of Dan Penn/Spooner Oldham/Chips Moman thing.

I guess I'm glad the medium is dying, because everyone's emptying their vaults. I mean, there's even gonna be a Legacy Edition of Santana's Supernatural. For the love.

Where've I been?

April was a great blogging month. May? Not so much. But I have my reasons.

I started working on the 7th, and now have a full-time job as an academic success coach for a growing company with three beautiful downtown offices. My office has a gorgeous view of the riverfront and Mt. Hood, made even better by the fact that it's been sunny and warm for the past two weeks. Better still is the paycheck. It took me over a year to find a permanent job, and all signs point to this being well worth the wait. (As a lifelong retail slave, the fact that I'm sitting here blogging from my couch at 11:30 on Memorial Day morning is a swell feeling indeed. Paid holidays, at last!)

The downside, of course, is that I've been pretty exhausted the last couple weeks. My training period was intense, and it's always a struggle for me to get into a routine, especially one that involves early mornings. But being able to leave the apartment at 8 and be in the office by 8:30 is an awfully nice change from spending two and a half hours on the bus every single day. Now I just ride the bus in the morning, and walk home in the evening. It's working out nicely.

Our new apartment feels like home, and Littlejeans, who spent the first couple weeks here being depressed and perpetually in hiding, seems to like it. The other night, she finally sat on the windowsill in the living room. (One of the things that attracted us to this place was the windows, which have a sill of acceptable width for a cat.) There had been a few close calls earlier, but she'd never taken the leap, so it was a proud, proud moment. There are pictures of the Great Windowsill Night, but none as cute as this slightly depressing example of the lengths she went to to hide from us:


Musically speaking, I've actually been working on a couple reviews involving some true favorites (Richard Thompson and Scott Walker), and trying to come to terms with the piece-of-shit album that Bob Dylan released last month. There's a new Lucky Soul track, which I can only hope means there'll be an album to go along with it. Hopefully in the summer. It'll make those evening walks even better. And next week, the Neil Young Archives. Yay!

Hmm, other than that? Almost done with Twin Peaks, the first season of which is unbeatable. The second loses a lot of steam after Laura Palmer's murder mystery is solved. There are still some really funny moments - as well as a few terrifying ones, far scarier than anything in the first season - but there's also no sense of purpose. Oh, and I'm reading Brad Gooch's new biography of Flannery O'Connor, which Ryan got me for my birthday. I'm only about a fourth of the way through it, but I love it. And every mention of a story from A Good Man Is Hard to Find makes me eager to reread that book. It's been, like, eight years or so.

I just heard horns outside. There was a small accident last night at about midnight, and a big, messy one last weekend that took over an hour to clean up. People drive like maniacs on this particular street corner.

Today we're going to Laurelhurst park to have a picnic with some friends and enjoy the pretty weather. Life is good!

Initial back-and-forth on Together Through Life

- He's coasting. Same blues cliches in the music and the lyrics that we've gotten the last few times. It's just getting boring.
- I thought Time Out of Mind was awful at first. Love and Theft and Modern Times fell into the "dull" category. I changed my mind on each of those after a couple months (and a revelatory concert), a few weeks, and two years, respectively.

- Cowriting with Robert Hunter? Really?
- Robert Hunter is at least one of the preeminent American rock lyricists, and has a lot of the same influences and reference points as Dylan. All this is more than could be said for Jacques Levy, and Desire sure turned out all right. Writing "Brownsville Girl" with Sam Shepard wasn't exactly a mistake, either.

- Everyone seems desperate to not let Dylan's late-career winning streak end. Apparently his last four records (plus Tell Tale Signs) have all been on the same level, and are all beyond reproach.
- I think there's a distinct possibility that Together Through Life is a pile of crap, just like Under the Red Sky, but one that might reveal small pleasures a little further down the line.

- Together Through Life is a dumb title.
- And New Morning, Saved, Another Side of Bob Dylan, Modern Times and Down In the Groove weren't?

- Doesn't excuse the awful cover art, though.
- See also Saved, Empire Burlesque, Modern Times, etc.

- There's not a single song on this record that strikes me as being a classic right out of the gate.
- That could be a problem, because the last couple had "Mississippi" and "Workingman's Blues #2."

- There was, um, already a song called "Jolene." I suspect Bob's heard it, too.
- Why not? He's stolen music, lyrics, and song titles wholesale since the '60s. At least he gives Willie Dixon half of the credit for "My Wife's Home Town." Free Henry Timrod!

- On third listen (in progress as I type this), "This Dream of You" might be the keeper.
- But it does sound an awful lot like "Red River Shore."

- "I Feel a Change Comin' On" is good, too.
- It's always the least bluesy songs that stick out on these recent Dylan albums, as far as I'm concerned. And there's always precious few of 'em. Whoever called this a country album - jolly ol' David Fricke, maybe? - was just going through a bout of wishful thinking.

- Listening to Billy Joe Shaver I'll buy. Not the reading James Joyce. At least not right now.
- I sorta wish he'd go back to listening to Neil Young and reading Erica Jong. Or better yet, F. Scott Fitzgerald.

- I've read, like, three reviews of this so far. I'll read some more of them before I listen to the album again.
- Of course, they're all gonna say the same tired crap about Dylan being a preacher or prophet, throw out some Greil Marcus-lite, drunk-on-Americana prose, and declare it another late-period milestone.

- Out of curiosity, what was the last new CD I bought, before yesterday?
- I think it was She & Him, also on the day of its release. March 18, 2008. Damn.

The 25 Greatest Albums Ever

25. Suede - Suede (1993, Nude)

Tracks: So Young, Animal Nitrate, She's Not Dead, Moving, Pantomime Horse, The Drowners, Sleeping Pills, Breakdown, Metal Mickey, Animal Lover, The Next Life

I threw you with this one, didn't I? But what a dark, dramatic bunch of songs. It's one of the best guitar albums out there, too, and often because Bernard Butler so often spiderwebs his way around behind Brett Anderson (see "The Drowners," around the 3:24 mark) and lets the singer cry his tales of drugs and (not infrequently gay) sex with all the attention he seems to require and most definitely deserves.

24. The Band - Music From Big Pink (1968, Capitol)

Side A: Tears of Rage, To Kingdom Come, In A Station, Caledonia Mission, The Weight
Side B: We Can Talk, Long Black Veil, Chest Fever, Lonesome Suzie, This Wheel's On Fire, I Shall Be Released

Sounds weird at first, what with the vocal bob-and-weave of four different lead singers, "Chest Fever," the lyrics that clearly betray their relationship with Bob Dylan. Then you recognize it simply as a stew of country, gospel, rhythm-and-blues, rock'n'roll, and New Orleans jazz, and think it's good, but maybe not worth all the fuss. You know, like, this is the stuff that got Eric Clapton and George Harrison and Traffic all bothered? But it's so simple!

And then, at some undefined point, it becomes very, very strange again. You start to make out the lyrics a bit clearer, which makes the straight-forward, over-familiar "The Weight" seem quite a bit more nonsensical, and a song like "We Can Talk" becomes not a throwaway but a perfect example of the Band at their absolute finest. My favorite lines, a question from one singer to another, and as good a summation of this group's aesthetic as anything I could think up myself: "Did you ever milk a cow? / I had the chance one day / But I was all dressed up for Sunday."

23. Neil Young - On The Beach (1974, Reprise)

Side A: Walk On, See The Sky About To Rain, Revolution Blues, For The Turnstiles, Vampire Blues
Side B: On The Beach, Motion Pictures, Ambulance Blues

The Californian dream/nightmare, reduced to a Cadillac fin sticking out of the sand. It's an indictment of everything from celebrity culture ("Revolution Blues") to critics ("Walk On"), from conspicuous consumers ("Vampire Blues") to Young himself ("On The Beach"). The second side is one of the saddest in all of rock'n'roll, particularly the title song, the moment at which the singer-songwriter movement becomes irreversibly adult: "Though my problems are meaningless / That don't make them go away."

22. Bruce Springsteen - Born To Run (1975, Columbia)

Side A: Thunder Road, Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out, Night, Backstreets
Side B: Born To Run, She's The One, Meeting Across The River, Jungleland

Sure, you've heard Dylan and Van Morrison and Phil Spector and West Side Story and Bo Diddley and probably lots more, too, but have you ever heard 'em played ALL AT ONCE?

This is a triumph of production, record-making at its meticulous best. It's also a study in how to properly turn a seething volcano of bombast into a sonic experience that hits the listener not only with its sheer musical power but with its emotion and its sense of drama. The epics that bookend each side of the record are more simple than they let on - they're structured like '60s pop songs, just drawn out over six, seven, nine minutes - but the production keeps things on edge, and Springsteen is nothing if not emotionally invested in every word he sings. He's made looser, riskier, subtler, and more adult records, sometimes all at the same time, but Born To Run is an experience like no other.

21. Van Morrison - Astral Weeks (1968, Warner Bros.)

Side A: Astral Weeks, Beside You, Sweet Thing, Cyprus Avenue
Side B: The Way Young Lovers Do, Madame George, Ballerina, Slim Slow Slider

What kind of music is this? It's not rock'n'roll or jazz or folk, it's, I dunno, heart music or something. Kinda like soul, I guess, but different cuz you can hear the singer having a physical reaction to the world slowly crushing him. And yet the title track and "Sweet Thing" and "Young Lovers" are positively buoyant. So is "Ballerina," which has gotta be the least-talked-about major song on this record. Sure, it's maybe a wee bit predictable to pair the "step right up" line with a rising bass figure, but it gets me every single time. Lester Bangs said it best about the singing on "Madame George" and "Cyprus Avenue," such that I can't really add anything to it except to say that if better singing exists, it exists on a different planet.

20. Billy Joel - The Stranger (1977, Columbia)

Side A: Movin' Out (Anthony's Song), The Stranger, Just The Way You Are, Scenes From An Italian Restaurant
Side B: Vienna, Only The Good Die Young, She's Always A Woman, Get It Right The First Time, Everybody Has A Dream

The first side is flawless, and "Vienna" might be the most underrated song in his or anyone else's catalogue. Albums with lots of hit singles get a bad rap sometimes, and yeah, sometimes the record company was just milking it. But I don't think that was the case here, because Billy Joel was just on a roll. He had everything going for him on this one: he had the songs, he had his touring band behind him, he had Phil Ramone taking over the production duties, and he had his usual work ethic. It was like the perfect storm of universally-palatable adult pop.

19. The Who - Who's Next (1971, Decca)

Side A: Baba O'Riley, Bargain, Love Ain't For Keeping, My Wife, The Song Is Over
Side B: Getting In Tune, Going Mobile, Behind Blue Eyes, Won't Get Fooled Again

It's probably best that Lifehouse got to be too big for this big, big band, because a) Pete Townshend's demos are amazing on their own and b) they probably would've screwed it up a la Tommy. The real strength this time around, though, was the quality of the songs. When my favorite Who song ever ("Pure And Easy") doesn't make the album, you know you've got a pretty fantastic batch of tunes. The subtle expansion of their sound is also worth noting, not just Pete playing with synthesizers on a couple tracks, but the violin on "Baba O'Riley" and Nicky Hopkins' piano on "Getting In Tune."

18. The Beatles - Revolver (1966, Capitol)

Side A: Taxman, Eleanor Rigby, I'm Only Sleeping, Love You To, Here There And Everywhere, Yellow Submarine, She Said She Said
Side B: Good Day Sunshine, And Your Bird Can Sing, For No One, Doctor Robert, I Want To Tell You, Got To Get You Into My Life, Tomorrow Never Knows

Rivals The Beatles for variety but tops it for cohesiveness, accessibility (play this one for the kids, they won't know it's an acid trip), and warmth. It's easy to say (as I've been doing for at least 10 years) that the reason Revolver is the best Beatles album is because it was the only time their pop and experimental sides were in perfect balance. There's not a wasted note on this record, and some of 'em were even so good they used 'em again but backwards!

17. Joe Ely - Honky Tonk Masquerade (1978, MCA)

Side A: Cornbread Moon, Because Of The Wind, Boxcars, Jericho (Your Walls Must Come Tumbling Down), Tonight I Think I'm Gonna Go Downtown
Side B: Honky Tonk Masquerade, I'll Be Your Fool, Fingernails, West Texas Waltz, Honky Tonkin'

I suspect most people who don't like country music just can't stand the lyrical wordplay, but maybe that's 'cause they never heard this record. Impeccably sequenced, from "Cornbread Moon," with its almost jazzy middle section (which also introduces an accordion, the one ingredient apparently missing from Ely's almost-as-great debut), through a song that will forever remind of driving into Austin for the first time, one of the great Texas ballads ("Because Of The Wind"), monumental compositions by Ely's fellow Flatlanders, some enjoyable fluff, and finally winding up with the ingenius pairing of Butch Hancock's "West Texas Waltz" and Hank Williams' "Honky Tonkin'." The outros of those last two songs conjure up swirls of neon, big hats, and lots of people dancing. Communal music at its least judgmental and most inviting.

16. The Rolling Stones - Sticky Fingers (1971, Rolling Stones)

Side A: Brown Sugar, Sway, Wild Horses, Can't You Hear Me Knocking, You Gotta Move
Side B: Bitch, I Got The Blues, Sister Morphine, Dead Flowers, Moonlight Mile

Cobbled together from a couple years' worth of tracks, Sticky Fingers hangs together much better than it ever deserved to. But every genre that ever mattered to the Stones gets its moment here, and they never once go through the motions; these are the Stones' best in rock ("Brown Sugar"), country ("Dead Flowers"), balladry ("Wild Horses"), soul ("I Got The Blues"), blues ("You Gotta Move"), mood pieces ("Moonlight Mile") and Santana impersonations ("Can't You Hear Me Knocking"). There's not a better introduction to their classic period, or a better summation of the band's strengths. And I've always wished Janis Joplin had stuck around long enough to cover "Sway."

15. The Velvet Underground - The Velvet Underground & Nico (1967, Verve)

Side A: Sunday Morning, I'm Waiting For The Man, Femme Fatale, Venus In Furs, Run Run Run, All Tomorrow's Parties
Side B: Heroin, There She Goes Again, I'll Be Your Mirror, The Black Angel's Death Song, European Son

It's important and influential, blah blah blah, and that wouldn't count for anything if it weren't also full of moments like the intro to "I'm Waiting For The Man," or the chord change before the "I am tired, I am weary" part of "Venus In Furs," or the moment in "Heroin" where Mo Tucker sounds like a team of horses, or the weird beauty of the Nico songs. What's amazing is that every single moment winds up being one of those moments.

14. Fleetwood Mac - Rumours (1977, Warner Bros.)

Side A: Second Hand News, Dreams, Never Going Back Again, Don't Stop, Go Your Own Way, Songbird
Side B: The Chain, You Make Loving Fun, I Don't Want To Know, Oh Daddy, Gold Dust Woman

A usually wise man once said, "It's not the side effects of the cocaine / I'm thinking that it must be love." Rumours, for our listening pleasure and at the cost of its creators' mental and emotional stability, is both. Just because almost all these songs are classic-rock radio staples doesn't mean they're fluff. Well, I think "Songbird" is fluff, but it's elevated fluff. And all of it resonates, unless, that is, you've never loved someone, lost someone, or had any emotion that needs to be expressed with greater depth than a stream of drool connecting your lower lip and your shoe. Also, if you're looking for a chance to sing, here it is.

13. Bob Dylan - Blonde On Blonde (1966, Columbia)

Side A: Rainy Day Women #12 & 35, Pledging My Time, Visions Of Johanna, One Of Us Must Know (Sooner Or Later)
Side B: I Want You, Stuck Inside Of Mobile With The Memphis Blues Again, Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat, Just Like A Woman
Side C: Most Likely You Go Your Way (And I'll Go Mine), Temporary Like Achilles, Absolutely Sweet Marie, 4th Time Around, Obviously 5 Believers
Side D: Sad-Eyed Lady Of The Lowlands

The best double album ever, and I'll throw out a reason you probably aren't expecting: it's all because of the drums. Listen to "Stuck Inside Of Mobile" or "Absolutely Sweet Marie" or the last five seconds of "Just Like A Woman" and just try to tell me you've heard better drumming, especially on a record where the drumming is theoretically of zero importance because, y'know, it's Bob Dylan, and it's supposed to be all about the words and the harmonica and the sunglasses. So Sandy Konikoff and Kenny Buttrey, take a bow. Same goes for you, half dozen guitarists who sound like Morse code in a haystack.

12. Leonard Cohen - I'm Your Man (1988, Columbia)

Side A: First We Take Manhattan, Ain't No Cure For Love, Everybody Knows, I'm Your Man
Side B: Take This Waltz, Jazz Police, I Can't Forget, Tower Of Song

He sort of blew it on the follow-up, The Future, by surrounding jaw-dropping masterpieces with iffy covers and an easy-listening instrumental, but I'm Your Man was not only a surprising comeback. It was a triumph for old people who make records, proof that late-'80s social commentary didn't have to come wrapped up in the voice of Don Henley. "Tower Of Song" has the memorable lines about aching in the places where he used to play and being born with the gift of a golden voice, but the funniest moment is actually the background vocals during the fadeout, which sound exactly like the Crystals singing "Da Doo Ron Ron." The '80s production was a mistake, and certainly takes some getting used to if early Cohen is your bag, but eventually there's no silencing the songs. Except maybe "Jazz Police," but that's almost too short to bother skipping.

11. Patti Smith - Horses (1975, Arista)

Side A: Gloria, Redondo Beach, Birdland, Free Money
Side B: Kimberly, Break It Up, Land, Elegie

It's a fusion in much the same way as Born To Run, with considerable overlap in source material, except Patti added Lou Reed, Jim Morrison, and Keith Richards into the mix. Like Born To Run, too, this is a record where the artist has nothing to lose and so risks it all. "Gloria" is one of the best debut-album leadoff tracks ever, in terms of demonstrating influences, potential, attitude, ideas, and a sense of purpose. It also, um, rocks. Horses is both challenging and accessible, and occasionally truly experimental ("Land"). Had rock "poet" Jim Morrison ever written a song like "Birdland," maybe he'd be on this list somewhere. Loser.

10. Bob Dylan - Bringing It All Back Home (1965, Columbia)

Side A: Subterranean Homesick Blues, She Belongs To Me, Maggie's Farm, Love Minus Zero/No Limit, Outlaw Blues, On The Road Again, Bob Dylan's 115th Dream
Side B: Mr. Tambourine Man, Gates Of Eden, It's Alright Ma (I'm Only Bleeding), It's All Over Now Baby Blue

The rock'n'roll side is pretty unadorned, in light of what Dylan did on his next two albums. But raw is what works for these songs, and anything more intricate would've ruined them. Aside from the biggies, "Love Minus Zero" is one of Dylan's gentlest love songs, and "Bob Dylan's 115th Dream" is a whole lot funnier than any of the "funny" songs on his acoustic albums.

It's the surreal epics on the acoustic side, though, that really pointed the way to the future. As a sustained performance, this is the best side of Dylan's career: every vocal is masterfully delivered, Bruce Langhorne's second guitar stays out of the way, and the harmonica solos on "Mr. Tambourine Man" and especially "Baby Blue" are two of Dylan's finest. Oh, and the songs themselves are lyrically and melodically inventive, too. No ripoffs of old British folk songs here.

9. Richard and Linda Thompson - I Want To See The Bright Lights Tonight (1974, Island)

Side A: When I Get To The Border, The Calvary Cross, Withered And Died, I Want To See The Bright Lights Tonight, Down Where The Drunkards Roll
Side B: We Sing Hallelujah, Has He Got A Friend For Me, The Little Beggar Girl, The End Of The Rainbow, The Great Valerio

Speaking of old British folk songs, there aren't any of those on this album, either, even though some of these sound positively ancient. But that's mostly 'cause of the button accordions and occasionally exaggerated accents. Anyway, death hangs over this album, as does loneliness, drunkenness, poverty and heartbreak. I actually think it's a lot darker than the Thompsons' fabled breakup album, Shoot Out The Lights. But there's an optimism to "When I Get To The Border" and the title track, and not all of the songs are slow. The first side is flawless, the blend of folk, rock and country is the perfect setting for the songs, and it's hard to imagine them being sung any better. I'll leave you with a verse from one of the peppy numbers: "A man he's like his father / Wishes he never was born / He longs for the time when the clock will chime / And he's dead for evermore." Have a nice day!

8. New York Dolls - New York Dolls (1973, Mercury)

Side A: Personality Crisis, Looking For A Kiss, Vietnamese Baby, Lonely Planet Boy, Frankenstein
Side B: Trash, Bad Girl, Subway Train, Pills, Private World, Jet Boy

Easy to sing along to 'cause you don't have to have any kind of voice at all, although you probably don't have David Johansen's charisma. Better than any "punk" album ever, because it's a laugh riot, and they did more with the Ramones' influences than those overrated uglies ever did. Sure, it's also a little sloppy, but certainly not enough to make it a challenging listen on account of the sound. It was produced by Mr. Fancyknobs Todd Rundgren, after all. Anyway, not many great albums take themselves less seriously than the Dolls' debut, and not many are as fun. The inside jokes, the little nods to golden oldies, the absolute lack of pretension - I mean, who else would've dreamed of referencing Mickey & Sylvia in 1973? - who cares if most of the guys are dead now? This album will live forever. No one else was doing this stuff at the time, and it's obvious why none of the legion of bands who cited the Dolls as an influence bothered to copy them. They knew it would be pointless.

7. Leonard Cohen - Songs Of Leonard Cohen (1968, Columbia)

Side A: Suzanne, Master Song, Winter Lady, The Stranger Song, Sisters Of Mercy
Side B: So Long Marianne, Hey That's No Way To Say Goodbye, Stories Of The Street, Teachers, One Of Us Cannot Be Wrong

He didn't have too much work to do to make the greatest debut album by a Canadian singer-songwriter, but Leonard Cohen really outdid himself. "Suzanne" is the acknowledged masterpiece of masterpieces, but "Winter Lady" is winter, "So Long Marianne" is a phenomenal singalong, and just when everyone thought there was nothing less sexy than a guy with an acoustic guitar - except a guy with a three-note singing range in his ancient mid-30s who looked like Dustin Hoffman - those lady background vocalists opened their mouths and made these already sensual songs into sirens' calls. Who knows what Cohen was talking about half the time; the sounds of the words, the formality of the presentation, and the dignity of the man's voice is all that matters.

6. Bob Dylan - Highway 61 Revisited (1965, Columbia)

Side A: Like A Rolling Stone, Tombstone Blues, It Takes A Lot To Laugh It Takes A Train To Cry, From A Buick 6, Ballad Of A Thin Man
Side B: Queen Jane Approximately, Highway 61 Revisited, Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues, Desolation Row

"Like A Rolling Stone" is the greatest song ever, or at least the greatest recording ever. The rest of Highway 61 isn't too bad, either. The songwriting leap from Bringing It All Back Home (the electric half, at least) would be unbelievable if the evidence weren't right there, and the music rises to meet the lyrics. Guitar, organ and piano are particular standouts throughout, and the siren on the title track offers some goofiness at just the right time.

There's one song that approaches the level of "Like A Rolling Stone," and it comes at the end of the record. "Desolation Row," as Dylan's final (mostly) solo acoustic (plus Charlie McCoy on essential second guitar) performance on record until 1973, takes that format to its limit: 11 druggy minutes of panoramic storytelling with a huge cast of characters drawn from literature, cinema and folklore, set to a simple, hypnotic strum and (natch) a vocal for the ages. That that were three other classics on the second side of the record, including the underrated "Queen Jane Approximately" - a towering achievement in lyrical rhythm and rhyme - almost seems like an afterthought.

5. Willie Nelson - Phases And Stages (1974, Atlantic)

Side A: Phases And Stages (Theme)/Washing The Dishes, Phases And Stages (Theme)/Walkin', Pretend I Never Happened, Sister's Coming Home/Down At The Corner Beer Joint, (How Will I Know) I'm Falling In Love Again
Side B: Bloody Mary Morning, Phases And Stages (Theme)/No Love Around, I Still Can't Believe You're Gone, It's Not Supposed To Be That Way, Heaven And Hell, Phases And Stages (Theme)/Pick Up The Tempo/Phases And Stages (Theme)

What could have been a gimmicky disaster - a breakup concept album with one side from the woman's point of view and one from the man's - was anything but. Willie Nelson hadn't recorded an album of songs this uniformly excellent since his debut, Country Willie, a virtual greatest-hits collection. And what songs these are! The woman's side seems more trivial on the surface, which is a criticism Nelson was probably bound to attract. But the attention to detail is also far more impressive. The protagonist being allowed to "sleep the whole day long" in "Sister's Coming Home," for instance - who hasn't been there after a breakup? The man's side is a bit more general, with the exception of "Bloody Mary Morning," but again the songwriting is probably the best of his career. Willie is Willie, so the singing is top notch, and there are half a dozen signature guitar solos on here, but the real key to the record's success is Nelson's sincerity. This is just one of the most emotionally honest, poignant albums out there.

4. Led Zeppelin - IV (1971, Atlantic)

Side A: Black Dog, Rock And Roll, The Battle Of Evermore, Stairway To Heaven
Side B: Misty Mountain Hop, Four Sticks, Going To California, When The Levee Breaks

I still can't decipher 60 percent of the lyrics on this album, and I think a lot of 'em probably just don't make any sense anyway, but there's no arguing with their delivery. After their relatively quiet third album, Robert Plant apparently had a lot of wailing to do. Some of it even sneaks out on "Going To California," the mandolin-driven Joni Mitchell tribute that provides required breathing space on the second side of the album. And lemme tell ya, that side sure needs it. All those other songs are loud, and "Misty Mountain Hop" is even kinda fast, too. The first side is positively pastoral in comparison. As it should be, since two of the songs are about stupid fairy-tale crap or something (the other two are about sex, natch). But that was the beauty of Led Zeppelin: they were far bigger than heavy metal or hard rock, and they had more range than any other band of their ilk. The best examples are on this record.

3. Rod Stewart - Every Picture Tells A Story (1971, Mercury)

Side A: Every Picture Tells A Story, Seems Like A Long Time, That's All Right, Tomorrow Is A Long Time
Side B: Maggie May, Mandolin Wind, (I Know) I'm Losing You, Reason To Believe

The greatest tragedy in rock was the swift, irreversible decline of Rod Stewart. He was hardly immune to macho rock-star posturing, but unlike Mick Jagger, for example, Stewart never seemed malevolent. He didn't write very many songs, but he wrote a few classics ("Maggie May," "Mandolin Wind" and the title track, in this case) and was rock's greatest interpreter. He wasn't a guitar hero, or even much of an instrumentalist at all, but he worked with people who were. "Make the best out of the bad / Just laugh it off," he sang in the leadoff track here (and followed it with a hearty one), knowing it was good advice. That laugh sums up the spirit of Rod Stewart in 1971, the spirit of this album, not because it was all about the humor, but because it was a response from the heart. There is such joy in Every Picture Tells A Story, even in a song like "Mandolin Wind," which it just occurred to me might be about watching the person you love die. Those lines about the steel guitar - gorgeous!

It's impossible to discuss this album without mentioning "Maggie May," one of the great rock records for all time thanks to the organ, the drums, the mandolin coda, the fact that I can never remember what the guitar is gonna do after any of the "Maggie I couldn't have tried / Any more" lines, Stewart's vocal tour de force, the pun on the word "cue," and the fact that the only time you hear an electric guitar is during a solo, and you don't miss it the rest of the time. (It's worth noting that there is exactly one track on this hard-rocking-est of albums that features a full electric rock band.) And I'd be remiss to ignore the definitive covers of "Tomorrow Is A Long Time" and "Reason To Believe," both of which are also among Stewart's finest moments.

On a good day, it just might be the greatest album ever.

2. The Stooges - Fun House (1970, Elektra)

Side A: Down On The Street, Loose, T.V. Eye, Dirt
Side B: 1970, Fun House, L.A. Blues

Possibly more polarizing than anything else on this list, for the volume (not to be confused with the noise, which is related but different), the language, the where-the-fuck-did-this-come-from saxophone on the second side, and the total hostility.

And that's why it's so great. Historically, it was an attitudinal moment that needed to happen, and you can hear it in every tortured note. It takes a while to get used to, I think, but it's actually not a blur of noise. There's some real variety here, from "Dirt," which is slow enough to be a Neil Young song, to "Loose," which is maybe dirtier than "Dirt" and shoulda been a hit. And the second side is almost a totally different animal, being the point where rock dabbles in free jazz (it don't sound like Chicago, that's for sure). None of it ever gets dull or predictable, or even less than fascinating. And it should come emblazoned with Dylan's directive: "Play fucking loud!"

1. Joni Mitchell - Blue (1971, Reprise)

Side A: All I Want, My Old Man, Little Green, Carey, Blue
Side B: California, This Flight Tonight, River, A Case Of You, The Last Time I Saw Richard

'Whoa, whoa, WHOA,' I hear you thinking. 'After all that, there's this? A lady with a guitar, or sometimes an autoharp or piano, picking/strumming/plunking away and singing in a high-pitched voice about how love is touching souls? Didn't the Stooges et al come to bury this sort of withering, wispy solipsism in sixteen tons of piss and shit?'

Well, yeah, they did. And it didn't quite work. Part of being great, I think, is having the ability to touch a wide range of people, and touch them deeply. Having the desire to do so doesn't hurt, either. And correct me if I'm wrong but, for all their many fine attributes, I don't think the Stooges were interesting in touching very many souls. Joni Mitchell was, at this point in her career, and fortunately for her and for the rest of us she made this masterpiece of vulnerability and self-discovery.

Blue is an album of modest gems (and a few stone cold classics) that together, to use that hoary old expression, add up to far greater than the sum of the parts. The musical settings are, for probably the last time in Mitchell's career, relatively unadventurous, but that allows us to focus on the lyrics, as we should. They are full of tiny morsels that, if you can't relate, you probably just haven't started to grow up yet. Half the songs feature the title color in their lyrics, none of them insignificantly, and she hits on the crux of the matter right off the bat in "All I Want": "Do you see how you hurt me baby / So I hurt you too / Then we both get so blue." You'll recognize that line if you've been there. Point is, at some point, unless you're a hermit or so out of touch with your own feelings or (god help us all) both, you'll find yourself in these songs. Once you do, there's no going back.

Introduction to the 25 Greatest Albums Ever **REVISED!**

Author's note: I discovered one of my 25 Greatest Albums needed to be disqualified, due to more than half of its contents having been recorded live. Fortunately, it was one that I felt a little uncomfortable about anyway. I took a few minutes to reconsider a few other albums, too, so the bottom of the list has changed slightly. I've edited my original post to reflect the changes.

My friend Ty did one of these lists, like, almost three months ago, and I've been thinking about my own ever since. I started with a list of 140 albums, and wound up using a mathematical system to rank them. In case of a tie, I did a combination of recalculating and generally deciding which I thought was better. My system didn't seem too kind to double albums, which is a damned shame, because there's nothing like a sprawling, messy double album to get me all excited. Also, albums from the 2000s were ineligible, as were compilations and live albums. As a result, a lot of my favorites were immediately ruled out, and because of my preference for the music of the '60s and '70s and distaste for virtually all post-1968 r&b, my list is very, very white. There's also a gender imbalance for much the same reason.

Here's a little taste of what's on the final list:

- The decades, broken down: eight from the '60s, 15 from the '70s, one from the '80s, one from the '90s.
- Two by female solo artists, 12 by males, eight by all-male groups, and three by mixed-gender groups.
- Only three by Bob Dylan, lest you worry about this listmaker's most obvious potential bias. (Although two others feature covers of Dylan songs.)
- One double album, two concept albums, two break-up albums, and seven by bands prominently featuring people who are now dead.
- 12 albums by Americans, four by Canadians, seven by Britons, two by multi-national groups, and one by an Irishman.
- Only two people have multiple albums on the list, and of the ten best albums that didn't make the list, only three are by artists in the top 25 (only one of whom is Bob Dylan).

Stay tuned for the whole effing list!

Hot, delicious burritos

While you're waiting for me to post the 25 Greatest Albums - which I've decided to do all at once, rather than broken up into fives, so that's why it's taking awhile - you're welcome to take a gander at my review of Hot Burritos: The True Story of the Flying Burrito Brothers.

Speaking of burritos, I had a really great one yesterday at Cha, which is conveniently located a block from our new place. (We moved over the weekend so, um, that process has taken priority over blogging. Sorry.) They have a daily happy hour, which we've been to twice so far. There are so many restaurants in this neighborhood, and so many outdoor dining possibilities. I love it.

Anyway, I still have some unpacking to do, so I'm gonna do that. And then I'll get to work on my 25 Greatest Albums post. Sorry to tease you like that.

Styrofoam boxes for the ozone layer

Harry wrote about the decline of the compact disc on Thursday, prompted by an entertainingly-captioned photo essay of a Borders music department that had been taken off life support.

You might recall that I was blogging ages ago about how I was getting rid of some of my CDs. And then you might recall that I didn't really mention it again for a long, long time. Well, I wound up getting rid of close to 500 CDs, which means I still have about 800, although now most of 'em are in individual vinyl sleeves so they won't take up nearly as much space. (They fit into two and a half book boxes. Much easier to move.)


Anyway, one of the things I mentioned in the comment I left on Harry's blog was that I've noticed the boxed-set selection dwindling at most music retailers I've visited in the last year or so. Hastings never had an outstanding selection, but it was pitiful the last time I visited Kirksville. By the time I left Borders in Austin, the selection was small and seemingly random, as it was at Barnes & Noble in St. Louis.


Flash back to the late '90s: I was working at B&N, and would occasionally visit Borders for a different shopping experience (and different selection). The selection at Borders was massive. Of course, it was all locked in cabinets, but it was fun to look at. The B&N selection was slightly smaller, but still really thorough. I remember buying Dylan's Biograph, or Nuggets, or the box of '70s Elvis stuff, or The Anthology of American Folk Music, or the Velvet Underground box, and being intimidated, overwhelmed, and really fucking excited all at once. There's still nothing like buying a boxed set, as far as I'm concerned. I mean, just the big, fancy books are usually enough to make me flip. But knowing there's all that unreleased material, or seeing stuff I already know and love put into a different context... there's just nothing like that. Certainly getting your music from the internets isn't like that.

Well, not until June, it isn't. I think the Neil Young Archives will absolutely represent the future of music in terms of having a physical product. I've only bought a handful of CDs in the last year - not kidding; six or so Leonard Cohen discs, the Who's My Generation, and maybe a couple others - but I'm totally gonna buy Volume One of the Neil Young Archives. The CD version is a steal for $99, and that's the one I'm getting. The Blu-Ray version, as Neil himself points out in the pop-up that appears when you click the link earlier in this paragraph, is really the one to get, since you get all the amazing, apparently neverending extras (via the internets). Of course, you also have to, like, own a Blu-Ray player, which I don't, and can't afford, and wouldn't buy specifically for my Neil Young fix. Now, if this was Dylan we were talking about...


There was an interesting article about classical-music boxed sets in the New York Times a few weeks ago. Apparently there's been a boom in exhaustive, collector-oriented, but reasonably-priced boxed sets of classical music. As someone who still loves having a physical product to listen to and otherwise handle, I'd love to see it get to the point where pop-music boxed sets are produced in a similar way. At least one company does the comprehensiveness-and-affordability thing, at least with old public-domain music, and another does everything right (although their sequencing is a little too academic), but their sets are extremely cost-prohibitive. Someone needs to be for the 21st century what Rhino was for the last fifteen years of the 20th.

Even if I'm not really buying CDs anymore, I still can't fucking wait to get all of mine out of storage in a couple weeks. It's hard to even remember what I own when I'm just scrolling through the iTunes.

On being (mostly) ambivalent about the Alan Parsons Project

Should you find yourself with some time to kill, and you happen to be wondering what I could possibly have to say about the Alan Parsons Project, well, click this link.

I promise I'll write something new on this blog someday.

Apparently these guys never went to seventh grade

Beth sent this to me today, and it's nothing short of amazing. It's Kirksville, Missouri's local news anchors wishing happy birthdays and anniversaries to various members of the community... and more.



There's something almost poetic about "TV" being half of the call letters for Kirksville's local channel, isn't there?

Julie

While I'm writing reviews of bands that my dear boyfriend referred to as "Renaissance fair music," my dear friend Julie is writing about her famous relative. And a bunch of folks who apparently can't be just a little open-minded are commenting on it.

Julie and I braved grad school together. We were neighbors. We organized a conference. We unintentionally bankrupted our organization by going out to a fancy dinner. (There were, like, ten of us. Julie and I weren't that big of pigs.) We had a passionate embrace in the front of a car shortly before I left Kirksville, which is mostly notable because two of our professors drove by at precisely that moment, and we've joked ever since that they probably started a rumor that we were having an affair.

We've done a lot of stuff, but one thing we've never really done is talked about her famous cousin. I've avoided it, because I'd been told that she hated talking about him. One time we briefly touched on the subject. I don't remember if someone else brought it up, but she basically said what she said in her Salon piece: "You don't have to agree with your family to love your family."

Last time I saw Julie was the weekend after Thanksgiving, when we had a delightful lunch in St. Louis. She was in town from New York for the holiday, and I was a few days away from moving to Portland. It was a great time, and I loved being able to catch up. I'm really, really proud of her, because I know this had to be a difficult piece to write, and I'm very excited to see her byline on one of my favorite websites. Congratulations, Julie!

The would-be stone cutter drops in

No, I haven't spent the last two months writing this review of the extremely after-the-fact second Fotheringay album. I wish I had. They could start calling me the Stone Cutter, like they did that one guy at Rolling Stone back in the day. What was his name? I'd look it up, but my copy of Robert Draper's RS history is in storage, along with 95 percent of my possessions.

I've been working on some other writing projects as well, and I'll link to those whenever they show up on the internets. I finished the last of them today, so I feel a little relieved, but also very ready to have something else to work on.

Mostly I've been working at a little bank in North Northeast Portland and spending about 12 hours a week on the bus. I find I have a hard time reading on the bus, and the concentration involved with trying to do so really stresses me out. Listening to music has a much more calming effect, so I've been doing a lot of that instead. I've still kept up a pretty impressive pace with reading, though, and in the six weeks or so since I started working, I've read As I Lay Dying, The Great Gatsby (again), Winesburg, Ohio, Breakfast at Tiffany's, and a couple music books. I'm starting on Flannery O'Connor's Everything That Rises Must Converge this evening, which is pretty exciting 'cause it's the only book of hers I haven't read yet. All the hoopla over Brad Gooch's new biography has gotten me very excited about O'Connor all over again.

In other news, for the third time since August, I'm moving. Only this time, it'll be a lot easier, since it's not a cross-country trip. Ryan and I are planning to get a place, hopefully in Northwest Portland, by the end of April. It's pretty exciting, even if my employment situation is up in the air and will ultimately have an effect on how this little plan plays out. I'm on round three (of four, I think, but maybe only three) of the interview process with a company downtown that would be very easy to get to and would pay enough money for me to live comfortably for the first time since 2003, when I was earning a pittance but my rent was $150 a month. Plus the job itself sounds pretty great. And being able to move and have access to all of my stuff again will make me feel a lot less homeless. It's been almost exactly a year since I was laid off from my last full-time, "permanent" job, and there's been just a wee bit of turmoil since then. It'll be nice to have some stability.

So, um, you can probably see why the posting here has been extremely light recently. Although I suspect there's something in the air, because a lot of us aren't blogging as frequently as we once did. Maybe that's not a bad thing.

On hating Billy Joel

Aside from Bob Dylan, my favorite musical artists during my pre-teen years were the Beatles, Billy Joel, Elton John, CSNY, and the Eagles. And I'll defend any of them to the death. Especially when Ron Rosenbaum writes something called "The Worst Pop Singer Ever" and it's about Billy Joel. Because that is just uncalled for.

Rosenbaum's argument is basically that Billy Joel - or "B.J.," as he annoyingly calls him - is a phony pretending to be authentic. His music is more than just bad:

It exhibits unearned contempt. Both a self-righteous contempt for others and the self-approbation and self-congratulation that is contempt's backside, so to speak. Most frequently a contempt for the supposed phoniness or inauthenticity of other people as opposed to the rock-solid authenticity of our B.J.

Lester Bangs, in his monumental piece on the Clash, wrote, "Joe Strummer is a fake. That only puts him up there with Dylan, Townshend, Jagger and most of the other great songwriters because almost all of them were fakes in one way or another." You probably know how I feel about Bangs, so you'll probably not be surprised when I say that I'm pretty sure Ron Rosenbaum is no Lester Bangs. And despite Rosenbaum's likely objection, let's throw Bruce Springsteen onto that list of legendary fakes as well. Because although his early work (let's say his first three albums) is supposedly very "street," it's also steeped in mythology, tall tales, and cinematic fantasy. When Springsteen got "real," around the time of Darkness on the Edge of Town, 97 percent of the joy also went out of his music, but the music is a lot more adult. (Not necessarily for the worse, although I'm partial to the earlier stuff.)

Also: Is it just me, or is the Billy Joel vs. Bruce Springsteen argument one of the biggest can't-like-both-of-'em cliches in pop music? Like Beatles/Stones or Lennon/McCartney? Rosenbaum is obviously pro-Springsteen, and pro-Dylan; every one of his arguments goes, "Billy Joel is inferior to x because," wherein "x" is equal to Dylan or Springsteen or the Band singing about Dylan and "because" precedes an example like this:

"She's Always a Woman": First, has there ever been a more blatant—or blatantly inept—case of attempted artistic theft than "She's Always a Woman"? It's such a lame imitation of Bob Dylan's "Just Like a Woman." (B.J.'s woman "hides like a child" where Dylan's "breaks just like a little girl.") B.J.'s woman also: is prone to "casual lies," "steals like a thief," "takes care of herself," and "carelessly cuts you and laughs ..." Poor B.J., recycling every misogynist cliché in the book.

Actually, there have been many much more blatant cases of "attempted artistic theft" than this example. (Like, cases that resulted in lawsuits and stuff.) In fact, I'd never thought of this comparison myself, or even heard it anywhere previously, which doesn't necessarily mean I'm an idiot, but it probably does mean Ron Rosenbaum thinks he's pretty damn clever. Moving on, though, the claim that Billy Joel is a misogynist is so old and stale that Rosenbaum should've been wiser than to hang so much of his "argument" on that particular hook. And how many of Bruce Christ's songs have "little girl" lyrics of their own? At least 31.

Anyway, I try really hard to be a with-the-grain sort of reader, to give most points of view the benefit of the doubt. Where Ron Rosenbaum fails, as far as I'm concerned, is in terms of his chosen targets, namely the songs you'll find on Billy Joel's hits collections. Allow me to make the rather cliched, predictable argument that you can't really judge Billy Joel's body of work - a phrase that I, unlike Rosenbaum, have no qualms with using - by his hits alone, that you really ought to look at the albums. (You can't blame someone who already hates Billy Joel for not wanting to spend more time with him than is absolutely necessary, but if your hatred of the artist is based on a hatred of his hits - and I suspect that's the case here - you're not really stretching your boundaries or questioning your beliefs by focusing on only the hits for your whiny article. The result is a boring, rote piece of writing that, nonetheless, somehow managed to provoke responses from at least a few Billy Joel apologists.)

I say that Rosenbaum and other haters ought to look deeper than the hits because, honestly, I think several of Billy Joel's albums are great. I wrote about The Stranger at length here (I also bring the Joel/Springsteen debate into new territory, regarding the packaging of 30th-Anniversary box sets for their classic albums; I'm a nerd), but I think Turnstiles, 52nd Street and, increasingly, The Nylon Curtain are just as worthy of esteem.

Turnstiles and 52nd Street, with The Stranger in between, comprise a sort of mid-to-late-'70s time-capsule trilogy, and in their own way mythologize New York just as Springsteen's first three records do New Jersey. Joel gets the short end of the critical stick, though, allegedly because his records sold and spawned hits. That assumption of success is a stretch in one case, and a weak argument against the other two, since big sales and artistic depth are not mutually exclusive. (See also: Springsteen, Bruce.) "Say Goodbye to Hollywood," the Phil Spector-aping leadoff track from Turnstiles, which was ironically covered almost immediately by Ronnie Spector with - guess who! - Bruce's own E Street Band, only hit #17, and Turnstiles didn't even make the Hot 100. After the mammoth success of The Stranger - which overtook Bridge Over Troubled Water as the best-selling album in Columbia Records history, and held that spot until Born in the U.S.A. (natch) surpassed it - 52nd Street seems to pale in comparison, including as it does only three hit singles. But those three ("Big Shot," "My Life" and "Honesty") are the first three tracks on the album, a good trick to keep you listening and probably make you say, "Hey, these other ones aren't bad, either." Because the other six songs are almost all minor masterpieces. If "Vienna" was the Little Composition That Could on The Stranger, "Zanzibar," "Rosalinda's Eyes," and especially "Until the Night" all vie for the title on 52nd Street. (Although there's nothing "little" about "Until the Night," another Phil Spector takeoff, this time a tribute to the Righteous Brothers and a true epic.)

Those three '70s albums have been my favorites since I was growing up, those and An Innocent Man. (My grandma frequently recalls how, when riding with my family to Minnesota in 1984, I sang "'The Longest Time' for the longest time." She does love wordplay.) Although I really liked The Nylon Curtain, too, and vividly remember driving through Pennsylvania some morning in, like, 1991 while listening to "Surprises" on repeat. (As you'll undoubtedly recall, this was tedious with a Walkman until you'd done it enough times to remember exactly when to stop rewinding.)

Anyway, The Nylon Curtain. I've been listening to that quite a bit over the last six months or so, and it's been one of those strange cases of nostalgia mixed with discovery. I knew all those songs backwards and forwards, and yet I'd never realized how much the whole record is like a tribute to the Beatles. (Weird that I hadn't noticed this, since the Beatles were Billy Joel's only competition when I was kid.) But listen to "Laura" and "Sexy Sadie" back to back, or "A Room of Our Own" and "She's a Woman," or "Scandinavian Skies" and "Strawberry Fields Forever," and you'll see what I mean. And again, those big hits at the beginning of the record - in this case "Allentown," "Pressure" and "Goodnight Saigon" - wind up being almost minor pieces in larger scheme. It's nice to be reassured that some art never gets old, and that some old art can even become newer.

August Brown's attempt to knock Ron Rosenbaum off his soapbox seems somewhat half-assed to me, but where I agree with him wholeheartedly is that the timing of "The Worst Pop Singer Ever" begs the question, "Why?"

Joel doesn't have a new album, his tour with Elton John doesn't start until March, and he hasn't otherwise been in the news lately. So the rationale for this essay has a faint, manic whiff of boomer self-loathing to it, a kind of reverse "you-kids-get-off-my-lawn" sentiment. Timely or not, this cow isn't even sacred. If Rosenbaum really wanted to take down an icon of Dad Rock, we hear Bruce has a new album and a little club show planned in the near future.

There's that Bruce Springsteen again! (He also gets a lot of attention from the New York Times today.) But Bruce isn't the point. The point is that no one stands up and says, "Hey, I like Billy Joel, I like him unironically, and I'm not the least bit embarrassed about it." Maybe because the guy hasn't put out a new pop album since 1993 and it would be almost as big a head-scratcher to see an essay like "The Best Pop Singer Ever" appear in Slate for no apparent reason.

Billy Joel should write some new songs and put out a record, if only to allow some brave soul to applaud the virtues of his music in a timely fashion. Not that I expect a lot of critics to line up to put their heads on that particular guillotine, but one can always hope.

Heroes are hard to find

I am not pleased with Portland Mayor Sam Adams. He's been in office for all of 17 days, and already there's a shitstorm because he apparently had a sexual relationship with an 18-year-old staffer several years ago. Naturally he had previously denied their relationship was sexual, and had the nerve to say this in 2007:

This is one of the worst smears you can make against a gay guy. It preys on the homophobic stereotype that gay men cannot be trusted with young people.

If the improbably-named Beau Breedlove was in fact 18 at the time, Adams had no reason to worry about the legal ramifications of his actions and should have owned up to them when first confronted. But I don't think the legality of his actions was what was troubling him. I think he knew he had made a major ethical error, and more importantly, he probably figured the citizens of Portland would think so, too. Using your power for personal gain doesn't usually sit well with the electorate, and it doesn't win elections.

But Sam Adams is a politician, and being a politician generally means being blessed with an oversized ego and a feeling of impunity. So he made the rather hubristic decision to not only deny the allegations against him, but also to speak as though he was being targeted solely out of homophobic prejudice, as though all gay males were being put on trial and he was going to defend us by defending himself. It would have been a noble act, to stand up and say, "This is a stereotype, and it's wrong to perpetuate it." But only if he were, in fact, telling the truth. Since he wasn't, he winds up looking a lot less like a maligned minority and a lot more like just another privileged power-holder.

Among the many reasons I was excited to move to Portland was the fact that the city was poised to become the largest U.S. city with an openly gay mayor. Now, less than three weeks into Adams' term, and despite the fact that I just moved here and haven't exactly been following this story because I simply didn't know it existed, I couldn't be more disappointed.

This pathetic tale is especially disheartening when you consider its timing. Barack Obama took the presidential oath of office a few hours ago, and a Harvey Milk biopic has been racking up all kinds of awards and nominations. Sam Adams, whose victory excited and gave hope to a lot of gay folks, and who is in a unique position to represent our community, is already tainted.

I saw Milk on New Year's Day and, despite the period detail and a number of strong-enough performances, never really stopped feeling like I was watching a movie. Of course the story itself is amazing (although The Times of Harvey Milk told it better), but the only time I was genuinely moved was the result of something that wasn't even onscreen. There was an older couple, probably in their 70s, sitting two seats to my left. Toward the end of the film, during the candlelight procession after Milk's murder, I heard a noise, looked over, and the old man was crying; I could see the tears running down his face. The film never quite got there. It did leave me with a vague sense of responsibility to make a difference (or something), but it never seemed real. It was always just a movie, because Sean Penn is not Harvey Milk, and because it strikes me as tawdry to turn a violent murder into a slow-motion, artsy-fartsy ploy to tug at the emotions of an audience.

With the furor over Proposition 8 and other bigotry-driven election results, the resurgence of interest in Harvey Milk, and the election of our first black president - not to mention the fact that there's always a lot of mythology and symbolism that goes into practically everything in America - Adams' election was a powerful symbol for gays, and he should've been sufficiently aware of his own potential symbolic value to come clean ages ago. Instead, like so many of our leaders, he was full of himself, and we might be seeing his undoing. And then we'll have to pick up the pieces and start over.

The relaunch

Welcome back. Maybe you noticed that I haven't posted in well over a month. Believe me, I've been fully aware. But I've had some misgivings about the blog, some concerns related to content, readership and purpose. While I was mulling those over, I didn't have any reason to update.

I think I'm over it now, though, and 2009 brings with it a slightly more focused approach to the blog. In an effort to make things a little more substantial around here, I'm only going to be posting a few times a week, aiming for a Sunday-Tuesday-Thursday sort of schedule (which I'll most assuredly break regularly). But these new posts will be longer, more thoughtful, and hopefully just better all around. The subject matter won't change, necessarily; I just intend to dig a little deeper from now on.

In light of my new commitment to this blog, and as a matter of housekeeping, I've redesigned things a bit, and there will probably be some more changes in the next few days. I like the picture at the top of the page, although I wish it were just a bit smaller. I've also updated my links to include much of what I read on a regular basis. Finally, I intend to slowly recategorize my older posts, which I've wanted to do for some time.

That's all for now. Just wanted to let you know I'm back in business, and I look forward to keeping you abreast of my brain activity. Keep an eye out for something in the next couple days.

Perhaps his sleigh broke down

We finally left Cheyenne this morning, after spending three nights there. Stupid crazy wind forced the powers that be to close I-80 between Cheyenne and Laramie, so we couldn't leave on Friday. The wind was still nutso today, but the road wasn't closed, so we left at 7am. It took almost two hours to get past Laramie, which is only about 50 miles west of Cheyenne. We didn't make it into Twin Falls, Idaho, until a little after 7 this evening. So it was a long day.

But it was also a gorgeous day to be driving through southern Wyoming, northern Utah, and southern Idaho. I'll post some pictures later on - we took a couple hundred of them today - but I just have to share this one now, because it's absolutely amazing. I took this, from the truck, driving down the interstate, somewhere in Wyoming:


My brother was all like, "Hey! There's people riding horses! Wait... what the...?" I grabbed the camera just in time to snap three shots of Santa Claus horseback riding with his cowboy friend! And less than three weeks before Christmas!

Never kick a fresh turd on a hot day.

So said the plaque directly above our booth at the Crossroads Cafe, aka my new favorite place in Cheyenne, Wyoming. When I asked for the country omelet sans bacon, and rejected the offer of ham or sausage as a substitute, our waitress offered to have them make me a special veggie omelet. Yay! My brother and I just got back from breakfast at said establishment; we also ate dinner there last night, and are already planning a similar adventure at dinnertime tonight. Hey, it's 0.13 miles from our motel, and we can walk there in, like, seven minutes. (Obviously, such a short trek would ordinarily take much less time. But there isn't ordinarily five inches of snow to contend with.)

So, yeah, we're kinda stuck in Wyoming at the moment. We had glanced at the forecast Wednesday morning, and knew that there was supposed to be a snowstorm hitting around 7pm, so our goal was to reach Cheyenne ahead of it. We were about 40 miles outside the city when the snow started, and by the time we reached our motel, the roads were getting much worse. It was fortunate that the Buffalo Bill Cody home and ranch museum place in North Platte, Nebraska, where we had stopped earlier in the day, turned out to be closed for the season. Otherwise our travel tale mightn't have such a happy ending.

Nebraska wound up being a lot more interesting than we'd anticipated, and it was certainly better than driving across Kansas. We stopped in Kearney to make wee, which turned into eating lunch, and finally into a one-hour walk around the Museum of Nebraska Art. I didn't expect much from the museum, but it wound up having some really cool stuff. I really liked this painting by Dale Nichols, even if it is untitled:


Anyway, parts of Nebraska were really pretty, and I tried to take a lot of pictures from the truck. Some of them turned out nice, like this one of a train:


So we're trying to figure out how to approach the rest of the trip at this point. I'd still really like to make it Portland on Saturday, but I'm not sure how feasible that would be. We still have about 1200 miles to go, which would make for a couple of very long days. I kinda just want to be there now.

I replay the past

Hey hey! Remember me? Does anyone still read this? What a lazy blogging month. I'm sorry. But, well, I've been really busy. Lots of work, lots of weekend trips, and now, lots of getting ready to move. Which, in case you weren't keeping track or had just plain forgotten, is happening on Tuesday. So much to do in the meantime.

As I mentioned earlier, my mom has been pestering me for months about four boxes of my old crap that surely must contain the last vestiges of my having ever lived in this house. Naturally, she wants it all gone. So I've been going through their contents off and on for the past couple of weeks. Among the treasure trove:

- My old Illustrated Classics! All 17 of 'em! This is actually really exciting, because I was wondering where they'd disappeared to.
- A big 3-D postcard of The Last Supper. Framed.
- An Official Major League Baseball 1993 All-Star Ballot. A drawing of a black, Mo Vaughn-esque slugger is on the front. Oh wait. I have six of them.
- The owner's manual for my alarm clock.
- A white ribbon (Third Place!) from the 1990 science fair. My project name was "Growing Mold." I believe this was the high point of my science career.
- A story book I wrote on Feb. 7, 1988, featuring the following line from Chapter 4: "One prisonor was ill and he Died. Thay made him Into a mummiei."
- 4,547 postcards.

"The Calculus Song"

Here's an artifact from my junior year of high school, to be sung to the tune of "This Land Is Your Land":

chorus:
This class is your class, this class is my class
We will all struggle, and yet we won't pass
No chance of using, nor understanding
Calculus was never made for me

verses:
When Mr. Kelemen collects our homework
He knows no doubt that we have done no work
Our answered quizzes are not what his is*
Calculus was never made for me

We've learned of Newton, that student fooler
We've learned of Riemann, Descartes and Euler
We've learned of Cauchy and Archimedes
Calculus was never made for me

For all our troubles, mistakes and blunders
As consolation some are odd-numbered**
Back tests he's passing, our teeth are gnashing
Calculus was never made for me

It's nice to know that with all our knowledge
Still one more year we will take in college
We took the big step, it was a misstep
Calculus was never made for me

*Original line: "We fail the testing, we fail the quizzes." I have to say I like the rewrite better.
**I believe this is a reference to the days when we were offered the respite of doing only the odd-numbered problems for homework. (Thank me later, literary critics and biographers. I'm doing your work for you.)

15 Days

The last four weekends have proceeded as follows: Portland, wedding, Chicago, Kirksville. The Portland and Chicago trips were actually long weekends, and the weeks in between have been packed solid with work. This week was supposed to be a little easier; I got back from Kirksville last night, I'm staying in St. Louis all of this coming weekend, and I wasn't scheduled to work Tuesday, Thursday or Friday. But I picked up an eight-hour shift on Thursday, my dad's birthday is Tuesday, and Friday is gonna be karaoke night with some friends from college. Bye bye, night life.

I wouldn't really care, except that basically all of my friends work daytime jobs and have to get up relatively early, and nine out of ten of my shifts are closing shifts. And I really, really want to see all of my St. Louis friends before I split for Portland, which, lest you think I'm not watching my calendar, is two weeks from tomorrow. Throw Thanksgiving into the mix and time with friends is gonna be hard to come by. I'm already getting stressed about it, not to mention very unhappy.

So, for the next two weeks, here's my agenda:

- Repack all of my stuff. Much of it I'd intended to go through, purge, and reorganize. (My mom has also been hounding me about several boxes of things that have been stored here for years, and I'd planned to get to those this week. We'll see.)

- Finish ripping my CDs to my hard drive - I'm up to the letter "T"! But I still have to get rid of a bunch of them.

- Determine how much more cold-weather clothing I have to get. I picked up a few more shirts on Friday, on a whim, but I could probably use a couple more sweaters. And I desperately need some sort of rain-resistant jacket. Stupid rain.

- Apply for six million jobs, and maybe even get one, which I realize may be expecting too much.

- Work a lot, and play a lot.

- Figure out how much money I actually have, and hope that gas keeps being half the price it was when I moved this summer.

That's probably not all, but I can't think of anything else right now. And to my credit, my brother and I have already planned our travel route and secured lodging for the four nights we'll be on the road. We're stopping in Lincoln, Cheyenne, Salt Lake City, and Boise, and driving 350-450 miles per day. Not too bad.

I should probably add "Not waste too much time blogging" to my list of things to do, but judging by the sporadic posting schedule I've achieved thus far, this shouldn't be an issue.

Mitch Mitchell (1947-2008)

Sometimes I think I should just start a weblog about dead musicians, because I sure love to post about 'em. This one struck me, though, because although Mitch Mitchell was very well-known, it was mostly due to who he played with. The reason it's interesting, I guess, is that when you're Jimi Hendrix's drummer, you're simultaneously known by what instrument you play and no one pays attention to you because, well, because you're Jimi Hendrix's drummer.

I went through a big Hendrix phase in, like, 8th grade. A friend made a tape for me, and it turned out to mostly be stuff from Are You Experienced?, which is really the only album of his that I've always liked. My dad and I actually talked about Hendrix a couple months ago, and how Hendrix was one of the dead rock stars my dad would most like to have seen live. I really don't know what he's talking about, because he's actually come to this conclusion based on listening to Hendrix's live records, more so than from watching footage of the guy. I mean, talk about having zero self-control on stage, and not in a good way. All that noodling and "jamming" and just generally being boring. The exception has to be the Monterey Pop Festival set, but pretty much all the other footage I've seen of Hendrix does nothing for me.

See what I mean? Start talking about Jimi Hendrix's drummer (whose name was Mitch Mitchell, lest we forget) and you wind up inevitably talking about Hendrix himself. And maybe that's okay, to a point. I mean, the guy made some great records. I'm all about the early stuff (even if that very phrase makes me sound like a douche), and "The Wind Cries Mary" must be one of my favorite songs in the history of the universe. But what about Mitch Mitchell, the drummer, who died on Wednesday in Portland, of all places? What did he ever do?

I'm not gonna listen to the whole Hendrix discography to make a point, for reasons that should be evident by now. But I did ask myself the question, "What song seems like it would be a good song for the drummer?" It would have to be a song with momentum, I guess, but also a song where Hendrix doesn't get excessively flashy. And "Hey Joe" was the first song that came to mind. So I'll point you to this fantastic video of the Jimi Hendrix Experience performing "Hey Joe" on some TV show or something. It's a good video in that the camera isn't solely on Hendrix, and we actually get to see Mitch Mitchell quite a bit. It's also a good video in that it illustrates what Mitchell brought to "Hey Joe," which was the JHE's debut single. (An interesting choice, since it's a wonderfully understated Hendrix performance - teeth guitar in the video notwithstanding - but an absolute tour-de-force for the drummer.) Just watch Mitchell throughout the video, and particularly around the two-minute mark. More importantly, listen, for once, to the drums. They're doing a lot more than keeping the beat.

Bob Dylan - "This Land Is Your Land"

Recorded in 1961, on November 4, of all days. It haunted me when I heard it for the first time. And listening to it this morning had the effect that everything I've taken in today has had. I started bawling.

What's the matter with Missouri?

So I'm on the Missouri Secretary of State's website, looking at the election results (as they currently stand, of course, because Missouri is always one of the last states to finish counting), and Senator John McCain leads President-Elect Barack Obama by 413 votes, with 99% of the precincts reporting. But that's 25 precincts still counting, and...

Well, fuck. I just refreshed the page, and now McCain's got a couple thousand votes on Obama. Poop. Obama took nearly 60 percent of the vote in St. Louis County, though, and almost 84 percent of St. Louis City.

In St. Charles County, aka evangelical Christian suburban hell, McCain beat Obama by 10 percentage points. And the other parts of the state that aren't Jeff City, Columbia, or Kansas City pretty much followed suit.

At least that miserable cretin Kenny Hulshof was trounced by Jay Nixon in the governor's race, and Mike Gibbons (whose face is almost as ugly as his policies) failed to become the attorney general. But I'm really discouraged by the overwhelming passage of the English-as-official-language-of-government-business constitutional amendment (86 to 14?!?) and the defeat (51 to 48) of Proposition M, which would've created a half-cent sales tax increase in St. Louis County to fund the Metro transit system. As my mother said earlier tonight, St. Louis will never become a city that people want to come to unless it has stronger public transportation.

But there will be plenty of time to mull over what happened today. Right now, I'm gonna go to bed as a happy guy who finally helped pick the President of the United States, even if he's still never voted in a blue state. (Soon enough, though!)

Voting

I got up relatively early today and walked with my mom to vote for Barack Obama and roughly 883 Missouri judges. The wait was only about 45 minutes, but my dad waited an hour and a half earlier in the morning, and a lot of people showed up while we were in line. So I'm pretty sure we lucked out. But whatever. I'd have standed in line as long as I needed to.

Unexpectedly, I was faced with a choice of ballot type. I could use either a touchscreen or fill out a paper "opti-scan" ballot. Since I didn't know what the latter meant, I went with the touchscreen, and I was delighted to see that the machine also created a paper trail. (Of course, the part of me that hates wasting paper was less delighted than the part of me that wants my votes to be clear and obvious. Sigh.) My mother chose the opti-scan paper ballot thingy, and afterwards, she was complaining that the public could see her ballot while she walked it from the booth to turn it in. How absurd. This is why I didn't have any real knowledge of politics growing up. My parents never divulged their voting information. It may have helped me make my own decisions, I guess, but I'm pretty sure it's unhealthy to have zero discussion of politics within a household.

But I digress. Naturally, there were a lot of things on the ballot that I don't particularly care about, as I'm moving in four weeks and they won't really affect me. But there was a proposed constitutional amendment that I was more than happy to vote against:

Shall the Missouri Constitution be amended to add a statement that English shall be the language of all governmental meetings at which any public business is discussed, decided, or public policy is formulated whether conducted in person or by communication equipment including conference calls, video conferences, or Internet chat or message board?

It is estimated this proposal will have no costs or savings to state or local governmental entities.

That shit just makes me angry, no matter where it takes place. And I don't even speak any of those other languages! I mean, really? Like government meetings aren't already conducted in English? What a bunch of xenophobic assholes. Hopefully after today, there will be a little less of that nonsense going around.

On a final note, I am none too pleased that I have to work this evening. I'd rather be watching how this election plays out.

Unusual surname leads to strange coincidence

Since I didn't have to work today, and since I'm always up for making a little cash, I took some stuff to Euclid Records. Only thing is, I didn't make it outta there with any cash, since I decided to treat myself to the option of $55 in store credit.

I picked up Bob Dylan: The Early Years, the Craig McGregor-edited anthology of several dozen '60s pieces on Mr. Zimmerman; Hank Williams' Original Singles Collection; and four bits of vinyl: Dylan's Dylan, Costello's King of America, the Mamas and the Papas' Farewell to the First Golden Era, and Emmylou Harris' Pieces of the Sky. Not a bad haul, and it killed a lot of time this afternoon.

But the weird thing was that, when I was perusing some Elton John records, I noticed my uncle's name scrawled on a couple of the sleeves. I almost bought Tumbleweed Connection, but then decided against it for some reason. Now I'm reconsidering, because it would be kind of cool to own the vinyl from which I dubbed a cassette some 15 years ago. Paying for it just feels wrong, though.

What a fantastic long weekend I just had!

I spent four full days and smidgens of two others in the city that, five short weeks from now, I'll be calling home. I'd never been to Portland, and although I did the move-to-a-city-without-visiting-first thing once before, I'm really glad I got to go check the place out. Because let's face it, I had no clue what I was getting into when I moved to Austin, and I think that wound up hindering me in a lot of ways. It was a long time before I started getting out and exploring, and it even took me an abnormally long time to make friends. Not that Austin didn't work out, of course, at least in some ways.

Portland is obviously going to be different, as I'll arrive and already know a few people. But just getting a feel for the city over the weekend is making it a lot more real, and more importantly, making me a whole lot more excited. Not that I wasn't extremely anxious and excited to begin with, but wow - as it turns out, I really, really like the place. A few things I especially enjoyed:

- Ryan said that Portland is very pedestrian-friendly, to the point that drivers will actually stop their vehicles to let you cross. And he was right. It was almost surreal. After all of my prior experiences, this'll take some getting used to, but it's good news for someone like me who will spend a lot of time on foot.

- Powell's. Jesus fucking lord of the manor. We went to the main branch downtown on Friday, and I was impressed, and by that I mean that I have no idea how I escaped without spending any money. Talk about self-control. I didn't make it out of the Hawthorne branch so easily, as I snagged Willa Cather's Youth and the Bright Medusa for $3.95. I could resist neither the title nor the contents of the book. (It's a collection of short stories.)

- The weather was insanely kind. Not a drop of rain or even a cloudy day, but lots of sun and temperatures in the 60s. So naturally we spent a lot of time outdoors. We wandered around the neighborhood and downtown quite a bit, and hit the International Rose Test Garden, Laurelhurst Park, Mt. Hood National Forest, Bagby Hot Springs, and Hoyt Arboretum. My legs are doing okay, but my torso is quite sore.

- I saw a number of very cute apartments close to Ryan and Collier's place, and I'm kind of in love with the neighborhood. I feel a lot more excited about finding a place to live. (If only I could get similarly excited about finding a job. Sadly, we know how that's gone this year. Ugh.) There were also a lot of international restaurants nearby. Yum!

- And then there was the stuff that I loved that had nothing to do with the city itself, but everything to do with the company I was in. Little things that I've missed this fall, like leisurely breakfasts, and hugs for no reason, and kittens, and wine before bed, and being really fucking happy.

Hardly working

I was initially pretty disappointed by how often I've been scheduled at the registers at work. You know, couldn't I be better used somewhere else? Anyone can run the register.

While I still think I'm pretty great at everything that requires some skill, I've also come to enjoy being stuck at the boring cash registers for the last two hours of the evening. Why? Because there's no one shopping. Well, practically no one. So I get to read magazines. Like tonight, I read the New Yorker story about how Sarah Palin came to be the Republican vice-presidential nominee. Monday and Tuesday, it was a long piece about David Foster Wallace in Rolling Stone (there's an excerpt here, but you should really pick up the magazine and read the full story). And a couple weeks ago, there was a two- or three-page article/interview thingy with Teddy Thompson in MOJO, which I can't find anywhere online. There have certainly been some others, but I can't remember them. I'll try to be better about that in the future.

For the next six days, however, I won't be working at all. I'll be doing the exact opposite: not sitting around doing nothing, but playing! I'm hopping - or skipping, very likely literally skipping - onto an airplane early Thursday afternoon for a long weekend in Portland! I've been looking forward to this for weeks. Watch for pictures in the near future!

Levi Stubbs (1936-2008)

Isaac Hayes, Jerry Wexler, Norman Whitfield, and now Levi Stubbs. What a sad year for '60s soul fans.

My favorite Four Tops song, easily, is "Ask the Lonely." I think it's just one of the saddest songs ever. Here's a version that somehow chops out a bunch of the middle of the song, but it's also not a lip-sync, which counts for something in my book.

"She hasn't met me yet."

I was awakened this morning to a phone call from an unrecognized number. The subsequent voicemail revealed it to be from someone at my former car insurance company, "regarding the accident of June 6."

Huh.

So I called the lady back, somewhat intrigued because it wasn't someone I'd previously spoken with. Turns out the guy who'd been working with my case - "working" is used here very liberally - is no longer with the company, and this lady is only there for a few weeks trying to wrap up all of his casework. She was calling because the driver of the vehicle two cars ahead of me wanted to - get this - know the limits of my policy.

Huh?

She said that they'd already made him an offer regarding his injuries, but he wanted more, and she couldn't provide him information about my policy without my consent. (Mind you, his huge pickup truck had a dinged bumper.) I asked if I was required to allow her to do this, and she was like, "Not at all, and there's no reason for you to. I don't think the injuries he's claiming fit with the damage to his vehicle."

Huh!

So naturally, I declined to release my policy info to this joker. Then I asked about the woman from the vehicle directly in front of me, knowing that she was sort of ridiculous and I don't trust her. Apparently she's hired a lawyer. I said, "Yeah, I figured she'd be a lot of fun."

And then the insurance lady says, "Well, she hasn't met me yet. I've been doing this for 21 years and I know what I'm doing."

Ha!

Needless to say, I thought this car accident stuff was all behind me. But it's nice to know I have someone who sounds willing, possibly excited, to fight on my behalf. She's also pretty hilarious. I'm kind of excited to hear from her again.

The Bob Binge

I've spent almost my entire day writing my review of Tell Tale Signs, which I'd hoped to finish by Monday, but the weekend was really fun and busy, and this week has been stressful. Having this finished certainly helps, but now there's a host of other crap to start worrying about.


But let's not talk about that right now. Let's talk about Bob Dylan. Because sweet Jesus, Tell Tale Signs is great. What's even better is that, today, I finally made a Bob Dylan playlist with the 1,703 Dylan songs currently on my iTunes. (There's more to add, as I remember I have some more CDRs. I can't imagine it'll push the total over 2,000, but I'll cross my fingers!) That's over five days' worth of music. I love it. And for the past five hours I've had it on shuffle, and haven't felt the urge to skip anything. Let's look at the first ten songs iTunes picked, just for fun:

1. "One More Cup of Coffee (Valley Below)" from At Budokan (1978)
2. "Sweet Amarillo" from Pecos Blues (bootleg, 1973)
3. "Dark as a Dungeon" from Marysville 6-21-00 (bootleg, 2000)
4. "James Alley Blues" from The Minnesota Tapes (bootleg, 1961)
5. "Masters of War" from Angels on His Wing (bootleg, 1999)
6. "Song to Woody" from Yesterday (bootleg, 1970)
7. "To Ramona" from 1961-2000: Thirty-Nine Years of Great Concert Performances (2001)
8. "Freeze Out" from The Genuine Bootleg Series Vol. 2 (bootleg, 1965)
9. "Clothesline Saga" from A Tree With Roots (bootleg, 1967)
10. "Talkin' World War III Blues" from Live 1964: Concert at Philharmonic Hall (2004)

Lots of live stuff, and nothing from an official studio album. In fact, of the more than 50 songs I've listened to today, only seven of them are from proper studio albums. I'm actually kind of surprised by this ratio. But I'm glad iTunes is supporting my bootleg habit.

I've also been looking at how many versions I have of certain songs. It's fascinating. Let's look at a classic album like, I dunno, Highway 61 Revisited:

"Like a Rolling Stone" - 24
"Tombstone Blues" - 12
"It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry" -7
"From a Buick 6" - 4
"Ballad of a Thin Man" - 13
"Queen Jane Approximately" - 2
"Highway 61 Revisited" - 11
"Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues" - 11
"Desolation Row" - 12

Or how about a not-so-classic album, like Shot of Love:

"Shot of Love" - 4
"Heart of Mine" - 4
"Property of Jesus" - 1
"Lenny Bruce" - 2
"Watered-Down Love" - 3
"The Groom's Still Waiting at the Altar" - 4
"Dead Man, Dead Man" - 2
"In the Summertime" - 2
"Trouble" - 1
"Every Grain of Sand" - 5

I can assure you that having three unique versions of "Watered-Down Love" does not enhance my life in any way whatsoever. And one of "Property of Jesus" seems like too many.

Now, I should also point out that this isn't the Ultimate Bob Dylan Playlist, which I'll make eventually. That'll be everything in the order in which it was recorded.

If someone would pay me to do this shit, I'd be in heaven.

Palin as President

This is really, really funny. Play with your mouse, click on whatever you can, and laugh. Because it's hilarious.

The elephants are kindly, but they're dumb

I just got home from a little trip to the St. Louis Zoo, and I must say it's very different than it used to be. I hadn't been there in seven or eight years, and they've done a lot of renovating since then. The penguins, for example, used to be in the aquarium area, wandering around on an "icy" landscape, and you viewed them through glass. Now some of them are outdoors while the weather permits, swimming and hopping around. The rest are indoors in the new Penguin Cove:

From here the path leads indoors to two spacious domed exhibits, complete with rugged coastlines, towering rockscapes and underwater viewing of lively penguins. At Penguin Cove, the first walk-through sub-Antarctic penguin exhibit in North America, you will take a journey through high coastal cliffs, like those of the island of South Georgia, to watch penguins on land and underwater.

It's very, very cool. The chimps, too, have a new seasonal home outdoors in the Chimpanzee Refuge. The zoo website has some information about what I called the "snack machines":

Imbedded within the craggy walls of their habitat are 30 feeding tubes, designed to make life interesting. To vary the chimpanzees' daily diet, the keepers drop some of their food items into the food chutes, but not every tube is used every day, and times of the day vary. The chimpanzees need to figure this out. Some of the openings at the bottom of the chutes are varied from day to day as well - some wide enough for a hairy finger (none are hand size) and some so narrow that the chimpanzees will need "tools" to fish out their favorite foods.

My favorite animals, though, were the hippos. I actually don't think the zoo even had hippos back in the day, because I feel like I would've remembered them. They were fucking awesome. We even got to see one make a poop, which provides food for the fishes that share the space. For massive, multi-ton creatures, hippos are surprisingly graceful. Just like in the cartoons:



We also got to hear one bellow, which was pretty cool, and very loud. Dave said that the last time he'd seen them, one of the hippos stood up and had its head over the edge of the glass barrier between his hippo pool and the human spectators, and that he was gnawing at a nearby rope. It apparently frightened a bunch of parents and kids, which I think is hilarious.