Friday songs: "Johnny 99" by Bruce Springsteen

     I was never all that big on Nebraska as a kid. Despite being spoon-fed Springsteen with my Gerber, it was an album that rarely left the shelf. My dad was never a big fan [1]. and it just wasn't for me. The record, conveyed beautifully by the album cover, was so cold and stark. There were no harmonies, no anthems. No Big Man. Just a guy and his guitar. Mostly, I think I just found it depressing.

      Later, when I became old enough to search out music that didn't make me want to shout along to or dance around like a spaz, I rediscovered Nebraska and it had a much greater impact on me. Springsteen channeling Suicide, stripping the songs of their instrumentation and forcing you to pay attention to the lyrics, which were less wry and stripped of their swagger [2]. The characters lost their cute names but kept their hardscrabble lives. The tales became bleaker. The back-alley salvations turned to the chronicling of American promise dying on the vine. I think for years it was my go to album for porch wine [3].

      The song that stood out to me almost immediately, though, is "Johnny 99." for one thing, it's probably the closest thing to a rock song on the album. It has a shuffling beat that damn near borders on rockabilly [4] , and he starts it (after a weird little studio hiccup) with a falsetto Orbison yowl before launching into the lyrics:

Well they closed down the auto plant in Mahwah late last month

      Right out of a gate, this is a Springsteen song. Referencing New Jersey, cars, and the oxidation of America's blue collar middle class. 

Ralph went out lookin' for a job but he couldn't find none 

He came home too drunk from mixin' Tanqueray and wine

     There's something about this detail that just kills me. I can't even tell if it's good songwriting or just weirdness, not even counting that who in their right mind would mix those things?

He got a gun shot a night clerk now they call 'm Johnny 99

     I still don't get where the 99 part comes in. Is he called Johnny 99 because that's what the judge sentences him to later in the song, or is it vice versa? Both Springsteen's timeline and phrasing in this song are amazing and sort of an anomaly. I can't think of another one from this era where he works so hard to make the words fit. That line is also the entirety of the attention paid to the initial crime in this song. Such a weird pace.

     It's also worth noting that Springsteen refers to Ralph as "Jawnny" throughout the song while the judge is clearly pronounced "mean John Brown." I don't know if this is some sort of commentary or class indication, but I never felt like it was an accident. But maybe it's just the nascent stages of Bruce's weird dust bowl accent that began manifesting itself around this time.

Down in the part of town where when you hit a red light you don't stop

     Despite almost never doing it, I'm a big fan of karaoke. I love to sing and I have no problem listening to a  song 200 times until I can sing it without prompts [5]. But this song has probably given me more trouble than anything else of Springsteen's. The phrasing is so stilted and difficult to get out that it turns into something of a challenge. It's a great image, mind you, but the phrasing always kills me.

     This line is where my singing goes starts to go off the rails every time. There's a few other lines that just trip me up even more, but this is where it always begins.

Johnny's wavin' his gun around and threatenin' to blow his top
When an off-duty cop snuck up on him from behind
Out in front of the Club Tip-Top they slapped the cuffs on Johnny 99

     Again, it's the details here. It's about naming the streets, it's about which dive bar in the shitty part of town was Ralph arrested in front of.  Also, the Club Tip-Top is is both a plausible and sort of quaint name for a place people get shot in front of.

Well the city supplied a public defender but the judge was Mean John Brown
He came into the courtroom and stared poor Johnny down
Well the evidence is clear gonna let the sentence son fit the crime

     It's here that he picks up the curious practice of having one character address the other one in the middle of a sentence. Sometimes, this can be completely organic [6] within a conversation, but here the "son" is in such an unusual place that I'm baffled by the songwriting process. It's almost impossible to have it as "sentence is clear son sentence gonna", but "Well son the evidence is clear" works. As does dropping the "son" altogether. Springsteen must've felt pretty strongly about having it in there, but it seems like a lot of tortuous re-working just to add some folksy syntax to the song. 

Prison for 98 and a year and we'll call it even Johnny 99

     It's here that the harmonica solo that comes in. As the only instrument in this song aside from the guitar, it's quite prominent but like most of Bruce's harmonica playing, it's unusual. His harmonica style is makes prominent use of the sort of twangy note-bending [7]. , so much so that the rest of the notes mostly just feel like setup for them. In all. it sounds slightly off until every 8 notes or so when he drops in a note that ties the whole thing together like a rug. Also, how is 99 "even"? Compared to 98.4 I guess?

A fistfight broke out in the courtroom they had to drag Johnny's girl away
His mama stood up and shouted "judge don't take my boy this way"
"Well son you got a statement you'd like to make
Before the bailiff comes to forever take you away"

     The sense of chaos that Springsteen conveys here is amazing. It just needs someone fainting and maybe the clerk's family cheering. By now the title character is no longer an unstable murderer, but a "poor" guy whose live is on the line. The narrator at this point is at least sympathetic to Ralph if he already hadn't been the whole time.

"Now judge I got debts no honest man could pay

     A line from "Atlantic City" makes an appearance. It's a good line and I could see why he'd want to get the most out of it. But it's also such a conspicuously good line that there's no chance that even a casual listener would miss it.

The bank was holdin' my mortgage and they was takin' my house away
Now I ain't sayin' that makes me an innocent man
But it was more 'n all this that put that gun in my hand"

     ...and now we're at the meat of the song. I'd bet that Springsteen started with this concept and worked backwards to write the rest of it.

"Well your honor I do believe I'd be better off dead
And if you can take a man's life for the thoughts that's in his head
Then won't you sit back in that chair and think it over judge one more time

     This line right here has killed probably every single attempt I've ever made at singing this song. It is so weird and stilted and I can't even imagine speaking like that let alone singing [8].  "Think it over judge one more time" sort of makes sense when spoken, but singing it is just brutal.

And let 'em shave off my hair and put me on that execution line"

     and then such a downturn at the end. This is nothing unusual for this album, and at best Springsteen's songs have a "life is fine at least until I go to bed tonight" sort of ending. But this one is just straight up a plea for death. It's practically Eminemian. 

     The rest of the song is just an outro, as Bruce strums as forcefully as he can within the confines of the song and yelps over the chords. Those yelps are almost feral, like they had a bobcat wrestling a dog or something in the studio next to him while he's singing. They're ferocious and muted and close down the song in such a beautiful way you almost forget about the end of the story he just told.

 
[1] My dad's primary interests in Springsteen involved jogging and/or dancing. It should not be a surprise that this album didn't appeal to him, nor did The Ghost of Tom Joad 13 years later, although by that point, I was coming around on it. Once, in high school, I was cutting class and I remember hearing Pierre Robert on WMMR announce that they'd be playing a rare early Springsteen set later in the day. I immediately decided to cut the rest of day and go home so that I could record it. I sat there glued to my old box (is that a term that will ever be even usable again?) waiting for them to play, and when they finally did, i was treated to a set from April 4, 1974 at the Main Point in Bryn Mawr, PA. I remember presenting this tape to him like I'd narrowly escaped a Mayan temple with it (of course omitting that I'd spent a day cutting school to get it). He was grateful, but never really listened to it much, despite it containing maybe the greatest versions of "Wild Billy's Circus Story", "Tokyo" and "Thundercrack" ever committed to tape. I've since found it 5 or 6 times over, but I'd love to have that original tape again. For all I know it might still be in a box in my mom's attic, slowly succumbing to the humidity of Maryland summers. Note: This story has nothing to do with anything. I think I might've already told it here years ago, too.↩

[2]The irony of course is that these sessions produced the most misunderstood lyrics in Springsteen's catalogue, and maybe rock music in general.↩

[3] Porch wine dates back to Pittsburgh, maybe? More or less a more intimate version of stoop drinking. Porch wine songs are usually accoustic and rarely swing. Neil Young and Will Oldham have some pretty great porch wine songs. Iron & Wine, however, is way too sleepy. It's a fine line.↩

[4] Despite my liking almost every adjacent musical genre, rockabilly still bores the shit out of me. I think I blame the dumb 90s revival for this. I realize the ↩

[5] Much of this probably stems from my only experience ever singing in front of a live band and I forgot like 2/3 of the words to the song. NEVER AGAIN, I cried!↩

[6] As it is later in the song when Ralph says "Now judge I got debts...↩

  [7] It's almost sort of punk rock, Bruce's harmonica style. He knows just enough to get by and he relies on that twang so much you'd think it'd get old after 2 songs. But between this song, "Thunder Road", and "The Promised Land" alone, he's gotten way more mileage out of that thing than you would've thought possible. ↩

[8] You can even hear Johnny Cash tripping over it in his cover of the song!↩

3 facts about me today 6/19/11

1. I'm fresh from one of the most relaxing (and rewarding) mini-vacations ever, which is strange. I've never imagined myself as Desert Folk. In fact, as someone who has watched horror movies for the better part of his life, Desert Folk scare me only slightly less than Mountain Folk and Swamp Folk on the grand scale of creepy desolate weirdos. They live in the closest thing to a wasteland I can think of, with only rattlesnakes and coyotes (2 syllables) for company. The cultural norms and and legal standards of the nation seemingly vanish with the water vapor, replaced with the mysterious, unwritten code of DESERT LAW. DESERT LAW, it seems, is a lot like the law of the jungle, but with allowances for things like crystal meth and the living mummies that inhabit Palm Springs.
   But weirdly enough, we had a great time out there. Not that I could live there permanently, but there's something refreshing about being out there, with pure spring water coming out of the taps and the massive San Gorgonio Wind Farm. The wind farm is one of the saving graces of the trip. Instead of seeing nothing but brush and corpses for miles, the different sizes, shapes, and speeds of wind turbine provide an almost hypnotic landscape I can only compare to an ocean. Also, it gets so hot there this time of year that everyone just kinda siestas in the afternoons, which I'm clearly a fan of. In all, Desert Folk ain't so bad (some of 'em, anyway), and there are surprising advantage to living out there. I'd describe the trip in greater detail, but it was a) a personal vacation, and b) it would ruin a lot of my next pic dump. But keep an eye out.

2. Once again, my hair is getting embarrassingly long. Right now my 2 options are to comb it super-tight with product for work or to slap on a baseball hat. Part of me wants to grow it out a little (not mullet length, but floppy), but then I remember that in 2 months, it's gonna be too hot to think around here so maybe I'll just chop it. Stay tuned!

3. Clarence Clemons died last night, and while I'm certainly not the only one thinking about this on Father's Day (see Will's similar thoughts here), it's a loss. I've written enough about my father and I's shared love of Springsteen here, so I don't want to bore you with that. Clearly, the band will never be the same. The Big Man was an essential piece of the E Street Band and, like Danny Federici, he is irreplaceable. Sadly, those two were also the most unique pieces of the band, and among the most identifiable musicians I can think of, but so different. Danny's accordion (particularly on "Wild Billy's Circus Story") and organ are ornamentation that fills in the empty spots of the records, painting the rest of the picture. Clarence's sax, on the other hand, just grabs the reins of the song and takes off. Late last night I was listening to one of my favorite recordings of all time, with the guys in Bryn Mawr, PA playing at the Main Point in 1975. It's a super early concert by band standards, and there's plenty of things still being worked out onstage (including the prototype for what later became "Thunder Road"). It's an amazing show, but at some point during "Rosalita" that night, Clarence not only took over the song, but he sent it careening in an entirely new direction, forgetting Bruce's please for love and instead strapping it into a roller coaster. the jaunt resolves itself a few minutes later when Clarence and Bruce start tapping out a call-and-response with sax and guitar, and things right themselves cosmically. It's a thing of beauty.

Go ahead, give it a listen.

There's a great old story about David Sanborn when he was the hottest of the hot shit studio horn men, he was asked by some producer or artist if he could play a song more like Clarence. He thought for a minute, and replied that yes, he could, but in order to do so, the lights in the studio would have to be turned way down, in order to provide mood. They accommodated this wish, and started again, but Sanborn stopped them again, and asked that the lights be turned down even more. They did this, and then a third time Sanborn asked for the lights to be turned down yet again. They did this and started the track once more. They played the song through but when the sax parts came up, there was nothing from silence coming form the darkened booth. When they stopped the track and turned up the lights to see what had happened, Sanborn was gone.

Sure, the veracity of this story is highly suspect, and I'm sure that even if it was true, nobody's gonna admit it. But it's a fitting story to this man, who was introduced in a fantastic way every time he took the stage with Springsteen. He was larger than life in a lot of ways, and while I can't replicate most of Bruce's stories, I can at least repeat one I heard secondhand.

Happy Father's Day to every great dad out there. If I could, I'd send each of you a ridiculous tie and a warm handshake. Keep doing what you're doing.

Who's Next?

Who's Next?

1. "Do you believe in the monsters?"
2. "Kiss With a Fist" - Florence and the Machine
3. "Can You Get to That?" - Funkadelic
4. "Lalita" - The Love Language
5. "Carly Simon" - The Haints
6. "Hope Dies Last" - Magnolia Electric Co.
7. "Going Back to Mexico" - Lula Reed
8. "March of the Dawn" - The Mummers
9. "Tattoo" - Petra Haden
10. "Look Back in Anger" - Television Personalities
11. "It's a Gas!"
12. "Deliverance" - Avenue A
13. "Indian War Whoop" - Hoyt Ming and his Pep Steppers
14. "There Goes a Girl" - Johnny Truitt
15. "The Grips" - Benjy Ferree
16. "The Last Kiss" - Aidan Moffett and the Best-Ofs
17. "Nothing but a Heartache" - The Flirtations
18. "You Know My Name (Look Up the Number)" - The Beatles
19. "Ingredients"

So, I haven't gotten to any of the correspondence that I've been waiting to get to, but I have had the bulk of this mix sitting on my desktop for the past 2 months. Some of this is very old and you might well hae heard a lot of it, but it's been played pretty steadily around here lately. This is a little more whimsical than most of my mixes tend to be, but I think it's still worth listening to. But then, that's your call.

download here.

updated link, for anyone having trouble with the last one

So, I've been taking this quiz (cataloging, which a lot harder than I ever would've expected to be) on and off all day, and while I'm doing this I'm going through these big stacks of blank or unidentifiable CDs that I have. They go back at least 10 years, which means that they go back almost as long as I've had access to a CD burner. 1998? It was something like that. Anyway, It was such a revelation at the time, and years of crafting and shaping these mix tapes, I was blessed with the ability to make a mix in 5 minutes to last me exactly one walk to work. Thinking about it now, it's the first time I really could just dump a bunch of songs somewhere for later listening. I mean, I could do it with tapes, but it never really made sense, because two weeks later, I'm driving around listening to the damned thing and hating every other song, but still forced to listen to it because I didn't have a CD player in the accord.

But suddenly, I could go to the computer lab at Pitt, download 20 songs right there, browse Addicted to Noise* while I slap 'em on a CD, and then I'm walking out the door listening to them ten minutes later. The problem is that the files would never be labeled well, and I'd have no idea what I was listening to most of the time. This was also at a time, mind you, when the internet was a lot less slick than it is now. Even looking at the ATN sheets linked above I sorta cringed without even realizing. Like watching old basketball or football footage and when they flash the score at the bottom of the screen, you think "how did those neanderthals ever get by without graphics of little animated players or robots to deliver the score?". And then you realize that you were 15 when that game took place and you realized that yes, things do move by that fast sometimes. But I digress. Where was I?

Oh, the CDs. Yeah, they're mostly these last-minute collections of unlabeled songs, sometimes half a CD by one artist, and the rest of the disc crammed with whatever else I could find at the time. There was so much flotsam on the internet then for me. I wasn't thinking about discovering new bands through the internet just yet (and to be fair I'm not sure I was alone there), but I would exhaust every band I'd ever loved up until then looking for rarities and b-sides and the like. One year I think I made 50 CDs that had A) Beck covering a Rolling Stones song, B) something from the Matador website, or C) Ween's "Booze Me Up of Get Me High". What a weird time.

Anyway, I'd make them at work. I'd make them in the library. I'd make them for a drive just up to Wawa. and I rarely throw them out, because I forget if there's anything I want on them. I can also pretty much narrow them down to what year I made them, because for some reason there's been a pattern to what brand/type of CD I've used changing every year since 2000.

and it's nice. it's filling in these little blanks and forcing me to look up songs by googling the lyrics (yes, while I'm taking this quiz. Smart, right?), songs I would've never thought to revisit on my own. As I write this, I'm listening to what I'm pretty sure is a New Order cover (and an awful one at that) from somewhere around 2001. Then it'll go into Bob James and then something that I think is the Karl Hendricks Trio (who are still together!?) , but I can't be certain. It's like these little, clumsily-arranged time capsules left for myself.

What I should do, is arrange a CD of my favorite songs of the year, not label any of them, and then listen to it 10 years later and see how many I know right away. Hell, I guess I already am.

so that's what I'm up to. I've been writing so much about the internet lately for two of my classes that I'm sorta shocked my mind went here on it's own. Two themes for my online class discussions this week: The first was more or less the internet will destroy us all, once it's plugged into OUR BRAINS (trust me, I've seen a lot of movies). The second, and I'm quoting, was "The Library of Congress: Kinda racist, right?" Both were a little ridiculous, but both of them have spawned some interesting conversation, and that was the point, right?

anyway, I'm going to turn this devil box off and go watch some old-fashioned television. Now playing that Grand Funk Railroad song that Chief Xcel sampled for that song on Soleside's Greatest Bumps.

Have a wonderful week, everyone.

*holy shit, look at that list of artists! Ani DiFranco + Turntablism!!

Little known fact: Option Magazine had Thurston Moore on the cover of every single issue they printed in that 5 or 6 years.

Not much going on today; I'm in the middle of a quiz, but if you're sitting around and want something to listen to, go here and check out the second part of J-Rocc's (of the World Famous Beat Junkies) series of James Brown cuts. It's making my late afternoon and maybe it'll help brighten your day a little.

Stop and think for second how awesome Maceo Parker is. Because the dude can play.

The tests I gave him shows no sense at all

I think it was my tenth birthday, I think, when I got my first cassettes. It wasn't that I had no access to music before that, but before that I learned everything I could about music by pilfering through the collections of my parents and siblings late at night and then stay up listening to them on the little clock radio I kept next to my bed*. I'd listen to whatever I could find: the very personal romantic mixes of my siblings, the battered Springsteen tapes that had wound their way through everyone in my family, the CSNY tape that had a wad of gum stuck and hardened over the track listing on the side... everything.
It was still a little while before I'd start buying my own music (U2's The Unforgettable Fire, later that summer), but a family friend always got a kick out of the fact that this little blond kid would be singing along with a bunch of teenagers when they'd sneak out to drink at night. This family friend put together one of the most thoughtful gifts I ever received. I unwrapped it and found three cassettes, the first I could ever claim were my own with impunity. They were all of historical significance, he told me. There was Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon, which had spend some 15 consecutive weeks in the Billboard 200***. There was The Who's Tommy, which was the world's first rock opera. and there was The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Heart's Club Band. I have no idea what distinction the last one held in this context, but think it had something to do with the production. or something.
Anyway, I loved all of these gifts, and I think I wore two of them out (my history of Beatles ointerest will have to come at another time, but I know I still had that tape when I went off to college). But far and away, Tommy just blew me away. It was this wild epic story that went all over the place, and had these interesting characters, and musically it had everything from overtures to ballads to stones-our rock songs. I know that I had the story very basically told to me around then, though I obviously didn't know all of it. I think I knew tht "The Acid Queen" was about drugs, but I think I was under the impression that "Fiddle About" was about child abuse more then pedophilia. I seriously hope so, anyway. Obviously, I wasn't paying that close attention to the lyrics of these parts.
Anyway, it was an album that just consumed everything I did for like a year. I loved that album and would find new things about it every time I listened to it. While most people I knew had aligned themselves with either the Beatles or the Rolling Stones, I decided that the Who would be my favorite band of all time. It's weird, because while I love all of these groups now, I really hated the Beatles and was impassive at best about the Stones. I think that it's because those two bands I only knew their earliest songs as a kid, where with the Who I knew Tommy and Face Dances, for some reason and worked my way backwards. If doesn't make sense to me, but there you have it.
Anyway, like I said, I loved Tommy. But about after a year or so, it came to me rather suddenly that the whole thing was pretty over the top****. The story was ridiculous (pinball?) and there were a lot of weird, sudden turns in the middle of the story. I soon realized that this wasn't the best Who album. Hell, this wasn't even the best rock opera that the Who did. I should also mention that in this period there were like 5 live Who albums released and most of them playing Tommy in full. It's no secret that the band played this for like 5 years straight and grew to hate it, and I soon understood why.
So one day I put it on a sheld or something and stopped thinking about it. I explored other albums and other bands and other whole genres. and aside from occasionally hearing "Pinball Wizard", I really didn't get that much of it. Until recently, when I was thinking of it and downloaded it on a whim in the middle of my midterms a few weeks ago. And to be honest, it fucking made my week. I gave it a fresh listen or ten, and I really got into all of these things I forgot about ages ago. The little feedback things at the beginning of "Amazing Journey" just run up my spine. Pete Townsend's unbridled sincerity in his vocals of "1921"****. There's the "See me, feel me" callback running throughout the album, just shy of annoying the hell out of you. There's "We're Not gonna Take It", which I've been playing twice a day as loud as I possible can for the past few weeks and going crazy for (that little whisper!).
Tommy is also Keith Moon at the top of his game. It's funny, because everyone else is somewhat subdued on this record. Daltrey is almost sing-talking through most of the record, and never lets his voice off its leash the way he sometimes did. Townsend's guitar is almost subtle, with the exceptions of a few power chords here and there (and surely some windmilling), it's like he's painfully aware that this is going to be a legacy and he can't have fun with it. Entwistle's bass is nonexistent. I think you can here his horn work more than his bass. Entwistly, who was arguably the greatest bassist of his era, is almost absent from this album (he did, however write both "Cousin Kevin" and "Fiddle About", which is appropriately and astoundingly fucked up). Moon, though. His drums are reigned in just enough to let one know what the hell he's doing. If I had a complaint about Keith Moon it's that he seemed to have thousands of distinct rhythms going on in his head at once, and while they lined up, the way he would alternate between them on the drums was confusing to the listener. Here, though, his work is practically cogent. Instead of air-drumming with abandon, I can listen to this and kinda figure out what he's going. It's really kind of a beautiful submission.
So how is it that the band's most well-known and possibly well-regarded album is a duff-job performance-wise for almost the entire band? I don't know. I also don't know how it works, but then here I am writing about it.

I fompletely forgot what I was trying to write about when I started this. I actually wanted to write about the Haden triplets today, but that'll come later. In any case, I guess what I'm trying to do is make a plea for you to go find a record that you were in love with. Maybe, like me, it can be the first record you were in love with. If your'e like me, you probably ran it into the ground and haven't picked it up in ages. It doesn't have to be anything profound or something that even aged well. It can be something that embarrasses the shit out of you. But go get it. download it. Just find it, dust it off, and listen to it. Remind yourself what you loved about it. There are times when I am so sick of rock music that I just don't care about it anymore. This happens more often than ever nowadays. This might be my growing intolerance, but it also might be that sometimes my bearings are off and I fail to remember what it was that made me love this crap to begin with. so go dust off an album that you loved once and give it another shot. Even if you hate it now, I'm sure there's something in it that'll bring a smile to your face.


*While I haven't seen it in a decade, I'm still pretty sure there exists a picture of me asleep and using this clock radio as a pillow, my ear crunched into the speakers. Smart.
**Thinking back on it, my interest in music might well have been an effort to be able to hang out with my siblings and not feel like such a baby of the group. This might explain my continuing interest in music as well..
***According to Wikipedia: "As of 2008, Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon has been on the charts for over 1,630 weeks, or approximately thirty-one years. Consecutively, the album spent a record 741 weeks on the Billboard 200".
**** Much more of this probably has to do with my watching the movie. I remember being so excited to watch that, and then even then knowing that there was never a bigger pile of shit.
***** For some reason I've never really liked Roger Daltrey. It only got worse when I realized he didn't really write any of the songs, or found out that he more or less threatened his way into the band...

wow. sorry for rambling as much as did right ther...

Thru You: Imagine slapping together songs a la Garageband, only with Youtube videos. The result is this hodgepodge of guys pretending to film instructional videos, jagoffs videotaping themselves shredding in their bedroom, distraught girls singing to themselves, etc... The list goes on. It sort of gels, and sort of looks like a bunch of people whose videos were chopped up and arranged into songs on more YouTube videos.

Anyway, it's worth checking out. It's real evidence that with enough pot and editing software, you can truly put something together. I recommend tracks 1,3,4, and 7.

edit: and pets. There seem to be a lot of pets around these people.

Despite that he forgets some of the words, or that his voice has changed entirely from when he recorded the song. Despite the fact that he punches up the rhythm and sounds 50 years older... Hearing Bob Dylan play "Billy" live for the first time still excites me beyond the words my brain can summon. I've seen him twice and to be honest always felt a bit underwhelmed. Not that I should've loved it (being the staunch traditionalist that I am, I've always preferred an acoustic Dylan), but hearing this, I'm wondering if I can catch him the next time he tours the US and maybe get to hear one of my favorite songs.

It's a conundrum.

PS There's also a new Theme Time Radio Hour on that site (this one's theme: "Truth and Lies"). So it's a pretty good day all around.

Eddie Bo, R.I.P.

New Orleans lost another giant in Eddie Bo, who passed away on Wednesday. Songs like "Hook & Sling" and "Check Your Bucket" were always favorites, and nearly impossible to listen to and stay in a bad mood. May your legacy never die, Eddie.

Learn and hear more of him here.

A Pat on the Head

1. And the Trouble With Me Is You - Linda Flavell
2. Right On" - Cougars
3. "Song of Most" - Rian Murphy & Will Oldham
4. earlier
5. "Little Ashtray in the Sun" - Cotton Jones
6. "Be So Happy" - Heartless Bastards
7. "Sorry 'Bout the Boat Race" - Hank IV
8. "Leave My Kitten Alone" - Little Willie John
9. bleh
10. "In the Jungle (Instrumental)" - The Hygrades
11. "Lying" - Martina Topley-Bird
12. "Which Way to Go" - Eddy Current Suppression Ring
13. "When They Come to Murder Me" - Black Francis
14. "Descent Into Hell" - Volcano Suns
15. "Can't Say No" - Thomas Function
16. "Rigor Mortis" - Wussy
17. "Ghosting" - Mother Mother
18. 1607

HERE

A shorter mix than I usually make, and largely comprised of tinny rock music (I actually removed 2 hip hop songs because they sounded so off to me after setting up a track listing). Anyway, I actually said about 5 hours ago that I was too tired to think straight. Now I really mean it. If there are any problems with it let me know and I'll fix it in the morning.

Jim DeRogatis on the Ticketmaster/Live Nation merger.

I tend to hate his writing, but he's always been a smart guy and I don't think any of us agrees with this merger.

If at all possible, don't give these fuckers a dime in 2009. And watch for the name change.

I just realized that we haven't heard from Chuck D since the election. Is anyone else a little alarmed by that?

Mzybe we should send someone round his place...

I had no idea that the Grammys were last night. I can't remember the last time I watched them, but I was probably in high school. I could go on here about how the expansion and ensuing collapse of the music industry coupled with the advent of the internet critic and disappearing radio formats have reduced this and truly all other awards ceremonies into a self-congratulatory farce, but I'm tired from other stuff at the moment, so I'll just say that I don't watch the Grammys because they're dumb. But...

BUT...

I find it interesting that the biggest story of the Grammys last night is who was NOT there. Hey Chris Brown, subtle, man.

Also, Robert Plant apparently looks even more like a mummy than the last time I saw him.

what I'm Listening to This Week, Pt. 2

Sinner's Crossroads, hosted by Kevin Nutt.
A program (and podcast) on WFMU, this hour long gospel program features some of the best songs I've ever heard on a regular basis. I can't even delete the podcasts because I listen to them over and over, knowing that I'll probably never be able to track down most of these recordings, even with the power of the internet on my side. Host Nutt does a good job of not getting preachy while on the air, leaving something of a sober look at some of the most excited and uplifting music ever recorded.
If you've ever avoided the genre because of the religious implications, seriously give this a shot. I'm not promising anything you'll like it, but it's worth at least being familiar with.

Download here or on iTunes.

This and Theme Time Radio Hour comprise about 35% of my listening lately.

Ain't Gonna Touch This

1. Anybody's Blues - Amos Milburn
2. Suki - Unrest
3. Me & Mary - Asobi Seksu
4. Jake Summers (BBC6 session) - Fight Like Apes
5. Inni Mer Syngur Vitleysingur - Sigur Ros
6. Barstool Blues - Neil Young
7. Billy 4 - Bob Dylan
8. Linstead Market Lord Messam & his Calypsonians
9. Get 'Er Done (ft. MF Doom) - Jake One
10 . Birds - Menahan Street Band
11. Acid Tongue - Jenny Lewis
12. I Don't Want No Stranger Sleeping In My Bed - Ray Charles
13. Jailhouse Tears (ft. Elvis Costello)- Lucinda Williams
14. Illya Kuryakin - Ike Bennett & the Crystallites
15. Rafiki (ft. Black Thought) - Zap Mama
16. They Were Doin' the Mambo - Tex Williams
17. Time Has Been Going By So Fast - Jonathan Richman
18. Start All Over Again (live) - J. Geil's Band

Lots of old songs on this one, mostly because I've been listening to old songs lately. Some fo these I've had in a folder for awhile to throw on a mix, some I scrounged up from here and there, and some I was just recently reminded of and felt like sharing. Anyway, I'm thankful for them.

Download here

Ad campaign for an Argentinean rock magazine. It looks like a pretty good magazine, so go check it out if you can read it.

I'm sure this is the burgeoning yup-rock bore in me, but I'm really enjoying this new Charlie Haden bluegrass album. I love the way his triplets can harmonize. (Have I become that boring?)

Except for the Jack Black song, which is a bit too much. Stick to the D, buddy.

Bo diddley R.I.P.

Bo Diddley dies at age 79

While he's been a household name (or at least was) for half a century, I still feel like the man's music is criminally overlooked when discussing the true pioneers of rock music. Just like Ike Turner's death was overshadowed by his less than stable personality and domestic battery, I feel like Bo's death will be more about his glasses, hat, and the fact that lots of more famous British musicians covered him. But if you get a chance, go through some of the man's music. It's always a treat, and though I thought I've posted "Roadrunner" here before, it would seem I haven't. He did make a mix, though, and frankly I'm a little disappointed that I never got around to posting more of him. I guess that's because I stopped posting music like years ago.

The man was a giant, and I hope that his influence will continue to be felt for a long time to come.

Anyway, it's a damn shame, and I'm sorry to see him go.

I woke up on Sat. morning feeling like I'd snuck up behind my liver the night before and broke a chair over it.

Saw Built to Spill and the Meat Puppets on Sat. night, and I think it's interesting that the town immediately south of us, that everyone described as "terrifying" when we got here is where we want to move. Anyway, the show was interesting and filled with hippies. I'm still trying to figure out which if these acts drew more hippies or if it was the combination, but there was a giant man in a tie-dyed skirt next to me through much of the show. He was there with his "old lady" or whatever and another couple. I thought it was interesting that while the band (BTS) was playing, him and his buddy decided to have the LOUDEST CONVERSATION POSSIBLE about Bill Ward of Black Sabbath's drumming capabilities. huh. They were actively shouting OVER the band. Thanks for making it easy, hippies.

One thing I want to address here though. Anyone who has spend some small amount of time with me knows that I'm somewhat susceptible to laughing fits. I mean bad ones. This happens all the time, and is nothing more than my overactive imagination putting completely stupid and absurd pictures into my head. Hilarious, sure, but ultimately kinda stupid. I'll giggle/chortle to myself uncontrollably for a half-hour at a time.

On Saturday night, I experienced one of these fits, and it was brought on by one of the hippie ladies and her hippie dance. Hippie dancing fucking cracks me up. There's a lot of variations on it, some twirl, some bounce, etc... but the one where they sorta just walk in place will never cease to make me laugh. It always reminds me of the way Super Mario characters will walk in place. So of course I started thinking about videotaping her and putting her in front of different backgrounds. Because while it's goofy enough, it's twice as hilarious when you remove them from any meaningul context.

I couldn't breathe I was laughing so hard at this. So if you have video editing equipment and you want to see me pretty much never do anything but laugh at hippies again, you can help me set this up. Picture a dancing hippie blue-screened into the following backgrounds:

-Super Mario Bros (of course. Bonus points for putting her into Super Mario Bros. 2 with the raccoon tail)
-In an active volcano.
-On a roller coaster.
-dancing next to a caveman, who is eaten by a dinosaur.
-going through a car wash
-storming the beaches at Normandy
-underneath a rocket ship blasting off.
-in quicksand
-on the bench at a professional football game.

and on and on I went. I was seriously having trouble breathing I was laughing so hard. I felt bad after awhile, but it also resulted (I like to think) in the hippies moving to the other side of the room. Hooray for ridicule!

Incidentally, speaking of Built to Spill, I've always thought Doug Martsch looks something like a Rasputin. Not that he's evil, but especially after hearing him sing, seeing him is a little jarring. He's pretty effing giant (to me, anyway) and has very soft eyes. Maybe I'm not thinking of Rasputin at all, but a giant sloth.
Still, I really wanted to keep frantically shouting "the mad monk has returned and he's doomed us all!" at the show between songs. Which I'm sure nobody would get or find amusing. You see what it's like, being me. I should just wear a helmet all the time so people stop wondering.

This morning, instead of a life-risking trek through a very active construction site, I was treated to a little jaunt not unlike the opening credits to a Pixar movie thanks to the new Man Man album.

Something about the tramsformative power or music. As much as I begrudge the fact that I wear headphones for half my day, sometimes they can really make a shitty situation better. or make it worse, depending on the mood I'm in.