15 albums

This list was started a year ago when folks were listing their “15 most influential albums” on Facebook. John and Nicole had both listed theirs and I always want to play along, but as always had to obsess over it first. Just making a list without any explanation wasn’t working; more than explaining to anyone else, I found I had to pick through my list and work out for myself why each album should be included. The original list was much, much longer; but despite the fact that some people (cough, John)decided to ignore the 15 album limit, I decided to play by the rules. I’ve come back to this list on occasion adding or removing something as the mood hit me over the last year and finally think I’ve got something I can settle on. This was originally a Facebook trend, but having spent so much time on it I think it deserves a more permanent home, so here it is.

In working on it, I was amazed to realize how much I do process through music and how much I really think the way I think and how I approach the world has been shaped by the music I cling to. It could be argued that maybe I’m just picking my soundtrack according to how I feel and matching the music to myself, but I think that there definitely has been significant shaping done by what I’ve listened to as well. Apart from the first album, these are in no particular order. Some of them have names or places associated with them, but not all of them. These were just quick association notes to myself, but I'm not deleting them, mostly because I'm lazy.

Without further ado, here is the list it only took me a year to complete:



1) Swamp Ophelia - Indigo Girls.
In high school, when I got to ASMS, my roommate Traber had a cd collection heavily influenced by his lesbian older sister. So searching through his music, I stumbled upon Swamp Ophelia. When I graduated, Jay gave me a copy of the album, which Mason later bore the brunt of. After playing that one to death, I think I've bought the cd at least twice and once on iTunes and I still listen to it as much as almost anything else. This album totally taught me how to love people, self included. Think I’m crazy if you will, but that last sentence is closer to understatement than it is to hyperbole.

2) The Red Headed Stranger- Willie Nelson mason
Stardust - Willie Nelson dean

(I know this is two albums, but I'm counting them as one because they are both Willie Nelson and both came to me at the same time and their effect is combined.)

I already liked Willie Nelson. I've always liked Willie Nelson; my first clear memory of a song is of him singing "The City of New Orleans", which still might be my favorite song of all time. But these albums began my appreciation of him as a special, unique talent beyond this image of him: pony-tail, beard, bandana, and New Balances. Dean gave me Stardust and Mason introduced me to The Red Headed Stranger and both blew my mind. After ingesting these two albums, I can pick out not just his voice, but his guitar playing anywhere. These two do really showcase his special way of singing though. Also, both are perfect albums. Not just a collection of good songs, but the whole albums have coherent feels, listening to them in their entirety takes you somewhere. Stardust remains one of my favorite albums to listen to going to sleep.

Nebraska by Bruce Springsteen fits in here somewhere, even though it isn’t a Willie Nelson album and I’m not going to give it its own number. Mason introduced me to it around the same time and I always think of it in conjunction with The Red Headed Stranger because it is also a perfect album. You have to listen to the whole thing and it takes you somewhere.

3) Wrecking Ball - Emmylou Harris mason
Mason brought this cd to the apartment after having visited his parents. Both he and his sister or mother had bought it to give his dad for his birthday so he kept the extra copy for himself (us). We were already fans of Emmylou, but this was a whole other ballgame. On this album, she really catapulted from warbling songbird into this ethereal angel, but not a gentle angel hovering over a baby's crib but one singing out of a twilight thunderstorm. I think also the accidental over buying of this cd happened more than a few times, with two people simultaneously buying it and then gifting it to others. That or us losing it, then rebuying it, then finding the lost copy, then giving one away, then really losing it and rebuying. Actually, I think maybe Mason accidentally brought back his dad's copy at some point, who then went and bought a new one, so we kept the extra, but this album kept on reproducing somehow (this was before burning cd's). We had the same strange occurrence with a Bob Dylan cd, going to put it back in the cd binder only to discover that there was already another copy there; giving one away, then having it happen all over again. This was when we lived on Short Street, with all our insane neighbors and when Brock and I became each other's sidekick and Dean and I started dating. I always listened to music when I slept, and he stayed at my house quite a bit because he had just moved back to the city and was living with his parents at the time. The music was sometimes not to his taste, though he didn't much complain, but when I put this in, he immediately asked what it was and if memory serves me correct went out and bought it (or took one of the reproducing copies from us). When he didn't like what I had selected, he would ask if we could listen to Wrecking Ball or Stardust as a sort of diplomatic way of vetoing my selection.

4) Everything But the Girl, Acoustic - Everything But the Girl rusty, john
My freshman year, while still very much in the closet, I had the good fortune to meet a gentleman named Rusty. His casual matter-of-factness and easy intimacy did an enormous amount to help me begin to feel comfortable in my own skin, particularly with regards to my sexuality. He introduced me to the acoustic album by Everything But the Girl, though I think I had also already listened to it at the listening station at Millennium Music on King Street and in John's collection of cd's. The songs on this album are so beautiful and heart wrenching, but also soothing and comfortable at the same time. I would listen to it on repeat, grabbing certain songs and just diving into them and drown myself in the feeling of the music. Their version of "Alison" was also my first introduction to Elvis Costello. Several of the songs on this album are about touring for them I suppose, but also about being away from home and the sacrifices made to live a traveling life as well as the joy of it. Already then I was pulled by the wanderlust that has marked my life, but now really forced to travel and ripped away from home by my job, I feel like listening to this album was early conditioning for this life, like having the feelings from these songs stored and digested inside me has made this life easier. Perhaps that sounds silly, but I mean it.

5) Rabbit Songs - Hem florida
Most other albums on here came to me through someone else, or at least are strongly associated with someone else from the beginning. This is all me. When I was in Pensacola, going out of my mind and worked to death and emotionally parasitized by my job at the camp, I would go to the Barnes and Noble and stay for hours on my day off. Reading, but also sitting at the music listening station. I saw they had a Patty Griffin cd and I sat to listen to it, but they had the stations mislabeled and instead I heard Rabbit Songs. I think I listened to almost the entire album before buying it. At night, after the kids finally went to sleep, I would lay on my cot and put my head phones in and listen to this album over and over and over again. Every night. It was just so beautiful and peaceful. And when I finally escaped Florida and was starting over in New York, they came with me, providing the quieter part of the soundtrack for this new adventure. Even though their other albums are brilliant, this is still the one.

6) Exile in Guyville - Liz Phair - ASMS mix tape
I think we were on some kind of class trip at ASMS (special projects rock climbing trip maybe?), and someone was playing a mix tape which had "Divorce Song" on it. I got so sucked into the song, asked who it was and what album it was on. That song is kind of the saddest song in the world, but also in a weird way hopeful. But it wasn't just the song. The whole album, wow. I've gone through several stages of listening to it on repeat in different times in my life and obsessed with different songs each time. Having just said that each of the songs has taken on a larger than life meaning at one time or another, it should be said that “Fuck and Run” holds a special place, hitting some feeling that I didn’t know anyone could say out loud and feeling like it was written just for me.


7) Little Earthquake - Tori Amos
Like so many other things, I was introduced to Tori Amos at ASMS, and at first I found her kind of annoying. I never really put on her cd's, but so many other people did, particularly this one, and suddenly one day I realize that I know all the songs and it is the soundtrack to so much and so many intense adolescent moments. After graduation, I went to one of her concerts at the Alabama Theater in Birmingham with Robert, Liz, and Jay. One of the best concerts I've ever seen and perhaps the most intensely awkward situations I've lived through (I smile as I write this). Years later, I steal Mason's copy of this cd and start listening to it on repeat. He has always had it, but never listens to it, because "Winter" (easily her best song) breaks his heart right down the middle and puts him in a blue funk like you've never seen (not kidding). I love "Winter" and usually stole it to specifically listen to that (not out of spite, I just like the song) but this time I kept listening to the whole album. "China" is drastically underrated, but at this time, Ben was actually in China, so suddenly this album did to me what it does to Mason. Of course, unlike Mason, I purposely listen to and like singing all the saddest songs in the world. And listening to her sing “China” made me feel like someone knew what I felt like having my love all that distance away. China, all the way to New York. Again, this song was written just for me.

7) Mermaid Avenue - Billy Bragg and Wilco
I can't imagine why John left this off his album list. It was a mistake. We listened to this so much in college it is ridiculous. And for years after college. I'll occasionally hear one of the songs from it and remember it and then I've got to hunt it down and listen to it on repeat. I inexplicably don’t have a single song from it on my computer right now. This combined effort is easily better than anything else either Billy Bragg or Wilco has done separately.

8) Ecce Homo - The Hidden Cameras
Bought off the merch table at what I think was their first show in NY. They were the first of five acts that night at the Mercury Lounge and blew my mind. This was the band I had waited for. Joel Gibb was working the table after the performance and was self-conscious about this album because he didn't think the recording was of good quality and tried to convince me to buy their EP instead (this is before they had done a full length studio album), but this had the songs I wanted to hear. As one of the other members of the band flirted with my then boyfriend Nate, both Gentleman Reg and Owen Pallett flirted with me. Everyone was in a good mood and flirty that night. I was waiting for Joel to emerge from behind the table, which he finally did and we started chatting... and I came down with a horrible fever. No other symptoms. Just an insane fever. So instead of forging a friendship with the members of my new favorite band ever or staying to see Adam Green of the Moldy Peaches sing, Nate bundled me into a cab and I spent the night praying that I wouldn't suffer brain damage from the worst fever I've ever had in my life. I was fine the next morning. And I had made the right choice. Despite the warnings about the quality, Ecce Homo was amazing. Many of the songs have made it onto subsequent albums, but I still haven't found another source for "High on the Church Grounds".

9) 69 Love Songs - The Magnetic Fields brock
When I met Brock, it was kind of like falling in love, except that wasn't what happened, though for years afterwards, depending on whether they felt threatened by me or confused by him (or conversely, threatened by him or confused by me), his girlfriends (and my boyfriends) periodically suggested that either one or both of us were in love with the other. And perhaps they were right, it just was never romantic. He had just moved back to the city, and our awkwardness and confidences complemented one another and we fast became partners in crime. If he was one thing, it was the king of indie rock. His bedroom in his apartment (later our apartment) was so stuffed with cd's that you had to walk over them. Piles of them everywhere, a foot deep. I'm reminded of walking over them, trying to tread lightly and distribute my weight so they wouldn't crack when I walk on the crabs in the live-hold on the boat. He had always heard of every band before you and knew all the obscure releases. And listened to a whole lot of crap. But occasionally he did really knock it out of the park with discovering new things before anyone else. He saw Belle & Sebastian coming way before anyone else. Even when he found great things, I feel like I was a hard sell and other people might play me songs by them and I would pass on it, then he would sit me down and pick out just the right song to stop me in my tracks and make me reevaluate their music. For Belle & Sebastian it was "I Don't Love Anyone"; he was not the last person to tell me that they thought it was my theme song. I suppose I'm just that kind of grump. I always took it as a compliment. (In fact, I love everyone.)

He played me a few Magnetic Fields songs before "Papa Was a Rodeo", but it was the one he sat me down and told me I had to listen to, again my theme song. And he was right. Holy shit if this didn't catch all of my world weary skepticism and still sort of hopefulness about romance. And it was by a gay band, written by a gay song writer who didn't hide this orientation in the music. And it wasn't just a gimic, Stephin Merritt is one of the best song writers there is. These days, I can find quite a few gay artists who are actually good, but at the time, this was a first for me. Erasure and the Pet Shop boys might have been plenty gay, but they never said "grand pianos crash together when my boy walks down the street." I didn't know you were allowed to sing that! Listening to these songs helped me more than I'd like to admit in becoming comfortable being gay and helping make that identity a casual side note to who I am rather than this overwhelming burden.

After graduating I took a job in Pensacola working as a counselor at a wilderness camp for trouble youth. We were understaffed and underfunded and were taking kids for whom the program wasn't ideal and rushing them to complete the program at too fast a pace. This was largely because of jeb bush and his cronies in the legislature working to destroy the programs that had made Florida's juvenile rehabilitation system a model for other states. They worked to turn it from a service to help people come out better on the other side into a putative system, which is all so much politics except that I was there on the ground, there to help and finding myself drowning in the mess they made. In the little time I had off, I found Pensacola to be an amazing town, with a surprisingly alive alternative scene. A bunch of fun little bars and cool people and one great little record shop. They didn't have 69 Love Songs in stock, but they ordered it for me, and I purchased it and Tiger's Milk. Angry at the end of the day, worn out and emotionally exhausted, I would listen to "I Don't Love Anyone". It was exactly how I felt, really, at that moment. Not even Christmas.

After finally being completely out and non-secretive in Charleston and even having come out to my family, I was back in a situation where I had to be neuter. I had to be this unflappable superhuman thing, whose personal life stayed outside of work and that kind of thing really grinds at your mind. I'd listen to 69 Love Songs as a sort of therapy, rebuilding the broken down parts at night laying in my tent. I don't know that I've ever heard anyone else call it beach music, but at some point that is what it became for me. On time off, I always headed to the beach and would blast it as I rode along the water. "I'm Sorry I Love You" became my ultimate beach jam. As soon as I got past the hotels and crap, and was riding with only dunes on either side, I would play it, singing at the top of my lungs.

10) Tiger Milk - Belle & Sebastian brock
See above.

11) O.C.M.S - Old Crow Medicine Show Ben
I had read about Old Crow Medicine Show in an issue of No Depression and immediately knew I wanted to hear them. This was before this album had come out and I couldn’t find any of their earlier stuff. (It is worth noting that this same issue of said magazine was also what convinced me to buy Patty Loveless’s Mountain Soul and to find and listen to the Be Good Tanyas.) Anyway, this album came out and I wanted it but hadn’t managed to find it yet, so Ben got it for me on iTunes and burned in on a cd and made a cover for it that he put stickers on (I cannot remember if this was a gift for an occasion –Valentine’s Day or birthday or whatever- or just because I wanted it). I still have it somewhere. The album was everything I had hoped for. Here are these hillbilly fuckers with crazy harmonies and sick instrumentation singing about everything and something else. Are you allowed to sing old-timey country about cocaine? Apparently you are. But more than then just doing something new by doing something old, their songs hit a just-right cord with me. Mason had moved up to and we revived our tradition of singing together and “Wagon Wheel” quickly became our favorite hootenanny anthem. It still is.

12) The Essential Leonard Cohen - Leonard Cohen
When Mason and I first became roommates, he introduced me to Leonard Cohen via “Famous Blue Raincoat”. I knew “Suzanne” and “Bird on a Wire” but this made me sit down and listen to it all again. The emotions in “Raincoat” are so complicated and intense; I would dive into it over and over again soaking up the intensity but also practicing that feeling of release and acceptance that the singer in this song is forcing himself to have. At this time I felt so twisted and turned and yanked around by circumstance and other people that it was a relief to hear someone sing about a situation so complicated and heartrending from somewhere approaching the other side of it. I also always felt like this was somehow the sort of situation that my brother Charlie and I would have eventually ended up in if I were straight and the potential had existed for us to fall for the same woman. Who would have been the singer and who the sung to?

But this wasn’t the only song on the album to strike a chord. “So Long, Marianne” and “Lady Midnight” and “That’s No Way to Say Goodbye” and… basically the whole album is brilliant, but perhaps “Chelsea Hotel #2” was the one that really got me. Partly of course there is the shock factor: I didn’t know that you could sing, “giving me head on the unmade bed”, but the shock never lasts as long as you hope. It was the sentiment in the chorus that left its lasting mark, “I never once heard you say, ‘I need you…I don’t need you…I need you… I don’t need you’ and all of that jiving around.” I pulled it out of context, but somehow the idea of never jerking a lover around with games of I-need/don’t-need-you planted a seed in my young mind as important. Partly it might have warped into an aversion to the idea of allowing need to tangle with romance, but mostly I took from it a desire to be a person who does not yank people around.

“Hallelujah” wasn’t on this album, but Mason at some point brought it to my attention (through Jeff Buckley’s version), saying that the line “All I’ve ever learned from love was how to shoot at someone who out drew you,” encapsulated my experience with love (which makes more sense if you know the stories I was sharing with him of the twists and turns and backstabs that marked my early romantic life). I took this as a high compliment, but also perhaps as a warning. Being told that you knew how to outshoot someone better than you might be flattering, but it reminded me that I’d rather avoid gun fights or at least that I never want to be in them with anyone I love.

13) Prime Prine – John Prine
As an adolescent, my relationship with my father was sometimes strained. We are both stubborn and I was pretty miserable and ready to lash out at the least provocation and nurse any wounds for as long as possible. Thankfully, such bitterness can’t last too long, and I have a hard time remembering a single fight we had. What I can remember is one night him inviting me out to the car to listen to a tape he had gotten. It was John Prine. I was uptight and slightly scandalized by “Illegal Smile”, but listening to a song about pot with your dad sort of marks a crossing point where your parents start to act like real people and stop playing the character of ‘Mom’ or ‘Dad’. And the music was a little silly, but really great. “Dear Abby” was the song in particular that Dad had brought me out to share. He liked the succinct advice in the chorus, and I suppose so do I. Feeling sorry for yourself has never gotten anyone very far in my family, and I hear that chorus in my head when I find myself starting to drift into self-pity. Which makes me smile and laugh at myself.

Of course, John Prine isn’t just silly songs. He’s got a special way of hitting the mark. This early introduction grew into seeking out more of his music and gave me some common ground later when I met Mason and we started talking music and singing together. It is also through Mr. Prine that I found Iris Dement; I will forever be thankful to him for that. "In Spite of Ourselves" might be the anthem of my relationship with Ben.

14) I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got – Sinead O’Connor
This album hits like a brick slamming into the side of your head. It is so beautiful and painful and other-worldly. If Sinead O’Connor only had that voice, she’d still be devastating; but the lyrics she writes… damn. She really killed us all with “Nothing Compares 2 U”, the one cover on the album, but for me it is “Black Boys on Mopeds” that puts this on my list.

For some reason, the Tiananmen Square Massacre stands out as one of the most impactful memories of my childhood. Not so much the details, but the lesson that people would kill other people who weren’t a physical threat. People kept saying everything changed after 9/11, that innocence was lost, that we now knew what horrible things people were capable of, but the whole time I kept thinking it was insane that anyone whose eyes had been open at all would not already be aware of this in spades. But I suppose that everyone needs something to strike that match of realization and for me it had been Tiananmen as a child. So when Ms. O’Connor sings, “Margaret Thatcher on tv, shocked by the deaths that took place in Beijing. It seems strange that she should be offended; the same orders are given by her,” I’m already punched in the gut right from the first line. This song to me was a devastating protest song, not so much because of a call to action, but as such an unblinking witness. The blunt refusal to believe that the bad things in the world happen somewhere else or are done by a distant Other perhaps affected my political attitudes more than I know. If nothing else, it certainly resonates with me.

It is more than just that song though. The whole attitude of the album. Even just the title, I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got. “The Last Day of Our Acquaintance” does deserve its own mention. I would listen to it on repeat, over and over again. It starts so quietly and you can hear the hurt, but it is defiant and grows in strength and volume until it is this rattling war cry. But early on, there is a line, “You used to hold my hand when the plane took off.” As a past tense statement, it encapsulates all the hurt and makes her case for the breakup, but it is effective also because listening to it as something she had lost, it made me want someone to hold my hand when the plane takes off. This gesture became for me the ultimate romantic gesture.


15) Give Up – Postal Service
This album was hitting right as I arrived in New York. I landed in the city with barely any money, but my brother and friends from college were there and we were all clinging together and helping each other stick it out. This album (along with Le Tigre) is the soundtrack for my memories of my over-crowded dingy Greenpoint apartment. We would buy a bag of potatoes, a bag of onions, and a couple dozen eggs and this music would play while someone cooked our meager ingredients and we drank Balentine tall-boys or fourties. Something about the music was perfect. The sound was just right, the lyrics and the voices caught the tenor of our excitement and our desperation and resonated with us. I’ve never been able to fully get into either Deathcab for Cutie or Dntel, but this synthesis does it for me. It also contains both the best break-up song and best love song ever. “Nothing Better” was originally my favorite from the album, so brilliant in the counterpoint of desperate and over-it duet, but before too long, I fell hard for a certain beautiful boy and “Such Great Heights” would play over and over again in my headphones. It still does.

Heaven isn't real.

(written earlier in the year while still at sea...)

I can't stop listening to "Oh, Heaven Isn't Real" by David Karsten Davies. I'm listening to it mindlessly, drawn to it because it is so happy and cheerful. Something about it is just absolutely joyous.

I'd be lying if I said there wasn't something in the sentiment which also draws me to it.

Sometime last week I listened to a podcast of Fresh Air that was about a modern heretic. I'll have to look the guy's name up later, but the long and short of it is he was an evangelical leader who after some soul searching found himself facing down a belief that everyone will be welcomed into God's presence in Heaven, that it isn't a matter of being saved or not, but rather that Jesus was a sacrifice for all, not just a gate to let the right people in and keep those others out. I've got to say, he's one of a very few Christian leaders I've heard in a long time who made anything that resembled sense when he spoke. The episode was more about how everyone else flipped out when he shared this shift in understanding. Without Hell, lots of people just weren't interested anymore.

How 'bout if you take out Heaven, too?

My childhood was extremely religious. Thankfully, my parents and the other people around me in my family translated this fervor into reaching out to other people. All other people, no matter what. This ecumenical openness and kindness towards all humanity is the part of Christianity that I continue to hold onto and appreciate. Please excuse me if I recount a short history of personal religiousity.

Among my earliest memories is a memory of coming home from church filled with the music. I mean that somewhat literally. I'm guessing that I couldn't read, but I remember looking at the sheet music and images of angels with trumpets coming out of the page and really feeling like singing was making a joyful noise. It all made sense for a brief moment. Why we sang, why people went to church, why there was any church at all and why anyone should worship God. Because of how that song felt, the angels with their trumpets that came in the music and touched this small child, this is why we do all this. The word 'holy' made sense. This, unfortunately, was a brief memory. It isn't repeated, though it was seared into my consciousness. It is this feeling against which I still measure all religious experience. If it leans towards that beautiful connection with the unknown, then I'm all for it. It is doesn't, well, most doesn't. If it seems against that, then I'm bound to be venomous (as I am with most politically religious ass-hats).

Most of my early religious life was spent feeling ripped away from this and having people try to convince me that all kinds of other criteria was important for the salvation of my eternal soul. I prayed and read and tortured myself with trying to reconcile everything to be found in the Bible. Reconciling the text in the Bible with the text in the Bible is a foolish task. Anyone who says they can, particularly with any remotely literal reading of it either hasn't read very much of it, has a very selective and sieve-like memory, or a particularly gifted imagination. It doesn't reconcile literally. If it did, we probably wouldn't spend much time with it. Trying to reconcile it with daily experience can perhaps be more instructive.

Our daily experiences don't make much literal sense either most of the time. So finding something in that expansive text to relate to or bolster what you want to believe isn't the most difficult task. The difficulty comes in being consistent. Actually, consistency isn't the biggest concern for me these days, but once upon a time, it was a dire concern. Anyway, point being I traveled along my own little spiritual journey. I tried to make this text and my life and the world as I experienced it all make sense. How does it all work?

Of course, I rolled around with all the fun little philosophical questions. If God is great, why does he let people die and all that stuff. What do I have to do to get into Heaven? How can he let people go to Hell who never had a chance to get saved? Why couldn't I have enjoyed some of the more fun sins for years without knowing any better before I got saved? If I make it to heaven, but know that other people are burning and tormented forever, then could it ever be heaven? If I am someone who could enjoy this while others burn, why would I belong there?

I'll spare some of the details, but edging up against a mental breakdown that was heavily influenced by a crisis in faith, instead of going over the edge, I stepped back. I'll go ahead and allow it religious terminology, so, if you will, we can call it being born again. This is a fair way to describe the transformation. And it was a transformation.

More than anything, it was letting go and releasing some of the weight that I had carried around. Particularly the moral weight and all this religious crud that I'd spent years piling on. It was partially both reaffirming and completely renouncing my identity as a Christian. It was certainly renouncing all the crap which other people spent years loading into that identity. I was never comfortable with it being an identity based on either I'm-going-to-heaven or you're-going-to-hell, and let's be honest, that's what most evangelical religious identity is based on. Which is stupid and is kind of an asshole-ish way to approach life. So all that was happily out the window.

All along, really the only thing that kept me tied at all to any type of religious identification was that early touchstone, the feeling from that early memory. I had felt sort of shut out from that for years, and I knew this transformation was real when I could touch that place again. I recognized it and knew it when I found it. This is the peace that passes understanding. Most people want nothing to do with it. They want the peace that is everything in its proper place. This is why people do dumb things like vote republican.

The closest I can come to describing the change is that I came to a point, a sort of realization, that I should just shut up with all my praying so fervently to understand everything and for everything to be in perfect order and to make sense. We'll call it being put in my place, and I suddenly felt both emboldened and humbled and to a certain sense like, "What business do I have even praying at all?" Telling the Almighty what you think should happen or what you'd like to happen or even just asking what he/she/it/them thinks is kind of presumptuous if you think about it. I reconciled the desire to still reach out communicatively by reducing my prayers to "wow." and "thank you." (demure punctuation and lack of capitalization intentional; an exclamation point still seemed a bit big for my britches)

I can't begin to describe how much more beautiful the world became, how much more I liked other people and myself once I got to this place. I like to think that it is apparent in my life, this joy and happiness, but I'm sure it isn't always. I was so dour and uptight before though (but I hid it well). This is slowly making its way back towards something resembling a point.

There was a time when I would have been scandalized and horrified at the existence of this song. I would have probably deleted the file, destroyed the cd if I could get my hands on it, prayed for the singers and everyone who had heard the song, and pleaded on their behalf for God to help them and change their ways. Honestly. This would have seriously rattled me.

Which misses the whole point. The song is happy. It is joyous even. So what if it is blasphemous? My old self would shriek at such heresy, but it is the old self that was further from joy and peace than the current self. I was so ready to be derailed and find darkness. Now I don't have time for it. I started writing all this when I realized how much I liked this song and how it would have bothered me in the past. Trying to put a finger on what is so different, I asked myself if I believed if this song was true or not: do I believe that heaven isn't real?

This is so literal and limiting; I can't even consider it a reasonable question. What does it matter or not? Of course it is and of course it isn't, too. I'm always looking for the beautiful and a more full experience and chances to let myself be a vessel for making a joyful noise, but am I expecting some big fat reward at the end of life for being such a just right the way God wanted person? No. That doesn't sound appealing, but I don't have much time for the question either way. I'm going to do my best to embrace and love and try to treat everyone better than they deserve and smile and spread joy where I can and mischief too. I'm going to embrace the sad and tough stuff too and I'm going to say my prayers, "wow." and "thank you." This doesn't have the least to do with trying to get to heaven. If there is a way to get there, I can't imagine it looking different from this, but the point is that this is just the way I want to move through the world. Why would I do it differently?

Back to the preacher who let go of Hell. It scandalized and fractured his megachurch (is there a grosser word in the english language?) for him to relinquish hold of belief in a literal place of eternal punishment. How toxic do people's minds have to be that this is a thing they want to cling to? Would giving up a literal belief in Heaven also rock people so terribly? How much of most Christian faith is wrapped up in wanting to "be in that number"? Do so many people live their lives based so heavily on some final end goal?

This shouldn't baffle me. I was a religious nutcase. Earlier tonight, one of the memories that came uncalled from the vaults was of me writing in the inside of the cover of a Bible that I was giving as a gift to a boy I was smitten with. It wasn't a love letter, to be sure, but maybe it also was. It was jointly an attempt to reach out to him and an attempt to save his mortal soul. It is painfully embarrassing to look back at. Thankfully I can't remember what I wrote, but you can be sure it was dumb and embarrassing. The point is, I should remember what it is like to feel so powerfully that my eternal life hinged on what I did in this temporal plane. And as far as all that goes I can, but also I don't think fear of Hell or of not getting into Heaven was ever a motivation for me. I've always been inclined to think that anyone doing something out of fear or for reward doesn't really have anything which resembles faith anyway.

Neko, rediscovered/re-explored

(written earlier in the year while still at sea...)

Neko Case is not a new discovery for me. Granted, everyone else found her before I did. She came to me as so many musical discoveries do: on a mix cd Mason made for me. I can't remember which one, but on it he had put "Deep Red Bells". At first it only sort of caught my attention, but then there is that moment when she asks, "Where does this mean world cast its cold eye? Who's left to suffer long about you? Does your soul cast about like an old paper bag past empty lots and early graves?" And you are swept off your feet...

She stole my heart but I haven't accumulated near enough of her music. Mostly I've listened to her through other people's collections. This is more accidental. I always think I have more of her music than I do. I used to have more, but other than a couple of random songs, the only album of hers I have on my computer (my musical lifeline out here in the lonely ocean) is of her live from Austin. I've listened to this whole album before, but tonight something about it is sending chills up the back of my neck.

This shouldn't be surprising. She has that voice. If ever a voice could sing haunted, she is the one. And you know this when you hear her the first time. It isn't a secret that sneaks up on you slowly, but somehow this realization feels fresh and new listening tonight.

Maybe this is partly because of the intentions with which I began listening to her. I'm working on a mix CD for Ben, which is difficult since we share most of our music already and I haven't really gotten much new music lately. And what music I do have that he doesn't has already gone on a thousand other mixes, so trying to make a new one that doesn't just sound like one of the old ones is a challenge. I suppose I should just wait, but I like making mixes when I am out to sea and feel double compelled this time for some reason that I have to succeed in this mission. Anyway, trying to sort out what music I got from Ben and what came from other sources, I sorted iTunes by 'date added' to help me remember what came from where and anything that I thought came from another source and hadn't been shared on our home computer yet got scoured for potential songs. Enter Neko. Both from this aforementioned cd and also from a song she did for a tribute album for the movie Nashville (we already know how obsessed I've been with that lately). I grabbed "Favorite" and threw it in the possible mix pile. "Favorite" sounds sweet and nice, right?

Burnt houses and warm deer blood soaking through her dress in her dream... maybe not right for a mix cd for your sweetheart. Great song, but why don't I go back and see if I can find a sweet love song by Ms. Case instead? And with such intentions I reentered her songs. Searching for a love song, the voodoo and magic came screaming out at me. Some how, on this listen the creepiness jumped out at me. Good creepiness, I'm totally digging it, but damn. Wow. It isn't enough that it just unearths the emotions she puts into the songs, but it reminds me of seeing her live.

She performed a few years ago at the Bowery Ballroom, which is one of my favorite live venues and it wasn't likely I'd have the chance to see her play anywhere that small again anytime soon. Several friends of mine were going and I got a ticket too. Simple enough, but Ben and I were broken up but both going. I am certain the situation was more complicated than this, as he will later remind me, but this was complicated enough. We hadn't broken up because we were no longer in love, rather we were driving each other crazy and at least from my side I didn't know how to make it better and felt like I was making things worse. So there I am with a group of friends and a boy I'm in love with but broken up from. He's told me since that that night was insanely difficult for him, so I know I wasn't alone in standing there blown away by the music but having no idea what to do with my hands or how close to stand or how to act at all. The situation itself was so intense by itself, but now listening closely again I'm reminded how this voice must have heightened the tension and electricity. I sort of feed off of awkward terrifying energy (a survival trait learned through years of being unimaginably self-conscious; otherwise I would be institutionalized) , so I also remember that night as exhilarating at the same time as I remember it as painful and confusing.

All said, Neko Case making my hair stand on end shouldn't come as any surprise to me and maybe she requires special consideration anyway for putting on a mix cd anyway. Listening and feeling the creepiness almost makes me want to watch creepy movies or read spooky books. I don't really go for gore and think most horror movies really miss the mark in terms of really making that mood without just going in for the kill. Hitchcock, of course, knew how and The Twilight Zone did too, but I can't think of any movie that really does what I want right now.

In the ideal world where I get to decide who sings together, Neko Case and Emmylou Harris get together and make this mind blowing other-worldly gothic southern rock opera. Actually, I've long wanted to put Emmylou together with Lucinda Williams, Iris Dement, and Nanci Griffith for a gothic southern rock opera. They all have that crazy warble in their voice that lets them sounds both sugar sweet and tormented. Neko Case doesn't have the warble, but can you imagine her doing a duet with Emmylou Harris? Let's make this a three disk project. These are the main women on it, but let's have backup harmonies from Dolly Parton, Kathy Mattea, Patty Loveless, and Natalie Maines . For a little balance, let's bring in Dwight Yoakam, Willie Nelson, Raul Malo, and Toby Keith. Hell, as long as this is my fantasy, let's also throw in Joel Gibb and the guy from Songs: Ohia. Daniel Lanois as producer. Sort of like a mix between Wrecking Ball and The Red Headed Stranger, but darker. I mean really haunting and cold spooky. Start spare and build, piling harmonies and layers on, going from whispers to screaming and howls. Not every song, but enough. Back and forth between too many voices and instruments and spare, bare-bones sound. It has to be recorded in New Orleans, during a hurricane. Ok, just kidding about the hurricane part. Before, during, and after a thunderstorm.

A few thoughts upon reading the March 5, 2009 issue of Rolling Stone

(written while still at sea earlier this year)

A few thoughts upon reading the March 5, 2009 issue of Rolling Stone:

1) On the cover and in the third picture in the article about her, Taylor Swift looks like Stevie Nicks (in a very good way). In the other pictures shot for the article, particularly the second one, she looks like Chris Crocker. Really.

2) In her Q&A interview, Stevie Nicks looks like she is made out of plastic, though certainly lifelike. I do like the style she is rocking. Hello white top hat. In the actual interview she comes across as likable, but a little crazy. Talking in third person? Really?

3) Can someone pry those stupid-ass glasses off Bono's face already? Who thinks they are a good idea? Does he just really like them or is there a misguided stylist telling him this is cool? There is something to be said for having a signature look or making an accessory your own, but wearing something no one else wears because it is impossible to not look stupid wearing it is not the same thing as wearing something so well that it is impossible for anyone else to wear them like you. Even Michael Jackson took off that sparkly glove and the black shoes and white socks, but he still owns those looks. The damn red or yellow glasses? They own Bono, not the other way around.

4) Miley Cyris is what Suzy from Calvin and Hobbes would grow up to look like.

5) The writing in the magazine is good, but the articles about things other than music are better than the articles about music.

Back the fuck off and leave Toby Keith alone...

This morning I've been texting back and forth with Kearney, whose job is apparently more boring than usual today or maybe he is just feeling chatty. Inbetween laughing at jerry falwell's fortune being squandered by him before he left this world to reap his eternal reward and feeling slightly gross for finding ourselves kind of totally loving Paris Hilton, we found time to comment on the election. He comments on the latest polls, saying it is going to be an uphill battle. I say duh, all the boomers are about to face the deep down racism that they like to believe they don't have when they find themselves choosing between a pathetic candidate and a black candidate.

Why in the hell am I sharing my boring text conversation with you? Because it is a funny backdrop for the rant that is about to follow. I think plenty of people are way more racist than they would like to believe. I think there is sub-conscious racism scattered all throughout this campaign and people are uncomfortable having to confront it. Nobody (except perhaps my father who read mccain's book 8 years ago and has refrained from updating his opinion of him since) actually wants to vote for john mccain. In Alabama this last weekend, my crazily conservative uncle confided that he and his internet political buddies all feel like they will have to hold their noses to vote for him. To say that the republican base is the opposite of energized is an understatement. So why will this be an uphill battle? Because the energizing rock star candidate is a black man and this makes an awful lot of Americans seriously uncomfortable. I'll happily argue that in general, America is more progressive about racial issues than almost anywhere on the planet. That said, I'm more saying that most people on the planet are more bigoted than they'd like to admit than that we are all roses and sunshine. We've got our racial issues in spades, and we are being confronted with that in an unignorable way now.

But, as the title suggest, despite having wanting to chew on these issues in text for a while now, it isn't what I've sat down to tangle with today. Or maybe that is exactly what I'm sitting down to talk about. Let's dive right in...

I followed a link to an article on Huffington Post, and in the side bar I saw a link to another Huffpo piece: max blumenthal griping about Toby Keith saying some black people might say that Obama acts white. Seems mr. blumenthal already had his panties in a wad over Toby Keith's song/upcoming movie "Beer For My Horses". Why, after reflecting that this election, despite having the strongest Democratic candidate in many years, is going to be a hard one to win because that candidate happens to be black, am I going to slam someone else for crying "RACISM!!!!"? Because he is being an idiotic dumb ass.

I thought I had written a similar diatribe in the past, but looking back through my archive, I can't find it, so here goes nothing. mr. blumenthal is the unfortunate victim of built up vitriol over people ignorantly stereotyping Toby Keith. So sure, he is the human equivalent of a bright yellow, double-axle, extended cab, monster truck, but he isn't the right wing moron that some people assume he is. Yes, he wrote that 'boot-in-the-ass' song that was played every three minutes for the year following 9/11. He wrote that song originally just for an audience of enlisted men heading off to Afghanistan, but it was catchy and it made it on his album and on the radio and won the hearts of right wing chickenhawk douchetards from sea to shining sea. And it became an anthem for blood thirsty furor that bush and friends rode us off to Iraq on. So I understand getting tired of that song, of the radios playing it all the time, of the assholes it ended up bolstering. Because it went from being a song for the troops to a song for people who wanted the excitement of war without any sacrifice, but it wasn't Mr. Keith who took it there.

He supported the assault in Afghanistan, but not the invasion of Iraq. He's not perfect but when you listen to him discuss things, he doesn't come across as an ignorant idiot. Country and a little crude at time, but then again, so am I, and I still get the feeling that he thinks about things before he comments and isn't just pushing anyone else's talking points or echoing whatever ignorant things some other doofus comes up with.

So having thought this for a long while as I watch lazy blogger after lazy blogger rant about how right wing Toby Keith is over the last few years, today I stumble across max b. screaming bloody murder over him saying that some black people might comment that Barack Obama is able to be in the position he is in because he acts white. Why in the hell is that a controversial statement? Plenty of black people do complain that he acts white. And he is a viable national candidate because he comes across, if not white, at least somewhat racially neutral. Ignoring all this doesn't mean you aren't racist, it means you aren't willing to look clearly in the face of racial issues. That people would rather not have to deal with racial issues doesn't make them go away, doesn't mean they aren't there. Which is exactly the point Toby Keith makes in that radio segment that got blumenthal all itchy:

GLENN: Today, the house hasn't been working on you know like finding energy or oil or anything else. Yesterday they decided and debated and finally passed a resolution to apologize for slavery.


TOBY: You know what? It's if it's never been done before, then I think everybody apologizes for that.


GLENN: I mean, why, but isn't that common sense?


TOBY: Yeah, it is.


GLENN: I don't know a single soul that is, like, oh, slavery. If we just had a few slaves. I don't know anybody that's like that.


TOBY: Yeah.


GLENN: And anybody who would be like that, we can, you know, take care of them by just saying, hey, talk a little louder because you're a freak.


TOBY: Well, we definitely need to move past it, because it's something that I see that never changes. It racial issues just never ever seem to change. We can't get past them. And so I really don't know what the answer is.


GLENN: Wait a minute. Hang on a second. Haven't we gotten past it. Isn't Barack Obama possibly the next president of the United States and you don't see people, you know, saying, oh, he's black. I don't know any of those people. I'm sure they exist, but I don't know those people. Don't you think that shows that, I mean, look at the great distance we've come in just the last 20 years.


TOBY: Okay, but, also, I think that the black people would say, he don't talk, act, or care railway himself as a black person.


GLENN: What does that even mean?


TOBY: I don't know what that means, I'm saying that's what I think that they would say. Even though the the black society would pull for him, I still think that they think in the back of their mind that the only reason that he is in is because he talks, acts and carries himself as a Caucasian, but I think he's got a I think him and McCain are the two best choices, in my opinion, that we've had in years.


Saying that we need to move past racial issues is not the same thing as trying to ignore them or pretend that they are all solved. They aren't and kudos to Mr. Keith for refusing to play along with beck's attempt to brush them under the rug.

"Nobody likes slavery and a black man can run for high public office. See? We aren't racist anymore." This is the kind of dumbassed rose colored shit that gets useful public debate about race stuck in the muck. It is the silencing of discussion of it that helps keep it alive and kicking more than people who aren't delicate about how they talk about it. This goes hand in hand with what max blumenthal is doing here: reducing racism to a list of verboten subjects that make you racist if you don't approach them in the approved way so if you avoid those, then you aren't racist. "You sing about lynching, so it is obviously about lynching black people, you racist!" Is lynching a loaded subject in America? Hell fucking yes! Last year when a friend who works for a music label was talking to me about them considering trying to bring a song across the pond from England that was basically a fuck-em-all drinking song referencing all manner of omnipresent pop cultural/political crap then suggesting to "string 'em up", I pointed out that the song might not translate so well over here because of the unavoidable racial connotations.

I don't mind people saying that "Beer For My Horses" should raise some eyebrows or trying to discuss what nerves it hits. Discuss it, argue about it, but don't try and use it as an excuse to whack a singer over the head with a blunt object for having a song about it. Our country has long celebrated vigilante justice and half of our movies are about those who slip between the fingers of the law getting their just desserts in the end from someone who steps outside the restrictions that the law puts on our police and judicial system. Right now the biggest blockbuster of all times is selling out across the country with exactly that story, so don't get all high and mighty about someone singing the same damn thing in a song.

It is funny and in ways thereputic for me to be writing this now. When I first heard the song(it has been out for a long time now), I cringed. Exactly because lynching has racial connotations in American, particularly in the South. And a little bit because I didn't think it is really one of his best songs and I'd rather hear Willie Nelson duet with him on a better song. I don't like mythologizing the good-old-days and have no illusions about how people's bigotries find ways to seep out between the words that they say. God knows I've written about it before. But also listening to the song, I found that the racial baggage that I found there was what I brought with me, and came away feeling that if we wanted to place his song about stringing people up in its appropriate context that it comes from our treasured American Wild West cowboy mythology. How ever much it may conjure up our wounds from racially driven lynchings I don't think that is the intent behind it, so it is irritating to see the suggestion that Toby Keith is a racist for singing this song beaten into the ground. I'll argue that such revenge fantasies have been particularly appealing to certain breed of whiney-ass-titty-baby types whose perpetual fear of discomfort keep rush limbaugh and sean hannity and bill o'reilly in business and that stoking these flames was useful for bush et al, but don't try to act like this one is particularly potent or dangerous.

max's whining was particularly irritating because of his dumb swipes at Toby's musical prowess and real country cred. I'll be the first to gripe that much of 'Today's Hottest Country' is vapid as shit and worthless, but Toby Keith? He is easily one of the best song writers in Nashville and has one of the most powerful and beautiful voices of any male country artist alive. Sure, he most often pumps out fun honkey tonk anthems with catchy hooks, but even these songs are usually beautifully written. The argument that he isn't country is just stupid and gratutitous. And the "At his best, Keith is Merle Haggard with a lobotomy," comment... do a detect a little side swipe at Mr. Haggard? You better step back! Swing around your country music realness with with your hyperlinks for some country icons and alt-country darlings and have a shout out for your friend if it makes you feel more legit, but don't try to slam the man who penned and sang "I Should Have Been a Cowboy" and "A Little Less Talk and Alot More Action" as not country and think you don't come across as a country music tourist at best. Some of his songs are dumb and annoying, but the man's plenty fucking talented and 'country'.

Anyway, can we discuss touchy subjects like race openly with eyes wide open and not either try to declare it all fixed and hunky-dory or squeal like a stuck pig anytime anyone does anything which reminds us that we've got racial baggage in this country? Please?

Synchronicity of the Lambs

Right as I was reading the comments for this post on Hunters and Gatherers, "Lotion" by the Greenskeepers started playing on my itunes...

Sad Song Mix continued: the final cut

I could probably spend the entire damn trip writing about the songs that should be included and why I won't include them, so I'll just cut to the chase (this of course is no guarantee that I won't change my mind several times before hitting land again and give you more boring play by play the whole time) and share the final line up with a few comments on the selections:

1) the longest drive - the Capricorns (for the duration of this commentary, I'm not capitalizing most titles of songs and mean nothing by it other than I'm feeling lazy. )
So maybe in the greater universe this isn't one of the saddest songs of all time, but I've been Capricorning myself to death and obsessed with them since the last trip. In listening to them over and over and over and over again on that trip, it struck me how truly sad this song is, which you would never notice if you just went by the frantic electro beat, but when you give it a good listen that frantic pace only seems to reinforce the desperation and loss this song is a record of.

2) the grand tour - George Jones.
As I said before, the man has a voice made for breaking your heart. This isn't his most desperate song but it packs a wallop. "A Good Year for the Rose" might have edged this one out if I had it in my library.

3) golden ring - Tammy Wynette and George Jones.
Again, I've already discussed why this song is so pointed. You are probably thinking to yourself that I'm not really going to break anyone's heart with my song selection so far, and that might be true, particularly since I imagine my main audience to be comprised of cold hearted bastards (which you must all be since no one ever leaves comments. Of course this assumes an audience...).

4) miss being mrs. - Loretta Lynn.
Too damn beautiful for words. So simple and to the point, just laying out flat how she is missing her husband. No embellishment, just direct and lovely phrasing.

5) letter to mom - Iris Dement.
Enough of just sad, let the soul crushing begin. If she wanted to sing it sad, Iris Dement could make you cry with "Jingle Bells"; there is just something in that voice. If she, Nanci Griffith, Emmylou Harris, and Gillian Welch brought their voices together, what hell they could cause. Throw in Lucinda Williams and the vocal combination could destroy us all if they decided it was time for us to cry. They each have a different kind of gorgeous warble that can either make you think of angels or just rip your fucking heart out. Iris is kind of the most punk of them all, with the most unruly voice which can sound so childishly innocent but always barely holding back this ethereal growl. She (particularly with any combination of the above women) could make the most amazing Southern gothic rock opera album. Let's imagine it with all of them...

I'm getting off track. I'll plan out my fictional world where I decide who sings what songs later. Back to sad songs and Iris crushing our souls. "Our Town" might be sadder in a way; it is certainly more defeated, but this song is so wrenching it is hard to believe it was even written much less sung and, having been sung, that it was sung by this voice. It starts so friendly but the subject matter... holy shit. (note: in the liner notes from this album, Ms. Dement points out that this is not autobiographical, but she did write it to help her process a story told her by a friend.)

You could argue that this song is too upbeat sounding or too defiant or...no, listen to it again and cry some tears.

6) six o'clock in the morning - ?
I don't know who the artist is. I can't remember for the life of me and have lost all the other songs I had by him, but I remember all the ones that I had were somehow in this same vein of wow-life-is-miserable-but-you-have-to-trudge-on. It is just sort of plodding misery and the weight of life's futility piling on instead of any one tragedy. Instead it focuses on that horrible moment of any routine day -getting out of bed- and treats it as the Sisiphean task that it is.

7) one more dollar - Gillian Welch.
One more soul-crushed-by-daily-life, there-but-for-the-grace-of song. Something in this song is so sad to me. I listen to it and cringe (and then listen to it again).

8) cold missouri waters - Richard Shindell with Dar Williams and Lucy Kaplanski.
This is cheating. This is from the album Cry Cry Cry which was made by these three sadists for the express purpose of collecting tear jerking tunes. But I don't care. The atmosphere in the song, the way the story is shared, the death bed confessional of it all. So damn amazing. Just a good plain sad song.

9) lonlier than this - Steve Earle.
Steve Earle can write a fucking song. And though he does great rebel songs and love songs, his sad songs are pretty hard to beat. I love this song. From the first time I heard it, I was mesmerized by the direct wallowing of it all. "It doesn't get any lonlier than this," is a pretty bold statement but he catches that emotion that makes that statement seem truly pained and sincere rather than hokey. I love singing this song, but Mason blatantly refuses to play it ever on account of it being too sad (this is from someone whose favorite song to sing in "Long Black Veil").

10) travelling soldier - Dixie Chicks.
I wanted to include "Am I the Only One", which is one of my all-time faves, but somehow in all these other songs its existential howl seemed too far away. "When You Were Mine" was a close second, but for just sheer complete and utter sad-songness this one can't really be beat. Natalie Maines has the voice to deliver it, and the story is so sweet then so lonely and hurt. It starts so pretty and you kind of have a moment when you know it is going to turn bad, but really, the image of the lonely girl in her band uniform crying under the bleachers while no one else cares is so insanely heart breaking.

11) ruby, don't take your love to town - Kenny Rogers and The First Edition.
The groovy back beat and finger picking makes the song sound amazing in a way that it is easy to forget some old country songs used to sound. But Kenny's quiet pleading in the song contrasts that so perfectly. It can't be just a man wishing his woman would do right by him; it has to be a song about a crippled vet watching his woman slip away from him because of his war injury as he lies there slowly dying. Don't hold back now. Of course, the song most likely to make anyone anywhere cry is Rogers' "The Coward of the County" and I haven't forgotten this, but I figured one rape song is enough for any list and anyway in the end of that song, you get revenge and get to feel an explosive surge of everything-is-right-in-the-world that kind of nullifies the pure sad-songness of it all. (Note to Kenny on the off chance that he ever reads this: drop the 'touching' mellow adult contemporary stuff for a while and make a kick-ass rough-around-the-edges album. And do a duet with Dolly on it. In a perfect world, the duet would be a cover of the Mountain Goats' "No Children" a la Kiki and Herb).

12) if we make it through december - Merle Haggard.
Just one of the most heart breaking songs ever. Not woe-is-me-my-baby-left-me or any crap like that, but a poor man being crushed by not being able to provide for his family at Christmas time.

13) martha - Tom Waits.
I've already written extensively about this song, so I won't beat a dead horse. Just so beautiful and sweetly sad. Tear-jerkers don't have to all be soul crushing.

14) getting over you - Janice Ian.
The way this woman writes and the way she sings... damn! "At Seventeen" could have been here, but teenage misery only deserves so much sympathy, even when it is captured so perfectly. And this is just so sad. From the first moment you hear the voice in the song, there is this tension of "I'm fine, no problem" and just-about-to-lose-it. There is that moment when she sings "You want answers that I can't give; you want words I don't know!" where her voice explodes at "know" and does something that gives me chills. The phrase is powerful enough and then she has to do that thing with her voice and it blows my mind every time.

15) red dirt girl - Emmylou Harris.
Again, one of these warbly angel voices that can kill. Of all my beautiful tremulous ladies, Ms. Harris's voice is completely other-worldly. Almost too hypnotic to break your heart at times, because you can get so lost in it, but this song kills me. Maybe it hits me all the harder since it is set in my landscape. Red-clay Alabama is my homeland, and there is something about that dirt that gets to you. That may seem like a dumb thing to say, but... I don't feel like discussing the affect of the soil on the mood of the landscape from my childhood. Let's just say when she sings about a red-dirt girl, it has immediate impact for me and there is built in tragedy in that landscape and the story in the songs fits perfectly. I wonder if I'd feel the same about the song if I were from somewhere else.

16) billy grey - Robert Earl Keen, Jr.
Just a plain beautiful tragic love song. This man doesn't get near enough credit as either a song writer or singer. Something in this song always gets me.

17) ruby's arms - Nanci Griffiths.
So Iris can growl and Emmylou can make you feel like you are in a legend, but for just breaking your heart straight out, nobody's got nothing on Nanci. Something in her voice cuts like a knife. This song is kind of pleasant and billowy, but the sadness is so overwhelming. It is one of those songs where I start wanting to pick it apart as I listen and scream at the protagonist not to leave, to question motives and all that crap, but her voice pushes that away and I'm just left with no doubt that he has to leave, that he truly loves her, that he can never turn back and I accept it all kind of soothingly, but then Nanci sings "Jesus Christ, this cold hard rain; won't someone put him on his train?" And my heart breaks right down the middle.

18) sweet loraine - Patty Griffin.
This is the first song by Patty Griffin that caught my attention. When I was in college in Charleston, the local music store had listening stations and I used to go between classes sometimes and just bury myself in songs. This album was up for a while and I listened to this song over and over and over again. It blew my mind everytime. It still does. The little phrases in the song are the ones that kill you. "Her mother threw stones at her on the day she moved. Now isn't that a funny thing to do, from someone who never really wanted you?" and "Her daddy calls her a slut and a whore on night before her wedding day; the very next morning, at the church, her daddy gave Lorraine away." would be gut wrenching by themselves, but again we've got a singer here who makes you feel it.

19) anymore - Travis Tritt.
This almost feels cheesy next to "Sweet Lorraine" but Mr. Tritt can deliver sad and be believable in a way that too many of "Today's Hottest Country" artists can't. I would just consider this a nice sad song, but I've got the indelible memory of the video attached to it. He had this series of relentlessly heartbreaking videos to go along with his songs and this was the clincher (if I'm remembering correctly). In this one, he is a wheel-chair bound vet whose best friend is an old black man who walks with a cane, who is working on his boat when his very pregnant wife brings him a snack, slips on the boat, hitting her head as she falls into the water. He crawls out of his wheelchair and sprawls helplessly on the dock reaching for her in the water as his old friend wades into the water to pull her to safety. She dies, but the baby lives for him to raise alone. The song is being sung as he his preparing to explain to his now adolescent daughter how her mother died. The video ends with them pulling up in their boat to the place where the mother is buried and his daughter turning to him and saying "Why do we always come here on my birthday, Daddy?" It sounds too schlocky to stand, but somehow they pulled it off without making seem like a farce and basically just pile as much tear-jerk as can fit in one video. The song by itself is sad and beautiful, but the memory of that video won its place in my mix.

(update: note that in the comments, some kind person corrects my memory, pointing out that the video I described remembering above was "Tell Me I Was Dreaming". This was actually a video trilogy, with "Anymore" showing him in the VA hospital, becoming friends with the black guy, trying to push his wife away and finally breaking down and returning her call and finding her still in love with him. She takes him home and every -including you- cries and smiles. The end of the trilogy with him taking the little girl to her mother's grave is chronicled in "If I Lost You". To make sure I got it straight this time, I just re-watched all three videos and had my heart smashed to bits again. Do not watch these unless you really want to cry.)

20) sometimes i still feel the bruise - The Mountain Goats.
Again, I've already covered this song ad nauseum so I won't recap here. Go read the other post.

21) You'll Never Leave Harlan Alive - Patty Loveless.
It isn't a warble that makes Patty Loveless's voice so deadly, but there is such unbelievable power in her voice. And few people can sing sad like she can. There are a couple of other songs from the same album which are heart breakers, but this song still stands out. The story is beautiful and tragic, but the whole sound of it kills you. If it didn't have words and she were just singing the sounds you would still get your heart destroyed by this song. You don't need the words. More than any other song on this list, it just sounds tragic. Brad Paisly also recorded this song, and I can't imagine what he was thinking. Actually, I can. It is a beautiful song and who wouldn't want to sing it? But damn, the list of people who could do it justice after this version is a very, very short list and Paisly is a great entertainer but only a good singer. Raul Malo or Toby Keith or Dwight Yoakam might be able to make a passable swipe at it, but still...

22) he was a friend of mine - Willie Nelson.
It is no secret that I love Willie Nelson. Obsessively. But all that aside, this song is a killer. So quietly sad. And this isn't a song that is easy to sing (try sing along for a minute. I'll wait), but Willie's voice captures something so perfectly here. The song has this tremendous potential, but without the right voice it would be nothing special. The lyrics are kind of repetitious and bland, which are strengths the way it is sung here, but in different hands you would just have a plodding, pleading yelp. Oddly enough, I have three versions of the song on my computer. Cat Power does ok with it. Nothing special. And I've got Mercury Rev doing it. They do a suprisingly good job with it, but the song just doesn't break your heart without Willie wielding it.

Anyway, that's gone on long enough. If anyone has good sad song suggestions, I'm always looking for some tear-inducing heartbreakers.

Sad Song Mix is totally back on!

So I still don't have "There Were Roses" (hint hint Mason, email it to me), but I found that I do have "Billy Grey" and "You'll Never Leave Harlan Alive". Besides, "There Were Roses" skates the fine line into activism songs. Don't worry, I'd still include it happily (or sadly, I guess), but I'm trying to talk myself out of including "Black Boys on Mopeds" which is totally an angry at the world issue song, but so damn spot on in sad-songness with the emotion in O'Connor's voice; and also Johnny Cash's "Ballad of Ira Hayes" which is also super issue-y and sung with more growling defiance than sadness and is sing-songy, but it is so damn sad and wretched that you can't really help having your heart broken. But if I include it, I feel like it is a small step to suddenly including "Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee" which is totally moving but all issue and completely not what I am going for with this time-wasting exercise.

I know that having mentioned Sinead O'connor that the obvious song for a sad mix is "Nothing Compares 2 U", but it was so popular and is so connected in my memory with images of the video that it takes a moment of active dissociation before I can just lose myself in the song, so it is out.

As long as we are talking issue-y but moving sad songs, "Tomorrow, Wendy" was a contender but is also out. The sound of the song is too pleasant and the voice too defiant. Of course this combination juxtaposed with the subject matter and lyrics is what makes it such a moving song, but still, out. I am tempted to let "Joey" in, though. Its melody might be a little too upbeat too, but damn that voice. Knife straight in the heart. If they hadn't backed her with pleasant upbeat tempos we'd have all killed ourselves or been scarred for life listening to Concrete Blonde. But the song is kind of a make up song, not the completely heart stomped tragedy we are going for here. If we were going to let "Joey" on board, then I feel like I'd have to also include "Jesse". "Jesse come home, there's a hole in the bed where we slept now it's growing cold," is about as pleading a line as you could ask for, but still it is a reconciliation song that only might be hopeless and besides, if I wanted my heart ripped out and stomped on by Joan Baez (which is exactly the kind of thing I am sucker for), I would include "Prison Trilogy", which I don't have and which brings us back full circle to issue songs.

Sad Song Mix: ain't gonna happen

Like I've said before, I love sad songs. Really, really, really love sad songs. And a favorite time waster on the the boat is compiling playlists. Some of these actually materialize as mix cd's for friends, but sometimes I just pick a loose theme and run with it. Tonight I decided to, you guessed it, make a sad song mix. I've told myself that I am going to make the ultimate cry your eyes out mix cd, but this aim is going miserably. First there is the issue with suddenly remembering songs which have to be on it that I know I don't have. You can't make the saddest cd ever without Kathy Matthea singing "There Were Roses" or Patty Loveless's "You'll Never Leave Harlan Alive", both of which I should have, but don't have with me.

And then there is the issue of whether or not picking songs that make you cry because they are so touching is allowed. I don't mean horrid shit like "Butterfly Kisses" or "Holes in the Floor of Heaven" (which, being honest here, both of which I found touching-ish when I first heard them -I totally have a soft spot for cheesy sappy stuff like that- but they were beat to fucking hell on the radio and only sort of tolerable from the start), but stuff like Red Sovine's spoken word tear-jerk trucking tales like "Giddyup Go". Yes, just as patently cheesy and intentionally schlocky but the sincerity is sweetly subtle and doesn't feel quite so fakey-fake to me (maybe just because I grew up listening to it) and really, if you can listen to "Giddyup Go" or "Teddybear's Last Ride" without tearing up, you should be institutionalized. Same goes for "Christmas Carol", which oddly enough I would totally include on this mix if I had it, even though I wouldn't allow the other aforementioned touching tear-jerkers. It is kind of in its own league of make you cry retardedly songs, and strangely the first Christmas song I heard on the radio this year, after several years of not hearing it (and it is one of those songs that is only effective if you hear it randomly on the radio).

Anyway, I kind of decided that I was trying to find actual sad songs, not just weepy things (though again, "Christmas Carol" still counts. If you know what song I'm talking about, you know why). Things were going ok until I decided that I would peruse some George and Tammy. Now, when you want to break a heart with voices, those two have criminal talent. This only makes it more difficult. Sometimes they both get a little too goofy with their phrasing. Now George Jones totally clowns intentionally, and you can tell he knows he being cute with his words even when he's singing tragedy, but Tammy Wynette does not. She may know it is a gimmick, but damn if she doesn't sing those songs even more sincerely and deadpan, and faced with this delivery and these horrific messages in cute packages I can't decide whether to bawl or crack up.

I told myself that "He Stopped Loving Her Today" may in fact be one of the truly saddest songs ever written, but it is so omnipresent that it feels like cheating and doesn't have some of the oomph for me that other songs might, so I settled on "The Grand Tour" for Mr. Jones. Mrs. Wynette on the other hand, she is killing me. Seriously.

It is her cheeseball songs which kill you. "D-I-V-O-R-C-E" might be the most ridiculed song on earth because of how silly the concept of the song is, but on the other hand, it kind of rips your damn heart out exactly because of this goofiness letting the heartbreak story sneak up on you.
But you can only hear so many of these songs before you kind of just have to bust out laughing. "Kids Say the Darndest Things" and "She Didn't Color Daddy" and "I Don't Want to Play House" are each heartrending in their own right, but with her whole resume of songs in this vein, at a certain point you lose it.

But being country's power couple of heartbreak, their best stuff is together. "Two Story House" and "Golden Ring" both made the cut. Maybe they aren't exactly what I had in mind when I first started this mix, because either of them if you listen in passing sound cheerful. I remember having listened to them for years and then one day had them both on an album and really listened to them for the first time. I had to listen to them on repeat to just wallow in the horror of this quiet tragedy that slips up on you. "Golden Ring" might really be the true winner, though both are so wretched and effective because they are being sung by both sides at the same time, with no one party singled out as the offending party, instead the breakdown is presented as almost inevitable and unnecessary at the same time. Maybe this is what makes these songs so effective: we know the narrators have personal knowledge of this kind of tragedy, but they sing it from a neutral if sympathetic distance which make the wrong turns and misunderstanding seem so misguided and avoidable.

The whole project is unworkable though. I just remembered that I don't have Robert Earl Keen, Jr.'s "Billy Grey" which is pretty much unmatched as outlaw tragedy love song. Ok, that isn't true, Richard Thompson's "1952 Vincent Black Lightning" is right there neck and neck, though for some reason though I find it harder to imagine it inspiring tears.

Cary Ann Hearst

I've been negligent lately. I've been at sea, but I've written copiously and just haven't posted it yet.

With this lifestyle, working like a dog at sea for weeks at a time, you have to treat yourself when you hit land and try to periodically convince yourself that it is all worth it. Most recently, I've staved off my imbicilic urge to buy new shoes (I live in fucking Hawaii and wear flip flops every day; why to I need new day-glo Pumas or one more pair of high tops or cowboy boots?) and have instead indulged in consuming music via Itunes. I have a hundred complaints with Itunes, but none serious enough to counter the seductive ease with which one can indulge their musical whims, so here I am with all these tunes.

Oddly enough, I've repurchased multiple Indigo Girls albums, which I'm not in the least ashamed of, even though every album I purchased I had already bought at some point as a cd or cassette. And I bought the new Jason Mraz song which I unappologetically love. And plenty of other things (expect to hear me talk ad nauseum about Leslie Hall soon).

Point being, I spent a pretty signifigant chunk of change on music recently. The most recent purchase is Cary Ann Hearst's album, Dust and Bones. I already had a couple of songs off this, so in all honesty, this purchase is not my first experience with her song "Dresden Snow", but regardless, that one song, if it was the only thing I had gotten out of spending the hundred or so dollars that I've recently spent on music, would be worth every penny. It is impossible for me to relate here how beautiful it is. Her voice, the lyrics, every damn thing about it hurts my feelings by being so beautiful. So I finally bought the whole album.

It was a bizarre experience having been given this song by a friend only to realize later that this Cary Ann was the same Cary Ann who used to play guitar and sing sitting on the stoop beneath my old apartment on King Street in Charleston back when she was still trying to get a gig singing at the Horse and Cart (may it rest in peace). So I'd be inclined to dismiss my enthusiasm as just so much nostalgia, but screw that, the girl can fucking sing. Go buy her album and if you get a chance to see her live, jump on it and write me about it. I'll be jealous and you'll be lucky.

"Twin high-maintenance machines"

Again, I'm back to the Mountain Goats. When there is no one to talk to you can always write...

Anyway, I'm listening to "This Year" now. I've heard it before and knew I liked it, but the perfection of the phrasing is blowing me away this time. "Twin high-maintenance machines"? So simple, so perfect describing... actually everyone in every relationship ever. I was going to say teen love or some shit like that, but let's get a grip: we are all high-maintenance machines on some level when we get in a relationship. I kind of like to pretend that I am low-maintenance as far as dating goes but that is a complete lie. I am patient and calm and don't like drama, but just because the engine don't whine and blow smoke doesn't mean it don't need to be checked from time to time. (I know I misused 'don't' in that sentence and just couldn't care less right now)

I was asked once by someone I was dating if I thought they were high-maintenance, so of course I said yes, because they were and I figured that anyone asking that question had to know that simply asking it makes them so. As I've said before, I often don't understand people so I missed the mark by a mile, since anyone besides me would know that anyone asking that wants to be told that they aren't, even if -especially if- they are (which I've already said we all are). I always say just the wrong thing with people I love and usually at just the wrong time, so I'm in a constant state of trying to figure out how to not sound like an ass the next time a friend or family member or bf asks some seemingly innocent question. I usually fail, but at least I know that if I can't run them off with my normal idiotic responses then they must be tough enough to enjoy having around.

This is off course, not what I originally was planning on writing about when I started this. I really did just need to share how much I'm loving this song and that line in particular (again, wow!), but I've just gotten back to sea after going and visiting my friends and basically spending three months on the move with my foot firmly in my mouth.

Not really that I said anything terribly horrible. I just always managed to just not quite hit the right tone and felt seriously disconnected around people. Of course, I've kind of always felt this way around people; that's part of why I hang out with fish. But this time was remarkable in how on the move I was and how many different people from how many different places and times I was around and seeing. I guess it is more remarkable how connected I still felt with so many of these people who I haven't seen in so long.

Particularly in New York, I really felt a disconnect. The time flew by faster than I expected and it was harder to find time with people like I wanted. I spun around like a top on fire (not that kind of top, you perv) and found it hard to slow down. And I was so excited to see everyone that I just talked non-stop or couldn't find anything to say, and with some of my closest friends I didn't get to just sit and hang out or spend time like I wanted to outside of bars and parties.

I did get to see perhaps the one person who knows exactly what I am talking about as far as saying the exact wrong thing at the exact wrong time: Brock. We met at a time when both of us were kind of in a limbo and soon realized that we complemented each other well, partially because we both had a bluntness that often got us into trouble. He was the king of answering honestly questions that weren't asked because the person (usually a girl) asking wanted an honest answer. I would coach him on things not to say or things that needed to be said, and he would coach me on the same. We couldn't see our own blind spots but were pretty good at catching each other, either pointing out and laughing after the fact or, as time went on, warning the other ahead of time that the other was about to say something stupid.

I guess most of my problem is that when I ask a question, I usually don't have an answer that I want to hear ahead of time or I at least don't expect to get the answer I want. If I don't think I would want to hear the wrong answer, then I don't think a question should be asked. Granted, half of my problem comes from me volunteering random information that no one else in the world remembers. I can't remember names to save my life, but I have this uncanny talent for remembering sorid and amusing details from my and all my friends' dating/social/family histories, which I have a tendency to blurt out when something reminds me of it. I, of course, love it when people blurt stuff like this out. I'm always interested in who slept with who and what weird habit drove someone mad or what kind of weird quirk you'd never guess so-and-so has. Unless someone is saying it maliciously, I'm all ears. I figure we all have our excentricities that someone somewhere remembers and still laughs at (with me, it is usually my friends laughing at mine, usually somewhere in the vicinity of right in my face), so I don't find it exceptional or cruel to discuss other folks weirdnesses and histories. Other people do, and this I always forget. It is part of my charm.

Maybe this is why I like this line in this song, the acknowledgement of being a needy, difficult thing right in tandem with the one beside you doesn't happen near often enough or sincerely enough.

"I felt free and I felt lonely and I felt scared."

Ok, so maybe I shouldn't dwell on one thing, but I'm in the ocean and on a boat where I am pretty much working around the clock (seriously, writing this now means that if I sleep today at all before the sun comes up tomorrow it will be one or two hour) so I'll dwell if I feel like it. So I'm back to the Mountain Goats.

I'm listening to "Woke Up New" for the first time (ok, now I'm listening to it for the third time on repeat, but you know what I mean). This one I don't want to talk about because of the poetry of it, because he makes you understand how he feels. This one makes you feel like he understands how you've felt.

Perhaps no one who has ever dated me believes that I know how to sing this song. My heart is made of bricks, built for storms and anticipating them, not so moved except by earthquakes or sometimes hurricanes that really mean it, so I can't blame them for thinking that. But there is life inside the damn thing, and if ever there was a song that I know how to sing, this is it.

Sometimes hearing something put into words like this is too much. It isn't just sad. It isn't weepy. "I felt free and I felt lonely and I felt scared," says it. There isn't this wild sadness or woe is me about it, just this honest terror and emptiness and loss tinged with openness and newness. It is too soon for the openness and newness to not hurt, to not scream, but there is this blank hope in the song, in that moment, in those feelings. This song isn't about that hope though. This is all what-now? howling into the vacuum. You know the hope is there, is going to matter one day, but right at the moment this is sing, it is all "What do I do?"

Ok, I promise I'll listen to something less melencholic (it is fall, so this is probably a lie).

I'm an idiot

(I didn't realize that "I Was Meant for the Stage" was originally written by the Decemberists. and so I sounded like an ass. Thank you to the kind commentor who so politely pointed out my error. I still think the song sounds flat, but do love it. I'll have to think about who I'd like to cover it most...)

Seems to be all songs all the time right now. I'm sick of writing about politics and can't keep up with them anyway being cut off from everything like this, so songs and books and fish and the weather are all that I've got an opinion about these days.

Anyway, I was excited to see that The Decemberists had covered "I Was Meant For the Stage", thinking that since I liked the song and the band that I would like them combined and we all know how I like my covers. Wrong wrong wrong.

I am only just hearing this for the first time these last couple of times and I keep trying to tell myself that I am going to like it, that I just need to listen to it one more time. Nope, it just isn't good. Dull, flat, boring. They fall for the silly indie trap that if you just slow a song down and try to make it sound dramatic it will be something special. It takes more than that for it to be an interesting cover.

I've tried telling myself that I am being unfair because the only other version of this song that I have at my disposal now is the Kiki & Herb version, which is heavy company to compete against. It isn't just in contrast though; the Decemberist version straight up sucks.

Sparkle and Shine

Sparkle and Shine is the most beautiful love song ever. No one can write them like Steve Earle. Really, this man may be one of outlaw country's grumpiest rebel children, but when the man decides to write a love song, holy fucking shit! Simple and pretty, but oh boy what he says when he says it.

I'm a grumpy fuddy-duddy when it comes to love and romance; most sappy shit makes me kind of want to puke. Most of it is obnoxious and more manufactured and fakey-flakey undigestable than Peeps, and I feel like it is sort of fanciful showboating. All the saccarine sentiment is theatrical: acting out and pantomiming love or some facsimile thereof for the sake of having that thing we are all supposed to want. All the supposed-to-be's and crap like that which people check off in a little notebook to see if they are lovey-dovey enough is enough to make you want to shit on a wedding cake.

Point being, sappy though I may be, I'm selective about my sappiness. The curmudgeon in me wants to just hate all love songs and such, but there is that certain tone that can be hit just right that is the only kind of love to ever tolerate being around for even a moment; it is that kind of love where no matter how you fight it or how grumpy you may be there is this other person that turns things upside down. I don't think every love story should follow a happily ever after trajectory, I just want that sentiment of helpless disarm caused by this other person who for whatever reason, in whatever way sends you haywire. I like sloppy love and the ridiculous and of course the tragic when the love is so there that the tragedy is completely lost in the love part (think Richard Thompson's "1952 Vincent Black Lightning" or Robert Earl Keen, Jr.'s "Billy Grey") or the fleeting but indelible ( Steve Earle's "Galway Gal").

"Sparkle and Shine" isn't so complicated. It is such simple enthusiasm and such a magnificent celebration of another person. It just describes the way this person makes him feel and looking out of his eyes at this vision, at this illumination brightening up his life, you can't help but feel this little swell of joy and peace, the quiet simmering ecstacy that you can only feel in those moments when you can still viscerally remember and feel that dizzy way another person can make you feel. That wasn't meant to mean just post coital feelings. The song does enough to explain it. "My baby sparkle and shine..." Ok, a little goofy, but if ever there was something I wanted someone to think about me or a way I want someone to make me feel, this song describes it.

"I am under no illusion..."

(warning: I've been obsessed with the Mountain Goats lately; this is only going to get worse.)

I like sad songs. I generally don't like horror flick or scary movies. I can appreciate them in their place, but I love sad, sad, sad songs and stories (not that horror and sad stuff are really naturally comparable things, but it somehow made sense to me in the middle of the night in the middle of the ocean). Believe me, I love a happy ending, but I can really get into those rip your heart out kind of stories and songs. This is not the same as the stomp-on-your-soul stories like Faulkner's _Sanctuary_ (this is not one of those dont'-read-it warnings that is meant as a challenge to your honor anticipating that you would pick it up, this is a warning against something no one should ever go through, trust me), but the tragic beautiful. _Giovanni's Room_ by James Baldwin is perhaps my single favorite piece of fiction ever. Tragic books and tragic songs have one big difference: the scope of the story they can share. A book can end tragic or have little tragic bits all along and still give you enough to buoy you up, which is generally how I feel about most sad stories. They only get to be tragic because the other parts are so beautiful. If anyone ever described _Giovanni's Room_ as a story about an execution, I'd be torn between punching them and having them committed and probably settle on giving them a look piled with so much indignation that I wouldn't have any room left for the scorn they deserved. Point being, the tragic in them is contrasted. In so much space, you've got to tell of more than just the pain.

Songs are different. They are shorter; only so much can fit in there. A sad song has to reflect enough of what ever it was that was so beautiful that you can relate to the sadness. The lyrics have to make you care and the music has to hit you just right to take you there. But they have to do it while usually really only telling you the tragedy. The beauty is hinted at, alluded to, mentioned but you only know how bright it was by how dark the song is without it.

I don't know why I love sad songs so much, but I do. I guess my whole thing is that for something to really be sad, you've got to really care about it, someone has to care about it and if someone can really communicate that caring and that pain, then I've got to be able to celebrate it. Often times, it is the sad songs which communicate more love and caring and hope (even if it has already been crushed) than the flat out love songs. "Some one loves me and I'm so happy," well, whoopty friggin' do. Lucky you (this isn't fair at all since I've been writing about how much I love some love songs, but whatev). "Somebody left me but I still love them," whoa, they mean it.

This of course is in stark contrast with my general view of the world and romance, but not really. As a general rule, whenever someone gives me crap about being lost without someone else, my response is only slightly more sympathetic than, "Oh, get a grip. You are better off without them." If I'm close friends with them, I know that if they were expecting sympathy they would have called Mason or Lisa, so I can be even more blunt. This isn't because I am down on love, just I'm don't care to call other things love and have no sympathy for codependence or fear of being alone or whatever other wretched, but oh so human, response to break-ups and such people so commonly have and call love. My curmudgeonliness comes from a tender place, though, so when I listen to sad songs, I let them totally get to me. Of course, this is only if they are well written and well played/sung. If they are just stupid and cheesy (how did we get back to Kenny Chesney again?), they get the same sympathy that most real life break-ups get. Ok, I'll leave K-Che alone for a minute (not because I've suddenly stumbled upon some sympathetic kindness, I just only have a few of his upbeat songs on my computer and figure that if I am going to write about how lame someone's sad song is, then I should at least be listening to it at the time). Luckily, there is always Brad Paisley pick on.

All my music is still in Alabama, so I'm slowly piecing together a music collection from what friends have so i have some random shit on here, including a fairly eclectic country mix. I've got nothing in particular against Bran Paisley, just normally wouldn't include him in my collection, but since he is here, let's talk for a minute about "Who needs pictures?" It is decently written, even if a little to kitschy, but only decently written. With just the right voice, it could be a sad song. When George Jones is in the right mood, he has a voice that was meant to rip your heart out and he isn't afraid to do it. Patty Loveless can do it with her hands tied behind her back and blindfolded. Bran Paisley can't. With a sad enough song, his voice might not pull down the lyrics, but with decent lyrics that need someone to make them sympathetic, no way. I know he has won a hundred thousand awards in country music and I know that he seems to be a likeable new country guy who actually loves and appreciates old country and cares about respecting those that made country something special. And sometimes he picks some good music and is a good singer and a good guitar player and... flat as a pancake. The man can feel the music, you can see it when he sings, but damn if he doesn't sing like a kareoke star. His voice has no soul. It is the soul of a cardboard cut out, not a soul musician. And his musicians are technically great, I am sure they are the best of the current "Nashville sound" session musicians, but the end effect is boring as dirt. Blank music doing exactly what it is supposed to do, blank singer doing exactly what he is supposed to do, decent lyrics having to carry it all and you feel exactly the sympathy you would feel for any other whiney-ass bachelor who wanted to tell you about how a camera reminded him about the girl who dumped him. In some people that might rustle up some sympathy; I just change the station.

This wasn't originally about how sad songs can suck. Griping gets as boring as Brad Paisley's music. I was inspired to write because I listened to The Mountain Goats' "I Still Feel The Bruise".

Holy shit.

As sad songs go, this is a whole 'nother ball-game. Right from the start, the music gets you. There is enough placid kindness in the notes to not just sound miserable, but before you hear the first word you feel the pain. Then he starts singing.

The same thing that was in the music is in his voice, in spades. He doesn't have to push it; these aren't lyrics that could be pushed. And what fucking lyrics they are! The first verse is sad enough; there is plenty of plainly stated sadness for you to know how he feels. Then the chorus slips in and knocks the breath out of you and leaves you sitting there with chills wondering if there is any way you could turn the song off now, knowing that you are going to play it on repeat. "I'm under no illusion, as to what I meant to you. But you made an impression, sometimes I still feel the bruise, sometimes I still feel the bruise..."

I can't remember the guy's name who is The Mountain Goats. I should, but I can't and I'm in the middle of the ocean and don't have the benefit of Google so you will have to google it yourself (which you have to have if you are reading this at this moment). Anyway, my first introduction to him was listening to "Korean Bird Paintings" on some music blog (maybe Thus Spake the Grammophone or Fluxblog). Of course this was right at the moment that he was appearing on the radar of everyone I knew, so I wasn't any ahead of the curve but I wasn't behind it (keep in mind this was in music nerd Brooklyn land, so not being the last to know about a musician like this took some doing). KBP was upbeat and cheerful, this pleasant love song rolls in and sounds so wonderful and you listen to the lyrics and this joy and wonder isn't just happy inloveness, it is past the breaking point desperation/ idon'tgiveafuckness. I had to listen to it a few times over and over again. Here is this crisp little cut-out from this bigger picture, so detailed in its description telling so much about the story surrounding it while kind of telling you nothing about it except that this is where the story has gotten to, leaving you to wonder how it got there and where can it go from here.

Then I got home and as with all new music I ran it past Mason. Suddenly I'm listening to "Going to Georgia", which quickly became a home hootenany staple. Mr. Mountain Goat can write like a motherfucker. He can sing like one too, and plays like he sings, but his lyrics are poetry. Phrased slightly differently, sung/played slightly differently and these songs would be straight up obnoxious, but they aren't phrased differently or sung/played differently: they blow the top off your head. I'm sure there are times he doesn't hit it just right, but damn when he does.

He followed this with "The Best Ever Death Metal Band Out of Denton". That is one of those titles that you want to both hate and love so you wait for the song to see which it is going to be. And it starts as just silly enough to laugh and like, it is just a song about some kids putting together what was probably a wretched obnoxious band and adults reacting the stupid way they so often do to such things. But it takes a turn. There is this dark moment calling this parental/authority reaction for exactly what it is and it makes you love all sincere punk forever. I can't remember the line verbatim so rather than sharing a butchered remembrance, I'll leave it to you find it and listen to it.

I saw him play live once. He played a sort of coffee house tour and played at Fix in Williamsburg. It was insanely crowded and way too hot, but he sang like a manic angel. Don't go hear him hoping to hear some song of his you want to hear live. He informed us that he hates playing old stuff so he only plays things live that aren't on any album yet. At first this made me cringe and fear for what I was in for; my fears were quickly assuaged. Given the chance, go see him live, especially if you are somewhere out of the way enough that he will be in a small uncrowded venue. I'd kill to see him in the coffee shop/bar at the Princess theater in Columbus, MS.

"Sometimes I Still Feel the Bruise", like all the best Mountain Goats songs, takes you to exactly where the narrator in the song is. In my mind, this song is exactly the message. I imagine it not as the song version of some conversation, but as written to be a song, to be heard or not by someone who may be or not be in the audience. Sort of hopeful that they are, but assuming that they wouldn't be and that even if they are, not singing in hopes that it would bring them back, just singing it because it had to be let out.

This is the kind of song writing that makes me want to hole away and just pour everything into writing songs. Not because I think I could write like that, although he is the kind of writer who makes you wish you could, but because he is the kind of prolific writer pouring so much in to it that it makes the action of it, the effort itself into a work of art. The lifestyle when well done makes it seem like something worth doing; the few people who do it so well forgives all those who do it poorly by showing the world why they are trying and asks the rest of us why we aren't.