Headline of the Week:Father 'Kicking Himself' After Son, 4, Shoots Mother. While police do not expect to arrest anyone, prosecutors could decide to file charges: "It would be something along the lines of negligence." Hey, give the guy a break and get the government off of his back.
According to the story, the father had given the lad a piece of live ammunition somewhere some time -- no one one seems to know when -- and "was unaware that the boy still had the cartridge." I know where he's coming from: As many times as I gave my boys a bullet with an unsecured gun lying around, I couldn't possibly have been expected to remember whether they had kept it or not.
Police explained that actually loading the gun had been a piece of cake so easy to eat that a 4-year old could do it: "He had probably seen his dad do it a hundred times." Police did not explain why the man felt it necessary to load his gun a hundred times in front of his toddler son.
Dave Workman of Gun World weighed in with a plea for gun safety:
It's cases like this that remind gun owners about...making sure their children never touch firearms without their parents' permission.
I don't know what's more alarming: The plural "cases," the fact anyone needs to be reminded, or that Dave doesn't seem to have a problem with leaving guns out where they can be touched...
Note: Brother Joe sits in today while Premium T. and I fly to South Texas.
Saw a great show Friday night - John Prine headlining w/ "special guest" Steve Earle. Steve opened and played for about an hour solo/ acoustic. Did a couple of cuts off the new album (Pancho & Lefty, Colorado Girl and the bluesy tune whose name escapes me), and then mostly some classics - Tom Ames Prayer, Someday, Goodbye, Dixieland, The Mountain & Copperhead Road. Couple of others. Played for about hour - he was totally on.
But John Prine was up to the task. I had really gone just to see Steve, but you forget how many John Prine songs are out there that you know. I'm not sure of most of the titles. I know he played the draft tune from his original album, "Sam Stone," "Lake Marie," "Paradise," "Angel From Montgomery" and a couple from his later albums that I have. I probably knew half the songs, but he really demands your attention. Great showsman. Had two backup guys for about half an hour, played by himself for about half an hour and then everyone came back out for half an hour.
I think this was a one time show because they were both in the area, but don't miss John Prine if he comes your way. Both American classics.
John Prine singing "Angel From Montgomery":
Those College Republicans: It's just a laugh a minute with those (white) guys...
BOB DYLAN, Together Through Life. Is Togther Through Life Bob Dylan's Texas album? Between its arrangements and trips through the streets of Houston, Dallas, and Austin, it just might be. The first song, though, opens with an authoritative drum shot reminiscent of the way "Like A Rolling Stone" introduces Highway 61 Revisited. From there, Dylan proceeds to investigate the territory first explored in "Too Much Of Nothing." This time, though, he's accompanied by a woman whose love offsets this brittle reality:
Down every street there's a window And every window's made of glass We'll keep on lovin' pretty baby For as long as love will last Beyond here lies nothin' But the mountains of the past
Thematically, Dylan continues to explore the tension between love and the emptiness of a world without it. In "Forgetful Heart" he implicitly compares the psychic pain caused by neglectful love to the existential angst of Macbeth:
Forgetful heart Like a walking shadow in my brain All night long I lay awake and listen to the sound of pain The door has closed forevermore If indeed there ever was a door ("Forgetful Heart")
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player, That struts and frets his hour upon the stage, And then is heard no more. It is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.
(Macbeth)
It's an audacious comparison to say the least, and no one but Dylan has the stature to pull it off. But pull it off he does, reinforcing the point in "This Dream Of You":
How long can I stay In this nowhere café 'fore night turns into day I wonder why I’m so frightened of dawn All I have and all I know Is this dream of you which keeps me living on ("This Dream Of You")
Frightened of the dawn, wary of the mountains of the past, terrified of "dreams that are locked and barred," Dylan remains secure in the conviction that "life is love" and that love is worth pursuing and holding.
But where? Not since Blonde On Blonde has the sound of an album conveyed so much of Dylan's intent. If love is a refuge, Dylan appears to have found a haven as the house band in South Texas bodega or dancehall. Fronting one of the best bands he's ever assembled, Dylan leads them through a set of ballads, waltzes, blues, shuffles, and rockers defined by David Hidalgo's (Los Lobos) ever present accordion and Mike Campbell's (The Heartbreakers) guitar. Together Through Life has the immediacy and vitality of a live performance, and yet it could be set during any time period -- the sound is that timeless. (I found myself taken back to the early 1970's and Hubert's Danceland in Riviera, TX, site of many a senior party.) Overall, Together's ambience is a welcome counterpart to the fearful specter of a loveless world. Dylan even offers a touch of humor in the bluesy "My Wife's Home Town": "I just wanna say that hell’s my wife’s home town."
From the beginning to end of Together Through Life, it's easy to imagine bodega patrons slow dancing to the ballads and shimmying to the blues. Don't forget to dance, Dylan implies, and remember that it takes two...
Also Recommended: Antje Duvekot, The Near Demise Of The High Wire Dancer. It's been over two years since the last Patty Griffin album, and this one will more than suffice while we wait. Duvekot not only sings like Griffin, she brings similar touches of whimsy ("Dublin Boys") and insight and melodic sensibility (just about everything else) to her songwriting...Steve Earle, Townes. A welcome return to form after 2007's Washington Square Serenade, Earle's interpretations of Townes Van Zandt are sensitive without being precious, appreciative without being reverent. Van Zandt was an often enigmatic performer of his own work, and Earle strives successfully to educe the meaning in the songs through his gruff vocals and the album's spare but potent production. In fact, while Earle's songwriting may be in eclipse, the artistic success of Townes and Joan Baez's Day After Tomorrow indicate that he has found a new voice as a producer...
Pssst...Spring for the Deluxe Edition of Together Through Life. It includes the "Friends and Neighbors" episode of Dylan's satellite radio show. His musical knowledge is wonderfully far flung and his taste is impeccable...
Bob Dylan has long had an admiration and fascination with Shakespeare. Compare the chorus of "This Wheel's On Fire" --
This wheel's on fire Rolling down the road Best notify my next of kin This wheel shall explode
-- with the passage in King Lear where the mad king is reunited with Cordelia:
Thou art a soul in bliss; but I am bound Upon a wheel of fire, that mine own tears Do scald like moulten lead.
The wheel of fire is a torture device that -- as metaphor in the hands of Shakespeare and Dylan -- has the potential to consume generations. While Dylan's wheel rolls down the road indiscriminately, Lear's is one of his own making that eventually annihilates both him and Cordelia. Dylan's attraction to the metaphor is obvious, especially in the context of The Basement Tapes, that brilliant surreal exploration of nihilism different that anything else Dylan has recorded...
Over at the New Orleans Ladder, Editilla lambastes the Army Corps Of Engineering's PR firm...
"Marigny Girl," by collagist and printmaker extraordinaire Tony Fitzpatrick, graces the cover of Stew Called New Orleans, the fine new CD from Paul Sanchez and John Boutte. The pair knocked out the CD in a single session. Stew glows with a relaxed confidence, starting from the very beginning with Boutte's sterling reading of Paul Simon's "American Tune." Boutte and Sanchez trade vocals throughout, augmented greatly by Leroy Jones prowling trumpet and an occasional solo from guitarist Todd Duke. But what really makes this CD shine is not so much the material -- excellent though it may be -- as the obvious friendship and affection between the two men bulwarked by arrangements built around Sanchez' rhythm guitar. Individual CDs from both made my end-of-year Best Of list, and I can't imagine that Stew will be any different...
You can listen to tracks from Stew Called New Orleans at the Lousiana Music Factory here...
"Marigny Girl" is part of a exhibition called Chapel Of Moths: A New Orleans Project, assembled by Fitzpatrick for last years biennial Prospect.1 New Orleans. You can view the exhibit here...
Fitzpatrick has been designing Steve Earle's CD covers for nearly fifteen years:
So Arlen Specter is now a Democrat. I've always been lukewarm toward party switchers because the act usually has more to do with self-preservation than principle. Specter is no different: The 79-year old faced a stiff primary challenge from his right. More than anything -- and way ahead of principle and party loyalty -- these guys want to be United States senators. Specter has already said that he will continue to oppose the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), I hope he doesn't get a free ride in the Democratic primary of heavily unionized Pennsylvania...
It's not often that we are among the youngest people at a concert, but we definitely were at last night's performance by Joan Baez. Backed by a three-piece string band, she greeted us with a hearty "Yes, we did" (no dissenters) and immediately launched into "The Lily of the West," a song she originally recorded in 1961 for her second album. The current tour simultaneously celebrates her 50th year as a performer and the release of her strong new album, Day After Tomorrow.
While age (Joan is 67) may have claimed the ethereal soprano of her youth, Baez still has plenty of vocal chops and a more immediate, earthbound contralto. And then there's her taste in songs: As the hour-and-three-quarters show advanced, I found myself marveling at the depth of her catalog. There were trad folk and Dylan favorites ("Farewell Angelina" and "Love Is Just A Four-Letter Word") of course, but she also covered Eliza Gilkyson's lovely "Rose Of Sharon" and three Steve Earle songs. The Earle numbers included a surpassingly wonderful rendition of his great song "Christmas In Washington," followed immediately by a full-band version of "Joe Hill."
I'd say that that was my favorite part of the show, but I don't want to diminish the rest of it. At one point, the band departed so that Joan could perform some solo numbers, eventually putting down her guitar for the a cappella rendtion of "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot." (Her final encore was leading us all in an a cappella "Amazing Grace.") And of course she graced us with the likes of "Long Black Veil," "Sweet Sir Galahad," "Diamonds And Rust," and "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down." She even threw in a lovely version of Donovan's "Catch The Wind" for the simple reason than that she likes singing it.
Along the way, she told humorous anecdotes of her past, such as the time she innocently sang a bawdy R&B number at a school assembly as her parents looked in horror. The tale of her and the band taking a cab on election night from a Virginia hotel to the White House, the cab driver honking in glee, made me think of what a great moment Obama's election must have been for Joan Baez. After fifty years of fighting the good fight and never giving up on people and never apologizing for her belief in human rights and simple peace and justice, she found herself dancing in front of the White House with thousands of her fellow citizens, celebrating a breakthrough even she must have thought was a long shot.
And this is what made the performance much more than an exercise in nostalgia. Joan Baez' journey as an artist and activist may have begun fifty years ago, but it continues now, with no sign of stopping...
More great photographs from Mike Urban of the Seattle P-I here...
Gail Collins, only half-jokingly, suggests that Bush resign now and let Obama take charge. With one caveat: "Vice President Dick Cheney, obviously, would have to quit as well as Bush. In fact, just to be on the safe side, the vice president ought to turn in his resignation first. (We're desperate, but not crazy.)"...
People seemed to like the video of The Original Schnickelfritz Band performing "Turkey In The Straw," so I managed to find a web site with more great performances here. The boys in the band were lead by one Freddie Fisher, the self-described "Colonel of Corn." They appeared in the "Gold Diggers" movies of the '30's and apparently had a following. Anyway, enjoy!...
Here, in a performance from the European leg of the current tour, Joan Baez sings "Joe Hill," one of my favorite songs:
Starting with my next post, you may notice a Gaelic tilt to Citizen K. That's because Premium T. and I are spending the next month on the Emerald Isle, the Auld Sod, the Holy Land itself: Ireland, a.k.a Eire and Erin. We'll be in County Mayo near the town of Westport, gazing daily upon the aquatic marvel that is Clew Bay and its maze of islands (reputedly one for each day of the year). Slainte!
Citizen K. Read: Yellow Jack, Josh Russell. Outstanding first novel set in New Orleans during the Yellow Fever outbreak of the 1840's. It chronicles the growing madness of the character of Claude Marchand, who is based on one of the first photographers in the United States. Russell uses the exotic setting and characters to probe into the nature of art, history, and obsession, all connected by Marchand's erotic fixation on a young heiress. Challenging and engrossing, Yellow Jack poses unsettling questions and offers no simple answers.
Friday's Choice: A (very) young Steve Earle sings "Mercenary Song"
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