Poop oh ate
Tell Tale Signs, Randy, Ani, Ray Davies, and the Cooder anthology was pretty much it for me this slow, tense, political year. Yeah sure Jakob D, the ever-cute Carrie Rodriguez, Kathleen Edwards, and Lynne Hanson ignited some sparks but what’s the poop behind every other aficionado wetting themselves over the latest Baez, Osborne, and Pretenders? And why didn’t any of the new music that crossed my path either by burn or XM leave any stain on my consciousness?
Lucinda was great at the Depression era theater alongside Madison Square but without her Buick 6 is a riffless Crazy Horse and I don’t remember very much of ‘Little Honey’ either. Randy at the Paramount in Peekskill with my bro fourth row was a damn fine treat as was a gracious and humble Ray Davies at the Bardavon and Ani too at the opera house on Market with me fine missus but fuck Paul Motian for telling the villagers at the Vanguard to go home already – – he’d been there all week with the Brad Iverson Trio. Fuck you Motian ain’t life hard and I hope Graham Parker missed his plane at Westchester airport after his piss-on-the-crowd gig in Pleasantville.
Cynicism is not a virtue and what else have I learned? That the good guys can win. That we can, in this lifetime, prove to the future why our fathers and grandparents sailed here. That we can make history again in America and maybe that’s what we should start manufacturing instead of “Real Wives’ spin offs ‘n Lohan tales of woe ‘n one bad cd and movie after another after another after ad nauseum . . . maybe the whole musical malaise came down to the fact that nothing was more important this year than ELECTION DAY and when was the last time any of us could swear to that?
But I bandstand and soapbox and this ain’t that kind of forum plus I’m willing to bet most you poopers were in the tank for Obama and a million thanks for that. Hopefully in this new America we’ll make better music – like Zevon’s debut recently re-issued with superlative demos and alternates or buck the conformity like the latest Byrne-Eno collab, and the humanity despite the avante gardism of Sir Paul’s latest electric arguments. Maybe in this new America we’ll all miss Levi Stubbs and Bruce will rescind his whore mongering with Wal-Mart and the Mets won’t blow another season in the last two weeks. I can only look forward
mj