Words

Neil Young--"Words" (mp3)

I was driving back to school after picking up some doughnuts for my advisee group the other morning, when I started looking through Ipod songs for one to kick off the shuffle back to campus. In the "R"s, there were the Doors waiting with "Roadhouse Blues." Seemed like a good choice. Hadn't heard it in a long time. So off we went. Good driving song, harmonica, basic blues pattern, distinctive guitar licks, Jim Morrison, the whole package. And then late in the song, the lyrics distilled into this:

"Well, I woke up this morning and I got myself a beer.
Well, I woke up this morning and I got myself a beer. The future's uncertain, and the end is always near."

Yeah, I thought. Now we're at the crux of the matter. It's not just fun and games anymore. Now we're back in the mead hall with Hrothgar and his men, knowing that Grendel could bust in anytime he wanted to. By title, by subject matter, "Roadhouse Blues" seems like a girls-n-partying kind of song if you don't pay attention, but there's always at least a little more to a Doors song.

I think it was Eddie Murphy who used to do a schtick about how white people listen to lyrics and black people don't. He made the point in the context of why white people can't dance. They're focused on the wrong thing and missing the rhythm. But if that accusation is still out there, mark me down as 'guilty.'

I can't help but listen to the lyrics. I'm obsessed with them. I doubt that this comes as a surprise to those of you who know me or have read this blog for awhile and found me trying to squeeze deep meaning out of the nearly-dry sponge of a cheesy Jackson Browne song. I used to try to make sense of the early, impressionistic R.E.M. songs, which might not have made any sense at all. But, at least, I knew the words.

Often, I am disappointed when I know that there is a good line coming in a song and I try to get someone I'm with to listen, but people have other things to say, other things to think about (and maybe their own favorite words), and so something else will come up before we get to the line. Lyrics, I guess, are meant to be mulled over in private, to be dissected and applied privately.

But a lyric freak wants more. He wants to world to pay attention to the "poetry" that goes along with the melody and the beat. He wants the recognition that popular music can offer insights worth more than a momentary consideration, insights that are worth coming back to again and again. Often, the insights come in small snatches, couplets or turns of phrase or pithy sayings. I always think of Dylan's genius of insight in "Positively 4th Street:"

"I wish that for just one time you could stand inside my shoes;

You'd know what a drag it is to see you."

But sometimes, somebody builds an entire song where he or she is really trying to say something, even say something amidst a mid-tempo, a variety of guitars, a good-rocking sound. Take a look at this little gem of a passage that opens Aimee Mann's very last song, "It's Not Safe," off of I'm With Stupid:

"All you want to do is something good,
So get ready to be ridiculed and misunderstood.
'Cause don't you know that you're a fucking freak in this world
In which everybody's willing to choose swine over pearls?
And maybe everything is all for nothing,
Still you'd better keep it to yourself,
'Cause God knows it's not safe with anybody else."

I can almost imagine someone cruising along with Aimee in the background, not paying attention, just kind of going, "Da da da da da da da, duh da da da da da da da da da da da da, duh da da da da da da fucking freak da da....wait, what?" Yeah, there's insight and powerful words there worth stopping for.

You know, popular music doesn't have to be an either/or, as in, either 'I like songs that make me move' or 'I like songs that make me think.' Well, I guess some of it does. But when you listen to the lyrics as a matter of habit, you not only enjoy the good ones, you get to make fun of the stupid ones. But those moments are hardly worth mentioning; all of us have been tuned in a little too carefully to some crappy words. Instead, I prefer to dwell on the opposite--those moments when the words shine, when the songwriter transcends the form and offers us true wisdom. That's the joy of listening to the lyrics.

Neil Young's "Words," from Harvest, is available at Itunes.

My Harvard Jacket

Say What You Wanna Say - Hit the Lights (mp3)
The Good That Won't Come Out - Rilo Kiley (mp3)

"Why are you wearing a Harvard jacket?"

You'd be amazed just how often I get this question whenever I'm wearing my Harvard jacket. It's a windbreaker, actually. Very nice for a September in Boston or a November in Chattanooga. It's crimson (natch) with an adorable, palm-sized patch on the right breast of Harvard's crest, a crest as old as the Dead Sea Scrolls and as revered as that cool "Unite or Die" snake of our revolutionary period.

Way back in 1998, I attended a 2-week special course (for special people with special needs) combining key figures from Harvard's Kennedy School of Government and their Graduate School of Education, a school not quite important enough to be named for important or wealthy people. The course focused on teaching and discussing media literacy and contemporary issues with high school classes, and the experience was absolutely stellar. It was precisely the kind of inspiring academic experience one has every right to expect out of what is generally considered the most revered educational institution in our country if not the world. As such, I found myself feeling very much like Wayne Campbell, confessing "We're not worthy! We're not worthy!" and bowing to the venerable institution's grounds and professors.

Before I left the school, I purchased a very nice Harvard-labeled shirt for my wife and this windbreaker for myself. Because, ultimately, I'm that kind of tourist. And because I was attending a class at Harvard. And because it's Harvard, and I think that's kinda cool... if also snooty and debatably overrated or unfairly singled out in comparison to dozens of universities of comparable measure.

But a funny thing happened on the way home in my Harvard jacket.

People wonder why I wear it. Like, they wonder aloud. And the better they know me -- which is to say, the more certain they are that I didn't graduate from Harvard -- the more likely they are to ask that vital question: "Why the hell are you wearing a Harvard jacket?"

There's this unspoken code about college gear. You wear it if you went to the school. Period. The only exception seems to be that it's perfectly acceptable to don another school's schwag if you ROOT for them in athletics. Sure, a few alumni might raise their nostril angle in your presence, but the rest of the world could care less whether you attended the University of Georgia or are just a fan.

But who the hell roots for Harvard in athletics? Nobody. So if I don't cheer on their football team, why the hell would I wear their jacket?

Yup, welcome to the South, where a university's athletic acumen is much more important than its academic credentials. Does anyone else find this odd?

If I were wearing an item of clothing with ABERCROMBIE plastered on it, no one would ever think of asking, "Why the hell are you promoting Abercrombie & Fitch? And why the hell did you pay money to serve as their walking billboard?"

Apparently it's less offensive to wear an Alabama sweatshirt than a Princeton one, and less offensive to wear a Polo logo than a Stanford crest.

In my wacky little world, we'd be much more eager to promote and wear gear that proclaimed the awesomeness of a college education than we would the logo of a corporate entity. Instead of UnderArmour shirts and Gucci pants, we'd don Emory University jackets and Amherst College jeans. And sure, for good measure you could throw in a UNC Tar Heels hat and cheer for them as a great school or as a great athletic program. Take your pick.

If John Travolta can do it, why can't we??

Hit the Lights' Skip School, Start Fights and Rilo Kiley's The Execution of All Things can both be found at eMusic for a very reasonable price! Mega awesome props to eMusic!

Grr.

John Hiatt--"Shredding The Documents" (mp3)
Tiger Woods--"Phonecall To Mistress" (link)

Poor Tiger. He can't stand the idea that his perfectly-controlled life and image have been tarnished by speculation. He can't imagine why anyone would dare to invade his privacy, especially the police who came to his house at least three times to find out what happened, which is their job, and were turned away by a high-powered lawyer. Poor Tiger.

Welcome to the first Point/Counterpoint between my fellow blogger, Sir William, and me?

I'll put it simply. If you think Tiger has in any way been treated badly, you do not understand our society. We are a society consumed by our prurient interests--give us a scandal, a potential scandal, even just the tease of a scandal, and we're all over it. Was he drunk? Was he doped? Was there a fight? Was the camel-toed 9/11 "widow" who's all over the Internet with the likes of David Boreanz, Stephen Dorff, and Ryan Seacrest the reason for the fight? Ryan Seacrest? Really? Ryan Seacrest? Doesn't he tend in a different direction?

It's convenient to blame the media for going overboard, but who reads, watches, and listens to the media? Hmm, that's right, that would be us. We want to know if Thomas Jefferson slept with Sally Hemmings, want to know enough to do DNA testing over 200 years after the fact! When my wife read some headline last night about some Argentinian ex-beauty queen dying from plastic surgery, my first question was, "Oh, was it that South Carolina governor's 'soul mate'? People are engaging in international, lustful trysts while we sit in our living rooms and play Wii. It's a dirty world, say the Travelling Wilburys. No, don't blame the media; blame us. We're the ones who sit around and gossip about every scrap and tittle we can get our hands on. Tiger should be exempt from that? No way! But I would even dare to argue that we want to know for more than just the gory details.

Why? We are also a very curious society. We like for things to make sense. Tiger's situation does not make sense. We want to know where he was going and why at such a speed and why a guy who hits some of the longest drives in the world onto the fairway can barely get out of his driveway or stay away from the trees. We want to know what his wife was doing with the golf clubs? Why break two windows? Was Tiger unconscious or not? How did she get him out of the car? Why was he unconscious from an accident that didn't even cause the airbags to deploy? Why does he decide not to attend his own golf tournament due to injuries when he attended it last year even though he was injured?

Our government, our businesses, our churches, our banks, our schools and every part of our lives feed us a lot of malarky that doesn't quite make sense. So, we have a highly-developed sense of wanting to know why something doesn't make sense. And you, Tiger, suddenly do not make sense. We thought we knew you.

But that's only some of who we are. Americans have little patience with the high and the mighty who think they are above the laws that the rest of us have to follow. So throw all of the speculation out the window about what happened with Tiger and why. What you'll still have left is a guy who, when the police come to his house, refuses to talk to them and has his lawyer turn them away. (Warning: these are stunt drivers on an enclosed track. Do not try this at home.) Think you can get away with that one?

And, finally, we are a judgmental society. Too quick to judge, you say? So be it. Tiger now looks like a cock, an asshole, and everything else that makes you realize that, wait a second, the guy rarely, if ever, talks in his commercials. Could that be because no one wants him to open his difficult, egotistical, unlikeable mouth? We'll just show his face and his razor and hope that does the trick. And, he's not aging well, at least not in the face, now that I think of it. Oops, I'm being judgmental.

Sorry, Tiger, but we Americans just don't put up with a lot of bullshit, like carefully-worded statements that are released through your website. Have the balls to attend a press conference you've scheduled and have the balls to say what happened. You have made a billion dollars from us, playing off your celebrity. Now you want to pretend that that celebrity didn't have its own price tag? C'mon. We know you can handle the pressure. But when you bow out, do not even play, do not even speak, use the scratches on your face that your wife gave you because you had an affair as an excuse not to do your job, we start to think differently of you. And it ain't the affair, buddy. Don't you realize we can get over that?

Oh Tiger, poor Tiger, methinks there will be much, much more to this story before it's all said and done. You shoulda just told the truth, pal, or at least some of it. Don't you watch Letterman?

Leave Tiger Aloooooone!

Tournament of Hearts - The Weakerthans (mp3)
Buy Into It - The Most Powerful Telescope in the World (mp3)

Look at the me. That's what the world is turning me into. Chris fuckin' Crocker.

Everywhere I turn, on the Internet, on TV, on the radio, there's this constant shark-drool hum about Tiger Woods. A fire hydrant. His wife. A golf club. A shattered window. A woman in New York. Scandal! Deception! Dodging the police! Ruining his career!!!!

My collective response to it? Stop it, people. Just stop.

As best I can tell, over the course of his billion-dollar career, this is Tiger Woods' virgin step into anything other than a lily-white track record. Seriously, just try and imagine how impossible it must be to go 13 years as arguably the most famous and best-known athlete in the world -- yes, for a while he trailed Michael Jordan, but no longer -- with press and photographers constantly following your every step, your every breath, without once doing anything untoward.

We get to sit in the privacy of our own homes and amuse ourselves with little platitudes like, "Character is what you do when no one is watching." But guess what? When you're Tiger Woods, someone is always watching. He doesn't need to be threatened by the thought of Jesus or angels or his father looking over his shoulder, because dudes with telephoto lenses and hypersensitive microphones are tracking him 24/7.

So, with the exception of being a little pouty and potty-mouthed on a golf course, this "accident" is the very first moment Tiger has proven himself human. (Well, he proved capable of impregnating his wife... but even the Visitors can do that, so I'm not sure having semen counts.)

And you can tell by our reaction that most of us have been eagerly and hungrily waiting for this moment. He's human, and by God, for that, he's gonna pay! Make him suffer! Let's revel in his imperfections!!

Please don't mistake my anger for fandom. While I'm in true awe of Tiger's golf skills, I don't idolize him or follow him or watch copious amounts of golf tournaments just because he's in them. Truthfully, I'm a bigger fan of Mickelson, and on those rare occasions when I watch golf, I get annoyed that Tiger's the focus of every other shot even when he's mired in 19th place.

While I'm not particularly in favor of politicians getting this treatment anymore than celebrities, at least politicians waste time shouting moralistic platitudes, practically begging to be caught in hypocritical moments. We're still guilty of being the drooling crowd at a gladiator match, watching the tigers maul their armored prey, but at least we can know they kinda asked for it. But celebrities and athletes? They just wanted to play their games, man. Everything beyond that is stuff we put on them that they never asked for.

In truth, we have no way of knowing what happened between this attractive and wealthy couple in the middle of the night. The only thing that's remotely fair to speculate, IMO, is that if -- IF -- she attacked him with that club, the reason Tiger is being so tight-lipped is to protect her from Florida's uber-strict spousal abuse laws.

If -- IF -- they were fighting, does the fight really have to be about his, um, "Driver" and another woman? I know plenty of couples who, especially in the dark of night after some drinkin', get in serious plate-throwing, wall-punching arguments about the most random nonsense on the planet. Watch "American Beauty" and trust that the plate-throwing dinner conversation happens all the time, all over this blessed country of ours. It doesn't just happen in trailer parks.

UPDATE: As of Tuesday night, Police had closed the case. Tiger will pay a $167 fine. The neighbor says Mrs. Tiger came to them asking them to call 911, which is precisely what someone would do after attempting to shove a pitching wedge into her husband's skull, right? The odds are pretty good that all of these rumors, all of this speculation, will either prove to have no merit, or will simply never be proven, like a fart in a phone booth of unbathed clowns. Yet no one anywhere in the media will apologize for gleefully attempting to drag the dude's name through the mud for the sole purpose of attracting the Almighty Dollar. They were just "following their journalistic obligations."

Yeah right. Sleep tight, you sharks and leeches. Rest up for your next celebrity. And please God don't go getting a conscience or anything. Or worse yet, don't go start reporting actual important shit like stuff about war and famine and hunger. That stuff makes Matt Lauer frown, which starts my day on the wrong foot.

The Most Powerful Telescope in the World sent us their album, and "Buy Into It" is a solid example of the quality you can expect from their album, The Moonlight's Fair Tonight. Yeah, he kinda sounds like J. Mascis without the wild and wailin' guitar. As for The Weakerthans, anyone who ever felt like a nerd has no choice but to love this band.

To Be a Young Fisher of Concussed Men

All Kinds of Time - Fountains of Wayne (mp3)
Only the Young - Journey (mp3)

It's the moment when sports become this beautiful, transcendent better-than-the-real-world thing.

Compared to 99% of people in Tennessee, I'm not much of a Titans fan. Their head coach, Jeff Fisher, is worth every bit of good ol' Southern admiration anyone can muster. That moustache. Hair that has greyed, bit after bit, as he became the Great Patriarch of Tennessee Football once Philip Fulmer's reign disintegrated like King Lear's.

In October, the mumbles began claiming Fisher had seen his last year as the Titans coach. The owner pulled rank and demanded that his QB in the wings, Vince Young, have a shot at the starting job. Fisher bristled.

Young, as we all knew here in Tennessee, had lost his stinkin' mind a couple of years ago. He practically held dogfights in his own head, a Vick stuck in his own mental prison. He was done as a pro. Stick several forks in him for good measure. Might as well collect his contract buyout and start doing local ads in Texas like Tim Couch does in Kentucky. His mind-blowing performance over USC at the helm of the Longhorns offered him more immortality than most humans earn, so he was going to have to settle for cashing in on those glory days for the rest of his life. Let's be honest: there are worse fates, right? Than being fawned over by millions of people who wear 10-gallon hats and Remember the Alamo?

It's not like Vince was a hated or even disliked athlete. People didn't badmouth him. We just all kind of thought the whole NFL thing was over his head. For whatever reason. Nothing personal, you know? In fact, a darn shame it wasn't working out.

Well, that was five weeks ago.

Since then, the Titans have tallied five straight victories behind the Vince Young no one but his own family thought even existed (anymore). [NOTE: If any Titans fan actually dares to tell you that they knew Vince was going to step up like he has, please stare at their nose. Just stare and keep staring, 'cuz I swear to God it will grow before your very eyes.]

Vince Young had officially returned to the NFL before the last Sunday in November. But what he did on Sunday, against the Arizona Cardinals, was orchestrate a 99-yard comeback drive even Arizona Cardinal fans had to watch with some modicum of admiration and warm fuzzies. Comebacks like this are why idiots like me watch a bunch of grown men do shit to their bodies that gladiators and Spartans see and go, like, "OMG why wud u do that 2 urself? LOLz!"

Most pundits are proclaiming Brett Favre's run with the Vikings to be "The NFL Story of 2009," but if Vince and his boys can pull off a 6th straight by knocking off Peyton's undefeated Colts next week, I'll officially announce this "The Year of The Vince."

The Vince Victory, November 29, 2009


Our school's own Titans savant, a man we lovingly call The Viper, declared it the third-best game in Titans history, and that didn't even count the dramatic Super Bowl loss.

SIDE NOTE: Oh, and by the way? Enjoy what we know as "professional football" while you can. This growing concern and focus on concussions? They'll spell the end to football as we know it. The dudes in charge of the system, having served loyally as the stoolies, like their pro-tobacco "scientist" predecessors, finally had to resign. Like the Shrew, they were calling the sun the moon, and too many important people were fed up. Once you start down this path, the path of acknowledging just how much serious damage football does to men's brains, the sport will have no choice but to adjust.

For Vince, who ain't the sharpest knife in the drawer, I only hope the changes go slowly and give him a few more years to shine, because the dude is fun to watch. Better yet, watching a guy return from the brink (of unemployment? of sanity? of glory days?) is precisely why so many of us are drawn to sports. And damn if anything should get in the way of our fascinations.

"All Kinds of Time" is perhaps the coolest ballad of a football player in alternative rock history. "Only the Young" is me desperately trying to be clever and failing miserably. I also wanted to enjoy bragging that I've posted two Journey songs in the last two months.

It's the most wonderful time of the year....

As with most music-related blogs, December is a special month at BOTG. Not only do we get to ponder and then pontificate about what we think are the best songs and CDs of the year, but, at least in my home, the days right after Thanksgiving are when we make the transition to 3-4 weeks of Christmas music being pretty much all that we listen to. So we get to share the holiday* music wealth, too.

Regarding those best songs, that will be difficult for me. Not that it hasn't been a good year (though it probably hasn't been a great year), but most of the time, just like I'm not thinking whole CDs anymore, I'm also not thinking in terms of what was released in 2009. There is so much music available now, and even more with what people are sending us here. Beyond those newly-released freebies, however, I don't have a good sense of what came out when.

2009 is the first year I heard Rusted Root's "Send Me On My Way" or Warren Zevon's "My Ride's Here" or, just today, Ray Davies' "Thanksgiving Song." My ideal list would probably better be titled "What I Heard For The First Time and Really Liked This Year."

One of the many joys of this blog is making those kinds of continual discoveries, and I'm glad that "hey did you ever hear" or "this post reminds me of another song" have become part of the conversation here. So, I'll find a way to make the Best Of list work, and if last year is any indication, Billy's and my list aren't likely to have too many intersects with the general consensus. Though Miley Cyrus does have a shot to make one of our lists.

Billy's.


(Will St. Vincent and the National's cover of "Sleep All Summer" make Bob's Best of 2009 list? Wait and see, but listen now: St Vincent and The National--"Sleep All Summer: (mp3) )

Regarding those holiday* songs, well, we could never hope to accomplish the brilliant lists put up by the Leather Canary (who seems to have gone defunct, alas) last year. They were so comprehensive, and I look forward to listening to them again if I can find them. Still, we enjoyed putting up one holiday* song a day up until Christmas, so you'll notice that I've just started that tradition again. As always, recommendations are welcome.

So let me implore you again. Even though people tell me that they don't read this blog for the music or the writing, but just to see what random pictures of hotties Billy will put up (even Manga hotties!) that have no relation to whatever he is posting about, there will be a lot of good music for you to hear this month, music of good cheer and music, perhaps, of lasting quality. So tune in and turn on with us and let us enjoy the various pleasures of the year as it winds down.

*I love the ACLU, but the idea that "Christmas" is to be replaced by "holiday" in order to be secular, inoffensive, inclusive or whatever strikes me as simply going too far. Shawn Colvin is available at Itunes, the St Vincent and The National cover is available at eMusic.

Never Too Much Of A Good Thing

Richard Shindell--"Hazel's House" (mp3)

Thanksgiving is one of those funny holidays. You have to accomplish it. You have no choice. Take me, for example. I'm going to Rome to see my daughter, but I had to have a Thanksgiving meal before I left, so we had one last night. We even had the nearly-as-essential Thanksgiving leftovers meal tonight.

When I first knew we would be in Italy over Thanksgiving, I started googling around to see if there was a place in Rome that would put on a respectable Thanksgiving spread. I got a couple of good leads and was feeling pretty good about it until I got whacked in the side of the head by someone who posted a response to the question. He said, "You're in Italy. They don't really cook turkey there. Do yourself a favor and celebrate Thanksgiving by finding a nice restaurant and having a delicious Italian meal." He was right, of course.

What is it all about? Why do we have to have that meal? And how many times do we have to have it?

Tomorrow, my wife's firm has their traditional Thanksgiving meal. Last Wednesday, my school had theirs. What is it?

I was talking to a student the other day and asking him about Thanksgiving break, especially what he would be doing.

"Nothing much," he said. "Mostly just staying here."

"Well, at least you'll get a good meal, right?"

He shrugged his shoulders. "You know," he said, "I don't really like Thanksgiving food all that much. I don't know what the big deal is. I mean, my mom cooks it okay. But Thanksgiving food just isn't that good. It's alright. It's more about getting together with your family."

I never eat turkey at any other time of the year, except in its deli form. I don't really like cranberries. Not a huge fan of sweet potatoes. And yet, here I am once again loading up a plate, and if someone told me that I had to load a similar plate of the same offerings at someone else's table tomorrow, I'd probably do it. Because there is something about Thanksgiving, its overwhelming sense of nostalgia and comfort, that is difficult to put into words.

Unless you are Richard Shindell. There isn't a whole lot of Thanksgiving music out there. Maybe none at all. Maybe there doesn't need to be, because this song captures the essence of it:

There’s a two-lane county road in northern Jersey
Winding up a hill beside a lake
Just before the road winds to an end
Is Hazel’s house

Long white picket fence around the front yard
A wagon wheel someone made into a gate
Flagstone steps will lead you to the front door
Of Hazel’s house

And Hazel will have seen you from the window
She’s waiting for you as you climb the steps
She says, “Thank God, we were starting to get worried.
Come on in.”

It’s New Year’s and the place is overflowing
Cousins, aunts and uncles gather round
“How long has it been? It’s great to see you.
How you’ve grown.”

And the uncles all have one eye on the Rose Bowl
One by one they slink back to the den
Everybody else heads for the kitchen
You go with them

She always has the crumbcake at the ready
Today is no exception - there it is
The order of the universe intact
At Hazel’s house

And no one seems to know that this is heaven
They say we only know it by and by
That one day all will be revealed
Well, here it is:

There’s a two-lane county road in northern Jersey
Winding up a hill beside a lake
Just before the road winds to an end
Hazel’s house

Yeah, yeah, I know the song is about New Year's Day, but I don't care. To me, it captures everything there is to say about Thanksgiving. I'd drive there tomorrow. If this one doesn't move you, I don't know what will.