All I do is post videos and talk about movies here, but such is life.
Song of the week
A few people have been asking me, “Who are you?” ever since DougJ tossed me the keys and I started posting this “Song of the week” thing myself a couple months ago. I was OK with everybody thinking I was secretly DougJ, but I probably should have just introduced myself earlier. I’m a long-time lurker/faithful follower of Balloon Juice—I used to come here via those Atrios links years ago and gawp at the freakshow. I even happened to be on hand the day of the showdown with Hamsher, and I laughed a lot following that comments thread. But Cole back then basically affected me the way Atrios affected him. I got too mad and couldn’t hang around long. I can’t remember why I came back in the summer of ’08 but I did and I couldn’t believe it was the same place. It’s ridiculous but Cole’s conversion somehow continues to inspire me and I have spent a lot of time here since. On the spectrum, since this is a politics blog, I’m probably closer to being a firebagger than an Obot—but to a lot of my friends I’m probably more of an Obot, and that doesn’t even include my lunatic neighbor who still literally worships Glenn Beck. I have the mixed blessing of coming from a 98% homogenous Democratic family, so I learn a lot talking to him. It truly is a visit to a Bizarro world. But I’m no good arguing politics, it’s bad for my blood pressure and general outlook, which puts a damper on making my case, so I just listen to people mostly.
I used to be a music journalist. Now I’m a freelance copy editor. Like approximately every human being on the planet I love music and listen to it every day. I love to talk about it and swap opinions and information. Like approximately every human being on the planet I also hate a lot of music so I know where you all are coming from when you hate my picks. I hate a lot of yours too. No hard feelings (or anyway I’ll keep them to myself). To me, that’s the give and take of it. As they say, there’s no accounting for taste and there’s certainly no accounting for mine. I have a blog, Can’t Explain, which is how DougJ found and eventually invited me to chip in picks for this weekly Friday afternoon thing.
So that’s who I am. The song picks are things I’m listening to, things I heard that week that surprised me, sometimes old favorites, or types of music I’m interested in knowing more about—all kinds of things. Stuff to talk about. For example, this last week I happened to notice that Robert Cray is playing casino dates now (maybe he has been for years?) and that reminded me how much I liked him once (and still do), and how long it’s been. So wondering what anyone might think of Cray nowadays, or back then.
Or, as always, share your own favorites of the week, or treat as an open thread.
Robert Cray, “Right Next Door (Because of Me)” (1986)
Somewhere in my youth or childhood
I heard the Lauryn Hill song “Every Ghetto, Every City” while I was riding the train yesterday and it got me thinking: what’s the best song ever about looking back on childhood? I’ll go with “I Wish” by Stevie Wonder, but I also like the Van Morrison song “Take Me Back” (especially the whacked out version JLL does in “Georgia”, as awful as it is). What else is good?
Please, don’t mention that Nickelback song “Photograph”, not even as a joke. There’s nothing funny about an existential threat.
RIP, Earl Scruggs
Dead at 88, which is a damned solid run:
He was an amazing picker, although my brother shunned his style to go clawhammer.
You all know I am a strange bird, but one of my all-time favorite banjo recordings is Tabula Rasa, with Bela Fleck, V.M. Bhatt, and Jie-Bing Chen, which is just hauntingly beautiful and so odd but so perfect:
Waterlily Acoustics, the recording studio that made that, has without question some of the most perfect recordings you will ever hear. And now, since we are all stream of consciousness, here is still one of the most beautiful songs I have ever heard:
Peter Gabriel’s Realworld work has been breathtaking. I have multiple albums, including Sheila Chandra, the Drummers of Burundi, Musicians of the Nile, and so forth. Good stuff. Not everyone’s cup of tea, of course, but I have no specific style of music other than good music. And what is good music? I know it when I hear it.
Saturday night and Sunday morning
Things are a bit slow here today, so I’m going to do another self-indulgent music thread. I had “Sunday Morning Coming Down” going through my head, and I suddenly had a bunch of questions about day-of-the-week songs. First of all, what’s the best one? For me, it’s either Stormy Monday or Sunday Morning Coming Down. Also too, is there a song about every day of the week? I can’t think of too many about Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday. Finally, is it generally true (as I believe) that songs about Sundays and Mondays are usually good, whereas songs about Fridays are often awful? Is it because songs about doom and depression are good, whereas songs about hopefulness and fun generally suck?
The Hungry Mom Song (Sunday Morning Open Thread)
Back in the days before you could just plug an iPod into your car stereo, we used to listen to CDs. On one family road trip (with dogs riding INSIDE the vehicle), I was playing DJ, and my daughter, who was about four years old at the time, asked to hear the “Hungry Mom Song.” We had no idea what song she meant, but after getting her to sing a few bars of it, we realized she meant Bob Marley’s classic, “Them Belly Full.”
Them belly full but we hungry.
A hungry mob is a angry mob.
The poor kid mistook “mob” for “mom.” We laughed our asses off. There are entire sites devoted to misheard song lyrics, of course, but I never tire of the topic. What’s the funniest one you’ve ever heard? Open thread.
The Hungry Mom Song (Sunday Morning Open Thread)Post + Comments (81)
Did the old songs taunt or cheer you?
What’s the best song ever about immigration/diaspora? This one may be my favorite.
Happy St. Patrick’s Day!
Update. Also too:
It’s embarrassing to listen to prosperous 21st-century Americans with Irish surnames lavish on Mexican or Central American immigrants the same slurs — “dark,” “dirty,” “violent,” “ignorant” — once slapped on our own, possibly shoeless, forebears. The Irish were seen as unclean, immoral and dangerously in thrall to a bizarre religion. They were said to be peculiarly prone to violence. As caricatured by illustrators like Thomas Nast in magazines like Harper’s Weekly, “Paddy Irishman,” low of brow and massive of jaw, was more ape than human, fists trailing on the ground when they weren’t cocked and ready for brawling.