Endless heavy hits. Kingdragon for president.
HEAVY HITS FROM MY BAND.
Boys keep swinging.
Ch-ch-check it out! A brand new track for you!
A little tune we call “For John B.”
Come down and see us sometime — maybe like WEDNESDAY!
[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]
Bill Callahan, “America!”
Yes, something as benign as watching David Letterman from your hotel room in Australia makes you homesick—because Dave’s is a familiar voice, he’s a strong flavor of the culture, and that’s your culture, it’s what you swam in when you were growing up, there’s nothing you can do about it—but then America kind of sucks, too, and makes you angry sometimes and merely annoyed other times. It’s hard to allow the fondness and the critique to remain in tension; it requires nuance and risks others’ misunderstanding. How much easier to write a jingoistic anthem or a one-note political protest.
Reviews that call the song sarcastic get wrong the intention or the humor, I think. But it’s also possible that I am projecting more than usual, because at school I try to hold conflicting things together in this way, too.
The song takes a fun turn at “Everyone’s allowed a past they don’t care to mention”—the personal is political, right? (It has the effect of referring you back to the album’s previous song, on which he sang, “It was me tearing out the baby’s breath.”) Being allowed this past you don’t care to mention implies that everyone has fucked up, but it doesn’t mean they’re unlovable: “Afghanistan, Vietnam, Iran, Native American,” but, still, “I wish I was on the next flight back to America.”
Oh Bill, you’re so mature.
[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]
Julie London, “It Never Entered My Mind”
Turn down the lights, Julie.
How old were you when you realized that Vincent Gallo’s beautiful album is almost a lost Julie London set?
[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]
Chain and the Gang, “Detroit Music”
I wrote a long post about Detroit, suburban sprawl, and the mistake of moralizing bad luck. It was great and probably would have been the first Tumblr post to win a Pulitzer Prize. Someone could have reblogged it to add a mournful Ash Wednesday coda, if they liked.
Tumblr lost it though, poof, so I am posting another stupid song instead.
[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]
Arthur Russell, “Time Away”
One of those self-help books that tells you to make your bed every morning and take more walks
[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]
Little Wings, “How Come?”
Did you know that the Little Wings guy is still alive and has a new album coming out? This song is really pretty. Less quirky than he used to be, but that’s fine, because I’m less quirky than I was in 2002, too.
[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]
Mick Turner w/Peggy Frew, “Window” (Kath Bloom cover)
Are there many songs that feel equally good if you are on top of or underneath love? I have not thought about it yet, but here is one.
Being in love or crushed by love—both are highly repetitive, full of whispering, remembered blurrily, difficult to describe the structure of, interminably long but actually not as long as you thought, etc., like this song.
In either mood, you can listen to it on repeat while you make dinner.
[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]
Matthew Friedberger, “Keep Me in the Dark”
You know it doesn’t have to be this way, right? We could move our hubs of culture, education, business anywhere we wanted—the South, let’s say, maybe Charleston because it’s easy to live there, or Nashville, which is laidback and much closer to Dollywood. It is warm enough in all those places. In Atlanta it was 60 yesterday.
One day a week ago I woke up at 6 am and turned on the “Today Show” for something to do. Their first story was that a lady in my town parked her car in the driveway and slipped, fell, hit her head, went unconscious, and froze to death. A neighbor noticed her the next day. For the rest of my life, when someone asks how I liked New Haven, I will tell this story.
Anyway today I trudged through the fucking snow and dirt with tiny ice pelting my face and moaned this song under my breath. It feels wintry. I think it’s a spiritual cousin to the Charlie Brown song.
[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]
Sharon Van Etten, “Don’t Do It”
Oh shit, this song hits me right in my Lilith Fair.
If a drag queen were to make themselves into my sister, they would look pretty much exactly like Ariel Pink here (aside from, perhaps, the shirt).
This observation has been approved by my sister.
With new jokes!
What do you call it when a doctor turns off the life support system
of an elderly man
who has been officially classified as an imbecile?
“Eric Clapton Unplugged”
NEIL HAMBURGER IS ON TOUR
[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]
James Brown, “Let’s Make Christmas Mean Something This Year”
Yes, it is hard to make Christmas mean something this year when you sit down to a holiday meal with your aunt and uncle and, within five minutes—BAM, an angry discussion about gun control is washing over you.
My poor mom watches preacher cable channels. She left one on to babysit the dogs, and I heard an evil hair-gelled man sob, “Whatever you need, Jesus Christ has an app for it.”
Lately I am feeling more adult (instead of at a precipice), and now it makes sense that you create a meaningful or sentimental time at Christmas instead of expecting it to magically fall into such a shape. For me, at home, creating a meaningful time entails not inveighing against Reaganomics, not calling my parents’ megachurch heretical, and not pointing out that one of the dogs seems to be going blind. That is all it takes. I have failed on all three points but, now having identified the problem, expect to do better next year.
[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]
Darlene Love, “Christmas Baby Please Come Home”
This song is on the Phil Spector Christmas album. It has been in a lot of bad movies. Let’s not talk more about it, let’s just listen.
