"I'm no Sufi but I'll give it a whirl"
Drinking a cold New Belgium Blue Paddle and eating olives: briney Kalamata, herbed Sicilian, buttery Castleventro. It makes for a nice afternoon.
I've been listening to Patti Smith's Trampin'. I wanted to mention it a month ago but didn't know what to say. I could never do it justice anyway. Much of this album places me in an open field under a gathering storm--the wind picks up, the grasses dance, ghosts of sound from near and far fly past at the same speed, cold draughts unlace the summer heat, until it falls around me with such force and urgency that I feel electric, it washes the zombie from my skin, the cataracts from my eyes, and amidst this exhilarating freedom is the realization I could be zapped at any time. I have choices and choices have consequences. I have a responsibility. I can make a difference.
From the beginning she asks us to make our presence known, to be a cause for celebration. In "gandhi" when she says Awake from your slumber/And get 'em with the numbers, I know she's talking about rocking the vote, at least not suffering in silence. As for "radio baghdad"... There is power in this song. This is what I meant about artists lashing out and using their magic. I was on the highway returning from Joplin when I first listened to this--alone with the volume loud enough to be heard over the air from my open windows, and I found myself weeping. I don't mean Charlotte's Web. This was like someone had pulled the shroud from a pile of dead children and said "Look! This isn't just politics and tv. This is an atrocity and your 'elected' officials have forged your name to it for all the world to see. You footed the fucking bill!"
I have no doubt about what I'll be listening to on Election Day. She is supposed to be in St. Louis on June 20th and it would be so cool to see her.
There are a couple of good interviews over at Rolling Stone, if you aren't afraid of stepping in a pile of Avril Lavigne.

You probably didn't come here to wade through twaddle about Morrissey so maybe I'll leave it at this. As I said, I do enjoy the new album and I'm glad he is still around, but I also think he fell well short of what he might have been aiming for, and what I know he could have produced. That album cover is provocative, seeming to promise stylish and literate confrontation...M. has been holed up for seven years and he's about to saunter out like James Cagney, blasting away at the Establishment. Only it's a toy gun, turns out, and I think maybe his trousers fell down as well. It's a shame because we really need more artists and musicians to lash out and use their magic these days. The "attack" songs on You Are the Quarry should have been of the calibre of "Margaret on the Guillotine" from Viva Hate, one of the best songs to close an album and one that shows the talent Morrissey had for expressing the disgust and weariness permeating Thatcher's days. That moan of "please die..." and a bit later the sound of a heavy blade falling, abruptly cutting off Vini Reilly's lovely mournful guitar playing said more in 1988 than the whole of this new album achieves. Maybe it's worth noting that M. didn't show up for any of the five scheduled Craig Kilbourn shows. And that the last song on the new cd is called "You Know I Couldn't Last".

Mmmm...coffee. When did I become such a grampa, I wonder. My brother used to say I dressed like a cool old person, referring to the thrift store cardigans. I was actually going for a Teenage Midwest Housemartin look but unfortunately I think I've always appeared a bit homeless as well. These days I have the Housemartin hair by default--except for the cross shaved on the side. Theirs, not mine.
Anyway, coffee...just can't start the day without it.

Learn Hard Ave.
Sometimes something cool happens that reminds me why I moved here.

Morrissey doesn't need me to champion his new record. Fans will be delighted and the haters will keep on hatin'. But, as promised, the trepidation I felt on first listen has melted away and I can be counted among the delighted. I may be the one guy in Larrytown blaring "You Are the Quarry" from my dusty blue Corolla like it's Outkast or DMX. I actually skipped in to work today because of this cd. Or maybe I'm just a dork.

This is no "Hatful of Hollow". He isn't saying anything new and the music is hardly adventurous. At first I wanted to talk about how many of the songs were striking out--at America, England, critics, today's 15-minute pop stars, fans, leeches, even U.S.-Mexico relations are given a romantic & wistful railing in a live song that has yet to become a b-side--how the photo on the cover is Moz packing heat, and the logo for the resurrected reggae label Attack Records is significant. But as far as attacks go it's nothing you haven't heard before and I'm left longing for something a bit more biting and insightful.

"Longing for" may be the key. I think what attracts me to Morrissey is that he keeps reminding me that Outside isn't such a bad place to reside. When the disco burns down with all the lemmings inside I'll be sitting safe in my room pining over the gender-ambiguous "one" who looks right through me. M. popped into my life when I was 16 and said things that I needed to hear, that I wanted other people to hear but couldn't say--like any artist worth his weight in tofu. And these things really don't change no matter how adult we think we've become. We can rationalize the teenage drama out of being alone or misunderstood but we're still just that. So when he sings in "Come Back to Camden": Your leg came to rest against mine/Then you lounged with knees up and apart/and me and my heart/we knew/we just knew/forevermore--it takes me back and god do I know, I just know.
There's more on my mind but I have to go to bed.

E=MChammer

The neglected blog--windows cracked, yard overgrown, kids all say it's haunted daring each other to sneak in through the root cellar. And here I am leaving mysterious tracks in the dust...scamper scamper scurry swish.

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Ex-pat Haiku for JSA

Tokyo, a song
Off the Thompson Twins album
'Here's to Future Days'.

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I will like the new Morrissey better tomorrow. That's usually how it goes, after the initial excitement I will feel a little disappointed, then I will end up finding my mental ipod has been restructured, the lovely bits will float to the surface, lyrics will pop into my head and make me smile...In the half-light/So English, frowning/Then at midnight I/Can't get you out of my head.

Word on the street has it that he will be performing all five nights next week on Craig Kilborn so I will be factoring that in to my appraisal. Betcha can't wait!