You Are What You Play

I've been listening to KEXP out of Seattle lately at work. I keep a text document open so I can jot down records I may want to buy. They also have a really excellent archive which includes the recent American Music Club set with Another Morning.

As I type this I'm listening to a My Morning Jacket EP that I'm really enjoying. I think I first heard them on a Darla sampler, but they were played a lot this week by John Richards. I'd like to buy Loretta Lynn's new record that Jack White produced and also Morrissey's latest, both also heard on KEXP this week.

I am so glad that Morrissey made a new record. I'd been a Smiths fan since I was quite young. I remember stopping by Newbury Comics almost daily when either the Queen is Dead or Strangeways was about to come out--I was so anxious for more of their music. Unable to wait, I asked someone at the store for a band that compared to the Smiths. They convinced me to buy a Mighty Lemon Drops tape; I wasn't very happy.

I was faithful to Morrissy until 1992 when Your Arsenal came out. It's not that it was bad, but it just wasn't the same. I saw him a few years after that in Boston and he was great live--I was shocked at all of the look-a-like boys that gathered in the corners looking solemn. I was sure they didn't exist any longer. Morrissey was very charismatic; he was no longer the skinny fella with flowers drooping out of his back pocket who I had pasted on my walls in earlier years.

Irish Blood, English Heart is excellent, but I wasn't sure about the rest of the record until I heard First of the Gang to Die on KEXP this week. This is perfect Morrissey:

You have never been in love
until you’ve seen the stars
reflect in the reservoirs
and you have never been in love
until you’ve seen the dawn rise
behind the Home For The Blind

What's this about Alabama, keeps coming back to me?

I pressed my ear against the door of this church last Sunday and heard the preacher talking about being a Christian to his congregation. It was pretty amazing to be standing out there.

Addie Mae Collins, Denise McNair, Carole Robertson, and Cynthia Wesley were killed here on September 15, 1963. One was 11, the rest 14 years old.

From Martin Luther King's eulogy:

"The innocent blood of these little girls may well serve as a redemptive force that will bring new light to this dark city. The holy Scripture says, "A little child shall lead them." The death of these little children may lead our whole Southland from the low road of man's inhumanity to man to the high road of peace and brotherhood. These tragic deaths may lead our nation to substitute an aristocracy of character for an aristocracy of color. The spilled blood of these innocent girls may cause the whole citizenry of Birmingham to transform the negative extremes of a dark past into the positive extremes of a bright future. Indeed this tragic event may cause the white South to come to terms with its conscience. "

Read about how 40 years later Birmingham still struggles with it's violent past.

In Neil Young's famous song he sings, "Alabama, you got
the weight on your shoulders" and I think it's still true.

Six days in Alabama was excellent. Sitting in a backyard, avoiding fire ants, drinking cokes and talking to an endless stream of cousins in the early heat of summer while thunderstorms rolled in and out was just what the doctor ordered for me.

I've got pictures of the food I ate so I won't forget the fried okra, butter beans, catfish, fried cornbread, slaw, and butterfinger cake and the gallons of sweet tea I drank. Thanks to the sunshine, my neck is even a bit red. I think my cousins would say I inherited that though--they kept saying they were rednecks. I thought that was a derogatory term, but I guess that's only if it's coming from a Yankee.

There's more to come about Alabama from me. This train was slowly moving past the Whistle Stop Cafe (where Fannie Flagg based the book) in Irondale. I sat inside and appropriately ate fried green tomatoes.

Alabama

I returned from an excellent time in DC with a raging sinus infection. After a week I'm just starting to feel a little more normal. Just in time to get back on a plane and see what happens the first time my ears pop. Scary.

Now I'm off to Alabama.

RV in Queens

In the New York Times, a man living in an RV in Queens:
"A lot of my friends have kids and bills and they're all bald," Mr. Hines said. "Me, I'm not living large, but life is still good. I'm living on my own terms. I have an apartment on wheels. I can pick up and go whenever and wherever I want."