You still here? Didn't you get the memo? Dowdytalk has moved (see below). Well, if you're going to stick around, then you're going to have to listen to this wicked stupid Toby Keith ditty.

There was a time when songs like this made my blood boil. I mean, rednecks are all macho bluster and no brains. And, contrary to the message posted at the end of this amateur video posted on YouTube, it's not military might that keeps us relatively free. Most of the people in the world who lack freedom do so not because they have a strong military to protect them from outsiders but because their government is run by the military. We're free because that hasn't happened -- yet. But, politics aside, this is an absolutely princely song. Absolute Bulldada (Google it if you don't already have the Slack to know what it means). I'll take this bloodthirsty warsong over Lee Greenwood's "God Bless the U.S.A." or Darryl Worley's "Have You Forgotten?"  any day. This is self parody at it's finest, the more so because it's so clearly heartfelt. (The song was inspired by 9/11 and the death of his father, both of which occurred within months of each other.)

Having said that, I can't help but wonder whether Keith still feels the same about this song in 2008 as he did in 2001. Perhaps his buddy Willie Nelson sat him down, got him high, and said, "Toby, my friend, it's one thing to love your country. It's another thing to paint your ass red, white, and blue and moon the whole world."

I have a new home online. At this point the only thing preventing me from podcasting is my own innate inertia.

Been awhile, hasn't it? What can I say? I've been busy waking up from a long, long slumber. But I haven't forgotten about you or your insatiable thirst for music. Today's tune is Brian Eno's "Third Uncle." Keep in mind this was recorded in 1974. It sounds fresher than the Bauhaus version recorded during the 1980s. Nineteen-seventy-four. Think about that. Bell bottoms, feathered hair, handlebar mustaches, muscle cars, and guitar fucking solos. Back then, the guitar was a hunk of wood that existed solely so a guy could hold onto something as he winced and whinged and played the only scale that mattered (a first position pentatonic, invariably in the key of A). Nobody thought of the electric guitar as a percussive instrument. It was this thing with strings meant for bending and pulling and wincing and whinging. Do you feel it? Do you feel like I do? I'm sure Television's Tom Verlaine was already doing his thing in New York, and Gang of Four's Andy Gill would be doing his thing soon enough, but did I mention this was 1974? I believe Phil Manzanara played the guitar on it, but undoubtedly the whole thing was Eno's idea. You can count on it.

Good things are happening, and I'll talk about them when I damn well see fit. But dig the new -- er, old -- groove.

Update: The lead guitar part part is so Robert Fripp. I haven't confirmed that yet, but nobody else sounded like that back then. Or now.

I'm traveling this week, so it may be days before my next "Song of the Day." I also don't have time to dissect this particular track, other than to say "Me like!" For once, I seem to be in line with the anti-thinking sorts who despise any attempt to scrutinize a work of art. "It's just music, man! Don't over-analyze it!" (blech!). Anyway, here's something for your delectation. "Mister Jung Stuffed," from Man Man, my favorite new band. Comparisons with Tom Waits are inevitable, given singer Honus Honus's (!) gruff baritone as well as the band's unconventional instrumentation and frenetic arrangements. But, really, they're their own animal. Or should I say beast? W00t!

GraphJam is my new favorite website.

Big Telecom: Who's my little subbies?

Congressional Democrats: We are! We are!

Update: Et tu, Barack? Sigh ... We're in General Election mode now.

Congress is debating FISA today. Will Dems bow down to their Telecom masters? (We need not ask about the Repugs: they are proud subbies, but the Dems sometimes flirt with Constitutional principles.)

While we wait, here's "The Blinding," by Babyshambles. No one stateside gives these guys -- okay, Pete Doherty -- much respect. If he is discussed at all, it is the usual hipster snark about his drug habits (will they be laughing if he actually overdoses?) or facile comparisons to fellow drug fiend Amy Winehouse (likewise). At best, his current band will be compared unfavorably to his previous one, the Libertines, who, admittedly, did kick ass.

The Libertines, by the way, just might get back together, and that would be exciting. But, damnit, Babyshambles has had some fine moments. As this song shows, Doherty has an impeccable ear for a hook. He actually manages to make thrashing garage band bar chords sound fresh and new. I am also fond of this video because it shows brief flashes of the Corpus Christi portrait of Christopher Marlowe, who not only influenced a generation of playwrights (Shakespeare included) but  also invented rock 'n' roll (one of these days I'll explain). Enjoy!

This song has been covered a lot. Everyone from Robert Plant to This Mortal Coil has recorded a version of it. The Australian indie film Candy features a version of it, sung by Paula Arundell, in the opening credits. This is perhaps fitting, given that the movie -- which stars a young Heath Ledger -- is concerned with heroin addiction, and that the song's writer, Tim Buckley, died of a heroin overdose in 1975.

I'm just beginning to explore Buckley's music. Up until recently the only things I knew about him were that he was Jeff Buckley's father, that, like his son, he died young, and that he wrote "Song to the Siren." There is much more to him than this, and his commercially unsuccessful musical career is a testament to what happens to musicians who choose to follow their muse rather than to commodify their talents. They end up broke and, sometimes, broken.

But, at this point, I'm in no position to write about Buckley or his music in general terms. After all, this department is "Song of the Day," not "Artist of the Day" or even "Album of the Day." Besides, the mysterious, haunting beauty of this song has given it a life of its own. But what is the source of this beauty? To me, the song provides a clear example of why you cannot separate a lyric from the melody, harmony, or even rhythm. If you took the same melody and chords and sang some hackneyed tale of endless love, the song would hardly be memorable. The same could be said if you put the words to different music, though it's difficult for me to imagine the lines "Long afloat on shapeless oceans/I did all my best to smile" sung to any other tune. And that's my point: the words and music form a gestalt.

Having said that, the lyric does invite scrutiny. It would seem, on the surface of it, to be written from the point of view of a spurned lover:

The hare and the fox is a bit odd, but I suppose if you're going to borrow from Homer, why not borrow from Aesop also? Frankly, I don't like it much. It doesn't make sense -- the fox makes dinner of the hare, whereas the siren lures the sailor to his death -- and the guttural consonants in "fox" jar against all of the liquid "Rs" and "Ls" throughout the verse. But overall the verse seems to suggest that, by rejecting him, his lover has dashed his love against the rocks.

In the last verse, however, things aren't so simple:


This reminds me of the Emily Dickinson poem where the speaker stands on the shoreline as the tide rises above her waist ("I started Early -- Took my dog --/And visited the Sea --"), apparently contemplating drowning herself. We are done with the simple conceit of comparing a deceitful lover to a siren and have ventured into allegory. Love is a kind of death. Death is a kind of lover. Damon Krukowski of Damon and Naomi took this allegorical reading even further. When I saw him perform this tune a couple of years ago, he told the audience that he considered it to be an anti-war song. It draws from The Odyssey, which is, in many respects, anti-war poem, and it was  written during the Vietnam War. Should I live, or should I die? Should I fight, or flee? And what is fighting? Taking a "stand" against the war, or surrendering to "duty"?

But enough about the words. They really do lose their impact them when you scrutinize them in isolation. Here are a few versions of the song. First, we have Buckley himself singing the song on, of all things, The Monkees Show:


Update: Donegan called to see if I'm okay. Awwwww... I'm okay. I'm just drawn to sad, sad tunes. Don't forget I grew up listening to the Smiths. Also, Donegan told me a funny story: HE REMEMBERS TIM BUCKLEY ON THE MONKEES SHOW! He used to hate it when the show broke from that zany quartet to feature real musicians. Just the image of a little Donegan screaming at Tim Buckley until Davey Jones came back on is priceless.

Attention Knee Pad Crew (i.e. White House press corps). This is how you interview a man who squats in the White House and takes a daily shit on the Constitution. It's nearly too late to hold the Spurious George accountable, and that's too bad. I imagine you'll summon your courage during an Obama administration, at least about Rev. Wright and his alleged ties to Fifth Column (oh and Michelle Obama's George Jefferson impersonation). But -- heaven forbid -- if Gramps McCain, wrecker of five planes (yes, five!), should be elected, perhaps you could avoid kissing his ass? If you have any sense of civic duty and professional pride -- not to mention just plain personal ethics -- then take a gander at how a real journalist interrogates a dishonest politician:

P.S. Did you catch how George blamed the troops for Abu Graib?

New department here at Dowdtalk: Song of the day. Here's a Stones song off Sticky Fingers that I've never heard on the radio, though it's been a live favorite for years. Three things strike me about this song:

1). The guitar intro: Vintage Keith Richards, an open-tuned, heavily syncopated riff that skirts around the downbeat, teases it. This is foreplay with a guitar.  C'mon, it implores, can't you hear me knocking? By the time Richards lands on the downbeat, the song is so sexed up that it doesn't matter how mediocre the chorus is. We're gliding now.

2). Jagger's vocal: I used to think the man couldn't sing. A pretty voice he doesn't have, but he does have range, and he is versatile. Try to sing the notes he's singing here. Just try (ladies too). And even if you can hit them, can you make it sound like you're in the throes of passion? Or does it sound more like cats in coitus?

3. The instrumental section: Very unlike the Rolling Stones. It's loose, it's jammy. The sax solo actually works, which is as rare in rock 'n' roll as good guitar parts are in jazz. Speaking of which, Mick Taylor plays an extended solo, and we're back in the 1970s. It could almost be the Dead. Normally, I wouldn't go for this sort of thing, but since it's such a diversion for the Stones, it really works. At this point, we're so far into the love-making act that we've lost sense of time. By the time the band comes together for the blues run that conclude the song, we've happily died a tiny little death, which is perhaps appropriate since the next song on the album is "Dead Flowers."

Enjoy!

Last week, Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones joined the Foo Fighters on stage at Wembley Stadium. I'm not a huge fan of the Foo Fighters, and I wouldn't spend more than $10 to see a reunited Zeppelin, but I was surprised when I found out that this isn't Robert Plant singing. It's Taylor Hawkins, the guy who drums for the Foo Fighters so that Dave Grohl, the band's original drummer, can sing. Did you get that? The guy hired to drum so that the main drummer can sing turns around and belts out a Zeppelin song better than Plant can. Seriously, when I first watched this, when I still thought it was Plant singing, I was surprised at how good he sounded. Plant didn't sound this good in The Song Remains the Same, and he was only in his 20s then.

What is it with prodigiously talented drummers? Steven Drozd, for example, pretty much is the Flaming Lips, barring Wayne Coyne's scratchy tenor. He plays everything but the bass (and perhaps a few minor guitar parts), and he comes up with the bands' stellar arrangements. Hawkins, Grohl, Drozd -- bastards all.

Grohl, by the way, absolutely nails Bonzo's drum part.

"It's Obama! It's Obama!"

The great jazz bassist Charlie Haden once remarked that he was glad he didn't hear music through Ronald Reagan's ears. It was a good line, good enough that, years later, I heard him use it again in concert, this time at the expense of George the Squatter, Bringer of Stupid Wars.

I don't know why it is that reactionary types have arrested aesthetic development. I don't think it was always this way (among other things, for instance, fascism is the aesthetization of state-sponsored murder). But, off the top of my head, I can't think of a single conservative musician, writer, or artist who doesn't completely suck. Sure, I'm biased, but my point here is that there appears to be no room in their tiny little hearts for artistic expression.

Case in point: the writers at the National Review Online are celebrating this dim editorial from the Wall Street Journal. As is my wont of late, I took my cue for this post from Sadly No!. But I could give a damn about whatever silly point the Journal's Bret Stephens thinks he's making regarding that commie-loving John Lennon. What struck me was this comment from NRO:

K Lo: I'm with you on "Imagine" — love the piano, hate the lyrics. A band called A Perfect Circle has a great cover version. The music is bleak and the vocals are subdued. It's a much-needed deconstruction of the song. It's like the anti-"Imagine." I'm not sure the musicians intended it that way, but that's the result, by my lights. Definitely worth a 99-cent download.

Where to begin? First off, Lennon's simple piano part is nice, but it hardly makes the song. What does make it is its provocative lyric: if you can't hang with its message, then I don't know what else there is to it. As far as A Perfect Circle's version, it's hardly a "deconstruction" (oh, I wish that word would be put to rest by those who know not what they speak). I think what "K LO" means is it's an ironic inversion of Lennon's commie message, undercutting the song's plea for peace and unity through its jarring close harmonies and droning minor key. I can see that, though I'm not sure the transformation militates against the song's original message. It many respects, it underscore the urgency of it. In any event, I appreciate the fact that A Perfect Circle re-worked this song into something completely different. I hate it when cover songs add nothing new to the original. But the band sounds too much like Tool for my taste. And, like that celebrated act, their singer sounds like he cut his teeth on Christian rock, which, dear sinners, is anathema to these pagan ears. (Update: it's the same damn dude: Maynard James Keenan, lead singer of Tool!)

So much for "quick notes." The other thing I wanted to add was that Dowdytalk.com is almost ready for launch. I'll still post here, but the prime time material will go there. Will keep you posted.

Update: Here's the video of A Perfect Circle's version of "Imagine":

This one's a no-brainer.

1. The Big O's VP: No way.

2. Another position in the Big O's administration: Perhaps, but Hills thinks big. Somehow I don't think Director of Health and Human Services will satisfy her significant power cravings.

3. Senate Majority Leader: The junior senator from New York can't expect that position anytime soon.

4. Supreme Court Justice: Abso-damn-lutely. Think about it: Clinton has the legal training. She's got the smarts. We need another woman to replace Sandra Day O'Connor. And the thought of her tormenting Antonio Scalia day in and day out for the rest of his working life sends me into paroxysms of happy happy joy joy. Sen. Clinton may be obnoxious, power mad, and intellectually dishonest -- all qualities that seem appropriate to the bench, post-2000 -- but she's also tenacious. Every time the wingers of the court tried to push through another shitty decision, she'd push back on principle alone.

While we're at it, why don't we put Bill on the Court too? Imagine that ... Those two would probably stay there for at least twenty years. How could they not love the power and influence?

Meanwhile, the wingers would be denied their majority, and they'd have to hang with the Clintons every single day. In no time Scalia, Thomas, Roberts, and Alito would be packing for some cushy job at the Heritage Foundation.

So whadya folks, say? Supreme Court Justice Hillary Rodham Clinton?

Remember, you heard it here first.

Speaking of passing, I feel like I'm passing a gallstone waiting for Sen. Clinton to finally concede. I'm watching CNN, all excited to finally put this godawful drama to rest. But Clinton is already about 20 minutes late. I imagine she's locked herself in the bathroom. "I won't go!" she's screaming at her aides. "We can still convince some super delegates to flip to our side. Don't they know? A black man can't win!"

Meanwhile, Bill is on the couching bawling. "I was the first black president. Now they gone and elected this half-African! It's not fair!"

In the convention center, Terry McCaulife is making his rounds, greeting HRC supporters. "It's going to be tough to guarantee the GOP a win this time around," admits the former DNC chair, who presides over the party as they lost Congress and watched the hated Bush get re-elected. "But if we can weasel our way into the Obama campaign somehow, we should be able to pull a Republican upset."

On another note, remember that silly rumor about Michelle Obama using the word "whitey"? Well, it's bullshit alright. Also, I've been reading up on Hillaryis44.org, and apparently -- surprise! -- it's a fake. The guy who is allegedly hiding links to a Canadian pharmaceutical firm in the site's code. Every time you visit that site -- which, for the sake of your privacy, you shouldn't do -- what you're really doing is lining the pockets of a scam artist.

All in all, it's a great day, but please, please concede, Hillary. Now. And, no, you don't get to be Vice President.

Let me leave you with this great photoshop image of Sen. Obama. If you clicked the link regarding the "whitey" rumor, you probably saw it. If you didn't, here it is:



Pretty cool, huh?

Update: Good speech, Hills!

Update II: While I'm stealing images from other peoples' websites, here's another good one, from Sadly No!:

I can feel it in the air. It's almost over. Hillary will make nice. Obama will make nice. And Gramps McCain will holler at the kids to get off the lawn.

Oh, and most HRC supporters will come on board.

And the crazies depicted below? Let's just hope they get the meds they need.

As for Michelle Obama's "whitey" rant, who knows? Maybe it'll be an October surprise. But I strongly suspect the whole thing sprung from some winger's race-addled mind.

These days, I'm supposed to be focusing on finding a job. However, I'm having trouble taking my mind off the crazy loons who protested on HRC's behalf yesterday. Loons like this:
]
Did you get that? An inadequate black male!

Or how about this one:

Can dark blue bruises like that form immediately? Or is this woman a liar? Methinks the latter, but perhaps it's possible.

Speaking of liars, how many of these nutjobs are really Democrats? Check out this loudmouth:

That's right, you heard her. If Obama's the candidate, then she's going to vote for McCain -- just like her friend, the apoplectic New York lady above. Who in their right mind would do that? I mean, if you're really a Hillary supporter, and you really, really hate Obama, then vote for the Green candidate (a black woman, by the way), or write in your precious Empress. Don't vote for a guy who stands for everything your candidate opposes -- unless of course you're not really a Democrat. And there are indications, in fact, that Operation Chaos was at work here, that the HRC campaign recruited Huckabee and McCain supporters to protest yesterday's Rules and Bylaws meeting.

So what the fuck? I'm pissed about this shit. Who are these dead-enders, and why are they standing in the way of progress?

And another thing ... back to Florida ... don't tell me, as I constantly hear, that this was a Republican idea, that Florida Democrats have been screwed by the Republican party. They were right there with their GOP counterparts. Here's the proof:


All said, I hope that most of Hillary's supporters are sane. I can't believe these crazies who interrupted the RBC meeting are representative of her supporters. Please tell me they're not. Because if nearly half of the Democratic voters are this bat shit insane, we're all royally fucked. We're going to elect a doddering old man with only half his marbles president and sink down the shit hole of history.

Let's leave with one more example of enlightened self-interest, as Publius might have written. Remember the townsfolk in Blazing Saddles? Well, turns out they're Hillary supporters. This becomes most apparent about one minute into the following video:



Addendum: There's been rumors of a video featuring Michelle Obama railing against "whitey" for a few weeks now. Now there's talk that the shit's going to hit the fan later today. I'm suspicious, largely because the only people who seem to use the term "whitey" are white racists parodying black nationalists, people like Michael Richards. But, if I'm wrong, and Mrs. Obama does rail against whitey, it's over.

That would suck. I'd have to vote for the Empress, 'cuz Gramps McCain is insane in the membrane.

So how long before Scott McClellan turns up dead in a remote Texas hotel room, the victim of an apparent suicide?

I know it's Clintonian to write off states that don't support my candidate. I know that, in the long run, a 50-state strategy is good for Democrats. But I also know that West Virginia is filled with some of the most backwards, atavistic mooncalves in the Union. This video confirms my suspicion that many of those all-important "working class Americans, white Americans" that support Clinton are nothing more than ignorant rednecks.

Fuck 'em. We can win without them. I, for one, am tired of stupid crackers setting the political tone in this country.

I thought only Republicans relied on such low-information voters.

Toni Morrison explains what she really meant when she called Bill Clinton the "first black president." I'm surprised it took her so long to address this common misconception.

Also, following up on our discussion below on race and gender, here's a very thoughtful post from Kos that is respectful of the significance of Hillary Clinton's campaign.

Update: Just as many Obama supporters sought to make nice with Sen. Clinton, she goes and says something like this:

"I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on," she said in an interview with USA TODAY. As evidence, Clinton cited an Associated Press article "that found how Sen. Obama's support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me."

"There's a pattern emerging here," she said.

Hard-working Americans, dawg. White Americans!

There is a pattern emerging indeed.