Thursday, May 15, 2008
Nov 4, 2002 | 1) Sam McGee, "Railroad Blues," from the anthology "Classic Mountain Songs" (Smithsonian Folkways)
McGee (1894-1975) played guitar with Uncle Dave Macon in the 1920s, with Fiddlin' Arthur Smith in the '30s and '60s; in this 1964 recording he blows holes through the idea of "country music," the "breakdown," the "guitar solo." Long, thin notes stretch into the air until you think you can't hear them anymore, but you can; bass strings swoop down to rescue the melody from the silences that are almost left behind. It's a workout, a cutting contest -- but more than anything an acting out of the pioneer spirit, of America as experiment, as, "Hey, there's always something better over the next hill," but deep down not really caring if there is or not, not if to get from one place to another you can move like this.
2) Don DeLillo, Belknap Lecture, Princeton University (Oct. 16)
DeLillo read from his forthcoming novel, "Cosmopolis," due next spring, about a day in the life of one Eric Packer, a 28-year-old billionaire currency trader. As the book opens he's in his white limousine, on his way to get a haircut. Refusing to dramatize, letting the words carry the story, DeLillo read quietly, and the result was a dreamlike rhythm. As Dave Hickey says of "Chet Baker Sings," there were "no range dynamics, no tempo dynamics, no expressive timbre shifts, no suppression of extant melodics, no harmonic meandering, no virtuoso high-speed scales." Later there were questions from the audience. "What do you know about being fabulously wealthy?" a woman asked. "I can spell both words," DeLillo said.
3) "Piss off Ryan Adams, win a prize!" (Oct. 17)
The tale of Ryan Adams' response to a fan who shouted out for Bryan Adams' "Summer of '69" -- Adams screaming, demanding the house lights be turned on, identifying the offender, paying him $30 as a refund for his ticket and refusing to play until the guy left the hall -- even made it into Time. But not the response of songwriter Robbie Fulks, on his Web site: "Any reader on this site who attends a Ryan Adams show and disrupts the show with a Bryan Adams song request will receive in return merchandise" -- T-shirts and autographed CDs -- "of his or her choice equal to the cost of the ticket, from my online store ... please provide the date and location of the show, what you yelled, and what Ryan's reaction was."
4 and 5) 16 Horsepower, "Folklore" (Jetset) and Woven Hand, "Woven Hand" (Glitterhouse/Germany)
In its best work, as with the 2000 "Secret South," the Denver combo 16 Horsepower calls up the specter of itinerant preachers you can't tell from thieves. It's scary to believe David Eugene Edwards' voice -- it can be scarier not to. But "Folklore" lacks all conviction -- and no one can get away with sounding bored with a song as good as the Carter Family's "Single Girl," let alone with Hank Williams' "Alone and Forsaken." Edwards could have been saving it all for his solo project Woven Hand -- here, from the first notes, a banjo clattering as if the distant past is rushing forward so fast the future will be defenseless against it, nothing is certain. You understand what it means to wander in the desert, abandoned by God and hating every human face, and you wonder why such a life sounds so rich.
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