So sings the great Guy Clark. And every year at this time, I think he's right.
Why do homegrown tomatoes taste so much better? According to the University of Illinois Extension Service, it may have to do with commercial tomatoes' being picked green so they ship better, but it also can be linked to micro-amounts of volatile chemicals that are sensed not by the tongue, but by the olfactory nerve in the nose. (Read the entire article in the Illinois Times here.)
Whatever the reason, for a couple of weeks every year, I get both love and tomatoes: homegrown tomatoes on bagels and cream cheese. It don't get much better ...
We headed out with a big band of friends Saturday night to celebrate with one of Durango's most iconic bands, The Lawn Chair Kings, who feted the release of their new CD at Durango's most iconic bar, El Rancho Tavern.
It was a match made in Purgatory.
LCK shared the spotlights with The Freeman Social, who also were cranking out the tunes for a new CD. It was a rocking night for a packed house.
A friend of mine pointed out that when we someday look back, the Lawn Chair Kings will be the soundtrack for our memories of Durango in the '00s.
Well, they may also become the soundtrack of the '10s for Durango -- and lots of other more far-ranging fans -- if the new CD is any indicator of what's to come from the band.
"Lawn Chair Kings II" is a fun and festive blend of well-written and polished alt-country tunes -- done in a style the band calls "western garage."
The band is fronted by guitarist and vocalist Eric Nordstrom -- who also is the 2010 Durango High School Teacher of the Year. Backing Eric is Steve Mendias on drums, the versatile Kelly Rogers and lap steel and guitar, and Dan Leek on bass.
Garage, maybe; Western, fer sure. 21st century Western. It all says summer in the mountains to me. And when I'm heading up there (soon!) I know what'll be pouring out my truck's open windows.
So I was listening to the classic rock station the other day, and, as happens once or twice or six times an hour, the Eagles came on. This was one I hadn't heard in a while, and one I like more than many, both a '70s mainstay and a mountain-town mantra: "The Last Resort," with its prophetic refrain:
They call it paradise I don't know why. You call someplace paradise kiss it goodbye.
That was true, back in the 70s, I think -- that you could, and should, hunker down and shush up about the still remote and un-marketed places scattered around rapidly growing country, and world. I think that was mostly a good strategy.
Maybe.
Hell, I don't know. Back then I was working in Boston (the one in Massachusetts, as Don Henley might sing ...) and found out that if you call someplace a center of industry, you can kiss it goodbye as well. (The called it the Massachusetts Miracle, actually, and it consumed the rural New England village life and countryside in a broad swath of suburban/pavement/industrial devastation around the Boston area.)
I wasn't out here in the relatively wild and fully wonderful West. Yet. And when I finally came, I stayed. I'd found my personal paradise. And I, of course, wasn't going to leave.
And I, of course, wasn't alone.
The West was, is, always has been and always will be lots of people's Paradise. How can you blame'em? I don't blame myself for staking a claim on and making a life in the place I consider the closest I am likely to get to paradise in this here life-cycle go-around. For myself, anyway.
And for others as well.
But for whom?
Now there's a hard question. And here's another: Call some place paradise, does it have to therefore be kissed goodbye?
And in our 21st-century 7-billion-strong Google-Earthed world, does calling someplace paradise perhaps actually help keep it from being kissed goodbye?
I think maybe so. I think we need today more advocates to go along with the activists fighting for our paradises. More people who know places and can articulate why they should be kept and protected and cared for, more people on the ground in places, seeing, looking, listening, like lovers watching over their beloved.
As the Eagles also sing:
There is no more new frontier. We have got to make it here.
I think we need more people actually making a living somewhere they love -- and living in a way that doesn't devour their beloved place.
And more speaking speaking from that place, and those lives.
We can't afford to only fight against any more. We must fight for things. And to do that, we have to stand up and argue for paradise.
Advocates.
What do you think?
*****
Editor Will Sands takes a look at the same question on last week's editorial in the Durango Telegraph. Read his take on the matter here.
Living here in little ol' remote Durango, we don't get many tastes of Big City Culture. And if I miss anything of living near one of them Big Cities, it's the music culture.
Sure, we get some great underground folk and bluegrass -- such as The Gourds playing the intimate and historic Henry Strater Theatre (a.k.a. "The Hank") last week, and Martin Sexton who will be making his guitar sing as ornately as his voice Sunday night.
But beyond that, the big acts (aside from the occasional acts who were big back thirty years ago when I was a teenager living near one of those big cities, and who are today more like a bit of traveling history than a true, vibrant musical experience, i.e. The Beach Boys last summer, or upcoming shows by the Charlie Daniels Band and Stephen Stills) tend to -- of course -- bypass our little hamlet set so far off the interstate in favor of those Big City venues.
Well, we got a sweet taste of contemporary culture last night, when The Mighty Underdogsbrought their dynamic and groovy hip hop beats to the stage at the Abbey Theatre. It was a welcome and invigorating breath of Big City air, right here in our little mountain town. A nice bit of what we might call Hick Hop.
The Mighty Underdogs feature my personal favorite MC and song writer, Gift of Gab, from the fantastic San Francisco-based rap duo Blackalicious. Gabby's song writing is not your usual rap: he writes tight, quick, snappy lyrics wrapped in rhythmic grooves, and generally delivering thoughtful, positive, and witty messages -- what I only partially tongue-in-cheek refer to as "Buddhist Hip Hop."
The Mighty Underdogs -- featuring performers culled from other bands, kind of like a 70s-style supergroup (so you other oldesters out there can compare, like, say, the 21st century equivalent of Bad Company or Asia, but without the stadium shows) -- is, along with Gift of Gab, Lateef the Truth Speaker, of Latyrx, and producer Headnodic, of the Crown City Rockers.
Now I realize I'm just a middled-aged small-town hillbilly white guy, but I love this stuff. And I particularly like this particular genre of rap music often labeled "conscious hip hop." I think it's good stuff, with a good message. And I'm glad my kids and I, particularly my high-school-aged son, can share an appreciation for this modern music together. And I must say that it's pretty cool to be able to say I was the one who turned him on to these fine, fun beats.
And last night I was really glad we could share it together, live on stage, right here in Durango.
To be sure, my wife and I and our buddy Todd -- also a music junkie and conscious hip hop fan -- were the oldest kids at this all-ages show. But that was okay. And it even added to the cultural insight for us middle-aged hipsters. Standing along the rail on the balcony over the main dance floor, we had a prime view of the hundred or so of our town's high school kids and college students (many of whom we knew or recognized) getting their big-city kicks.
The show began with an hour of Denver-area mash-up artist DJ Vajra mixing beats for the swarming mass of kids on the dance floor. Here we got a visual treat and surprise: the dance floor parted and -- I swear, in what was like a modern reinterpretation of that classic dance scene from Saturday Night Fever -- kids would jump into the middle of the circle and offer whatever break-dancing moves they could muster for their fellow patrons' pleasure.
And everyone seemed very pleasured, even by the meagerest of dancing attempts. It was a great, fun, appreciative teen-tribal spirit flowing around the place. And some of the dancers -- like the guy who spun a few moves, then mimed pulling two girls out of the crowd on an imaginary rope, followed by all three performing a synced and crazily-well choreographed chorus-line dance -- were quite good.
But then came the Underdogs, and for an hour and half the trio hopped and rocked the place. You felt they, too, were loving it, and they played it hard, worked the crowd well, and spread those truly good vibrations that some old, worn out dog-and-pony show of a one-time big-time band could never bring to our little town.
Shame on you classic rock radio station, for ignoring 98 percent of the output of rock and roll music released between the years 1965 and 1978. You are foolish, yet you have most of America by the ear who for some reason don't mind hearing "Sympathy for the Devil" a hundred times over. Here are three classic rock records that are all but ignored by classic rock radio.
Rolling Stones Exile On Main Street- 1972
Led Zeppelin- Physical Graffiti- 1975
The Who- Quadrophenia- 1973
I feel like I should write something about these records, but you all have outstanding taste, else you wouldn't be here. So do I really have to?
“the more mediocre your music is, the more accessible it is to a larger number of people in the U.S. That’s where the market is, you’re not selling to a bunch of jazz aesthetes in Europe, you’re selling to Americans, who really hate music, but love entertainment.” -Frank Zappa, 1969.
somewhat of a blanket statement, but also super true. I listen to KDUR all the time and have surrounded myself with musicians and other people that hold more than a remote interest in music. Then I travel, to large, urban areas with suburbs, and realize that a lot of people listen to junk. Can 6 billion American Idol viewers be wrong? YES THEY CAN.
Well, you know it's deep winter in the mountains when we have a Blogging Battle of the Band-album-covers. It'll be hard to top Telly Savalas -- I bow to Bryant Liggett and his deep (physically, if not psychologically) vinyl collection.
And I offer one more Salvo -- and video. The video is painful, in a rather luridly delightful way. And, I pray to all that is sacred and sane, it is tongue and cheek as well -- although I'm not sure the audience at the 1978 Science Fiction awards, where this appeared, were quite so sure ... But it's worth getting through, as the performance takes a somewhat bizarre and funny -- in a peculiar and ha-ha way -- in the middle.
It's a long stretch from the American Dust Bowl to a concrete-lined riverbed at the foot of southern California's mountains; and it's almost as far from that dry ditch to the River of Lost Souls draining the south side of my home range. Last night I listened to a bridge, designed by roots musician Dave Alvin, that connected these three pieces of our common past.
Guitarist Chris Miller's hands helped Alvin build this bridge on the Durango Arts Center's new and improved performance stage, in front of a packed house of appreciative locals. Like Dave Alvin, most of us were too young to remember the Great Depression evoked by Alvin's cover of Woody Guthrie's "Do Re Mi," but old enough to recall seizures of family farms and homes in the late 1980's, that signaled the demise of our nation's last embrace of 'free-market' economic fantasy.
For the young and/or innocent among us, a short history follows. Savings and Loan Associations were once the less regulated half of our banking industry (think of the lately lamented 'sub-prime' mortgage industry, except with at least a little in the cookie jar). 1932's Federal Home Loan Bank Act encouraged citizens to borrow money to buy a home or farm, using S & L's to finance the endeavor. In the early 1980's, deregulated free-marketeers mined S & Ls' assets to fuel a false economic boom. The inevitable collapse helped ensure that the first president named Bush would leave office four years later in disgrace, derided as one of our least competent chief executives, with a deregulated billionaire named Perot helping apply a boot from the right wing as Bush went out the West Wing's revolving door. Most of us voting in the recent election remember at least a part of what followed (boom, crash, wars, bail-outs, hand-wringing, etc.), and as our economy spirals into depths not seen since the 1930's, 70% to 80% of us now place our current Bush president in the running for least popular decider-in-chief in U. S. history.
But I digress, for last night's performance was presented more in the spirit of a peoples' music, than the dry language of economic politics. The bridge grew from roots of folk, blues, rock and jazz rhythms and riffs, and it drove the crowd from the depths of rivers, through the dives of Dave Alvin's late and lamented youth, past fallen heroes and knaves, and into a vision best described by Alvin himself, in this 1987 performance of his Jubilee Train.
The roots of American music seem to always revisit a theme of movement, and more of us than not have recently jumped on a train to change the place our country has become. It wasn't easy in 1932. It won't be easy now, but at least there are still bridges, and musicians helping us remember just where we can go.
Between the years 1987 and 1995 I attended a handful of Grateful Dead shows. All were fun, musically some were great, most were not. On one particular occasion my friend Kelly was in attendance. Kelly and I saw hundreds of punk shows together (punk being a love, not a hobby, nor a slight interest, but a sober obsession) and Kelly expressed his dis-interest in the Grateful Dead to some shirtless, eyeball spinning parking lot wanderer. The reaction was a simple "you're not high enough." Kelly's response was something to the point of questioning why drugs were needed to enjoy something. Touche.
Over the years I've seen hundreds of shows, some jam shows, some not, some great, some not. I've moved far away from the jam band shows, not out of a dis-taste of the musical talents of the performers, but as a result of the shallowness of the fans. Limited knowledge for something these people think they should enjoy for a reason they do not know. Common tastes can be narrow, especially amongst a sea of like-minded followers. A dislike, or dis-interest of Gram Parsons but a love of Workingmans Dead makes no sense to me.
I often wonder if jam bands would have been, and remain to be as popular as they are if drugs were not at the center of the audiences common goal. This is coming from someone who has experimented well past the edge of common sense, and will, without a doubt, go past that edge again.
What did the Widespread Panic fan say when his acid wore off? THIS BAND SUCKS!
I've stared into many peoples music collections and seen absolutely nothing amongst a sea of CD's and LP's. The beauty of music is of course in the ear of the listener, and far be it for me to insist on things that are cooler than what you think is cool, but I like to do it anyway. I haven't worked this hard reading, listening, researching, seeing, and playing to not. The entire Led Zeppelin catalog is respectable, but isn't sending your collection over the top. Here's 2 more suggestions (with hundreds more on the way) that can help.
"Red Roses for Me," the 1984 full length debut from the British/Irish band The Pogues, led by Shane Macgowan, (one of the top songwriters of our time) is a hybrid of traditional Irish music mixed with the fury of punk rock. It's a shot of celtic angst.
Their third full length, this 2001 release is the one that introduced the Drive By Truckers to the world. The record is a loose narrative set around the tragic plane crash that ended it for the original lineup of Lynyrd Skynyrd, and story aside is one of the finest rock records not only of 2001, but of this decade. 3 guitars or a life of crime.
Hank Williams III, son of Jr, grandson of the original, makes music. I'm sure he doesn't vote the way his Dad does, and musically has more in common with his grand-dad. His new record is more of the same of the last; modern-day outlaw country ripe for the punk rock kids that just started coming around to country right around the time Johnny Cash died. III is less likely to be brought into the Grand Ole Opry than grand-dad, and that's fine. He doesn't have much good to say about that place anyway. Give Damn Right, Rebel Proud a listen. He's pretty good at playing speed metal too. Back to his Grand-dad. He's not a member of the Opry. Pretty strange for a man that debuted at the Opry in 1949, and was called back for 6 encores. The original Hank Williams needs to be reinstated.
I've always felt that time could care less about us, that its gonna move, fast, whether I like it or not. This morning I realized that 3 of the 4 original Ramones are dead, and Flava Flav is almost 50.
I wanted to start the morning off with a list of people that I think should be Eighty-Sixed from the local bars, but instead I'll give you 6 names of artists/bands you should add to your collection, simply for musical improvement. Before I do that however, follow these instructions. 1. Go to CD collection. 2. Find the G section, pull out "Gin Blossoms." 3. Find the S section, pull out "Spin Doctors." 4. Walk to trash can. 5. Throw away CD's.
Now, replace them with this....
1. Funkadelic- the self titled debut or "Maggot Brain." 2. John Prine- Sweet Revenge 3. Bad Brains- Rock for Light 4. Replacements- Sorry Ma, Forgot to Take Out the Trash 5. Minutemen- Double Nickels on the Dime. 6. Slim Cessna's Auto Club- Cipher
Why do homegrown tomatoes taste so much better? According to the University of Illinois Extension Service, it may have to do with commercial tomatoes' being picked green so they ship better, but it also can be linked to micro-amounts of volatile chemicals that are sensed not by the tongue, but by the olfactory nerve in the nose. (Read the entire article in the Illinois Times here.)
