Heaven is a Better (Sounding) Place Today

My music loving soul is so sad to hear that Maurice Jarre has died. He was one of my favorite film composers. ("Ghost", "Lawrence of Arabia", "The Tin Drum") He was best known , of course, for "Lara's Theme" from "Dr Zhivago", which no one can deny the beauty of, but I always preferred his "Building the Barn" from "Witness". It's a stunner that does the rare trick in film music of both perfectly matching the onscreen action and standing alone as a beautiful piece of orchestral classical music.

I have said for years that if I ever married again using "Building the Barn" as the processional had to be part of deal. It works thematically and musically, with the best build-from rumbly low beginning to the soaring end-ever. (Building-get it?) To have the bride walk in at the trumpet's climax-just when you think the song has built as high as it could possibly go, it goes still higher, the roof on the barn if you will-I think that would be jawdropping.

So rest in peace Mr. Jarre and many thanks for the gift of this song.

Gilding the Lily

The Passion
Southeast Christian Church-Louisville, KY
March 26, 2009



I was asked to go, the ticket paid for, so I went. I like the pageantry of Easter as much as the next person-my idea of a perfect Easter is being blissed on the couch, stuffed to the gills with chocolate bunny ears watching Jesus movies one after another.

Southeast is Louisville's megachurch (I've been in smaller stadiums and I'm Catholic-you know we like a big space) and they spare no expense with their production. Horse, camel, 2 burros, sheep and a trained dove (how'd they DO that?) all present and accounted for. Not to mention the moving sidewalk, put to clever use as Jesus & the apostles spread the word, and the cast of (literally) hundreds. A multimedia and multisensory production, it seems like the producers haven't met a special effect they didn't like or weren't willing to put to use for their purpose.

Which was sort of my beef with it. (Besides the song, oh yeah did I mention it's a musical? that had the line "Death where is thy sting" from the gospel of....Shakespeare?) It was hard to genuinely feel much being constantly beaten over the head, hard to listen to the true meaning of the season with so many bells and whistles. The previous Friday I went to the Stations of the Cross at my church. It was me, the nun running it, her nun friend, a lady with a walker and the entire 5th grade class with their kindergarten buddies. It was modest, not a special effect in sight, but I think I got more out of that about the Passion, and its sacrifice, than out of all the pageantry the megachurch threw at me.

Reason #437 Why I Love Louisville

My building is right behind Burger's Market, an old school neighborhood market whose tag line is "The best of everything". They are good neighbors if a bit expensive. Their green beans? Best. Ever.

They also have Tab. And Fanta.

I don't need any of this stuff (why would anyone want to pickle a walnut anyway?) but it's good to know it's there, just in case.

To Save Me

This week the flag of my disposition is low and my mouth is full of loss. Yes, it's true I lost my job but I also lost something far more precious and irreplaceable, a friend.



The next sound you hear is them sawing off the branch I had so nervously crept out on.



There is no support system and language for this kind of loss. Yeah, for us singletons there's a certain amount of people coming and going but not friends. Your friends are always there for you, that's why they call them friends. That's why this loss is so hard to wrap my mind and heart around. Because it's not supposed to work this way-it's wrong, wrong, wrong especially for a relationship that was sparked by an act of kindness out of the clear blue sky.



Being a friend is a strength and point of pride for me-I am very tribal. If you're a member of my pack there's nothing I won't do for you which makes having to cull stuff wrapped up in this loss nothing less than brutal. The CDs are sacrosanct of course, even if I never listen to them again, but I threw the envelopes away. The pictures have also been changed out. The voicemails are still there, for now, and I haven't done the Facebook defriending yet either. Those will have to come too, with time.



The flag of my disposition is low. Or as the song goes:

"So, how much difference could it possibly make
how much effort could it possibly take to save me
to save me, to save me, to save me
save me from sailing over the edge"

-M. Ward

Goodnight Ryan II-Impressionistic Musings

It all started in 1997 when I discovered Whiskeytown's "Stranger's Almanac" at the Borders where I worked. We had a counter dump for it and I was attracted by the rose (later so important in Cardinals graphic design) and the semi on the packaging. I fell for this record pretty quick, none of that annoying 'getting to know you' business. For years, until I moved back last fall, I had to play it every time I drove home as soon as I crossed the border into Kentucky so that "Inn Town" was blasting out over the hills between Cincinnati and Louisville.

Most of my Ryan memories are wrapped up with my friend, Marla, who was as big a fan as me at least until the Cardinals incarnation (she's allergic to twang). We live far apart now and I don't get to see and talk to her as much as I like so listening to Ryan is also like being with her.

Other memories:


-Talking with Ryan in a Detroit alley after a show. The boy was, as the expression goes, drunk as 10 Indians but spoke passionately about Joyce Carol Oates' Detroit set novel, Them (he is the son of an English teacher). That was when Marla, who's a ladybug (ladybeetle!) person gave him a ladybug pin which, I think, confused him some. I joked with her about being a G-rated Plaster Caster fan person, handing out ladybug pins instead of making X-rated molds. Surprisingly, she didn't really think that was funny.


-Seeing him back to back-Cleveland the first night, then Detroit. How Cleveland was so joyfully racuous-Ryan in a jacket and tie ripping up the Stones' "Brown Sugar" (that was after that cover was included on an Uncut complilation)-I think it's still my favorite show. Then the next night, in Detroit when we were with our respective sweeties how much less fun the show was and how we kept insisting, "But he was so good last night".


-Getting a semi drunken phone call from Marla when she lived in Maryland and was in a bar with Ryan and the rest of the band postshow.There were actually a lot of phone calls from shows-I remember another one she went to where she called me at work. I was standing at the registers listening to..was it "Come Pick Me Up"? Wishing I was there but feeling like part of me actually was through the combined magic of friendship and the telephone.


-Going to LA to see him on the "Gold" tour with The Counting Crows at the El Rey to commerate/celebrate Marla's divorce. It was a great, celeb-filled trip. Buried in the 3 hour show was a stunningly beautiful version of "Oh My Sweet Carolina" during which I cheered long and lustily after the lines, "I miss Kentucky/and I miss my family". Then weeks later when we got the bootleg we were shocked and appalled to hear the snooty LA types let the hick jokes fly. Imagine, paying good money for a bootleg on which you are personally mocked!


-There were lots of bootlegs, back when that concept actually existed. Some wacky song versions, some that sounded like they were recorded from the ice bin in the bar. The crazy "Burrito Song" that somehow rhymed 'Raul Malo' with 'burrito'...


-The wacky between song patter that came from the potent mix of stage fright and being high, my favorite being the conversation Ryan and my pal Dean had regarding being like brothers and riding dirt bikes behind the Mini Mart. Ryan also had one of the best heckler responses I've ever heard when he said, "We have to pretend we're not friends now" to shut up one particularly loud fan. And of course, the inevitable shoutout for "Summer of 69" during a certain career phase. I was glad when that phase was over.


-Yeah, it was pretty stupid to call one album "llor n kcor" (rock 'n roll backwards) but I still have the shirt anyway. And I gotta say there are some good songs on that record.

So many memories, further proof of how insinuating our favorite artists are and how there is virtually no corner of our lives they don't touch. Bye, for now, David Ryan Adams. All my best to you. I'll be watching.

Goodnight Ryan

I've been feeling very nostalgic about my boy Ryan this week it being both the most recent time I saw him and (supposably) his last show. I guess 8 shows in 4 states over 12 years, 13 records, inumerable singles and 10 bootlegs will do that to a fan. It's hard to be objective so I'm going to seperate the actual review from the rest of my impressionistic musings.

The Cardinals w/Ryan Adams

Louisville Palace

March 16, 2009

First let me say I like the Cardinals as much as anybody and I'm pleased, as I've said before, that Ryan has straightened himself out and is happy living clean and sober. But as a concertgoer, well, sometimes I wish for the bad old Ryan. The Ryan who could heckle back with the best of them. The Ryan who would play the same song twice in a row, once off tempo, once on, just because he could. Yeah, it could be annoying-the down side of the wacky between song patter-but it was always interesting.

Monday's show at the Palace? Not so much.

Now there were some great moments-"Come Pick Me Up"* was fabulous and such a surprise so early in the show, Ryan hit notes in "Wonderwall" I haven't heard in years and "Two" was also beautifully done-but overall there seemed no thought given to pacing at all which left a big draggy group of midtempo songs all clustered together. I realize that with the name change, taking first billing away from himself, Ryan was attempting to be just the Cardinals. And if they had the chance to do more records together they might have gotten there-Neal Casal's 3 songs were fine songs. They just weren't, truth be told, especially in light of the announcement that this was to be the last tour, what we all came for. I was hoping, and I bet I wasn't the only one, that this show would be less Cardinal-centric. That they'd pick up a few more pre-Cardinal songs not Whiskeytown of course but "Firecracker"? "Wish You Were Here"? Please? As a final hurrah? But no.

So goodbye David Ryan Adams, I'll look for you on the printed page and hope that you'll have a change of heart about the music.

*I would gladly stand on a therapist's coffee table and proclaim "Come Pick Me Up" to be the best codependant, fucked up relationship song ever. Begging for someone to steal your records? Now that's messed up. Shot through with bittersweet longing cut with cold acknowlegment of the inevitability of just how badly everything is going to end, it's one of Ryan's absolute best. There's a reason people yell for it at every show and it's not just because it drops the F bomb.

Now I Know Anything is Possible

I'm still trying to wrap my mind around this.

Let me make sure I've got it right.

Ryan Adams, my rock n' roll boyfriend, married Mandy Moore.

Ryan Adams, author of such lyrics as "cotton candy in a rotten mouth/you're so fucked up/you know I couldn't help but have it for you" married Mandy Moore.

Mandy Moore who starred in a movie based on a book written by Nicholas Sparks.

N-I-C-H-O-L-A-S S-P-A-R-K-S.

Ryan Adams married Mandy Moore and is now one degree away from Nicholas Sparks.

Now I know anything is possible-the sky is open and absolutely anything is possible.

A Reliable Wife

First, I need to say I have a total thing for mail order bride stories, specifically those of the West. They're kind of America's version of Cinderella. I even wrote my own version years ago. It's girly and romantic yeah, but being a girl I guess I don't have to apologize for that. The genre gets an entirely different spin though in Robert Goolrich's new novel, A Reliable Wife. In it, a desperate sporting woman responds to a Wisconsin man's ad for the reliable wife of the title with a sinister plan to win him, marry him then poison him, returning from the wilds a wealthy widow. What she hadn't figured on is that the man has designs of his own and their relationship becomes a sick and twisted dangerous dance with the reader never sure who will prevail.

It's a dark book, one I enjoyed as much as one can enjoy such a story. However, flashes of Goolrich's previous book, his memoir The End of the World as We Know It, kept coming up. That book started as one of those wacky Southern family memoirs that just seemed, well, wacky until about halfway through when the author wakes up to find himself being raped by his own father. The rest of the book, as you can imagine, was a brutal read.

Now, I would never presume to tell someone how to get over a trauma such as this. Whatever exorcisms they need to do to come out on the other side, I can hardly imagine having to carry that around. However, as a reader sounding the same notes over and over in book after book is a dicey proposition. Yes, you certainly can rewrite your life over and over in each new book (see Pat Conroy, Augustin Burroughs or Dave Pelzer) indeed you can make a whole career of it, but unless you're bringing new stuff to the party you're going to lose me.

And now? Now, I'm going to reread Sarah Plain and Tall about four times to get the taste for mail order bride stuff back.

JTE Redux

So yesterday I just happened to be listening to the radio on my day off when they announced that Justin Townes Earle was playing a show last night, a show I had heard nothing about, which is exactly how it happened the first time I saw him last Halloween.

That would have been sign enough to get me there but coupled with the fact he was playing in my parish church, after the Friday Fish Fry I was going to attend anyway...well, I'm no theologian but if anything says "Girl, get yer ass to church" that would be it.

Though seeing someone play honky tonk in a church was a first (I noticed that Justin and his partner in crime, Cory Younts, both dressed up this time-no trucker hats in church) it makes sense. Yes, it's a progressive parish (one of the reasons I picked it) but it also makes sense, to me at least, cause music is its own kind of religion. Think about it-it's belief in something bigger than yourself, something that remains mostly unseen, something that speaks to your heart and builds its own community.

Or it least it feels that way when you get pew butt 3 songs in.

Like last time, the interplay between Justin and Cory was a delight that leavened the sorrow painstakingly chronicled in many of the songs. Yeah, I bet the road can be a drag that seems neverending but it must also be such a delight to be making music all over the world with your best friend. When they did their mandolin flavored cover of the Replacements' "Can't Hardly Wait", funny enough by itself, Cory cracked Justin (and the rest of us) up with his sly sideways glance at the church's statue of Christ during the lines, "Jesus rides beside me/he never buys/and he smokes" .

Also like last time, I teared up during "Turn Out My Lights" (aka the Methadone Clinic Girl song) this time without the cover of darkness to hide them. That song just undoes me every time. Other highlights included the intro to the unflinchingly honest "Mama's Eyes" where Justin explained how his mother was Steve Earle wife #3 and "though I am absolutely my father's son more importantly, I am my mama's boy", "They Killed John Henry" (I've figured out there isn't a song about John Henry I don't like) and the lovely closing cover of Randy Newman's "Louisiana 1928".

Where I Am