It’s stupid to even try to write anything intelligent about this song. “Gimme Shelter” is simply more a force of nature than a piece of music.
“Wal-Mart is a place where people gather, it’s a place where you sometimes see your neighbor the most…”
Rain-spattered locomotive window.
The Washington & Idaho Railway in Potlatch, Idaho, hauling one load from Bennett Lumber for interchange with BNSF Railway in Marshall, Washington.
“That is, I believe that the will of the people, their traditions and customs, their concern for their families, their communities, and for the future should determine the shape of any political order…
…it is clear to me, especially in this late date of our democracy, that it enthrones the will of determined and well-financed minorities, that it dissolves the customs and traditions of the people, and that it has no concern for the future.”
In which Wilco writes and records one of those perfect, balls-out rock songs about highways.
“Seven Habits of Highly Infective People
1. Be infected.
2. Leave open sores untreated and uncovered.
3. Spit or sneeze into other people’s mouths.
4. Slice off part of your body and feed it to another person.
5. Vomit down someone’s shirt, especially if they’ve recently had chest or abdominal surgery.
6. Tear off your face and wipe it (wet side-down) on someone else’s face.
7. Cough without covering your mouth.”
Thistle in the ice.
"...cawmpletely informed with hawnky-tawnk music..." →
Edward Norton conducts a thoughtful, intelligent interview with Bruce Springsteen. Resplendent in his Joisey accent, The Boss has a lot of interesting things to say about his scene in the 1970’s up to the release of Darkness on the Edge of Town. “We were provincial guys, with no money… this whole street life in Asbury Park. New York City was a million miles away… the good part about it was that you were very, very connected to place. And it was unique, where you lived, and the people you grew up with were very singular… the irony of any kind of success is that you’re a mutant in your own neighborhood…”
Norton notes that, despite his “intense connection to a locale”, Darkness marked a time when Springsteen was expanding his horizons, reading people from outside his region (like Flannery O'Connor)—even seeing the American West for the first time. Bruce found more locales with textures and interesting stories (the Rattlesnake Speedway near Fallon, NV, for one), and therefore found fodder for his songwriting. This awareness of where he was, I’d say, grounded and focused his next several records through to Born in the U.S.A.
After which point, having become a household name, Bruce really did become a mutant in his own neighborhood; his connection to real people and situations eroded, and his music suffered. Tunnel of Love was all about being famous and divorced. The boring L.A.-period double-albums from 1991, whatever they were called, stunk. The Ghost of Tom Joad was about specific people that Bruce had never met and with whom he’d never hang out. With The Rising, connected as it was to the shared national experience of 9/11, and the less-earnest parts of The Seeger Sessions, which sounded like he was actually having fun playing music, did he touch ground again. But real people and places remain somewhat abstracted with Bruce; are there any identifiable human beings in Magic and Working on a Dream?
The interview is well worth a listen; for that matter, nearly anything about the intertestamental period between Born to Run and Darkness on the Edge of Town is worth the time.
The fiddle fades out at the end, the sound of a party out in the country at night, heard across dark fields, looking at the blaze of lights on the porch of the house where Billy and his friends are gathered. Effortless, sublime, and beautiful.
"Good try, honey." →
Terry Gross interviews Keith Richards on NPR. The best part is probably the 34:00 mark, when Keef tells her what vowels are. He addresses her as “honey” the whole time. Her interview with Jay-Z (from just the other day) also has more than its share of surreal, deeply comic, WTF moments.
Parts of Eastern Washington are quite flat.
The future.
Willow in the fog.
Spring storm over the Camas Prairie.
The largest thing I’ve yet killed.
Near Swoope, VA.
Quotes from a Nazi and some American Christian politicians
Some of American Christendom’s favorite politicians sound a lot like that emblem of all that went horrifically wrong with modernism, nationalism, and the 20th Century. See if you can guess who uttered what—Adolf Hitler or the American Christian politician…
1A) “We are not a warlike nation. It is a soldierly one, which means it does not want a war, but does not fear it. It loves peace but also loves its honor and freedom.”
1B) “Above all, we must realize that no arsenal, or no weapon in the arsenals of the world, is so formidable as the will and moral courage of free men and women. It is a weapon our adversaries in today’s world do not have.”
2A) “We can be confident in the future of our nation as these values are passed on to each new generation. Our children need to know that our Nation is a force for good in the world and must understand our past as they prepare to lead in the future.”
2B) “He alone, who owns the youth, gains the future.”
3A) “There is a road to freedom. Its milestones are obedience, endeavor, honesty, order, cleanliness, sobriety, truthfulness, sacrifice, and love of country.”
3B) “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was once like in the time when men were free.
4A) “I knew early on that the smartest thing for me to do was to work hard, do the best that I can. And then get myself on a path that could be dedicated to God and ask Him what I should do next. That will be the position I will be in as long as I’m on earth—that is, seeking the right path that God would have laid out for me.”
4B) “Even today I am not ashamed to say that, overpowered by stormy enthusiasm, I fell down on my knees and thanked Heaven from an overflowing heart for granting me the good fortune of being permitted to live at this time.”
For those who don’t know me, lest you be mistaken about where I’m coming from: I am a Christian—and I’m not one of those liberal sell-outs. I’m just currently repenting of being a conservative sell-out. Both ways deny the way of the cross; the liberal denies that there was a cross, and the conservative doesn’t think it means anything anymore.
The answers: 1A) Adolf Hitler; 1B) Ronald Reagan… 2A) Sarah Palin; 2B) Adolf Hitler… 3A) Adolf Hitler; 3B) Ronald Reagan… 4A) Sarah Palin; 4B) Adolf Hitler
HT: a friend who’d rather not be named.