"If drums stop - no good. Then come bass solo."

That's the puchline to a great joke.


My favorite disposable flavor-of-the-minute record: "One Thing" by Amerie. I guess it would be considered "modern r&b."

(I hate labels on anything except cans, bottles, and the occasional garment.)

Whatever genre-definition you use, this little diamond cuts clean. A nasty slab of overdriven, nearly-distorted drums with an afterthought guitar fill caught on the edge of the sample. It pumps its way into my heart with each spin. The vocal is the only melodic instrument for the first two-thirds of the track, and it makes me remember what the Ramones taught me (among others) - how exciting tension-and-release become in a song, when a bit was left for the listener to fill in with their own mind; when the best parts of the song are going on in your head. I cringe at the memory of so many over-arranged songs - every once in a while, a nice, clean, taut, stripped down record resets my musical odometer, and reminds me how simple a great track can be.

(Before I knew the name of this cut, I called it the turkey song, because I swear it sounds like she's singing "gobble, gobble, gobble" in the intro.)

So it's my "get up and dressed" record of the moment. Like any great disposable pop record, I'll probably have moved on from it by next week, but knowing me, it'll always have a place in my heart.

'Taint

Typical of me, I have zip in mind for what I will put up on here, but plenty of ideas as to what I won't.

This will be a polemic-free zone.

Ever since I was a pre-teen, I have been a newshound; I have also been fascinated and absorbed by politics and government. I never considered politics for myself - too many witnesses to my sordid past abound - but I was always engaged, proseletyzing relentlessly. I was forever forming opinions, modifying them, shaping them, polishing them like little gems.

And the news? I devoured it all. I was on a quest to know everything about everything. Then the whole world would have to go through me like shit through a goose, so that I might pronounce my opinion on each and every issue of the day. I lived a noisy, urgent life.

And then I just got fucking tired. Tired of it all. Tired of warring factions whose only point of agreement was on hating anyone who didn't neatly fit the arguments. Tired of bleed-lead news. And like a cold-turkey kick, I cut myself off. Just like that. And a strange thing happened.

I began to notice a distinct corollary: the less I paid attention to all that stuff, the more engaged I became in my own life.

There was no denying it - I was happier, less agitated. I was more deeply involved in my inner life, which, parodoxically, also left more room for me to share the lives of my beloved friends and family.

It's not that I don't pay attention to important issues. But once I could see what the cost of admission to the circus had been, I began to raise the bar on my "must-know" criteria. And I began to realize how exhausting it was to maintain a position on every issue of the day. I'm out.

So I'm gonna post about life, music, philosophy - anything but politics, manufactured controversies, or the celebrity cluster-fuck that passes for news in mainstream culture. I'm not above any of it: I know how quickly I am seduced by it all, but I also know the morning-after remorse I feel, every time I take the news too seriously.

I think I'm gonna like this blog thing. Woo Hoo!!!

Just Like Me

It's just like me to join the last century five years into the new one. My first DVD player last month, and now a foray into blog-dom. Time to pass another imaginary velvet rope. I've been online for eight years now, so I guess it's time to try this as well - sorta like a journal I can fill in on the run, and never worry about again.

Let's see if I can commit!