A Busy Time for a Music Fan

The first quarter of 2007 has seen the release of a rather remarkable number of good (or at least interesting) albums. Among those added to my collection (several only in MP3 form--thanks eMusic.com!) in the past three or four months are the following:

Bright Eyes: Cassadaga
Bright Eyes: Four Winds [EP]
Andy Palacio: Watina
Arcade Fire: Neon Bible
Patty Griffin: Children Running Through
Lucinda Williams: West
Norah Jones: Not Too Late
Neil Young: Live at Massey Hall 1971
Graham Parker: Don't Tell Columbus
Fountains of Wayne: Traffic and Weather
Modest Mouse: We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank [sic] (Surely they meant to call it: We Were Dead Even Before the Ship Sank)
Michael Penn: Palms & Runes, Tarot and Tea: A Michael Penn Collection
Michael Penn: Mr. Hollywood, Jr. 1947 (this is a remastered, re-release of his 2005 masterpiece)

Of these records, my strongest endorsement goes to the pair of Michael Penn albums. My goodness can the man write a pop song! Clever, word-play-rich lyrics embedded in beautiful and hooky melodies all delivered in a McCartney-esque voice. *Palms and Runes* is a retrospective done right: every track a gem, some new versions of old favorites (well, at least for those of us who know him as more than just "that guy who did the song about Romeo in black jeans") sequenced in a way that does more justice to sound and content than it does to chronology. *Mr. Hollywood, Jr, 1947* is Penn's ode to 1947. It's what a short-story writer would do if trying to capture a place at a time in a collection of independent, although thematically related stories. This is my favorite of all of Penn's records, mostly for it's thinner production and overall unity.

Neil Young's *Live at Massey Hall 1971* is also wonderful. Neil is solo and at the top of his vocal game. If you've ever thought of him as a good songwriter/guitarist whose voice is a drawback, you need to listen to this record. But then I've raved about this record on this blog before.

Other quick notes: I at least like all of these records, although some I've yet to fully absorb. Still, I'd say that the Graham Parker album is a bit disappointing (not nearly as good as 2004's *Your Country*), as are the Norah Jones and Fountains of Wayne records. (Keep in mind that I have high expectations of records by all these folks, so "disappointing" does not mean "bad.") I just don't really get Arcade Fire, the Bright Eyes album is a bit over-produced (do we really need to hear him bleat with an orchestral background?) as is Patty Griffin's (although she still owns the most amazing female voice in pop music). Still you could do a lot worse than support these artists and spend some quality time with some quality popular music.

The Boys of Spring

"While Scully danced over the airwaves/Scully surfed over the airwaves..."

Terry Taylor, "Bakersfield"


'Tis spring and a boy's thoughts turn to that which his nature compels him: the high heat, the roundhouse curve, the check swing, the gapper, and (let us not forget) the 6-4-3 double play. Baseball's back and every decent American feels renewed. April is a time for hope, when even the worst of teams is but a few games out of first place.

As always, my loyalties are torn. On the one hand, I've been a Cubs fan forever. And with the addition of Sweet Lou Pinella and Alfonso Soriano (who may well be the best pure athlete in baseball), this is a season that might turn out to be "the" year. But then again I live in Cardinals country and I fully understand why the people around me have a loyalty to the Redbirds. The Cards embody all that is good about baseball. The team is composed of smart trades, can't miss free agents, and homegrown talent the likes of which is not seen east of the Mississipi or west of the Ozark mountains. Or anywhere else in North America.

Despite my love of mid-America baseball, I have to admit that long-time Dodgers announcer Vin Scully is the Prince of the Airwaves. His silky voice and literate accounts of the goings-on on the field greatly out-distance my ability to describe.

Scully dances over the airwaves indeed. (Thank God for Mlb.com's audio subscription.)

The Sorry State of Public Discourse

In the interest of at least partial disclosure, I should note first of all that I'm a Democrat. I'm not, however, a yell0w-dog Democrat (that is, a Democrat who would vote for any candidate her party runs, even if it is a yellow dog). And I'm not the sort of party member who will back whatever any member of her party says in a debate with members of The Other Party. I'm a Democrat who isn't always towing the party line.

Now we've all had it with the talking heads on cable news shouting each other down. That is not the kind of public discourse that will lead to serious understanding, and (even more) found areas of agreement and compromise. We are also all tired of hearing politicians say what they think we want to hear, politicians who will say almost nothing that hasn't been market-tested in advance. We might differ as to which politicians provide the best example of this, but we agree that many are guilty. And we don't like it one bit.

So far so good. But there is another problem of public political discourse that is less obvious but also troubling. It's the decision to simply ignore the relevant, serious problems of one's position that are presented by one's political foes. While I'd like to be convinced that I'm wrong, I have to say that the most obvious recent examples of this come from the Demos. Exhibit #1: Reasonably (to my mind, anyway) the Democrats want to limit how long our troops stay in Iraq. It's been four long, costly years and there doesn't seem to be any reason to think that things will be better tomorrow, next month, or next year. But the President counters by saying that if we leave before Iraq is a stable democracy, then all hell will break loose. The country will likely become a Shiite theocracy that might well be run by extremists (think Taliban, only Shiite), and that will be a disaster for Iraq, the Middle East, and (ultimately) the U.S. What the President is saying here is not (to my ear) implausible. So I'd like to hear what the Democrats who want to push a time table for withdrawl have to say about it. What's that? I'm not hearing anything. What we get are lots of reasons why we've been in Iraq long enough (or even too long) and why the Iraqi's have to be responsible for their own security. But what do the Democrats say about what would happen if we leave on a certain date no matter what the country's condition is then? From what I can tell only Joe Biden takes this seriously (and he has a plan that doesn't involve withdrawl on a particular date).

Still related to the war in Iraq and withdrawl, there is the issue of to what extent telegraphing our pullout date to the enemy puts us in a bad military position. The Democrats, sure that the war was wrong to begin with and has been poorly managed (two points on which I am definitely in agreement), insist that we can't stay there forever and that we need to specify a date when we will pull out. While that is, in itself, not unreasonable, there is still the legitimate question about to what degree our announcing our date of departure might be a significant aid to our enemies. So far, I've heard no Democrat take this issue head on. Why is that? Why is it that the good concerns/objections of our political opponents aren't deemed worthy of response? From what I can tell the reason is that in our current political climate what matters is scoring points with voters/poll-respondents today and not with what is really in our long-term national interest. This is surely a deplorable state of affairs for anyone who cares about where our country is heading.

We should call upon our leaders to address the key objections to their policy views and to tell us why their position is correct even with their opponents best objections in mind.