Music Friday: "I Don't Want to Grow Up"

The Nasty family left this afternoon to travel to Iowa for my parents' 65th wedding anniversary. We go into Waterloo somewhere around 9:45 this evening. As we pulled into the parking lot of the Hampton Inn, this song was playing.

Seems fitting. 

Random Notes from a Crank

Sometimes when I'm in meetings, a mental image comes to mind: a dog chasing its tail. See video below:

When I drove my kids home from school the other afternoon, we noticed about a three-year old girl pushing an empty stroller down the sidewalk. Probably a kid about five years old, and presumably her brother, was behind her. He was trying to mount his bike. All he was wearing was his underwear, his whitey tideys out there in broad daylight. It was mid-seventies temp-wise, and I didn't see a parent close by. My daughter's comment was something like, "That kid's outside just in his underwear! That is weird."

In response to the story about a scholar now possibly having evidence that Jesus had a wife,  Jason Isbell had a great tweet: "Disappointingly, the newly-found Jesus text began with the line 'Take my wife. Please.' He actually OPENED with that." 

My eyes look toward you Mary Magdalene. With the hatchet job some Biblical scholars have done on her, it wouldn't surprise me if she was the wife of Jesus. 

And all this Jesus stuff reminds me a Hayes Carll tune and video. Check it out. 

Music Friday: "Stomp and Holler" & "Grateful for Christmas"

On my Top Ten/Twenty Albums of 2011 post, for whatever reason I didn't include KMAG YOYO (& Other American Stories) by Hayes Carll, which is a darn fine album. That's an oversight on my part and strange since Carll has been featured before on a Music Friday post.

Apologies to Mr. Carll. I should have included your album in the previous post.

So today I offer two songs from KMAG YOYO. "Stomp and Holler" is the first song on the album, and "Grateful for Christmas" is the next to last tune.

Music Friday: "Drunken Poet's Dream," "Bad Liver and a Broken Heart," "KMAG YOYO," & "She Left Me for Jesus"

I mentioned the fine music of Hayes Carll a couple of weeks ago in "Music, Pabst Blue Ribbon, and Leaky Analogies," so I thought I'd offer you a quartet of his songs.

Carll reminds of Todd Snider in a number of ways. Both artists should be considered Americana musicians, and they both have a country twang to 'em even though Snider is originally from Portland, Oregon. And they both have good senses of humor.

First up is the slightly lascivious "Drunken Poet's Dream."



And if the song title of "Bad Liver and a Broken Heart" doesn't sound like good ole traditional country music, I don't know what does. The commentary about Texas before he plays the song is good stuff although I don't care for the pot-shots about Arkansas. He has a mission though.

This tune is a way slowed down version of the song compared to the version on his first album Trouble in Mind.



And then next up is "Kmag Yoyo," which is described in the post I referred to at the start of today's post. It's more rollicking than the first two videos.



And finally, time for some cornpone with "She Left Me for Jesus." This is the music video for the song.



"If I ever find Jesus, I'm kicking his ass."

I wonder if that guy's girlfriend's name is Mary Magdalene.

Music, Pabst Blue Ribbon, & Leaky Analogies

Over on Twang Nation yesterday, there was an interesting post titled "Americana Music and Craft Beer" that sidles up to making a few analogies that compare musicians to types of beer, which is a natural follow-up to concert review of Hayes Carll in which the writer quotes Carll's description of his fine tune, "KMAG YOYO."

Although I'm not all that familiar with his work but it's hard not to notice the guy because of his commercials, I found the author's description of Kenny Chesney pretty apt.

If there's a beer that exemplifies crap, it's Corona, my friends. The only way to make the stuff palatable is to put a lime in it to mask the stench.

I've also noticed, as the author relates, the popularity of PBR tall boys or 2x4s at local clubs that I've gone to.

But I drank PBR before it was cool. The hipsters have co-opted my beer of choice when I used to frequent the Flamingo in Kirksville. I mean, PBR is one part of my holy trinity of cheap, quality macrobrews.

But the author loses me a bit when he compares Carll and the wonderful Amanda Shires to brews I don't know. Even though the Chesney comparison seems appropriate, after a while, comparing musicians to beer ventures toward mental masturbation on a low order anyway. It seems like something my fraternity brothers and I might do (or did) if we were at a party that was a sausage fest.

If you look at the analogies with critical acumen, they leak just like how "leak" is a sketchy way to describe how they don't work.