Went to see John Hiatt at the Metro last Tuesday night. As previously lamented here that meant I had to miss Lucinda Williams who was a few blocks up the road at the State. It was a difficult choice but I chose the ability to get up the front and rock out at the Metro over having to sit and clap politely at the State. I haven't seen any big reviews of Lu but I can't possibly imagine it was anything less than sublime. So there can hardly be a higher compliment to JH to say I didn't regret missing Lu at all. It was a real greatest hits show, pulling out all the favourites (although alas not MY personal favourite 'Icy Blue Heart") and most everyone around me seemed to know all the words to all of them. I was in my preferred spot on the rail, front row centre. The vocal was a bit low up there (I always choose proximity over audio fidelity) as you'd expect but the band sounded great. It was a fantastic night.

I really wish I could leave it there but then dear old Bruce Elder had to go drop this pile in The Age/SMH and I am forced -- positively FORCED, I say -- to conduct a good old fashioned fisking. On one level it's just the usual tossed off nonsense, but on another whenever women have their existence in a public space so casually written off -- and our newspapers of record chuck it up as their official record of events -- we have a real problem.

Usual tossed off nonsense first! Bruce has a lot on his plate. He has to review books and music. He has to sniff out the pros and cons of various Southern Highland B&Bs so Fairfax readers can plan their long weekends. He is BUSY, y'all. So it's unreasonable to expect him to have a decent grasp of the canon of every act he gets paid to see. But then if you act like you do, you risk looking a fool.

John Hiatt plays music for blokes. He writes, sings and plays about those things that certain blokes relate to: electric guitars (no accident that the opening song was Perfectly Good Guitar and that for most of the 90-minute performance the band configuration was three guitars, bass and drums); the awfulness of being a male eager to escape the boredom of small-town life (Damn this Town), cars (Detroit Made and Drive South) and, when he occasionally gets around to love, it's the kind of tough love that blokes have to deal with - like the unexpected departure of his "baby" in Crossing Muddy Waters where he describes the event as "She let out this morning / Like a rusty shot in a hollow sky". Great imagery, but not exactly a sweet lament for lost love.

Jesus where to start. "Perfectly Good Guitar" is a tongue in cheek response to the habit of certain 60s/70s rock stars to smashing their guitars. Only blokes may note and wryly comment on this cultural artefact! Um, OK, whatevs.

"No coincidence the band configuration was guitars, bass and drums." Indeed it's not a coincidence since he was playing rootsy rock music and this is a common, indeed ubiquitous, rock configuration. Here's the most recent live stuff of Lucinda Williams' I can find from SXSW this year AND OH MY GOD ITS NO COINCIDENCE SHE HAS GUITARS AND DRUMS IN HER BAND. That's what rock musicians (and blues and country) do, why do I even need to say this?

"Damn This Town" is, like, not at all what he describes except in the most superficial way. Indeed the "damn this town" refrain refers to wanting to you leave your town (a peculiarly male life experience? SIGH.) but there's a line at the end "I'm 58 years old, still live at home like a kid/Damn this town/Damn this town" tips some of us off to a bit of irony happening. Maybe only "literate chicks" listen to the last verse of a song.

OK, "Detroit Made" is basically just about cars, I'll give him that one.

But "Drive South"? "Drive South"?????????

"Drive South" is a song about automobiles in the same way "Leaving on a Jet Plane" is a song about aeronautics.

And then there's "Crossing Muddy Water." It's not expected or compulsory to know the background but this song is actually about the mid-80s suicide of his first wife. So, yeah. Now you don't need to know that but even coming to the song as a blank slate I cannot fathom a moral adult listening to it and coming away with the idea it was some kind of masculine posturing or jesus I don't even know what he's talking about. The sensibilities of a person who DOESN'T think this is a (bitter)sweet lament for lost love is to be forever questioned. I mean, LISTEN TO IT. (written lyrics)

"When he occasionally gets around to love" OHHAhahahhahahahahHAHA. Bruce, all his songs are about love. Here's the setlist cadged from a roadie after the show by my friends Rory and Jane. LET'S TAKE A LOOK!

With YouTubes so you can check my work.

Perfectly Good Guitar -not love
Detroit Made - not love
Crossing Muddy Waters - LOVE
Drive South - love
Cry Love - duh it's right there in the name, LOVE
Paper Thin -- love
Real Fine Love - love
Thing Called Love- love
Feels Like Rain - love
Slow Turning - love
Tennessee Plates - Elvis, bank robberies and grand theft auto ... because of LOVE, well OK maybe more LUST
Memphis in the Meantime - needing to get out of Nashville because everyone knows blokes hate country music
Have a Little Faith In Me- love
Riding with the King - What does this song mean? Well ever since Eric Clapton and BB King covered it it means John Hiatt gets a sweeeeet royalty cheque every year. HA HA.

I trust we don't need to dwell on this further.

Now we move from the stupid and worthless to the offensive and dangerous.

There are women in the audience but most of them are accompanied by their blokes, who sport a beer in one hand, jeans sliding down over a sagging middle-aged spread and hair that is either in short supply or turning grey.

Bruce, the Margaret Mead of Fairfax, has lit on the startling sociological insight that in our society a large percentage, even a majority, of people go to social events with opposite sex partners. (you may speculate on the projection going on in his description of the men, I am above that) I didn't do a head count; I didn't know the data would be required later to prove my existence. It would not surprise me if the demos skewed male, however I did a statistical analysis (oh, yes I did) of the "likes" and comments on the last 5 posts on the official John Hiatt Facebook page and came up with a slight majority 52%-48% of people who appear to present as female.

Perhaps Bruce is basing this extraordinary claim on some personal experience. Perhaps he knows a woman who was there under sufferance with her husband to pay him back for that one time he sat through an episode of Grey's Anatomy with her. But I have anecdotes too. Next to me front row centre were a woman I didn't know who was with her I presume male partner and knew all the words and was right into it. To my left were three women I knew, none of whom were there "with their blokes." Two are long standing Hiatt fanatics and one was not really familiar with him but left a convert. I could also tell you about standing in the long queue for the ladies loo with a bunch of women gushing to each other and counting out decades of their life's milestone by John Hiatt songs.

This is tossed off rubbish too. He's phoning it in, as they say. But as I said above there are serious cultural undercurrents to a man being able to assert so blithely the invisibility of women's experience, and to take for granted they are merely passive supporters to their men's actions. Heaven forbid they could be there as a mutual pleasure.

As above this idea John Hiatt's music is blokey blokeness for blokes is utterly laughable. If you said the same about, say, Bruce Springsteen or Steve Earle or - in particular - Justin Townes Earle I think you would be wrong but you'd have a much more arguable case than John Effing Hiatt whose stock in trade is in fact love songs that border on the soppy but which can just stay the right side of that tightrope which is why he is such a bloody ace songwriter. (I suppose actually if you are one side of a tightrope you fall off, but I can't be bothered to tighten up my similes just for goddamn fracking Bruce Elder.)

It's so WRONG that it is HILARIOUS he quotes "Well I never went to college babe / I did not have the luck / Rolled out of Indiana in the back of a pickup truck" to support his thesis of John Hiatt, Poet Laureate of Dude Nation while ignoring THE WHOLE REST OF THE SONG.

Then out of nowhere
and from nothing
You came into my life
I'd seen an angel or two before
But I'd never asked one to be my wife

Well now the babies are all sleeping
And the twilight's givin' in
She looks like you, he looks like her
And we all look a little like him
Well maybe it's just the little thing
The way I feel tonight
A little joy
A little peace
And a whole lotta light.

Fuck yeah, what a brute! I mean, really.

Returning to "Drive South" here's vid of JH doing it which I choose of the various other versions on YouTube because it has audience shots so you can see the women brazenly existing right there. Although it is at a Borders bookshop so perhaps they just dropped in to pick up The Rules revised edn and their ladybrains were ambushed by the wholly unfamiliar sounds of a form of transport being used as a symbol for freedom and renewal.

And here's noted woman Suzy Bogguss doing a version of the same song, which was so transgressive of societal norms that it got to Number 2 on the US country chart. (Oh early 90s music videos, don't go changing.)

By the way the only vee-hick-al refered to specifically in "Drive South" is "this Chevy van." This is a Chevy van. CHICK MAGNET OR WUT??

Another non-bloke who didn't get the memo is Bonnie Raitt whose biggest career hit was JH's hymn to masculinist posturing ode to romantic love between mature equals "Thing Called Love." Here's Bonnie, with Dennis Quaid a ha ha.

Eh, now I'm tired of dealing with this shit. I rest my case.

I've closed comments on every post (315 of them, manually. Urgh) preceding this one in order to contain spam. Unfortunately I deleted some of the most recent legit comments in the process. Apologies.

Hope to get back to posting here shortly.

I've started a Flop Eared Mule Posterous site to take advantage of its quick posting options. Anything substantial, or not, I have to say will still be here but the random things I come across on the Internet which I wish to share -- vids, articles, pictures -- will be there.

I've tried the various methods of merging the two, but none of them have worked so i'll have to go with the separate sites for now. Really, there's no great need for the chunky, fully-featured website platforms like Movable Type (which FEM is on) much anymore, and I'm much preferring the ease of Posterous and Tumblr these days.

Allison Moorer and Steve Earle's first child was born April 5, at 10:07 a.m. Named John Henry Earle, he weighed in at 8 pounds 2 ounces and measured 21 inches long.

I hate moving. Biggest argument in favour of moving entirely to digital, if you ask me.

Managed to empty the bath of CDs (thanks Mum) but re-sorting them in my prefered system awaits.

As previously mentioned, the delectable Rosanne Cash has an album coming out shortly called The List, which is 12 songs chosen from a list of (I think) 100 country songs her father gave her, as comprising an education in that discipline.

I trust you shall agree this is a pretty good list.

1. "Miss the Mississippi and You"
2. "Motherless Children"
3. "Sea of Heartbreak" (w/ Bruce Springsteen)
4. "Take These Chains From My Heart"
5. "I'm Movin' On"
6. "She's Got You"
7. "Heartaches by the Number" (w/ Elvis Costello)
8. "500 Miles"
9. "Long Black Veil" (w/ Jeff Tweedy)
10. "Silver Wings" (w/ Rufus Wainwright)
11. "Girl From the North Country"
12. "Bury Me Under the Weeping Willow"

I thought I would do my own. Also 12 songs, my own list if in a parallel universe I could sing. These are not meant to be an overview of the history of country music (there's nothing before the early 60s for a start) but just a solidish collection of songs I could listen to all day. I put the last two in brackets just because those are the versions I chose to include but could have used any number of other versions -- both "She's Got You" and "He Thinks I Still Care" have male and female pronoun versions so I chose one of each. It's hard, but on the other hand the top 10 or so really write themselves then the final two spots are tough to divide between about half a dozen tracks. "Sea of Heartbreak" gets brackets cos basically I'll love anyone singing that song. I cheated and gave myself a bonus disc ....

I Drink -- Mary Gauthier
All Her Lovers Want to Be the Hero -- Steve Young
Big River -- Johnny Cash
Once a Day -- Connie Smith
She's Got You -- Loretta Lynn
Pancho & Lefty -- Townes Van Zandt
Sing Me Back Home -- Merle Haggard
Choices -- George Jones
South of Cincinnati -- Dwight Yoakam
Goodbye -- Steve Earle
Sea of Heartbreak -- (Rosanne Cash feat. Bruce Springsteen)
The Lord Knows I'm Drinking -- Cal Smith

Bonus Disc:
Goodbye -- Steve Earle
Willin' -- (Linda Ronstadt)
He Thinks I Still Care -- (Patty Loveless)

Hm. It's not very ... upbeat, is it?

Under the bylaws of 8tracks you're not supposed to make a playlist anywhere (so it mimics internet radio) but ... eh, I hope I can be forgiven this one time. So here it is! (and a direct link)

As grand as the canyon is, for pure wow value, you know, I really have to say i thought Sedona was tops. My photos certainly, and no photos I've even found on the net, really do it justice. The red rocks loom up to and over the town and are coloured in a most astounding way.

It is also a world's best practice centre of woo being a locus of various vortices, UFO-fanciers, Kokopelli channelers and allied commercial enterprises. A hoot.

Arizona Yodeller, The DeZurik Sisters

Getting reflective at the Wukoki pueblo, Wupatki National Monument near Flagstaff, Arizona.

I think, historically speaking, this was written about Los Angeles but whatever it's such a ripper performance ...

I have never seen Blues Brothers.

Segue:

Here is my latest 8tracks, a semi-late Friday night and RIP Koko eight songs which clocks in at just over 30 minutes. There are a few mournful eMusic references tucked away in the lyrics too. ;-(

This has been a Bad News Day in my personal music world, which I may rant about after I've processed it a bit.

BUT WAIT!! When Bob slams a window, he swings wide open a door so I am most thrilled to see Tim Dunlop's new music blog at Crikey has gone live. Yay, Tim! Apart from being (or because of being??) one of the world's stand up blokes, his taste in music is impeccable.*

We are not very well served by professional, MSM or semi-MSM music blogs in Oz, so this is red hot orsumness all 'round.

*with the exception of his woeful Randy Newman blind spot.

Swiped this off Slow Listening Movement, anyone who wishes to be tagged, is.

In iTunes:

Number of Songs: 18342 Actually "items" not songs, some podcasts are whatever in there I guess plus audiobooks and Dylan radio show snippets.
Number of Albums: 2943
Most Recently Played Song: William Elliott Whitmore - Johnny Law
Most Played Song: Me and My Woman -- Shuggie Otis but it only says 13 times so that can't be right.
Most Recently Added Album: Reincarnation of A Love Bird -- Charles Mingus
First Song Alphabetically: A-11 Daryle Singletary
Last Song Alphabetically: !@#* -- Rusted Root
Smallest Song Numerically: Love Minus Zero (No Limit) -- Bob Dylan
Largest Song Numerically: Love Minus Zero (No Limit) -- Bob Dylan
Shortest Song (Item): Ricky Gervais -- Bob Dylan
Longest Song: Strauss: Also sprach Zarathustra, Op. 30 -- Cincinnati Pops Orchestra (34:57)
First Album Alphabetically: Abattoir Blues -- Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds
Last Album Alphabetically: 1928 Sessions -- Mississippi John Hurt. Non-numeric: Yuma -- Justin Townes Earle
First Band Alphabetically: AC/DC
Last Band Alphabetically: ZZ Top

First Ten Songs That Pop Up On Shuffle:
Fragile Humans -- Johnny Irion
Aria B -- Dui Hua Qiang
Medley - That's All Right/ Someone Else is Steppin' In -- Barbara Morrison and Johnny Otis
Angel Without Wings, Porter Hall, TN
I Don't Want No Woman (To Be My Boss) -- Big Bill Broonzy
Ars Er -- Pau Riba
I Ain't Getting Any Younger -- Anita O'Day with Benny Carter's Studio Orchestra
Take My Hand -- Cyndi Boste
Salt Peanuts -- Miles Davis
Akale Wube -- Getatchew Mekurya

I was looking, once again, at Leonard Cohen vids for ever on YouTube and rather randomly one of the "Related Videos" was Australia v West Indies 1984/85 SO THEN I got sucked into watching vintage cricket for ever on YouTube instead.

A million people have tagged me in this 25 Things meme over on Facebook and I regret to inform I have no intention of doing it at all but let this be the One Fact you get out of me: A. R Border is my favourite player ever. Hands down. Gilly 2nd.

(5.30 mins or so is when the century happens.)

Maybe it's the beard.

And the Poms all out for 51 the other day was ROFLMAOTASTIC not just cause they're the Auld Enemy, but because the Windies rock and we need them back. One swallow does not a Summer etc etc but still. Go Windies.

OK I haven't quite exhausted my all Cohen, all the time kick. It's a bitch coming down, man.

I did an 8tracks of various Cohenalia. Covers mostly (the ones I can stomach), some songs "about" him, a version of "Chant des Partisans" and a bit of Len himself, including a Dreadfully Serious Poem from his early Montréal days. Direct link or the embed:

Also see wayfarer's mix (Andre in comments here) includes some Len collabs which are new to me. That Herbie Hancock one makes me happy in a special place.

I also watched, remarkably for the first time, the I'm Your Man doco as it screened on SBS the other night. The live bits were filmed at the 2005 Opera House gig which we -- my two sisters and me -- were at. My sister -- who will ONE DAY flipping comment here ;-) -- watched it before me and emailed that it didn't seem like they were looking at the lyrics, which was a major gripe of ours at the time. Alas, SHE LIED. Here is my original blog post about it. Because, seriously Nick Cave is obviously looking at the frigging lyrics in the video. NICK, WHY DO YOU HURT ME THIS WAY. I mean, I don't care what Jarvis flipping Cocker does with his time but Nick Cave is NOT ALLOWED to disappoint me. Sure "Suzanne" is a bit wordy but what's your excuse for not knowing "I'm Your Man"? It brought it all back.

But it brough back all the things in my follow up post about the good things. The vid also reminded me Perla Batalla and Julie Christensen were awesome and really, despite being by far the least of the names there fame-wise, their "Anthem" was the highlight of the movie I just saw. They get it. It's interesting to see I liked The Handsome Family in 05 since now I find them boring. I'd forgotten I ever liked them. But "Heart With No Companion" is a terrific shitkicker song, it's just their own songs which have no melody. Anthony was an unknown -- really he was, back then. I'm tempted to dig back into Blogger and fix the error on the title of only my favouritest song ever, but I won't.

It's weird seeing blog posts from four years ago, I won't do it too often.

I should link to this since someone put a lot of work into it, and you might find some interesting links. I am glad to represent the dags in the hip indie ocean.

Some of other things which are 24th:
Turkey has the 24th most railways (I refuse to recognise "World" as a country)
"Der Kommissar," by After the Fire is the 24th best conservative rock song as voted by the National Review.
Lady and the Tramp is the 24th highest grossing film of 1980.
Brian Lara has the 24th highest Test batting average.
The 24th century of the anno Domini (common) era will span the years 2301-2400 of the Gregorian calendar.

I had cause to look at Lucinda Williams' official site just now to check a discographical detail and noticed that the "coverflow" display features a photo I took and put here. I suppose I have right click saved a lot of Lost Highway photos over the years so I will magnanimously call it even. ;-)

1) Shaun has a new blog. I assume I am allowed to tell people.
2) Lazy journo slapdown re: Leonard Cohen. You may have seen that inferior cover versions of Hallelujah are number one and two on the UK charts in the coveted Chrissie week. Not bad for a song that is merely ninth best on its original album.
3) Stereogum's 50 Most Popular MP3s of 2008 (or as Bob Dylan would say 2000 and 8) available for free/legal download. Some 200MB later I can confirm I really just don't dig indie rock/pop very much. What is it about the human voice that is so hateful it must be smothered so far back in the mix? See also: country, alt. I tried, dagnabbit! OTOH, YMMV.
4) An amusing macrumors forum post (h/t Barry Saunders on Twitter) from October 2001 on the announcement of "Apple's New Thing", known to you and I as "the iPod." I had a grand old time laughing at the retrospectively couldn'tbemorewrongness of the "who could possibly ever want more than 64 meg of space for music!!! Steve Jobs has gone CRAZEEEE" sentiments. But really, in 2001 I was still using an audio tape walkman and a few years later someone showed me mini discs and I kind of thought that would be all too much trouble to bother with. Our thinking about portable music has so utterly changed in such a short period of time. Then we didn't know we NEEDED it. Now I am 99% digital. I don't regret it at all, for lots of reasons. I have a small flat and a goodly percentage of living room wall space is taken up with CDs racks, which I barely look at these days let alone flip through. I had an idle thought the other day I could get rid of the racks, shift up the lounge and then I wouldn't have to smash my shins on the filing cabinet/telephone table everytime I try to squeeze through to get to/from the computer. But then the idea of a home without too many CD racks made me sad, and I banished the idea. Also, seems a waste of the nice callouses I have on my shins now. Barely notice.
5) Ta-Nehisi Coates's blog just because I have enjoyed it a lot this year.
6) Skepchick's Top 10 Jackasses of the Year.
7) An epochal moment: the last time any dumb awards show will have a chance to snub The Wire. You won't have Bunky to kick around any more!
8) 2008 Golden Winger Awards for Excellence in Wingnuttery

As Zoe snarkily pointed out in comments, now I have these tickets all I have to do now is not forget the show is on. True, I have only really done that once this year but I have already committed to two different parties next Saturday night so such muck ups are never far from happening. So, I made a list of things I am doing so I can obsessively check it every day for the next two months to reassure myself.

This random combination on my iTunes reminded me of a friend, and I can't believe its been, like, eight months or something ridiculous.

One amusing moment in the US campaign (and oh my, how many of them have there been?) happened when MY GUY Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr took on some Freeper drongo who has a gig on Florida telly. She asked, "hey, "from each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs" is that proto-Islamofascist Marx right? So, B. Hussein Obama is a Marxist, right?" And Joey responded, "You are Ashton Kutcher in drag and this is a Punk'd skit, right?" (paraphrase) That was pretty funny. The better answer was, "Actually that was first used by Louis Blanc and merely, literally, popularised by Marx in reference to a specific phase of economic development bearing not even theoretical relevance to the USA in 2008 but, hey folks, gawd love ya, easy mistake, sweetheart."

My point is this. After America becomes a Socialistic utopia a la GASP Sweden on November 5th (6th AEDST), I do hope to see the immediate creation of The Department of Homeland Musical Redistribution, with, say, Doctor John as its first Secretary.

America has the ability. Australia has the need.

Give me your tired singer-songwriters, your poor troubadours,
Your honky tonk angels yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your brief major label deals.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me:
I lift my lamp beside the golden door.
And vow to bring five of my friends to your gig in Sydney.

Once upon a time I had a wee mental list of the five singers I most wanted/needed to see live. Dylan, Springsteen, Cash, Cohen and ... Um, it might have actually been Billy Bragg in truth. Tremendous back catalogue, still know all the words to St Swithin's Day and Between the Wars, but compared to the way I felt at 21 the attraction has not really worn well. Can I blame Wilco? Sure, why not. Anyway, I've seen him (the night of the hail storm, for Sydneysider nostalgia) so either way he gets crossed off. Obviously there were many more I was thrilled with the prospect of seeing live, but those were the Big Tickets.

Done Dylan, in double figures for his gigs now. Bruce, not yet but he'll swing back here again sometime so I'm not worried about that. Cash, alas to the power of infinity, no and no chance now. Leonard Cohen, at the time I had the list I honestly thought I would never get to see. He wasn't touring, wasn't recording, was still doing the Buddhist biznitz. But, I've got those tickets now so that's an unexpected strikethrough on the list. Someone said to me the other night, we should be grateful his manager ripped him off and he needed to go back on the road. Ha.

Anyway, that list has been overtaken by time.

Being philosophical about the prices of the Cohen tickets I said the other day it's tax on not living in the USA or the UK. You just have to cop it sweet Oi Oi Oi -- or move.

But anyway, all the names on that list are crossed-off one way or the other, finally or provisionally so I need a new list. Behold the new Category at left: The New List, of folks I have not seen but must. Astute readers will note it's mostly an excuse to feature some wonderful music via YouTube. Later today, I kick it off with Tom Russell.