Monthly Archives: June 2020

Jun292020

A Song You Like That’s a Cover by Another Artist

30-Day Song Challenge, Day 15: A Song You Like That’s a Cover by Another Artist

I took a break from these song challenge posts for a while because, in light of everything going on in the country and the world, they seemed frivolous, if not outright disrespectful to those whose lives have been upended by — say it with me — “these unprecedented times.” But honestly I’ve been missing them. Missing the escape from thinking about current events and my job and all the rest of it. I’ve missed writing. Writing has become a luxury I rarely get to indulge, and even though these entries aren’t anything much… they’re something. I enjoy doing them, and I enjoy talking about music even though I’m basically just an uninformed loudmouth sitting at the end of the cafeteria with his friends, blathering about whatever cassette they ripped off from the 7-11 last night.

Not that I have any knowledge of what that would feel like. No, sir, not me.

Anyhow.

I also just want to finish something. This challenge was supposed to generate 30 entries, and I’m only halfway through. So, let’s get back to it, shall we?

Stevie Nicks’ fifth solo album, Street Angel, was released in 1994. That was an unhappy period in Stevie’s life as she’d been battling an addiction to painkillers, and the album turned out to be a big disappointment for her. It was the least successful of her efforts away from Fleetwood Mac, with poor sales and no top-40 hits. Both the critics and Stevie herself have criticized the album’s production, and Stevie has also said she should have gone back and redone the vocals before it was released.

But you know… in my usual contrarian fashion, I quite like this album.  It has a pared-down quality compared to her work in the ’80s (no doubt due to the production she doesn’t like) and a world-weariness that suited my general mood at the time it came out. This is an album for listening to in the middle of the night, when you’ve gotten off the late shift and the heat of the day is still bleeding out of the asphalt as you drive home with the windows down, and you’re trying figure out what the hell you’re supposed to do with your life because it sure as shit isn’t what you’ve been doing.

Not that I would know how that feels either.

Stevie mostly writes her own stuff, but one of my favorite tracks on this album is actually a cover of a Bob Dylan song. I have mixed feelings about Dylan… I think he’s hugely overrated, to be honest. His lyrics are more opaque to me than poetic, and his singing voice… well, I’m no doubt revealing myself as the uneducated philistine that I am, but he’s always sounded to me like Eddie Murphy’s impression of Buckwheat from The Little Rascals. In the hands — or voice — of someone else, though, his songs can be… magical. Like this one. At least to me. Listening to Stevie NIcks’ rendition of “Just Like a Woman,” I hear her singing about herself… or about a daughter she never had… or about a girl I might have known in my early twenties, when we all feel impossibly old and jaded as well as unbearably fragile and clueless.That’s how I remember feeling, anyway. Your mileage may vary.

I love this song.

There was no video made for this one, so just enjoy listening and gazing at the album cover for four minutes.

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Jun022020

“We should be the America that cherishes each other…”

There’s never been any question that I would vote for Joe Biden if he is the Democratic nominee for president in 2020. I’d vote for a ham-salad sandwich if it was running against the current occupant of the Oval Office. But after listening to a speech Biden delivered today in Philadelphia ahead of the Pennsylvania Democratic primary, for the first time I feel some genuine enthusiasm for him. He’s a low-key speaker, to be sure. He doesn’t have Obama’s eloquent delivery or Bill Clinton’s charisma. But I like what he said. And I liked the sense of earnestness and empathy in the way he said it. This is a man who gets it… who sees America for what it is and for what it ought to be. He’s not a revolutionary, he’s not promising utopia, but he’s not a cynic either, and I think a Biden administration will be a step in the right direction. Or at least a a step back toward the light:

“The battle for the soul of this nation has been a constant push and pull for more than 240 years, a tug of war between the American ideal that we’re all created equal, and the harsh reality that racism has long torn us apart. The honest truth is that both elements are part of the American character, both elements. At our best, the American ideal wins out. But it’s never a rout, it’s always a fight and the battle is never fully won.

… 

“I ask every American, I mean this in the bottom of my heart, ask every American, look at where we are now and think anew. Is this who we are? Is this who we want to be? Is this what we want to pass onto our children and our grandchildren: fear, anger, fingerpointing rather than the pursuit of happiness? Incompetence and anxiety, self absorption, selfishness? Or do we want to be the America we know we can be? The America we know in our hearts we could be and should be?

…

“We hunger for liberty the way Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglas did. We thirst for the vote like Susan B. Anthony and Ella Baker and John Lewis did. We strive to explore the stars, cure disease, make an imperfect union more perfect than is been. We may come up short, but at our best, we try.

“My fellow Americans, we’re facing formidable enemies. They include not only the Coronavirus and a terrible impact on the lives and livelihoods, but also the selfishness and fear that have loomed over our national life for the last three years. And I choose those words advisedly, selfishness, and fear. Defeating those enemies requires us to do our duty. And that duty includes remembering who we should be. We should be the America of FDR and Eisenhower, of Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, Jr., of Jonas Salk and Neil Armstrong. We should be the America that cherishes life, liberty, and courage, and above all, we should be the America that cherishes each other. Each and every one of us.”

Each and every one of us. E pluribus unum… out of many, one. That’s my America. And I want it back.

 

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Jun022020

Justice for All Is the Duty of All

“It remains a shocking failure that many African Americans, especially young African American men, are harassed and threatened in their own country. It is a strength when protesters, protected by responsible law enforcement, march for a better future. This tragedy — in a long series of similar tragedies — raises a long overdue question: How do we end systemic racism in our society? The only way to see ourselves in a true light is to listen to the voices of so many who are hurting and grieving. Those who set out to silence those voices do not understand the meaning of America — or how it becomes a better place.

“America’s greatest challenge has long been to unite people of very different backgrounds into a single nation of justice and opportunity. The doctrine and habits of racial superiority, which once nearly split our country, still threaten our Union. The answers to American problems are found by living up to American ideals — to the fundamental truth that all human beings are created equal and endowed by God with certain rights. We have often underestimated how radical that quest really is, and how our cherished principles challenge systems of intended or assumed injustice. The heroes of America — from Frederick Douglass, to Harriet Tubman, to Abraham Lincoln, to Martin Luther King, Jr. — are heroes of unity. Their calling has never been for the fainthearted. They often revealed the nation’s disturbing bigotry and exploitation — stains on our character sometimes difficult for the American majority to examine. We can only see the reality of America’s need by seeing it through the eyes of the threatened, oppressed, and disenfranchised.

“That is exactly where we now stand. Many doubt the justice of our country, and with good reason. Black people see the repeated violation of their rights without an urgent and adequate response from American institutions. We know that lasting justice will only come by peaceful means. Looting is not liberation, and destruction is not progress. But we also know that lasting peace in our communities requires truly equal justice. The rule of law ultimately depends on the fairness and legitimacy of the legal system. And achieving justice for all is the duty of all.”

— George W Bush, statement on the nationwide protests over the murder of George Floyd

I never thought there would come a day when I’d be posting a quotation from Dubya, of all people, let alone nodding in agreement with it, but here we are. Strange times.

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