The first two poems here come from Adrian Blevins’ new collection, “Appalachians Run Amok”. Ms. Blevins’ exemplary wit sparked our current batch of posts (below) on the Country and the City.
Bitter Geezer (Tale of Tubb)
Proto-punk Richard Meltzer was ready for country before most rock critics of his generation. This 1973 review of an Ernest Tubb album was more than a hoot.
The Little House We Live In (& On the Rez)
Caroline Fraser’s Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder traces the Little House books’ role in American culture wars.
“Pour Out Your Wrath”
The author posted this piece at the Gush Shalom site on the eve of Passover with the following short intro: “I was about to write an article about Pesach eve when I remembered that I wrote exactly the same article six years ago… – I just have nothing to add.” Seems like he got it all…
William Hazlitt on a Sporting Life
C.L.R. James mused in “Beyond a Boundary”–his far out book on cricket and “what men live by”–that he hoped to “write of the game and its players as Hazlitt wrote of fives and Cavanagh.” James knew his 19th C. Brit culturalists and his praise led your editor to the following swatch from Hazlitt’s “Table Talk,” in which the eminent pre-Victorian paid tribute “to the best fives-player that perhaps ever lived…”
Citizen Russ
In a recent interview, Charles Barkley told about an unusual phone call he received from Bill Russell–a call that persuaded Barkley to stop complaining about how much he paid in taxes…
Merrill Garbus & The Wokeness Unto Death
For being an “outside artist,” Merrill Garbus of Tune-Yards has never lacked in critical applause. The lo-fi Afrobeat of her 2009 debut Birdbrains immediately established her as a singular voice in the freak-folk music world. The gigantic production and stylistic leap of Whokill, her 2011 sophomore effort, landed her on many year-end best-of lists. More recently she was commissioned to create the theme music for the New Yorker Radio Hour. As a fan, I’ve worried with each new release she’d morph her authentic weirdness into easily digestible hipster marketability. But she’s resisted that impulse. Unlike the manufactured weirdness of a Lady Gaga, her introspection and restlessness have kept her music from becoming self-help dance muzak. Her defiant neuroticism resists any easy boxing-in.
Stormy’s Tale (Or: Protect Me From What I Want)
Extry! Extry! Read all about it. The president is a spanko.
A Hard Case
Ralph Peters–longtime Fox News commentator–just published an op-ed piece in the Washington Post explaining “Why I left Fox News.”
Children’s Crusade III
This March For Our Lives and the global response to it is unique.
An Eye for Comedy
The second half of the HBO documentary, “The Zen Diaries of Garry Shandling,” made me want to be a kinder, more generous, and more forgiving person. The doc, directed by Judd Apatow, lifts the edges of the napkin covering GS’s life without revealing much. We come to know him from his eyes.
“Sidewalks, Fences and Walls”
Solomon Burke cut “Sidewalks, Fences and Walls” long after he sang songs that made him “King of Rock and Soul” in the 60s. There’s a good cover by Bob Dylan (on a bootleg) which steered your editor to the original. Other Firsters had already heard and loved it. More from one of them below…
“What man isn’t a Solomon to some missing-Mary in his life?
I can’t fucking believe she married Billy. Billy!”
