about a guy like Ernest Tubb

He wears bright orange and a slick smile. His big, blue eyes closed all the doors in the building. You look out the window and see the sky making faces like feeling the rain coming.

 

(posts) Jacques Brel singing "Dans le port d'Amsterdam"

Notes: Janet Morgan Rasmusen died Friday, November 12, 2010, in Dallas. She was 84.

 

(posts) Bon Iver's "29 #Strafford APTS"

Note: Every once in a while I hear a song that is so good I hate the person that wrote it.

(posts) the video for "You Make My Dreams" by Hall and Oates

Notes:

• The best band with the worst videos. 
• Cocaine?

(posts) DEP's "Setting Fire to Sleeping Giants"

about Bob Dylan's "Chronicles, Volume One"

Chronicles, Volume One is a Bob Dylan memoir. Dylan's reflections pass quickly through these 300-plus pages. His prose is loose; he ends his sentences with a comma so that he can tag on an afterthought or rephrasing.

Not a traditional memoir, Chronicles, Volume One offers only bites from the living legend's five-course career. The original idea was to release three volumes. This first one was published in 2004, and there is no sign that the other two are imminent.

Of the bites chronicled here, the best moments come when Dylan documents the people he has known, the songs that shaped him, and the frames of mind he has that have endured. The man is multiplicitous. The people he describes are scene makers rather than scene stealers or celebrities. There is no gossip here. His favorite songs have all aged well. And his states of mind are, as expected, always at odds with the world.



Notes:
Chronicles, Volume One is worth reading if you are a Dylan fan.

the lyrics to Ozzy Osbourne's "Tonight"

Now I'm back out on the street again
It never rains unless it pours
Try to get back on my feet again
I hear the raging thunder as it roars

Tonight, tonight
Is it just a rhapsody
Or am I right?
Tonight, tonight
Is it all a mystery?
I just can't fight no more

I hear the questions surface in my mind
Of my mistakes that I have made
Times and places I have left behind
And am I ever gonna make the grade?

Tonight, tonight
Is it just a rhapsody
Or am I right?
Tonight, tonight
Is it all a mystery?
I just can't fight no more

As I beat my head against the wall
Running 'round in circles in vain
I'm feeling three-foot tall
You don't understand
I'm fading away

Don't want your pity or your sympathy
It isn't gonna prove a thing to me
Good intentions pave the way to hell
Don't you worry when you hear me sing

Tonight, tonight
Is it just a rhapsody
Or am I right?
Tonight, tonight
Is it all a mystery?
I just can't fight

Notes:
Song credits Daisley, Kerslake, Osbourne, and Rhoads. From the great album "Diary of a Madman."

the lyrics for Procol Harum's "A Whiter Shade Of Pale"

We skipped the light fandango
Turned cartwheels 'cross the floor
I was feeling kinda seasick
But the crowd called out for more
The room was humming harder
As the ceiling flew away
When we called out for another drink
The waiter brought a tray

And so it was that later
As the miller told his tale
That her face, at first just ghostly,
Turned a whiter shade of pale

She said, 'There is no reason
And the truth is plain to see.'
But I wandered through my playing cards
And would not let her be
One of sixteen vestal virgins
Who were leaving for the coast
And although my eyes were open
They might have just as well have been closed

And so it was that later
As the miller told his tale
That her face, at first just ghostly,
Turned a whiter shade of pale

Note: Song by Keith Reid and Gary Brooker

(or posts) "Career Opportunities" by The Clash

Career Opportunities
 -by The Clash

The offered me the office, offered me the shop
They said I'd better take anything they'd got
Do you wanna make tea at the BBC?
Do you wanna be, do you really wanna be a cop?

Career opportunities are the ones that never knock
Every job they offer you is to keep you out the dock
Career opportunity, the ones that never knock

I hate the army and I hate the R.A.F.
I don't wanna go fighting in the tropical heat
I hate the civil service rules
And I won't open letter bombs for you

Career opportunities are the ones that never knock
Every job they offer you is to keep you out the dock
Career opportunity, the ones that never knock

Bus driver; ambulance man; ticket inspector

They're gonna have to introduce conscription
They're gonna have to take away my prescription
If they wanna get me making toys
If they wanna get me, well, I got no choice

Careers
Careers
Careers

Ain't never gonna knock