"No, No, No" is the wrong answer.

Man, Back to Black is a good album.

And man, this is a lousy performance of the title track. Simply a train wreck.

It's enough to make me feel guilty for buying Amy Winehouse's album; however she's spending her earningsn, if she doesn't stop soon it'll end her.

There aren't a lot of tabloid princesses I have a lot of sympathy for. As much as they seem hounded by publicity, they also have armies of publicists "leaking" their every move to the press. And I'm sure Winehouse has the same.

But simply for the waste of talent, it makes me depressed. She's got so much more potential, and she's flushing it away.

Rob

Give a man gin, give a man cards. Give him an inch, he takes a yard.

Rob just challenged folks to describe their current pop-culture universe. He did it in one long post; I’ll do it in a series of posts I’ll never get around to finishing. His approach is better, but, as Thurston Howell III was known to exclaim, “Say, Lovee…”

I’ll start with music. I’ve been listening to the new White Stripes album, Icky Thump–especially “Effect & Cause,” “You Don’t Know What Love Is,” and “Prickly Thorn, But Sweetly Worn.” I probably haven’t even heard the whole album more than once; my mp3 player doesn’t hold a lot of music, and I like some variety, so I rarely put more than a few songs by any artist at one time. It’s not a bad system – it gives me a foothold into new albums by making a couple of the songs “singles,” no matter what the radio is playing.

I’m also still really enjoying Amy Winehouse’s Back to Black, although I realize that makes me some horrible yuppie stereotype. But anyone who opens a song singing “What kind of fuckery is this?” certainly know show to get my attention, and more than that, Winehouse manages to keep it.

I’ve been slowly working my way through Tom Waits’ Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers and Bastards three disc-set. It’s a daunting collection of new music, but my personal singles strategy is has served me well throughout the year, making favorites of “Lucinda,” “Fannin Street,” and “Fish in the Jailhouse,” about an improbable prison escape based on what they’re serving in the cafeteria: “The bars areiron, the walls are stone/ All I need me is an old fishbone.” Everyone's MacGuyver in the jug.

Also, I’m enjoying two Anders Osborne albums: Living Room and Ash Wednesday Blues. I used to have a legal bootleg of one of his concerts in Philly (Osborne allows taping, or did at the time), with a great performance of a song called “Trippin’in Montana.” Somewhere along the line, I mistakenly recorded over a secondor two of the song; why I didn’t pull those little tabs out of the cassette, I’ll never know. But now that I’ve gotten hold of the studio recording, I’m listening to the song like mad – once or twice a day, it seems. It’s not quite as driven as the live performance, which was propelled by a relentless tuba backbeat, but it has the same Waco-apocalyptic feel to it. Here’s a couple verses to give you an idea:

He was trippin’ in Montana
On a cold, dark path
He was looking for salvation
And a hot clean bath
He left a bloody situation,
But he was not to blame
Like that run-in with the agent
Who promised gold and instant fame

He had a way to look important
That fooled everyone around
Like how he held his shoulders
And always stood his ground
They used to say he looked like Jesus
And that really frightened him
Changed his face in Amarillo
Just to clear his name from sin

A fugitive cult leader. All I need is a fishbone shiv and I’m set.

Of course, in two weeks I’m going to Fest, which is an annual meteor crashing into my music landscape. By August 25, I’ll be listening to a lot of new stuff.

Rob

Jonesing

The other day, I realized I missed NPR.

Well, that's not quite it. I've can tune into an NPR station, WNYC out of New York, whenever I like. And I always hear about 20 minutes of Morning Edition on the way to work, which is usually discussing something both miserable and intractable. Arab-Israeli conflict, anyone? But what I was really missing were the shows I used to hear all the time: Fresh Air and Radio Times, both out of Philadelphia. Fresh Air is a national show, but it plays on NYC at a time that's doubly inconvenient -- not only am I generally not in my car at 8pm, but by that time NYC's FM station switches to classical music, and I have to go fishing around on the AM dial to hear it. Radio Times is a Philly-area call-in show, and as far as I know isn't on NYC or any other station besides WHYY.

No matter. Podcasts are more convenient anyway. So far I've just listened to a few Fresh Airs. I like the show because no matter the subject, Terry Gross always elicits an interesting conversation. I never used to be able to pick and choose, but since there's a podcast backlog, I've managed to listen to Richard Dawkins about his book The God Delusion, as well as a reporter who worked on the story of the changing chemical balance of the oceans, and actor Gabriel Byrne (who even briefly talked about one of my favorite movies, Miller's Crossing). In other words, I'm really enjoying it. (I'll be dipping my toe back into Radio Times tomorrow. I'm pickier about my subjects with that one. I don't really give a hoot about gardening, and even less about what people might call in to say about it. And I'm only slightly more interested in Don Imus, although here's a piece about racism, politics and that niche of talk radio that I found interesting enough to read to the end.)

At the end of Thursday's Fresh Air (which I heard today), the music critic reviews an album by British singer Amy Winehouse, Back To Black. I'd seen enough mentions of her in Entertainment Weekly to seek out one of her songs on YouTube the other day, and I liked it enough to play it a few times. Then I surfed away, thinking "If I ever hear that song again, I may have to buy that album." So today I hear some of it on Fresh Air, and my opinion hasn't changed. It's called "Rehab"; give it a listen and you might feel the same.



Rob