2004-08-05
Well, wouldn't you know it? The film came out even better than we thought. I wasn't worried. Really.Rob and I sat in a telecine lab near downtown Nashville for several hours on Tuesday, somehow managing to maintain near constant elation despite our full knowing of the impending $1,500 bill. The shots were beautifully composed, richly colored and lit, and for the first time in my life I was pleased with the presence of my face on film. Of course, I didn't have the opportunity to hear my voice accompany the images, which when recorded sounds high-pitched and effeminate. All the better, I suppose. Would've spoiled my mood.
Really, how often can two college students drop a very hard-earned $1,500 in a single afternoon and then spend the first 100 miles of the trip home singing at the top of their lungs and pumping their fists out of rolled down windows? That's how goddamn happy we were.
Because we were driving to and from Nashville in one day, Rob and I had little choice but to indulge in our guilty pleasure like the discreet encounter of two junkies behind a strip club. That guilty pleasure is country music. And what a fix it was.
You know what? You don't listen to enough country music. Consider the following:
"WHEN THE MAN COMES AROUND," JOHNNY CASH. Here's the thing: Cash is the tintype picture of badass. When a guy whose body of work revolves around drugs, murder, ghosts, women, and booze talks about God, you better believe I'm gonna snap right the hell to attention. One day I'm gonna sit down, open the Book of Revelations, and pick out every one of the subtle references to the end of the world.
"LEAVE ME HERE," HEM. This is how sad this song is. There's a line that goes, "Now I have been here before, though I know I am lost, because the same place that filled me with joy is a road I've crossed." You know when you're in the process of learning the lyrics to a song and you manage to flub up the same words over and over? When I was learning "Leave Me Here," I recited the last part of the aforementioned lyrics, "...because the same place that filled me with PAIN is a road I've crossed." Sally Ellyson has the silkiest, dreamiest, most haunting voice I've heard since Grace Slick. Cigarettes were made to be smoked with music like this.
"THE ROAD TO ENSENADA," LYLE LOVETT. Weary, somber, and nostalgic, I first heard this song about a trip through Mexico to Texas while driving solo through the Texan red hills and ranches at sunset. Lyle runs the gamut for me, evoking the best and worst of comraderie and solitude, and this contemplative song puts me back on the highway, headed straight into unchartered American territory.
"WHISKEY LULLABY," BRAD PAISLEY AND ALLISON KRAUSS. The best country music involves the following elements: A sad man with a slide guitar and a story to tell. So when you take that flawless equation and toss in Allison Krauss, what do you get? Gold, Jerry, gold. This story of a couple drinking themselves to death is this affecting: Cowboy Brady was driving around and whooping it up with three other big, surly, loud cowboy motherfuckers, and this song came on the radio. The guy who was driving said, "All right, everybody shut the fuck up!" And there were a few minutes of silence for "Whiskey Lullaby." There's really something to be said about that.
And finally,
"THE TALIBAN SONG," TOBY KEITH. Because it's so terrible, it's serious suppressed laughter hilarious. And remember, this is Republican Andy talking. Told first person through the eyes of "a middle-aged, middle-eastern, camel-herding man" with "a little two bedroom cave here in North Afghanistan," the short-sighted lack of cultural relativism could be enough, but oh no. The capper is truly the background singer who during the chorus warbles, "Oooooooooo, the Tal-i-ban, baaaybee..." Oh, Toby Keith. Really, the man's heart is in the right place, but after the overly ethnocentric machismo of this and "Courtesy of the Red, White, and Blue," I don't know how anybody in America can see him as anything but a national security threat. You're at a 10 now, Toby. Let's take it down to about a 4, eh?
Carolyn will be coming into town tomorrow night for a few days to audition for "American Idol." Time to go look for stuff to do for, um, free.
-Andy