I have spent three days driving, covering a little over 1200 miles (a short first day out), and not posting. I drove from Virginia to Kansas, and had a lot of time alone with my thoughts. Thus I have a few different things to write about, and if you hate one topic move on to the next. Really three posts in one - hey, I believe in VALUE, and for the same price of admission I'm giving you THREE thought provoking topics. Brace yourself, and don't touch that dial...

The topics are, arranged in no particular order:
1) I Drove All Night and the American societal need to co-opt cool
2) War and the Idiocy of Absolutely Everyone
3) Memory, or Why I Think Old People Sit On Porches

I DROVE ALL NIGHT AND THE SOCIETAL NEED TO CO-OPT COOL
I have had the same favorite song since 1992. It is "I Drove All Night," originally recorded by the man with only somewhat arguably the best voice in the history of rock music, Roy Orbison. Covered in an amazing homage of a remake by the underrated Cyndi Lauper... and let's just not mention "(Goonies R) Good Enough" in this conversation.

Recently purchased by a major car company, along with a popular songstress, for a commercial and release. Silly drum machines and uninspired, dull perhaps even synthesized guitar work. Totally a corporate watering down of an amazing, quintessential, and until now lesser-known wonder of popular music.
See, I'm not going where you think I'm going with this. I think Celine Dion is a hell of a singer. I think given the right producers and arrangers she's great. She should record entire albums of Jim Steinman. However, this was so obviously a thoughtless work for hire that it show nothing of her ability to make a song tell a story or go anywhere - the build of this song, that's the important thing. I won't go off on a musical tangent here too much, I'll just say do yourself a favor now, regardless of your opinion of the new version, find an mp3 or CD of Roy Orbision's or Cyndi Lauper's tracks of this number. Celine's version is okay, I think, but only on strength of material and the fact Celine has a really powerful sound and is faithful to the source vocally. On the other hand, another of my favorite songs - with even stronger source material - was recently covered by the Dixie Chicks. "Landslide" is in my mind an AMAZING song and I would've thought very, very hard to ruin. The passionless, corporate, rote version regurgitated by the Dixie Chicks had me believing that was the reason people were bulldozing and burning their CDs until someone told me the real reason. I still choose to believe it's musical karma. This song, too, has been well-covered - check out Tori Amos' live cover, easily available on mp3 shares. Another bad cover of a somewhat obscure song? Dire Strait's "Romeo and Juliet" covered by a group that is usually much better than this, the Indigo Girls. A quiet, pensive little unique piece of Mark Knopfler's brilliant guitar band music becomes a thoughtless mess of chordstrumming every-person-in-college-with-a-guitar dreck. These covers would be fine and dandy in their own worlds if it wasn't for the fact that, as was the case with the Indigo Girls version of "Romeo and Juliet", the awful cover becomes better knwn than the honest-to-god original song in some circles.
Sometimes it doesn't work, though, and people don't buy it, because the original is just too beloved. Anybody else hear that AWFUL cover of the classic Peter Gabriel "In Your Eyes" that came out a year or two ago? That went away fast. That was perhaps the second most awful popularly-released cover of a great song I've ever heard, next to "Landslide" as listed above.
Every musician has, I imagine, songs or artists they love and want to pay homage to through their music. However, when you reach a certain level of celebrity and you cover a lesser-known song like that, you're really looking at the original artist and co-opting their cool. Who'll question it? Not the bulk of music buyers, whose musical memory stretches back only probably half their lives, you know, to when they were seven, eight, or nine. Enough of this, next topic...


WAR AND THE IDIOCY OF ABSOLUTELY EVERYONE
All these things are possible for a person to simultaneously believe, without contradicition:
1) To be against war. I mean, really, who is FOR it?
2) That we should be happy that the war is going well and we're doing what we're doing.
3) That Saddam Hussein should have indeed been removed from power
4) That going to war in the first place, at this point, as we did, with the information and reasoning we the U.S. public were given, was wrong.
However, one thing I learn from watching more and more debate about the war, hearing people from both sides talk more about it than they should, is this:
Everyone on both sides of this issue, who speaks out publicly about it, is an idiot. Idiocy everywhere.
People on the no war side saddened, its so tragic, "this war is affecting us all," well, YEAH, it's a frickin' WAR, they DO that.
People on the pro war side screaming about how they were right all along and how dare anybody express dissent when our troops are over there fighting for our lives.
And, of course, people on both sides spending a hell of a lot of time bashing anyone who dares to be on the other side.
You know what? I have YET to hear ANYONE speak in opinion about this war with an informed, unbiased view. I listened to an awful lot of talk radio on the road, with views from both sides, and all the callers on either side of the issue were either un- or misinformed to the point of embarrassing ignorance. Of course, it's talk radio, so what do you expect, but seriously - this is bothersome. There is no grey area to most of these people. And people get so ANGRY and - on the liberal side, condescending; on the ocnservative side, self-righteous. See, I consider myself a liberal, but lately I just want to step away from all of it. No one seems to see both sides of this picture. Many people I talk to about it do, just no one who speaks in any public forum I've heard.
So, from now on, whenever anyone asks how I feel about the war, what will I say?
Shut up, that's how I feel. Just shut up.

Coming next post, because now I'm too tired:
MEMORY or WHY OLD PEOPLE SIT ON PORCHES