Thirty years after Elvis died and we've lost our way. How do we find our way back, or is that impossible?
Liner Notes for a mix cd that isn't done yet.
Tame a new land and you will wind up with dusty, bleeding knuckles. The blood stays on the strings, like Liam Neeson's blade in "Gangs of New York". The new scriptures were simply waiting to be written, just as the fourth of July was always a day waiting for a revolution.
The land was simultaenously explored and created, by patriots and pioneers and prophets, slaves and martyrs and saviors, gunmen and sailors and confidence men and salesmen and glorious charlatans and disgraced true believers. The sounds that Nick Carraway heard when he saw New York with the same eyes as the first settlers and the voices that Ahab heard are the same sounds and voices we hear when we listen today- that wild thin mercury sound of "Stuck Inside of Mobile With The Memphis Blues Again". The sounds of traveling Highway 61 with Woody Guthrie and Tom Joad riding shotgun (even if Tom Joad never rode that highway, he still did, you know?) as you plunge deeper into the bayous haunted by Jesus and Katrina. The music that Arthur Dimmesdale tried to lash out of his own body, equal parts Anne Hutchinson and Kim Deal. What the Redcoats heard when they found themselves face to face with Mike Watt and the Minutemen, who met them with muskets and promises that their band could be your life. The kind of music that coud only come from a country where Jerry Lee Lewis is cousin to Jerry Falwell. Where we drink wine Spo-Dee-O-Dee, and pour coca-cola just like vintage wine. The kind of a country where Johnny Cash wears the black to atone for the sins of Thomas Jefferson. To navigate these wilds you need Lewis and Kerouac to guide you, a compass and a Hank Williams album.
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