Goodbye, Mr. Petty
This one is in the blood and muscle and bone and grit of Mongrels:
music
Even then
That time when this young unknown artist opened for Rick James. Please look at what he wrote in the “position” section. #HeKnew #tbt pic.twitter.com/vMljMGYLdi — COMMON (@common) September 14, 2017
How I lose a lot of hours
It’s looking at this old snapshot, and wondering what they were looking at, what they were talking about. How the world must have trembled under their feet with each step they took:
Someday You’ll Accompany Me
I’ve only ever had two kind of holy grail acts: Bruce Springsteen and Bob Seger. But back when they were touring harder, I was . . . well, I didn’t end up in their amphitheaters, anyway. I mean, I didn’t even see Metallica or Motley Crue until the 2000s. So, I figured I’d missed out.
I Want My MTV
oFirst, I audio’d this, which made it sometimes confusing. Being an oral history, which is to say, “block of pertinent quote” led into by attribution, all read here by and in the same voice, I kept having to tap back twenty seconds, to hear again WHO I was listening to. Maybe ten hours in, though,
High ‘n’ Dry
It’s always driven my crazy, how Guns n’ Roses just apostrophes the truncated ‘d’ of their “and,” but just leaves us all wondering what happened to the ‘a.’ It’s a petty concern, granted, but it seems to me that, if you’re not going to go just with a straight, naked ‘n,’ then you’re kind of compelled
Too much coolness in one place
Which is to say: Bob Seger singing a Waylon Jennings song written by Steve Earle. Maybe the most golden pedigree I can dream of. I mean, okay: if this was somehow all happening in the passenger seat not just of a 77 Trans-Am, but if all three of these music makers were in the actual car
A Werewolf Playlist
Not what I listened to while Mongrels-writing, but some songs that synch up well with Mongrels, I think. Which you can cue up just on Spotify, here*. Also, before I get to annotating and embedding and pulling my hair about because the versions I want aren’t available, etc, I also put together a Youtube playlist—different
Growing Up Dead in Texas playlist
I tried so hard to make a YouTube playlist for Growing Up Dead in Texas. Songs that are in the book and songs that kind of encompass the book. But it wasn’t meant to be; the songs I needed can’t be included in playlists. So, in lieu, I’ll put them all here, in the order that
All the Music I Still Wear on My Sleeve
So on the radio the other day I heard a song that took me right back to the second grade–The Gatlin Brothers’ “All the Gold in California.” Some excellent stuff. But it got me thinking about what all else I used to listen to about that time. Up until the fifth grade, anyway. I mean,