There was an incident in the checkout line.\u00c2\u00a0 A woman wearing one of those convention badges was in a snit.\u00c2\u00a0 She accused the tattooed clerk of being "cavalier".\u00c2\u00a0 I wondered if she employed this description to show her superiority.\u00c2\u00a0 After all, it wasn’t his fault. At least that’s what he ultimately told me, five minutes later, after the manager had been called and had shepherded the customer away.\u00c2\u00a0 You see someone had forgotten to put down the stick.\u00c2\u00a0 He charged her for the next customer’s items, a man in such a stupor that he didn’t protest.\u00c2\u00a0 It just required a refund.\u00c2\u00a0 But that wasn’t enough for this woman.\u00c2\u00a0 She wanted to complain.<\/p>\n
It had been a long day.<\/p>\n
Yes it has.<\/p>\n
And the only moment of bliss was in traffic when I heard Friend & Lover’s "Reach Out Of The Darkness" on XM.\u00c2\u00a0 What a great record.\u00c2\u00a0 And thereafter came the Beatles’ "She’s A Woman".\u00c2\u00a0 Never a favorite, the vocal was so over the top that if something this good was released today, eardrums would explode.\u00c2\u00a0 Why does everything today have to be beat-infused?\u00c2\u00a0 I thought canned drums were exhausted in the eighties.\u00c2\u00a0 I guess not.<\/p>\n
Oh, I did hear one more great track.\u00c2\u00a0 Thompson Twins’ "Hold Me Now".\u00c2\u00a0 Can’t that guy come back?\u00c2\u00a0 Don’t tell me it was about my youth, I was already over thirty when the band broke.\u00c2\u00a0 Remember the album opener, "Doctor Doctor"?\u00c2\u00a0 I loved that album.<\/p>\n
But I’m writing about none of the foregoing tracks.\u00c2\u00a0 I’m writing about Ry Cooder’s "Tamp ‘Em Up Solid".<\/p>\n
After leaving Whole Foods, I couldn’t find the right song, I was pushing the buttons, and then Bill Fitzhugh took over on Deep Tracks.\u00c2\u00a0 He runs a show where it’s all about the segues, he makes the songs fit together.\u00c2\u00a0 He talked about growing up in Jackson, Mississippi, about Paul Simon recording at Malaco there, and said he was going to play a track from "Rhymin’ Simon", but not the one made in his hometown, and ultimately Ry Cooder’s cover of the traditional "Tamp ‘Em Up Solid".<\/p>\n
Shit, I always thought it was an original.<\/p>\n
Then again, "Paradise and Lunch" was the album I bought just after graduating from college.\u00c2\u00a0 I played it enough to know it, and then busted out of town, traveled west to start my new life.<\/p>\n
But I never forgot "Jesus on the Mainline"…CALL HIM UP!<\/p>\n
And "Married Man’s A Fool".<\/p>\n
And the exquisite "Tattler", which you probably know from Linda Ronstadt’s subsequent take, which is an original, cowritten by Washington Phillips and producer Russ Titelman.<\/p>\n
But the opener is "Tamp ‘Em Up Solid".<\/p>\n
Actually, I saw Ry shortly thereafter.\u00c2\u00a0 At this brand new performance center in Jackson Hole.\u00c2\u00a0 Right on the ski resort’s property.\u00c2\u00a0 On a cold night ultimately spent in my tent in Yellowstone Park.\u00c2\u00a0 It was a disappointing show, Ry punched the clock, just another gig on the endless road.\u00c2\u00a0 And I’d stayed in town just to see him.<\/p>\n
You see I was a fan.\u00c2\u00a0 Bought "Into The Purple Valley" because of a great review.\u00c2\u00a0 Not knowing what it was gonna sound like.\u00c2\u00a0 Like nothing else in the store, like nothing else I’d ever heard before.\u00c2\u00a0 I ultimately went back and bought the debut.\u00c2\u00a0 And every album thereafter for more than a decade.\u00c2\u00a0 Including "Paradise and Lunch", which is one of his absolute best.<\/p>\n
So I’m cruising on the 405.\u00c2\u00a0 Listening to this Jesse Winchester song about a rhumba.\u00c2\u00a0 And then I hear that bass intro, and that slide guitar that sounds like a train coming down the track…<\/p>\n
Tamp ’em up solid, so they won’t come down<\/span> And suddenly a smile came to my face.\u00c2\u00a0 I parked at my destination, but couldn’t turn the radio off.<\/p>\n The radio…<\/p>\n Bill was playing the oldies. He’s lost in the classic rock era.\u00c2\u00a0 And there’s a lot more there than the hits you hear on terrestrial radio. Like Ry Cooder.\u00c2\u00a0 You see you didn’t need to have a hit to make it back then.<\/p>\n Baby, when you marry your railroad man<\/span> I’m not exactly sure what "Tamp ‘Em Up Solid" is about.\u00c2\u00a0 Lyrically, that is.\u00c2\u00a0 But I know what it’s about emotionally.\u00c2\u00a0 Survival.\u00c2\u00a0 Life. With a smile on your face.<\/p>\n Not everybody’s gonna be famous.\u00c2\u00a0 Not everybody’s gonna be a doctor or a lawyer.\u00c2\u00a0 But life unfolds nonetheless.\u00c2\u00a0 You get married, maybe divorced, but still the train keeps rollin’ down the track.<\/p>\n In my iTunes library I’ve got a live version of "Tamp ‘Em Up Solid".\u00c2\u00a0 Which is every bit as magical as the studio version.\u00c2\u00a0 Maybe even better.<\/p>\n As good as Ry was the night I saw him at the Country Club in Reseda, when John Hiatt opened up.<\/p>\n Some people are musicians.\u00c2\u00a0 Some people are stars.\u00c2\u00a0 Sometimes they’re both.\u00c2\u00a0 But if you’re solely the latter, famous for nothing, we may know your name, but we consider you part of the endless parade.\u00c2\u00a0 Whereas a great musician is like a virus, he infects you, gets inside, leaves a residue, akin to antibodies, that makes you a fan forever more.<\/p>\n Radio, a dedicated deejay and a talented musician.\u00c2\u00a0 An alchemy that had us addicted.<\/p>\n Tamp ’em up solid.<\/p>\n <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" There was an incident in the checkout line.\u00c2\u00a0 A woman wearing one of those convention badges was in a snit.\u00c2\u00a0 She accused the tattooed clerk of being "cavalier".\u00c2\u00a0 I wondered if she employed this description to show her superiority.\u00c2\u00a0 After all, it wasn’t his fault. At least that’s what he ultimately told me, five minutes […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2717","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-music"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p96vPs-HP","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2717","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2717"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2717\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2718,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2717\/revisions\/2718"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2717"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2717"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2717"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
Tamp ’em up solid, buddy, so they won’t come down<\/span><\/p>\n
Every day’ll be payday, dollar bill in your hand<\/span><\/p>\n\n