{"id":4306,"date":"2011-06-25T07:26:07","date_gmt":"2011-06-25T15:26:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/?p=4306"},"modified":"2011-06-25T07:27:16","modified_gmt":"2011-06-25T15:27:16","slug":"e-mail-of-the-day-37","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/2011\/06\/25\/e-mail-of-the-day-37\/","title":{"rendered":"E-Mail Of The Day"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
From: John David Souther
Subject: Thanks from JD Souther<\/p>\n

Bob,<\/p>\n

Nothing appeals to me like a maverick and you definitely don’t wear anyone’s brand but your own.<\/p>\n

You’re one of a kind writing has cracked me up, made me scratch my head and look for the material covered, and now filled me with surprise and gratitude.<\/p>\n

The Bordertown piece<\/a> was a powerhouse of praise (thank you), information (some of which I’d not thought of in years), opinion (shot from the hip but deadly), and critique (accurate-You’re Only Lonely, as an album, was an attempt to put a double album’s worth of recording into one-very uneven).<\/p>\n

I must have got twenty forwards of it from luminaries and fans alike and I read it again every time, the grin getting wider with each read.<\/p>\n

Hope you are every bit as opinionated about the 21st century albums (’08 If The World Was You, ’09 Rain-Live At The Belcourt Theatre, and the new one Natural History which is in its third week of release).<\/p>\n

Thank you again and please come to a show as my guest and introduce yourself again.<\/p>\n

Keep knocking ’em out of the par and add me to your mailing list.<\/p>\n

Best,
JD<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I’m not even sure how to respond.<\/p>\n

Which is why I’m sharing this with you first.\u00c2\u00a0 Maybe in the process, my thoughts will be clarified.<\/p>\n

I don’t do it for the money.\u00c2\u00a0 I do it for this.\u00c2\u00a0 And when I started, I didn’t expect this, didn’t even dream it.\u00c2\u00a0 And now it brings tears to my eyes.<\/p>\n

I bought J.D. Souther’s "Black Rose" in the summer of ’76, when I had the world’s worst case of mononucleosis and decided to go to law school because what the hell else was I gonna do with my life.\u00c2\u00a0 I couldn’t go back to Utah.\u00c2\u00a0 If I did, I’d never escape.<\/p>\n

And I’d love to tell you law school was a thrill, but it was a relentless drag with far less work than Middlebury and much less stimulation.<\/p>\n

But I became fixated on a girl.\u00c2\u00a0 I thought I knew her from Utah.\u00c2\u00a0 I recognized her ass from the tram line at Snowbird.<\/p>\n

But when I finally worked up the gumption to speak with her, which took weeks, she had a southern accent and I knew I was mistaken.\u00c2\u00a0 But I was still taken.<\/p>\n

And the very first time I went to her apartment, right in front of her stereo, was a copy of J.D. Souther’s "Black Rose".<\/p>\n

The moon was yellow<\/span>
And the sky was cool<\/span>
The night can make a promise of love<\/span>
Or it can make you a fool<\/span><\/p>\n

It’s summer in SoCal.\u00c2\u00a0 Which means it’s like spring anywhere else.\u00c2\u00a0 Cold and foggy.\u00c2\u00a0 But it’s still the season of possibilities. What did the Beach Boys say, "Summer Means New Love"?\u00c2\u00a0 Whenever I feel elated, whenever I have a bounce in my step, I sing the above lyrics from "Your Turn Now".\u00c2\u00a0 Really.<\/p>\n

And "Faithless Love" is the hit of the album.\u00c2\u00a0 I’m sure it’s still paying J.D.’s bills.<\/p>\n

But the song that resonated in that empty time twenty odd years ago, when my wife left me, but didn’t seem want to get divorced, was "Baby Come Home".<\/p>\n

There’s that moment, a bit more than halfway through the record, when J.D. gets down on his figurative knees and sings…

If you could trust me<\/span>
Try to believe me<\/span>
Listen to me when I say<\/span>
When I say that love<\/span>
Is a burning fire<\/span>
And it will not fade away<\/span>
No, it will not fade away<\/span><\/p>\n

It’s kind of like carbon dating.\u00c2\u00a0 The feeling, the connection, the hurt, never completely evaporates.\u00c2\u00a0 But you’ve got to hang in there long enough until what your head says your heart believes, that it’s time to let go.<\/p>\n

Then there’s a return to the chorus, J.D.’s resorted to pleading…<\/p>\n

Ah, but deep in the night<\/span>
When nearly nothing’s going right<\/span>
You can hear him cryin’<\/span>
Baby come home<\/span><\/p>\n

The night is the worst.\u00c2\u00a0 If you turn on the TV you’ll be up ’til dawn, meanwhile the tossing and turning goes on forever.<\/p>\n

She came back for one last interlude and then disappeared for good.<\/p>\n

But J.D. Souther’s music did not.\u00c2\u00a0 It stayed right by my side.<\/p>\n

There’s that brilliant cover of "Roll ‘Um Easy" I discovered on XM and had to immediately track down.<\/p>\n

And the version of "Black Rose" I’m listening to right now was personally EQ’d for me by Val Garay, its engineer.<\/p>\n

Life ain’t so easy in this border town, but it’s a hell of a lot easier when I get e-mail like this, from one of my heroes.<\/p>\n

You can have double digit millions, a Gulfstream VI, but can you write like this?<\/p>\n

You just wish you could be J.D. Souther.<\/p>\n

<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From: John David SoutherSubject: Thanks from JD Souther Bob, Nothing appeals to me like a maverick and you definitely don’t wear anyone’s brand but your own. You’re one of a kind writing has cracked me up, made me scratch my head and look for the material covered, and now filled me with surprise and gratitude. […]<\/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":[1,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4306","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life","category-the-music"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p96vPs-17s","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4306","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=4306"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4306\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4308,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4306\/revisions\/4308"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4306"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4306"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4306"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}