I was stealing music.<\/p>\n
I was looking for this version of "Urge For Going" by Tony Rice.\u00c2\u00a0 I’d never heard of Tony Rice.\u00c2\u00a0 And the guy who e-mailed me about it had never heard the version by Tom Rush!\u00c2\u00a0 So I fired up my P2P program and looked for it.<\/p>\n
I wouldn’t buy it.\u00c2\u00a0 Why should I?\u00c2\u00a0 What were the odds of it being superior to Tom’s take?\u00c2\u00a0 Still, I wanted to hear it.\u00c2\u00a0 And I found it, along with covers of "The Wreck Of The Edmund Fitzgerald" and "Early Morning Rain".\u00c2\u00a0 Fascinating.<\/p>\n
But what was even more fascinating was that someone with one of these MP3s had a SCREAMING connection.\u00c2\u00a0 So I opened his hard drive, and proceeded to take about sixty tracks.\u00c2\u00a0 Oh, I had more scheduled, it’s just that he logged off.<\/p>\n
And there was fascinating shit.\u00c2\u00a0 Everything from Nazz to Sugarland.\u00c2\u00a0 But it lay forgotten on my PowerBook until I synched my machines yesterday.\u00c2\u00a0 And, in straightening out titles, playing snippets of each track, I heard "Angel", by Pure Prairie League.<\/p>\n
You should not be allowed to air "Amie" without playing "Falling In And Out Of Love" before it, they meld into each other, the first segues into the second.<\/p>\n
More than I could feel Oh, when your partner is in a bad space.\u00c2\u00a0 And you can’t fix it.\u00c2\u00a0 You’re powerless, but you’re compassionate, you feel their pain.<\/p>\n "Falling In And Out Of Love" starts with some ethereal guitar picking, it’s slow, and quiet.\u00c2\u00a0 Craig Fuller sings the above lines.\u00c2\u00a0 And THEN!<\/p>\n Everybody speeds up just a bit, everybody locks into place, the vocal is no longer solo, there’s harmony of the type we fell in love with on Crosby, Stills & Nash records, but this isn’t saccharine, it doesn’t have an edge, it just evidences exactly what we feel inside.<\/p>\n Falling in and out of love with you I saw Al Franken on "Politically Incorrect".\u00c2\u00a0 Bill Maher lauded him for being married two decades.<\/p>\n After the applause died down, Al proceeded to say yes, he was in love, but between years sixteen and eighteen they HATED EACH OTHER!<\/p>\n That’s love, it’s about the commitment, and the hope during bad times you’ll rediscover each other.<\/p>\n "Amie" is more upbeat.\u00c2\u00a0 Maybe that’s why it’s the song you hear on the radio.\u00c2\u00a0 The singer is playing the John David Souther role.\u00c2\u00a0 Intelligent cowboy who did his woman wrong, but is admitting it, and leaving the decision up to his mate.<\/p>\n "Angel" isn’t quite as upbeat, isn’t quite as hopeful.<\/p>\n Oh, it’s about the love of a woman, one all-knowing, one who you know is going to leave you.\u00c2\u00a0 Maybe that’s why it sounds so WISTFUL!<\/p>\n The reason album rock exploded is because of the album TRACKS!\u00c2\u00a0 Songs that were not made for play on the radio, just in your bedroom.\u00c2\u00a0 Songs that weren’t made for everybody else, but just for you.\u00c2\u00a0 Oh sure, you wanted to hear the hits in concert, but you got butterflies in your stomach when they played YOUR favorite, the song YOU resonated with, that you felt no one else was aware of, that made you feel special, that got you through.<\/p>\n After going through the downloaded tracks, I clicked on "Angel" once again.\u00c2\u00a0 This was on "Bustin’ Out", wasn’t it?\u00c2\u00a0 That album I bought when I stopped being itinerant, when I finally had my own apartment and bought the stereo of my dreams?<\/p>\n It sounded familiar, but I didn’t completely know it.\u00c2\u00a0 I certainly hadn’t heard it in decades.<\/p>\n When you’re in your twenties, hope alternates with despair.\u00c2\u00a0 There’s too much of the latter, but the exuberance of the former keeps you searching, keeps you going.\u00c2\u00a0 But as you age, you suddenly realize this is your life.\u00c2\u00a0 You spend a lot of time looking behind.\u00c2\u00a0 What exactly were the choices that got you here?\u00c2\u00a0 Could you have ended up somewhere different if you’d been more aware, realized the importance of what you were doing?<\/p>\n Today in the L.A. "Times" I read the letter of a fifty year old to the advice columnist.\u00c2\u00a0 She was divorced, she had kids, she’d always seen sex as a means to an end.\u00c2\u00a0 Now, suddenly, she had discovered she LOVED sex.\u00c2\u00a0 She was doing it with multiple men, whom she didn’t want to marry…\u00c2\u00a0 Was there something WRONG with her?<\/p>\n I think it was Amy who said it was just fine, as long as she was upfront, as long as she used protection.<\/p>\n It’s not only twentysomethings who want to bring sexy back.\u00c2\u00a0 But we boomers, we’re trying to find what we missed.\u00c2\u00a0 Assuming we’re looking.\u00c2\u00a0 Too many aren’t, it would scare them.<\/p>\n I pity those people.\u00c2\u00a0 They’re the ones who pay $500 to see Madonna or the Stones, so they can tell their buddies they went.<\/p>\n But the rest of us, confronted with the confusion, we’re still looking for meaning from our music, not just spectacle.\u00c2\u00a0 We remember when a record could touch you, open your mind.<\/p>\n I’ve played "Angel" seventeen times so far.\u00c2\u00a0 I like the place it puts me.\u00c2\u00a0 In a bubble.\u00c2\u00a0 Where the rest of the world doesn’t intrude, where my mind isn’t clouded by its influences.\u00c2\u00a0 Where I’m not a pinball, but in control of the flippers.\u00c2\u00a0 Well, at least I know where the controls are.\u00c2\u00a0 "Angel" makes me relax and float downstream.\u00c2\u00a0 And when you do this, your mind isn’t turned off, but extremely open.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s when the good thoughts come in, when the questions appear, when the answers are revealed.<\/p>\n I believe everybody craves this experience.\u00c2\u00a0 Sure, they want to jump and be elated.\u00c2\u00a0 But life is really about reflection.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s a solitary journey.\u00c2\u00a0 Oh, we hope to be enmeshed in society, but still, the trip is our own.\u00c2\u00a0 How do we get through?\u00c2\u00a0 With music.<\/p>\n <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I was stealing music. I was looking for this version of "Urge For Going" by Tony Rice.\u00c2\u00a0 I’d never heard of Tony Rice.\u00c2\u00a0 And the guy who e-mailed me about it had never heard the version by Tom Rush!\u00c2\u00a0 So I fired up my P2P program and looked for it. I wouldn’t buy it.\u00c2\u00a0 Why […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","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-723","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-music"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s96vPs-angel","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/723","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\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=723"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/723\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=723"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=723"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=723"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
You’re touching what is real
Oh my mind is reelin’ round
Caroline is feelin’ down today<\/em><\/p>\n
Falling in and out of love with you
Don’t know what I’m gonna do…’cause I keep
Falling in and out of love<\/em><\/p>\n