Which makes you feel better - Bashing Harleys or BMWs

[Ari Rankum]

Great reference point... Cockburn is one of those rare folks in music that can be called an honest-to-goodness real-life poet. Not just some schmoe that slaps together rhymes. Yeh, he is an amazing guitarist, but its that combination of lyric poetry, insightful commentary, and amazing guitar that has always intrigued me. I didn't realize what he was playing, those are some beautiful instruments. Patrick

+100. Cockburn is one of those artists that I come back to over and over. I can't believe some of the stuff he's laid down. That includes lyrics and guitar licks. Tough to top Bruce Cockburn, IMO.

Favs:

Pacing the Cage.

Wondering Where the Lions Are

If I Had A Rocket Launcher

Mango

Lyrically and musically, one of the most ambitious starts Bruce ever had was through the first minute or so of "Last Night of The World". It fell apart at the first chorus, I think. I wish he'd re-write it, because that tune has one hell of a lot of promise before then. And after then, it also does a perfect job of capturing regret that can only come later in life as the result of going around the block a few times. If you've ever had a lost love in your life that haunts you till today with thoughts similar to, "what the hell was I thinking?", this song will take over your brain at the first listen.

And as much as I bow down to Bruce Cockburn as a poet, I have to give the nod to Tom Waits. When I listen to Tom Waits' "The Heart of Saturday Night" album, I can't understand how I can still stand to look at the face of a man who has lived enough life to write something like that. While Tom is not the best looking dude (ask an expert like TWN), he doesn't look near as bad as you'd expect someone to look when he can paint life the way Tom does in "The Heart of Saturday Night".

Obligatory Motorcycle Content: The last large piece of biomass I ran over on the FJR was from the Rodent Family. It made a distinct "Bruce" sound as I sped its conversion to carbon last weekend. ( It had a large amount of nitrogen in its lungs at the time.)

 

[odot]

This thread got really gay...really quick.

 

[Ari Rankum]

This thread got really gay...really quick.

Yes it did. I've been going over the history of posts, and I can't tell where it happened. One minute, everything was fine, then some dude, don't remember who, was poking himself in his money maker. Weird.

 

[odot]

Gotta keep your dukes up if you are going to be associated with me. Nice point, ari. When is our next book club meet?

 

[Ari Rankum]

Gotta keep your dukes up if you are going to be associated with me. Nice point, ari. When is our next book club meet?

That's a good question.

When I got to Reno, I had a bunch to write about. I woke up on Wednesday and headed down to Chevy's for some breakfast. I took the little Hilton notepad and a pen with me. I started laying down some good stuff. Pretty soon I had a big pile of furiously written little notes. Thinking back, this could have been my undoing. I started to get distracted by the really crappy service - like no warm ups of my coffee and no ice water. So my writing slowed down and started to suffer in quality. Considering the waitress' perspective just now, I might have been damn scary sitting there filling up notepad sheets one after the other, and maybe that's why she stayed away. For whatever reason it happened, I decided I was done with Chevy's and left with my half-filled notepad.

I've still got some thoughts about "power cruising" cross-country on the FJR I want to write up. I'll get around to it. The mood has to be right.

 

[odot]

um....a good mood developer I use is called jack. Or, beam. Milwaukee's best is another option.