the rix mix

Enjoyed listening to Neil Young's Living With War online. It's a great thing for him to do & not a moment too soon. Neil's always best winging it, & these arrangements are loose indeed, likely few "classics" here, but they rock hard & frequently poetically & they solidly if mostly unpoetically hit their lyrical targets & in sum do what they're supposed to do. Combined with Springsteen's surprisingly good Pete Seeger album (few were more dubious than I about the project), which accents the side of folk music I do like - its playful & even enigmatic qualities, performed with a wide-textured ensemble, it's been a good week for geezer rock & "protest" music. "Froggie Went A-Courtin'" is one of my all-time favs. Elvis & Bob Dylan love it, too.

Froggie went a - courtin and he did ride, uh huh.
Froggie went a - courtin and he did ride, uh huh.
Froggie went a - courtin and he did ride,
Sword and pistol by his side, un huh, uh huh.

Well he rode down to Miss Mouse’s door, uh huh.
Where he had often been before, uh huh.

He took Miss Mousie on his knee, uh huh.
Said "Miss Mousie will you marry me?" uh huh.

This "giant grid" calendar I've just hung on the wall is supposed to make me write things I need to do, read what I write & be reminded, & then do them. That's three or four different steps. A lot of people don't succeed with these until they have a kid, & then they have to use one that covers the entire front of the fridge & might even glow-in-the-dark. A friend of mine hangs hers next to the stove, & now her excuse for "forgetting" stuff is that age has seriously reduced her peripheral vision. I am not a multi-tasker. Not even a good single tasker. I'm an expert at following my own digressions. Books & music are activities I can do from beginning directly to end & even those are iffy. Oh yeah, when I used to collect records, I was expert at flipping front to back through boxes tucked under tables at flea markets. You could kick me, run into me with a baby carriage, even drip a melting snow cone on my head & I would not be distracted until I got through entire box.