the rix mix

National Review has list of 50 greatest conservative"rock" songs, so lame & desperate one wonders why they bothered. "Won't Get Fooled Again," released while Nixon was President, is #1.* Tammy Wynette's "Stand By Your Man" is #50 - now we know it's a rock song. Disaffection with contemporary culture & politics, longing for simpler times, for clearer values, for "authority" to fuck off, is not a definition of political conservatism. Definitely not in 2006. As for "Kicks" being on the list, the followup Paul Revere & the Raiders hit "Hungry," composed by Barry Mann & Cynthia Weil, would be a much better choice:

There's a custom-tailored world that I wanna own someday
With a special place up high where we can stay alone you and me
Girl, I'm gonna have it all someday if you'll
Just hang on to my hand
If I break some rules along the way, girl, you
Gotta understand
It's my way of gettin' what I want now, 'cause I'm hungry

Sounds like a future Republican congressman's marriage proposal.

Belated Happy 65th to Bob Dylan. Dylan taught me the truth of the statement "Poets understand the Revolution better than the Revolution understands poets." Well into the 1970s the old 60s folkie- lefties kept fantasizing that "Bobby" (that's what they called him, you were supposed to know who they meant) would return to early form & lead a generation, or something. These "revolutionaries" missed what the revolution actually was, & when it occurred.

* The CSI: Miami theme. At the end of this season's final episode, Horatio Caine & Eric Delko were off to Brazil for the declared purpose of revenge-killing the man who ordered the murder of Delko's sister, a woman Caine was married to for about 5 minutes.