East Bound and Down

Sad news that Jerry Reed has died. I thought about him just the other day. I was watching Hurricane Gustav coverage and somebody mentioned that the storm was heading over Thibodaux, Louisiana and I spent the next couple of minutes trying to figure out why I knew that town's name. The answer, I finally remembered, was Reed's great song Amos Moses ("about 45 minutes southeast of Thibodaux, Louisiana/lived a man named Doc Milsap and his pretty wife Hannah").

I'm not a huge country music fan, but Jerry Reed is some of the good stuff---one of those good natured artists that transcends genre. Besides having an incredibly distinctive voice, when I was growing up, Reed was one of the kings of the novelty song--Amos Moses, When You're Hot You're Hot, She Got the Goldmine (I Got The Shaft). Not to mention starring in Smokey and The Bandit (and stealing The Survivors out from under Robin Williams and Walter Matthau if you remember that obscure movie constantly shown on HBO in the 80s) .

Up Up Down Down Left Right . . .in B Flat

Take a look at this half time performance by Cal Berkeley in the fine "marching band too smart for its own good" tradition of Rice's MOB. My favorite band is still Texas' own Prairie View A&M Marching Band (The Storm!) but this here is undeniably good. I'm guessing it will be a cold day in hell before we see or hear something similarly witty from the Show Band of the Southwest.

PKD+Burt Bacharach=??

An article on the inevitable combination of Philip K. Dick, Dionne Warwick, and Burt Bacharach in this week's New York Times. Three great things that don't go together at all. There's an audio link to one of the songs to the left of the article---I don't think Prince has anything to worry about.

Tikhon Khrennikov

So this probably lies way out of this blog's normal subject matter, but oh well. I noticed Russian composer's Tikhon Khrennikov's obituary in the Times yesterday. I was shocked he was still alive. His main claim to fame today is that when Stalin needed a composer to ride herd over his fellows, Khrennikov took the job and most famously put his knife squarely in the middle of Dmitri Shostakovich's back. (I recommend Shostokovich's autobiography Testimony for a sense of what he went through; the man was lucky to survive). Khrennikov is a bit like the Russian version of American artists who named names to HUAC. So I should hold him in complete contempt, right? But here's the thing-----I love Khrennikov's music.
This performance of The Song of Drunken People is the only clip of his work I was able to find.