The Nutcracker Buck Sessions

That’s just a really awful song.  It may be the worst song ever written.  That’s a long shot, granted, but there’s a very good chance it’s the worst song ever recorded.  In addition to its profound awfulness, it is distinguished by being perhaps the only anti-Oak-Ridge-Boys song about a decapitation fetish done in a quasi bossa nova style.  I don’t remember how it came about.  It was written many months ago, a throwaway that wouldn’t stay thrown away, and when I got the Mac it was one of the handiest songs to mess around with, and before I realized what I’d done, suddenly I had . . . this.  The bass goes wompy and finally disappears altogether toward the end of the song.   The two chords of the verses are looped; that is, I played them only once and then copied them throughout the song (I should have taken a bit more care to avoid the squeakiness of the fingers sliding on the fifth and sixth strings . . . 32 times.)  I think I also copied the guitar leads over again, for the second or third verse, just because I was bored and didn’t want to keep playing.

The other reason it’s up this week is because it’s the closest thing to a Halloween song I had.  I kind of halfway resolved back on July 4 that I’d try to write songs for the major holidays, but I was on hiatus for Labor Day, and though I wrote a Columbus Day song, I forgot about both the song  and the holiday.  I think that’s all the major holidays since July 4.  I’ll try to write a Thanksgiving song.

Video.  I had big problems with the video, too.  Neither computer liked the footage:  the Mac wouldn’t download it, and the PC took it but slowed everything down that was associated with it.  The opening was supposed to be a self-referential thing—all the great directors do that after their styles are firmly established—but I couldn’t get any cooperation from anybody in ringing the doorbell.  I had to try to do it myself, but the noise outside was so loud that you can’t hear it.  Anyway, if you saw any of the early nutcracker videos maybe you’ll get the joke anyway.  And you get to see Buck’s Halloween costume.

That door needs oiling.

Pumpkins.  I carved those pumpkins.  I’m pretty proud of them.

Visitors.  We have visitors from Scotland this week.  Heather and Karen are staying with us.  We actually met Heather here in Houston back when we first moved here, but she moved back to Scotland shortly after Thomas was born, and I haven’t seen her since.  Janet saw Heather at Neil’s funeral, where Heather was one of the many mourners who showed up and stood in the cold outside the church, which was overflowing.  Janet hadn’t seen or kept up with Heather closely since Heather left Houston back in 2002 and was very touched to see our old friend come on her own to the funeral.  They’re the best kind of visitors, too:  the kind that used to live here (i.e., we don’t have to show them around.)

Grist for the Mill.   After 34 weeks of doing this nutcracker thing, I’ve discerned that one of the themes or preoccupations I keep turning to, whether it’s evident in the blog itself or not, is the question of community and what role music, art, literature, and pop culture generally play in forming that community.  As the various entertainment industries and their attendant media outlets die or fragment, victims of the democracy of the internet, where are we going to look for our common language?  How long will we be satisfied just forwarding videos of people getting hit in the balls with stuff? 

The question may be fallacious, of course, and my concern is probably just a type of fogeyism, no different from the old Norsemen sitting around the fjord in 1350 bitching about nobody reciting sagas anymore.  The kids will find their pop culture regardless of what I have to say about it.  Still, writers like my friend Katherine Hester give me hope that somebody will still be reciting sagas even when all the money and glory has gone out of saga recitation. 

I’ve known Katherine since graduate school; her blog, Grist for the Mill, is on the side bar of mine, and I’ve linked to her short story collection, Eggs for Young America, in a previous entry.  Katherine’s blog topics are varied, but they usually have motherhood as a topic, or at least the raising of children in a sprawling Southern city at the tail end of history is the lens she sees and reports things through.  I.e., it’s not that jokey NPR-essay motherhood stuff about diapers and cranky husbands; it’s the real thing. 

Her most recent essay is especially stunning and a reminder that what the best writers do—what you can’t get from American Idol or that fat kid doing his Darth Vader moves—is detect and translate the subterranean reverberations of experience layered upon experience, find connections that otherwise might be missed in living life only along the Y-axis, and in doing so evoke of the denseness and majesty life takes on if you stick around long enough.  That sentence needs work.  Just read the essay and you’ll see what I mean.  It’s about finding stuff.

Lyrics.  There have been reports that the song lyrics are not showing up as a sidebar option.  On the right side of the screen there should be (i) a copyright notice (I know, I know, but it makes me feel important), (ii) Recent Posts and (iii) Pages.  Under Pages all the song titles of the original songs ought to be displayed, and those are links to the lyrics.  If they’re still not there, let me know (I know, I know, but it makes me feel important.)

Willie Nelson.  I still plan to do a Willie Nelson post about Red Headed Stranger before this whole thing is over.  Meanwhile, PBS is streaming, for a while, the pilot episode of Austin City Limits, which originally aired in October 1974.  The episode is a full hour of Willie, and it’s worth checking out for Willie fans, regardless of when or how you became a Willie fan, and for people who are curious about why Willie deserves his iconic status.  The set list from 1974 is almost exactly the same set list he plays today, at least up to “Will the Circle Be Unbroken.”  It’s also kind of a kick to be reminded that ACL didn’t always have the same format and graphics (“London Homesick Blues” didn’t become the theme until later.)

Next Week.  Maybe not a good song but at least a better one.  And don’t get your hopes up, but it just might have drums!