max abelson's super groovy music video spectacular

#903: emmylou harris - pancho & lefty (1977, old grey whistle test)

i was trying to think about what’s as pure and wonderful and romantic and impossibly sweet and tender as jeremy lin effortlessly sinking a game-winning three pointer on valentine’s day for his sixth knicks win out of six tries after waking up on a couch as a nobody, and finally it hit me: of course, it’s emmylou harris on my favorite 70s television show singing townes van zandt’s old song about a bandit who betrayed his best friend in mexico and then grew old alone in cleveland. jeremy lin is the emmylou harris of basketball. they are undeniable.

#866: emmylou harris - leaving louisiana in the broad daylight (live, 1978)

the way emmylou harris hops up and down in place while young ricky skaggs and his mustache play their fiddle solo would bring a tear to hank williams’ cold corpse on a cold night in the oakwood annex.

#825: iris dement (with emmylou harris) - our town (1995)

five songs to immediately watch iris dement play after an extremely anxiety-inducing and overall-confidence-in-the-entire-world-sapping week, in order:

(1) our town: the most excruciatingly beautiful song written about one’s municipality by female folk geniuses in emmylou harris’ circle since kate & anna mcgarrigle’s my town. the sweet cosmic sorrow of listening to the way she says “kiss it goodbye” may make non-musical sorrows less sorrowful.

(2) in spite of ourselves: “iris dement, the fourteenth child born to her father in paragould, arkansas (but only the eighth child born to her mother, flora mae) has the voice of an eight-year-old that learned to read, talk and sing from sped-up johnny cash records. she’s a cherub, and so she looks supremely uncomfortable singing the ungodly lyrics of this dirty little ditty; meanwhile, john prine’s hay-farmer’s voice is more haggard than merle haggard.” also, this song is how joe weisenthal feels about america.

(3) let the mystery be: “a bouzouki? gadzooks!”

(4) sweet is the melody: “iris dement makes joni mitchell or joan baez or any other sweet voice look like a hideous, acidic pile of deformed, vicious vocal ugliness. plus, sweet is the melody is a beautiful song about beautiful songs, which means if someone wrote a song about it, the world would probably implode in a moment of sheer metaphysical ecstasy?”

(5) wheels of love: “if you had to spend every minute of every day in a non-unionized underground longwall coal mine, but you had emmylou and iris singing to you through a little transistor radio, life would be lovely, maybe.”

#797: emmylou harris, dolly parton, linda ronstadt - calling my children home (1983, live)

if heaven has large-haired a capella country trios, the angels spend all day and night in the clouds gnashing their angelic teeth and kicking their cherubic bodies for never sounding as good this filmed segment for a televised award ceremony.

#759: neil young - thrasher (rust never sleeps, live 1979)

on weeks like this one, when everything’s covered in a thick fuzz and drenched in haze and the news is all bad and all ugly, i listen to mid-70s neil young loudly. and when the going gets really tough i turn to the best album he never made, 1977’s chrome dreams (you’ll find it here), especially the song he sings with emmylou harris about the star of bethlehem. because bob dylan is for the hour when the writing’s on the wall, but bob dylan listens to neil young when the handwriting’s illegible. 

#724 - emmylou harris - mr. sandman (1981)

my belated new year’s resolution is to live every day as if her holiness emmylou harris is singing my personal soundtrack, even if it’s just her odd early-80s material. 

#700: george jones and emmylou harris - here we are (1981)

well, you guys, here we are: the 700th video. doesn’t it feel like dusty springfield’s i think it’s going to rain today (no. 500) was just a moment ago? not to mention dusty springfield’s son of a preacher man (no. 1)? since then, you and i, we’ve looked at hundreds and hundreds of music videos, but also several mustaches, and of course old posters, and we’ve cuddled around the fireplace to share our favorite quotes, then turned down the lights to listen to some semi-legal downloads. we’ve seen it all: our faces are pocked and lined like early-80s george jones, no longer silken and smooth like early-80s emmylou harris. but life goes on, and living it with you makes it worthwhile.

#673: doc watson - nine pound hammer (1962)

there are lots of wonderful things about having a disabled brother, and obviously a few un-peachy things, too. one not wonderful thing is when many of my otherwise lovely friends use the word retarded when they mean something is disgustingly awful or hatefully bad. there’s also the word retard, which maybe because it’s a noun and not an adjective seems a lot more personal, and either way makes my spine tingle in an even less pleasant manner. if i don’t say anything when that happens i feel all hollow, but if i do it can be awkward for all involved.

(needless to say, these are both words that you hear from people besides friends, but strangers say lots of stupid things, and who am i to mind? growing up, my sister and i differed on this point, and it would embarrass me to hear her correct someone who wasn’t close. in retrospect, though, good for her.)

the reason this comes up is that after paul krugman very briefly blogged about my observer article last week, i got several long and impassioned emails. one of them was from one of the smartest people my age i know in finance, who in the middle of a point that was otherwise actually sort of reasonable got both the adjective (retarded) and charmingly pluralized noun (retards) into the same sentence.

it hurts me to hear both words, personally. they’re not very subtle reminders that people associate disability with extreme awfulness, or even just ickiness. and my brother tom is not awful, he is excellent and hilarious, and is constantly making life-altering insights into emmylou harris’ heavenly harmonies. that’s not to say that disabled people can’t also be mean or boring or lots of other things, like everyone.

it’s just that they’re not awful. and even though phrases like alternately-abled are mostly laughable, especially if you think about my surname, sometimes people really can be special because of their disabilities. listen to doc watson! the man couldn’t see the skies or his wife or the inside of a cathedral, let alone his guitar. but it’s hard to imagine that not being able to do the first didn’t affect the way he played the latter.

so from now on instead of awkwardly saying, for example, “i think you mean matt groening’s recent simpsons decisions are unfortunate and misguided,” i’ll start singing doc watson songs very loudly, or at least wave this photograph.

#651: emmylou harris and daniel lanois - wrecking ball (1995)

10 letters i will get around to writing in the new year, no. 5771:

1. to emmylou harris, thanking her for wrecking ball, the song and also the album

2. to philip roth, asking when he’s going to get around to writing a really great book again, especially if the book that comes out in october is at all like the last ones.

3. to max abelson, the one who lives in brooklyn and has a brother named alan, who is not me, who lives in manhattan and has a brother named tommy.

4. to mrs. stevens, my second grade teacher, who was really great.

5. to her son trevor, who had one leg and was my best friend for a few summers in elementary school, and was a much finer athlete. 

6. to e.b. white, who’s dead, but have you read here is new york? it’s so good.

7. to don cornelius, asking for a copy of the new soul train dvd set.

8. to van dyke parks, asking if he’d fly to trinidad with me.

9. to max abelson, myself, to read if i make it to 100.

10. to daniel lanois, thanking him for helping with wrecking ball. 

#642: gram parsons and emmylou harris - streets of baltimore (live, 1973)

first came a bookstore-bathroom run in with ultra rare hipster runoff graffiti. and this afternoon, in the middle of a very stressful observer deadline, i got to have an actual back and forth with pitchfork founder ryan schreiber, who, let’s face it, is a true indie-and-internet god. if you’re interested, and who could blame you if you’re not, it was a gentlemanly twitter disagreement over his site’s top-videos-of-the-90s list, which ends with aphex twin’s dementedly dark come to daddy.

not the decade’s single best video, i said.

agree to disagree, he proposed.

and what, he wanted to know, would i have chosen?

no surprises, wow and flutter, c.r.e.a.m., or even windowlicker, i said.

the finale came with his excellent point that anthony kiedis’ ocean rap should have been number one. and just like that our conversation had ended! the irony is that i started the day by spending 90 minutes compiling my list of the top 10 videos of grainy live versions of beautiful country rock songs about major maryland metropolitan areas. this one ended up on top, and it goes out to you-know-who.

#601: willie nelson, emmylou harris, and daniel lanois - the maker (1998)

after daniel lanois was seriously injured in a motorcycle accident this week, he called up a pal and said calmly, “look, i got a lot of broken bones.” god bless that man. for me, what makes the music daniel lanois produces so special is that it’s sooty, smoky, crunched and chewed, and yet every note is perfect and clean. it’s easy to light songs on fire, but not easy to make them smell like charcoal, which is what he does on bob dylan’s time out of mind, brian eno’s apollo atmospheres & soundtracks, u2’s joshua tree, emmylou harris’ wrecking ball (her best album, if you ask me), and willie nelson’s teatro, which the above is from.

besides producing, he also happens to have written songs that are as good as anything those bands have done. the maker is one of them! it’s a religious song that’s heavenly because it’s black and blue. speaking of angels, wim wenders directed the video, and this one, too.