#965: loretta lynn - blue kentucky girl (1965)
as far as blue kentucky girls go she’s no emmylou harris, but she has those eyes with old mountain sadness, a banjo player in neon-colored plaid, a voice that sounds like pollen and pedal steel and tobacco, a husband named doolittle, and she swears this is her favorite song and she’ll love you by the moon above you. don’t leave her for the bright lights, friends.
#964: neil young - star of bethlehem (1974, live)
there are two song subjects: love that’s there and love that’s not. the first is sunshine in the month of may and babies and walking together and vibrations and excitations, rivers and rainbows, dawn and dew. the second is love that was taken away forever, or at least a little while, because of babies who said goodbye and left frying pans too wide.
i’m sorry to say there are songs that are even sadder, the ones about love that never started in the first place—less devastating but more unsettling than songs about real love lost. and then the most brutal of all, the songs that aren’t just about agony but can cause it, don’t care if a romance is lasting, or gone, or if it never even existed: these are the love songs that don’t believe in love at all, and have tried to and failed.
their saving grace is that they usually have emmylou harris singing harmony. you may not believe in anything, friends, but you can believe in her.
#954: emmylou harris - blue kentucky girl (1979)
how could you not be very fond of the nation that gave us emmylou harris? just think, who’re the first five terrific people who come to mind? they’re matt groening, janet malcolm, thomas jefferson, stanley kubrick and walt “clyde” frazier, aren’t they? and guess what, they’re all from the united states of america! happy birthday, beautiful.
#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.
is emmylou harris greater than justice, truth, love and freedom? no one knows for sure.
#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.
