perfidy

In Friday's OpinionJournal Best of the Web Today, James Taranto included a story entitled "Docs for Starvation", highlighting this news item:

"More than 260 doctors yesterday called on the American authorities at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp to allow detainees to starve themselves to death," reports the Daily Telegraph of London. We guess that explains hospital food, but if the docs want the prisoners to die, aren't there quicker and more humane ways of accomplishing it?

Now, I'm clearly a fan of snark, evidenced, inter alia, by the fact that I read and enjoy Best of the Web each weekday that Taranto's not on vacation.

So I read it and chuckled a bit, then moved on. Later, however, I got a link to a story in The Independent that more fully described things, and was somewhat embarrassed by my earlier chuckling. Why I'm telling you this is beyond me, because none of you were there when I was chuckling, nor was anyone else, but mild guilt has strange effects. Among other things, the Indy article points out that:

More than 250 medical experts are launching a protest today against the practice - which involves strapping inmates to "restraint chairs" and pushing tubes into the stomach through the nose. They say it breaches the right of prisoners to refuse treatment.

...

Since August they have been routinely force-fed, an excruciatingly painful practice that causes bleeding and nausea. The doctors say: "Fundamental to doctors' responsibilities in attending a hunger striker is the recognition that prisoners have a right to refuse treatment.

"The UK Government has respected this right even under very difficult circumstances and allowed Irish hunger strikers to die. Physicians do not have to agree with the prisoner, but they must respect their informed decision." The World Medical Association has prohibited force-feeding and the American Medical Association backed the WMA's declaration.

(ellipses mine)

Damn, I said to myself, the docs have a point. Contrary to Mr. Taranto's punchline, it's not the doctors who want people to die - it's the people who themselves want to die. All of which, in retrospect, is quite obvious, so shame on me.

I'm not of a mind with all other sentiments reported in the article, such as the UN's demands that the Guantanamo Bay detention camp be closed down, at least not that it should be closed down because of the force feeding. But I don't have trouble agreeing with them when they say that "...treatment such as force-feeding and prolonged solitary confinement could amount to torture."

I can even understand why the military command at Camp X-Ray would think force feeding was preferable to body bags filled with dead detainees. Understanding, however, isn't the same as agreement, and I think that if the detainees prefer to shuffle off their mortal coils rather than to remain in detention, that's their right, and that right shouldn't be infringed.

And no, I don't think that because the only good terrorist is a dead terrorist (even though this is self-evident). In fact I don't even think that everyone at Camp X-Ray is a terrorist, or even deserves necessarily to be (or still be) detained. I'm comfortable that some of them deserve it, and I only wish the military could be a bit more crisp about sorting all that out, without releasing folks who will do harm after being freed, and without returning inmates to home countries in circumstances in which they'd be in personal danger. Both types of detainees exist, along with the odd innocent, and not everything at Camp X-Ray is wrong - perhaps most things at Camp X-Ray aren't wrong.

But force-feeding prisoners who'd prefer to let it all end naturally seems clearly wrong.

Apparently, Buddhists are also subject to the temptations that the flesh doth surely hold. A Japanese Buddhist priest was arrested for schtuping a teenage prostitute. But we should go easy on him, because he was under a lot of stress.

Well, at least it was a girl he went after.

It's not Dubai, friends...this is one of remarkably rare times I'm with the President. The reason this deal should have gone through smoothly is that pissing off foreign investors is a very stupid thing for America to do, now. Somebody's obviously briefed Bush on this fact, and that somebody failed to find a way to convince Congress of the same thing. This is a political bungling of the highest order; the issue should never have been allowed on the public's radar. The public has responded in a highly predictable manner -- rampant xenophobia and plenty of water-cooler talk about what's "obvious", and that of course American control of things like ports is a good idea.

The problem is that the only reason the US economy and financial system hasn't crashed and burned is that foreigners have put trillions of dollars into buying parts of America. Some of the biggest buyers are the Chinese (circa $300 Billion a year) and Arab nations; we have our biggest trade deficits with nations and regions we consider to be "nasty", and we're dependent on them. The total foreign investment the country needs is on the order of $600 Billion a year, thanks to crackwhore-like management of the country's finances by the fundamentalists-in-charge. If that $600 Billion should start to dry up, you can expect a huge increase in interest rates, shortly followed by the financial meltdown of the US government, which is on an utterly unsustainable course. Ripping away significant foreign investment will cause a decline in the overall value of assets within the country, and generally retard growth heavily. Since crazy growth rates are the only mathematical means left of avoiding inbound financial catastrophe, it doesn't seem like good policy to me.

Congress just sent a message to foreign investors everywhere -- that they're not welcome, and that they can't own "key" infrastructure assets. The subtext is that anything they do can and is subject to forfeiture or control. Bills floating around congress defined "key assets" as anything from farms to ports to chemical companies. In short, much of America's manufacturing base can be classified as key, and a security asset.

Of course, America wouldn't be so vulnerable to this if (to repeat myself) the crackwhores weren't in charge of the roll of cash. And the people who put them there will never believe that there are any consequences to their actions until the hammer drops on them personally.

The internets are buzzing about two recently-released videos of new DARPA projects featuring motile robots. Both videos are fascinating, yet positively awful. Try to hold back the horriplations from your scalp as you watch this six legged robot climb any vertical surface in a way eerily reminiscent of how crustaceans and larger insects do move. If you thought watching a computerized Tom Hanks in "The Polar Express" was a creepy experience, remember that Tom Hanks is not considered to be much of a threat to one day eat your skin and enslave your children to labor in uranium mines.

And once you've shaken off the nasty thrill of the climbing bug-bot, check out this robotic pack mule, "affectionately" dubbed "Big Dog" by its irony-deficient creators. Click on the video to watch the Great Dane-sized Big Dog easily navigate on four legs over flat surfaces, mud, snow, gravel, schist, and hills of up to a 35% grade. Also watch for Big Dog to react quickly to retain its balance when kicked. Again, the thing reacts distressingly like an actual, living creature.

And although the Ministry is beginning to feel like the kids from South Park when, halfway through Season Three, they began reacting with boredom every time Kenny died ("uh, right. Oh my god. They killed Kenny. You bastards."), doesn't DARPA see the problem here? As with the million other distressing advances in autonomous robotitcs, we wonder: do they want humans to have no refuge where robots cannot get to them? Do they secretly wish to commit species suicide? Or do they simply think that humans will be in charge forever?

Inquiring minds want to know!

Last week it came to light that Yale had admitted a former quasi-ambassador of the Taliban. The Wall Street Journal was on it from the get-go, and new media outlets and bloggers are getting more heated about it. Jim Kouri at Sierra Times has a good summary of the issues and arguments at play here.

The chain of events seems to have gone that two apparently influential alumni talked a Dean into admitting the guy, despite his rather obvious connection to the Taliban, his lack of formal education, no visible means of support, and total unwillingness to divorce himself from Taliban-ic philosophy. A Yale rep later explained that they had already lost “one” (terrorist? jihadi?) to Harvard, and were eager to get one of their own.

We’ve all played the admissions game, and we’ve all lost it somewhere along the line. Aside from being the wrong race, and a veteran- already two tremendous hurdles to overcome- I always felt that I didn’t have the extracurriculars to really stand out in my applications. No captain of the football team, never started a homeless shelter, not once did I even help an old lady cross the street. Never in a million lifetimes though would I have thought that collapsing walls on homos and executing women for being slatternly would have put me on the fast track in the admissions office. Well it’s too late now.

What really got up my ass about it though was that he’s going for free. He must be. There is simply no way that this man has the economic resources to float any amount of time at Yale. Period. He’s not a citizen, so he isn’t borrowing from the gubmint; no Staffords for him, or Pells. I am highly skeptical that any private monies from a foundation or other grant-issuing organization would have anything to do with him. So there is no doubt that at least the huge majority of the cost of his attendance at Yale is being paid for by Yale.

But big privates like Yale get their money from private contributions, primarily from generous alumni giving. Shrewd investing of huge gifts grows the school’s endowment, which at the end of FY04 was closing in on $13 billion. That kind of bread means Yale can afford to put anyone it wants through for free, should the administration wish.

In essence, Yale’s own alumni are paying for this terrorist to go to Yale.

At this point in the discussion, it’s probably best to sit back and let things stew for a bit. Reflect on the links, the arguments, the themes and meta-themes at work, and then in a mellow and rational manner, quietly contemplate how best to exact vengeance.

Clinton Taylor at Townhall is on the right track, equating punishing the university with denying it donations. He recommends sending fake red fingernails to the Development Office, in recognition of the Taliban’s persecution of women who wore nail polish. The only very obvious problem is that he wants people to send these things to Development, which doesn't admit students. Admissions does. You’d be better off getting them to the President, or better yet, the Trustees, to send the message you want to send. And I can tell you what Yale is going to do about the uproar regarding this clown:

Nothing.

The university is sticking with its original story, that having an executive-level member of the most reprehensible government in recent memory attending is good. We can learn from him, you see. And the administration will wait for it to go away. Eventually attention will be diverted, things will calm down, and it’ll all be forgotten. The guy’s going to finish what he started, the Dean’s going to keep his job, no one’s going to look bad, and the world will continue to turn.

But Development is the right path to take to voice your displeasure. Fake nails aside, withholding donations is pretty much the only thing that gets a school’s attention in a serious and meaningful way. Money talks, people, and higher ed is a business. The problem with that tactic is that Yale is filthy stinking rich, and unless you’re prepared to mobilize thousands of wealthy alumni to withhold future giving, or renege on pledges already given, you’re not going to do much real damage.

But at the very least, by not giving your few dollars, you guarantee that no more of your own donations will go toward putting terrorists through your alma mater.

Legendary Malian guitarist Ali Farka Touré died this week in Mali after a long illness. His exact age is unknown; he was probably born in 1939. Best know in the USA for his 1994 album with Ry Cooder, Talking Timbuktu, he leaves behind a body of powerful and idiosyncratic recorded work that stands and some of the best that Africa has ever had to offer. Having achieved international fame in his 50s, he spent the last twenty or so years of his life as he spent this first fifty, as a farmer. The only difference being, from time to time he would step up to a microphone and record some of the finest, deepest, and most elemental guitar music ever made.

I have been fumbling with a proper obituary for the man for an hour now, and I can't seem to do him justice. Instead, I will quote from a short blogcritics piece I wrote in 2004 about Malian music that I feel captures what made Ali FarkaTouré special.

Ali Farka Touré himself is a farmer and local (what... chief? mayor? paterfamilias?), who tends to his village first and his music second. In 1995, he reputedly begged off a US tour claiming that he could not leave his home because if he did, he risked losing his land in an armed skirmish. When in 1998, one of his US labels, Hannibal, wanted to record a new record with him Touré insisted the producers bring a mobile recording rig to his compound at Niafunké. The stunning resulting album, aptly titled Niafunké, was recorded whenever farm chores did not press and whenever the mood struck to pick up his guitar.

In 2000, Touré decided to come to the USA for one last tour before devoting all his time to a village irrigation project. I was lucky enough to see his New York date, August 8, 2000, and I can't ever forget it. A big man in person, on stage he looked ten feet tall, wielding his electric guitar like it was a toy and wrenching from it some of the most searing melodies I have ever heard. He was playful, switching between guitar and njerka (a small one-stringed fiddle) and stopping to explain to the New York audience what he was singing about in the eleven languages he writes in. About halfway through the show, he struck on the game of lifting his leg way up in the air and bringing it down onto the stage with a huge *boom*. His band worked the *boom* into the deep percolating groove they had built, and soon Touré was *boom*ing away, each one accented by a chord from his guitar that sounded like trees breaking in the wind. The entire night was unforgettable and absolutely one of a kind. Ali Farka Touré is often compared to John Lee Hooker, whose elemental blues sound seemed to emanate from some half-remembered Mali of the mind, but on that night Ali Farka Touré sounded like Timbuktu.

Before the show, I shared a cab with record producer and Hannibal label owner Joe Boyd, who asked me about African music and what I thought about it. I mentioned Ali Farka Touré, Johnny Clegg, Fela Kuti and a few others before bringing up Angelique Kidjo, who had just released her pop-inflected album Oremi the previous year. Boyd looked at me quizzically and said, "you like that? That speaks to you?" I admitted that it didn't really, it just sounded nice, and he told me that someday, smart kid that I was, I would figure it out, I would get it.

Later that night, I got it.

I should also mention that on that same night, I met Mr. Touré briefly in his dressing room, where he took my stammered compliments with leonine reserve (I speak no French; he gave no indication whether English was among his many tongues). Up close, he seemed positively regal. It was not just that was a large man, but he radiated a genial calmness, a sense of presence, that made it seem that he was simply... in charge. When I saw him on stage seemingly shooting lightning from his fingertips or dancing with his one-string gourd fiddle, It was then that I got it. The god dances and we all must watch. That night was the best concert I have ever seen, or hope to see; it literally changed my life. And now, he's gone. And if his passing matters this much to me, who orbited him once for about forty-five seconds, in Mali it will surely be met with public fetes and much sorrow.

If you have not yet begun your collection of Ali Farka Touré recordings, I would recommend starting with Talking Timbuktu, which is in some ways his most accessible album. Made with Ry Cooder, it is a little less skeletal (and a little more Western) than much of Touré's other work, and is a good point of entry to his music and to Malian music in general. After that, you can take your pick of any one of a number of his records: I am partial to Niafunké and The Source, though many people swear by his self-titled debut on Mango, or Radio Mali, a collection of radio broadcast recordings. You should also check out his last album, 2005 Grammy winner for Best World Music Album, In The Heart of the Moon, which he recorded with Kora master Toumani Diabate. In something of a departure from his other albums, Touré gently winds circular rhythmic guitar lines around and underneath the ethereal waterfall plinking of Diabate's kora (a kind of many-stringed west African harp). Although it was never intended as one, it is a fitting capstone to the career of a giant of Malian music.

I've been on a sort of alternative country kick recently, having reviewed albums by Hank Williams III and bevy of outsider country icons in their younger days. And now comes a third approach to that hallowed genre in the form of Bloom, Red & The Ordinary Girl, an album by the alt-country sisterhood Tres Chicas. Tres Chicas, which started as a one-off project but is now a permanent concern, consists three friends from the Raleigh, North Carolina area: Lynn Blakey, who is a veteran of the great Southern indie music scene that gave us REM; Caitlin Cary, a founding member of Whiskeytown, which also gave us Ryan Adams; and Tonya Lamm, a member of the big-in-Europe indie-rock/folk/country band Hazeldine.

Bloom, Red & The Ordinary Girl (the title refers both to the Chicas' nicknames and to lyrics on the album) is a comfortable, completely unpretentious alternative country album of relaxed performances, gorgeous harmonies, and generally outstanding songwriting. Supported by crack playing from Matt Radford (upright bass) and Geraint Watkins (piano, organ) and team-produced by frequent Nick Lowe collaborators Neil Brockbank and Robert Trehern (who also features on drums), Tres Chicas sound like they're having a blast singing some lovely, aching songs that are reminiscent of Gram Parsons, the Jayhawks, Emmylou Harris, and the laid-back earthy earnestness of the Indigo Girls.

Musically, the album tends to stick to easy tempos and sparse arrangements organized around acoustic guitar, keyboards, and the Chicas' twining harmonies. Because of this, matters sometimes threaten to succumb to the dreaded mid-tempo syndrome. But although the dreaded mid-tempo syndrome has rendered hundreds of otherwise fine albums as sleep-inducing as a bathtub of warm syrup, on Bloom, Red & the Ordinary Girl the live-sounding, spacious production and gorgeous singing helps to make sure that mostly doesn't happen.

Tres Chicas' secret weapon, however, is definitely masterful songwriting. Each of the Chicas wrote songs for this album, and working together must surely have raised their game. There are so many styles, voices, and narrative devices here that it's possible to believe that they are the work of a dozen different writers.

Take "My Love," "Shade Trees in Bloom," and "Red," three selections from the middle of the album which also happen to be the sources of the album's title. I suspect each was written by a different Chica, because they are so distinct yet so absolutely in line with what Tres Chicas are about.

"My Love" is a gently swaying love song that paints in deft strokes a story of slightly distressing devotion with lines like "I'm not Jesus Christ, I'm just an ordinary girl/ and everywhere I go, you go/ Under high silver skies, you shelter me from rain/ you make it very plain you're mine, my love." Is this love actually shelter, or is it stifling and crippling? The song never quite decides.

Next is the quiet "Shade Trees in Bloom." In stark contrast to "My Love," this song's lyrics are plainer and more direct, almost sounding like the "straight from my heart" centerpiece of a lost Broadway hit, with stanzas like

All quiet now, just listening
Sometimes what you think is the end is the beginning
I'll put you to sleep but you keep laughing
Let's put our arms together, baby, we'll see what happens

On the chorus, one of the Chicas breaks out of the harmony to sing in ascending intervals "I want something beautiful, I want something good," a sentiment almost corny enough to roll your eyes to but redeemed by the performance. The song edges right up to maudlin without stepping over the edge.

Different again is the vituperative heartbreak of "Red," in which the three sing, "You have gone off to another, one who you think suits you better/ I don't wish you well, and I'll see you in hell/ And I'm sitting here burning your letters," like a young Elvis Costello circa All This Useless Beauty. Even though not every lyric on the album works perfectly, most artists don't show this much range in a career, much less in the span of three songs.

It is good that Cary, Lamm, and Blakey have decided to make Tres Chicas a permanent thing. They are talented songwriters, and Bloom, Red, & The Ordinary Girl is packed with fine writing that only rarely dips into anything resembling the standard folk/country coffeehouse confessional mode. Although some of the imagery is a bit overcooked, and a couple songs do melt into mid-tempo torpor, those aren't fatal flaws in an otherwise accomplished and thoughtful and... (pretty? that's condescending)... and, and... luminous batch of alt-country songs. All twelve songs together in a row can be a little too much to take, but my iTunes' shuffle function proves that on their own, each one is a gem. I'm not going to like this album in every mood, but it sure sounds nice right now.

It's probably a no-brainer that one of the first completely here, queer, and loving it punk bands was from San Francisco. When Pansy Division formed in 1991, they fused a Californian version of Ramones-ified power pop with a very clear love for British punk, especially The Buzzcocks, and topped it with lyrics that were, well, totally gay. Such a combination could easily run thin quickly. But whatever novelty potential the band had was quickly overshadowed by their songs, which treated the experience of being an out (and horny!) gay male in America with candor, humor, and sometimes brutal honesty. The lyrics to "Anthem," off their first album, served as a sort of mission statement:

We're here to tell you, ya better make way
We're queer rockers in your face today
We can't relate to Judy Garland
It's a new generation of music calling
We're the buttfuckers of rock and roll
We wanna sock it to your hole
With loud guitars, we're gay and proud
We gonna get ya with your pants down

Between 1993 and 1998, Pansy Division released six albums in this vein on the Lookout! label, albums that helped define that now legendary label's '90s-era sound. Like label-mates Green Day and Screeching Weasel, Pansy Division relied on fast tempos, trashy guitars, and a knack for big pop hooks tied to snotnosed lyrics. By 1994, the band was supporting Green Day on national tours, and became de facto poster children for the nascent queercore movement. They have since jumped to Jello Biafra's Alternative Tentacles label, where they released their seventh album in 2003.

The new Essential Pansy Division, out now on Alternative Tentacles, is a witty, thoughtful, and often profane thirty-song stroll through the band's career. The running order jumbles up songs from all seven of their studio albums, so that 1993's "Fem in a Black Leather Jacket" sits next to "Who Treats You Right" from 2003's Entertainment. I would like to kvetch, because I'm a kvetch and a pisher besides, that ordering the tracks in this way obscures the band's musical and conceptual growth, but that isn't really true. Like the Ramones before them, Pansy Division have not really changed their modus operandi in fifteen years, preferring to refine and embellish a winning formula.

Have they matured musically? Well, "He Whipped My Ass In Tennis (Then I Fucked His Ass In Bed)" is no more or less hooky than "Cocksucker Club," recorded a good dozen years before. Have they matured lyrically? Well, if you consider a song about circle jerking called "Alpine Skiing" an improvement over the older "Groovy Underwear," then sure. But what is really striking is that Pansy Division have been models of consistency throughout their career. Individual songs may be a little stronger or weaker, but they have found a winning formula that works for them, and it's a good one.

What makes Pansy Division more than just a very gay Barenaked Ladies, though, are the deep songs. Right in there with all the endless dicks (viz. "Dick of Death," "Touch My Joe Camel," "Horny In The Morning") are a few songs that hit with an ugly punch. "Denny" is about a porn actor from before the days when they knew about AIDS:

Denny picked me up, Denny did me
He's got a tattoo of his dick on his belly
It was double vision disorienting
Denny's kind of a dorky fella
Denny's dramatic, Denny's dark
He ain't nothing like the restaurant
He's got HIV+ tattooed in black
In 6 inch letters on his back
He said, "I want them to see
What they've done to me."

"Deep Water" is written from the point of view of some anonymous kid tortured with guilt and repression and waiting for the day he can leave home. "I Really Wanted You" is a bittersweet song about an old crush getting married (to a woman, presumably). On a lighter note, the jaunty "No Protection" is about shooting down a guy who wants to ride bareback, sung through a vocoder (like what Cher used on "I Believe") over a disco beat. Songs like these deepen and complicate the bouncy, happy sex romp that Pansy Division normally sings about, and coming as they do between songs about blowjobs, they pack surprising power.

In closing, I have to say that I am so used to hearing boy-meets-girl songs, hetero-themed get-it-on songs, and the like, that listening to thirty gay-themed punk songs in a row induces a little bit of vertigo. It's not just a simple matter of Pansy Division swapping out "dick" for "pussy" in their lyrics; the differences are deeper, fundamentally cultural. If you've ever spent more than a few days in England, you'll know what I mean when I say that it's the little things that are the most surprising. People look the other way before crossing the street. Bar etiquette is different. Standing in line is different. The money is funny colors. Every where you turn there's people speaking a language that you understand, but saying things that you have to think a little about to really comprehend.

Although my days of listening to Pansy Division albums ended about the time I graduated college and no longer had access to everyone in the dorm's record collection (ten frigging years ago!), which means I'm not completely up on what the kids are listening to these days, I can say for sure that The Essential Pansy Division is a well put together compilation, perfect for the gay nephew, homophobic uncle, or SoCal punk fan in your life. Also included is a DVD disc of live performances, TV appearances, and videos that, though inessential, do make this the only Pansy Division album you will ever need to buy.

I wrote recently about Hank Williams III's quest to rescue country music from a faded modernity of computerized backing tracks and lycra-clad artists and return it to the rough and real place it came from. But Hank Williams III's is only one interpretation of country history. Back in the mid 1970s, Austin and Nashville were home to a crop of young songwriters with rural roots and the heads of poets, songwriters who staged a quiet revolution against the cookie-cutter genteelness that was country's stock in trade at the time. Their names have gone on to renown in some circles: Rodney Crowell, Steve Earle, David Allan Coe, Townes Van Zandt, Gamble Rodgers, and John Hiatt, to name a few.

All these people are a little grey and a little grizzled now, and the sound they pioneered - the immediate predecessor to what we now call Alternative Country or Americana - has been around for so long it's hard to remember there was a time when it was brand new.

Fortuitously, film director James Szalapski was in Austin at the time and was moved to preserve this emergent alt-country scene in a 1976 documentary he called Heartworn Highways. This film has become over the years a cult classic, little seen but much revered, and it has now been cleaned up for a 30th anniversary DVD release by HackTone and Shout! Factory.

The labels have also put together a soundtrack to the film, a companion piece intended to build upon and embellish the documentary's musical narrative. Drawn from the original full session tapes, the soundtrack is a rambling 26-track compilation of intimate performances, entertainingly inebriated stage patter about whiskey and music, and some very good songs played by some very talented folks.

Of historical note is the fact that the album contains the very first recordings by alt-country icons Steve Earle, Rodney Crowell, and John Hiatt. If like me you only know these artists by their later work, Heartworn Highways is a bit of a revelation. Though a little rough and maybe a little less accomplished than their later stuff, the songs here belong unmistakably to their creators. John Hiatt's sharp lyrical poetry, Rodney Crowell's gift for atmosphere for melody, and Steve Earle's scrappy defiance (and leftism) are already in full view. But these treasures are only the smallest part of what makes Heartworn Highways worth a listen.

The song that kicks off Heartworn Highways, "L.A. Freeway" by the great and reclusive Guy Clark, sets the tone for the album. Clark's plaintive song conjures a laid-back atmosphere that, like most of the recordings here is Most of the tracks here are really intimate - living room intimate, front porch intimate. More than that, "L.A. Freeway" serves as sort of a mission statement for the album as a whole with its theme of leaving the urban life behind and getting back to one's roots.

The homey, homespun vibe continues straight through until the last notes of the closing song, a Christmas Eve jam on "Silent Night" with Clark, Steve Earle, Rodney Crowell, Steve Young, Susannah Clark (guy's wife), and Richard Dobson. Along the way, chairs creak, whiskey is sipped, audience members have important questions for whoever's singing, microphone stands make noise, and people come and go.

Guy Clarke contributes three other songs to the album, including an early version of his classic "Desperadoes Waiting For A Train," about "a man who was kinda like my grandfather, but was really my grandma's boyfriend." It is a perfect song about how this man helped raise him, with lyrics as sharp as a knife and scenes as sharply drawn as any ever have been, and it is made even stronger by the care the producers have put into sequencing the record. You see, just before "Desperadoes" is a wonderful David Allan Coe song called "I Still Sing The Old Songs" which closes with a few lines from "Red River Valley." "Desperadoes" opens with a mention of the same song. Rather than seeming gimmicky, touches like these elevate Heartworn Highways from a mere compilation to a statement about what country music meant to some of its future saviors.

It should be clear by now that I am not so much reviewing this album as falling in love with it. This was not a sure thing - I don't always have patience for confessional living-room singers and their confessional living-room songs. Performances like these live or die on the quality of the writing. But despite the fact that these are songwriters still learning their craft (Townes Van Zandt's "Waiting Around To Die" is actually, so he claims, the very first song he ever wrote), there really isn't a single dud, outright cliche, or bit of hokey filler here. And although the homespun authenticity of the whole thing sometimes feels a little studied, a little put-on, that's a minor sin to commit in the making of music this good. I could try to run down more highlights from this album, but the truth is, you're either going to dig all of it or none of it, and I wouldn't feel right choosing this Steve Earle song over that Townes Van Zandt when they are all pretty much gold.

If Hank Williams III's most recent album is his Moby Dick, a strenuous and difficult work about struggling with forces beyond his control, Heartworn Highways is more like Lake Wobegon Days, an intelligent, smart, and unpretentious album of people singing songs about living the way they want to, and what it means to them. Heaven and hell don't seem as close as friends, whiskey, and the velvet black of a Tennessee night, and all these geniuses love each other's company. It's just a little sad that all these artists who showed so much promise in 1976, who were kicking hard against the rigid conformity of Nashville's establishment, still remain marginal (if highly respected) figures in the scene they tried to topple. Still, whatever happened after, and whether or not their revolution succeeded and on what terms, Heartworn Highways is a fine chronicle of a great time in country music history.

At Unfogged, Alameida notes something that I've been meaning to do for a while now. In fact, Chainsaw Mick and I often close our conversations in the exact same way.

Now I can never become President. (This is the one thing standing in my way.)