I realized today that I haven’t engaged in this playthrough of my records. ‘My uncle took the message and he wrote it on the wall,’ yeah, sure. That doesn’t make me think of Chuck Berry trying to get back with his ex; I’m thinking of mix tapes of songs with operators, party lines, 10-cent calls from pay phones in booths—all gone. The songs have gone meta.
Roy Acuff pulled me back into the music. I didn’t expect it—he’s country about one step removed from the yodeling brakeman, but I reacted to the emotionally honest songs. He did Titanic as if it were ripped from the headlines, but it happened 40 years before he wrote the song—both World Wars occurred in the interim, nuclear weapons, the rise of communism; it wasn’t top of mind.
Streamlined Cannonball is a song about a fast train, and he played it like a dirge. Acuff wrote it, and I don’t rush to criticize an auteur, but Doc Watson’s version leaves it way up the track.
I should be embarrassed by how much I like Don’t Worry ‘Bout the Mule (Just Load the Wagon). It is a great break-up song (but my read is that he really doesn’t mean it). When I was producing copy for a living, the design manager would sometimes ask me if I could make the deadline if she assigned me another project. I always said, don’t worry ‘bout the mule, just load the wagon.
converselyspeaking 