I’m a little baffled by the uproar over this cover, which has proved controversial even ten years after the event. The music is specifically about 9/11, even to the point of including treated excerpts of 911 calls and first responders alerts. If this image is inappropriate, wouldn’t those found sound elements also be inappropriate? Where does the line get drawn? I think that part of healing from this tragedy involves using the images and sounds we associate with it in new ways? 

What bothers me about this album cover, then, isn’t that it depicts the second plane just seconds before it hit the Towers. It’s that it’s a terrible image. The sanserif front is just dull, and the photo treatment looks cheap. I’d rather see a starkly untreated image here, with that unnervingly clear blue sky intact.

Or, better yet, I’d rather see a slightly more artful image from that day used, one that isn’t quite so direct. Seth Colter Walls over at Slate has some interesting alternatives, and to that I’ll add my own: a clear blue sky background, with a bit of black smoke invading the bottom of the frame. And since Nonesuch will likely be packaging this with a signature slipcover for the jewel case, I’d have no text anywhere on the exterior.

Ozark singer Almeda Riddle performing “Poor Wayfaring Stranger” a cappella

This guy has a new double live album that’s more talking than singing, funnier than most stand-up records, and more tuneful than just about any other guy with an acoustic guitar. There are killer squirrels, death threats, onstage tackles, dead mentors, and Elizabeth Cook:

http://www.the9513.com/under-attack-by-squirrels-interview-with-todd-snider/

One of the hallmarks of your songwriting is that you’ll have sympathy for someone like that, or like the guy trying to break into your house on “Highland Street Incident.”

I tried to make up that song for a long time, and I finally thought I could tell their side of the story. I bet they were having a harder night than me. It took me a long time to figure that out, because he hit me with a fuckin’ gun. It took me a long time to forgive him for that. (laughs) ‘Cause it fucked my life up. I was taking a hammer to the mailbox for about a month after that. I didn’t want to get hit by a gun again. I knew that. That was all I could think about for a long time. And then one year that lifted and I thought, how big of a drag would it be to be a crackhead in Orange Mound, Memphis? My goodness. I wish I’d had money to give him. It’s like when people don’t want to give a bum money because he’ll go spend it on alcohol. But I think, “He lives outside. Can’t the guy have a drink? What if he wants to spend it on alcohol? Shit, here’s a little for food, here’s a little for booze.”

A little bit of my youth, documentarized

Disco bunny

From my interview with Marideth Sisco, who deferred cancer treatment so she could shoot her scene in Winter’s Bone:

I was struck by the party scene, where you’re singing with the group of musicians. It really presents Ozarks music as a living thing, not something that’s part of the past but something that occupies a role in everyday life.

Absolutely. That’s very true in this culture. The music tradition here goes very deep and very far back. A lot of people will look at the music of this area and call it derivative because it certainly does have a lot of the same tunes as the Appalachians and all the music of the upper South. But again, it’s that folk process. It changes according to the situation, and we excel at sad ballads because that’s just a fact of life here. The Ozarks isn’t an easy place to live. It makes for a hard life for a lot of people, and there’s a lot of struggle and a lot of heartache, but feelings and families run really deep here. The music becomes a way to celebrate that.

Read the rest here: http://www.the9513.com/high-on-a-mountain-interview-with-marideth-sisco/

Don’t get me wrong: I love Vince Guaraldi’s “Charlie Brown Christmas” soundtrack and the Fleshtones’ “Hooray for Santa Claus” cover. But I grew up singing Christmas songs in church or in the car on the way to grandma’s on Christmas day, which means I think of holiday music as participatory, not passive. You’re supposed to do the singing yourself, while you trim the tree or shovel the damn snow off the sidewalk or count to ten and try not to punch an airport line-cutter in the face. Listening to a pop artist cover a yuletide chestnut (never mind that pop artists have historically made songs into chestnuts) always seems a little lazy on my part. I know the words.

From my interview with Justin Townes Earle:

When I do cocaine, I’m not capable of going to sleep at night. I can never get enough [cocaine? sleep?], and that makes my behavior erratic. And a lot of bad shit happens. I can’t talk about what happened in Indianapolis because it’s still at trial. But the reports that came out in the papers… other than the fact that I was probably intoxicated and that I did break some things in the dressing room, the rest of the story is false. That’s for sure. I don’t give a shit how messed up I get. Some of the shit it says I did in there are things I would never do in a million years.

Read the article here: http://www.villagevoice.com/2010-12-15/music/justin-townes-earle-urban-cowboy/

I know you keep a very busy pace writing. Does that leave you time to consume much — read books, watch movies?

 I watch a lot of films. I seem to do alright. I read every day and I watch I’m notorious for watching a lot of movies and a lot of really bad movies as well. I’ve had that habit for years, so I’ve seen everything. It’s actually come in really helpful now that I do screenwriting and stiuff like that. I can reference stuff that nobody’s ever seen or nobody would ever bother seeing. I know what not to do as well as what to do.

By bad movies, do you mean old creature features? Bad horror? 

Just romantic comedies, all of that sort of stuff. Chick flicks and teen movies and all that sort of stuff that you don’t really most sane people don’t go near. I don’t watch a lot of horror because I find most of it really tedious. Or science fiction. But pretty much everything else is fair game.

[Also, if you haven’t caught Grinderman on tour, damn it’s highly recommended.]