Treasured Archives

The past five months have seen me obsessively combing through my iTunes library, trying to put everything to rights — making sure the information for each song is complete, making sure the year is the year of the song's original release, retrieving the correct artwork, getting rid of duplicates and overlap, deleting songs I never want to hear again, moving others to my music files so I've got them, but don't have to listen to them right now, bringing other files up to date by adding missing songs, etc. So far, I'm only up to the letter "D." And that's only because I skipped through the hundreds of Bob Dylan songs at a rapid clip. I'll go back to them later and address the matter of duplicates and such.

It's been fun in a crazy, obsessive sort of way. So much has changed in the digital universe since I first began building my library, so many old classic albums are now available that weren't available even a few years ago. In the "old days" (2005), I could only get certain songs by buying them off of compilations. Now, the original albums are available as mp3s, and it's enough to make a girl weep. My record collection and turntable are both in storage, but luckily I'm now able to rebuild that library in this format. I'll never find the Nancy Ames LP I played to death, but I've come upon some wonderful stuff. This week, for example, I got my hands on the first Creedence Clearwater album I ever owned: Bayou Country. I've played "Born on the Bayou" every day since, because I cannot get enough! That was not a song that appeared on the compilation I bought, yet it's my very favorite, and hearing it again is like going home — not to a particular place, but to myself, the person I was in 1969 and in some ways still remain. A joyous homecoming of sorts, in ways that only music can give you.

YouTube has several "BotB" videos, including a live performance at Woodstock. But I chose this one because there's nothing to distract you from the song. Turn up the volume!

Abbondanza!

It's not every year that nearly every single one of your favorite bands releases a new CD...and they all turn out to be good! But that's what's happened for me this year, and I fairly swim in gratitude. So much listening pleasure, and I don't even own them all yet.

Let's start with Bon Iver. This is a band I fell in love with the first time I heard "Flume," as these pages will attest. This year's album is a thing of captive beauty, a sound that could not have been produced by any other heart/mind/talent than Justin Vernon's. That's art, my friend -- a work of a unique living soul that manages to be singular in its expression while universal in its force. If you haven't read this Pitchfork interview on the making of Bon Iver, Bon Iver, I think you'll enjoy it.

Here's "Calgary."

On to other Old Favorites who came out with new work this year: Okkervil River, Fleet Foxes, My Morning Jacket, Wye Oak, Steve Earle, Gillian Welch, Lucinda Williams, and even The Posies! And while I do not yet own each of their new CDs, I was able to give most of them a First Listen at NPR (thank you, Bob, Robin, Stephen, et al), and from what I can tell, they're good and I will buy them.

In the New Favorites category, there's Yuck, the Joy Formidable, the tUnE-yArDs (God, do I really have to type it like that? Will never mention them again.), Smith Westerns, The Lonely Forest, The Antlers, The Felice Brothers, and Other Lives. And I'm probably forgetting someone wonderful.

[I did! It was Zach Rogue of Rogue Wave, who's back recording as Release the Sunbird. His new CD is called Come Back to Us, and it's wonderful.]

Most regrettable purchase: The Head and The Heart. It's nice in a harmless sort of way, but it never hooked me, despite repeated plays.

Biggest surprise purchase: Adele! I'm not a pop fan, but her Tiny Desk Concert was so mind-blowing, I had to have it.

Old Favorite yet to come: Wilco. I was not a fan of Wilco's last CD, though I deeply love this band. If their new CD, out next month, doesn't disappoint, then it will have been a perfect year for me.

In Which I Reminisce About My Folk Singer Days

When I was sixteen, I wanted devoutly to be Mary Travers. I wanted the blonde hair she swung so saucily onstage, I wanted her awesome cheek bones, but most of all I wanted her rich alto voice. I did what I could in my small-town way, forming a group called "Three Hoots and Annie." So pathetic, that name. A desperate play on the term hootenanny, which was used at the time to denote the many folk-music gatherings going on around the country. I staged a show at our high school, convincing my classmates they were really folkies at heart. It was a small school. About 25% of us performed, and the other 75% showed up to cheer us on. What else was there to do on a Friday night, once football season was over?

The Three Hoots and I went on to perform at Rotary Club and various other homely functions. The capstone of our success was being invited to appear on a Phoenix television show whose name by happy chance I can't recall. It could have been "Folk Sing," but I won't swear to it. In any case, I do remember my family bunching up around the television set on a Saturday afternoon, myself included, to partake of our celebrity. Title, fade-in, and there we were, in glorious black and white -- Sandy on guitar, Mike on banjo, Teri on upright bass, and I, the Mary Travers wannabe, warbling sincerely and unmistakably off-key. Thank God there were no re-runs.

There was a folk club in Scottsdale, Baboquivari, where legitimate singers performed, and dates invariably took me there, bless them. It's where I wanted to go. We'd sip warm apple cider and listen to the resident folkie croon "Scotch and Soda" or whatever else the Kingston Trio had popularized. And then, poof, the folk trend gave way to the wondrous insanity of The Beatles, and that was that.

Until now. Witness Robin Pecknold of Fleet Foxes single-handedly resurrecting interest. I say this knowing he's not alone, of course, but wishing to pay tribute to how wonderfully he does it. If you haven't seen the tour doc he posted from this Spring, when he opened for Joanna Newsom, you're in for a treat.

Fifty Favorite Songs of the Decade

It’s not easy to cull fifty songs out of a decade’s worth of listening, but I’ve attempted it nevertheless. I’m not claiming these are the best songs of the last ten years, only that they are my personal favorites -- the songs I listened to again and again, the ones I most often combined on mixtapes and know now by heart. I wasn’t able to select a top ten. A top twenty was the best I could do. I present them to you in alphabetical order, followed by thirty of their distinguished brethren.

Top Twenty Faves:

Ash Wednesday, Elvis Perkins
Cannot Get Started, Handsome Furs
Come Pick Me Up, Ryan Adams
Crazy, Gnarls Barkley
Favorite, Neko Case
Flume, Bon Iver
The Greatest, Cat Power
Hard Feelings, Constantines
Hot Burrito #1, Robb Strandlund
I Never, Rilo Kiley
Jesus, Etc., Wilco
Maine Island Lovers, Okkervil River
Muzzle of Bees, Wilco
Poison Cup, M. Ward
Rita, Los Lobos
Secret Meeting, The National
A Song for You, Whiskeytown
Soon Enough, Constantines
So Says I, The Shins
Where to Begin, My Morning Jacket


Thirty More to Love:

3rd Planet, Modest Mouse
50 Dollar Whore, Anne McCue
Anonymous Face, Quix*O*Tic
Blue, Lucinda Williams
Breath Thin, Tulsa
Call It A Ritual, Wolf Parade
For Real, Okkervil River
Golden, My Morning Jacket
Gone for Good, The Shins
Head Home, Midlake
Hex, Neko Case (Catherine Irwin cover)
I Envy the Wind, Lucinda Williams
I’ll Be Here Awhile, 311
I Will Sing You Songs, My Morning Jacket
Karen, The National
Lemme Count the Ways, Pillows
A Long Dream, Tyler Ramsey
Mahgeetah, My Morning Jacket
Making Pies, Patty Griffin
Mercury, Kathleen Edwards
My Love for You Is Real, Ryan Adams
The Opposite of Hallelujah, Jens Lekman
Over Time, Lucinda Williams
Porchlight, Neko Case
Rain, Patty Griffin
Red, Okkervil River
Sewn Up (Exhumed & Groomed), Rogue Wave
Three Faint Calls, The Greenhornes
The Velocity of Saul at the Time of His Conversion, Okkervil River
Your Eyes Told, Jesse Sykes & the Sweet Hereafter

Not That Kind of Guy

“Hot Burrito #1,” a song by Gram Parsons and Chris Ethridge that first appeared on their 1969 Flying Burrito Brothers LP, The Gilded Palace of Sin, has always haunted, mesmerized and half-embarrassed me, when it wasn’t making me swoon. It bypasses the usual artifice by being extremely plain-spoken in its message, and by marrying its lyrics to a melody that is in no way sentimental but is in every way melancholic.

You may be sweet and nice
But that won't keep you warm at night
'Cause I'm the one who showed you how
To do the things you're doing now

He may feel all your charms
He may hold you in his arms
But I'm the one who let you in
I was right beside you then

Once upon a time you let me feel you deep inside
And nobody knew, nobody saw
Do you remember the way you cried?
I'm your toy, I'm your ol' boy
But I don't want no one but you to love me
No, I wouldn't lie
You know I'm not that kind of guy

She’s with someone else. He’s aching and not ashamed to say so. He goes so far as to remind her about the time they made love, and how she cried. Does it get any more personal than that? Yet he doesn’t take it farther. He pulls back at that point, says he knows he’s just her toy, but that he doesn’t want anyone else but her, making me ache for and with the guy.

Forty years later the song has been recorded by all kinds of people. My favorite version is by Robb Strandlund, perhaps because he slows it down, thereby increasing the swoon factor. Here’s the Flying Burrito Brothers version, set to stills:




And here it is by the Japanese country-rock band The Ma’am. If not even a Japanese country-rock band can ruin it, "Hot Burrito #1" must be a hell of a good song.

Will Sheff Is So For Real

The other day as I sat in my gyno's reception area waiting to be examined (probed, humiliated), I turned for solace to my iPod and the Okkervil River playlist. A few months earlier, after listening to them nonstop for two years, I'd taken their CDs out of my car, and already the hankering was returning. I'd never grown truly tired of them.

The first song that came up was "For Real" -- the Black Sheep Boy version, not the longer cut from the For Real EP. It hit me with such force, I put it on repeat and just listened trancelike to it over and over and over again until a nurse in a pink jacket stepped out and called my name, destroying the magical reverie I had going.

Will Sheff may be the best young composer/songwriter we've got. His construction is brilliant. His songs move, turn, meander, crest and fall in a way I find enthralling. If there were no lyrics, I'd still be held in the grip of the song's narrative. As a writer, Sheff is as literate and poetic as they come. Each song is practically a novella unto itself, each line pregnant with sound, imagery, and meaning. A century ago, he'd have been a poet. As a singer, he's sometimes pitchy, yet his voice is very "for real" and he knows how to use it to add another emotional layer to the experience. As a performer, he's all heart, heart and soul.

Seeing Okkervil River live and watching all the elements come together was my favorite concert experience ever -- and this was in a storied Los Angeles club with a poor sound system. I can't wait to see what Sheff writes and records in the coming years. He's only going to get better, though sometimes I can't see how that's possible.

Here's a great little video of the band laying down the tracks for "For Real:"

15 Albums

The Facebook note says: Think of 15 albums that had such a profound effect on you, they changed your life or the way you looked at it. They sucked you in and took you over for days, weeks, months, years. These are the albums that, no matter how they were regarded musically, shaped your world. You use them to identify time, places, people, and emotions.

For a music lover, this is a weighty assignment indeed. It actually got me to wondering whether my life's been impacted more by records than by books, and if so, why? A book, however significant, gets read and then shelved, perhaps not to be read again for many years, whereas an album may be listened to hundreds upon hundreds of times -- in my case, consecutively! -- until it's etched a permanent groove in one's brain.

With apologies to the dozens of albums I fail to mention:

1. The Everly Brothers -- The Fabulous Style of the Everly Brothers

I begin with this because it’s the first piece of music for which I ever lay down cold, hard babysitting cash. Whereas my older sisters collect cute little ‘45s, I am not content with a sample song or two; I want the whole damned thing -- the LP. I spend many happy hours dancing around our bedroom to “Til I Kissed You.” Eventually I scratch the record into disuse with the huge coarse needle on our cheap record player.



2. Bob Dylan -- Bob Dylan

In high school I fancy myself a folk singer, ripping off ditties from Peter, Paul & Mary, the Kingston Trio, et al. Living in the Arizona desert, I have little access or exposure to anything that’s not mainstream. (Luckily, the mainstream is not yet corporatized, so things aren't as bad as they sound.) One summer I meet a boy from NYC who tips me off to Bob Dylan. I buy this album and am instantly in its thrall. To this day, “Song to Woody” brings tears to my eyes. It’s one of the purest odes Dylan ever pens, and the innocence in his young voice breaks my heart.

3. Bob Dylan -- Highway 61 Revisited

In college, my love for this album borders on obsession. There’s not a single cut that doesn’t transport me in some way. Scorpios like to plunge the depths in search of meaning, and Dylan provides so many layers, so much imagery to explore. Unlike some, I love his voice. It resonates with me. Even now, to hear his voice is to remember who I am.




4. The Beatles -- Rubber Soul

While managing to remain tuneful and 'poppy,' this is the first Beatles album that hints at a darker side. Instead of “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” it’s “I’m Looking Through You,” or “Run For Your Life.” It’s more interesting lyrically, and musically it's not like anything else I've heard. While never an obsession, it marks a period of my life that’s very happy.


Years wash by, years filled with Simon & Garfunkel, The Mamas & Papas, Sergio Mendes & Brasil ’66, Aretha Franklin, Three Dog Night, Joe Cocker, Otis Redding, Santana, more still-great Dylan.

5. Traffic -- The Low Spark of High-Heeled Boys

I’m living and working in LA. My friend Gail, who was kicked out of our sorority back in college, is now a San Francisco hippie, and not in the romantic sense, but in the scary sense: no job, a "daddy," lots of drugs. I love her anyway. She flies down to see me so she can scam the airlines for lost luggage. In addition to her stash, she brings "The Low Spark of High-Heeled Boys," as Frisco-worthy a title as any I can think of. I play it incessantly for months. “Either light up or leave me alone,” (asshole).

6. Neil Young -- Harvest

This tender, introspective album completely takes over my life. If I had a dollar for every time it spins on my turntable, I’d be a gazillionaire. Neil’s a Scorpio, too. He understands me! I pull the Murphy bed down from the wall of my crappy apartment, and I lie there and listen for hours. For months. All the while, Neil’s falling for a woman who has my exact same birthday, but isn’t me. It sucks.


7. The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band -- Will the Circle Be Unbroken

A new, blue-eyed love enters my life, and this record comes with him, bearing the stamp of all the greats of country -- Doc Watson, Mother Maybelle Carter, Earl Scruggs, Vassar Clements. “End of the World” becomes our anthem. "I'm Dreaming Tonight of My Blue Eyes" works, too.


The Ronstadt years come and go, more Aretha, the Eagles, Rita Coolidge, Bonnie Raitt, Leon Russell, Carole King, James Taylor. I have a love affair with “St. Dominic’s Preview.”

8. Emmylou Harris -- Pieces of the Sky

Emmylou and her Hot Band play all over town and my blue-eyed love and I catch her as often as we can. “Boulder to Birmingham” rips my heart into tiny pieces: her relationship with Gram Parsons, his untimely death, the image of his burning coffin evoked in song. Emmy’s nasal voice is perfect for the alt-country songs she’s writing and performing, with a tip of the hat to the Everly Brothers, of course. The Byrds, too.


9. Jackson Browne -- The Pretender

"I want to know what became of the changes we waited for love to bring/Were they only the fitful dreams of some greater awakening?" Here I'm in emotional territory I can understand. I’m still young, still a sucker for wounded boys from dysfunctional families. Jackson Browne fits the bill perfectly. I play "The Pretender" for at least a year.


The 80’s are a blur of marriage, children, and no real sleep to speak of. The music scene passes me by. I manage through the fog to latch onto X, U2, the Police, the Pretenders, British New Wave. But mostly I’m breastfeeding.

10. Neil Young -- Harvest Moon

It’s an older, gentler Neil by now, and a less exhausted me. I’m painting a quilt to be auctioned at my daughter’s school, as Neil cradles me in song -- though from a CD this time, not an LP.

More years crowd by. Now it’s music to end a marriage by: Dylan’s Masterpieces (“If You See Her Say Hello”). His divorce seems to help me through mine. Van Morrison's Moondance LP sees me to the other side.

More years, single mothering, exhaustion. I’m in Portland to visit my son Will at Reed College. He’s a music major. He introduces me to the Shins and triggers my next obsession.

11. The Shins -- Chutes Too Narrow

“A cold and wet November dawn and there are no barking sparrows, just emptiness to dwell upon. I fell into a winter slide and ended up the kind of kid who goes down chutes too narrow, just eking out my measly pies.”

This album goes on repeat for a year, maybe two. James Mercer’s precise, poetic songwriting, perfect harmonies, pointed lyrics: they're everything I look for, everything that satisfies. One minute I’m addicted to the gentle “Those to Come,” the next I’m hooked on the head-banging “So Says I.” I finally remove it from my rotation, but not because I’m tired of it.

My kids are older now. Will is out of college and in a band:

12. At Dusk -- The Summer of Promises Kept

It may seem self-serving to include an album from my son’s first band, but I don’t pretend to like something I don’t like. I’m attracted to music that’s layered and complex, and this is that, while also being somehow sunny. I play it and play it and play it, loving how the songs change, shift, and surprise me.

At this point I’ve awakened from my long musical slumber. I reach out into the universe again and fall in love with the entire indie/alt scene. I can’t believe how much freaking great music is out there waiting to be mine. Who should I mention here? Ryan Adams, Neko Case, Wilco, Wolf Parade, the Constantines, Handsome Furs. I start going to shows. I catch Okkervil River at the Troubadour, and I’m gob-smacked.

13. Okkervil River -- The Stage Names/Black Sheep Boy/Golden Dreams

There’s no separating these discs, because after I fall in love with this band at the Troubadour, I immerse myself in their entire oeuvre. First I duplicate the set list from the show, and then I make mix CDs of all their songs, till I don’t know which is from which album, or what it’s called. But I know each song intimately, because I play them without tiring for two years. I have a low saturation rate.


14. The National -- Alligator

"I think this place is full of spies/I think they're onto me." Matt Berninger and The National write and sing about the seedy underbelly of life, but do so in a way that elevates. It's something about the juxtaposition of music and lyrics, how they play against and upon each other. I don't know any other band that sounds like they do, and they're even better live!



15. Bon Iver -- For Emma, Forever Ago

The music on this album is my idea of beautiful. Honest and spare; emotional in a way that hints at something deeper. “Flume” is the cut I go back to again and again. It puts me away.

As I write, it's February 2009, and there's already a lot lot lot of really great music out! 2009 looks to be a banner year for indie music.

Music A to Z

I was sent a Facebook Note asking me to go into my music collection and choose one song for each letter of the alphabet. Here's what I quickly came up with:

And It Stoned Me -- Van Morrison
Brass in Pocket -- The Pretenders
Come Pick Me Up -- Ryan Adams
Don’t Forget About Me -- Dusty Springfield
Everything’s Coming Our Way -- Santana
Flume -- Bon Iver
Gone for Good -- The Shins
Helpless -- Neil Young
I Will Sing You Songs -- My Morning Jacket
Jesus, Etc. -- Wilco
Kokomo -- Bonnie Raitt
Low Spark of High-Heeled Boys -- Traffic
Maine Island Lovers -- Okkervil River
No Reply -- The Beatles
Over Time -- Lucinda Williams
Poison Cup -- M. Ward
Queen Jane Approximately -- Bob Dylan
Rita -- Los Lobos
Song for You (A) -- Whiskeytown
These Days -- Jackson Browne
Undun -- The Guess Who
Vox Humana -- Deerhunter
Whispering Pines -- The Band
X-Ray Eyes -- The Whore Moans
You’ve Got Your Troubles -- The Fortunes
Zombie -- The Cranberries

Except for X and Z (I think my collection had exactly two songs for each letter!), I can say that each of these is a song I love, and, again, except for X and Z, I could come up with another such list of songs I love again and again and again. And maybe I will. In the meantime, I think I'll make them into a playlist.

A New Day

It's a new day, and I come late to the party in many respects. All the music blogs published their Top Ten lists weeks ago; the lists overlapped predictably, with very few surprises among them. That's not a complaint, merely an observation. 2008 was that kind of year. I'm not sure I even have a Top Ten list for 2008, to be honest. It was such a quiet year, musically, a year in which to admire releases rather than nurse one's addiction to them. What's not to love about Fleet Foxes or Vampire Weekend, for example? Admirable, both, yet neither produced a song that got under my skin.

So what did get under my skin in 2008? Bon Iver's Flume, to be sure. It haunted me by never allowing me to possess it wholly. I love a melody or a passage or even a person's face that cannot be memorized, cannot be captured by the mind. The only way to experience it is to return to it again and again. Flume is a song I have returned to again and again, and I have yet to satisfy my interest or exhaust my enjoyment.

Second would be the Constantines' Hard Feelings. What a perfect marriage of fuzzy guitar, driving rock, and Bryan Webb's guttural vocals. Love this band. One of my regrets of the year just passed is that I had tickets to see them at the Troubadour and didn't go. I'd waited two years to see them, too. It's a long story.

Other favored songs, though not necessarily in descending order:

Tyler Ramsey - A Long Dream
The French Kicks - Said So What
Wolf Parade - Call It a Ritual
KaiserCartel - Oh No
Jenny Lewis - Acid Tongue

There are many more songs that I liked, enjoyed, or admired in 2008, but I'm confining my brief list to the ones I more than liked.

Lines that Emblazon

So many beloved songs, so many poetic moments, so many lines that emblazon themselves on the brain. I'm in the mood to catalogue some of them. Let's start with this verse by Will Sheff from the song, "The Velocity of Saul at the Time of His Conversion":

Loosen the wire, your time has expired
The only word left is "goodbye."
In my new dream the light's shining on me,
Little needles of sodium unstitch the seams of the sky.

I will never as long as I write come up with an image as beautiful as little needles of sodium unstitch the seams of the sky. It makes me want to lie down in a field in the dark of night and watch it all unfold, preferably with a friend. Whole stories come to mind.

Ducking for Cover

I like covers, don't get me wrong. Some of my best friends are covers. If it's a song I love, I'm eager to hear it done all kinds of ways by all kinds of people.

This morning, while out walking, my iPod offered up a favorite Dylan cover -- Jimi Hendrix's "All Along the Watchtower." I'm grooving along, as always, until we get to that one line where Jimi improvises because he doesn't know the words. He does a phonetic approximation of "none of them along the line know what any of it is worth." Only for Jimi, it comes out something like "none will ever on their mind, nobody of it is worth." This always cracks me up, because it makes no sense, obviously. It reminds me of my months as a foreign exchange student in South America back in the 60's. There were Friday talent shows at the school I attended, where lip-synching to American records was considered a "talent." Often, the kids didn't know the English words, but they did their best to move their lips according to the sounds. It was hilarious and touching. Just like Jimi.

In the Isle of Wight live performance video, Jimi doesn't even take a stab at the line, but in this studio version, he at least puts some syllables together.



Here's another Dylan cover I went crazy for recently: Wilco and Fleet Foxes doing "I Shall Be Released." Who better to cover this anthemic song? And with Tweedy going into his falsetto? You gotta love it.

Falling in Love

Who doesn't love falling in love? It's the greatest feeling in the world. Fortunately for me, I fall in love several times a week -- with a newly discovered artist, band, or song. I'm like a shark trolling the waters, constantly on the hunt for that new experience that's going to remind me that I'm alive and present and a part of that great web of creativity that stirs our hearts and connects us to one another. And lest you think me fickle, I never stop loving those I've already fallen for, which only enlarges the trove of pleasures from which I am able to draw.

I have fallen so crazy in love with so many bands over the last five years, I can't imagine my life without them. Okkervil River and every song Will Sheff has ever written. My Morning Jacket with their otherworldly reverb. Handsome Furs. The National. The Constantines. There are more. And when they come through town and I catch them live, it only makes me love them more.

Often I fall in love after the fact, with a group that's been around a while, but that I missed the first time around. The Pixies come to mind. This morning I was out walking with my iPod, as I am wont to do, and heard a Replacements song from 1985, "Swingin' Party," that was new to me and that I really liked. Ah, to begin the day smitten. What a lovely thing.

Here's a cover version that's really sweet by Jon Auer of The Posies.

Justin Vernon’s Birth Date

Someone give me Justin Vernon’s birth date. I have to know if my theory is correct, to wit: all the singer-songwriters I really like are water signs, like myself. I have a friend who’s an air sign. She and I have no musical tastes in common. She likes Jack Johnson; I like Ryan Adams. You get the distinction. Air signs like whatever blows across the surface of things without making a disturbance. They like to stay dry. Water signs like whatever plunges to the emotional and psychological depths. They don’t mind getting wet. I’m a double water sign, which in my case means music = tears. Doesn’t matter how many times I’ve heard something. If it makes me cry once, it’ll get me every time.

Today I watched Bon Iver on Blogotheque again. (Love their quiet little Take Away Shows. So digitally clear and so moving.) I’ve seen #93.4 a bazillion times. Made me cry anyway. Justin’s sitting there with his made-to-order bandmates, looking like nothing so much as a French Canadian woodsman. A friendly, hulking presence in the tidy apartment in Montmartre, his small audience already familiar with his songs. He starts singing “Flume” in that clear falsetto that would seem to belong to someone else and immediately I feel a catch in my throat. Then comes --

Only love is all maroon
Gluey feathers on a flume
Sky is womb and she’s the moon

-- which I take to be in praise of the female anatomy, but that’s just me. Then the band pauses mid-song as each musician goes at his instrument as if trying to unleash every last drop of emotion. The containment has been unbearable; there must be release. They beat and strum until there is release, then gently the song resumes and finishes. And, alas, Queen Bea is spent. But not too spent to watch it again.

Here's #93.4.

Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson/Chris Bell

When I saw that Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson -- henceforth referred to as MBAR, because not only do I decline to write that 28-letter name again, I ain’t even cutting and pasting it -- described his sound on MySpace as “that song your mom really likes," I had to laugh. You nailed me, MBAR. You totally nailed me. Queen Bea is a mom, and Queen Bea really likes your sound.

I’ve heard the Dylan references and I am a Dylan fan, but that’s not what speaks to me. (Anyway, one Dylan is enough.) What I heard was that shattering rawness, that on-the-verge-of-coming-apart-at-the-seams quality that characterized Chris Bell’s first (and regrettably, last) solo effort. MBAR is not as overtly revealing as Chris Bell -- Bell concealed nothing, not an ounce of the pain, not an ounce of the absurdity. He was one of those people who did not get how the rest of us were doing this thing called life. It was beyond him, until at some point he ran his car into a tree. And then he was beyond it.

MBAR’s “The Debtor” has a lot less innocence and a lot more complexity than Bell’s “I am the Cosmos.” And that is a good thing.

Here's Chris Bell, if you haven't had the pleasure of hearing this founding member of Big Star minus the band.