Snobbin: Beautiful Trash in the Pop Culture Gutter

Time once again emerges the winner in its perennial battle to change our hearts and minds, ravaging (perhaps, that's too harsh a word) along parameters that stretch from our youth to our deaths. What are these you ask? Only the old man himself knows and he's not telling. Winter fades to spring on the Elk River and the flood waters recede, streaming rivulets of mud and murk. I pack again for the cabin trip, like every summer since my summers began, excited, except for those few years in high school, when I fled from my parents, a high-minded but foolish youth, escaping into books and records, with friends. We surreptitiously visited the cabin on weekday nights, beers in hand, talk in mind. I pack and pack some more -- the right records, the right books, the right attitude -- looking forward to seeing the Elk overrun its bed or settle back into its groove, and anticipating the smell of the forest, the plants, the early summer.  I make my annual lists and call around...

Adam's House Cat was the first band that featured Drive-By Truckers' mainstays, Patterson Hood and Mike Cooley. Their first and only record, Town Burned Down, has never been officially released, even though it provides the blueprint for everything the two have done for the past thirty years. It is, perhaps, too lo-fi for those who like the more recent direction the Truckers have taken, post Jason Isbell and Shonna Tucker, and it surely harkens back to the pre- Southern Rock Opera era of the band. I first heard their song, "Runaway Train," after downloading it on Ninebullets.net a few years ago and was hooked. I hope it someday gets an official release, but tracks have turned up on the internet and the Truckers have streamed it on their Facebook page. A few tracks can be found on YouTube, at least for now. Archive.org hosts an excellent live reunion show Live at Nuci's Space from December 1st, 2006 that captures the power and variety of AHC. The band existe...

Simone Felice  has traveled a far different path on his solo records than his work in the Felice Brothers. While they added extra, electronic instrumentation after he left the band on Celebration, Florida, Simone has explored the vagaries and sound of 1970's folk singer-songwriter pop, channeling the likes of James Taylor and Randy Newman, yet writing striking and relevant modern songs. Both of his solo efforts are low key, literate affairs miles away from the rocking Americana of the Felice Brothers, but as memorable as their early efforts. Felice has an ear for quiet melodies and poetic phrases -- worn vocal exercises mingle with catchy harmony vocals. "Our Lady of the Gun" from 2014's revelatory Strangers catches him at full strength, sounding like the understated, yet equally tragic, sister song to The Felice Brother's "Frankie's Gun!" The song is stark and melancholic, yet clear and well-defined. Felice sings, "there's a stranger...

The buzzing of far away tools run roughshod over my static mind as the waxing of Lou Reed relates the modern state of "viciousness." Another day in the intellectual rat race of love, shattered by promises of work and relaxation, mugging for some far off camera Will you be the true prospect, or clear delineation and demarkation, of a confident future, nay past, clowning like a businessman? The terminus of this period of stagnation ends in three bangs, like celebrity deaths or folkloristic tropes or statistics -- the year is clearly marked as 2014, the jigsaw puzzle of being bailed out is consistently cut from my parent's best wishes. The lines of a Catholic school girlhood are marked clearly on your face; lines of my pagan youth mark mine like the aged face of a forgotten prom queen. Tell me again of your hopes and dreams. No rest is all that matters. We run. We fall. We continue on and on. The fuzzy cat with a scepter knocks us down like pawns. The leaves...

Channahon State Park in Wills County, Illinois,  near the confluence of the DuPage, Des Plaines, and Kankakee rivers. We walked on a trail that follows the old Illinois & Michigan Canal route. The hollow log and the rusted loop are my favorites.  Read about the canal here:  http://www.canalcor.org/CCA_Hist.html

“There are some good things to be said about walking. Not many, but some. Walking takes longer, for example, than any other known form of locomotion except crawling. Thus it stretches time and prolongs life. Life is already too short to waste on speed." -Edward Abbey Starved Rock State Park in LaSalle County, Illinois.

Spring and summer always puts me in the mood for Sam Cooke. I wake up most mornings humming a Cooke tune, hoping that my day will be sunny and bright or at least incessantly hummable.  I have still only worked my way through part of Peter Guralnick's well-researched Dream Boogie, which will unfortunately have to wait until after my exams in August but listening to these singles makes me want to jump back in. "Chain Gang" was a successful single for Cooke when he released it on on July 26, 1960, and it has become one of his most ubiquitous and well-known songs, as well as his first for RCA Victor after a stellar run on Keen records. The song's call and response chants are instantly recognizable, and, despite its theme, the song is typically upbeat; Cooke narrates the story of the prisoner's daily work lives, but allows them to hope as they slave away under the burning sun. Perhaps the song plays as a bit naive for modern audiences, but it still remains part of...