It’s been more than a month since my last confession, and not much has changed. In particular, the grind of COVID-19 around here hasn’t really slowed down, staying just below the red line where hospitals won’t be able to keep up with the demand for beds but not moving down much below it, either.
For me, the biggest surprise is how quickly I have become adjusted to just staying at home. This was hard at first, and I had to go on a couple of 15-mile or so drives around northern Virginia just to feel some human contact and see something other than my neighborhood. I no longer have that issue; I haven’t been more than a couple of miles from my house in weeks now and I spend almost all my days in a four-block radius.
Meanwhile, summer crowds are showing up in beach towns, with a lot of folks not wearing masks and just pretending everything is the same as it ever was. I’m not sure how long that’s going to last but I give it about a month — basically, long enough for this to create a new surge of cases.
It is very hard for me to accept that some people have decided to die – or worse yet, to kill someone else – because they needed to get some boardwalk fries in Ocean City. But they have, and while most of them are probably going to get lucky, some of them won’t. Those folks don’t realize yet that they’re living the last few weeks of their lives, and that their candle is about to go out because they refused to believe what they were told by health and science professionals. It breaks my heart.
Lots of things break my heart these days. Our government is in shambles and is being looted before our eyes; thousands of people are dying unnecessarily; we are in the midst of learning some very, very hard lessons that should have been much easier. I have accepted the fact that this grind might take years to resolve. A lot of people seem to think it’ll end any day now. It won’t.
In early February, I sat on a chartered cruise ship in the Caribbean, feeling lucky and listening to live performances by dozens of my favorite musicians. Then something odd (and a little chilling) happened.
On the second day of the five-day trip, the captain announced that the buffet would be closed for a few hours, and food from it would be served by the staff after that. I assumed that someone on the ship showed signs of a norovirus, the bane of cruises everywhere, but I also was mildly concerned about that coronavirus thing that was vaguely brewing in China. But everyone adjusted, there were no other apparent health issues, and most of us seemed to have a good time for the rest of the cruise.
How ridiculous that all seems now.
Like so many people, I have been deeply struggling and occasionally in despair over the situation we currently find ourselves in. It is hard to keep it together when you think you might be dead soon, and that your hopes are tied to what passes for the U.S. government right now. And it is crushing to have spent decades preparing and saving for retirement, only to have those plans washed away in a few weeks. I wonder if I ever will see my office again, or go to a baseball game, or see my brother and sisters in person; my family had a Zoom get-together a couple of weeks ago and I managed to smile until it was done, after which I lost my shit for a while.
Eventually, I landed in a place that offers cold comfort, but that’s still a form of comfort. All of this is out of my control. All of this has become utterly unpredictable. I have accepted this and am living my life a day at a time. I just focus on getting through today and solving its problems as I go along. I don’t focus on the possibility of job loss, sudden health reversal or even worse; I don’t dwell on what kind of a world might still be here if I even manage to retire. Life is just a series of days now, one after the other, with no distant horizon to look at or aim for.
People say these things always end. That took a couple of years for the last pandemic, and this one in some ways is worse. What we’re doing now is designed to keep a brush fire smouldering instead of flaming uncontrollably, but it’s still a fire and we’re the brush. Eventually, you’ll get singed if you’re lucky and turned into ash if you’re not. I know the best scientific minds in the world are working on a vaccine, but I also know how those efforts have gone against coronaviruses in general. I am more hopeful that a treatment can be developed, as opposed to a vaccine.
This all would be a crap way for me to close a really great story of a life, but I don’t think too much about that any more. For now, I live for today.
I still buy new music, mostly in the rootsy/Americana genre these days, but I rarely find the albums really transformative and I have a tendency to move on to the next selection fairly quickly. It’s also fair to say that my tastes before I was 25 ran straight to Top 40 artists. But I started getting flavors of other things once I moved out of smaller towns, and those completely changed my musical interests.
Here are 20 albums and compilations that have really affected my tastes over the past 35 years. There’s a surprising amount of blues in here, and surprisingly little of the Americana I listen to now, but there are a lot of albums that kind of mix up various genres a little bit. Three chords and the truth, baby: That’s where the soul of man can be found.
These are in no particular order.
Sonnyboy Williamson — More Real Folk Blues: I first heard a Sonnyboy recording in the mid-1980s in Little Rock (a fact that is true about a lot of these picks). I was a casual harp player and could not believe the tone he was getting out of that thing, which wasn’t being distorted by a cheap mic or run through a guitar amp. It was just beautiful. And his songs were word paintings. This album is packed with some of his greatest performances.
Beat Farmers — Van Go: The whole Southern California rock-country-punk edge thing in the back half of the 1980s was vastly appealing to me, and this was one of the best bands of the era. I always thought they could have fit on the Top 40 but they never really got there, and I sang (badly) a version of ‘Riverside’ for years in the band I played in at the time.
BoDeans – Love&Hope&Sex&Dreams: I still play this album fairly regularly. “Runaway” always seems like a perfect single to me, as does “Still the Night.”
The Cobra Records Story: This is one of the few compilations on this list. I knew nothing about Cobra when I bought it, but the CD selection looked good in the record store. Soon I was listening to such hip songs as “Shake It” by Duke Jenkins and His Orchestra, along with early stuff by Otis Rush and Buddy Guy. Willie Dixon recorded here, too, after he’d had it with getting his royalties ripped off by Chess Records. It’s just a great set of discs that stand in alternative with a similar set from Chess.
James Harman — 2 Sides to Every Story: I like harp players who do more than just play endless “Look at me!” riffs, and I specially like guys who can front a band with their voice and personality. Harman scores on those fronts, and he’s also an excellent songwriter. I covered “If the Shoe Fits, Wear It” from this album for decades.
Drive-By Truckers — Southern Rock Opera: My introduction to the DBTs, as well as an intro to one of my favorite phrases: ‘The duality of the Southern thing.’ On the surface, this seems like a rockin’ album from a bunch of rough-edged Southerners; below the surface, it is something very, very different.
Jason Isbell — Southeastern: This album was my introduction to Isbell, who had just gotten sober and married after some rough times, and he’s subsequently risen to the front of the alt-country/Americana movement. You are dead inside if you can get through this album without being broken open a little; “Cover Me Up” will probably still be his signature song 30 years from now.
Junior Wells — Hoodoo Man Blues: A classic blues album from the guy who taught John Lennon how to play harp. It has great originals and covers, and is funky in a James-Brown-meets-the-blues kind of way. “Messin’ With the Kid,” in particular, is an absolute blues standard.
Little Charlie & the Nightcats — All the Way Crazy: This was my introduction to a jump blues band that toured nationally for decades, fronted by the incomparable Rick Estrin on harp and Charlie Baty on guitar. Estrin still tours under ‘Rick Estrin & the Nightcats’ and Baty passed recently; they both remain enormous influences.
Lone Justice: Maria McKee twirling around in a gingham dress and singing the raveup “He’s Workin’ Late” is one of my favorite memories of the 1980s. I loved every cut on this album and the band was even better live. Decades later, I learned that Tom Petty actually wrote “Ways to Be Wicked,” and I began performing the song on stage myself.
Los Lobos — How Will the Wolf Survive?: This album, more than any other, shifted my musical tastes. I first heard it at a memorable party in (I think) 1986, loved it from the opening riff of “Don’t Worry, Baby,” and got pulled into a rabbit hole of L.A.-based roots music that dominated my tastes for the rest of the decade.
Lucinda Williams — Car Wheels on a Gravel Road: I’d heard of Lucinda a little before ‘Car Wheels’ came out, but specifically remember reading a Rolling Stone critical rave about this album and thinking, “This sounds perfect.” It was. In addition to the powerful songwriting and some of Lucinda’s best singing, the album was just a testament to the power of tone. Some of my favorite guitar tones of all time are on this album.
Magic Sam — West Side Soul: It should be on every blues lover’s Top 10 album list, I believe. There’s his iconic cover of “Sweet Home Chicago,” his blues moaner “I Feel So Good,” and his hair-raising take of Willie Dixon’s “My Love Will Never Die.” Want to know what blues music feels like? Here you go.
New Orleans Party Classics: This Rhino compilation from the early 1990s is just an excellent introduction into the sounds of that city. Opening up with Professor Longhair’s “Go to the Mardi Gras,” and hitting on such chestnuts as “Iko Iko,” “Big Chief Part 1” and “Lil’ Liza Jane,” I have played this particular album hundreds of times. It cemented my love of New Orleans and its music.
Rod Piazza — Live at B.B. King’s: I am much more influenced by 1990s blues harp players than by the blues masters, and Piazza is the master of the West Coast/jump blues sound that I love the most. He has plenty of technique but even better tone, and it’s shown off here better than any other album of his I’ve heard.
Southern Culture on the Skids — Dirt Track Date: How many times have I seen S.C.O.T.S over the last 25 years or so? I bet it’s been at least a dozen. But this is the album that still sticks with me, with its salutes to fried chicken, demolition derbies, cheap wine, Little Debbies and general southern celebrating. “White trash? Don’t call me that,” the band sings. They’re still singing that.
The Fabulous Thunderbirds — Girls Go Wild: That’s actually not the name of the band’s eponymous first album, but everyone calls it that, and it’s influenced whole generations of rootsy guitarists and harp players. This was my introduction to Kim Wilson, and through this album and this band, I eventually got to know the music of people like Lazy Lester, Jerry “Boogie” McCain, Slim Harpo and other artists I had never heard of. I’ve never met a blue musician of my generation who dislikes this album.
The Fire-Fury Records Story: This was a retrospective I stumbled across in a record store in the early 1990s. I bought it on a whim and played it again and again and again. It is loaded with great music, much of it from artists I didn’t know — Fire and Fury were labels run out of a Harlem record store — but I subsequently played several of these songs in bands. I fell into a serious Lightnin’ Hopkins obsession thanks to this package, learned more about King Curtis and Louis Jordan (the latter through covers on this album) and went a little nuts over Titus Turner’s “People Sure Act Funny (When They Get a Little Money). So. Good.
Kim Wilson — Tigerman: This was Wilson’s first solo album, and it was bluesier than the slightly broader offerings of the T-Birds. It’s another offering to the altar of great harmonica tone, and the covers are sooooo tasty.
“I wish it need not have happened in my time,” said Frodo. “So do I,” said Gandalf, “and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”
A few months ago, I talked to my wife about how lucky I felt. I’ve lived this bizarre Zelig-like life in which incredible things just keep happening around me, and I’ve had more adventures and fun than I ever could have hoped or deserved. And now I’m living through all of this. It is not an adventure and it is not fun, but if it claims me (which is unlikely even in the worst of circumstances, a fact all of us need to keep in mind), I will have little to complain about. Even as this darkness closes in, I feel grateful.
The Nats sucked. Let’s not kid ourselves: In May, it looked like the seven-year run of championship-caliber baseball was over for this team, which sat at 19-31 and looked truly terrible getting even there. I had given up on them and thought it was time to dump players and get a new manager. I, of course, was wrong.
Fast forward to today, after the Nats completed what I’d argue was the greatest comeback climb in the history of baseball. They won a dramatic and improbable World Series, 4 games to 3, coming from behind yet still again in Game 7 to break the Houston Astros. The mighty Astros — a resonable pick for the best team of the last 20 years — probably still wonder what hit them. So do I.
I wonder because I lived through the pain of those four other playoff years, including two years (2012 and 2017) when I thought the Nats were baseball’s best team. I lived through the most painful loss I’ve ever witnessed — the Game 5 collapse against St. Louis in 2012, when the Nats blew a 6-0 lead. I also was in the park in 2017, when the Cubs came back and won in a deciding game that had waves of nearly indescribable weirdness.
I thought this team was haunted. I actually was kind of glad its run looked like it was over, because I thought a few rebuilding years could pass, I could enjoy some non-pressure summer baseball, and perhaps the next World Series contender wouldn’t remember the horrors that the postseason provided. But no: The Nats roared back and made the playoffs as a wild card. I waited for the pain I was certain would come.
Actually, the wild card game against Milwaukee never felt painful. The Brewers scored early, handed over a 3-1 lead to the best reliever in the National League, and this looked like a garden-variety defeat that would end a comeback season. I admired it for what it was and settled in to enjoy the park for the last two innings of the year.
And the Nats scored three runs and won 4-3, with the winning run scoring on a bad-hop error from a Milwaukee outfielder.
Los Angeles was next. The Dodgers were clearly the National League’s best team and had gone to the World Series the past two years. Predictably, the Nats fell beind, both in overall games (2 to 1) and in the score in the deciding Game 5 (3-0). And they won that game, gloriously, with an improbable homer-driven rally against one of the best pitchers in baseball, followed by a soul-crushing grand slam in extra innings. What was happening here?
I felt sorry for St. Louis. I grew up a Cardinals fan, as I’ve often stated here, and most of my family live in Missouri and remain incredibly loyal. They remembered 2012, reminded me about it and expected a similar Nationals collapse, if not an even easier series victory for the Cardinals. Instead, the Cards got swept and two Nationals pitchers carried no-hitters into the late innings.
Next: The World Series. Holy shit, the World Series! I didn’t feel any real stress; almost anyone who knew anything about baseball considered Houston the big favorite, and even a complete Nats collapse couldn’t erase the joy of this season. In Vegas, the Nats were the biggest underdog since the Rockies in ’07 (the Rockies got swept), and deservedly so.
You know how that ended. More comebacks; the Nats trailed in every game they won, became the first champ in history to win four road games, and just generally sowed the all seeds of crazy. I’ll never see another World Series like it. It’s highly unlikely there will ever be another World Series like it.
I remember the exact moment I thought the Nats would win the series. It came after Lance Bregman hit that first-inning homer in Game 6 for Houston and adopted that ridiculous I-just-won-the-World-Series gaze-and-trot. It was as though he had learned nothing about his opponent. But Juan Soto adopted the same gaze-and-trot after a huge homer a few innings later, in an act of fantastic trolling, and the Astros fell. Then Kendrick snuck that homer over the wall and off the foul pole in Game 7; the pole rang like a bell, and you knew for whom the bell tolled. And then there was an epic parade a few days later.
This series was so improbable, so bizarre, so exciting, that it still hasn’t entirely sunk in. I’d rate this Nats team as the weakest of the five that have played in the post-season since 2012. Yet they are the ones who are World Series champs, defeating two incredibly powerful teams along the way, and no one can ever take that away from them.
