Can a one-legged man do a one-armed push-up?

So what have you been listening to lately? Me? You want to know what's on my record table? Well, I can guarantee you that five years ago I would have never said that my favorite new song is by a two person band that describes their music as retro-goth dance, and that they won't release their first album for another month. But they are She Wants Revenge and the song is "Tear You Apart". To be honest, I'm really not sure what is so appealing about it. It's kind of like "True Love is Blind" from Louis XIV...very simple. Then again, I've always kind of had a fondness for that which makes the simple sound good. "Boogie with Stu", Zevon's "Carmelita", the Beatles' "Lovely Rita" and "Atlantic City" (The Band's version, not Bruce's) come to mind. I think I especially like it when someone can make a very difficult piece sound simple, a la John Bonham on "Good Times, Bad Times" or everything Mark Knopfler or Jeff Amments ever touched. In that vein, listening to Jimi Hendrix is like watching an athlete who is so superiour (that's British for "superior"), that he or she doesn't appear to break a sweat while the competition labours (British for "labors") in the dust. I mean, the man (Jimi) is singing as he's playing!?!? Has no one else noticed that? Never have I seen or heard a person embrace an instrument as if it was fashioned from his own body. He may as well have been blinking or breathing as playing the guitar.

Lately, though, I've found myself attracted to roots music. Reggae and blues, mostly. I have to admit that Howlin' Wolf might be my favorite artist to listen to, ever. I first heard him when I bought a collection of blues tapes on my 8th grade east coast trip at the Smithsonian. It may have actually been my most fruitful and long-lasting experience of the entire week. I take that "may" back, it was. Sex and drugs have come and gone, but the music has never let me down.

I need some ambition. Is there anyone out there who can inspire me? I've been playing the same four chords for about an hour now. I mean, honestly, how many times can a person play the riff to "Sweet Jane"? I've also been dwelling in the Sublime, although the reality that I will never hear a new Brad Knowles song is depressing in spite of the upbeat creativity that he projected. It reminds me of Jimmy Cliff...a lot. He wrote a tune called "Vietnam", which Bob Dylan called "the most beautiful protest song [he] had ever heard." Pretty high praise, if you ask me. If you didn't speak english you might thing it's a song about a new love, finding a penny heads up or good times amongst friends. The point is that the beat betrays the message that lyrics convey. It really is beautiful, Bob.

NIN "Only" is really starting to grow on me, though "Piggy" remains the top Trent track of the week.

BTW New home brew tonight. It's an American Brown Ale. One of my more mature compatriats decided that "One-eyed Brown-Eyed Girl" would be a fitting moniker and so it shall be.