I just went on a mini-binge of subscribing to literary journals last week.  This weekend I went to Brazos Bookstore (I'm in Houston) to scope out their literary mag selection and was disappointed at how small it was, as it used to be bigger (I bought Tin House's latest issue and a few books).  On the way up Kirby I…

Ditto on Bobby Jean. I love that song.  "In some motel room there'll be a radio playing . . ."   Gorgeous line.

Bill W.

Yeah, or the one where somebody's out in the jungle by himself working on some project and somebody else shows up out of the blue for no reason (because although everybody on the show is an excellent tracker, everybody is also so oblivious that they could be snuck up on by asthmatic buffaloes) and they argue or…

In the Live Aid feel-good fest there was an impromptu backstage Spinal-Tappy scene of Cronin and crew soulfully hanging around the piano doing an acoustic version of one of their songs, probably "Keep on Lovin' You."  It was just painful.  The guy's voice is awful even when he can stay on pitch.  In a live format it…

"Daddy Frank," Merle Haggard's dumbest song. (Granted, it's a short list.)

@Los Locos, yes, and I recall a scene shot in the Pennzoil building lobby (Penn's looking up through the angled glass roof panels) and in the skywalk from the Allen Center. I live in Houston and work downtown and saw the movie at River Oaks Landmark theater, and I'm hayseed enough to get a charge out of seeing places…

@GaryX, not Dallas—it was Houston. (Or at least those parts were shot in Houston. Maybe it was supposed to be a stand-in for Dallas. Admittedly I couldn't hear most of the dialog in the movie.)

Deng me! Deng me!
They oughta take a pie and meringue me.

Agreed on Steve Earle having multiple runs between 1986 (Guitar Town) and 2002 (Jerusalem, which broke the streak.) The only duds in there are Shut up and Die Like an Aviator and The Hard Way, tough Exit Zero may be weak enough to disqualify the run.

Nobel Prize
It's awarded for a body of work, not a particular work, though particular works may be singled out in the citation of the committee.

No problem. I actually am an idiot, coincidentally.

E. Buzz, do the Senor Fuences bit.

Merle's been cagey about that. That's one way of looking at it. Another is to conclude that he changed his mind. I think Okie was probably meant earnestly at the time. (He also wrote "Fighting Side of Me" about the same time, which can't really be interpreted as anything other than hawkishness.) But those views…

Sentences like this one:
"The Bakersfield Sound arose primarily as a response to the homogenization, over-production, and one-size-fits-all bigness that characterized country music throughout the '60s . . . ."

You may be thinking of Slim Pickens. Honest mistake.

I don't know squat about New Orleans (0ther than yeah, the inspirational comeback stories are wearing mighty thin, but that's not New Orleans's fault), but I know a shitload about Austin (lived there 13 years) and Houston (past 12 years), and Houston has more funk and soul in one taco truck off Wheatley than Austin…

I didn't know Winwood was so reviled. I don't care for "Higher Love," but "Back in the High Life" is a good song (though Warren Zevon's cover is better, I think), and I used to dig "Arc of a Diver." Maybe I wouldn't anymore—dunno, haven't listened to it in a long time.

Thanks
for making me all self-conscious about my spiral-corded kitchen phone, which I totally didn't know was 30 years out of style.

Watcho is correct. After almost forty years of doing nearly the exact same set list (see the very first Austin City Limits and then go see a current Willie show; I guarantee he's playing in your town at least within the next couple of months), Willie is incapable of singing a single song. The whole set is a medley…