Two bands I can’t get enough of lately (neither of which is particularly new). First, Old 97‘s. I’ve wanted to see this band live for a very long time and it looks like I’ll finally get the chance when they come through Phoenix in June. Here they are performing “Time Bomb” for KEXP:
Here is their video for “Please Hold On While The Train Is Moving” from the band’s 2010 albumThe Grand Theatre, Volume One:
Next up is Lucero. First for them, “Nights Like These” with the classic line: “She had a weakness for writers and I, I was never that good with words anyway:”
Here is Lucero’s Ben Nichols performing his track “Last Pale Light In The West” from his EP of the same name inspired by Cormac McCarthy’s powerful novel Blood Meridian:
I recently finished reading Cormac McCarthy’s
disturbingly unforgettable book Blood Meridian. It’s
not a book for everyone. In fact, it’s harsh brutality
and matter-of-fact-violence-as-a-way-of-life-ness is not
for most people. McCarthy makes no excuses for the
violence, nor does he simply use it as a gimmick or
mere plot-mover. In many ways, the violence is the
plot. If Camus’ Stranger had kept on killing, we might
have something of the kid/man.
This is a book that requires a lot of the reader.
Within the first few pages, we are jarred to attention
by what seems to be senseless violence perpetrated
by men without conscience. The violence does not
relent through the entire novel and it’s almost as if
McCarthy is asking the reader not only to persevere
but to become desensitized to the violence. It is
the proverbial car-wreck. You know you shouldn’t
look, but you want to. You can’t look away as the
kid and Judge Holden play their parts in the dance
of war; “the last of the true.”
The novel is heavy on allusion and is planted firmly in
the traditions of several literary forms. Its prose is often grand while focusing on minutia. I recently came across
these two lectures from Yale’s course “The American Novel Since 1945″ which I found extremely interesting:
