9 Lonnie Holley: Oh Me Oh My

Lonnie Holley is one of those people whose very existence is a bit awkward for the United States of America. He’s a good looking guy, a few months older than my Dad but healthier looking than even me. He’s not some crinkly, confused, 112 year old veteran of the first world war, baring a toothless smile to the camera on the arm of his minder. A minder he needs to remind him to put his underpants on in the morning, and works overtime changing him considering the amount of times each day he pisses himself. He is still plugged in, still 100% articulate, more creatively engaged now aged 73 than he’s ever been. He didn’t become an artist until he was 29. He didn’t even begin releasing music until he was 62. There’s no rush.

Which all means he has pretty vivid memories of being born in Jim Crow era Alabama.

THAT YOU’LL MAKE IT BACK TO MY BED, GET ME HOT AND SIZZLIN’

5 Ultrasound: Everything Picture (Deluxe Edition)

A synthesised orchestra bursts into life. And I mean bursts. If this were in a Disney movie and meant to signify the first buds of spring in some fantasy netherworld ruled by a giant and intimidatingly amiable field mouse, you’d still ask them to tone it down a bit. The orchestra repeats itself for a few bars, as if sweeping its arms across the landscape. Isn’t it beautiful?, it says, this world you believe to know? Isn’t life just idiotically charming when you don’t know any better?? Then, the orchestra stops, to be replaced by a single foreboding organ while the sounds behind it seem to be dripping out the last of their good will. Drip. Drip. Drop. Drip. The droplets seem to both become sparer and start to resemble a ticking clock, winding down to some unknown but anxiety inducing conclusion. The same music that had previously swept its hands in overt astonishment as the landscape that is now starting to melt away, now grabs you roughly by the collar and pulls you forward. It opens a hand to you containing a red pill and a blue pill. Before throwing them both in rage at the still deforming landscape.

“Nah, fuck that”, they say. “That trope has been done to death to such a point where it now somehow represents Men’s Right Activism. There aren’t just two routes anyway, there are an infinite ways to comprehend reality, let me show you them all“.

I’LL SHOW YOU MINE