999,866: Billy Bragg & Wilco — California Stars

California Stars - Billy Bragg...

I never got the Woody-Guthrie-boner that most Bob Dylan fans eventually develop on their way to being self-righteous folk-loving pricks. The old-timey folk-y stuff just doesn’t do it for me like it does for people who have “Kill Yr Television” bumperstickers on their hatchbacks.

I think it’s because it just seems to prattle on and on, and I can’t slice through anybody’s Appalachian accent today, let alone Rev. Hatfield McCoy’s, cut into a glued-together acetate sometime in 1922.

Regardless, I find myself piecing together Woody’s life from some of the previously-mentioned self-righteous folk-loving pricks and the large amount of PBS that I droolingly ingest.

The guy had a long and pretty successful songwriting life, but then half-lost his mind along with the ability to control his nervous system. He felt himself to be a danger to his family, so he temporarily shipped himself off to California before eventually taking up permanent residence in a mental hospital.

At the end, he started writing strange new words, but couldn’t finish writing the songs, lacking the ability to play an instrument anymore. All these lyrics sat in a box in a basement for decades, until his family sanctioned Billy Bragg and Wilco to breathe life into them.

These aren’t rambling ballads to communist bank robbers; they’re strikingly modern pop lyrics.

My limited knowledge now gives me the picture of this dilapidated man, wanting to go to California and get better and live a free life, like he did in his youth, but he can’t control his own body. He became his own prison. Jeff Tweedy’s vocals don’t howl with angst, they’ve got a sepia-toned longing, just oozing out of them. They smile at memories, sigh, and sit contented enough.

Some of that credit goes to Tweedy and Bragg for the music and singing, but I can’t help feeling that these lyrics pushed the music to exist as it does, that this was how Guthrie would have heard it in his mind as he put them to paper.

Oh, shit. I’m getting a chubby.