PHOENIX, AZ, USA - Mad as hell and unwilling to take it anymore, I opened my second-floor window, placing my right speaker on the ledge, to blast Jethro Tull into the barrio. In the early morning light, as this mainly Latino neighborhood was also opening its windows and doors to blast rappers and sweet norteno ballads, I too decided to broadcast in my own way, knowing full well that a Celtic bard is a rough translation in Mexican America.

But hey, what the hell, it made me feel better.

Now, the Tull is on tour again. It is heartening to think that such a wise old muse can muster the strength after all of these years of predicting the apocalypse. Heartening more to think: Hey, there's still time to change the course we are on. And that the Tull is once again throwing it's pan lute into the fray, stirring the soul with Bardic prose, ancien' rhyme and all the rest in classic rock, 4/4 time.

Someday I hope to speak to him again. Once, while at Access Internet Magazine, I had a long chat with him over the phone. Ideas flowed through that line like water and his ideas still resonate in me, just as I refused for several days to take my cassette tape of "20 Years of Jethro Tull" out of my car's player as the oracle insinuated itself into my skin.

And still, despite the dark times, they flow. Ian Anderson is a gift that keeps on giving.

So here's to you, O Bard, O Prophet of Doom. May your words sing wisdom into the night, as we now sing together (as Bono stole from Bruce Cockburn, and I steal it now) to kick at the darkness until it bleeds daylight.

And now, for this week's reviews, all blasted this am to the barrio:

REM Around the Sun
(BMI)
Been having mixed feelings about this one, by far one of the most somber REM releases ever, and that's pretty somber. After listening to it more than 20 times, falling in love with it over and over again, I sold it back to the music store from which it came, not so much because it sucked (unless you are one of those pathetic I-Like-the-Old-REM-That-Rocked hardliners), but because the emotional content of Stipe's almost Swedenborgian zeitgeist cut too close to what I was going through before, during and after the presidential election.

This lush, down-pace, bittersweet [ode] to love and its many levels was simply more than I could bear. But after I got a few bucks for it as a resale, I made up with my paramore, and then bought it back from the record store (so far, I am down about $23 during the history of this series of transactions), and then handed it over to her, knowing full well her love was a safer place to keep it. Anyway, you are not a real REM fan if you don't appreciate the luminosity of this release. Stipe's voice and message considers to blossom until the fullness of that sun, his brand of love, which has never dimmed. If the guitar parts that quaked have well, diminished, blame Peter Buck for just phoning it in. Maybe the whole world's earthquake has been just too heavy for him lately? Who can blame him for taking a pass? I can't. Of those songs I would like to hear over the radio: "Wanderlust" is my fave. The song that should also be played endlessly to render the global listeners into piles of heartbroken muck: "Leaving New York."


Social Distortion Sex, Love and Rock'n'Roll
(Time Bomb/BMG)
This is your new Johnny Cash; this is your new Johnny Cash being fried in a skillet called Social Distortion. I have discerned that lead singer Mike Ness is the male answer to a man-hating, deep dark man-worshipper like PJ Harvey, who I also love, despite all of her darkness and gloom and anger. Like PJ, Ness pushes his eviscerated soul through the meatgrinder of the heart and, while both artists find similar forms of victory in their release, to listen closely can be a terrible thing to bear. Especially if you don't have a sweetie around to cling to in the storm. To no surprise, the band maintains it's pure, straightforward integrity of drums, bass and scorching guitars. There is no compromise in the sound. However, notice: Ness is more loving and life affirming, despite the wreckage, than I can remember. The big surprise here: Optimism unleashed, no longer gathering force.


The Tragically Hip In Between Evolution
(Zoe Records)
Yet another spotty record by this Canadian wondercrew (the previous, In Violet Light, seems to be a mere retreat into the woods after 9/11) only kicks off by the third song, "Gus the Polar Bear from Central Park," and then really starts to cook with the next REM-like (the old REM-like) rocker, "Vaccination Scar." At its best, that Byronesque tragic hero, Gordon Downie, continues to shout about things totally self-referential from the top of the rafters, and so, upon the first listening, the rest of the band is doing most of the work. At least here, for the most of the record, cohorts Ron Baker, Johnny Fay, Paul Langlois and Gord Sinclair have reaffirmed their collaborative muscle. Polar Bear's tragic riffs seer Downie's heroic poesy home while the drum and bassline push the music up above those Blame Canada trees. Still, it has been a long time since Fully, Completely, which will always remain as one of the best rock documents of the 1990s. But at least here their are still remembrances of the source of their original buckskinned moose call conceits.


Trampled By Turtles Songs From a Ghost Town
(Banjodad Records)
This topical bluegrass band out of Duluth, Minnesota also has some sort of connection to Decorah, Iowa, and hearing it makes me long to go there, bad, and meet all of them folks living off the grid and picking away at their instruments on their porches as the sun goes down on Amerika the wounded. I love the title because I love ghost towns. I love the sound because it reminds me of my own heart-home, Telluride, Colorado (or the San Juan mountain range, anyway). The vocals are sonorous and clear, the band backs lightly and sprightly and fast with inspired mandolin and grooving riffs that would challenge a lot of guitar players. In fact, there is nothing complicated about any of this. In its delivery of vanquished pain, dancing out of heartbreak as the mandolins and banjos tinkle away, I find peace. My favorite tune: "My Brother Works for the CIA." He should quit his day job, que no? There ain't no easy answers when the circus is in town, they sing. Indeed, I wholeheartedly agree.

---

Douglas
McDaniel

DOUGLAS MC DANIEL is publisher of Mythville.com and his blogger site, Mythville.blogspot.com, as well as about 10 books (although at times he loses count, since he always intends to make more). A Phoenix-based freelance writer, he can be e-mailed at mythville@yahoo.com for as long as the empire supplies electricity.