Are You Loathsome Tonight?

These are the songs that make every day feel like summertime.

Do you like a thorough year-end roundup? No? Me either! But look -- I don't make the rules. Everybody's doing it, to quote one of my favorite of NRBQ's non-trivial number of songs about getting high. So welcome to Please Take My Advice: 2022 In Perspective or It Was A Very Dumb Year or whatever we should call this thing. Nostalgia: this one's for you. But first, let's take care of the fine print. 

Please Take My Advice is not a car or car service. Please stop asking about make and model. Please Take My Advice is unafraid to grasp the brass ring. If notional excellence does not suit your personal aesthetics then Please Take My Advice is not the Substack for you. Surely there are others. Please Take My Advice possesses no such “deep inner circle” of unknown elites, as has been nefariously rumored by untrustworthy sources in the media. As always, all questions, complaints, petitions, class action suits and other matters pertinent to the machinations of the legal system should be referred directly to Bar/None Records In Hoboken, New Jersey. 

OMG! Enough from the bureaucrats and fatcats and regulators, am I right?? Let's get down to business. 

Look folks, I’m not really doing a year-end roundup. That was a red herring. I have only the loosest grasp on what happened last week, let alone last January, and I’ve neither the time nor inclination to look it up. What was it Heraclitus said? You can’t step in the same river twice. Certainly not on a weekday. On the plus side, a bunch of stuff has taken place in the recent past and this I can address. Bring on the bold face.

What’s up with you? Surely you must have had thoughts about the recent Bob Dylan book Philosophy of Modern Song? You’re always carrying on about Dylan. 

I don’t think I talk about Dylan any more then anyone else, but yes, I did have thoughts about Philosophy of Modern Song. In fact, I published those very findings in the Washington Post. 

“(Elvis) Costello’s glam-noir ‘Pump It Up’ (1978) is regarded with similar, delectable dread. ‘The one-two punch, the uppercut, and the wallop, then get out quick and make tracks. You broke the commandments and cheated. Now you’ll have to back down, capitulate and turn in your resignation.’ In its gnomic way, the haunted, hilarious corridors of ‘The Philosophy of Modern Song’ offer the best insight yet into a crucial Dylan paradox: Music is clearly his salvation, but music also seems to scare the wits out of him.”

You can read the rest of it here.

Outstanding! And I mean that. I really, really enjoyed that insightful review. Any other artists of note you’ve been writing about at length recently? You did a thing on Warren Zevon, right? 

Yes! I did write about Zevon’s weirdo-kinda-comeback 1987 LP Sentimental Hygiene over at LG&M. It’s one of my favorite records, because I am perverse. 

“By 1987, Zevon was forty (40!) years old and newly sober, but he’d gotten a lot of destructive work done in the several years previous. Music industry consensus had him pegged as a genius, but one so temperamental, erratic and aesthetically asymmetric that the juice would never be worth the squeeze. He had written countless transporting songs, but few hits. He was a reliably intoxicating live performer, but everything that happened off-stage was a sucker’s bet. You had to clear a pretty high bar for debauchery to be written off by the music business in the 1970s. Zevon soared.”

That’s an excerpt. If you like the way that sounds you can read the rest here.

Are you kidding? What a terrific excerpt! I will proceed to that link without hesitation! What else is going on? Anything with Lenny Kaye? 

I mean, you aren’t just guessing are you? You must have been briefed, right? Yes, I was lucky enough to interview the legendary Lenny Kaye regarding his superb recent overview of 20th century music Lightning Striking. 

It was a huge honor to speak to one of my all time heroes and I think it came out great. We cover a lot: Memphis, Liverpool, the Pacific Northwest and then down to Northern California. Also New York and a bunch of other places. It was the “Tangled Up In Blue” of interviews. Check it out at the Southwest Review.

Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska. Spill it.

I wrote about the 40th anniversary of Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska over at the Ringer. 

“The punishments just kept coming for working people: NAFTA and wage stagnation, the opioid crisis and mass incarceration, the cold shoulder of a Democratic Party too interested in courting Silicon Valley and suburban elites to remember their rank and file, and the false profiteering of Donald Trump. None of it was unforeseeable, or unavoidable. It’s just that, save for lip service, no one within the political class really cared. Watching the beginning of that long downward trajectory commence, Bruce Springsteen worked on ‘Nebraska’.”

If this seems like the sort of thing you like, there’s much more over here.

Fuck, dude. That is some righteous shit. I’m into it. Hey -- I’m fully aware that the novelist Owen King is a member in standing of the Paranoid Style’s vaunted “inner circle.” What can you tell me about his forthcoming novel The Curator?

The Curator is so fucking rad. This book is out on March 7th and you aren’t going to believe how wacked-out awesome this shit is. Owen has really outdone himself this time. It’s like Notes From Underground re-staged in some depraved Narnia. It’s hilarious, harrowing and truly perversely strange. This is going to bust your brains out and you need to order your copy now. But don’t take it from me, check out this starred review from Kirkus.

Are you going to do the end-of-the-year roundup?

No! How many times do we have to discuss this?

Obviously, yes. This was all a red herring to get you to read my Year End Roundup!!

My favorite things from 2022:

Everything Chuck Prophet but especially his radio show Trip in the Country

Nicky Beer’s poetry collection Real Phonies and Genuine Fakes

Paul Gorman’s book The Wild World of Barney Bubbles: Graphic Design and the Art of Music

David Cantwell’s book The Running Kind: Listening to Merle Haggard

Joshua Clover’s book Roadrunner

Tom Scharpling’s book, It Never Ends: A Memoir With Nice Memories!

South Side on HBO Max

Better Call Saul on AMC

Open Mike Eagle’s A Tape Called Component System With the Auto Reverse

Drive-By Truckers’ Welcome 2 Club XVIII 

Jennifer O’Connor’s Born At The Disco

Al Riggs’ Themselves

Nick Paumgarten’s “Retirement The Margaritaville Way” March 21, The New Yorker

Charles Hughes’ “If You Don’t Like Millie Jackson” December 13, Oxford American

Michael Venutolo-Mantovani’s “In the Shadow Evacuation of Kabul” August 30, WIRED

Everything Adam Nayman writes, but especially “David Cronenberg’s Dreams and Nightmares” June 3 The New Yorker

Amy Rigby’s Diary Of Amy Rigby blog – she has a Substack now, too!

Robert Christgau’s And It Don’t Stop Substack

Eddie Pepitone live at The Idiot Box, Greensboro, NC

Julie Klausner’s Ask Julie Podcast

Wow! Those are some excellent recommendations. This will keep me busy. Thanks, Beth.

No problem! I apologize for the subterfuge, but you just can’t be too careful.

On a final note, I want to wish everybody a very happy holiday season and to sincerely thank everyone who bought my record, read my writing or just generally was supportive this past year. We like to have fun at Please Take My Advice, but please don’t let the antics detract from how very much I genuinely appreciate all of you. I got to do a bunch of rad stuff over the past twelve months and the privilege is in no way not lost on me. A lot of those opportunities occurred because of you, the Advisors. It means a lot. 

Have fun, stay safe and we’ll pick up this dumb thread next year.

Love,

Elizabeth