Feature Dec 25, 2013 at 4:00 am

The Mercury's Guide to Portland's Best Ball Drops

Comments

1
Parson Red Heads know their J.J. Cale (RIP 2013 along with so many musical foundation stones). NATURALLY (1970) was the soundtrack, Acetone drum machine & all, along with its two succeeding Shelter albums cut further south in Muscle Shoals and Memphis on 1971's REALLY then back up to Cale's Tulsa porch and finishing up at Bradley's Barn for OKIE (1973). What makes this roots music so vital is Cale's Okie Zen way of connecting with the times, usually a bit ahead of the times like he chooses to play a little behind the Tulsa Time beat.

That's why Parsons Red Heads reply on the beverage of choice question for New Year's Eve rings so true. That quick quote of the Cale song "Reality" in reply comes from Cale's bleakest and blackest record, 1983's #8 with its intimations of Orwell's 1984 as Cale had moved to L.A. was overwhelmed with the sense datum of homelessness, unemployment and despair in the air and on the sidewalks. That ran counter to the Reagan-Bush campaign's MORNING IN AMERICA narrative jive that won in 1980, burying Jimmy Carter's malaise, even as the TRICKLE DOWN ECONOMICS by re-election campaign time found U.S. at its deepest historical debt trying to spend our Cold War rivals into bankruptcy, and full frontal attack on unions and the middle class way of life that mingled the way Napalm sticks to kids' skins with the mass media propaganda hanging in the corporate air.

#8 was a tough sell with its Cale intuitive masterpieces "Unemployment," "Hard Times," "Trouble In The City," "Money Talks" & "People Lie" co-writes with his wife and band-mate Christine Lakeland along with the existential challenge to the know-it-alls "(I'm Just) Livin' Here Too." The Parsons Red Heads quote source "Reality" and its red-eyed capper "Takin' Care of Bidnet" worked like Cale's better known (thanks to Clapton's ham-handed cover) "Cocaine" in the way it actually came as a pathos-soaked cautionary, rather than any rebel yell as it played out in clubs loaded with those self-medicating.

2013 into 2014 might've been a better year for Parsons Red Heads to be playing all of #8 instead of "NATURALLY", unless our Po'Land musical treasure like their mentor are seeing ahead into the oncoming future and sensing as the Tulsa Seer did back in 1970 the French film "MY BEST FRIEND'S GIRL" with its romantic metaphors and free-form FM radio DJ's & ski bums as used by auteur Bertrand Blier who let Cale's songs of this period play out in their entirety as an English narrative paralleling the French mise en scene. That snowy alps opening montage of downhill slalom set to Cale's smuggler's blues "Bringin' It Back from Mexico" or the backwoods sublimated violence of "River Run Deep" or the long gone blues lapping up on the fatal riverbank in "Somebody Call the Doctor (I Think I'm Sick\Ain't Had No Medicine In Over A Week..." Hold out for the balm of "Magnolia" and let's hope the spirit of Cale and slide guitarist Mac Gayden is in the air along with Auld Lang Syne...

Balance & Health & Recovery to us all in the New Year!
http://www.amazon.com/8-J-J-Cale/product-r…
2
No Pink Martini?? I've been pleating my L.L. Bean chinos for months in anticipation
3
aint nothing worse than pumped up bunch of fuck tards celebrating Auld Lang Syne BRO!
4
Does anyone know anywhere you can take kids to celebrate New Year's Eve?
www.chrisinnewberg.blogspot.com

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