americana

 Ah, my friends from the prison, they ask unto me “How good, how good does it feel to be free?” And I answer them most mysteriously “Are birds free from the chains of the skyway?”

 That quote by Old Dog reminded me of this from Bob Dylan's Ballad in Plain D.  Of course it is much better sitting in some bar with a cold one and musing self-pityingly over fate than doing a sojourn in the steel hotel.

The way I remember it is the original folk singing movement came from people going into Appalachia to discover the forgotten songs of the pioneers.  The true purists would only allow the original songs to be sung, but then people began to make up their own.  It was kind of a lefty thing in an Arlo Guthrie manner and something about that style of music made them ideal for protest songs.  This wasn't the top down words of some politician, these were the words of the people in their hills and dales, but not so much from the downtrodden in the cities because they were too angry and a little scary.  Coal minors though, they were big.  That big dark hole was made for song.

The recently deceased Nanci Griffith was one of my favorite singers, she was sort of country, sort of folk, sort of, I dunno, balladeer.  Seems to me musicians who are sort of something, are more interesting than those who are something through and through.

Nowadays there is something called Americana

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Americana_(music)

which is basically the kind of music that she played.  Well you know the first folksingers didn't think of themselves as folksingers, they were just singing the songs around them.  I am partial to the early blues singers and reading about them I learned that they called themselves songsters, in the sense that they would sing anything.  Well a guy has to earn a living.

I had a fling with English ovals too, and I think it was because of that dandy little box that Old Dog speaks of but I don't remember what it looked like anymore.  Also there were these tiny lumpy cigarettes from India called bedes, which because they tasted so terrible and came from India the rumor was that they would give you a buzz.  When it became obvious that they did not, they went out the window.

There was a big thing with pipes in the freshman dorms.  What screams college man more than a pimply-faced frosh with a pipe stuck into his mug?  Of course in our case we were well aware that our hero Hugh Hefner was a pipe smoker, so clearly that was the way to catch chicks.  There was a pipe tobacco called cherry blend that was to tobacco as soda pop is to beer and we all took to it.  

I imagined nothing made the young girls' hearts beat faster than when a crowd of five or six guys from the freshman dorm entered the dance with their pipes hanging from their mouths and a redolent cloud of cherry blend trailed in with them.

Later on I tried English Leather with equal success.  Then beer because in the commercials whenever the guys popped tops the babes would appear out of nowhere.  Strangely that didn't work either, but I did like beer so I kept on drinking it.

Redistricting always causes a huge furor because there are winners and losers.  I think there is some rule in Illinois where if the majority doesn't send up a map that is approved within a certain time, the other party gets a shot.  Not sure if that is true elsewhere and no time this busy morning for me to do proper research on.

For now I think I will dust off that old Kingston Trio album and stuff my pipe with cherry blend and just groove.  Maybe some hot chick will stroll by and, attracted by the sound and the smell, knock timidly on my door and that will give me a chance to don that smoking jacket and pile on the charm,