Sometimes music criticism rises above the genre and achieves its own kind of beauty and merit.
I spend my weekends listening to Woody Guthrie and country love songs, and then my week begins and Jessica Hopper lays this on me:
“It turns fall and I can hardly do but sleep; I wake up every morning thinking of Neil singing “It’s better to burn out / than it is to rust”. Pre-hiemal rusting, writing rusting, rocking rusting; r n’ r never dies but everything else will … N. Young pressing on down memory lane, thigh deep in Pancho’s gtr scruzz, all “I wish” “I remember” “I wanna” I’m gonna” and “I was”—almost no now, everything at a distance—inextricable, unwindable behind-you or some runaway, gotta get over that lies just beyond the horizon. Woeful and unmoored in the present —all he knows for sure is who he was then, which is hardly a comfort to begin with.”
(You can read the whole thing here.)
A listener just stopped by with only kind words for what we do. I was so surprised that I almost didn’t know what to say. I think that might have just made my day.
