Portrait of man with a red jumper and hat, Lucien Freud |
Anyone remember that Doonesbury book, In Search of Reagan’s Brain?
It was what the zeitgeist of the early 80s demanded. We all sensed that
there was something missing in El Presidente.
The book was a grand, satiric tour
de force which brought the issue everyone was quietly grappling with-- is
this guy for real?-- out into the open. Reagan’s intellectual emptiness
suddenly gave us a convenient excuse to cope with the drastic changes his
cronies were pushing through Congress. "Hey, this slashing of the social
budgets/razing of environmental regulations/sacking of an entire
industry/selling arms to the Iranians to fund the contras, is terrible, but hey, the poor guy doesn’t have a brain!
Cut him some slack!"
Gives me shivers just to recall those days! Brrrrr.
Tonight’s post is sort of related to that book. Like
Doonesbury who led us deep into the empty caverns of the President’s skull,
tonight, the Washerman’s Dog takes
us on a haphazard romp through the inside of a man’s head. It ain’t necessarily pretty and can, as oft's been suggested, be pretty shallow. Sure its self-pitying and sex obsessed but
there are some weak shoots of pride and mature emotion too. Scary but essential to understanding how half
the population functions.
Track
Listing:
01 Woman
Hungry [Porter Wagnoner]
02 Pasties and a G-string (At the
2 O'clock Club [Tom Waits]
03 Better Off Without A Wife [Tom
Waits]
04 I Take a Lot of Pride in What
I Am [Merle Haggard]
05 Mannish Boy [Muddy Waters]
06 Loneliness Is Eating Me Alive
[Merle Haggard]
07 A Man Of Many Words [Buddy Guy
and Junior Wells]
08 Good Man Gone Bad [B.B. King]
09 she loves the jerk[John Hiatt]
10 Stood Up [John Hiatt]
11 Friday is My Day [Z.Z. Hill]
12 Walk Like A Man [Bruce
Springsteen]
13 Lovinest Man [Delbert
McClinton]
14 How Long Can I Keep It Up
[Aretha Franklin]
15 My Mellow Man [Dinah
Washington]
16 Roamin' Special [Champion Jack
Dupree]
17 Man in Need [Richard Thompson]
18 All The Soft Places To Fall
[Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard]
19 Mr. Fool [George Jones]
20 Poor Poor Pitiful Me [Warren Zevon]
21 Mr. Stupid [Richard Thompson]
22 Uninhabited Man [Richard
Thompson]
23 A Good Man Like Me [Del
McCoury]
24 Man Out Of Time [Elvis
Costello]
25 I Ain't Broke But I'm Badly
Bent [David Grisman]
26 Get a Little, Give a Little
[Z.Z. Hill]
27 Rednecks, White Socks And Blue
Ribbon Beer [Johnny Russell]
28 It's a Man's Man's World
[Renee Geyer]
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