Thursday, June 7, 2012

A Musical Guide: The Mind of Men

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]


here

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