Voices Carry (unless you're dead)

On the local news tonight (I never watch it, tonight was a fluke) There was a brief shot and mention of an anti-war demonstration in downtown Little Rock. They mentioned that there were similar demonstrations in LA, Seattle, etc., but then they moved on. Another interesting indicator was a story about the recruitment boom that the National media were picking up on. It seems that in Little Rock, recruitment is actually the same or lower; many parents are calling to ask how they can make sure their children are ineligible if there is a draft. I checked for any online evidence for these stories, but there wasn’t anything. The local “liberal” weekly did mention one high school girl who changed her mind about enlisting, the day of the attack. Of course on the conservative nightly news, they quickly cut to pictures of people painting their houses red white and blue; this is the buckle of the bible belt, after all.

Not quite the stereotypical picture of gun-totin’ Arkansas you had, huh? This place is different than any pre-conceived notions I ever had. It sort of the same story with the place I came from in California (Bakersfield). “Nashville West” really doesn’t have much of a country underground— I’d say it was more of a Heavy Metal town way back when... Little Rock has a large gay population, but I’d say the 60s hippie refugees are probably most responsible for its, um, eclectic attitude.

None of this helps me much, I’m not gay and I’m not a hippie. Yes, you can count me as one of those people who think the Grateful Dead are boring as hell. I suppose I just don’t neatly fit any category; I hated the Sex Pistols and the Dead Kennedys, but I love lots of other punk rock. Go figure. Lately there has been a big shift in my musical taste.

I love women.

I downloaded SHN’s of an Aimee Mann boot the other day; it’s pretty good. I wasn’t crazy about Til Tuesday’s Voices Carry when it first came out a million years ago. I think it was because I was fed up with the whole vocal-effects circus that was going on with pop at the time. Now that I hear some of her stuff, both old and new, I may have to buy a CD to check out. But there was a side-effect, one of those horrible coincidences that I’ve got to spill out.

My last big love (a story I don’t want to tell more fully) was involved in an affair with a married priest when we first connected. A married priest? Yes, there is such a thing. If you move from another religion into the Catholic Church and you are already married, they let you stay married as a priest. Anyway she was having this affair with a priest with a wife and three kids (she met him at the University, he was a teacher too), and he was a bit quirky when it came to sex. Imagine that. A guy who is supposed to be upholding the public trust as a teacher and priest having clandestine sex. But I digress.

This fellow just couldn’t stand it if she made any noise whatsoever during sex. He would “shh” her, or clamp his hand over her mouth. Consequently, the song Voices Carry had great meaning to her.

Needless to say, when I heard the song again after so many years it generated some pretty unwelcome mental imagery. But the rest of Aimee Mann’s newer material was arresting enough to make me want to listen to it some more, even though I could have done without that eyelid movie.

To close on a more humorous note, I was rolled on the floor laughing at a commercial from a lawyer about some class action suit over a drug:

• Headaches
• Shortness of Breath
• . . . endless list of generic symptoms . . .
• Death

Okay, I just have to wonder how many dead people picked up the phone to call?

Well, enough of that for now. PJ Harvey is going to be on Leno, evidently she was in Washington during the attack. Perhaps I'll write more later.