My Live Double Albums

Up early this morning with a headache; took some Excedrin, and couldn't get back to sleep. Went downstairs, and for no good reason, started to look through my cd collection, doing some re-organization. (I'm borderline OCD, okay?) Discovered that I have a lot of live music--especially if you throw the jazz in there--but not that much in the classic, live double-album format. Of course, that format now is most arbitrary, in the age of the cd (which itself, I suppose, is passing; maybe it's all about digital tracks loaded onto your iPod now?). The old school of a live concert recording that just couldn't fit onto a single vinyl record has now been transcended by the innumerable ways in which songs can be packaged. Still, sometimes the old format is preserved, to maintain the integrity of something originally recorded decades ago, and sometimes it's adopted for new stuff today, just because it seems like a good way to the album to sell. So anyway, herewith, a list of all the live double albums I own, good and not-so-good, in reverse alphabetical order (so as to save the best for last). It's mostly a miserably MOR list I know, but I don't care.

The Who, Live at Leeds. Confession: I didn't even know this wasn't originally a double album for years; it was only when I finally obtained a copy of my own (thanks Scott!) and did some research that I found out that for 30 years Who fans were, criminally, restricted to either only 35 minutes or at most about twice that of the Who's 1969 concert at the University of Leeds. As perfect as their performance of "Summertime Blues" on Disc 1 is, I can't imagine listening to this recording now without the complete "Tommy" being part of it.

James Taylor, James Taylor (LIVE). Taylor's first live album, but really just a greatest hits review. Not a bad double-album, but probably not one I'd seek out today; I bought way back when I fancied myself a James Taylor completist. Disc 2 stands out as Taylor's only recording, that I know of anyway, of the Dicky Lee tune "She Thinks I Still Care," and Arnold McCuller's lead on "I Will Follow" is stunning.

Talking Heads, The Name of this Band is Talking Heads. Not as good as their later stuff, to tell the truth: Stop Making Sense is a tighter, stronger live album. Still, it's worth having; Disc 2's "Life in Wartime" is terrific.

Sting, Bring on the Night. The album when Sting truly became "Sting": earnest, self-important intellectual warring constantly with jazzy, ironic goofball. Tremendous stuff; Disc 1's "Driven to Tears" is a small, tight, jazz fusion masterpiece.

Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, Live in New York. The best record which the Boss has ever produced, in my opinion. "American Skin (41 Shots)" is worth the price of the album alone.

Bonnie Raitt, Road Tested. Raitt is a great musician and performer, and the live music recorded on this double-album is first-rate. But really, it's the huge number of guest stars, and the odd, off-beat numbers she performs with them, that makes this live recording--her first after 25 years in the business--such a treat. Her duet with Kim Wilson on Wilson's own "I Believe I'm in Love with You" is a triumph.

The Police, Live!. Pretty good; Disc 1, which contains a 1979 show from Boston, is raucous and fun, while Disc 2 is much more slick and straightforward--it's essentially listening to Synchronicity live, with a couple of old favorites thrown in. Worth it if you're a Police completist.

Alison Krauss and Union Station, Live. A fine recording; nothing special, just Krauss's typically peerless voice and a lot of high-end, note-perfect bluegrass playing. It's Krauss's very best performance of "Baby Now That I've Found You," though.

Joe Jackson, Live 1980/86. Technically, Big World was originally also a double album, but the forth side was blank--just a gag, I guess--and that doesn't work too well in the cd world, obviously. His collection of various live recordings on this double album, however, is no joke: it's one of my favorite cds of all time. Three different versions of "Is She Really Going Out with Him?" and a slow, luxurious, mournful version of "Steppin Out" that is simply one of the most beautiful things I've ever heard. An absolute must-have.

Bruce Hornsby, Here Come the Noise Makers: Live 98/99/00. Hornsby continuing his unique journey though the blues, jazz, folk, bluegrass and gospel, subjecting a lot of his more pop-oriented work from The Range to similar treatment. I love what he does with "Th Red Plains" on Disc 1.

Robyn Hitchcock, Robyn Sings. Hitchcock's tribute album to Bob Dylan, complete with a recreation of the "Royal Albert Hall" recording, with some drunk guy yelling "Judas!" at appropriate intervals in the background. Hitchcock's cover of "Desolation Row" is, I am convinced, the definitive take on the song. He owns it now; no one, I think, can steal it away from him.

Bob Dylan and The Band, Before the Flood. I actually really like this recording, but I can understand why it doesn't seem to get that much respect: Dylan and The Band don't actually seem to mesh particularly well. But it's worth having because it contains some of Dylan's best, strongest, most polished acoustic performances, especially "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right" at the beginning of Disc 2.

Neil Diamond, Hot August Night. I wanted a copy of this for years, finally got one, and now can't take it out of my cd player at work. The awesome encore of "Soolaimon" (my wife's favorite Neil Diamond song) and "Brother Love's Traveling Salvation Show" (my favorite), with Diamond rapping out a borderline incomprehensible evangelical hallelujah, is an awesome slice of portentous 70s folk-rock.

John Denver, An Evening with John Denver. Shut up, haters. I discovered this double-album in LP form on my mission in South Korea, in 1989, where it was being passed around a congregation I attended like it was some mysterious Holy Grail, a treasured key to understanding that distant land called "America." Seriously, there are far worse introductions they could have received. "Matthew"? "Boy from the Country"? "This Old Guitar"? Pure gold, folks, pure gold.

Allman Brothers Band, At Fillmore East. Some people call it the greatest live double-album of all time. Once you listen to "Whipping Post" all the way through, you'll agree.

Suggestions, anyone?

Localist Principles, Populist Words (or, The Problem Defined)

[Cross-posted to Front Porch Republic]

There's been a lot of talk lately over at Front Porch Republic about agendas--about what, in other words, a blog like Front Porch Republic is really for. To just discuss amongst ourselves our various complaints, or to actually articulate some localist or populist policies, maybe even a platform or sorts? The ideas being thrown around are many (see, for example, here, here, here, here and here), and as one might expect, some of them I agree with, and some of them I don't. But there is at least one large problem looming behind all this rousing debate about differing proposals, and that is a disagreement as to why, or to what end, proposals are to be offered in the first place. I don't think I've got either the brains or the wisdom to attempt an answer that could encapsulate all of the above. But recently I read a phrase--in a different but not entirely unrelated context--which strikes me as a good way of expressing the overarching problem, and thereby perhaps one which could help people like me know where we stand, and think about what we want to say.

The phrase I'm thinking about arose from a comment made by one of my favorite bloggers, Timothy Burke. As part of a reflection on his mixed reaction to Matthew Crawford's Shop Class as Soulcraft--which, of course, I've praised before--Tim and I got into a bit of an exchange, during which he sharpened his complaint with Crawford's tone:

Crawford’s manifesto strikes me as at least half based on his aesthetic view of what makes for the good life. Which is absolutely fine. It’s absolutely fine even to evangelize for the good life as you understand it, and that’s inevitably going to involve suggesting that most other people ought to like what you like, live as you believe they should live. But it’s got to start from a constant recall that this is about good (food) (sex) (wine) (literature) (machines) (daily habits) and an aesthete’s appreciation of their goodness, which seems to me should always be unabashedly personal. That way, when you argue that everybody else should get with the aesthetic program, you tend not to forget that you think you have better taste than other people, rather than tricking yourself into thinking that everybody would have this good taste if the Powers that Be/Consumer Culture/Hegemony/Mainstream Media or whatever weren't enslaving your mind. It’s about not confusing a project of persuasion with a project of emancipation, and I think Crawford really does confuse the two.

I like that--not all of it, maybe, but certainly at least the last line: a "project of persuasion" and a "project of emancipation." I can work with that, maybe run with it a little bit. The former project is one where you are attempting to argue through appeals to taste, morality, beauty, or virtue: qualities that may once have been widely accepted as objective, derived from ancient philosophical or traditional religious sources, but which today, in modern Western democracies anyway, are most usually assumed to be plural and subjective. In any case though, you're talking about something that will partake of a sense of the aristocratic, or the elite: a concern for the good (or, at least, a better) life. Of course, talking about "the good life" pushes up against talk about "the common good"; the two overlap somewhat, but not entirely. Common good talk partakes mostly of the latter approach, in which your goal is to do more than to persuade others about the worth of your values: it is to teach them about the practical, personal, and/or popular freedom or opportunity that you are convinced is available to them. This is an approach which requires not just making a case for a way of life, but an attack upon the structures, policies, and situations that you believe define both your own and others' ways of life. You are, in sort, appealing to the (presumably objective) political, economic, and/or social interests of your interlocutors. Tim adds that he thinks Crawford's book has been particularly successful amongst a certain type of social conservative because they also frequently confuse the two...and though he was kind enough to give me the benefit of the doubt, I can't help but feel the sharp edge of that criticism.

I don't really consider myself an out-and-out localist, but my family and I do try to live in accordance with certain localist, self-sufficient, simplicity-oriented principles: we try to eat local and buy cheap, we walk or ride bikes, and so forth. I'm also not much of an out-and-out populist, but there is so much which, I think anyway, potentially goes hand-in-hand with populism--a commitment to democracy and sovereignty, a recognition community integrity and social equality--that I don't mind the label, and use it repeatedly. (See here, here, here, here and here, for a start.) Point is, I find myself wanting to be able to do both things, just as Tim accuses Crawford of doing. I want to communicate a source of belonging and virtue and culture--call it "localism"--that I consider, philosophically and psychologically and, yes, aesthetically, to be valuable. I also want to communicate my belief that what gets in the way of people being able to appreciate their communities as sources of such is, more often than not, structural economic and political opposition to such--call that "populism." Is it really possible to do both at the same time?

Perhaps not. Localism--or, more plainly, a commitment to a specific, local community--is, quite possibly, in a world characterized by what Michael Walzer called the "Four Mobilities" (geographic, social, marital, and political) like our own, invariably just an affectation, not an agenda. True, we can--and should!--discuss the numerous economic and social forces which sustain the modern Western world's environment of innovation and dislocation, but until and unless a complete collapse of wealth and/or technology drains the pool of opportunity through which even the most grounded and conservative of individuals swim, you'll be hard pressed making the case for local communities without including along with your quasi-Marxist jeremiad a large portion of romance. (I know; I've tried.) By the same token, the populist critique almost invariably can't stay localist, can't stay nostalgic or simple: if you really want to empower people, then you have to attend to what people actually do...and if what they do is move around and live and buy and sell beyond the sphere of some basic, hypothetical, self-sustaining polity, then any attempt to reach those people will have to involve some compromises with and positive action towards socializing and preserving a communitarian sensibility within said polity. (In short: simplicity is complicated, and sometimes local communities are their own worst enemy.) So perhaps localist principles can never quite entirely support the sort of populist arguments which their defense requires, and conversely perhaps populist claims can never quite entirely capture the whole appeal of living locally in the first place. It's enough to make you want to move to some isolated cabin in the mountains of Montana--or a some nondescript anonymous apartment in Manhattan; whichever place best allows you to give up on any attempt at straddling--and leave the whole "project" alone.

(Of course, one could also respond to this fear with the example of more than a few Western European polities, which have arguably demonstrated that pursuing populist (or, at least, progressive or "socialist") ends, ends which to a great extent ground themselves in a socio-economic critique of those aspects of the market which can undermine equality, in fact rebound to the sustaining of local ways of life and the preservation of community. This is probably my own one weak hope: the Red Tory/left conservative/Laschian breakthrough! Though I suspect I'm mostly alone in believing the United States should strive to learn "conservative" or "communitarian" lessons from our Christian Democratic brethren across the Atlantic.)

In a comment to a recent post, Patrick Deneen asked whether the kind of conservative effort which Front Porch Republic is engaged in--if that is, in fact, what it is engaged in, a point about which I would have some questions at the very least--ought best be considered an "ethos" or a "movement." He further asks, "whether it's possible to advance an 'ethos' through politics and a political movement." If I might continue to make use of Tim's distinction, it is a question as to whether or not any "political" argument that necessarily involves some element of aristocratic persuasion--about what makes for good food, a good family, a good community, and a good, local life--will ever be plausible or workable in our modern, liberal democratic, interest-group-dominated political world. And it is a question of whether, assuming we can come up with a political argument that speaks of local common goods, will that "common good" be so watered down by the policies and compromises necessary to achieve real democratic emancipation--the freedom and capacity for the masses of individuals to get away from the rat-race, and find fulfillment the popular control of one's economy and culture and polity--that it isn't really conserving anything at all, anymore? For me, divided modern man that I am, this is the problem. But of course, it's actually a problem for all of us, in the end.

Happy Blogoversary, Melissa!

My wife Melissa, aka Book Nut, has been blogging for five years. I've been at this longer, but by any even remotely objective measurement, she's better at it than me. She has a clearer focus, she's a more regular writer, she has more readers, and her blog has brought her into a much wider world (not to mention a sometimes even financially remunerative one, at least based on all the free books she receives on an almost-daily basis...) than anything my blog has done for me. Am I jealous? I'll admit it, sometimes, yes. But mostly I'm impressed. She's always been a smart, funny, opinionated, caring, thoughtful person, and her blog has allowed her to apply those characteristics to something she loves: books. So go wish her some congratulations, everybody. And while you're there, stick around a bit, look through her archives, read some of her reviews. She's been talking about her favorite books for five years now; surely, she's probably talked about some of yours as well.

Our Three-Year-Old Sounds Exactly Like This

Via Ezra Klein, something way too cute to be denied: a little boy's first encounter with...lobster.



I sure hope this wasn't staged. It's awesome.

Friday Morning Videos: "Our House"

Next week is Thanksgiving, and we're preparing for some relatives to visit, and stay with us (on the old couch-bed downstairs) for a few days. I thought that might make it an appropriate week for something by Crowded House, but I never really liked any of their hits too much. So how about some Madness? No doubt it'll be that around Chez Fox next week.

Oh Sure, Let the Judiciary Save Us

So it appears that our local Wichita school district, USD 259, is joining up with dozens of other public school districts around the state to sue (or at least threaten to sue) the Kansas state government, claiming that cuts in the state's education budget constitute a departure from guaranteed funding formulas--which themselves arise from a long history of previous lawsuits--and thereby violate the state constitution.

I'm mostly a big fan of public education, and think that, generally speaking, people ought to be willing to pay more in taxes to support them. But in this case...blah.

Alexis de Tocqueville observed, close to 170 years ago, that "There is almost no political question in the United States that is not resolved sooner or later into a judicial" (Democracy in America, Book 1, Part 2, Chp. 8), and that remains the case. Some people see this as a good thing: democracy doesn't work for those who have no vote or voice, the argument goes, and so it is appropriate to have an independent judiciary capable of weighing in, issuing judgments, and forcing actions in regards to, say, minority populations, unpopular religions, the poor...or, in this case, the young students that public schools serve. I wouldn't argue against that principle in an absolute sense. I agree that broad rights do sometimes trump local politics or customary traditions, and that means interventions are sometimes necessary: I have no desire to necessarily see, for example, Brown v. Board of Education overturned. (I'm a fan of the arguments against judicial review as currently practiced by Jeremy Waldon and Mark Tushnet, but neither of them, I think, would dispute that "separate but equal" was a violation of fundamental rights) But the recourse to the judiciary, and the hope that through a carefully designed lawsuit it will bring judges to discover a right that will force things to change in the favor of the plaintiff is much, much too common in the United States.

That the U.S. is lawsuit-happy has become common knowledge amongst most observers of America's political culture, and the negative social, economic, and cultural consequences on relying too much on the courts can be seen, either directly or indirectly, in matters ranging from insurance costs to abortion politics to consumer complaints and more. But that knowledge doesn't seem to affect people's decisions much. The organization Schools for Fair Funding successfully pushed, through judicial action, the Kansas state government to provide significant increases in education funding, not to mention changes in how it was distributed, but those were during relatively flush times. Now we have a situation where Kansas, like so many other states, is struggling with high unemployment rates, bankruptcies and home foreclosures, all of which cut into the available tax base. And the way to resolve this is...what, democratic deliberation? Trusting our legislators to make the best decisions they can? Getting active through interest groups to demand changes in the funding formula? No, a lawsuit--in essence, trusting courts to intervene and set up a formula (or at least, set themselves up as those responsible for approving or rejecting whatever formula the legislature comes up with) which they think is fair and mandated by the state's constitution. Which will probably similarly result in taxes being raised--essentially, if indirectly, by mandate--or the highway budget or some other portion of the state budget being deeply cut, up to and including letting people go--again, essentially by mandate.

Leave aside your complaints about the separation of powers, and about how this kind of response to a set of genuinely difficult and complex social and economic trade-offs basically cheapens our democracy, entrusting public policy and the hard compromises which self-government involves to a small group of people, as serious as those complaints may be. Think about the backlash to all this. Yes, parents like ourselves would, generally speaking, love to see more money go to the schools, and if SFFF's arguments are correct and the money is there to be cut and re-allocated, more power to them. But think more broadly than that: think about the reliance upon the judiciary this fosters; think about the political reforms to make our government's budget process more participatory and transparent which are not pursued because everyone assumes the courts, not political action, is a proper last resort. Moreover, think about who really wins these kind of defiant clashes, as opposed to those who get what they need through careful deliberation. In Arkansas, it was a tiny Lake View School district that pushed forward a case that drove that state's education policy for years...ultimately resulting in school district consolidation and, you guessed it, the disappearance of Lake View. Consolidation is a complex issue, and there are both good and bad arguments for it, but that's just the point: almost everything having to do education funding, like so many other public policy issues, has both good and bad arguments behind, requiring compromising and continual tweaking. To keep such tweaking in the hands of legislators--and thereby, ultimately, in the hands of voters--is the proper way to run a representative democracy. Insuring that issues pertaining to fundamental rights are resolved through definitive, even defiant, judicial interventions is one, often necessary thing. But figuring out yearly education budgets? Just not the same thing at all.

The Flint Hills Center for Public Policy is basically a libertarian outfit, and quasi-socialist that I am, I probably disagree with them nine times out of ten. But one of those ten times happens to occur right here, when people are tempted to turn to the judiciary to supposedly "cut through" the tough and always unsatisfying parameters and limitations of policy discussion. It's not a sign of good citizenship, ultimately, and more immediately, it almost never results in good policy. As the FHC put it, "the authority to make policy lies with the state Legislature and thus the voter." You don't have to sign up to join a bunch of Tea Party wing-nuts to recognize the truth of that.

Friday Morning Videos: "Queen of Hearts"

Here's something a little different: country-pop music. Now sure, country music--original folk and roots, Nashville-style, western swing, rockabilly, whatever--was obviously out there all while I was growing up, but I missed out on nearly all of it. It wasn't until I was an adult that I found the sense to familiarize myself with all those great country performers over the years who never really respected genre boundaries--the Johnny Cashes, the Emmylou Harrises, the Willie Nelsons, the Dolly Partons--and who consequently, once radio went corporate, rarely had big, cross-over hits. In the early days of the video age, before Garth Brooks changed the whole country music scene, there was very little twang on VH1 or MTV, and hence little country music in my consciousness. But there was Juice Newton though, so let's give her some props.



I love her bandmate who keeps poking his head up over the jail cell window. Nice touch.

Crawford, Once Again

My old review of Matthew Crawford's Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry into the Value of Work, somewhat condensed and reworked for a Mormon audience, has just been published in The Mormon Review. So, if you want another look at it, or a chance to discuss the article with me, that's where to go.

Perfect.

A good reminder that, whatever else John Stewart is, he's a very, very funny man.



It's the little "purity of essence" tag right beside the Xeroxed picture of Che Guevara that puts it over the top for me.

Friday Morning Videos: "King of Wishful Thinking" (Again)

One or two people out there might actually be wondering "Wait, didn't he do this video already?" Yep, I have. But, having arrived at the one-year mark for this feature, I looked back through the archives, and discovered that a good chunk of my videos are no longer playable, thanks to the fact that you can't embed most of the stuff on Youtube anymore. So, over the next few months, I'm going to be reposting new copies of the videos that readers can't watch anymore, as the week when I originally put them up comes around. Yes, that's right, I'm doing this all for you, my readers. Ain't I grand?