The Classroom Conservative

Ron Sexsmith, Love Shines

I caught the Ron Sexsmith bug about ten years ago when I bought his Blue Boy album on a whim.  I remember very clearly hearing the horns on “This Song” and being a little put off by the overproduction of that first cut, but I was immediately won over by the simple brilliance of his lyrics: for “Cheap Hotel,” for “Just My Heart Talkin,” and for just about every other song on that CD, on all his previous recordings, and on each of the recordings he has released since.  Blue Boy, in some sense, was an anomaly: roots and country legend Steve Earle, from the producer’s chair, had Sexsmith work in a variety of genres, and yet the lyrics kept outshining everything else about the record.

Long Player Late Bloomer, Sexsmith’s twelfth album, has been out for a couple of months.  Produced this time by Bob Rock, the CD sets out to achieve for Sexsmith a big radio hit, a money maker.  The musical accompaniment is polished, and the vocals are robust.  But there is no evidence that Long Player Late Bloomer will rival Lady Gaga’s Born This Way.

Douglas Arrowsmith’s documentary examines the phenomenon of a Canadian legend, a critical darling, who cannot afford a washer and dryer for his home.  Love Shines sets out the contrast between critical acclaim and commercial success, but it ultimately fails to answer a fundamental question about how professional musicians make money.  Ron Sexsmith has had twelve albums, and his songs have been covered by artists who sell more records.  After Napster, after iTunes, CD sales figures seem quaint.  So what does Sexsmith have to do, practically, to be able to afford to bring his band on the road with him?  Even in the age of e-books, I know that you can support writers by buying a novel and buying a couple more to give friends.  How does the average fan support a favorite, underappreciated singer/songwriter?

What I found most interesting about Love Shines was the footage of Sexsmith in the studio with Rock and the session musicians.  Though a life-long music fan, I still find the process of record producing rather opaque.  It was interesting to see how Sexsmith would approach his producer with a lyric and a melody – and how Rock layered sound atop it.  It is clear that the words themselves are most important to Sexsmith and that he has always seemed open to packaging those words in a way that reaches more people.  It is not just about the money, he attests, and you believe him.  But you can feel the frustration of a man who has the admiration of some of the world’s greatest musicians but whose work lacks the cultural pervasiveness that would spell greater security.  Steve Earle is correct; Sexsmith is most fortunate that people even know his name.  Heck, Elvis Costello says that Sexsmith has revived for him “Every Day I Write The Book”!  However, Sexsmith needed a fortieth birthday gift in order to secure a piano, the tool of his trade, and, at some point, critical acclaim is not enough.

The Pixies In Calgary

Groggy, unable to hear clearly out of my left ear, I walked around a Calgary hotel room in search of Mike Bell’s review in the Calgary Sun.  “Nostalgia For Pixies Wearing a Little Thin,” the headline read.

I marveled again at how it can be that two people can hear the same thing and draw very different conclusions.

I was amongst 2,500 fans at the Jube on Saturday night.  Tickets were difficult to come by.  One of the seminal bands of my youth, a group that disbanded nearly twenty years ago, was returning to Calgary, where they had played during their 2004 reunion, and I had a chance to go.  I arranged my work schedule at the end of term so I could get there, and I was not disappointed.

The conceit, this time around, was that the band would be playing in its entirety Doolittle, their breakthrough 1989 album.  Whereas music fans today download individual songs from iTunes, and concerts from iconic bands are buffets of greatest hits, the Pixies sought to remind us that recorded popular music was once conceived in a pattern defined by two sides of twenty minutes each.  Albums were tiny narratives, and Saturday night had a story of its own.  It began, as David Bowie shows once did, with scenes from Un Chien Andalou, the French surrealist film that reifies “slicing up eyeballs,” the noted “Debaser” lyric.  After racing through four B-Side cuts, Kim Deal began the bassline of that song, and I was reminded – suddenly – of the impact this band has had.  As influential as Come on Pilgrim and Surfer Rosa might have been in some circles, it was that first song from the first side of Doolittle that signaled something new in music, something that would help give birth to Nirvana and the whole grunge movement, but something that actually defined a whole new vein within popular music, something that really was never emulated.

Why the Pixies were unique had a lot to do with the style of guitarist Joey Santiago, and that was evident again at the show in songs like “There Goes My Gun” and “Into the White.”  The heavy drumming of Dave Lovering was featured on “La La Love You,” and I marveled again at his steady presence.  The melodies of “Here Comes Your Man” and “Monkey Gone to Heaven” belie the dark images of the songs.  But the real key to the Pixies, now and then, is the tension between Charles Thompson (a.k.a. Black Francis, Frank Black) and Kim Deal, as the latter tries to adapt her tremendous gifts to a band that has always been forged in the vision of the former.  The mending of their relationship was documented in Loudquietloud, the chronicle of band’s reunion tour, and one can only speculate as to how it manifests itself today.  She speaks to the crowd; he remains Black Francis, throughout.  She smiles, having fun, explaining to us how a needle once worked on a record.  He steps forward to say “Hey!” and you think that the fourth wall is finally crumbling before realizing that he has simply begun Doolittle’s third-last track.  Together, their harmonies are better than ever, truly better than ever, as her voice has improved with age and his control and range has not diminished one bit, but when they take on “Gigantic,” from Surfer Rosa, as a final encore, he steps back.  Is he giving her a moment, finishing with the only song she sang on that first, full-length record?  Is he hacked off?  Is he disappointed with us?  Have we been a good audience?

While some of my reactions may have been foolish, they were not simply nostalgic, as Mr. Bell asserts.  I shake my head at the fifty year olds around me, with their lighters, with their tokes, jumping up in the first rows of the balcony as if they could not, otherwise, see.  I do marvel that so many people their age – God, my age! – know the words to “Wave of Mutilation,” but I am under no illusions: it is not 1989.  When Thompson performs now, I understand how all this work underwrote his solo success from the mid-1990s.  The songs are polished, hard to realize live amidst all the thrashing about.  When, finally, something does go wrong, on “Dig For Fire,” with its intricate interplay between percussion and rhythm guitar, Mr. Bell calls it “an unmitigated disaster.”  On the contrary, I was reminded that some of these encore numbers, like this Bossanova favorite, are not played every night.  And I marvel, anew, at what it takes to maintain such command over such an impressive oeuvre, as the Pixies have done.

In Search Of Easy Listening

One of my "leisure" activities for vacation has been a comprehensive review of my iTunes. (Music appreciation counts as a hobby, right?) Over the course of some years, I have ripped to my laptop with little rhyme or reason about 12,000 songs. It gets messy after awhile. Some songs get imported without album art, and that has to be downloaded afterwards. Sometimes the wrong art gets added. I noted with humor that the cover for I'm Your Fan, the Leonard Cohen tribute record, came through as a picture of three Mexican comedians. Some titles are duplicated. Is it the same song twice, added first as part of an "original" disc and then again as part of a compilation? Or are there alternate recordings of the same song? This takes some investigation in order to maximize drive space. Not all selections download or get ripped adequately. "Mary's Prayer," the big single from Meet Danny Wilson, was purchased three times from the iTunes Store; all three versions skip. The Cowboy Junkies' The Caution Horses sounds muddy, and the volume is unusually low on a Jimi Hendrix record I borrowed and ripped. My wife tells me that the Steve Winwood will not play.

But, by far, the most difficult thing through which to sort is the recommended genre classification label that is downloaded when you rip. I have come to admire people who have completed a library science degree: perhaps, to them, 12,000 inconsistent tags do not intimidate. But, to me, they are a real source of frustration.

When I worked for Sam The Record Man in the 1980s, much of our collection was filed under "pop/rock." As this covered most so-called "popular" music, it was relatively simple to identify the outliers: blues, country, classical, and jazz, for example. With a strong "traditional" legacy in Newfoundland, one could understand "folk" intuitively. There was a practical value to this system, of course. People coming by for a Bessie Smith album or a new recording of Holst's The Planetswould not go looking for it where we were hiding the Tiffany. Sam's in St. John's was rightly proud of its little classical bin, hand-picked by our expert manager, Wayne Smith. Rhonda Wiseman, our assistant manager, was a blues aficionado, and that section was good, too. But, here, the problems started. Robert Cray had some crossover hits then, as his sound mellowed, and people would look for him in "pop/rock." There was little question that Stevie Ray Vaughan belonged there, too, but that should have been "blues," surely. It was hotly debated whether we needed a separate "R&B" section. Indeed, scratch the surface of "pop/rock" and none of the distinctions started to make sense. Before I caught on at Sam's, A&A turned me down for suggesting that its "easy listening" section should expand. I was trying to separate "pop" from "rock," I guess.

Twenty-five years later, what we called "pop/rock" has indeed been fractured hopelessly. iTunes provides dozens of new categories, from "electronica" to "metal," to describe popular music. This really began in the early 1990s, I believe, when "grunge" ushered in something called "alternative" music, a category that has only ever meant "weird in a good way" or "popular in a way about which you need not be ashamed." So many artists, then as now, really and truly blur all these distinctions. But rather than honor the complexity of what makes music good, these different categories have subdivided musical taste to an impossible degree. What separates pop from rock from blues from alternative from folk from roots?

I went back and relabeled everything unambiguous as "pop/rock." There are 500 country songs, 500 blues songs, and 200 that qualify as "Christmas." There is a value in being able to tag all your holiday music, thus. But try making playlists with 9,000 items tagged "pop/rock."

Barney Hoskyns, Lowside of the Road: A Life of Tom Waits

Evidence of the well-documented weakness of Lowside of the Road can be found on the five pages of its second appendix: emails from Tom Waits' friends confirming that they would not assist Barney Hoskyns in writing this biography. To Hoskyns' credit, he demonstrates that an unauthorized biography need not be a hatchet job. But while some readers quibble with the conclusions Hoskyns draws in the absence of evidence, I sometimes question the direction in which he chooses to take his analysis. Just what is biography meant to do?

In his discussion of the first thirty years of Waits' life, Hoskyns is on firm ground. There are many people with whom to talk, and many of those people choose to do so here. Hoskyns speaks in great detail about Waits' folk roots in San Diego in the late 1960s and his move to L.A. What is but touched upon, however, is Waits' early family life. It is as if, out of respect for the musician's privacy, the biographer steers clear of anything beyond Frank Waits' drinking and the breakdown of his marriage to Alma Waits. Where this book is most vivid is in describing Tom Waits' early struggles in the music business, the difficulty in finding the musicians and the producer who could help him put on vinyl what he heard in his head. The image of the hobo under the streetlamp was first forged behind the piano in ridiculous gigs opening for Frank Zappa. Waits' own struggles with alcohol, his bohemian motel life in Los Angeles, and his personal life round out a sketch of his years on Asylum Records.

With his marriage to Kathleen Brennan and his switch to Island Records, Tom Waits traded the hobo for the carnival barker. With Waits, Brennan, and their three kids living an intensely private life, Hoskyns is unable to make the same connection, from 1980, between Waits the person and Waits the musician. And, yet, beginning with Swordfishtrombones (1983), Waits' music changed dramatically. As many critics have carped, the last half of Lowside of the Road reads as a series of album reviews; Hoskyns is remarkably skilled at describing the music, but thirty years passes pretty quickly with little more than a series of records to mark the time. I would have preferred that the second half of the book more contextualize Waits' achievement in the changing landscape of popular music. For example, how does someone who works with a broad canvas, song cycles on a large scale, fit in a world in which downloading has reinforced a shift back to a earlier, singles-based sensibility? To his credit, Hoskyns restrains any resentment he might feel about Waits' apparent attitude towards his research, showing spleen only perhaps in his criticism of Waits' latest albums. Similarly, he filters out any peevishness that might be felt from those Waits friends excluded from the current tightly-knit circle, those friends who would, then, speak to the author at great length about being discarded by a genius.

Still, I found this a very valuable book, for reasons that Hoskyns probably does not realize. I am a huge Waits fan, but -- ten years younger than the author -- I got interested in him with the release of Big Time (1988). Swordfishtrombones and Rain Dogs (1985) make perfect sense when you begin in the late 1980s. I enjoyed here learning more about Waits in the 1970s, running out and buying Nighthawks at the Diner (1975) in order to compare his live sensibilities with that of Glitter and Doom, my favorite record of last year. There is no huge transition for me to explain: the hobo is the carnival barker, and neither is Tom Waits at home in northern California. That is not to say that I would not like to know more about the influences behind the wonderful collaborations between Brennan and Waits, but I am happy to supplement the music with at least this much context.

The Passage Of Time: A New Year's Ode

With the weather outside truly frightful, or at least prohibitively cold, I have been using some quiet time to catch up on ripping some albums for iTunes. I was surprised to find, for example, that I had neglected to add Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska or any Kinks to the list. How, with only twelve thousand songs in my pocket, could I have missed "Celluloid Heroes"? Just kidding. But pulling out these old CDs demonstrates to me just how flimsy a grasp we have on time. It seems like an appropriate New Year's observation.

I recall so vividly, for example, the release of David Bowie's Let's Dance in 1983. It was a smashing success, of course, and Bowie has not had as successful a studio album since. But, at the time, it was hailed as a significant "comeback" in the United States. Station to Station had been an American hit in 1976, but his next four records failed to crack the top ten. Let's Dance hit #4, ending a seven-year drought, just when people apparently thought that Bowie would be forgotten. I recall that impression. A big star from the 1970s had lost all significance by the middle of the next decade. Seven years to a fourteen year-old boy just discovering popular music seemed like an eternity. Of course, Let's Dance has now been out for more than a quarter of a century, and to a middle-aged man its release feels like last summer.

I had the same response today when I was reminded that XTC's Skylarking was released in 1986 or that Sinead O'Connor's second record was supposed to make her the first superstar of the 1990s. The nostalgia industry has already begun to repackage the fleeting stars of that decade: Fiona Apple, Shawn Colvin, Deep Blue Something, Divinyls, Duncan Sheik, Joan Osbourne, Tonic.

The modernists whom I teach struggled to find a better way to represent the passage of time in their literature, of course. The meticulous hour spent in class should not be represented in the same way as the easy hour spent in leisure, but how best to achieve this literary sleight of hand? For many authors, they sought only to draw their readers' attention to this paradox. Pages and pages were devoted to the inner workings of a man or woman experiencing a moment, and years could then pass through the words of a single paragraph.

This seems apt, as I realize that the students joining us next week, after taking a few extra months to work, were born in 1992, just as I was making application to graduate school. They feel to some extent as if they have lived whole lives, struggling through years of restrictions, navigating secondary school -- and those years, like this one past, has passed for me in the blink of an eye.

Because I Like Lists: My Favourite Albums Of 2009

Twenty years ago, I used to get paid to keep track of my favorite recordings and publish them at year's end. Without the financial incentive, I cannot swear that I have not forgotten something essential here. Still, I know that I have purchased and listened, repeatedly, to all of these CDs. Back in the day, record companies used to send them to me for free.

1. Tom Waits: Glitter and Doom Live. An arresting presence in concert, the gravelly crooner still translates well to CD (or MP3).

2. Levon Helm: Electric Dirt. Follow-up to Dirt Farmer shows that The Band veteran is far from done.

3. Leonard Cohen: Live In London. If you did not see Cohen on tour, this album is as close as you will get to that stunning experience.

4. Ry Cooder: The UFO Has Landed. Sure, it is a collection: but how else to bring together 25 years of eclecticism?

5. Morrissey: Swords. Shows that his B-Sides are better than many people's singles.

6. Elvis Costello: Secret, Profane, and Sugarcane. As melodic, if less angry, than he was 30 years ago.

7. Norah Jones: The Fall. She could sing the phone book. Maybe in 2010?

8. Bowerbirds: Upper Air. Leaving behind the dark and brooding, North Carolina outfit shows the morning after their debut's night before.

9. Bob Dylan: Together Through Life. Though not as arresting as his turn-of-the-century blues records, this ramshackle collection holds together well.

10. The Weather Station: The Line. Canadian Tamara Lindeman's folksy "found sounds" were a find for NPR's "All Songs Considered."

Leonard Cohen In Calgary, Alberta

I have thought, on occasion, as the wheels lifted off the ground at some exotic location, that I would never again set eyes on whatever sight presented itself to me through the widow of the airplane. From the very top of the Jack Singer Concert Hall in Calgary, I had on Sunday night the same thought: I was watching Leonard Cohen give the single greatest concert I have ever seen.

One need not be ghoulish to imagine that Mr. Cohen, who turns 75 in September, will never again undertake as punishing a tour as that with which he is currently engaged. Running through a deep catalogue of genuine classics, he demonstrates consistently the value of singing ones own songs; when he proclaims "Ain't No Cure For Love," you really believe that he means it. You are reminded, as he recites his lyrics, that the man is a poet of the first rank -- and that by embracing the ballad form he did nothing to tarnish his early legacy. In fact, crafting a song as bittersweet as "Famous Blue Raincoat," conscious of the lyrical demands of something as mundane as the repetition of a chorus, Mr. Cohen affirms that true artisans can tailor their art to the rigors and discipline of form.

The reedy high baritone of Mr. Cohen's early career has collapsed, of course, and from under its rubble emerges a more agreeable bass that breathes new life into his catalogue. As a result, "Chelsea Hotel, No. 2," "Sisters Of Mercy," "Suzanne," and "Who By Fire" are revived. Songs from his "middle period," like "Dance Me To The End Of Love" and "Hallelujah," benefit from arrangements fleshed out by his full and accomplished backing band. (Indeed, perhaps only "Bird On A Wire" and "The Gypsy's Wife," with lush new arrangements, suffer overkill.) Both generous and gracious, tolerating constant camera flashes from the gloom of the auditorium, Mr. Cohen introduced on two separate occasions all of the individuals whose talents compliment his own, the most impressive being, perhaps, Spanish guitarist Javier Mas.

I am not sure that you could describe the show as the resurrection of a ladies' man, as I sensed from my perch none of the sexual chemistry you imagine these songs once engendered. I acknowledge that such flirtation was never intended for me, but one cannot help but think that his banter with singers Sharon Robinson and Charley and Hattie Webb lacked the danger that it might once have had. Then again, was the mood broken by the persistent yob who marched up and down the far isle on the floor, shouting? Or how about the guy who proclaimed himself a senior citizen but who felt he had to scream an adolescent answer each time Mr. Cohen spoke to the crowd?

In the end, I think, I came away from the show most in awe of how productive Mr. Cohen was in the late 1980s and early 1990s, of how well the material from I'm Your Man (1988) and The Future(1992) stands up, today. "Anthem," "Closing Time," "Everybody Knows," "First We Take Manhattan," "Take This Waltz," "Tower Of Song," and "Waiting For The Miracle" all come from a period that culminated in his being awarded the 1993 Juno as Vocalist of the Year. But no one at the Singer longed for the early 1990s, on this night; we were instead treated to evidence of the master in full voice and in top form.

Morrissey, Years Of Refusal

"Life is very long, when you're lonely," Morrissey sang at the helm of The Smiths in 1986. The title track from the band's greatest album laments, in part, waiting around and around and around some more, answering questions about fulfilling a destiny defined for you by others. I wonder if Morrissey ever feels that way, himself?

One could make the argument that The Queen Is Dead is one of the greatest rock albums ever. After The Smiths blew up following a stellar four-year burst of achievement in the late eighties, Morrissey embarked on a solo career that has, in its output, dwarfed that of his early band. But he has endured a full two decades of Smiths nostalgia where some people have been waiting for him to make a record that rivals in its impact his first work. The key to The Smiths had been timing, of course, as their music was a salve to a generation that came of age amidst of the dreariness of Thatcher's England. Smiths nostalgia takes no account of how Morrissey's pop anthems were the soundtrack of the early nineties, how Smiths retro had little resonance amidst Cool Britannia.

So, now, some early reviews of Years Of Refusal suggest that Morrissey has taken an unprecedented turn to the loud and straightforward. This, too, lacks any historical perspective. Morrissey has turned up the volume before with Your Arsenal (1992) and Maladjusted (1997). In fact, the new record follows a formula to which Moz has adhered for some time. Some of the songs are quite heavy, demonstrating the influence of guitarist Boz Boorer, with whom Morrissey has collaborated much, much longer than he ever collaborated with Johnny Marr. Some of the songs are downright campy, the kind of swooning torchsongs that get his fans to rush the stage at his gigs. (But if, like me, you have ever seen a Morrissey show, you can attest that everyone rushes the stage, anyway.) Some of the songs are perfect pop earworms, the sorts of things you sing to yourself all day. Morrissey has not made an album packed with the third variety since the flood of material that tumbled out of him immediately upon leaving The Smiths, but at least he has here avoided the affectation of the worst camp that has been the ballast of some of his B-sides.

Some of the heavier songs are still remarkably melodic: "That's How People Grow Up," "One Day Goodbye Will Be Farewell," and "I'm Ok By Myself." The pure pop of "Sorry Doesn't Help" and "I'm Throwing My Arms Around Paris" is irresistible, and Moz's lyrics swing from the fragility of the former ("In the absence of your touch / And in the absence of loved ones / I have decided I'm throwing my arms around all of Paris because only stone and steel accept my love") to the egotism of "All You Need Is Me" ("There's a soft voice singing in your head / Who could this be? / I do believe it's me / There's a naked man standing, laughing in your dreams / You know who it is / But you don't like what it means"). While he fails here to rise to the heights of Vauxhall and I(1994), the instant classic of moody pop whose opening bars still fill me with my own nostalgia, Morrissey brings forth on Years of Refusal a timely collection of songs that adds at least a half-dozen titles to one of the most impressive outputs of any pop superstar of any era.

Unlike the casual fans who are waiting and waiting for something, or waiting for the return to something, I can always find something vital where Morrissey has taken me over the course of a twenty-five-year career.

My Most Played Songs Of 2008: Some Old, Some New

Happy New Year, Everyone!

Many of you will be both impressed and frustrated with the accessories that accompany your iTunes player. I wish I could be more positive about "Genius," the facility that should recommend music to your taste and suggest ways to plug holes in your collection. Genius takes forever to load on my system, even though it is analyzing only nine thousand songs, and it is almost always wrong. Less ambitious, but more interesting, is how iTunes tracks your most played songs, and if you remember to reset it every January 1, it will tell you during the next Christmas week what most held your attention during the year.

#10 Bela Fleck and the Flecktones, "Jingle Bells"

Bela Fleck's take on Christmas music sounds like the Chieftains and an Ozarks folk band got stranded in the Australian outback. Almost any track from this most original of Christmas records stands out from the holiday din, but "Jingle Bells" showcases virtually all the features that make this new release an instant classic. Even people who hate Christmas music will find Bela Fleck irresistible.

#9 Bruce Springsteen, "Atlantic City"

I always thought this song was about the shame and guilt of a small-time hood. After hearing a great paper on the subject from my colleague Irwin Streight, I came to appreciate the protagonist's desperation and fear, and that realization brings me back again and again for a further listen.

#8 Bowerbirds, "Hooves"

This is a haunting hundred-and-sixty seconds from these North Carolina gypsies. An unusual ode to mother, this song has a Beth Tacular accordion bit that will stay with you. Luckily, the rest of the record is equally stunning.

#7 Wilco, "Hate It Here"

Jeff Tweedy and his mates have here come up with an original breakup song that will, in turn, break your heart. The Beatlesque bridge will run through your head throughout the day when you least expect it.

#6 The Shins, "Phantom Limb"

Although they left Sub Pop Records this year, The Shins remind us how vital that label has been. The first single from their third record is a real earworm, a sweet vocal punctuated with crisp percussion. I am a sucker for the tambourine, raised in the evangelical tradition and all.

#5 Ron Hynes, "1962"

The greatest song ever written by the man who also wrote "Sonny's Dream" and "The St. John's Waltz": this is shameless nostalgia for the innocent seduction of a simpler time. As with all Hynes' songs, it is the detail that stays with you. The speaker here remembers how his girlfriend wrapped his guitar in a sweater to protect it from the rain. You have to hear the hard-to-find acoustic version released in 2001.

#4 Helena Bonham Carter/Johnny Depp, "A Little Priest"

This song captures the precise moment when Mrs. Lovett and Sweeney Todd stew up the scheme for "those above to serve those down below," if you follow my meaning. The English professor howls at the line: "The trouble with poet is/ How do you know it's deceased?" Indeed.

#3 Rufus Wainwright, "Zing! Went The Strings of My Heart"

Deliciously vampy and campy homage to Judy Garland, Rufus Wainwright's lush Carnegie Hall show is a triumph. He is in full voice on this cut, and there is the added bonus of hearing him speed up the band "just a touch, just a touch, darling." It's guilty, sing-a-long goodness!

#2 Billy Bragg, "The Milkman of Human Kindness"

I could be rightly accused of being a Billy Bragg jukebox, and I have a real affection for the early, pared-down stuff. It would not have surprised me if "The Saturday Boy" or "A New England" or "Levi Stubbs' Tears" was played more frequently, but the computer does not lie. I am a sucker for the inherent pun of the premise here: the singer brings "an extra pint" of the milk of human kindness to the lovelorn. This song also boasts a simple but brilliant guitar bit.

#1 Amy Winehouse, "Back to Black"

While everyone gets all giddy over "Rehab," I prefer the subtlety of this offering from Camden Town's songstress. Marry an old school R&B groove with a sorrowful vocal, and you get this story of betrayal betrayed. You could be forgiven for feeling like an enabler if you read this song as the story of competing with addiction for the heart of a beloved, but that just fires up the deeper tragedy. "I love you much, it's not enough," she sings. "You love blow and I love puff/ And life is like a pipe/ And I'm a tiny penny rolling up the walls inside."

Bob Dylan In Lethbridge, Alberta

I saw Bob Dylan in Warsaw, Poland on July 19, 1994. He was promoting a third volume of hits at the time, and the set had a retrospective feel about it. He sang "Jokerman," "Tangled Up In Blue," and "Maggie's Farm," and he finished with "It Ain't Me, Babe" and "Blowin' In The Wind." I felt as if seeing him live, half way around the world, was a cumulative tribute to someone who had so influenced me. Over the subsequent years, when an opportunity to see Dylan again presented itself, I would shrug.

Of course, Bob Dylan has recorded three fabulous studio albums over the past decade, including the utterly brilliant Time Out Of Mind (1997), and so when it was announced that he would be visiting Lethbridge, Alberta, it occurred to me that to fail to see him again, in yet another offbeat venue, would be stupid. It has been fifteen years, after all. I am so glad I had a chance to share this great experience with all the folks who live here - as well as many visitors from Montana and British Columbia, from what I hear.

The tickets were expensive: about four times what used to count as "normal," and twice what I now usually pay. Luckily, we had wonderful seats about a row or two above stage left. Dylan was set up behind his keyboard on the right side, and we had a good view all night from just feet away. Unfortunately, we were also in line with a speaker, and so the volume was much louder here than at other points throughout the Enmax Centre. (The hearing has just returned to both my ears.) Coveted floor seats I bequeath to anyone who wants to stand and jostle for two hours. Enmax security did an excellent job of clearing our row of people who wanted to creep close enough to take a picture.

The set was heavy with material from Modern Times (2006), swaggering rockabilly that shifted Dylan just slightly from his bluesy turn. Happily, and luckily, the heavy backing band brought those songs alive for me, from "Rollin And Tumblin" to the climatic "Thunder On The Mountain." The back catalogue was represented by "Highway 61 Revisited" and, to my surprise, "Girl From The North Country." Similarly, on the verge of a generation-defining American election, Dylan returned, without comment, of course, to "The Times They Are A-Changin" and "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall." On this tour, Dylan has been using "Like A Rolling Stone" and "All Along The Watchtower" as encores, and he employed them here in that order. While the latter pales in comparison to the former, placing his two guitarists under considerable strain, it was enjoyed by the crowd, who were finally revealed in their pulsing enthusiasm by the house lights. The highlights for me were the blues numbers, however: "Lonesome Day Blues" from Love and Theft (2001) and especially "Love Sick" from Time Out Of Mind, the best song Dylan has recorded in twenty-five years. The live version, anchored by the bass and sharp, throbbing drumming, was worth the price of admission itself.

But what about that voice, much discussed? I have long ago thought of it as the sound of waves beating against a cliff, receding over the rocks and back to the sea. There is a beauty, a poetry that transcends even the words, though if you know not what to expect, I am sure it can be jarring. On this night, there was nothing of which one could legitimately grouse. My complaints are with my fellow concert goers. How many times did the people around me get up to go and get another drink, to go and get another pizza or hot dog? We are so used to socializing in our homes, we do not remember how to sit (or stand) and enjoy even a legitimate spectacle. I was sickened as the inhabitants of a luxury box across from us flashed the lights on and off, on and off, as they filled and refilled their glasses, oblivious to what was happening on the stage.

I have heard further complaining, in particular from those in attendance at his subsequent Regina show, that Dylan chose not to do an intimate, acoustic set of oldies. One of the problems with some Dylan fans is a persistent desire that he be what they think he should be, that he reinforce their nostalgia for a time they now view to be simpler and somehow idealized. What they fail to remember is that his artistry was forged in a troubled time of transition: that he has persevered and reinvented himself as this Dylan for now should be enough for everyone.