Ryan Adams Rethinks "New York, New York"

This is worth a listen. Ryan Adams is the ultimate reminder that great musicians aren't always the most affable people. But his song was in the right place at the right time to tap our spine in a time of pain, and he's got plenty of talent to back it up.

Adams went on WNYC to perform a mesmerizing arrangement of his song, "New York, New York," a song that reminds us that the soundtracks to our lives don't always have to be perfect matches for our moods or our moments. They only have to be there with us, burning a timecode into our memory.

The song starts at the 5:45 mark. I dare you not to be moved.

Further On Up The Road: A Reconsideration of Springsteen's The Rising

Bruce Springsteen--"Further On (Up The Road)" (mp3)

This Sunday, it will have been 10 years since the towers came down, the Pentagon collapsed, Flight 93 became the ultimate battle of good and evil.

But there is one aspect of this powerful, emotional anniversary that few realize: ten years down the road, no one has tried to heal this nation, except Bruce Springsteen.

Our president sent us shopping and off to war. The "Never Forget" stickers peeled off our cars. Other musicians, though still relatively few, gave us the rage, the revenge, even the understanding (as in Steve Earle's brilliant "John Walker Lindh"), but nothing that we could use to heal. Bruce Springsteen gave us a soundtrack as a balm for our pain.

You may have been surprised, as I have been, by the dearth of 9/11-related songs. But then, there is no great song about Pearl Harbor, is there? I think I expected the range and dexterity of the Vietnam War songs, but those developed over years about a situation that lasted years. We may have wanted a song like Neil Young's "Ohio" about 9/11, but it never materialized and what would we protest against anyway? Instead, we got The Rising and we continue to have The Rising and little else. Luckily, it's been enough, all these years.

Always a champion of newer music, I nevertheless will argue that The Rising contains many of the best moments in popular music over the last ten years--"Lonesome Day" is the strongest opening song on a CD that I can name (and the song that holds up to repeated listenings more than any other), "You're Missing" stands as the most powerful testament to the losses on 9/11, the singular most defining event for an American these past ten years, and the "Na-na-nanana-nas" of "The Rising" are the most redemptive, cathartic moments of 21st century popular music. Bar none.

That being said, we would be remiss not to remind ourselves that Springsteen is a commercial artist; The Rising is a commercial endeavor. When we start there, we can concede that the CD's famous first and last tracks, "Lonesome Day" and "My City Of Ruins," have absolutely nothing to do with 9/11 or New York City. "Lonesome Day" is a song about a relationship, a failed relationship, and all of the emotions that go with being the one who didn't choose to end it. Wikipedia, pompous rock critics like Dave Marsh, and others have simply got it wrong because they are so desperate for unity, so desperate to take words like "vengeance" and "Hell" and tie them in to that day. What they miss is that, tonally, a song like "Lonesome Day" or another song that has nothing to do with 9/11, "Waitin' On A Sunny Day," simply fit because they evoke similar feelings--loss, anger, hope, need for vengeance--to those that 9/11 inspired. "My City Of Ruins," as is well known, was written before 9/11, about Springsteen's New Jersey hometown, not New York City. But it fits. And like any true artist, Springsteen is not going to waste a song that fits, regardless of its origins.

Ten years later, the CD's best 9/11 songs still paint a complex portrait of people not sure to how feel about what has happened to them or to their country as a result of those specific events. "Into The Fire," "Empty Sky," "You're Missing" and "The Rising" illuminate the specific circumstances of those involved and of those left behind. The immediacy of these songs has lost nothing to either the years that have passed or to multiple listenings. Others, like "Further On Up The Road" and "Countin' On A Miracle" are raw musical statements, with searing, unguarded vocals and melodies that capture a kind of desperation and hopelessness, sometimes tinged with bravado, sometimes intensely intimate, that the other songs don't have, but that the CD needs.

Taken as a whole, The Rising's songs evoke the most personal of losses. If the CD has a dominant motif, it is the loss of a kiss, the emptiness of a bed meant for two with only one person in it. Springsteen territory.

Not that there aren't some duds. "Nothing Man" nobly tries to capture what is was like to be a hero on that day, or, more specifically a survivor, but it doesn't delve into the soul like the aforementioned songs or offer the brutal details of "You're Missing." Still, it reminds what it must be like for survivors who are still here because of a whim, a casual decision, a stroke of luck, a simple twist of fate. Other songs, like "Worlds Apart" or "Skin To Skin" or even the haunting "Paradise" simply fail because they reach beyond the CD's mixture of love and loss toward reconciliation with an enemy that we still don't understand. "Paradise," while evocative, is simply misplaced on the CD, the second to last song a sensitive portrayal of a terrorist? No. Plus, "Worlds Apart" and "Skin To Skin" are the weakest songs, musically, on the CD.

In terms of instrumentation, The Rising belongs to Nils Lofgren. While the parts he plays, often on lap steel, are not challenging, they are the standout musical moments on a CD that more often wants to build a wall of instruments and voices. It is Lofgren's notes that usually make the songs soar.

The other thing that's happened in the interim, of course, is that the E-Street Band has taken these songs out on the road, in my opinion, with mixed success. While "Lonesome Day" or "The Rising" can stand with Springsteen's best concert numbers, a song like "You're Missing" loses meaning out of context and a song like "Waitin' On A Sunny Day" is revealed as the lightweight song that it is when removed from the original song cycle. The much-maligned (by my friends) "Mary's Place" is maligned because of the way it is used in concert, as a late-in-the-show replacement for audience party songs like "Rosalita" or "Kitty's Back." In context, it's a nice contrast to some of the rougher numbers.

Ultimately, The Rising is clumsy, in the way that all rock and roll is clumsy. But that is its charm--boys, now men, trying to explore their emotions and match those to music has always been the best that rock had to offer. No man would say in person what he will say in song. That a rock band, in almost its 30th year together, would be expected to, would dare to, take on a national tragedy was never in the cards when rock was young. That Springsteen is able to do that in a sprawling, loose commercial venture that addresses the wounds of an entire nation with a certain amount of timeliness and complete non-partisanship (while revitalizing his own career) is even more amazing. In effect, what was once a rockin' party band throws 15 musical darts at "the big topic", and a good 2/3 of those hit their mark, or come close.

But then music in general, rock and roll in particular, has always been about salvation for Bruce Springsteen. Those who love him understand that; those who don't or who are indifferent apparently don't need to share in that salvation. And that's fine. Perhaps, for 9/11 and its aftermath, Springsteen found himself as the perfect artist, nay, by 2002, the only artist, whose natural musical tendencies fit so perfectly with addressing our unhealed wounds.

If art is supposed to be a reflection of society, then there is precious little art that matters where the life-changing events of September 11, 2001 are concerned. The only one who figured out that people like me were hurting, sitting in our dark kitchens each 9/11, drinking beer and contemplating God-knows-what along with our unexplainable sense of loss, was that larger-than-life character "Bruuuuuuuuuuuuce!" Despite all my years of listening to him, that still somehow amazes me.

So, yes, Mr. Springsteen, I will indeed meet you further on up the road. I know you'll have a song to sing to keep us out of the cold.

Nine Years On

Wilco--"Jesus, Etc. (live)" (mp3)

I'm not really sure what 9/11 means nine years later. Are you?

Today, we claim, through a mixture of increased surveillance, government overstatement, civilian action, and sheer luck that we have not had an attack on our soil since. Not had a successful attack, anyway. While I don't think we are quaking in fear as we anticipate the next one. And if and when we do have another one, the vultures from either side of the aisle (depending on who is in power at the time) are waiting to descend with their charges of the government's inability to keep us safe.

Today, the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission remain largely ignored. Most prominently, government agencies like the FBI, CIA, NSA, etc. do not work with any more sense of collaboration or information-sharing than they ever did. If anything, it's worse.

Today, Afghanistan is a place of no resolution. Our incursion there was supposed to neutralize the enemies who flew planes into our buildings, to crush their terror network. And all but one of the accused terrorists who allegedly committed the attacks, plus bin Laden himself, came from Saudi Arabia, which remains our ally, if not our friend.

Today, those workers and civil servants who responded to the physical tragedy and its aftermath in New York City are in the fight of their lives (literally) to get acknowledgement and support for the illnesses caused by the dust of 9/11. While we might think without thinking that our government and our country would embrace and respond to their sitation positively, that has not been the case.

Today, our president's announcement that we have finished all ground operations in Iraq is met with indifference. Many people shrug their shoulders and mutter, "We never should have been there in the first place." As if that was just so obvious to everyone and not the hard-fought reality that is responsible for much of the political divisiveness in America right now. The hatred for protesters, the lies about weapons of mass destruction, the charges of unpatriotic behavior aimed toward anyone who opposed the invasion of Iraq or challenged its priorities all seem forgotten.

Today, we feel relief that a church in Florida has decided not to use the fires of burning Korans to stoke the larger flames of religious hatred all over the world. But that is a mixed relief. The sentiments that prompted the initial idea, whether they came from God or not, are still there, if not in that church, then elsewhere. At the same time, the protests against the burning of that book come from countries, some of whom do not allow the Bible to enter their borders. Here, while perhaps a bad idea, burning the Koran is an expression of freedom of speech. There, possession of a Bible is a crime.

So, I really don't know what to think 9 years down the road. I'd like this day to mean something. Unfortunately, because we're enough years away from it now, the scars of 9 years ago aren't so noticeable on the surface. That does not mean that they are not there. For most of us, though, we'll probably be reminded of the events of 9/11 because of some tribute that is paid to them at the start of a football game.

"Go Find a TV"

Into the Fire - Bruce Springsteen (mp3)
The Kingdom - Bethany Dillon (mp3)


One of seven faculty speeches given in memory of 9/11/01 on Friday morning at our school.

My wife called me just before 9:00 a.m. She was at home nursing our second daughter, who wasn't even a month old.

"I'm watching the Today Show, and they think a plane hit the World Trade Center," she said. "Go find a TV. You need to see this."

"Honey, I'm right in the middle of finishing up this story," I said, or something to that effect. "Why don't you just tell me what's happening?"

We were on the phone no more than three minutes when she said, "Oh my God oh my God."

"What? What?" I said.

"Hold on. Oh my God. I think another plane just hit the other building."

"What? Another plane? Are you..."

"Go find a TV," she said.

I walked across the floor where I work, and then up the stairs, and then slowly down the first floor admissions office hallway, looking in rooms for a TV set; it now seems like some weird 60s mind control movie. I remember passing people's doorways, and they're coming out into the hallway, too, because they've just heard, and they're looking for a TV. And we all have this dumbfounded look of confusion and disbelief on our faces.

I might have been the sixth or seventh person in the office of the one dude who had a TV. Another dozen or so crowded in over the next 10 or 15 minutes. By that point, we knew it had to be the work of foreign terrorists.

I'm 37. Vietnam ended before I could say "Mama." I never had drills in school where I ducked under my desk just in case a nuke dropped on us. The only conflicts I ever knew my whole life were quick and simple. Grenada. Libya. Panama. Kuwait. The fights were over almost before they started, and they made us proud to be Americans, and everyone said you just don't mess with the USA. As if to add exclamation points to this, the Berlin Wall fell, the USSR collapsed, and everyone who wasn't distinctly an American ally seemed to experience calamity and disaster. It really was as if God was speaking, and He was telling us all, "America is my country, and everyone best follow suit or prepare for the apocalypse."

At 9:03 a.m. on September 11, 2001, when that second plane hit... well, clearly something happened on the way to paradise. And it created a fear in me and others that was to that point in our lives unknown and unthinkable.

Many of you aren't too crazy about coming into the Chapel three days a week. I understand that; I do.

But let me promise you something. There are times when this place means everything. If you were a student at this school on September 11, 2001, if you were a teacher or a staff member, if you were Catholic or Protestant or Jewish or Hindu or completely 100% atheistic, you wanted desperately to be in this place. The power of a community gathered together for comfort in a time of high emotion cannot be explained. The value of hope that someone or something greater and wiser and more loving than humankind might be out there cannot be adequately explained.

On September 11, I learned that the world had changed, that my children would grow up in a different time, that hate existed and we were a target. And I was also made eternally grateful for this space and for this community. We were fortunate to have this Chapel and to have one another.

It's only unfortunate that we need tragedies of unspeakable proportions to be reminded of such simple truths.

When Perception Transforms Reality: GAS

Poor Misguided Fool - Starsailor (mp3)
Gas Panic (live) - Oasis (mp3)

Damnedest thing I've seen in a long time.

Gas stations so full of cars, so packed tight, that cars have stopped in the middle of the street waiting to pull in, and another car has rammed right into the backside of it. On the way from my mother's house in East Brainerd to my house in downtown Chattanooga, I witnessed this scene three separate times in the span of 25 minutes.

Three accidents at three gas stations, all within 15 miles of one another.

(I would have taken pictures of those, but I was on my scooter, and the one shot I tried was so blurry all you see is the blue lights of cop cars and the white lights of the gas station streaking all over the place. Above was the best I could do.)

Cars were packed four deep or more to a pump at every gas station I passed that hadn't already run out of gas.
An earlier version of this article in Chattanooga's online newsrag, the Chattanoogan, combined with the idiots on local talk radio, spurred our citizens into believing that, as of Friday morning, gas prices would skyrocket to $5 from their current $3.65 range.

I called some friends in other places tonight. Nothing like this is happening in Raleigh, or Atlanta, or Montgomery, or Nashville. It's happening in a few places in Florida, in Houston (where Ike is soon to rampage), and in Chatta-fucking-nooga. Either Chattanooga is waaaay ahead of its fellow cities, or we're the most gulliable lemmings this side of early 20th Century Germans.

As of 10 p.m. Thursday night, Google had "gas lines" articles from BlueRidgeNews.com, Chattanooga's rags, and Gatorsports.com. That was it, other than some stories about some crisis in Bolivia.


You'll have to pay me a shitload of cash to get me to believe it's pure coincidence that this happened on September 11.

If only we would just drill for oil in Alaska and off the Gulf Coast, this wouldn't happen. In 2042. Maybe.

"Poor Misguided Fool" is from Starsailor's first album, Love is Here. "Gas Panic" is from the Oasis concert CD, Familiar to Millions. The first is available on iTunes. The latter isn't available in download form anywhere I looked. Both bands are full of Brits who don't have to put up with our idiotic American gas fetish.