Ships Passing In The Night
Now Playing: Beth Orton--"Stars All Seem To Weep"
"He bade farewell to his friend the locksmith, and hastened to take horse at the Black Lion, thinking as he turned towards home, as many another Joe has thought before or since, that here was an end to all his hopes--that the thing was impossible and never could be--that she didn't care for him--that he was wretched for life--and that the only congenial prospect left him, was to go for a soldier or a sailor, and get some obliging enemy to knock his brains out as soon as possible."

--Barnaby Rudge (1841), by Charles Dickens

I don't actually feel like that, but I have in the past, and was struck by how beautifully Dickens captured the feeling. Barnaby Rudge is cool--I read it in college and didn't quite realize its excellence.

More communications problems between myself and Emily--my phone died yesterday somehow and the phone guy at the Diag is on vacation until tomorrow. I called her to let her know that I'd be at the Great Lakes Myth Society show downtown today if she wanted to join me, so we'll see how that turns out.

I hate it, too, when I get a CD and there's only one song I like on it--but I really like it, and can't stop listening to it. Such is "Saturday Afternoon" off Outrageous Cherry's "Supernatural Equinox" album. I barely managed to stop to listen to Beth Orton. They were really good last night, in a criminally underattended Blind Pig show. It didn't help that I was perched on a stool by the partition wall nursing a Bud and imagining that reading a fictional narrative of the 1780 Gordon anti-Catholic riots in London (such is Barnaby) would keep the black dog away. Fortunately, all the bands, Cherry, the Fondas, who I'd never heard, and the Coronados from No Fun Records were all superb. The show was well worth it. The album wasn't.

Thinking of the beginning quote, I wonder how I'd find an "obliging enemy" in Ann Arbor. I guess I could just walk into the Firefly Club and inform everyone, "jazz and blues are both overrated examples of slave music that only guilty white liberals listen to anymore." I don't believe that for a second, of course, but it'd be fun to see the looks on a few faces.

Whether Emily shows up or not (there may have been an emergency or she may have to work for all I know), I'm looking forward to the GLMS show. Brandon and others rave about them incessantly, and indeed, it's hard to see where marrying Appalachian music and prog-rock could possibly go wrong.