Mama Was A Rock’N’Roll Band

Today, I did not read chapter 8 of Law and Economics, Cooter and Ulen, 1997. I did, however, read this Magnetic Fields blissout at Tangents, which made for much better reading.

He talks about having tears in his eyes during Papa Was A Rodeo, while people around him were laughing, and my heart goes out to him. Sure, there’s some sort of humour in that the lyrics read by themselves could come across as incredibly hokey and country-western-cliched, but actually listening to the song just changes everything. You feel the dead-end desperation of nowhere towns. You see the swath of road illuminated by the headlights of a truck, beyond which all is darkness, but you know the road just goes on and on. You squint a little at the sickly yellow light of a roadside diner, and rub your fingers against each other, thinking you can feel menu grease on them. And then the song ends, and you open your eyes, and you’re sitting in your room, and you just really really love the Magnetic Fields.

I borrowed Screamadelica and Pixies At The BBC from Nick, and Matt has lent me Little Kix in preparation for the Mansun concert we’re going to this Thursday. The loans from Nick were stuff I’d always meant to listen to but never really got round to getting my hands on. I’ve listened to each one once since Sunday, but don’t have defined feelings about them yet except that they’re definitely worth listening to again. The Mansun album sounds like, well, Mansun. Similar to the first two albums with none of what made them interesting. This is why I sort of lost interest in them after hearing the new singles on the radio last year. Oh, well. The reasons I’m going to the concert on Thursday are, firstly, that I thought it’d be good to see a really Britishy type band live here, just for the sake of it, and secondly, that my growing resignation about my grim prospects of watching bands I really want to see made me jump at the chance to see a band I didn’t really mind since I would at least have company to go with. I’ve written about this before, and it doesn’t sound any less pathetic the second time, so I’ll stop there.