The New American Flag

We here at Silhouettes of Birds and Trees would like to submit the following as a model for a new version of the American flag.



The United States of Truckasaurus. Yeah, motherfucker, yeah.

Dylanesque

There are certain musical artists who possess voices that absolutely DO NOT appeal to a large segment of the music-listening public. This has always been the case. A lot of people didn't like Elvis's twang, Buddy Holly's "o-ah-oh" pronunciations, or Johnny Cash's semi-monotonous (yet still awesome) baritone growl, or even Frank Sinatra's croon (how could you not like that?).

In the annals of American popular music, I would have to say that at the top of this "acquired taste" heap would have to be Bob Dylan's nasally, whiny, uber-literate wheeze.

For the non-initiated Dylan listener, the first thing that a critic will generally seize on is the purported "fact" that "BOB DYLAN CAN'T SING!" While somewhat true in a traditional sense - he doesn't possess what passes for a generally-accepted beautiful singing voice - Bob Dylan used what he had and in so doing, made "not singing" an absolute art form. By becoming a world renown singer/songwriter without a great singing voice, he paved the way for many, many, many others who were in a similar predicament - they had something important to say through their music, but lacked the traditionally beautiful singing voice that was generally necessary to become a recording artist.

Dylan shattered that mold. And in terms of his own relevance, the quality of his singing voice is absolutely unimportant. Regardless of whether or not one likes Bob Dylan (and his accompanying vocal chords), at this point in history, his contributions that to popular music cannot be denied.

He single-handedly changed the face of folk, rock n' roll, and one could argue, country, during his heyday in the 60's. In "going electric" at the Newport Folk Festival on July 25, 1965, he simultaneously changed the direction of both folk music and rock music. His onetime backing band - aptly and simply known as The Band went on to become one of the most influential groups in rock history. Beyond the popularity of his own songs, cover versions of his songs are now counted as several of the most popular songs in American music history - "All Along the Watchtower" as performed by Jimi Hendrix, "Blowin' in the Wind" as performed by The Kingston Trio, Joan Baez, and Peter, Paul, and Mary, "Knockin' on Heaven's Door" as performed by Eric Clapton, Guns n' Roses, and Warren Zevon, "Mr. Tambourine Man" by The Byrds, "Forever Young" as sung by Rod Stewart, and many, many more.

Thousands of artists count Dylan as an inspiration and many have attempted to usurp his lyrical style and seemingly scattershot stream-of-consciousness poetry. Lyrics have always been viewed as "poetic," but nobody in popular music - at least within the folk genre - over the past 50 years has been as prolific or poetic as Dylan (even though Leonard Cohen is close - if not nearly as popular - and Nick Drake might have come close had he not died so young). Not quite as many artists have attempted to emulate his vocal style, however. Until relatively recently, that is - with similarly polarizing results.

Folk has always been a relatively popular genre, but after its popularity explosion during the late 60's and early 70's, it was generally relegated to the soft-rock Dan Fogelberg/James Taylor/John Denver/Harry Chapin/Jim Croce adult-contemporary music store shelf. It pretty much stayed there for about 30 years. After the turn of the millennium, however, folk music has made a strong resurgence into the popular music consciousness. Folk is now pretty much par for the course in alternative and indie rock music. Sufjan Stevens, Devendra Banhart, Jose Gonzales, Joanna Newsom, Iron & Wine, The Avett Brothers, and countless others have taken up the mantle in the neo-folk (and/or freak folk) movement.

The Hold Steady' s Craig Finn is an ridiculously literate front man with pretty much no singing ability. He sing-speaks all of his meanderingly poetic stories over his band's good old fashioned bar rock. Joanna Newsom mewls her way through bizarre lyrics in (some would say) excruciating fashion while simultaneously playing exceptionally beautiful music on her harp (yes, harp). Devendra Banhart's nasal vibrato sounds like pretty much nothing else - perhaps an elf singing whilst sitting atop a shuddering washing machine. The point is - these singers are currently extremely popular - and simultaneously extremely unpopular. People either love them or hate them (Me personally - I love The Hold Steady and Devendra Banhart, but I'd rather have screwdrivers jammed into the corners of my eyes than listen to Joanna Newsom) - there's very little "grey area" in between.

But not many folks purposefully emulate Dylan's nasal whine...mostly for fear of being labeled "Dylanesque" idol worshipers who apparently don't have the creative capacity to come up with a style of their own. Being considered "unoriginal" in indie-rock circles is generally considered worse than just being flat-out bad. Being told that you sound "just like someone else" is generally considered a kiss of death in modern rock music.

So it comes as somewhat of a surprise that there now exist two bands (that I have recently come across) that make absolutely no attempt to hide the fact that the sound strikingly similar to Bob Dylan. And I would assume that if asked, they would both not hesitate to list him as one of their main influences. And amazingly, they are both growing in popularity and national prominence - and they both kick ass in a big way.

The Felice Brothers

The first group that I'd like to mention is The Felice Brothers. The are a bizarre outfit of brothers (minus friend Christmas) from the Woodstock, NY area. The sing songs of vengeance, redemption, failed relationships, and broken-down welterweights. In a similar vein to Dylan and The Band, their music (and the themes therein) are generally almost universal. The songs almost sound as if they could have been written in 1850 - or just as easily 2008.

Many people seem to be fighting their popularity because they assume that The Felice Brothers are simply utilizing the same route already treaded by Dylan and The Band. Me personally, I don't see anything AT ALL wrong with that...we could use some music that good in today's increasingly terrible musical landscape. But if you ever see these guys live, it becomes evident fairly quickly that they aren't really "putting on a show" or "impersonating" anyone...they are who they are, they sing what they sing, and they're not doing it for anyone but themselves. Very impressive.

Here's a little blurb about them:

"They charm like a snake oil salesmen in a 19th-century medicine show; they stomp the boards like spirit-filled preachers; they close their eyes when they croon their imperfect (and therefore paradoxically perfect) Catskill Mountain harmonies; they smile wickedly when they drop into a groove; they bring a little bit of that front porch feeling with them wherever they go.....and their all the more golden and beautiful for it."
Gabe Soria / Mojo Magazine

I highly recommend checking them out.
Their Myspace Page - (especially check out "Frankie's Gun")
Their Website



Ezra Furman & The Harpoons

I'm not really even going to try to explain these guys. They are a band from Boston/Chicago. They are completely different than The Felice Brothers - Ezra's lyrics tend to be one of two things - either exceptionally biographical or fullblown stream-of-consciousness insanity. In both cases, they are very affecting. And his voice - that shrieking, nasally, weird voice - unapologetically reminiscent of Dylan. Actually, Ezra's much less restrained than Dylan. Check him out, as well.

EF & TH Myspace - especially I Dreamed of Moses
EF & TH Web Site

The Ghost Cat of Old Ford Road

I just reread the title of this blog. It sounds like one of the titles to what were my favorite books growing up - those Hardy Boys Mystery novels (the original ones, mind you - not those crappy "Undercover Brothers" ones that stink up bookstore shelves now).

If only Frank and Joe (and perhaps their somewhat rotund friend Chet Morton) could be around to help me solve the mystery of "The Ghost Cat of Old Ford Road."

(TUESDAY)

It all started late last Tuesday evening. I drove home as I normally do - and backed my van down the driveway. I left the van running while I opened the garage door and turned on the interior light. As soon as I hit the switch, I heard a muffled rustling in the rear righthand corner of the room. Thinking that I might be having some auditory hallucinations, I shrugged it off and started to walk back toward the van.

Another bit of rustling and out of the corner of my eye, I caught sight of a black and white blur go streaking behind some shelving. After getting over the initial surprise at having a relatively large animal (not huge - but large - as compared to, lets's say, a sparrow) banging around inside I spent the next ten minutes poking and prodding behind the pile of junk in the back of my garage trying to determine what it was that I had seen and heard.

The flash again! Yes - this time I had seen it relatively clearly. It was definitely a cat. A black and white cat.

I rummaged around in the garage for a little while longer. Moving things, lifting things, uncovering hiding places, et cetera. I neither saw nor heard the beast again that evening.

After pulling the van into the garage, I began to think about what had just happened....I'm sure that you observant readers noticed earlier that I wrote that I had to "open the garage door" when I got back. This obviously means that my garage door had been SHUT AND LOCKED all day long. I had opened it for approximately 15 seconds while I drove the van out in the morning while leaving for work - and other than that, it had been shut and locked since approximately 6pm the night before.

And as far as I knew, there was no animal in the garage when I had locked the door more than 24 hours previously.

The evening passed. I made several trips out to the garage to get things out of the van, to get firewood, and to unceremoniously bang on the lawnmower with a fork. The latter was meant to startle the "ghost cat" into revealing itself. It never happened.

(WEDNESDAY)

I got up the next day, did my usual routine, checked the garage again (still nothing), and left the house for work around 8am.

When I returned at around 6pm, I again did the usual - backed the van up the driveway, got out and opened the garage door, flicked on the interior light - this time there was no rustling. I banged on the lawnmower a couple of times to make sure that there was nothing inside. No movement, no noise, no nothing. So I went out and backed the van inside.

I parked, turned off the vehicle, got out, and walked around to the passenger side so that I could get all my stuff together to bring inside the house. I put on my backpack and grabbed a few cds and my coffee cup and went to open the door to the house.

My eyes happened to be drawn down toward the doormat. There, on the matted wicker, lay multiple relatively freshly-squeezed pieces of cat shit.

I nearly dropped my coffee-cup in a slow motion cinematic way just to illustrate the shock paired with fear that I was feeling. But instead, I went inside and got a dustpan, collected the "leavings" and launched them into the yard.

I went back inside and made myself some dinner. As I ate, I thought about this conundrum again.

"Okay," I thought to myself, "I made sure that there was no cat in the garage this morning, right?

"Yes," I answered myself.

"So...how the fuck did a cat get into a locked garage in order to leave a pile of shit on my door mat?" I asked myself, knowing full-well that I didn't know the answer.

"I don't know," I answered myself needlessly.

I called my wife and told her about the cat shit. She thought that was pretty weird, as well - especially as we had hardly seen any cats in the general vicinity of the house since we began living there in September.

I checked the garage a few more times on Wednesday evening, but there was no sign of my feline buddy the ghost shitter.

(THURSDAY)

On Thursday, I did all my normal morning stuff. Except this time, I pulled the van out of the garage and spent about 15 minutes looking through as much of the contents as I could get to before I left for work. No sign of the cat. Or its shit.

I made sure that there were no hairy feline-like creatures in the garage before I left for the day. I shut the door slowly - while simultaneously scanning the surrounding environs - making sure that nothing darted in before I could get the door to the ground.

I left and didn't think about it again until about three-quarters of the way through the workday when I wrote to my friend Jeff via AOL instant messenger during the day and told him about the ghost cat. Here is a short excerpt:

Bushead78: On a bodily function note...yesterday, I found a pile of cat shit on the doormat in front of the door to my kitchen - INSIDE OF MY LOCKED GARAGE.

GaryBuseyLives: wait wait...WHAT?

Bushead78: I think that I have a ghost cat shitting on my door mat.

GaryBuseyLives: old on...I need...I need air...air...okay...holy shit that's funny. Shitting ghost cat.

Yup, we had a pretty good laugh about that. I thought our little exchange was quite hilarious.

Until I got home.

I opened the garage door - went inside and flicked on the lights. And on the other side of the garage - in a wide-open space between the snowblower and the a pile of boxes that we had yet to unpack upon moving in - was ANOTHER BIG PILE OF FRESH CAT SHIT.

And these were huge turds, by the way - giant hair-covered cat plops. Apparently this ghost cat had been eating antacid tablets or sawdust or something in order to save up its shit in an effort to unleash it in a hellacious constipated fury all over the floor of my garage.

This shit looked fresh. Like it had just stopped steaming in the chill winter air.

In a relative panic, I looked all over the garage again...no cat. But when it comes down to it, I don't suppose that you're really supposed to be able to see a shitting ghost cat anyway, right? I bit freaked out, I managed to once again play dustpan lacrosse with the semi-frozen cat shit and tossed it into the road at the end of my driveway.

I have not seen or heard the cat since - nor have I seen any cat "remnants" since last Thursday. Perhaps this ghost cat has moved on from the apparent purgatory that was my garage - to pet heaven (or more likely hell).

Or maybe, just maybe - it's now taking colossal cat shits in some other sorry bastard's garage.