RIP Arthur Penn

Maverick film director Arthur Penn passed away today. While Bonnie and Clyde usually gets most of the attention when talking about Penn, he made a number of other fine films, including the all too rarely screened The Chase, the 70s film noir classic Night Moves, and Alice's Restaurant, starring Arlo Guthrie. Alice's Restaurant suffers from its drifting, episode-driven narrative, and for my particular cinematic tastes its satire strays too far from realism to adequately ground the film in contemporary political questions (it was 1969 after all). But the snowy funeral scene, with Tigger Outlaw singing Joni Mitchell's "Song to Aging Children," has always struck me as a deeply moving portrait of fading 60s countercultural hopes - in its own way just as powerful as the murder of Wyatt and Billy the Kid at the end of Easy Rider.

at least one more round

Hello again. While I was snoozing on the job, someone swooped in and grabbed the bluebirdsing domain name from me. And the external hard-drive flew the coop and left me without the digitized songbook to draw from. But with a little help from some friends (notably the now 40 Cardonia) I've got most of the tunes back, and now there's a tavern in the sky (a hat-tip to Michael Hurley, who would never sleep on the job). So let's serve up a few!

Back in 1974 on Phases and Stages Willie tried to tell everybody to pick up the tempo - just a little. But while he may have been wanting to take it on home, the song just wanted to slowly find its own way to the door.
Give him a few years and he puts the ramshackle shuffle on it when doing a starring role in Honeysuckle Rose, but even with Dyan Cannon and Amy Irving to get home to he's still he's not barnstorming it like he does on, say, "Whiskey River" or "Good Hearted Woman."

Willie Nelson - Pick up the Tempo

And then we have the Jerry Jeff Walker, Lloyd Maines, and Co. kicking down some doors to get home version.

"We were doing country, but it was pretty aggressive country." - Lloyd Maines

Maines is talking about the music he was making with his brothers, Steve, Kenny, and Donnie in the late 70s/early 80s as The Maines Brothers, but his words do a pretty good job of describing the Rock & Roll thrown down he and Walker put on "Tempo."