Husker Du

Some random thoughts .

Do you remember when Nick Cage was considered a really, really good actor? What the hell happened to his career? I say this because "National Treasure" is on cable and what a mess that movie is.

I have a longstanding disagreement with most of the rest of the world regarding Ella Fitzgerald. Personally, I think that the young Doris Day sang with more raw soul than Ella did. Brilliant technician, pure voice, but to me she sounded pretty vanilla. And don't get me started on the "little girl" voice that she sometimes employed.

I have to go back to Cincinnati, Ohio next week. And again the Reds are out of town. So can we meet, say, in Milwaukee instead? Unlikely.

I just picked up the first Warren Zevon effort, when he was in his teens, living in Los Angeles and going to Fairfax High. The folk-rock duo [by then a style on its last legs] of lyme & cybelle recorded for White Whale records, where the mother of a friend of his worked. Warren was lyme and to show you the extent of the young Z's pretension, they refused to capitalize their name a la ee cummings, and lyme né Warren dressed all in green. Brilliant! The "I Heart Huckabees" moment came when I read the CD liner notes. They were penned by the brilliant but stridently righteous Dawn Eden, my ex-girlfriend's younger sister. One can run but one cannot hide ... from Dawn Eden. She writes more liner notes than Rosie O'Donnell has feuds.

I know I'm gonna get some negative comments for my Ella remarks. So I might as well let it roll.

I think John Denver planted that experimental plane of his in the Monterey Bay intentionally. If you listen to his songs, his remarks, you really get the picture of someone who was both depressed and who never got over the fading of his star. And please, if you listen to his early records, it's very very depressing stuff. He had a great voice, but without Bill Danoff's "Take Me Home, Country Roads" [John wrote the bridge, not a bad bridge], John's recording career at RCA would have been over.

I've been listening to a lot of Curtis Mayfield recently. And Elliott Smith. I find them to be very similar.

Last note, and hopefully this will appease my harshest critics, let's give some extra credit to Curtis Mayfield. Joni Mitchell gets all kinds of props from the perpetually self-congratulatory hippies for her creative guitar tunings, and Curtis - who was a superior player and writer - gets not nearly the same love for his amazing tunings and guitar work. Maybe that's why he was darker than blue, while she was merely blue.

And, on Canada Day 2007, I leave it at that.