Buy Shit, Sell Shit & Get Out of Dodge

Riding back to my apartment in Cheney from Chelan I was excited to finally put on the new album from Shooter Jennings called Black Ribbons. I wasn't entirely certain what to expect. Jennings billed it as a concept album which had come to him during his cross country trip with his family. Driving his mobile home along the highways of middle America in the dark hours of the morning, Jennings was struck by the short range radio shows he was picking up. These weren't major stations or even small town stations, but old timers broadcasting from their basements or their back porches or up on the top of a hill (are there hills in middle America?).

What touched Jennings was the note of despair and rage flung out over the airwaves by these deejays, men whose voices and words evoked a tone and tenor of Armageddon. This was the Bible-belt after all, but these deejays spoke not only of religion but of politics and culture, and they spoke directly to the listener, intimately in the night.

Jennings conceived of an album with this same effect. Music interwoven with deejay monologues, little bursts and rants and the music itself a hodge-podge of sounds and styles but always circling back to the theme the deejay had chosen. An album with range and scope, both musically and lyrically, but also an album which would harken back to an older school of music, one where the audience put on an album and listened to it all the way through. An older time when listening to music was not merely background or even for footstomping, but was, quite intentionally, an experience.

Which was why I had put off listening to Black Ribbons until I had a nice long drive ahead of me. I wanted to hear it all the way through, no distractions. I had three hours between me and Cheney, plenty of time to play the whole album and get the full experience.

First off, let me say a word about the packaging. The whole of the recording industry needs to take a page out of Jennings' book here, because this is, hands down, the coolest, most entertaining packaging I've ever seen for a musical album. The artwork is arresting, with a torn American flag wrapped around the CD casing. Then, flip it open and it is literally a pop-out arrangement.

Surprise!

A man in a suit wearing a plastic sheep mask covering his face (those ones held on by a string around your head) is handing a black box to a short, pre-pubescent girl in a cute blue skirt. The words to “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” are radiating out of the man's eyes and into the girl's head (for some reason, the man possesses are eerie resemblance to George Bush).

Another flip, four black crows pop out and you discover the CD itself with the bold declaration across its front: Killing For Peace Is Like Fucking For Chastity.

(If you're not having fun by now, I don't know what's wrong with you).

As a further gift, you get a special tarot card, slightly larger than your average playing card. Mine says Martyr. I don't know if there are others.

As for the album itself...

This IS an experience. Avid music fanatic that I am, I've had a fair share of musical experiences. Black Ribbons is one of the most unique, most interesting, and one of the most fun. Taken as a whole (and I really don't see how you can take it in pieces) the album weaves a fascinating narrative, telling a story both through the music and, compellingly, through the spoken interludes of the deejay.

To give you a taste, here is the first deejay rant, entitled on the back: “Last Light Radio 11:01 PM” :

From the center of nowhere, atop the shoulders of giants, above the creeping fog of disinformation that clouds the American Union this is Will O' the Wisp and this is the Last Light Radio, your last beacon of truth and defiance. I've always started my shows by saying that all ships lost in the night search for the lighthouse on the rock of the enlightened, but good truth-seekers out there the battery is fading and the light is dying. I see that freedom has failed us and with no light the night's gonna be a long one. Woody Guthrie said this land is your land, this land is my land. Great words, but this land is their land now.

This is the last time your ears and my voice will be getting together, because as of midnight tonight our previously public airways will be commandeered for government approved and regulated transmission. The last breath of free speech will blow itself out. What rises in its place is gonna be the wind of thought control. Bad guys win, folks.

You know, I don't always play a lot of music on the show. Most of it these days is processed, bubble-gum bullshit churned out by the overlords of doublespeak and meant to turn a gray world grayer. But tonight I won't go without leaving a message. Tonight I've chosen to play the one band the American fascicrats don't want me to play. Tonight I'm going off the air with the music of Hierophant. For those of you not familiar you'll get a taste of Hierophant's music tonight, their message, their light. I started you off with Wake Up, from their 2009 album Bohemian Grove, their first and most radical. Remember what the song says: don't let em get you down.

The most important truth is love. All you need and all you need to know, as the poet says. Or was that beauty? Ah, what's the difference? Love your family. Love your neighbor. Love your enemy as yourself. Go on loving, it's what humans do best and the one thing they can't kill. Got it?

This is Will O' the Wisp; the time now is no time; the temperature is cold; the news is blue. But for now the light still shines.

From the same album now is Triskadekaphobia. That's fear of thirteen, my sons and daughters. As in thirteen o'clock.

Your listening to the last night and the last light.

Which pretty much sets up the tone and thematic of the album. What is impressive from here is the range of material Jennings incorporates. Many of the songs are loud, raucous, growling and spitting and tearing, such as “Don't Feed the Animals,” which borders on what we used to call heavy metal (although never quite reaching the same level of metal's musical disjointment...Jennings, thankfully, always remains musically interesting). Some of it here is a type of garage punk, such as the crashing “Fuck You (I'm Famous),” but other songs are achingly tender ballads.

Particularly wrenching is the number title track, a sad acoustic country (broken) love song.

Man down, tie a ribbon round my soul

I'm in the black and I'm out of control

Like a ship that's lost in the night

No direction, no guiding light

Jennings' vocals send shivers up the spine, the kind of howl that comes from some deep, inner source of pain.

Other numbers like “The Breaking Point” and “All of This Could Have Been Yours” showcase Jennings musical versatility while still knocking on the doors of lost loves, missed chances and shattered dreams. More upbeat tunes like the top-down, wheel-tapping “California Via Tennessee” keep the mood, at least at times, lively:

I'm alright

Whatcha gonna do

I went to California to get away from you

I'm alright

I seen all I gotta see

I sleep in California to dream of Tennessee

And, of course, as the narrative night pushes on our deejay host continues to rant, to rave, to comment, and to let loose with bitter but humorous statements such as: “Tonight's commercial: Buy shit, sell shit and get out of Dodge.”

Black Ribbons is an impressive, powerful accomplishment. If I were Siskel & Ebert I'd give it the old Two Thumbs Way Up! Since I'm just me, I'll tell you it's one of the best things I've heard. As an album, as an experience, it's standing in my Top 20.

So, if you've got some time, if you can set aside an hour of your day (or better yet, your night) do yourself a favor and pick up Black Ribbons. If nothing else, you can enjoy the packaging.

Oh, and in case you miss it...the voice of Will O' the Wisp: that's Stephen King.

Comments on "Bush at War"

What strikes one most upon finishing Bob Woodward's Bush at War (for the reader today with the advantage of hindsight) is the overwhelming feeling of: How could it have gone so wrong?

Woodward's book covers the first 100 days after 9/11, an exacting blow by blow account of President Bush and his inner circle's reaction to the terrorist attacks, the decision to go to war in Afghanistan, and the planning and execution of the initial phase of that war. One of the most highly respected investigative journalists in history, Woodward was given unprecedented access to President Bush and his war cabinet (including the VP, Secretaries of State and Defense, the Directors of the CIA and FBI and the National Security Advisor...they were, respectively, Dick Cheney, Colin Powell, Donald Rumsfeld, George Tenet, Robert Mueller, and Condoleezza Rice).

First, let me be clear about what this book is. This isn't a political book. It is a book about politics, certainly, but that is somewhat incidental. It is a book of reporting, and what it reports happens to be politics. Woodward makes almost no commentary throughout the book, and only interjects his personal opinion (maybe a total of half a dozen times) when he can not say for certain what someone was feeling (in which he might write: It seemed to me that...). Woodward is a journalist first and foremost, and he makes no effort to play historian or political commentator. If you want the political screaming match, there are plenty of books from the left and the right to satisfy your taste...but this book isn't it.

Woodward's account brings us directly into the meetings where the actual decisions were made. We get moment to moment details of the daily conferences where all the options were on the board and the most powerful decision makers in our country chose this direction or that one and left others by the wayside. We see exactly the principal players' feelings, opinions and ideas about terrorism and the following war and how those opinions and ideas shaped American policy. Where do we go to war? How do we wage war? For how long? With what resources? It's all here.

What is most interesting is noting that if you had read this book in the summer after 9/11, you would have most likely felt supremely confident in the American leadership and certain that whatever challenges they faced they were the best men to handle them. For in these first 100 days, Bush and his team do very little wrong. In fact, every major decision appears to be the right one.

As in all major undertakings, there are differences of opinion. We see clear delineations between the worldviews of Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Powell. There are also bumps in the road and minor setbacks, but nothing derailing and nothing honestly caused by any wrongheaded decisions made by these administrators. Most of what might be called “bumps” are put down to strategic challenges of waging war in Afghanistan, and all of those challenges, at least initially, were met and overcome.



Out of these first hundred days, two men truly stand out: President Bush and Secretary Powell. It is the President who is the first to raise the issue of humanitarian aid to Afghanistan, and he does so within the first few meetings. He is also the one who hammers on the issue over and over again. It is the President who insists on a clear plan for victory in Afghanistan, who makes himself endlessly available to all his subordinates promising to meet any and every need they have to succeed, who demands a plan that is effective and not overly costly (I don't want to use million dollar missiles to blow up fifteen dollar tents), who clearly articulates time and again that he does not want American troops involved in nation building (insisting that America arm and aid the Afghan Northern Alliance instead of dropping a massive troop force which must stay in place for years on end), and who is continually concerned about building positive relations with the Afghan people. He is, in general, calm and collected, trusting of his staff and their plans, and the one seems to most understand from the beginning that the war against terrorism will be long and hard and they should not be deterred by the length of the endeavor or the criticism they will face. All in all, the majority of his decisions in these first 100 days are the right ones.

Secretary Powell comes away as one of the most confident, level-headed, mature and wise men in American politics. Certainly, out of all present in this book, he is the one who possesses these qualities to their fullest. Time and again one finds the thought creeping into the mind: This man should be president. In this instance, not generally because President Bush is doing a poor job, for he is not, but simply because Secretary Powell seems to be the man best suited to the job. By the end, what one comes to believe is that America may have lost the opportunity to elect one of its greatest presidents, for Powell would almost certainly have been one had he ever run for election.

Sadly, from where we stand now it is clear that something went wrong early in Bush's presidency. No matter where you sit politically, one can not deny certain facts: bin Laden was never captured, political stability was never achieved in Afghanistan, the invasion of Iraq has not gone well, America did engage in nation building, the economy collapsed, and the American people mostly turned against Bush and his policies. Judging from Woodward's book, it is hard to understand why.

One does see a few elements of this collapse. First is Iraq. President Bush and his council bring up Iraq from day one, but they quickly put it on the shelf. It is clear that toppling Saddam in Iraq is a clear goal from the very beginning of Bush's presidency, but the decision is made to take Afghanistan first and return to discuss Iraq later. Only Secretary Powell is against the invading of Iraq. As a former military general, he understands the full implications of such a mission, and as Secretary of State he understands the full political ramifications. In fact, Powell at one point asks Bush for a private meeting, two and a half hours long, to lay out exactly and specifically why they should not invade Iraq. His insight into this issue is (despite its length) concise, insightful, worldly and (as can be seen in hindsight now) entirely dead-on accurate.

It is chillingly telling to note that everything Secretary Powell warned against when invading Iraq happened: major logistical problems, long-haul standing army, breakdown of American/Middle Eastern relations, view of America as the Invader, subsequent rise in terrorism and terrorist recruitment, massive financial toll on American economy, destabilization of the Middle East, enormous increase in oil prices...Secretary Powell's reasoning reads like a laundry list of everything that went wrong in Bush's presidency.

There are a few unsettling elements of President Bush the man. First, his willingness to “go it alone” if needs be. This opinion is one he initially kept under control in the first 100 days, but one that we know now became a major issue for his presidency later on. Like it or not, going it alone was not a practical strategy, as Secretary Powell and other advisors pointed out. Superpower America may be, but it is quite simply not possible to execute a war on the other side of the world, to say nothing of two wars or a “global war on terror” without the cooperation and assistance of other countries. This is made vibrantly clear from the start, as the biggest challenge faced by America in the initial phase of the war in Afghanistan is simply getting permission by various countries to use their air bases as landing and launching points for the US Air Force. Without such permission, the US military literally could not launch a war (unless it wanted to invade multiple other countries, many of them allies).

Second, was President Bush's set belief that he was a president with a vision, a president who would change the world and alter history. This is not necessarily a bad quality for a president. Looking back, it would seem that many of our best presidents had it. However, in this case one can see how this belief in a grand and shining vision may have been President Bush's undoing. It would, one knows, lead him and his cabinet to make decisions based on that vision and not entirely on reality.

Finally, there is the continued feeling that certain members of President Bush's team, primarily Vice President Cheney and Secretary Rumsfeld, whose fervent desire to invade Iraq, go it alone, and use any and every means necessary would eventually come to dominate over the more level-headed and realistic viewpoint of members like Secretary Powell. One does not get so much the view that men like Cheney and Rumsfeld are evil, sinister and lusting for power (though perhaps they are, Woodward makes no such commentary), but rather that they are simply determined, single-minded and unwavering in their beliefs. It is their inability to see other points of view which will no doubt lead them down mistaken paths.

Woodward wrote four books on Bush's presidency. Bush at War is the first. The second, Plan of Attack, addresses the decision, lead up to and eventual invasion of Iraq. It is this second book that I am reading now.

Mostly when I write about books on this blog it is because I wish to share them with everyone else and recommend them for reading. Certainly, I think Woodward's book is worth your time. It is well written and insightful. However, it is not stunning in its language or particularly moving, though it is a fantastic piece of reporting.

No, my goal here is simply a kind of running commentary on my own deeper reading about the eight years of Bush's presidency and the lead up to the current political world we live in now. To understand the issues facing us today we must understand how we got to the place where we currently stand. Regarding the majority of the problems facing President Obama, one must have a deep understanding of President Bush's legacy.