The Mule

Hey! Don't forget his great score for Orson Welles' TOUCH OF EVIL!

Thanks! Don't suppose that's still in print?????

Virtually the same version can be found on "I, aye, eye," (if my memory is correct) and on "Volunteered Slavery." We will have to agree to disagree. I think the performance of "I Say a Little Prayer" on DOG YEARS IN THE FOURTH RING is much wilder and more intense than the one on VOLUNTEERED SLAVERY. Complaining about Kirk repeating various tunes on albums is like complaining that Monk played the same 12 tunes throughout his career. Couw, sorry I misread your post. Obviously I haven't heard or seen that performance. Where have you heard/seen it?

If you mean the I, EYE, AYE album the answer is no. It's definitely on my list of must-haves, tho. I REALLY like the live stuff on the DOG YEARS IN THE FOURTH RING collection, especially the version of "I Say A Little Prayer."

Damn, I think that may be the best description of Kirk's music I have ever read!

...it's the 40th anniversary of the church bombing in Birmingham that killed those 4 little girls.

Excellent post, Jim. It's what I was groping to say when when I wrote he was "unafraid of the truth," but you said it much better than I did... The other thing I greatly admired about Cash is that he embodied the ideal of the American maverick. He was his own man. He had integrity. He was a proud American but he never wrapped himself in the flag like so many of those phony, wannabe, cowboy types that have turned "country" music into a bad joke. Cash understood people's struggles and didn't judge their failings. Is there any major American musician who still plays concerts in prisons and proud of it? I don't think so.

Gentlemen, gentlemen...this thread has become so huge that we're now duplicating many album covers! Some of these have been posted three times now! We must dig deeper! Search farther! Put your backs into it!

This has been an awful week for music. Another American maverick gone. First Warren Zevon and now Johnny Cash. Very similar artists in some ways as their songwriting explored similar themes: outlaws, sinners, society, heartache... Cash had an incredible career and a profound influence on musicians in and outside of country music. In my mind, he was one of the greatest American artists and I'm just glad he received so much recognition during this lifetime. Take Jim's advice and check out the video to "Hurt"---it's the greatest music video ever and an incredibly moving career summation from a man with amazing integrity who was unafraid of truth.

"Satan is Real" should have been titled "Satan is Cardboard"....

No, it's NOT!!!! The album cover Pat Cooper is making fun of... ...was single-handedly responsible for this Mule's sexual awakening. Makes me ill looking at that Pat Cooper cover, man...

Love this one, but I've always been a sucker for "frame within a frame" compositions.

Always been fond of muscle cars, myself. My dad had a 1967 Cougar much like this one: Then he bought at 1975 Firebird Esprit, which became MY first car. My old man charged me full Blue-Book value on it too, but I didn't care. I LOVED that car...

I draw the line at art that intentionally, explicitly, and insidiously promotes a philosophy of hate. I don't think it's that slippery a slope.

Should have been titled "Sea of Wet Dreams...."

I didn't realize that Satan's first name was "Buddi." Good to know...

Why? In a general sense I might agree with separating the art from the artist (which is, in and of itself, a debate--Isn't it true that "who" the artist is, as a human being, informs the art?) EXCEPT when that art is in the service of irredeemable EVIL. TRIUMPH OF THE WILL is an evil film. It celebrates fascism, racism, anti-semitism, and presents Adolf Hitler as God. I don't care how ground-breaking or well made it was, it was created to promote EVIL. Indeed, because of it's high craft and seductive powers it fits the very definition of insidious. Riefenstahl may not have known about the "Final Solution," but she sure as hell knew that the Nazi Party was virulently anti-semitic, racist, bent on world domination, and believed the German people to be the "master race." One has to assume that she was down with the program. Indeed, if you look at her work previous to her time with the Nazis, she sure seemed to extol Aryan virtues regardless. Sorry, but Fritz Lang got on the next boat to America when the Nazis came to him and that's what any human being who didn't believe in the Third Reich should have done. Why, then, should history NOT harshly judge this woman who used her immense talents to promote one of the most hateful and vile regimes the world has ever seen? btw, your Cat Stevens analogy isn't the same thing at all. Cat Stevens may or may not be financially supporting Islamic fundamentalist terrorism--I don't know. What he ISN'T doing is writing and singing catchy little songs extolling the virtues of brave Islamic terrorists killing Israelis and Americans. Leni Riefenstahl wasn't a Nazi party member who made great melodramas. If that were the case I might agree that one should separate her poltics from her work. What Riefenstahl did--consciously--was make fascism and Adolf Hitler look RIGHT. Correct. Worthy. Justified. Appealing. She exhalted EVIL in her ART.

I really do think it's a fascinating subject. As you well know, many great artists were pretty monsterous to the people around them and yet... Is the act of artistic creation so difficult that the artist MUST be self-absorbed or narcissistic in order to create? There's a book there Chris and if you don't write it, I might!

Furthermore, she was quoted just before her 100th birthday as saying, "I don't know what I should apologize for. I cannot apologize, for example, for having made the film "Triumph of the Will' --- It won the top prize. All my films won prizes." That quote, at best, can be held up as an appalling example of tone-deafness. When I read that I see a woman who either still believes in the Third Reich or is so blindly arrogant, ambitious, and narcissistic she is undeserving of any respect. Not to mention incredibly callous.

Chris, I understand what you're saying and think the dichotomy between the artist and their art is a fascinating subject. However, we're not talking about "Miles Davis beat his wives and yet he as capable of such beautiful music" here. Once again, Leni Reifenstahl was a Nazi-sympathizer and career opportunist who created a ghastly work of propaganda that indirectly led to the slaughter of tens of millions. When Fritz Lang was approached by the Nazis and basically offered a blank check to become Hitler's propagandist, he was appalled and fled to America. Reifenstahl saw an opportunity and she seized it. In my mind, Lang was the greater person and a greater filmmaker. TRIUMPH OF THE WILL continues to inspire hatred today (the same goes for BIRTH OF A NATION which was often screened by Klansmen right before lynchings of blacks in the south). The woman NEVER apologized or even expressed regret. In interview after interview there was a disconnect in her mind between her film and what it represented. She was either too proud or arrogant or still too much of an "Aryan" to ever grapple with her contribution to fascism and the subsequent horrors. Nothing of what I've seen of her subsequent work redeems her or TRIUMPH OF THE WILL. btw, please DO NOT associate me with PFunkJazz's obnoxious and uncalled for accusations of racism or Nazism.

Sorry, but her most famous work of art indirectly led to the deaths of tens of millions. Her disgusting ode to fascism is still screened by neo-Nazis in musty little basements to enthralled true believers to this day. As Couw said, she spent the rest of her very long life defiantly, arrogantly, unrepentant and in denial. Strike up a conversation with an African-American about how much they admire the artistry of BIRTH OF A NATION sometime. Straight to Hell.

Thank you. I was rather proud of that one and disappointed that no one commented on it....

From The Village Voice: The Poet of Gower Avenue Winds Down His Dirty Life and Times Warren Zevon, 1947–2003 by Joshua Clover September 10 - 16, 2003 Finally, he'll sleep. (Photo: Pater Palladino) In 1977, when Linda Ronstadt was taking her last shot at being the queen of California, she covered "Poor, Poor Pitiful Me"—a song from Warren Zevon's self-titled, not-really-first album. Zevon had written for the Turtles, played piano for the Everly Brothers, and earned a rep as a songsmith. Ronstadt changed only the third verse: A guy in Yokohama picks her up and throws her down, pleading, "Please don't hurt me mama." It makes you wonder about the original. What would a young gun write in 1973, a professional with an amateur face devising his own rock of the westies in the cross fire of Hollywood decadence and Hollywood liberalism, cf. über-progressive Jackson Browne, who in fact produced Warren Zevon and was presumably at the board when Zevon recorded his own third verse: "I met a girl at the Rainbow Bar, she asked me if I'd beat her. She took me back to the Hyatt House . . . "—and here his voice paused down to a mutter—"I don't want to talk about it." It's brutal, and funny, and not OK. Warren Zevon was Jackson Browne's bad conscience. Careless of the scene's niceties, Warren Zevon wouldn't get released until 1976—all stained romance and bad dope, burnished chord changes and exposed nerve. The songs, when they weren't about itinerant gamblers (his dad's calling, as it happened) or Frank and Jesse James, recalled L.A. hard-boiled pulp novels, where desiccated burnouts are the only shadows in the sun-bleached promised land. The baroquely precise "French Inhaler" pairs a would-be starlet and her bottom-feeding beau: never-wases drinking in the dive behind the dream factory, pathetic and melancholy unto death. Only an ambiguous reference in the song's last second hints, and then only to hardcore consumers of biographical porn, that the song might have been about Marilyn Monroe all along—a ghost version of her life, as if David Lynch had been a piano man in his early days. Murmuring "So long Norman," she's the one who couldn't leave. But so is everyone else on the record, the most delicate, impure document of LaLaLand in the years between Joni's Ladies of the Canyon and Jello's "California Über Alles." The poet of Gower Avenue became a stateless pop star behind the single from the follow-up Excitable Boy, the mini-surrealist "Werewolves of London." As novelty smashes often do, it seemed to come from nowhere, or everywhere. On that record and the next two, Bad Luck Streak in Dancing School and The Envoy, Zevon removed his seamy scenes of betrayal and secret combat to an atlas of international hot spots, filled with spies, drunks, mercenaries, and the women who didn't love them. On the side, he wrote tender, caustic ballads ("Accidentally Like a Martyr" was recently covered by Dylan) and domestic tales of very creepy guys that sometimes sounded indecently enthusiastic. He even cut in at dances where he wasn't invited: "Sweet home Alabama," he sang in his faux-anthemic rebuke to Skynyrd's rebuke of Mr. Young, "play that dead band's song." The chorus continues, strangely forbearing amid verses of mocking savagery, "Turn those speakers up full blast, play it all night long." Not one to burn out or fade away, Zevon drowned. Traditional narrative follows: five-year creative drought, ignominy, rehab, comeback album. Sentimental Hygiene is rich with the usual suspects, but here the bloodied losers and lowlifes were often the singer. "It's tough to be somebody; and it's hard to keep from falling apart," he testifies in "Detox Mansion." "Here on Rehab Mountain we all learn these things by heart." Comeback albums are expected to serve up redemption; this one offered redemption as just another grift and sounded like someone coming up for the second time, just long enough to spew a last round of vitriol. Astonishingly enough, there was one act left—the one where real tragedy teaches the self-inflicted kind a lesson. After a couple of records where the songwriting went flaky and unfocused, and another half-decade hiatus, Zevon rallied his talent on little Artemis Records, composing a series of serrated, rollicking wounds, collaborating with folks from Springsteen to Carl Hiaasen. It wasn't a comeback so much as a persistence of vision. A rare few are born to be stars, fewer live to write. At the time of the first Artemis release, Zevon was diagnosed with mesothelioma, an inoperable lung cancer. The epic from his mortality trio is "I Was in the House When the House Burned Down," and one is tempted to listen allegorically: the house the mortal body, and no way out. Racing the fire, Zevon made two more records, the last one—The Wind, released August 26—when he was supposed to be dead already. They're moving and jocularly messy, three feet deep and rising. Zevon, who died Sunday, was a writer of terrific particularity, the kind novelists are jealous of. He would likely compose his own obit in specific and self-lacerating terms, leave the allegories to others. Or perhaps he would concede that the death he stood off to do just a little more writing was something so dark even he couldn't make an account of it, and offer the phrase suggesting it was better left obscure, the better to fill with our own worst imaginings. I don't want to talk about it.

Straight to Hell....

32. Most of them upgrades and as such I've always bought them at a deep discount or used.