LATEST ADDITIONS

It might be Miles Davis, John Zorn, or the works of Eric Satie. Is there an artist, living or dead, whom you collect obsessively?

Today, “Elements of Our Enthusiasm” turns five years old, which, in blog years, is older than the universe. I thank you, dear readers, for sticking around and making this blog one of the most visited pages on our entire website. “Elements” is more popular than Justin Bieber.

Seeing John Prine the other night on Governor’s Island with <I>Stereophile</I>'s Stephen Mejias was a fairly profound experience, owing to Prine’s strange, elegiac tone. It may be that he wasn’t down with the venue (a windy island at night) or that he was simply tired (he looked it), but almost everything he sung, even the fun ones like, “Please Don’t Bury Me,” had an odd sadness clinging to it. I tried not to think about how Prine beat cancer back in 1998. The first time I saw him backstage after the cancer had been cut and radiated out of his throat, he cracked a smile and chirped, “Well Robert, this is what happens when you start smoking when you’re 14. What did I expect?” Thankfully his voice and his irascible disposition returned undiminished by the illness. He’s lost some tissue in his neck and his voice did indeed get a little growlier, but overall he was extremely lucky. I prefer to ascribe his lonely tone last Friday to the fact that he’s been singing some of those songs for 40 years and just decided to give them a different emotional bent in New York. Truly though I have never seen a Prine show that wasn’t laced with jokes, spot on wisecracks and sly references to the current world history. And never have I heard one of his signature songs “Donald and Lydia,” done so beautifully, its chorus lines turned into a near prayer:
“But dreaming just comes natural
Like the first breath from a baby,
Like sunshine feeding daisies,
Like the love hidden deep in your heart.”

When I initially read about the Triple Decker Record <a href="http://pitchfork.com/news/40051-jack-white-invents-a-new-type-of-vinyl-… Pitchfork.com</a>, I thought to myself, “Maaaaan, that’s stupid.”

<i>Grinderman 2</i>, by <a href="http://www.grinderman.com/">Grinderman</a&gt; (don’t click that link), is October 2010’s “Recording of the Month,” and it’s available today. Go out and buy it, before it buys you. Bwhahahahahahahaha.

The two Big Eye IPAs I had enjoyed with dinner were doing the trick. I was feeling weightless even before stepping onto the ferry. Beautiful people crowded the front, holding onto railings and each other, while some sat inside the old, wooden frame. Lower Manhattan was soft, quiet, and blue, and two towers of light shot high into the night sky. Suddenly, imperceptibly, the unreal city became smaller and more distant: I hadn’t noticed that the ferry had departed. We could just as easily have been riding a magic carpet. Robert Baird and I were on our way to see John Prine at Governors Island, just a short ferry trip away from Ground Zero in Manhattan.

One of my favorite parental duties is dispensing advice that's calculated to make me sound wiser than I am. Among those pearls: Every so often you should change your point of view&#151;your <I>philosophies</I>&#151;just to see if your opinions can stand the strain. In doing so, you may discover a few things that are better than you expected them to be!