Caught in the Carousel

Letter from the Editor - June 2007

By Alex Green

I was at the farmer’s market last week buying the last of the asparagus of the season when I heard something unsettling and familiar. Every week the market has a new musical act playing in the middle of the square--one time it was a terrific traditional country band replete in jersey cow chaps, another time it was a hideous jazz combo fronted by Perry Moscovitz, whose law firm is down the street from my house—and this time it was a guy in his mid-thirties armed with nothing more than a battered acoustic guitar and Boston Red Sox hat he’d set on the ground for donations. I wasn’t paying too much attention, but when I heard him play a rousing and enervating version of The Cure’s “Friday I’m In Love” it stopped me cold. It reminded me of a joke I saw the comedian Dana Gould make way back in the ‘80s. He said he was starting to feel really old because on the radio the deejay had said: “And now, and oldie, but goodie, from The Clash.” At the time, the joke was hilarious, because it was 1985, only six years after The Clash had put out London Calling and even though their best days were behind them, they were still, in many ways, still young and tough and relevant and to suggest that they could be referred to as being old, was absurd. Around that time, I was working on my own stand-up act and one of the jokes I was fond of making was one that involved my ex-wife. Being fifteen and barely 5’4” and having never brought a razor near my face, the joke—and I can’t quite remember it, to be honest—always got a lot of laughs when I performed it—but now that joke has lapsed into obsolescence for only one good reason: the passing of time. Not that profound, I know, but I’m now at the age where I could have an ex-wife (or two) and as ludicrous as it was at fifteen, the joke, if I were to make it, would sound dead serious. In other words, that joke isn’t so much as not funny anymore--that joke isn’t even a joke anymore. But back to “Friday I’m Love” at the farmer’s market, asparagus suspended, heart motherfucking breaking.

It sounded good. Standing there in the hot pre-summer sun of California, amidst husbands and wives holding fruit and pushing strollers and yelling at their kids, The Cure, those legendary Goths, those brilliant and lugubrious gloom junkies, sounded good as folk music.

It was about as counterintuitive as seeing a vampire at the beach.

But here’s the thing: if you think about it, it makes sense. The fact is, once enough time has passed—and in many cases it doesn’t even have to be that much time—everything takes on a little fade. What I mean is, the sparkle lessens, the color dulls, the heat isn’t quite that hot anymore. And that’s where folk music begins. Your old yearbook photos from 10th grade: folk music. Your favorite movie from 1976: folk music. Your old favorite album from 1981: folk music. Once something gets a little history behind it, it begins to transform. Billy Bragg told me once that he may not get the same feeling from listening to The Clash’s first album, but he remembers how he felt when he first heard it. Nothing gets lost—you can be assured of that—but the thrills get a little distance to them and may not be able to shoot you to pop heaven anymore. But that’s okay, because memory, that tricky little bastard, lets nothing go; that’s where history gets recorded. It makes sense that “Friday I’m In Love” can be played now as a folk song—after all, it’s been fifteen years since it was released—because when it’s played like that, for those of us who remember hearing it for the first time, it gives it a kind of unlayered simplicity that offers a big wink that seems to say, “This is your history—not too bad, eh?”

Speaking of history, this month features an interview with the wonderful Mike Ford, who many of you probably remember from Canada’s Moxy Fruvous. Since his days with the legendary Ontario outfit ended, Mike has been traveling around Canada singing songs about Canadian history to students all over. Under the Canada in Song banner, Mike has written tons of new songs all starring historical figures from Canadian history. What makes Mike’s new material so compelling is that he has taken people like D’arcy McGee and William Lyon and Sir John A. Macdonald and brought them back to life in the context of some terrific folk songs. Kids all over Canada are being introduced to dates ands events and people that they would probably have largely ignored under the tutelage of a tweed-jacketed, badly bearded and thoroughly burned out history teacher; but with Mike at the helm, history has become exciting and relevant to young people from province to province.

What else do we have this month in the Carousel? Glad you asked!

*David Porter takes a long look at the new Donnie album.

*Alex Mattraw gives us her daily Coachella diary.

*Singer/songwriter Shawn Brown drops in to talk about his new album Just In Case.

*Our staff reviews albums by Dale Watson, The Icicles, The Loose Salute, Chris Bathgate, Stateless and more!!

*Five new MP3’s: Mike Ford’s “A Woman Works Twice As Hard” and “Can’t See Straight” by Woodhands. Both of these musicians are Canadian. We hope this starts a trend.

And our friends at One Little Indian have provided us with three new
tracks from two exciting new releases:
Rose Kemp--"Violence" From the album A Handful Of Hurricanes
Daniel Agust--"The Moss" and "If You Leave Me Now" From the album
Swallowed A Star

Did you hear the rumor that there very well may be Caught In The Carousel t-shirts by the end of the summer?

We can’t confirm that rumor—in fact we don’t where that came from.

But they’re going to look really, really good. Whoops.

Love and Rockets,
Alex Green
Editor, Caught In The Carousel
Alex670@earthlink.net