[Songs My Son Should Know] Willie Nelson | Angel Flying Too Close to the Ground / Last Thing I Needed First Thing This Morning

One thing that makes me a bit forlorn is the certainty that Enzo will be missing out on the current generation of aging musical legends -- those who will imminently dissipated in flesh, but not in myth, by the time he is keen enough to appreciate the magnitude of their art.

Most notably, this refers to Texas' favorite son, Willie Nelson. 

Enzo will never take his date -- and later his wife -- to hear the disconsolate preachings and raucous narratives of an old cowboy.  How else should a father teach his son about women and romance?  Learn to country dance.  Know the lyrics of an idyllic song.  And always take her to see Willie.

Enzo has been to a Willie concert -- in Hill Country, even -- but The Redhead Stranger will likely just be an arbitrary figure to him, the way my generation regards Jimi, or Jim, or John, or Janis.  Yes, we love those artists; we've listened to them and praised their work -- but we never truly connected to them the way our parents did because we didn't evolve with them.  They are ghosts whose voices are distant relics.

Willie represents the outlaw in country music; the unlikely, rustic hippie who has been accepted by the widest spectrum of people, cultures, genres, and nationalities.  I think more people in this world dislike oxygen than dislike Willie -- a man of folklore who is both transversal in range and intimate in scope.  By the time Enzo is my age, Willie will be Bunyan-esque in stature, cutting the Grand Canyon itself with his musical refrains.

Two songs that should herald Enzo into his tour of musical discoveries are these ...

... which are 1) my favorite Willie song and 2) his best song.  Ask me on consecutive days to tell you which song belongs to which number, and the answer will invariably change. 

So, I don't expect Enzo to stop exploring here.  I expect him to find his own personal 1) and 2) -- as every Willie fan has.  It is a bug far too infectious to ignore.  Particularly for a Texan.

[Songs My Son Should Know] Kanye West | Good Morning / Hey Mama

This week's [SMSSK] is a box-set of jams that have a small bit of history in Enzo's short catalog of gestational days, so ... while we are at it, can we finally discuss Kanye in a positive light?  No we can't?  Alright.

During Enzo's time in the womb, Melissa and I logged a rather impressive list of live gigs about the country.  Most were the smallish, indie shows that provide most of the day-to-day cacophony of amplified tunes in our household -- mostly shit without a beat and throngs of lead guitar.  However, occasionally, we like to swag out -- and this is where Enzo really finds his impulses.

Last year, one of Enzo's final subtegulaneous shows from the front porch of Melissa's womb was Kanye West at the Austin City Limits festival.  It was a show that removes all doubt about the magnitude of talent that Kanye can really project, particularly if two things: 1) You're expectations are erroneously low, and 2) You can remove whatever distorted biases you may have about the dude.

Kanye is one fucking hell of a performer.  Mommy and Daddy enjoyed the shit out of it.  And the little, unborn progeny appeared to as well, because ...

... this was Enzo's first favorite song -- at least by my judgement.

This happens to be Track One of his very first music collectible: Rockabye Baby Lullaby Renditions of Kanye West.  Melissa and I picked it up as a gift to our boy in celebration for seeing his 3-D image for the first time -- and this event having just been on the euphoric heels of that Kanye show, we thought that it all made some sort of transcendental sense.  I guess it did.  In his first weeks of life, Enzo found the perfect configuration of muscles that made him appear to be just totally delighted when Track One played ... *Good Morning OOooooOOOoooooOOOOOoooo Oooaaaahhhhhhhh (*except in xylophones). 

As you would expect, he happily transitioned to the full, lyrical version in the following months -- and from the opening glottalizations of the track, you can really observe Enzo's musical recall at work.  Seeing your son define his musical palate before your eyes is a pretty special event -- even if its in favor of an admonished artist.

The second song, Hey Mama, is what I refer to as Enzo's "safety song".  What that means is, when those opening chords of Good Morning aren't doing the trick to calm his little-boy nerves, singing the refrain from this jam is the singular penetrable force for snivels and wriths.  Sometimes, Melissa and I like to change it up to "Heeey Enzo".  Then its REALLY lights-out.  That is the levity of parenthood.  Pretty creative, huh?

Overall, we think that our son has great taste so far.  Its something that we want to remember forever how he had immediate approval for beats so clever and lyrics so rappy.

And sure, there is still plenty of time for him to become endeared to my sad-bastard, guitar schlock.

[Songs My Son Should Know] Daniel Johnston | Story of an Artist

Daniel Johnston may be the only artist alive whom people discuss as if he had been put deep into the earth just the week before last.  This, a haunting feeling, hushing your tones in his presence -- so as not to speak ill of the dead, but, also to give respect to a figure that had succumbed to a sickness that had debilitated a genius into a child.  To be witness to this arrestive regression is to be witness to an imminent, dismal death, exacerbated in morbidity by his life-long narration in the form of hymnals. 

Story of an Artist is, what I believe to be, Daniel Johnston's most autobiographical prose -- daunting and morose in melody -- but also lyrically celebratory in his acceptance of fate.  In this writer's opinion, Story of an Artist is the message scribed and preserved in a bottle, to be cast into the vast landscape so that it may emerge long after his brain had breached asylum. As the years progress for Daniel Johnston, I believe this discovered message becomes gradually, increasingly powerful, written by proxy for an aged casing of a man who was at one time the most revered artist in the the most progressive music city.

The message: There is victory in the spirit of man.

One of the lessons in the humongous, multi-volume set of Advisories, Recommendations, and Suggestions that i will relay to my son is the absolute acceptance of the impaired and disabled; Those whose genius could not be contained by their skulls or their will by their skeletons.  Truly, the strongest humans I know are these very people.  Story of an Artist allegorizes this fickle connection between the infirm and the able, and attempts to provide reason for destiny and circumstance.  I think its an important lesson to know.


In many ways Daniel Johnston IS dead. We can never reclaim the singer whose twenty-year-old, school-boyish-demeanor endeared the very early MTV generation -- when important music was still recorded, accessible, and collected on D-C90 TDK cassette tapes.  We cannot reclaim the visionary painter who's art hangs like relics of "Old Austin", a phenomenon that starts the day after you move to this city.  We cannot reclaim the ambition of a lyricist, whose very simple compositions contained more information than was provided superficially, like binary code translated into verse.

But, this is not to say that the spirit of man cannot persevere through circumstance -- or fate, destiny, or other happenstance.  Its simply possible to have the desire necessary to overcome obstacles.  Stay deliberate.  Keep focused.  Remain inspired.  The story of an artist.

Old Austin, possibly the day after I moved here.