365 Photo Project - Day 185

Taken: July 4, 2010, approx. 9:40 p.m.
Location: Healdsburg, Ca.

I got to see the Fourth of July fireworks from our porch tonight. They're nothing like the incredible shows they put on in the Nation's Capital when I lived there. I would pack a cooler with beer and munchies and spend July 4th on The Mall with thousands of other revelers watching Leontyne Price or Tony Bennett, but as fun as that was, it's nothing like watching without the crowds and in my pajamas. And no mile-walk to wherever you parked your car eight hours ago.

I set up my camera on a tripod and did my best to capture the show but I'm still learning. I took over 200 shots and haven't even gone through them all but I had to settle for the best of the bunch I edited. This here is it. Happy Fourth people.

Hey Baby, it's the Fourth of July

St. Helena, California, July 3, 2007
I love making my own CD compilations for myself and friends and one thing I've been doing since back in the days of cassette tapes is compiling tapes of songs with similar themes, like songs about days of the week (Stones' Ruby Tuesday and Tom Waits' Looking for the Heart of Saturday Night). It's a great way to get artists on the same song list who wouldn't necessarily go together.

So, in honor of the Fourth of July, which has given birth to more than enough annoyingly lousy patriotic ditties, and with the assistance of my Vox.com audio stash, I give you some of my favorite songs about Independence Day. I didn't post some of the more obvious Fourth songs, like Bruce Springsteen's Independence Day. Instead, I thought I'd offered a few off-the-beaten popular path, as it were. All of these songs are also actually called "Fourth of July."

If you think of any others that I might not have heard of, please post them in the comments section.

With out further, ado ... (Click on the CD covers to listen to the songs).

The first is "Fourth of July," by Aimee Mann. I'm a huge, huge fan of Mann, as much for her lyrics as her pop-infused sound. She's also married to Michael Penn, a wonderful artist in his own right (and brother to Sean). This makes me wonder if he has written a song about the Fourth. I will have to do some research and find out. Mmm, gives me a new idea for a themed CD.

Anyway, this song, from the album, "Whatever" is really a relationship song. Makes sense. I mean what better day to sing about breaking up than on America's day of independence?

The song opens with some of my favorite lyrics of all time about any holiday. I think this says it all, don't you?

Today's the Fourth of July
Another June has gone by
And when they light up our town
I just think what a waste of gunpowder and sky.

The second is a classic by the cult-favorite Americana blues/folk/whatever singer/songwriter Dave Alvin called, um, "Fourth of July." This is the live version by Alvin and his band, The Guilty Men.

Even if you're not a fan of this music, you should go see them play. What Alvin hasn't earned in popular appeal, he has more than made up for in the adoring respect of his peers. So whenever he puts a band together, you know it will include the best players around. And let me tell you from experience, the Guilty Men can peel paint off them thar walls.



And finally, the third "Fourth of July" by a guy named Pete Droge, who came out with a startling great folk/pop record in the late 90s called "Necktie Second." Unfortunately, his career did not take off as expected but fortunately for us, he still plies his trade and his newer tunes can be found on most music download sites.


This song is about a friend who killed himself. I don't know if it's real or fiction, but it's a great piece of folk music and offers a truly different take on independence day.

On the fourth of July
See the sparks in the sky
When you're sick of the trying
and you're tired of the crying
Then the fourth of July
Is a good day to die
They'll celebrate each year
Your independence from here...

As you can see, the one constant about the fourth songs that I know and love is that they're sort of depressing. So along with the three here, I also give you a classic pre-Fourth jam song by Van Morrison, appropriately titled "Almost Independence Day."

Have a blast and keep the music turned up. Loud.

Some Things I know

Bird Dance
Apparently, I'm in a minority among my friends (and viewers) about David Milch's new HBO Show, John From Cincinnati. After four episodes, I'm pretty much hooked on the strange characters and stranger goings on in the surfing town of Imperial Beach in San Diego.

I've been a big fan of Milch's work, even the stuff that didn't last long (anybody see Big Apple?), and not just because I think he may well be the best television writer of our generation. Milch is one of those writers who doesn't pander to the audience but to his own, interesting, damaged, fucked up, cool ass soul and the results are more often than not poetic and beautiful and captivating -- and nothing like what's on anywhere else.

Like Deadwood before it, John From Cincinnati is a tapestry rich with what I like to call characters with actual character. Milch's dialogue can sometimes feel overtly stylized (some call it mannered) very much like, say David Mamet, but there's also something lyrical about it and sentimental, almost feminine, that a guy's guy like Mamet rarely offers.

Milch is a master of the silences of dramatic t.v. in that he almost always knows when his pictures tell the story a thousand times better than any words he could put into the mouths of his characters. I've been moved to tears by moments in Milch's dramatic writing when nothing is said and yet everything is clear. This is not an easy thing to do in a medium like t.v. and in an age where everything is explained to us in more detail than (I hope) most of us require.

The height of this was his western Deadwood, a near-perfect place for Milch to combine his years of teaching college English and the experience one only gets from abusing your body and drugs and yourself. An experience, I might add, that is considered by some morons to be a seemingly prerequisite for being taken seriously as a real Goddamn writer. Still, whatever Milch did in his life, he's putting the experiences to good use telling us tales that make me love t.v.

When you watch Milch's work, you never get the feeling he thinks your a t.v. watching couch potato chump. His stuff drips with allegory like great prose writers, there's always something simmering beneath the surface, real, imagined, significant or small, that makes you think that whatever the trappings of drama, there's real life being lived here. I like the way he finds the humanity in people and his tough-edged sentimentality that shows us pain and love without judgment. He seems to find something worth understanding in even the worst kind of folks and really, if that's not the best of life and art, what is?

And when Milch invites the viewer to come along for a ride, you know it's not going to be easy or always apparent where he's taken you. Some label this as pretension. I think it's just smart t.v. that treats us with respect, that understands where not all blithering couch potato idiots.

Seriously, it's not exactly hieroglyphics, you know? I mean just cause it's not easily understood or a little mannered or maybe a bit weird, doesn't mean you're stupid if you don't get it.

Whatever place we end up with Milch, good or bad, for better or worse, it's going to be rewarding on some essentially important level, and that's worth the price of admission to me.