Finds: Bob Marley and Gossip • Kicking Mule records • Natalie Bergman • Overthinking about Overthinking

Peter Finger, Homecoming. I first started listening to this song on a road trip to Kentucky. Towns and streets were hushed — it was late era Covid. We had driven to western Appalachia from Chicago and it felt like driving into a new season. Trees were blooming. In Chicago, the world was still frozen. I remember my kids playing in the woods. The older one pushing the younger one on a swing. My dad was in the hospital and I remember talking to him on his birthday. 

For the uninitiated, Kicking Mule was the other great guitar record label founded in Berkeley. With a mail order business that blended guitar tablature with musicians, Kicking Mule is overshadowed by Takoma. That means you can find good deals on their vinyl records on ebay. But you can’t find this song on the popular streaming platforms. 

Natalie Bergman, You Can Have Me. From a new record by Bergman, this song reminds me of the bittersweet Harry Nilsson songs from the 70s. You Can Have Me, she says. The author offers herself, but the space outside the lyrics infers a person with other, more material interests. 

Bob Marley doesn’t like gossip. If you actually listen to this song, the lyrics are about a town gossip. “You should be ashamed of yourself,” Marley says. “Your teeth and tongue a-go let you down.” Apparently this song was about a rival musician (Niney the Observer). If you are seeking more chatterbox themed content, someone came up with a cheeky, Victorian-influence chatbot that will converse with you in period-appropriate language. Mr. Chatterbox.

Morton Feldman obsessively collected rugs. Feldman composes with elements beyond audio. Time, memory, and how the former decomposes the latter. I love the author’s description of a listener responding to Feldman’s longest composition — a work that lasts for four hours, with a brief and beautiful choral interlude 40 minutes deep. “You’re given this beautiful thing that’s totally tear-jerking,” he says, “and then you never get it back.” 

There’s only one kind of person that would need this kind of list. Five books.  

“The truth is, we are both only really happy living among lunatics.”

Taken out of context, that's W.H. Auden on Iceland, 1937.