SOUNDTRACK: RHEOSTATICS-“Woodstuck” (Moose: The Compilation, 1991).
Back in the 1990s, it was common to buy a compilation or soundtrack or even a band’s album based on one song. Only to then find that you didn’t really like anything else on it.
Maybe that single sounded like nothing else on the album. Maybe the movie was almost entirely one genre, but they had that one song that you liked over the credits. Or maybe the compilation was for something you didn’t know, but a song you really wanted was on it, too.
With streaming music that need not happen anymore. Except in this case.
I bought this compilation, used, recently exclusively for one song, Rheostatics’ “Woodstuck.” It’s a goofy song and this is the only place you can get the studio version. The actual compilation was not well documented, so I didn’t know what the other bands on it might sound like. It turns out to be a compilation for Ontario based Moose Records which specialized in Rock, Folk, World & Country. They put out another compilation in 1992 and that’s all I can find out about them.
I’d heard this song on several live bootlegs, but I was very curious about the original recording.
It’s a stomping folk song with great backing vocals and a very funny chorus.
You can’t go back to Woodstock baby, you were just two years old You weren’t even born
And this wonderful verse
Before they were kissing the earth now they’re washing their cars
Before they were feeling stoned now they’re feeling bored
Sure you shed your clothes but you shed no blood
Poor hippie child don’t sit and wait for another summer of love
Was it worth getting this whole compilation for a two and a half minute joke song? You bet.
[READ: July 20, 2019] “Just Keep Going North: At the border”
William T. Vollmann continues to amaze me with his dedication to writing about issues that matter.
This lengthy essay is Vollmann’s attempt to discover what is happening at the border after trump warned of migrant caravans coming up from Mexico in February of 2019.
He decided to go to the Arizona border, a place he knew little about, to save himself from prejudgment (he is from California and knows that border situation a little better). He went to the internationally bifurcated town of Nogales. Nogales said it would sue the federal government if it did not remove the new coil of razor wire.
He talks to an immigration lawyer from Tucson who says in the old days it was no big deal to cross the border–you could come and go. There were some small changes in the mid-eighties. Then 9/11 caused big changes. It had been bad before trump but trump’s policies at least opened peoples eyes to what was happening here.
Vollmann spoke to a man who was selling tacos. He had been selling them there for sixty-five years. When Vollmann said he was ashamed of America, the taco seller said that he believes the caravans are arranged by trump and the government of Mexico to get authorization for the wall.
The lawyers say that things are really hopeless. The Eloy, Arizona court is a black hole of justice. The Florence Arizona court is more reasonable.
I had a client who crossed legally, with a visa. She was the victim of a car accident. She called the police and was detained and taken to Eloy. They required her to post a fifteen-thousand-dollar bail. The bail bond company put on an ankle monitor, that she had to pay for, for a year and a half. Now shes a legal resident, but she had to spend a month and a half in detention.
Vollmann speaks to group called No Mas Muetes (No More deaths) a group that caches food and water to help migrants in the desert. But they often run afoul of the authorities. They have been arrested for leaving water and food for people in the desert–they have been arrested for being on private property or other minor offenses which the authorities then try to make into worse offenses. All for trying to save peoples lives–the number of dead in the desert is staggering.
He asks about the status of most asylum seekers and is told that they seem to be mostly women and children from Central America fleeing because of unbearable violence. They live in situations where they can’t make money because they can’t leave the house: “I was forced to be a gang member’s girlfriend, and when I wanted to leave he didn’t see it that way.” Everyone has a murdered family member or have been threatened with murder. But migrants are afraid to say what really happened to them because they don’t want to seem like they are asking for a handout. So most say they just want a better life.
Gangs and mafia have taken over. If a woman wants to leave, they just kill her.
Eulalia left Guatemala. He asked her why. She said that bad men tried to take her away with them. When she refused, they threatened to kill her and her mama.
He spoke to another woman, Antonia, who wore an ankle bracelet–she had no idea what it was for–had no one told her? She hopes to get to Baltimore where her sister lives.
When she got to Mexico she was told to just keep walking North until she found the wall. It was just her and her daughter. When Vollmann went to Nogales to see the wall he learned that it goes about twenty-five miles until it stops. No taxi drivers would go drive near the wall citing mafias. His taxi driver said that they were in the most dangerous part, Morley.
Vollmann writes:
I must now sorrowfully report that we never got decapitated or even shot, although we certainly garnered eyefuls of the presidents razory tinsel
He asked a border patrolman if the razor wire slowed them down. Yes, it slows them down. Does it stop them? “Nothing’s gonna stop them.”
As for evidence of the mafia, he never saw any. When a taxi driver pointed to someone who might have been a mafia, Vollmann asked for a description
he said the man was wearing a dark blue shirt. Was I Supposed to piss my pants over that?
Then he learned about the freezer. The first place migrants are detained is called the freezer. People’s fingers turn blue. Then they are moved into the so-called dog cages where they have mylar blankets.
He asked a Mexican policeman what the saddest thing he had seen there was. He sad the saddest thing he’d seen that day was a child with a bullet in his leg.
In contrast, he went to a town hall in Green Valley where trump’s staunchest allies were meeting. People included the tool who started a go fund me to rasie $1 billion to privately support the wall. (Much racism follows including words of obfuscation from Steve Bannon).
The Trumpeters arguments against the immigrants were precarious and ungenerous
They complained about the amount of money it will cost to educate these people and provide heath care
But, how
does an illegal alien get work in the United States? He or she presents a false Social Security number. Their Social Security fees get removed. They will never collect Social Security income in their old age. They are not robbing us, but themselves. Surely this must go far to offset the cost of their education and health care. Now, what about the cost of incarcerating them? One of the detainees had been there for eight months with an unknown stretch ahead of her. Justify the costs of that.
Another migrant, Juan, worked for a long while but was never paid, when he was taken away. He worked for nothing, actually adding value to the country. But instead of simply sending him back they imprisoned him for three years–he had now become an economic drain on the country.
It’s terrible that you can’t argue racism with logic. Who knows when this crisis (trump, not migrants) will end.
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