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. (more…)
I Just Read About That... 