SOUNDTRACK: KURT WAGNER-Tiny Desk Concert #6 (October 8, 2008).
I have never been a big fan of Lambchop. It’s just not my kind of music—a little too slow for me. But I really enjoyed Kurt Wagner in this Tiny Desk performance. His guitar playing I really beautiful (I loved how he hit the high note on Bob Dylan’s “You’re a Big Girl Now.” He plays three Lambchop songs and two covers.
Wagner is from Nashville, and he has an air of Southern propriety about him–apologizing for taking up everyone’s time at work. He sounds great doing the Dylan song, which I suppose is no real surprise. The first Lambchop song is a pretty ballad called “Slipped Dissolved and Loosed.”
He is a charming and funny guy, joking about a few things (like working in an office) and then discussing about one of his songs, “National Talk Like a Pirate Day” (which is not as funny as the title might suggest). Another song is titled “Sharing a Gibson with Martin Luther King Jr.” (and Wagner waves a fan of MLK Jr. (from a funeral home-(?)) to start the song.
The final song is a Don Williams song called “I Believe in You.” I’ve never heard of him (and neither had anyone else in the studio). It’s a really enjoyable, sweet song, and there’s a funny moment when sirens go past and he comments that at least they are in tune. I still don’t think I’ll be listening to a lot of Lambchop, but I really liked this Tiny Desk show.
[READ: October 8, 2013] “Improvised, Explosive, & Divisive”
Two years after writing about his trip to Vietnam, Bissell returned to another war zone. This time going to Iraq to get embedded (I suppose that’s the technical term for what he did) with some Marines at Camp Taqaddum in Iraq (17 miles from Baghdad). This was during the Iraq war (and the Bush presidency), after Mission Accomplished, when the military was searching for a strategy for what to do in the situation.
This article shows interviews with Marines and makes assessments about our then current plans (such as they were) for how to extricate ourselves from a seemingly hopeless situation. After Mission Accomplished the war went from a “war” to “stability and support operations against an insurgent element” or what is called MOOTW (military operations other than war). And Bissell acknowledges that it barely seems like any resembling war in Iraq where the soldiers are headquartered. They cannot drink alcohol, have sex or view pornography (they are trying to remain respectful of their host country), but at the same time they play softball and go to the gym, wear Co-Ed Naked Camel Watching T-shirts and have a Baskin-Robbins ice cream stand. Not to mention DVD, video game consoles and Coke for sale in the PX.
Some of the article is technical—a side of the fighting that most readers probably don’t know. Like that the troops must be fully protected (and the vehicles as well) just to travel the relatively short distance between camps. (more…)
I Just Read About That... 