In My Place 214

August 2, 2026. 38.99256, -74.79718. See the updated map here. See all the blog posts here.

Remember when they tried to ban canopies from the beach? This was in Wildwood, the backwards fucking shore town that I've somehow found myself visiting every year of my life. The jabronis who live here year-round love to bitch and moan about the beach, and I guess a few years ago they looked around and saw that the rapidly shrinking beach was being increasingly covered with large tents, and, ya know, instead of attempting any long-term change, like voting for responsible environmental policies, they instead kept voting for the pedophile and then attempted to just make sure people didn't have shade on the beach. That ban lasted half a summer (I think this was like 2023ish), and didn't even last until I finally got down here with my own cabana. As I type this, I don't have sunburn. I've only seen one pedophile flag in town so far, none on the beach, and also only one nazi flag (a.k.a. the thin blue line-style "American" flag). Maybe these people are starting to realize they fucked themselves. Or maybe they just don't care anymore, which is probably worse. Anyways. It was a good beach day.

The Highwomen, Sunny

I picked the album for today because we did the Brandi Carlile album. I didn't read the post, but I scanned through it and saw a Blind Spots post on the Highwaymen. I'll come back to that. I ended up liking this album more than the Brandi album. That might be because I had more time or openness to it this week. But it's also this interesting experience of coming into a supergroup album not really knowing any of the artist, not really being into the genre, not really being into the themes.

I listened to the album maybe three and a half times total, but after the first time, I remembered that Blind Spots post, and I went back and read it, and listened to the first song. I was like... oh, I see. It's an homage/parody that the Highwomen are doing. I didn't know about that either. Clearly my adult autism brain paused for a moment, and was like, "If it's the Highwaymen, then it should be the Highwaywomen." Highwomen is something else. Highwomen sounds much better than Highwaywomen, so that probably matters more. But that did get stuck in my craw for a bit.

So rethinking about the album in that sense, through the second and third time, I came to liking it. The first two songs really do answer the question of "what is a Highwomen?" Ya know, "Highwoman, she was in Iran-Contra, and she escaped." "Highwoman, she was in the Salem Witch Trials and hung." "Highwoman, she was a freedom rider in the South." It was nice seeing Yola in there! What a delight. I was like... okay. I don't really remember what Johnny Cash and Willie were talking about in the other song, but maybe that's the analogous.

And then Track 2 redoubles into it. I think it's literally called "Redesigning Women." It's like, "Here's what the Highwoman is again." I thought that was good. It's a thesis-based project. Which, again, the project, I don't really care about, but from that detached perspective, I can still kind of enjoy. Then immediate go into Track 3, which is just a typical country radio song. "I'm not your loose change, I'm your lucky penny!" It still falls into the theme of "womanhood," but we're just bouncing around, having country fun.

Track 4, that one even sounds like a parody of country songs! For the next four or five tracks, that's mostly what I noted down—"this feels like a different kind of country song." Like, Amanda has a touch of the Reba, a little bit of the Reba flair. There's a couple big tracks, "Wild Child," "Old Soul." Big anthems. It ends on a big anthem too. Those were fun, although they were a bit long. But then you had more country standards. "Don't Call Me," which is a swinging, honky-tonkin', jug-tootin'-type song. A couple times I wrote down: "This is another jug-hooter." Which is... it's a country album, so you expect some jug-hooters, but in the relief of this opening of "We're the Highwomen, and that means something!" What does it mean? Now we're jug-hooters too, I guess.

I'm still enjoying it. I love the "1-800-GO-TO-HELL," I'm gonna use that. Then there's a sad song on death or whatever toward the end. I didn't care for it, but I understand it has to be in there. I really liked the one song that was like "Don't call me mama, I like wine and I'm hungover, and I can't deal with you right now." So if I went ahead and said, "What is a Highwoman?" I guess from the Highwaymen, from what I remember, it was all these men doing crazy stuff. One dude is building a dam and drowns, another guy gets crushed by a steamroller in Looney Toons or something. Whereas the Highwomen were like "I'm going to be my own lady, and go out and do stuff." Which is great! Maybe it's culturally on point.

So overall, good album. Not my genre, but good album. I appreciate the supergroup nature of it. Brandi and Amanda Shires in particular were very good.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Joe: I feel like for some of these albums, I go back and I wish Sunny had been part of it. Because I feel like that's the important question: what are they trying to do here? The people who did it that week dismissed it—myself included—and maybe my thought at the time was an album about power to women. Do they do this enough? Like you said, there are songs that are just fucking country songs, that don't speak to the power of women. So maybe viewing it that way is a sign of failure on their part. Whereas I was thinking today—and what I think you would've gotten to first, if you were there in November 2019—is that this is country album in the way that the Highwaymen did a country album, in that they are taking the tropes of country, and applying them to a certain gender. So the Highwaymen were explicitly masculine in the way they were doing it, because that's what country was at the time, whereas the Highwomen are presenting those same tropes, but from a different perspective. This isn't an album about women, but it's reimagining the country tropes as centered by women.

Sunny: There's that one track toward the end, I forget what the name of it was. "I love this woman, and she doesn't know I love her." And the first time I listened to it, I was like, are they just doing a cover of a male-perspective song, or is this a lesbian femme-love thing? And by the end of the song it's very clear it's the latter. And I think that reaffirms what you're saying, that it takes the tropes—this is a classic type of country song—and then bringing it to them, and playing on perfume vs. cologne, and all these other little things.

Joe: I don't know why I assumed that Brandi Carlile was the mastermind behind that song, as the lesbian of the group.

Sunny: That would be my assumption without looking into it.

Joe: I looked it up. Amanda Shires and her then husband Jason Isbell wrote that song, and Shires is the lead on that.

Sunny: Interesting.

Joe: This is something I looked up on Wikipedia on the car ride here—

Sunny: As all good research is done.

Joe: —and I think that that speaks toward the togetherness of the Highwomen. That they are expressing empathy toward the whole of the woman experience. Just because Amanda Shires is straight doesn't mean that she can't empathize with her bandmate Brandi Carlile. And in a winking way too.

Sunny: You're right, the song is a little tongue-in-cheek, which definitely plays into that. So all these Highwomen are speaking to this universal woman experience, flush with the country thing. If someone is to be over critical, you could call it tokenizing. The one criticism is, ya know, country is racist, the South is racist, and all these women are white. So on Track 1, they immediately try to combat that. 

Joe: "We need Yola!"

Sunny: "We gotta get Yola in there." Maren isn't in there! She doesn't have a verse about the first woman to discover radioactivity or something like that. It's just Brandi, Amanda, and Yola on there.

Joe: She's not singing about hitting number one on a Chainsmokers song.

Sunny: Exactly.

Joe: I guess it's interesting to think about Maren Morris has purposefully removed herself from the genre of country. Not that she is doing Chainsmokers songs again or anything. But she's definitely been very expressive about how country is dominated by Morgan Wallen types, and I don't want anything to do with that shit anymore. Which makes me sad, in a way, that maybe the mission of the Highwomen has failed. If the purpose of this was to present it from a different perspective, then you have bad faith actors like Morgan Wallen who are purposefully leaning in the other direction. A more traditional direction... not saying that Willie Nelson or Johnny Cash were racist at all, they seemed to be pretty liberal. I guess just the idea that masculinity, like if you value that, then that seems to be more of a conservative thing. So masculinity looks different in country music.

Sunny: And there's a performative nature to everything we're talking about, but these are all performers. So I think to your point, one could say that the Highwoman project, if that was the point, was a bit of a failure. Or they weren't able to fight against all the culture that... I mean, they are one band, with one album, versus the whole country that's gone in a certain direction.

Joe: That genre specifically, I guess. I know that the Brandi Carlile album we listened to came out well before The Highwomen, but that didn't seem very country to me.

Sunny: Yeah, a lot of pop sensibilities, a lot of rock sensibilities.

Joe: Amanda Shires isn't really... she's more Americana, which is rooted in country but removed from the traditional outlaw country. Less familiar with Natalie Hemby. She was more of a country writer. She has since released an album of her own, since this. So I don't know, I can't really speak to her experience. I feel like maybe, instead of seeing this as four country artists that are coming together to reclaim the genre that they work in, it's more like four musicians who work slightly outside the genre, who admire people like the men in the Highwaymen, and are trying to reclaim it for them.

Sunny: And trying to take back a bit of this genre. To your point, they are not all in it all the time. Which is probably why they can produce a project like this. They have a little bit of outside perspective. Did they make any more music after this?

Joe: Together? No. I mean, they probably have worked together, in certain combinations. So, okay, I looked up Yola's most recent album, the 2021 album. What was that called? [Editor's note: Stand for Myself.] Rachel S. picked the Yola album before that for Record Club, Walk Through Fire. And then there was one that came out around the time we covered Walk Through Fire. Fuck, what was that called? I looked it up because, since then, Yola has also not really done any country stuff. Those two albums were produced by the Black Keys dude, Dan Auerbach. And she has since said, yeah that dude's a piece of shit, I'm never gonna work with him again. And I wanted to look up her two best songs, "Diamond Studded Shoes" and "Stand for Myself," and they are co-written by Auerbach. So I don't know. Where was I going with this?

Sunny: Artists outside of country... oh, do these people work together again?

Joe: Oh yeah. On that album, Natalie Hemby co-wrote a song as well.

Sunny: So they're still in contact.

Joe: Yeah, they're all pals.

Sunny: But the Highwomen project is not an ongoing thing.

Joe: Right, it is not. They did all they could. And I don't blame them for not wanting to put up with that shit. Like, if they're not within that genre firmly, and they released an album right now that was explicitly pro-feminist, people like us would be like, oh that's cool, let's listen. But that genre...

Sunny: Marketing it in the circles that it would be marketed in would be very difficult.

Joe: Fox News would have a field day. They'd have Morgan Wallen on the talk show to do his thing. They'd have Jelly Roll on there!

Sunny: It would be an easy target, sure.

Joe: Yeah man, I think I agree that it's not the best album ever. But that's more genre, not purpose behind it.

Sunny: And not talent. Clearly these people are making good music, and displaying it.

Joe: Is that something that comes in time? I know we were talking about how long you've been doing this, how long we've been doing this. I got the sense that, back then, listening to The Highwomen, I did not have the capacity to understand that you can appreciate art, or knowing the purpose behind the art, without liking the art itself. I don't know if that's my way of coping with having to do a review every week for the rest of my life, and the boredom that would come from saying "this is a shitty album, fuck this, I'm never listening to it again," like not considering the depth of it. Or, if it's actually true. Do you get that sense? In book club, film club, whatever, that you're at the point where you can appreciate art even if you don't like it?

Sunny: Yeah. Listen, I don't know anything. [laughter] But I would say two things. One, the repeated process—and Record Club for me was probably the biggest jump, and you've posted about this too—I've certainly previously been an "anything but rap and country" person, and now I kind of like rap and country, in the right context. So that in itself is a marker of change. I think doing art appreciation, art criticism, and just enjoying art, is a muscle like anything else. In the same way you'd go to visual art school and seeing a bunch of paintings you might not like, being exposed to them still helps you develop taste, helps you understand them, helps you understand the history around it, and all of that helps you appreciate all the stuff you do like even more. And so, yeah, I'm big on saying that doing this for however many years has helped sharpen that tool. And it's also revealed the Dunning-Kruger Effect of it all: the more I know, the more I realize I don't know anything. There's even more depth to music and art than I could ever wrap my head around. I try to be humble about that too. But yeah, that's a big reason I keep doing Record Club. It exercises muscles of art appreciation, being able to extemporaneously write, and also being able to take 40 minutes and listen to music intently. Which is a harder thing than you'd give credit for!

Joe: Apparently! Based on the fact that very few people do this. Especially week in and week out.

Sunny: I mean, I know very few people who sit down, put on a record, even one side of a record or album, and just listen to it. Maybe doodle around with it, or write with it, but just listen to it. Not do their chores or their laundry while they're listening, not thinking about work while they're doing it, not being on the computer while they're doing it, or on their phone. Just listen to the music. That speaks to more our greater culture, but I think this project does ask for it. I don't do it every week, and there are definitely some weeks I just listen to it on the way to work. But the weeks that I do, it's nice.

Joe: Do you feel like you like the album more when you have those moments for concentration on the music? Is that just a given?

Sunny: I think it's hard not to. In the same, if it's a piece of music, one that I don't like in the same way, it's not as sweet or enjoyable, I might like it or appreciate it more, having given it that time and attention, and find at least something... even on the worst album, there's usually at least one track or one chorus or verse where I'm like "that's kinda catchy and fun, they're doing something."

Joe: I wonder if you—and I know we've talked about a similar theory with the Reba thing, but more specifically to liking something, as opposed to the more philosophical stuff—does that argument become "I don't like this because I did not devote enough time to it"? Could any album improve, could any album get to the point where you like it for what it is, not what it tries to do, if given enough time and space? And should the assumption be that if somebody who doesn't do Record Club every week, and decides to pop in, and says "You know what, this Highwomen album kinda sucks!" Can we assume that that is because they didn't listen to it forty times over six years?

Sunny: I can almost definitely assume that they haven't. [laughter] I think so, though. I think there's something to that. So the question is, what does it mean of the quality of music that it's able to hook somebody, maybe a lot of people, in that first time? I guess that's Taylor Swift. She's able to, for millions of people on the first listen, people will be like, I like this. Whereas there's a lot of other music, like Buckethead for example. There's a lot of depth in there, but a lot of people here would be like "I'm not going to bother with any more of this, and don't bring it up to me again."

Joe: [laughter] Amazing example. Nah, it just feels like there's a responsibility, if like... I don't want Record Club to be a conduit to irresponsibility, that this would just be a place to talk shit on something you don't know about. Which is fine, ya know, it happens. And sometimes there are albums that I listen to 20 times and I still fucking hate them.

Sunny: Sometimes I totally understand where they're coming from, and I hate that they came from that place.

Joe: It's just the limiting nature of Record Club, it just feels like too much of a constraint sometimes. You have five days to do it. And then something like the Highwomen comes along that... I didn't like. At the time. I literally said in my review, this is a bad album. But I... I don't do this anymore, but at the time, Martha was being born, and I wrote it in advance, because I knew I wasn't going to be dealing with this stuff in the hospital. I have since had another child, and dealt with it in the hospital, because that's what I do now. But I certainly did not give this the time that it deserved. And now, I've been listening to it again, a couple times this morning, all these years later, and it just feels something was missing. Which isn't fair to these artists, and it isn't fair to my experience, our experience...

Sunny: Yeah, but like you said, one of your daughters was being born that week, you know what I mean? Everything you said is true, and also it's in contrast with having some value in a project that is time-constrained and runs every week. And that creates a different experience. I guess you can't have both. Or you can't have both at the same time. You do summer projects that run a bit longer to have that space. For Record Club, which one is better? Or which one would you get more engagement? Or more interesting writing from? That I'm not sure.

Joe: I don't know why I'm hung up on it for this particular one. Maybe because we covered a couple of the Highwomen's, and a couple of the Highwaymen's, albums since then, and I treated them with more respect, as a piece of art. And I don't like the idea of someone going back and reading my November 2019 review of The Highwomen, and being like, oh no, you didn't do this right.

Sunny: Sure, but that's why they can look at your November 2024 reappraisal. [laughter]

Joe: There you go. I took that as a syllable thing, by the way. Highwomen vs. Highwaymen.

Sunny: These are musicians first, not literary majors.

Joe: Is "highway woman," could that be misconstrued as a prostitute or something?

Sunny: It could be, I guess. But maybe that would be an appropriate person to sing a song about. And redeem.

Joe: What are you giving this album?

Sunny: I'd probably give it a 3 out of 5. I like two or three tracks a lot, I appreciate what they're doing, but there are at least four or five tracks that I thought were just stupid. Or, if it is a parody, then I get it! I don't have to keep watching it!

Song of the Day: "Identity Crisis"

A column about music, and about how the music informs our lives. Today's author is Joe. See the previous songs HERE.

"Identity Crisis"

DARK THOUGHTS

from DARK THOUGHTS

2016

One of the thoughts I've had about Lizzo lately—what, you thought this was gonna be a blog post about West Philly greats DARK THOUGHTS? get your head out of your fucking ass, this is PoYB, of course a DARK THOUGHTS Song of the Day entry is going to turn into a blog post about Lizzo, psh—is that she is exploiting a misunderstanding about the dichotomy of Identity vs. Choice. Lizzo is not the first person to do this, nor will she be the last. I don't even think she has ever thought about her issues (her commercial and artistic issues, to be clear) in this way, or maybe she has and she's being purposefully obtuse about it. That's not what I'm here to determine. I'm just here to do the thing I usually do—bend over like Ace Ventura and grab my ass cheeks and mime talking out of my ass about whatever subject is on my mind lately. And this has definitely been on my mind.

So Lizzo's new album, the possibly but not necessarily ironically named Bitch—oh, and this officially counts as the RC f/u for this RC alumna, meet me at the bottom of this post for the official checkmark on that task—didn't really do all that well, commercially speaking. I assume it's not very good artistically, either, but that's neither here nor there. I've never thought her art was all that compelling and I didn't need to resort to self-aggrandizing but ultimately condescending courtroom fiction to make that opinion clear. The music is basic at best, lousy at worst, and always with a heavy stink of commercialism about it that's turned me off from the beginning.

But this time, unlike the past few times, her product hasn't sold all that well either. It didn't even make it onto the Billboard 200 chart. As of the typing of this paragraph, Bruno Mars' fourteen-year-old Unorthodox Jukebox is at #200, which means that an album old enough for me to have rolled my eyes at it while I was sitting on my girlfriend Pam's Center City apartment couch sold more copies than Lizzo's brand new album full of Corporate Boss Bitch® Product Placement™ Yas Gurl© summer jams.

What do we make of this? If you ask Lizzo—oh man, if only I actually could ask Lizzo myself, as opposed to having to hear her words through print on the snarky music blogs that I still read—then she'll tell you that they are OUT TO GET HER. She frames it like she always has: that she is a strong fat Black woman, and that the powers that be are doing everything they can do (manipulating the algorithms, basically) to keep her down. The irony is that there's probably more truth to that than we as a society seem willing to accept. I do think that institutional racism makes it so that artists like Lizzo are suppressed and held back. I do believe that your typical large Black woman with a strong voice is going to face more opposition than a classically attractive young white conservative male.

I'm talking here about the concept of Identity. In other words, what about "who Lizzo is" affects her life and people's reaction to her. When I talk about "racism," that's an Identity thing. When you hate someone because of the color of their skin, or treat them differently, that's a racist considering Identity. And that's wrong. I would condemn that, and have. If you're getting paid less because you are a woman, if you're getting kicked out of a coffee shop because you were born in Israel, if you are being made to feel less than because you are overweight, if you don't sell a lot of albums because the corporations that control the flow of music to the sheep who use streaming services are bending the algorithm toward their racist will, then that is identity politics! And it's fucked up!

And if I didn't know anything else about Lizzo, maybe we'd leave it there, shrug our shoulders and wish her the best. But that's not all we know about Lizzo. Here's what else we know: we know that she was credibly accused of being abusive. There were lawsuits accusing her of abuse her employees. This included such salacious allegations as forcing her employee to stick a banana up a stripper's vagina, against the employee's will. Lizzo's response to these allegations were the same as any other cishet white male abuser that we've seen countless times over the years: these are lies designed to take me down, but I won't let it, I will fight my accusers and call them liars and save my reputation. But we all know what all that shit ultimately means. We've gone through it countless times on this blog, what it means to be an abuser and what that might mean to the conversation about the art or lack thereof. Ultimately, someone who is credibly accused of abuse is not someone who I'm going to engage with on an artistic level.

Lizzo knows all this, though. That's the thing. She knows that she is an abusive piece of shit, and she also knows that people like her have verifiably been treated unfairly throughout history because of who she is. And so she uses that to her advantage. On purpose or just because that's how her mind has been trained to work, I don't know. Maybe a little of both. But what she's doing is mixing up the concepts of Identity and Choice. Her identity is that she is an overweight Black woman. Her choice was to abuse her employees. And when I consider her art, I am declining but ONLY because of her choice, and NOT because of her identity.

I'm actually inclined to give Lizzo the benefit of the doubt here, in that she just simply doesn't know, or can't understand, the difference between Identity and Choice. She has, rightly so, been conditioned to see any challenge toward her as a challenge of her Identity, and she's been conditioned that way because it's very often true! You can't let those fucking scumbag racists get away with that shit, you gotta stand up for yourself! And I'll stand right alongside of you in the fight to make sure that no one is punished simply because of who they are, and what their identity is! And if her music wasn't selling because of Identity, I'd stand up and fight! That's what Lizzo wants you to think, too! Come fight with me, she says! Buy my music, prove to them that an overweight Black woman can make great art too!

She's only saying that because she doesn't want you think about her Choice, though. Her choice to be an abuser. It's a completely separate thing. It has nothing to do with Identity. And, if she were to let anyone even once consider her Choice, then it robs her of her victimhood that she needs to survive the PR crisis of being an abuser. So it's really important that you think the albums aren't selling because of who she is! And not consider once that they might not be selling because of what she chose to do!

I guess what I'd ask is, one, do you see how fine of a line it is, between Identity and Choice? And two, do you understand how some people might take advantage of how fine of a line it really is? Lizzo is taking advantage of it for sure, attempting to tell you that she's not beloved because of her Identity, and completely ignoring the probability of the issue being due to her Choice. What other bad actors are muddying the water for you? Now that it's on my mind, I'm not going to lie, I see it everywhere.

What the purpose of all this is, understanding the difference between Identity and Choice, is that we can then understand how to respect and love Identity, and how to hold people accountable for their Choices. A person should NEVER be judged for who they are, and a person should ALWAYS be judged for what they choose to do. And if you start conflating the two, well then, you might just be a Lizzo fan in 2026.

Lizzo

Cuz I Love You — RC Week 15 — 2 pukes out of 5

Special — RC f/u #9 — 1 puke out of 5

Bitch — released June 5, 2026 — N/A, no grade assigned to abusers

In My Place 186

July 5, 2026. 40.08544, -75.04741. See the updated map here. See all the blog posts here.

Family dinner was at a diner tonight, and I had a delicious BLT, with—

—What's that? Okay folks, sorry, I am being informed that there was an issue with yesterday's Fourth of July In My Place, that maybe SOME people would rather I spend my time writing about the scene in the picture instead of doing performative ACAB shit-talking. Well to those people I say HELL NO, I'm gonna talk shit on cops all I want. FUCK THE POLICE. I'm doubling down today, motherfuckers.

I had to call 911 AGAIN today, because that stupid fucking wire was still on the goddamn ground. No one's done anything about it. I still don't know if it's a live wire. I'm not gonna touch it and kill myself because the cops refuse to do their jobs. Absolutely ridiculous that the cop the other day just drove away like a fucking asshole. I called PECO, and they apparently aren't doing anything either. And there the wire sits. So I called 911 again.

But this time I amped it up (pun not intended). I gave the address of next door, which is city-owned property. I said that it was sparking. I said that it was a live wire. I said that I have no idea how the rain affected it. And I said that I am just passing through, so no, you can't have my information, but someone better get out here QUICK. I stopped short of saying that an off-duty officer was shooting at the wire due to the color of the wire, though that would have gotten them out there even faster.

As it turns out, the firemen AND the cops came out this time. I let them look around for a while, then asked them if they were looking for a live wire, and directed them to the wire in question. They asked if I called and I said no. I said it's been here for days now and the cops didn't do anything and now there's a live wire in the goddamn alley next to my house. The firemen claimed it was a cable wire, not electric. They kicked the wire to the side, and said they would tell a lieutenant, and then drove away. The cop didn't even get out of the car.

So there's the wire again. Maybe if it's still there tomorrow, I'll make that my photo of the day. Maybe if it's there the day after that, I'll get wire cutters and cut the wire and take the coin-flip chances of dying. I was trained from an early age not to touch a wire that's lying on the ground, and yet here in adulthood, no one seems to want to back up that lesson with any real action. I say fuck the police. Public safety my fucking ass.

That BLT was good though.

In My Place 185

July 4, 2026. 40.08348, -75.09269. See the updated map here. See all the blog posts here.

too many cops at the parade

too many cops in rockledge

i called 911 yesterday

fucking useless fucking asshole

there's a downed wire behind my house in the alleyway

i'm assuming it's live

called the police

we talk so much fucking bullshit about cops keeping us safe

this cop didn't do shit

they never do

the wire is still there

and i'm sitting here on the fourth and the cops are waving at me

mocking

i am never calling 911 again

happy fourth of july everybody!

Monday Morning Mixtape 078: Sounds like a Cracked Bell

Welcome to Monday Morning Mixtape, a PoYB Contributor-curated playlist of songs, made just for you at the start of each week.

"Sounds like a Cracked Bell"

Songs for Philadelphia, America's First City, in honor of America's 250th

chosen by Joe

Spotify

YouTube

"Philly's been good to me" by Kurt Vile

from Philadelphia's been good to me, 2026

The whole "Philly reputation" thing is totally played out. Once the national population got wind of "jawn," it was all over. I'm not grumpy about it. Have your fucking cheesesteaks in Seattle, I don't give that much of a shit. I don't care if people think they are going to get beat up at the Linc, or need to dress the Rocky statue in their own team's garb, or listen to some asshole Kelce's dumbass podcast, or try to use jawn in a parody of a Philadelphia accent. Everything is commoditized these days, why not the reputation of a city. Whatever, I give up. What you can do, if you're worn out like me, is just let it collapse into the personal. Let Philadelphia be to other people whatever they want it to be. For me, it's been good to me, and I'm glad I'm still here.  —Joe

"L.E.S. Artistes" by Santigold

from Santogold, 2008

I don't know why I legitimately thought that Santigold was British until this week. I was shocked to learn that she grew up in Mount Airy and attended Germantown Friends School, which I walk past almost daily. Wild. I loved this album when it came out in 2008. I'm still floored that she's from Philly. Did everyone else know this but me?  —Gloria

"Freedom of '76" by Ween

from Chocolate and Cheese, 1994

Damn, we already did "Streets of Philadelphia" on MMM, didn't we? Hmmm. It's funny that no one I've talked to has provided me any excitement about the 250th. Sports fans are happily retreating into soccer (despite JMK's very good point last week that everyone is pretending). My dyed-in-the-wool liberal friends are disgusted by the country. My dyed-in-the-wool neo-con friends are disgusted by the country. Locals don't have a lot of faith in CP and her merry bureaucrats. Supposedly there will be hundreds and hundreds of block parties around the city; surely not a recipe for bedlam.  —Sunny

"4th of July, Philadelphia (Sandy)" by Cymbals Eat Guitars

from Pretty Years, 2016

I claimed at one point that this was the best song of the '10s, and even if I relitigate the list in three and a half years, it would still be a lock for the top five. Sometimes I forget about it, but then I listen and get choked up all over again. It's about escape, but it's about escape within, not without. So the story takes place entirely in Philadelphia, but when the protagonist finds something else, it's a different frame of mind, briefly. That all happens in Philly too, though. We're here forever. No one could possibly want to leave, right? Even when a scary uncle threatens you with a gun?  —Joe

"Frankford Ave" by Post Play

from Post Moves EP, 2022

(not available on Spotify!)

This is such a fun song. It samples the SEPTA announcement "doors are closing" from the El. It's dreamy and atmospheric, which is probably not what words you typically use to describe anything related to SEPTA. Post Play is made up of John Raphaele and Sweater, who (I think) run both Subsurface and the record store Impressions. Very Philly, very cool.  —Gloria

"Wedding Singer" by Modern Baseball

from Holy Ghost, 2016

I've always wanted to take a huge map of Philadelphia and put pins all over it and tell stories from each pin. I'll get around to it eventually, maybe not anytime soon. I need to time to let the idea marinate some more. It's been sitting in my brain for a decade now, and in that time, the thing that's evolved is that I've let go of the idea of it being comprehensive. I think now that I would choose maybe 100-200 pins, and stick to that, and tell stories, and not just make those stories the "important" ones either. Kind of like how MoBo sings about a random night when they didn't have subway fare and couldn't make it home from Tasker-Morris. Probably not the greatest night of their lives, but something small to remember, to put on a map with specific lyrics about a subway stop.  —Joe

"Silver" by Waxahatchee

from Out in the Storm, 2017

I'm not a purist when it comes to the definition of "Philadelphians," not by any means. Totally cool with people moving here and falling in love and wanting to stay. It's that kind of city. I'm also cool with people staying here for a few years and then trying somewhere else and taking a part of Philly with them as they travel. Philadelphia is for everyone. That's what "brotherly love and sisterly affection" means. The depth and breadth of this town is infinite. Take a piece, like Katie Crutchfield did, after Alabama and before Kansas. I insist. If you were ever here, you are from here.  —Joe

"Norf Side" by Jill Scott ft. Tierra Whack

from To Whom This May Concern, 2026

Pretty much lifting this right from my other column, haha. Jill Scott blends funk, soul, and poetry on To Whom This May Concern. The rhythms are infectious, and the whole thing flows so well. The standout song for me is "Norf Side." I listened to her ode to North Philly on repeat when I first heard this album. If you didn't listen to it yet, you should.  —Gloria

"Christian Street" by Marah

from Kids in Philly, 2000

No deep cuts today, all hits ("hits" relative to this blog and the music it typically traffics in, you get it). This is one of the greatest songs of all time, and it's one of the most, if not the most, Philly song of all time. It basically acts as a panorama of South Philly at the turn of the century, and it features the fucking Mummers. You ever been down to Two Street to see the Mummers' after party on New Year's Day? It's mayhem. Bunch of drunk fucking losers causing mayhem and destruction. You know what you don't ever see on Two Street on New Year's Day? Any police presence. Unlike the Pride Parade, where the police are out there roughing people up for fun. Fuck the police, fuck the mummers. Don't worry—this blurb is very Philly too. "I hate cops" is something that any Philadelphian worth a damn would say.  —Joe

"The Liberty Bell," written by John Philip Sousa

performed by the Band of the Grenadier Guards, 1967

I don't think of the Liberty Bell when I hear this. I think of watching Monty Python with my dad. My mom always went to bed early when I was a kid; she was asleep by like 9 PM. But even when I was like four or five, I remember being up later than her because my dad was in charge of bedtime and wasn't so concerned about being asleep on time. So we'd watch Monty Python's Flying Circus on tapes or a Flyers game if they were playing. He would always sit in a rocking chair, and I would be on our brown velour floral couch; maybe one of my sisters would join us. But when I was five, they were middle school and junior high, too old and too cool to hang out with a kindergartener and their dad.  —Gloria

"Bury Me in Philly" by Dave Hause

from Bury Me in Philly, 2017

It's America's birthday this week. Philly started it, 250 years ago. I think this is why trump was afraid to make a big ICE staging in Philly—because he was afraid we were going to end the American experiment just like we started it. Don't worry, ICE was still here, and still threw a bunch of innocent people in the back of vans. You just didn't hear about it, because the Eagles were on. Fuck ICE, Stop the Killing of Palestinian Children, Go Birds. Happy birthday, America. I'll be here in Philadelphia until your deathday, or mine. We can celebrate then too.  —Joe

NEXT WEEK: "Clap Your Hands! (but I feel so lonely)" — Songs involving handclaps (chosen by Joe)

Discussion — Week 386: Give Up the Ghost by Brandi Carlile

This is a band called American Nightmare. They were originally called Give Up the Ghost. They broke up in 2004, their members joining various other projects. I've heard and like Cold Cave, the solo electronic project by American Nightmare lyricist Wes Eisold. Apparently Fall Out Boy stole some of his American Nightmare lyrics and paid him an undisclosed sum in 2007. Then American Nightmare got back together in 2011 and are apparently still an ongoing thing, earning an "is" not a "was" on their Wikipedia page.

Most of my "we should do this band for Record Club" ideas these days are bands that you could connect to other Record Club artists. I had never heard of American Nightmare before writing this pre-discussion blog post, but now I'm convinced we should cover them. There's the Brandi Carlile connection, the Fall Out Boy connection, and now I'm also seeing that "Give Up the Ghost" is a Radiohead song too, which I missed when making last Sunday's Brandi Carlile introduction write-up. What else can we discover when we listen to bands we've never heard of before?

So I guess the first question I have for you is: what are your thoughts on Brandi Carlile, and how were they informed by your experiences with her prior to this week? Was she new to you, or do you listen to WXPN in Philadelphia?

I'd love to hear if the album reviews today (featuring a few non-regular RC contributors!) moved the needle for you at all in either direction.

And I'd love to hear how your week's going! Anything fun planned for the weekend?

This has been the 386th week of Record Club. Thanks for joining us. See you in the comments.

Give Up the Ghost, Zach

Why do I do it to myself, sit in these coffee shops with their tables that aren't straight and with coffee that I can make at home for pennies that I paid fourteen shekels for? I know why. It's because I can't sit at home. It's just something I can't do, that I don't want to do. "All these days grow long," Brandi Carlile says, and I really tend to agree. Right now the days are long but this is the week where they start to get shorter, already. I don't want to talk about that. Because it's depressing. And at the same time I want the days to go by. Micro versus macro. Because the sun comes up, and it's 11:30 in the morning, and there are so many hours to fill. I think that's why I was working at the coffee shop anyways, I think that's why I was there to begin with, and that's why I've been taking on a few more shifts here and there anyways. Because I want the time to pass by, and at the same time I don't. Why? "I have dreams," she sings, and it's so simple, so so so simple, I have so many dreams, and then it's 11:30 in the morning again and it's a year later, a year after I quit my job, and where did all the time go? And the women in this city are so attractive, gosh I can't even handle it. I sit here, typing away, no one knows, absolutely no one here knows I'm typing for a blog, I wonder what they would think, I wonder what they would think if they knew I was typing for a blog? And then all the different tasks come in, like signing the new contract for next year for the apartment and figuring out how I'm going to get to my doctor's appointment tomorrow and all these different tasks, how am I going to do it all, how am I ever going to "finish my own movie," as Anthony Rapp sings in RENT (a movie that I'm looking forward to seeing with Joe whenever it comes up in Film Club, I can't keep track when, I know it's soon, I think it's soon). RENT is pure cheese but it still tends to touch the heart. This album isn't cheese. How can it be, when she sings about taking drops from high places? I wonder if, sometime in a previous life, I jumped off a building, because when I'm feeling depressed it's like a film that plays in my head, the idea of climbing up to a roof and just jumping off, I won't do it or at least I think I won't but sometimes it's all that keeps my sane, the idea that it's possible. My friend told me last week that he thinks I'm a very undefined person, and I agree. I'm religious and I'm not, I'm American and I'm Israeli, I can travel wherever I want and I live alone but I also like to be in a relationship, I'm jealous of people who are so sure of themselves, like the people of Poetica Cafe in New York, who refunded Congressman Dan Goldman this week after he bought a coffee (really he was just in there because his daughter needed a bathroom and he didn't want to be a freeloader) because he is a "genocide enabler" and they don't serve genocide enablers even though they also promise to treat all customers with "unconditional dignity" according to their website; this kind of bullshit feels like a personal attack because I wonder what would happen if I walked in there and told them I voluntarily moved to Israel, would they not serve me, too? Even his opponent denounced the coffee shop's behavior. Yesterday at my coffee shop I served an Israeli Arab and what if I had assumed that she supports Hamas, what if I would have refused to serve her, too? I don't think it's any different, even though Goldman is a politician and I do think he should be held to a higher standard, but not this kind of standard, not this. I don't know, I'm just really bothered by this, it just sucks, this kind of way of thinking, and it doesn't seem to be getting any better or any easier. I don't know why I'm writing like this today. Maybe it's because I didn't write for MMM this week so I just have more things to get off my chest. Maybe I drank too much coffee, hot strong small Americano in a glass. "It's not the end of the world, it's not even over but it will be soon." What if you knew you would die in a year, what would you do differently? And I could die today, I mean, I really could, if someone I don't even know is distracted on their phone for even one second then they could just run me over while I'm on my bike, it could happen, lately I'm noticing, especially the past few months, that when I walk around the streets everyone is walking around and staring at their phone as they walk, way more than they used to, it's like everyone does it now, and everyone thinks they can pull it off without walking into your path but almost no one can, the scary thing is that sometimes I find myself doing it too. Am I just imagining this, or is it actually getting worse? 

Is anyone even going to read this? Or is a huge block of text too intimidating? I read your last one for Mandy Moore, Joe. I read every word.

Brandi Carlile is so clearly a goddess and the godmother of so many things. It's hard to explain, I just know it from listening to her music. I didn't need to see the comment she left on the I'm with Her Instagram page when they won their Grammy this year to know that. This album is simple poetry, it's nothing complicated, but it hits deep, it stings, this album, it's just simple reality, recorded by someone who is musically talented and a deep thinker to boot. I appreciate her writing so much of this album in second-person, I always want to write in second-person but it feels like a cheap trick, very few books are written in second-person but here it works, it just works so well.

In My Place 152

June 1, 2026. 40.06706, -75.08394. See the updated map here. See all the blog posts here.

Viewed through the cynical eye, the terrorist plot that ran through the erstwhile gun-and-bait shop on this otherwise sleepy Northeast Philly intersection was nothing more than a trumped-up panic perpetuated by a post-9/11 scaremongering near-suburban community that valued safety above all else, including dignity and logic. The evidence is buried in local news stories long since wiped from the internet, but I remember the "did you hear about"s from my mother, no doubt a news story that retroactively justified the white flight my family took a block outside the city limits. Let's not pat ourselves in the back for the broken-clock-twice-a-day gun industry that somehow caught one ill-willed individual trying to buy a gun, after probably selling ten guns to ten NEWT domestic abusers before lunchtime. Good riddance; buy your bait elsewhere.

The Stone Roses, Bobby M.

I got into the Stone Roses completely backwards. Before I ever heard this album, I was already a huge fan of Manchester music without realizing it: Oasis, New Order, the Smiths, etc. Then I read an article about the biggest British bands that never really broke in America, and the Stone Roses were basically the example. So in January 2017, right after Trump got inaugurated, I threw the album on during my commute to work.

The first thing that hit me was how much this album feels tied to a specific place and time, late-'80s Manchester. It sounded like a world I knew nothing about but immediately wanted to know more about. I ended up going down a rabbit hole reading books about the band and the whole Madchester scene, listening to Happy Mondays and Inspiral Carpets and their contemporaries. Looking back on it now, I think my obsession with this record and associated scene was probably a reaction to the start of Trump's first term.

I remember standing on the platform at Allegheny Station in the freezing air, staring down at Kensington Ave. beneath me while the country felt like it was openly moving toward fascism, and this album was an escape. I wanted to be literally anywhere else.

What makes the album work for me is that the rhythm section is really the star of the show (something I tend to look for). Mani and Reni lock into these grooves that almost feel more dance music than rock music, while John Squire's guitars just shimmer and swirl all over everything. Ian honestly isn't a great singer, but it weirdly doesn't matter. The vocals add to the atmosphere instead of dominating it, much like early R.E.M.

My favorite lyrics: 

"Sometimes I fantasize, when the streets are cold and lonely, and the cars they burn below me. Don't these times fill your eyes?"

"I'd like to leave the country, for a month of Sundays, and burn the town where I was born..."

Never Seen It #306: The Battle of Algiers

It's hard to start a blog. Even harder to continue it. And hardest of all to win it. But, it's only afterwards, when we have won, that the true difficulties begin. In short, Ali, there's still so many of the 500 movies I've never seen before to watch.

The Battle of Algiers

1966

Gillo Pontecorvo

Thanks to all those who survived the battle and lived to talk about it below.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Sean G.

"The army is here for you. Trust in it." No thanks.

This movie reenforces my anti-war beliefs, and angers me that some humans will always want to control other human beings. 

This was a beautiful bummer. I don't know what else I could say about The Battle of Algiers that hasn't been said. The realism and the documentary feel is incredible, and has obviously been inspiring movies since its release to tell stories in this style. 

The camera work is dazzling. Ennio Morricone's score is so great. The pacing and the editing are patient when they need to be and suspenseful and swift when it calls for that. The sequence of the women dressing down to sneak bombs out and blow up the bar and restaurants was totally compelling. 

The violence feels so real and painful. Heartbreaking shots of women, men, and children crying. The poor guy they "interrogate" (torture) at the beginning who gives up the hiding place who we see again will be haunted by these moments as long as he lives. So much senseless violence. Obviously so relevant today and forever more. Now I get why Leo's character in One Battle After Another watches. Does he have the Blu-ray or VHS? Is he just happen to be catching it on TCM? 

I also knew absolutely nothing about France's occupation of Algeria and this conflict and the war. Deserved the legacy it has. 

5/5 pukes

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Catherine

There's a haunting familiarity to this film, even at 60 years old. Watching bodies pulled from rubble as dazed loved ones look on has become so disturbingly common lately, so much of it could easily pass for footage from today. Roger Ebert mentioned in his review that the movie holds a universal frame of reference and I have to agree.

There are so many hard truths to grapple with in this story. In the face of torture and oppression, you yearn for a perfect protagonist to save everyone—but we don't have a wholly "good" hero to root for. The FLN is content to execute their own ne'er-do-wells to clean up the streets, and they can calmly scope out a café with babies and other innocents and still plant a bomb and walk away. Surely the Algerians still deserve their autonomy free from under the boot of the French government, but the film doesn't hold your hand to tell a perfectly packaged good vs. evil story. It peels back a tattered curtain and offers a glimpse at some uncomfortable realities that can be hard to swallow. What's fair in war? How far is too far in the quest for freedom?

Even the respect the French colonel has for the FLN was unexpected and fascinating juxtaposed with the atrocities carried out by his army. It all seems like a dark game to him, and he admires a worthy adversary.

The film highlighted well how war crimes, civilian casualties, bloodshed, and mass destruction are perceived differently depending on who holds power. When the Algerian rebels attack, it is barbarism. When the French military unleash their bloodshed, it's just plain old war. What can you do?

The propaganda employment was also interesting. French soldiers parade Donkeys though the streets to deliver bread to impoverished children in a show for the UN, as they blast speeches throughout the Casbah assuring the residents that they are the ones who truly care for their wellbeing, not the dastardly FLN. 

At certain points, the film almost felt like a Bond movie, with clandestine meetings, secret notes, trap doors, and over-the-top assassination plots, and I was rapt. And since this movie was released only four years after the war for Algerian independence ended, when everyone's feelings on the subject were surely still extremely raw, that makes its existence even more bold and impressive.

"It's hard to start a revolution. Even harder to continue it. And hardest of all to win it. But, it's only afterwards, when we have won, that the true difficulties begin."

This is one of those quotes that I'll probably have to mull over for the rest of my life—just leaving it here for some thought.

Anyway, I think I just saw a masterpiece. 5/5 pukes

~~~~~~~~~~

Frank

I'm currently in an international cinema class, and Film Club lined up perfectly this past month with viewing The Battle of Algiers.

I will be brief in saying that I think this lived up to the hype and there were parts that I think will be seared on my soul. 

Knowing that there were real members of the FLN cast in this is extraordinary to me. I can't get over the fact that this film has been used by both police and terrorist forces as a textbook for how to go about their respective businesses. 

As I enter the final weeks of my film school, I don't think I'm capable of one coherent thought, so here are some strays:

I think that it is fascinating how women are used in this. It struck me that the film spends almost more significant time with the three women bombers as they do with any other "character" in the film. Women are crucial parts of any revolutionary group, and yet I couldn't help but wonder out loud if these women knew the oppressive setbacks that a fanatic theocratic regime would have on their lives after the revolution. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss indeed. 

The French colonel defending himself to the journalists. *how can you call me a fascist? I literally fought with the French Resistance against Nazism* this hit me in two ways:

1) Someone in class said "Fascism is Colonialism when it happens to White People" and I cannot stop thinking of this. 

2) It makes me so angry that someone who fought Nazis couldn't see the hypocrisy. Or maybe even more mad that they can see it and don't care because in war there is just us and them. Freedom bought through blood has its own costs perhaps. 

It struck me that the colonel felt the need to win over a liberal media (albeit a French-bent liberal media, still in accord that France holding onto Algeria as a colony was a divine right). Like he wants the world to agree with him, think he is actually doing something necessary and aligned with French values etc. etc. Just compare that need for (deep ironic quotes) "full transparency" with say a government invading another country that actually has realized they can say or not say whatever they want and no one will really do anything about it. It deeply pained me that somehow our real life villains have somehow gotten more cartoonishly evil. They've figured out public opinion actually doesn't matter as much as we'd like to think. But then again, public opinion actually DID turn in France on Algeria. The government was overturned and Charles DeGalle, ultimate symbol of French Resistance, brought back in charge. So maybe there's still hope. 

The progression of visceral violence builds steadily as the tension boils over into inevitability. In the beginning of the movie, we catch the immediate after of a torture session. When people are shot, it's cartoonishly bloodless. As the movie ramps up, we steadily see more blood. more of the actual torture. more dead children and French Algerian citizens. Until finally we reach the crescendo of the actual Algerian revolution a few years later. 

Something else that someone in my class brought up that I have been digesting: Ali la Pointe was a violent criminal before he was radicalized. Revolutions seem to often be built on the backs of those for which unpleasant means are needed. I wonder if it makes it ultimately a poisoned fruit. But I also have no alternatives against oppression. 

This was such a barrage of sight and sound, I definitely think I will have to revisit it a few more times. 

4.5/5 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Joe

A classic in the subgenre of "Wow, this is exactly what's happening in America right now!" This is a subgenre that I have created in my own mind. The subgenre lacks nuance, of course. But what it lacks in nuance, it makes up for in pure spirit. I'm a dummy about the world just like anyone else, but I know that it feels wrong, what's going on around me right now, here in this country, and so it's always pretty fascinating—and perversely comforting, perhaps—to know that we Americans in the 21st century are not unique snowflakes, that this has happened before, that history is cyclical, that there have been other people in the grand story of mankind that have persevered.

Here is the story of the Algerians in the late 1950s and early 1960s that fought the French imperialists for their independence. Some of us have been conditioned, or maybe even feel it within the very depths of our souls, to see the oppressed as the "good guys" and the oppressor as the "bad guys." The Battle of Algiers goes out of its way to make it more complicated than that, and honestly, at the end of the day, it should be. It should be complicated but also not complicated at all. There are subtleties among the binary but ultimately it's a binary. The Algerians were right to want to be free and the French were wrong to do everything they could to prevent that freedom.

It's complicated because the fight for freedom seems to require violence. The one FLN character discusses the idea of terrorism, and how it's necessary at first, but then can't be sustained, and the fight for freedom requires something more than that. It's tough to unilaterally say that the Algerians were completely right if they are killing people with bombs. You can make similar arguments all over the globe in 2026. You can talk about how the U.S. is bombing Iran, and how maybe there are complications in the fact that the Iranian government seems to not treat their own people very kindly either. You can talk about how the Israeli government is slaughtering Palestinians and murdering children and their soldiers are taking gleeful pictures of the Palestinians' suffering, and how maybe there are complications in the fact that the Jewish people who populate Israel have been suffering and oppressed for millennia. There are complications, but those complications do nothing to change the score here of who is the oppressor and who is the oppressed.

It's complicated here in the U.S. right now because not everyone (and in fact, possibly not even a majority of people) supports the government's senseless slaughter of humans overseas and the bombing of children's schools. It's complicated too because a certain subset of the American populace has been somehow conditioned to take the oppressor's side. That seems like a uniquely American thing, but I don't think it actually is. I think that some people are just attracted to power. It's like how people somehow think that Skylar White was the bad guy in Breaking Bad, even though Walter clearly was—Walter has the power, and that's why a certain type of person will exalt him.

Maybe you can watch The Battle of Algiers and think of the French, who hold all the power, as the heroes of this story. Colonel Mathieu's mid-film speech was pretty convincing! The rebels were dangerous, and he was there to protect the people from their own destruction! There's an assumption on his part that the French people are behind him. At one point, he lays it out: there is a conflict because they don't want us to be here, but we want to be here, and so where does it go from here? It takes an extra step, however, for the audience to then ask this question: wait, why do the French forces want to be there so badly? To answer that question, you have to understand what it means to be an oppressor and what it means to be oppressed, which is not a capacity that some human beings have. To not know you are oppressed means that the oppressor is winning.

I was aware of this film's existence prior to the creation of the Film Club movie list in two ways. First was that I'm a big fan of the band Algiers, and it says right there on their Wikipedia page that they named the band after the movie. Their art is also embedded with the same righteous violence that is embodied in the film—Algiers makes punk rock music of the oppressed. Second was that former PoYB film correspondent Fisher made a rare sojourn into classic film to see this one, and had a lot of good things to say. I'm glad to say that he was right on the money in terms of this film speaking to the truth about fascism and that it's important for films like this to raise questions about the subject, if only to allow its audience to answer them. This is not just a good movie, it's an important one.

The way that it goes about making its importance known is itself important, I think. I'm talking about the cinema of the thing, and not just the politics therein. The Battle of Algiers is like a documentary, on purpose. The unseen FLN announcer acts as a narrator, explaining what's going on. It plays out like black-and-white newsreels. It was filmed so soon after the actual battle that there were people who took part in the real-life conflict acting in the film. All this is in service of making the film feel "real," which is integral to its purpose. You wouldn't get the message if it didn't seem real or felt exaggerated. Yes, this is real. Yes, fascism is real. Yes, you are being oppressed right now. Yes, there is something you can do about it.

It took me maybe half the movie to really appreciate what it was trying to do. Thus, the first half was slow for me. But when it sped up, it did so exponentially. The first hour was tough to get through, the next 50 minutes were exciting and I was into it, and the last ten minutes or so found me stunned. I think this probably mirrors how these things happen in real life, too. It happens gradually, and then all at once. The movie even pointed out the quick escalation, how the French quelled the uprising but then over a year later, there was a large and spontaneous uprising in the street, so strong that independence was won soon thereafter. The Battle of Algiers made me wonder if we'll ever see something like that in the U.S. Maybe we already did in Minneapolis. Maybe we never will, with half the nation licking cops' boots and a government who is more than willing to murder its own citizens if they're on the wrong side of the political divide.

I appreciated the fact that this movie has been used as a "training documentary" for organizations like the IRA and the Black Panters, re: urban terrorism in the fight for independence and freedom, and I also appreciated the fact that the director was quick to say that it wasn't that simple. Pontecorvo was correct to paint the theme of The Battle of Algiers more broadly, that it was more about the fragility of the human existence, and that there needs to burn within us a sense of justice in order for us as a species to survive. You see America crumbling because an agent of the state murders a mom in her car in cold blood and half the country defends the murderer. Something about The Battle of Algiers needs to speak to all of us in order to survive.

When I watch this film, and films like it, I find hope. I was thinking about hope as I considered the music of The Battle of Algiers. There is a musical motif that comes up again and again, and I'll admit, it's not very melodic. It sounds more like a broken car engine, loud and noisy. It's rhythmic, a loud clanking, in 4/4 time. I think it's supposed to sound like a beating heart, and I think that heart belongs to the human race. There is hope in the fact that the rhythm appears again and again in the film, that it never stops until the credits roll. The hope is that it never stops for any of us, that the heartbeat of the human race can continue, on and on, past any atrocity that might befall upon us by our oppressor.

GRADE: 4.5 pukes out of 5

~~~~~~~~~~~

GROUP AVERAGE GRADE: 4.75 pukes out of 5

Meet us in the secret comment section behind the false wall.

(NEXT TIME: We take the battle of the human spirit to the parking lot, in 2024's Rap World.)

Song of the Day: "Recital of Facts"

A column about music, and about how the music informs our lives. Today's author is Gloria. See the previous songs HERE.

"Recital of Facts"

Francis Harris

from Trivial Occupations

2018

I almost took a shower using hand soap tonight.

It wouldn't have been the first time. I just can't seem to get myself together. I've been trying to get to my co-op to refill my Dr. Bronner's bottle for over a week, but I didn't make it.

I feel like I can't get anything done lately. Partly because I put caring for others over myself, and I don't even know if it's noticed or appreciated most of the time. But I feel bad about it when I don't do it. 

Someone left my house last week and had a long trip ahead, and I still feel bad I didn't offer them a banana, or a Lara Bar, or a bottle of water for the road. I feel bad that I wasn't considerate in that moment. I didn't even think of it until they were gone.

I feel the weight of caring in every relationship. Even for small insignificant things like offering a snack. But I can't free myself from it.

And I don't know why taking care of others is so important to me. Maybe it is one of the only aspects of femininity that I feel really successful at. I feel that both my body and my mind take up too much space to fit into the traditional mold of femininity. I even feel that my hair, the voluminous blond curls that are thick from humidity and tumbling into my eyes and down my shoulders at this moment, is taking up too much space. Everything about me takes up too much space.

And I know that's a backward thought. 

I don't even believe that thought.

Women should not make themselves small to fit into the world.

But sometimes we hold onto thoughts that are not ours.  

I had so many thoughts tonight while taking my shower, with the end of a random body wash, found under my sink, mixed with water and a tiny bit of shampoo. I had so many thoughts, and not all of them belonged to me. I know they didn't belong to me because I can't seem to remember most of them now. But many related to the idea that perfection is the enemy of good.

The pursuit of perfection has often paralyzed me in a place far from good. 

The analogy of being without soap because you didn't have time to refill your reusable bottle with organic, fair-trade, vegan soap, that's made in the USA is just a little too on the nose. 

As the hot water poured over me, I thought about the spoken word poet I saw this week. He talked about black and Indigenous death and erasure. He talked about the evils of capitalism and how we are all part of this system that brings about our own destruction. And the whole time he was talking, I kept being distracted by the gold chains on his neck and the Tabis on his feet.

Maybe they were knock-off Tabis, but still, a knock-off of a thousand-dollar-plus shoe doesn't seem very anticapitalist either. He sat there telling me my morning coffee is contributing to child labor while he read his notes from a smartphone. A smartphone that I am sure has cobalt in its battery. 

And I don't say this to dismiss him. I say it because I recognized myself in him.

And I think about how hard it is to be perfect and still be part of the world. 

We try to reduce harm in whatever way we can. We reduce, we reuse, we recycle. We buy fair trade items. We research companies that align with our values. And sometimes it just feels like too much. It feels overwhelming, along with every other responsibility we have in life.

I am paralyzed with the idea of perfection to the point that it is hard to get important things done sometimes. Perfection is the enemy of good.

When I was depressed, I would tell myself that anything worth doing is worth doing poorly. It's worth it to go to work just to respond to emails. It's worth it to use a baby wipe to clean your face, when it's too much work to wash it, pat it dry, and apply your skin care. It's worth it to lie in bed even if you don't sleep. It's worth it to journal today's date and one word. It's worth it to journal today's date and no words. 

Perfection is the enemy of everything.

Perfection is the enemy of me.

And yet it's all I've ever wanted.

All I've ever wanted was to be perfect. 

All I've ever wanted was for one person to think I was perfect. 

And that's an unreasonable expectation. Because we can't be. We aren't perfect. And it's okay. I love so many real people with real flaws. 

I don't expect anyone to be perfect outside of myself. I don't even want anyone to be perfect. I'd prefer them to be honest, authentic, and present. That's it. And I don't even expect that all of the time. Just, maybe, enough of the time. 

But here I stay, trapped in a need for perfection to the point of failure. 

Failure to even buy soap as a small act of care for myself. 

I cannot care for myself the way I care about others.

I stepped out of the shower and, before I even dried off, used my iPhone to order soap from Amazon. It'll be here by the morning.

In My Place 089

March 30, 2026. 40.07792, -75.07842. See the updated map here. See all the blog posts here.

I am pretty liberal when it comes to when I'm at work or when I'm doing work. A liberal amount of time has passed since I last truly played hooky, like for real. I remember liberally skipping basically like an entire week of work when I was a young social work pup, and my supervisor was on vacation, and the chain of command was pretty liberal in how I conducted myself and my caseload, so I made the liberal decision to sleep on my couch and watch The Wire. That was a good week. I can't do that anymore, life ain't that liberal. But my supervisor is out for the week again. Two weeks, actually. Her vacation time is pretty liberal. And so I... still did work. But took a liberal amount of time to do it. And then liberally went home an hour early, liberally doing liberal work liberally at my liberal home. The liberal comforts of my liberal home. It liberally felt liberally good, as a liberal.

See, if you say the word enough, it starts sound stupid. It also sounds stupid if you're a nazi who hangs signs on your fence.

Tramps like Us: Devils & Dust

A complete run-through of Bruce Springsteen's discography, written every once in a while by Joe.

The Rising seemed to close an arc on a middle section of Springsteen's career and discography. It provided closure for those who see this artist as a band, a.k.a. "Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band," one single entity. Throughout the latter part of the '80s and most of the '90s, this was not the case. Springsteen was out there making it on his own (with a little help from Randy Jackson). The Rising, and the tour that lead up to the creation of that album, brought everyone home. Everything was put in place for Springsteen to ride off into the sunset as a legacy artist.

Devils & Dust throws a screwball at me, in that I don't see too many E Street Band members in the credits on this one. We can still consider it a course correction in a few ways, however. The first is my own course correction, and this is something that I'm going to have to remember as we dive into the 21st century output that I am not familiar with at all: I am not a Springsteen expert, I am not an authority despite the fact that I am writing a column about his music, I am learning just as you are. Just because The Rising's blog post might have positioned the artist's composition as static from here on out, doesn't mean it's necessarily that way forever. The very next album after The Rising basically plays out like a solo album again. This is news to me. Consider me corrected.

It's also a course correction of sorts for Springsteen himself, who, yes, doesn't pretend that this is an E Street Band album, but also doesn't make their absence any function of the theme of Devils & Dust. The album is not about Springsteen trying to find himself, that's all over and done with. The album is not an E Street Band album simply because the music didn't require it. It might not be an "acoustic album" like Wikipedia claims it is (the majority of the songs on here have at least three more instruments besides an acoustic guitar), but it is also verifiably sparser than something you might expect from the E Street Band. It's not The River. (In fact, the word "dust" juxtaposed with the word "river" in the discography might even position these two albums as opposites.) It's an album about feeling lost in the world, yes, but it's an album that feels confident in character, unlike The Ghost of Tom Joad. More like: "I am lost, but I know I will find my way."

The final course correction has to do with The Ghost of Tom Joad, though. Springsteen, in making this solo "acoustic" album, seems to have learned a great lesson about what made Tom Joad somewhat of a misstep. It was the music! It was too empty, too skimpy, it did absolutely nothing to excite. Musically speaking, of course, since the themes of that album remain just as important today as they were then. But ultimately, I'm approaching an album of music because the music itself excites me. Tom Joad didn't do that. Devils & Dust very much does. And I'm choosing to view this as Bruce Springsteen's acknowledgment that something like Tom Joad could be done again, but much better. Well, here it is.

Devils & Dust is full enough with interesting sounds that I honestly did not even realize it wasn't an E Street Band album until I read about it. Sure, okay, there are no saxophone solos, I get that. But this feels like the efforts of a band, and not the efforts of one dude. I wasn't picturing Bruce Springsteen playing the steel guitar or violin or the fucking sitar in the studio. Those sounds came from elsewhere, and they add so much to the best songs on this album. The only difference here is that these are studio musicians, and not, ya know, Max Weinberg and Clarence Clemons.

But that's not the point this time around, is what I'm trying to say. The E Street Band weren't fired, they were just doing some other shit while Springsteen was making his country-tinged mid-'00s solo album about the Iraq War.

Oh wait, hold up, is that even true? That this is a political album? As was the case with The Rising, it seems to be both true and not. The title track is clearly about the political fuckery around that time in our history, and the ways that it affected the physical and emotional safety of the men and women fighting a pointless war. The rest of the songs are, by Springsteen's admission, from the late-'90s, recorded years later. The great thing about art is that you can sometimes apply it to certain situations even though the songs weren't written with that in mind.

Springsteen uses this to his advantage. The Rising was not written wholly to be a 9/11 album, but you can listen to 95% of the songs on that album and reasonably say "this is about 9/11." Devils & Dust was not written to be a protest album against an immoral war, but you can reasonably say that this is his album about the Iraq War, if you want to. And I think it's okay if that's how you want to remember the album, because it really was fucked up, and it's happening again! We're sending missiles and military to Iran this time, because why? To distract people from the fact that the president raped kids? Maybe Springsteen will release an album this year and we'll get to apply the songs to our current war and current political fuckery. Maybe Springsteen will intend it to be taken that way, or maybe he won't, but that's our right to choose.

I'm choosing to view this album as all of the above. I was generally aware that George W. Bush was a fucking war criminal who got a lot of people killed because of oil back in 2005, but I was certainly not hyperaware of politics or really understood any of the major details. I was just a dumbass high school sophomore who didn't know shit about the world. So it's important to course-correct myself on that, and Devils & Dust serves as good motivation. But I'm also choosing to view this album as an important cog in the Springsteen machine, a sign that he could basically do whatever he wanted, with his band or not, it doesn't matter, that whole storyline is kaputt, we're just concentrating on the music from here on out. AND I'm choosing to view it as a success musically, since he dips his toe into country music in really surprising and refreshing ways, and includes instrumentation that I'm just not used to hearing from this dude. It's really cool! Devils & Dust seems to be everything!

Everything except... popular? For real, I didn't even know this album existed before I made the list for this blog column, and I was certainly not familiar with any of the songs or know what they were about. Why is that? My guess at this point is that Devils & Dust doesn't comfortably fit into any one archetype of this artist's career, and doesn't seem to care about arcs at all. It's a political album but only kind of. It doesn't feature much of the E Street Band but that's not noticeable. It features great songs but none of them were hits or pretended to try to be hits. It features big arrangements but still is labeled an acoustic album. It features interesting sounds but nothing that informed future work. It's everything, but in some ways, it becomes nothing.

Which is fine. I am always attracted to the underrated, and I think we can definitely consider this album underrated.

Song for the "Tramps like Us" mixtape: "All the Way Home"