(with apologies to all and sundry...)

Roger joined the army, he's jumped around the world
Stephen went to night school, he's buying up the world.

Artie became an architect, you should see the stuff he builds,
Derek's an engineer, he's building rocketships to Mars.

Me, I'm a scribbler and occasional mathematician,
it's a living, shh don't tell anyone.

None of us took the deal, all of us left home.

Well, except for Gregory, but he's a politician,
so what the hell do I know...

That moment..

The one when you find out a friend from the long ago didn't get dragged off into the undertow?

It's kind of cool.

There's a cycle in gossip mags: every few years, someone will brave the wild north woods to chase down Stephen King in his natural environment. You know the ones. "America's Master of Horror", that kind of thing. Bring the camera, throw a few pictures of the writer, preferably on an overcast day with a black iron-trimmed Gothic house in the background somewhere.

I'm a sucker for these articles. Stuck in the doctor's office with a stack of old magazines spread on the table, inevitably the cover picture they choose draws me in.

I don't think I'm the only one. Stephen wrote this ritual into one of his books, "The Dark Half", and not as a joke, either. That scene in that book might start out feeling like a joke; Thad and his wife, the characters in the middle of it, even treat it that way. By the end, though, it's a different story entirely.

That sort of article is what sticks in my mind when I read this article on Eminem by Rob Harvilla at the Ringer. The article starts with that kind of title that I can't quite pass by, and then gets rolling with the theme throughout. It's, dare I say it, gothic.

Which is why, when Rob discusses the song Just the Two of Us/97 Bonnie and Clyde (lyrics warning if you've never heard Eminem, and let's face it for quite a few of the rest of the links to follow in this article), my mind turns to murder songs. And isn't that an old tradition in the American tradition?

Start with the gender-flipped point of view. Janie's Got a Gun by Aerosmith, and before that, the Bobby Russell song The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia (that's the Reba McEntire version, but Vickie Lawrence had the first version to hit the charts in 1973). These two in particular build the story around the killer's motivations, but the end place is the same.

In the brutalist vein Eminem is always associated with, there's Used To Love Her by Guns N' Roses.

Go back further than the American tradition, and there's that perennial, Whiskey in the Jar, a staple of coffee houses the world over. Thin Lizzy and Metallica doing it up loud and proud makes me giggle, especially now whenever I hear an acoustic version and see people scratching their heads over it.

I don't know that it's the oldest song in this line, but there's also "Delia's Gone" (note: historical inspiration here going back to at least Blind Willie McTell, the wiki on Delia Green gives a good overview). The most well-known recent version is Johnny Cash's, always worth a listen, but a fun version I'll link to instead is by Wyclef Jean.

heh: The Long Black Veil, recorded by Lefty Frizzell and written by Danny Dill and Marijohn Wilkin seems like it ought to be older, doesn't it? 1959 though, so it's in the same sort of thing, though the death is (deliberately?) mistaken identity in this case.

I remember an old quote that sort of sums all this up. Johnny Cash again, he said there's really only three subjects important enough to write a song about: God, love, and murder. And yeah, Cash did end up putting together an album collection titled "Love, God, and Murder"...

It's that most optimistic of times. Pitchers and Catchers report. All things are new again, anything is possible.

Oh, there are teams where everyone knows better. Which doesn't matter at all now, because there are new kids coming in, and who knows, you might get a chance to say "I saw him" before anyone else did.

Or maybe a little magic will appear; the Miracle Mets kind of thing, a happy fluctuation that none of the stat heads could predict, the big money couldn't bet on or wrap up in contracts, and the talking heads will bandwagon jump into in September. It's happened, on occasion.

The great gift of the game, this moment. That knowledge that every year turns, that optimism and hope renew. All things come around.

Maybe this is the year.

Live albums are a crapshoot, aren't they? You can just imagine the conversation, "Hey, you can't capture how good you are in the studio, let's make a live album and get the real you recorded, the one the producers and engineers..."

Does it work, though? Used to be, it was a sign the band was about to break up. Or change labels, management, something, because the live album seemed like the last ditch effort, throw something out there and fill the channels, fulfill the contract, whatever.

There were, of course, exceptions. Frampton Comes Alive, Live at Budokhan, Live Bullet, Eagles Live. Hell, the entire Unplugged series relies on the fact that a good live recording can be, should be, magic. Still, at least for pop and rock acts, the live album is, I think, more looking for gems.

One thing seems for sure. For rock and pop acts, finding someone who can do live albums across decades is a true rarity.

Jazz, and blues, well now. That seems like a different story altogether. Duke Ellington Live at Newport, Count Basie in London or at Newport, Ella Fitzgerald (I love Ella's small band live recordings, she's playing in those settings in a way that is unique for her; like her recordings with Louis Armstrong these trio and small group live sessions seem more intimate than the big band and studio work), Sinatra's live recordings have their own literature. Coltrane, Dizzie, Parker, Miles, Brubeck and Mulligan and Chet. Seek out ye wandering soul, there are balms for thy wounds here.

And then there's B.B. King. The king of the blues. His live recordings, his own released albums span some forty years of work. From the master at work to the gentleman player.

Cook County Jail and the Bobby Bland pairings were soundtracks to my youth. My mother's albums, but I played them just as much or more than she did. I may not have been there physically, but I could be there in those magic moments whenever I needed to be.

San Quantin, the Apollo, and then Ole Miss... those are the albums (cd's ok) where I consciously chose B.B. King as being my music, not just my parents'. It happened when San Quentin came out; that one I bought as soon as I was aware of it, just to see what the king sounded like these days, when I was a broke teenager never to be able to afford to catch him live but I could scrape together the ten bucks to get the cd and dream.

I bought Ole Miss and Apollo just as soon after that as I could. Apollo was like San Quentin and the others; Ole Miss was something else altogether. Even by double album standards Ole Miss was a monster of an album, in terms of length and number of recordings. In terms of the time in those concerts.

For my generation, seeing Lenny Kravitz was... like going to a revival meeting. Three hours of worship at the altar of all that is performance in its purest, sexiest, most intimate and rocking form. Too young for Prince (there's another story for another time, I was too broke to get tickets when he came through and played Hofheinz Pavillion, a friend was supposed to get tickets but then backed out when another in our social circle got involved. I stood outside the Pavillion for hours waiting for someone who never showed, watching everyone going into the concert and feeling like shit.), I saw Metallica and Guns N' Roses at the Astrodome, Soundgarden and Pearl Jam in that magic moment right before Ten came out (Fitzgerald's if you're familiar), No Doubt in front of close to half a million lunatics at Texas Motor Speedway and Gwen had every last soul in the palm of her hand... Lenny for three hours anytime anywhere was something else entirely.

B.B. King at Ole Miss gave me the first taste that he, and oh that band, had that same magic touch. That when the drums and horns fired up and the hype man stepped up and gave the crowd what they knew, what they'd paid their money to see and hear... that they were in the hands of the master, the king.

San Quentin is the album I return to, when I just want to hear the power and the music. And remember what it felt like, I guess, to discover that someone I'd known since I knew what music was had something far more yet to give to me.

Reminder to self: trust in the work and the art. Have confidence in it, because no one else will.

Necessary sometimes to put it that bald way; I had a good day storywise, got a story bit down I needed to write. It felt good to do it. As always, I did my best with where I am, and that's the only part of this here writing thing that matters. I do what I can to do justice to the story, the characters, and after that it's up the readers, and not anyone else. As it should be.

And yeah it feels good to stretch and dive into new territories.