Can Music Be Perfect? Vol. 31

The almost always reliable "Dean of Rock Critics" Bob Christgau gave the album "Car Wheels on a Gravel Road" his very rare A+ rating. I always thought it lacked some of the authenticity and immediacy of the two classics that preceded it... to me, a little bit of the "Lucinda trying too hard to sound like Lucinda" syndrome. But every damn song nails it, hard. I may have been wrong.

This live version shows that while she may not need that particular guy, she is well-served by the guys in the band.

Thanks, Anna Eshoo

My Rep did the right thing and voted to defund the NSA's bulk collection of domestic telephone records. Too bad she couldn't get her buddy Pelosi to join her, or any 7 of the 83 Dems who sided with the national security state and its ruler, our occasionally very disappointing president.

I'd love to know the poet...

... who spray-painted (quite unobtrusively) the following exquisite one-liner on the pedestrian bridge across 101 at Embarcadero:

This hair that I leave on boys' pillows splits the sun's rays for my eyes only.

Your FSA/OWI Photo of the Day

By popular request, a picture in honor of Detroit. This shot is rich in history and perhaps some irony. Ford Motor Co. was a notoriously brutal union-buster. The UAW gained recognition at GM and then Chrysler in 1937, but it was not until 1941 that they succeeded at Ford. Meanwhile, partly as a means of dividing and conquering, Ford earned a reputation as a major employer of African-American workers. Fortunately the UAW recognized the virtue in and necessity of cross-racial worker solidarity.

Detroit, Michigan. Ford workers carrying American flag and union banners in the Labor Day parade. Arthur S. Siegel, 1942.

Microcosmos

All on one fallen oak branch...

Your FSA/OWI Photo of the Day

Parris Island, South Carolina. U.S. Marine Corps glider detachment training camp. The glider plane hangars. Alfred Palmer or Pat Terry, 1942.

Belly

I'd sorta forgotten about this album. I sure like the sound.

From the sublime Quincy Jones...

... to the ridiculous Jerry Fielding. On the other hand, this theme song was quite lovely and somehow captured the gentle quality of this amusing 70s TV show. Rock Hudson and Susan Saint James were one of the great TV couples. Proof that chemistry does not require sexual attraction, I reckon.