Something for the Compsons . . . and the Snopeses

It's a good thing when you can kick off a show -- a record-spinnin', rock-'n'-rollin' radio show, by God -- with a rock song originally sung by a country legend when he was a blue-eyed soul singer and now reinterpreted by a New Wave legend growing comfy in his own skin as a "mature" artist.

Now, was that a sentence or what?

Next step, William Faulkner redux. . . .

We start the program, the Revolution 21 podcast, with Nick Lowe covering Joe Stampley and Merle Kilgore's "Not Too Long Ago," which spent some time "bubbling under" the Billboard Top 40 in 1965, a single that put Stampley's group, The Uniques, in the spotlight for the first time -- a spotlight both wondrous and cruel with its unrelenting beam, unwavering and unforgiving just as it was unforgettable, a blessing and a damnable damned curse because fame can mess up a good man. It has messed with many a good man. Men make the music of our lives, it is true, but women do, too, women both strong and sensual and with the artistic genius that only the best men may possess, but not with the grace and tenderness of the fairer sex, and we pay tribute to them all today.

Michelle Shocked. Aretha Franklin. Patti Smith. All these women have achieved greatness in this man's world, rapacious, cruel men who chew up and spit out all that stands between them and their sordid appetites, like the appetite I possess for Early Times, a wondrous elixir of the gods I guzzle just for guzzling's sake. Hic! And all these women are featured on The Big Show this week . . . geniuses all.

We also will feature other geniuses on the program this week, many of whom you have heard about and others you have not but are brilliant and talented and a mere step below the pantheon of the heavens nevertheless. It is right and good that we shall honor them this week.

Lo, these gut-busting, uncivil and unkind times are times in which we need art, need music, need Revolution 21 and the brightness it brings to a mean and dingy, a mean and dank world. Listen now. Listen as if your life depended on the act of will that is listening, because it might. It might.

Can you tell that I need a vacation? For men will call you perceptive if you can, for that it the God's -- the Christian and Jewish god of Abraham, Isaac and Joseph -- honest truth that I do. I do. I do, God help me, I do.

Pass the Early Times.