in the sphere of loving

XTC, Oranges and Lemons
Nick Lowe, Labour of Lust
Pere Ubu, Dub Housing
The Rolling Stones, Get Yer Ya-Ya's Out: The Rolling Stones in Concert

• I heard Jesus gave the "all-clear" that you can stop hating Muslims now.


• Making an impromptu New Orleans visit is one of the things I really love about not living in New Orleans. I'm not sure I'd make the most of it if I did live there. The weather was magic, the pizza at Slice is right on the money and I don't know why I've never walked through Audubon Park before. I've been there, like, to go to the zoo or, well, maybe that is the only reason I've been there.
  
  
  
  I dig the stinky, crittery thicket that is Bird Island. I love wondering if the hippos Pablo Escobar bought off the financially strapped Audubon Zoo in the 1970's once menaced these fetid waters. I love the pale flowers of the city defying the onset of autumn with bikinis and beach towels. I love how New Orleans loves itself. Sometimes I get tired of how much New Orleans loves itself, getting in there with tweezers and a magnifying glass with its self-love, but today, I was loving its loving.


• Nick Lowe, it must be said, is the best songwriter. Even when the song part isn't the best, the writing is.
  
  
  Nick Lowe, "Dose of You"
  
  Down there at the 2:30 mark, does he not say, "a heel made of high / a dress made of tight" ? Somebody make him poet laureate of wherever. But I digress.


• How the crowd doesn't go apeshit after The sublime reading of "Sympathy For the Devil" on Ya-Ya's I'll never know. Could it be that they were exhausted by the preceding 45-minute deconstruction of "Midnight Rambler", watching a perfectly good song be vivisected and coldly inspected by Victorian scientists looking to scry the future in its entrails? Could it be that Keith Richards and his guitar had been replaced at that point of show by Wile E. Coyote manning an enormous Acme Electromagnet pulling in mailboxes and washing machines and battleships and Sputnik into Madison Square Garden?
  
  
  "Compressed Hare", 1961
  
  Or is that Mick Taylor at the controls? Or was it understood in 1969 that everything was cool ('cept for that overlong confusing war, wait a second...), the Rolling Stones roamed the Earth and didn't suck, so folks were harder to please? All I know is that it bent time so that I could shave off 30 minutes from my usual drive back from New Orleans. Love that. Circling in.


• I think it was magnets. I woke up with an edge on me, and smoothed it down best I could. Maya asks to listen to Oranges and Lemons every time we're in the car - she loves XTC so much that she draws cartoons about them + plus she's becoming a sullen, unresponsive teenager so I'll take what I can get - and since I choose to spend this weird anniversary, about which none of us knows how to feel, in the sphere of loving, here is the only band in her world on the subject.
  
  
  XTC, "The Loving"
  
  All around the world,
  Every boy and every girl,
  Need the loving.
  The humble and the great,
  Even those we think we hate,
  Need the loving.
  
  Soldiers of the Queen,
  All the hard men that we've seen,
  Need the loving.
  Babies at the breast,
  Those in power and those suppressed,
  Need the loving.
  
  Let's face it you just can't hide,
  Your first taste'll send you reeling,
  Like a firework to which we're tied,
  Be prepared to go through your ceiling now.
  
  The loving's coming,
  The loving's more than just an ad man's vision.
  The loving's strumming,
  On your heart strings,
  So loud that you can't help but listen.
  
  Sailors on the seas,
  Or the clergy on their knees,
  Need the loving.
  All the rich and poor,
  Even those we fight at war,
  Need the loving.
  
  That thing that we need most of,
  That stuff we should try before we've died.
  Everyone is begging to be loved,
  With a free gift, a working heart inside.
  
  The loving's coming,
  The loving's advertised in all the papers.
  The loving's humming,
  Your favourite song,
  For once it won't annoy the neighbours.
  
  The loving, the loving.
  
  All round the world,
  Every boy and every girl,
  Need the loving.
  Cold-hearted or warm,
  Every single person born,
  Needs the loving.
  
  Way out there in space,
  Think we'll find that alien race,
  Needs the loving.
  And just to end the list,
  Everything that could exist,
  Needs the loving.
  
  The loving's coming!