4 minutes to write this song

I find myself listening to the radio a lot more than I used to in recent years. Mostly, the local hip hop station (B96), and only because we enjoy listening to it. It seems that a lot of Hip hop music offers absolutely no content beyond what you've already heard before. Realistically speaking, we're listening to urban techno.

I say a lot about music, and they only thing I can derive from all this dissatisfaction is that I must not like music very much. I suppose that makes me a critic. But don't you ever listen to a song and think to yourself that maybe... just maybe you could have written that song for yourself?

Maybe you could have... especially when the best you could do for a chorus is "We only got 4 minutes to save the world".

Maybe I'm bitter. Maybe it's because I don't have the millions of dollars or the ambition to take a shitty idea farther than the beginning of the creative process.

I do the same shit with movie ideas... I think of an idea and I throw it out because maybe that idea is too stupid for anyone to take seriously... but then we get movies like the new Adam Sandler flick, You don't mess with the Zohan. But that's not what I'm really here to complain about. I should stick to the topic... that music sucks.

And that I'm not funny.

But there is one song that's really struck a ... I'm really sorry... struck a chord with me. I can't stop listening to it.

And it's folk music.

There has to be something extremely wrong with me at this point. I've probably listened to it 20 times today. But there's a charming quality to it. It's unassuming, and the "hook", as I've weaponized to criticize so many other songs with is delightfully unassuming. It's a slight rhythm change and a bit of a musical cliffhanger with an unresolved chord. Mrs. Gunz thinks I like it because it seems to be a song about just accepting life, and that's my mantra.

The song, while basic, maybe a bit over-produced, but that's bound to happen when it takes 9 years to put out a new album after a battle with cancer.

The people who are prone to read this blog won't know who I'm talking about. His name is John Prine, and his album Fair and Square may not be for everyone. Chances are, if you're reading this, you probably won't even like the song I'm referring to, which is called "Clay Pigeons", you'll probably make like the misses did and say, "it sounds nice".

Just the same, give it a listen, you may find yourself just as surprised as I did when I caught Prine's performance on PBS HD accidentally on a Saturday morning. But it's the least I can do for someone who found and produced a song by legendary songwriter (Blaze Foley, but I think you'll like Prine's version better), to make you listen to it.