On "Hooligans United" - a Rancid Tribute

It was about time for a Rancid Tribute album.

I preordered this pretty much as soon as I heard about it, in the “Please Take My Money” sort of way.

It is a double album chock full of songs that were originally performed by Rancid.

So a couple of things I learned listening through this several times:

11)      Part of what makes Rancid so distinctive is Tim and Matt’s singing voices. I’m a big Anti-Flag fan, and they get the first song on the first record. They do a straight-forward cover, but it feels a little thin – Justin and Chris can’t quite match it.

22)      Tim, who released a solo album under the title “A Poet’s Life,” really is a poet. His songs work well even when singers who enunciate sing his songs.

33)      The most interesting covers are the ones that take the songs in an entirely different direction than the one you’re used to singing along in.

Overall, it is an interesting record for the Rancid fan, but I’m not sure how heavy of a play it will earn on turntables.

On Siddhartha

I first read this years ago.

I was trying to impress a girl.

I didn’t get it. I was too young. Maybe so was she.

I read it again. I didn’t have to impress a girl.

Still the girls were impressed.

My wife had read this copy before me. The pages are dog eared.

There’s little in terms of plot. Sid just goes from one thing to the next.

But it is reflective of life, though few have his gifts.

Still the girls were impressed.

It is put aside now.

In years the time will come; I’ll pick it up

Again, or pass it along.

The girls won’t matter then.

Robert Putnam's "Our Kids": Compelling Argument Poorly Argued

There’s an epidemic out there. Poor kids these days don’t have a chance, and it’s getting worse.

Robert Putnam, with the help of an uncredited assistant (on the cover, at least), gathered storied of young adults and melded those stories of haves and have-nots with larger statistical trends to tell the story of how the educated class is ,moving away from the uneducated class. There are copious charts and graphs.

I really wanted to like this, since it covers a lot of the same ground as the recent Charles Muarry Book “Coming Apart,” and for ideological reasons I don’t want to read Muarry. The problem is that there’s no hook. The kid’s stories should be what grips you and pulls you into the text, but it doesn’t work. I think there’s too many so I can’t fully live their stories, or perhaps Putnam and company are better analytical thinkers than storytellers for generating pathos. Whatever it was, I was unengaged. It was good enough to finish, but it did not compel me to write marginalia. If you have to read this for a class, it will be readable but it might not pull you in if it is leisure time reading.