Since we got so many great recommendations, I thought that an update on the antenatal music was in order.

A Free Fetus is a dancer, much moreso than Boy Z was in utero. Maybe #2 is going to be the musically inclined child. Almost everything that we play seems to elicit a response. Sometimes – somewhat to Dr. O’C’s chagrin – quite an exuberant one.

I’ve incorporated many of your suggestions, but recently have decided to take #2 on an in utero trip through the history of rock and roll. Starting with Bill Haley and the Comets’ “Rock Around the Clock” – arguably the first rock and roll song – and finishing with, well finishing with the child being born I guess. So far we’re up to the early 1960’s.

•    Chuck Berry – “Johnny B. Goode”
•    Elvis Presley – “Heartbreak Hotel”
•    Patsy Cline – “Sweet Dreams of You”
•    Bob Dylan – “Don’t Think Twice It’s All Right”
•    The Beatles – “Can’t Buy Me Love”
•    Smokey Robinson & The Miracles – “The Tracks of My Tears”
•    The Rolling Stones – “Paint It Black”

I’ve been mixing up the classics with songs that come to mind that seem like something I would like to hear if I were floating around in the proverbial primordial ooze. Some of the other song that have gotten A Free Fetus’ feet a’tapping include:

•    Ella Fitzgerald – “Beat Me Daddy, Eight to the Bar” (Thanks Marcy.)
•    New Order – “Bizarre Love Triangle”
•    The Beatles – “Blackbird”
•    Wilco – “Candy Floss”
•    Radiohead – “Let Down”
•    Gladys Knight and the Pips – “Midnight Train to Georgia”
•    Frank Turner – “Photosynthesis”
•    The Decemberists – “Sons & Daughters”
•    Stevie Wonder – “Superstition” (Thanks Rassles.)

On the menu this evening – The Man in Black.

It rained yesterday – Australian drought my ass. It rained on A Free Man and Boy Party Day, which meant that we were house bound for the bulk of the day. Boy Z has risen to toddlerhood proper and I just want to say that I now have sympathy for all you stay-at-home-parents. The boy is an insubordinate destructicon (he gets it from his Mother). Here’s hoping that this mythological Australian summer kicks in soon or I may go back to working five days a week.

My sanity was preserved by  the arrival of two overseas packages yesterda. First, in the morning mail, was a box of Georgia schwag from Just Jessie containing more paraphenalia to make Boy Z the best dressed Little Dawg in the Southern Hemisphere. Even better, though, was DVDs of the first four games of the year – back when we still thought we were good. Watching the Bulldogs run all over Georgia Southern kept Boy Z quiet for a good two minutes.

With the afternoon post, my sanity was at a breaking point – the terrorist was on the verge of winning.  Then my hardworking postman rang the bell again, this time with a box full of Obama paraphernalia kindly shipped my way by Alice of 10,000 Monkeys and a Camera – her campaign leftovers. It was a veritable treasure trove of all things Obama, including some t-shirts, stickers, buttons, posters (one of which is my favorite campaign image) and even Democratic mints. There was a notable shortage of Obama gear in Oz, so Alice’s package was a great treat for a fervent supporter of the president-elect. Plus, the stickers and pins distracted Boy Z for a fair few minutes. Although, I suspect that I’ll be finding Obama-Biden stickers stuck about the place for a few days.

My most heartfelt thanks to both Jessie and Alice!

———————

In lieu of an accompanying track, I’d like to point you to the Aquarium Drunkard who has a whole album of a show played by Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash in 1969. Two of my favorite artists of all time – magical. Check it out here.

Now, I may be overthinking this, as it is my tendence to do, but I think I see a darkness in these shots. It may be the literal darkness – dark clothes, high contrast. But my fear is that there’s something more. It’s a fear I’ve had since I found out Dr. O’C was pregnant. The curse of being a geneticist is that you can’t help but think about everything in terms of heritability. There are a number of traits that I would rather not pass on to my son. Dark obsessions, addictions and compulsions that I have fought my way through but only after years of struggle. Since, Dr. O’C fell pregnant I’ve hoped that her genes were just a little bit more potent than mine. That rather than my fierce introversion he gets his mother’s easy sociabibility. Rather than my introspective depression he gets his mother’s level headedness. Rather than my tendency to self-absorption he gets his mother’s generosity of spirit.

Or maybe, at the very least, he could get the alleles that give the men in her family a full head of hair into their old age. Maybe sometimes a photo is just a photo.

I couldn’t decide which version of this Will Oldham song I preferred, the Bonnie “Prince” Billy original or Johnny Cash’s cover. So, I’m sharing them both. They’re both spectacular.

Bonnie “Prince” Billy’s “I See A Darkness” and Johnny Cash’s “American III: Solitary Man” are available from .

“I hear the train a comin’
It’s rollin’ ’round the bend,
And I ain’t seen the sunshine,
Since, I don’t know when,
I’m stuck in Folsom Prison,
And time keeps draggin’ on…”

The other day we were playing the baby Johnny Cash – the Sun Records version of “I Walk the Line”, in his/her continuing pre-natal musical education, and he or she went crazy, started kicking like Michael Flatley. We’ve interpreted this response as the baby enjoying the music – we’re glass half full kind of people. Now I found this kind of odd, I mean what’s in Johnny Cash for an unborn baby, where are the bits for him/her to relate to? Sometimes I think about things too much, but it got my memory working.

Some of the first music I remember hearing when I was a kid was Johnny Cash. When we first moved to Florida, my dad had a big green Mercury Marquis with an 8-track cassette player and was a big fan of Cash’s “Folsom/San Quentin” live album. I can remember driving in that car with the windows down (no A/C) in the Florida summer just melting into the vinyl seats, with my Dad singing the chorus:

“When I was just a baby, my mama told me, ‘Son,
Always be a good boy; don’t ever play with guns.’ But I shot a man in Reno, just to watch him die.
When I hear that whistle blowin’ I hang my head and cry… ”

That’s the only verse he ever sung. I’m convinced to this day that my Dad knows only one verse to about a hundred songs.

Johnny Cash was the original rebel. He played country and gospel when Sun wanted rock n’ roll. He did live albums in prison when his record company thought that was career suicide. He made mistakes but he got his life and career together when he needed to. There’s something pure and simple about Cash’s music. There’s no bluster and attitude. He was never a great guitarist, but the sound that comes through on his early recordings is something that had never been heard before. Listen to those Sun recordings of Johnny Cash and the Tennessee Two – just Cash, Luther Perkins and Marshall Grant. The music just plunges forward, it’s like a steam train chugging ahead, not necessarily beautiful, but damn compelling.

Cash fell out of favor with the public in the 80’s. So much so that he played a concert at the community college gymnasium in the small Florida town where I grew up. My Dad and I went to see it. Unfortunately I don’t remember much of the concert, but I do remember getting ill midway through and having to leave early. Wasn’t the last time I would get sick at a concert, but the only time that it wasn’t self induced.

Cash’s resurgence came in collaboration with the producer Rick Rubin, known mostly for producing rap albums. When “American” came out in 1994, I was living in Seattle and trying to live a lifestyle with little room in it for anything from my past. But I couldn’t deny the power of this record, just Cash and his guitar. His voice sounded different, weaker but in a way richer. And songs like the cover of Leonard Cohen’s “Bird on a Wire” brought a ton of emotion that I could have done without in a kind of fragile emotional state.

Cash and Rubin released four of these records and one posthumously. I think the best is “American IV: The Man Comes Around”. I saw the video for “Hurt” before hearing the album and was awestruck. It’s an amazing testament to Cash and the footage of him, in very advanced age recovering from his own illness and the death of his wife is shocking. The album itself is amazing and unlike the other American series, the Cash originals on this album are the best tracks. Particularly the title track and “Give My Love to Rose”. The latter was originally recorded in 1959, but it’s the version on this album, when Cash sings:

“I found him by the railroad track this morning
I could see that he was nearly dead
I knelt down beside him and I listened
Just to hear the words the dying fellow said…”

You can tell you’re listening to a man that has a grip on his own mortality.

So, pardon, the riff. This was meant to be about why our baby might like Johnny Cash. And I don’t know, but I have a couple of ideas. Maybe it’s because you can’t not like Johnny Cash. I know people who hate country music, but still own a Cash album or two. He’s like Elvis or the Beatles, essential to modern music as we know it. And the honesty and simplicity of his music is impossible to dislike.

Or maybe its for the reason that I liked it when I was a kid. Maybe Baby DVD likes Johnny Cash because his or her Dad does. I like that answer, but then, I am a half glass full kind of guy.

MP3: Johnny Cash – “Folsom Prison Blues” (Live)
MP3: Johnny Cash – “Give My Love to Rose”

“I hear the train a comin’
It’s rollin’ ’round the bend,
And I ain’t seen the sunshine,
Since, I don’t know when,
I’m stuck in Folsom Prison,
And time keeps draggin’ on…”

The other day we were playing the baby Johnny Cash – the Sun Records version of “I Walk the Line”, in his/her continuing pre-natal musical education, and he or she went crazy, started kicking like Michael Flatley. We’ve interpreted this response as the baby enjoying the music, we’re glass half full kind of people. Now I found this kind of odd, I mean what’s in Johnny Cash for an unborn baby, where are the bits for him/her to relate to? Sometimes I think about things too much, but it got my memory working.

Some of the first music I remember hearing when I was a kid was Johnny Cash. When we first moved to Florida, my dad had a big green Mercury Marquis with an 8-track casette player and was a big fan of Cash’s “Folsom/San Quentin” live album. I can remember driving in that car with the windows down (no A/C) in the Florida summer just melting into the vinyl seats, with my Dad singing the chorus:

“When I was just a baby, my mama told me, ‘Son,
Always be a good boy; don’t ever play with guns.’
But I shot a man in Reno, just to watch him die.
When I hear that whistle blowin’ I hang my head and cry… ”

That’s the only verse he ever sung. I’m convinced to this day that my Dad knows only one verse to about a hundred songs.

Johnny Cash was the original rebel. He played country and gospel when Sun wanted rock n’ roll. He did live albums in prison when his record company thought that was career suicide. He made mistakes but he got his life and career together when he needed to. There’s something pure and simple about Cash’s music. There’s no bluster and attitude. He was never a great guitarist, but the sound that comes through on his early recordings is something that had never been heard before. Listen to those Sun recordings when it’s a three piece and the music drives forward, it’s like a steam train chugging ahead, not necessarily beautiful, but damn compelling.

Cash fell out of favor with the public in the 80’s. So much so that he played a concert at the Community College gym in our small north Florida town. My Dad and I went to see it. Unfortunately I don’t remember much of the concert, but I do remember getting ill midway through and having to leave early. Wasn’t the last time I would get sick at a concert, but the only time that it wasn’t self induced.

Cash’s resurgence came in collaboration with the producer Rick Rubin, known mostly for producing rap albums. When “American” came out in 1994, I was living in Seattle and trying to live a lifestyle with little room in it for anything from my past. But I couldn’t deny the power of this record, just Cash and his guitar. His voice sounded different, weaker but in a way richer. And songs like the cover of Leonard Cohen’s “Bird on a Wire” brought a ton of emotion that I could have done without in a kind of fragile emotional state.

Cash and Rubin released four of these records and one posthumously. I think the best is “American IV: The Man Comes Around”. I saw the video for “Hurt” before hearing the album and was awestruck. It’s an amazing testament to Cash and the footage of him, in very advanced age recovering from his own illness and the death of his wife is shocking. The album itself is amazing and unlike the other American series, the Cash originals on this album are the best tracks. Particularly the title track and “Give My Love to Rose”. The latter was originally recorded in 1959, but it’s the version on this album, when Cash sings:

“I found him by the railroad track this morning
I could see that he was nearly dead
I knelt down beside him and I listened
Just to hear the words the dying fellow said…”

You can tell you’re listening to a man that has a grip on his own mortality.

So, pardon, the riff. This was meant to be about why our baby might like Johnny Cash. And I don’t know, but I have a couple of ideas. Maybe it’s because you can’t not like Johnny Cash. I know people who hate country music, but still own a Cash album or two. He’s like Elvis or the Beatles, essential to modern music as we know it. And the honesty and simplicity of his music is impossible to dislike.

Or maybe its for the reason that I liked it when I was a kid. Maybe Baby D likes Johnny Cash because her Dad does. I like that answer, but then, I am a half glass full kind of guy.