Brightest Young Things

I Lost You, But I Found Country Music

I ain't got nothin' for today.  Alan already stole my thunder by posting the story of the coolest 4 year old alive, which I'd read about last night and was working on a theme for, but no worries, it probably wouldn't have gone anywhere anyway.

And it's not like I got nothin' at all, I mean I have the ultimate sad melancholy s0ng in the queue I've been waiting for all week but I can't say I'm looking forward to posting it.

If you haven't guessed it by now there's no real hope for you.

However instead of just one song, I want to put this one in there since, well, Charlie Rich is a huge stud.

Edit: a friend just turned me on to this one and it fits so here you go

I'm just going to type now, K?

K. What I want to look forward to is the snow. Snow makes children out of adults, well, some adults. Not my co-workers who are already blathering on about how it disrupts their mundane lives and how at least it's happening on the weekend because as contractors they wouldn't get paid if the government closes.  Holy crap I thought I could be miserable.

Fuckin' snow! It just makes you (me) want to grab someone and stay out in it for hours and have snowball fights and walk in the middle of the road and find a little hill to sled down and make snow angels and go inside and have some warm cocoa and then go back out and just be, well, 12 again.

So do that, ok?  Go out in it. Try to capture some childhood. And if there's someone special in your life make an effort to be with them and play and just let loose then snuggle up together warm and electric and close and rub frozen noses and just be amazing first-love kiddies again, k? Promise?

And now for the song:

It took 18 months to record this simple 3-minute track because Jones was either drunk or on coke or just generally fucked up out of his mind during that stretch.

"In the 1970s, I was drunk the majority of the time. I had drunk heavily for years and had pitched benders that might last two or three days, but in the 1970s I was drunk the majority of the time for half a decade. If you saw me sober, chances are you saw me asleep. It was a five-year binge laced with occasional sickness from sobriety...Some folks think they're in pain if they've had one too many cocktails the night before. They have no idea how it feels to have one too many pints. It's like going through a violent food poisoning with an ax in your skull."

I learned something interesting about George Jones though, while reading up on the song: He's just like me.

"One thing kind of funny about it was that the melody was so close to 'Help Me Make It Through The Night' that George kept singing the melody [to that]. He couldn't get that out of his head."

I ran into that when I was playing piano and writing my own melodies. I'd be in the middle of playing, a phrase would sound like a phrase in something by a completely different composer and off I'd go.

Hi Ho.

"On the day they finished, Jones writes, 'I looked Billy square in the eye and said 'Nobody will buy that morbid son of a bitch.' Then I marched out the studio door."

"He Stopped Loving Her Today' earned Jones a Grammy Award for Best Country Male performance in 1980. It also resulted in CMA Awards for Best Male Vocalist of the Year in 1980 and 1981, and it was the Academy of Country Music Single of the Year and Song of the Year in 1980."

"I don't want to belabor this comparison, but a four decade career had been salvaged by a three-minute song." - George Jones

And now George Jones, still drunk in 1980 and forgetting the words to a song he didn't write, but only he could sing:

Previously in Misc/Awesome:

• 12/28: Terrible Boyfriend/ Girlfriend Generator.
• 12/1: The John Waters Advent Calendar-it starts today
• 11/28: It Chooses You: All I Want for Christmas is Everything from Miranda July's Pop-Up Shop
• 11/3: Things I'd Move to Minnesota For
• 9/6: PHOTOS: Maloof $$ Money Cup
• 9/2: PHOTOS: Chantilly Model Train Show
• 9/1: Libby's List: 5 Things I Want Right Now...
• 8/22: PHOTOS: Best Friends Day
• 8/10: PHOTOS: Lawn Mover Racing, Eastern Seaboard Regionals @ Bowles Farm
• 7/26: Special List: Things the BYGays Want Now That We Can Marry In DC (and NY!)