Stone Roses – "Made of Stone" (1989)

Are you all alone?

Are you made of stone?

(The photos above were taken at the Wildcat Park chert glades in Joplin, Missouri, and Cadillac Mountain on Mount Desert Island in Maine's Acadia National Park.)

* * * * *

The Stone Roses were perhaps the greatest of all the “Madchester” bands.  

“Made of Stone” was released in 1989 on the group’s eponymous debut album, which critic Andrew Unterberger described as "an exercise in rock classicism," featuring accessible melodies like those of the Beatles and resonant guitars similar to the Byrds, along with "the cheeky (and quintessentially British) humor of the Smiths" and "the self-fulfilling arrogance of the Sex Pistols."

Stones Roses was voted best British album of all time in a 2004 poll of 100 British musicians and critics, and was consistently ranked as a top-five album in polls of British fans.

Guitarist John Squire's cover art
was inspired by Jackson Pollock

Not surprisingly, the group’s second album couldn’t top the first one.  The band broke up in 1996, but got back together in 2012.  They performed at the Isle of Wight and Coachella music festivals in 2013, and a documentary about their reunion – The Stone Roses: Made of Stone – hit theaters in 2013. 

Click here to view the trailer for that documentary.

Here’s “Made of Stone":

Click below to buy the song from Amazon:

Primal Scream – "Burning Wheel" (1997)

I'm anesthetized 

I'm demonized

Caught in the vortex

(I know exactly how that dude feels!)

"Burning Wheel" became my favorite song in the whole world about ten minutes ago.

"Burning Wheel" doesn't have anything to do with rocks, but I'm not going to let that stop me from filling up this post with pictures of rocks.

In case you're wondering, half of these pictures were taken in Acadia National Park in Maine, while the other half were taken in the Wildcat Park chert glades just outside Joplin, Missouri.  

Do I know which are which?  No, I don't.   (Any more stupid questions?)

"Burning Wheel" was released on Primal Scream's 1997 album, Vanishing Point.  The group's lead singer, Bobby Gillespie, has described the album as "an anarcho-syndicalist speed-freak road-movie record."  

That makes sense because the album was inspired by the 1971 movie of the same name, which can fairly be described as an anarcho-syndicalist speed-freak road movie.  

You can click here to read a 2 or 3 lines post that featured another song from the Vanishing Point album and discussed the Vanishing Point movie in considerable detail.

Here's "Burning Wheel":

Click below to buy the song from Amazon:

Kingston Trio -- "Everglades" (1960)

If the skeeters don't get him

Then the gators will

Every time I go to Joplin, Missouri to see my parents, I visit Wildcat Glade, which is one of the few remaining chert glades in the world.

There are only about 60 acres of chert glades left, and about 25 of those acres are along Silver Creek and Shoal Creek south of Joplin.  (Chert -- which is also known as flint -- is a very hard rock.)  

According to the dictionary, a glade is an open space surrounded by woods.  Wildcat Glade has that in common with the famous Florida Everglades -- the vast area of tropical wetlands in southern Florida -- but the two areas are otherwise completely different.

Exposed chert at Wildcat Glade

The chert glades are open areas with very thin soil and lots of exposed rock.  These glades are sometimes called "Missouri deserts" because the soil is too thin to sustain much in the way of plant growth.

Wildcat Glade tree

Prickly pear cactus -- which I'm used to see growing many miles away in south Texas -- flourishes in the the chert glades:

Wildcat Glade prickly pear

When I visited the chert glades, there were plenty of Maximilian sunflowers growing there:

Here's a closeup of one of these wild sunflowers:

I never knew about the chert glades when I was growing up in Joplin.  The chert glades seem to be largely ignored -- I never see anyone when I go for a hike there.  That's probably a good thing as far as preserving this unique habitat goes.

Pools of rainwater collect in the chert

"Everglades" was written by the prolific country songwriter Harlan Howard (1927-2002), who is best known for the Patsy Cline hit, "I Fall to Pieces," which he co-wrote with Hank Cochran.  His other hits include "Heartaches By the Number," which  was a big hit for Ray Price.

Howard, who was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1997, is responsible for this famous definition of a great country song: "Three chords and the truth."

Harlan Howard

One of the first records I remember listening to as a kid was The Best of the Kingston Trio, which was released when I was ten years old.  

I listened to that album countless times on my family's Magnavox console stereo, and I still remember the words to the many great songs on it -- "Tom Dooley," "Tijuana Jail," "Scotch and Soda," "M.T.A.," "Where Have All the Flowers Gone," "A Worried Man," and many others.

"Everglades" tells the story of a young man who kills a rival in a knife flight and then hides out in the vastness of the Everglades, where he is safe from posses and bloodhounds but at the mercy of mosquitos and alligators.  

When the fugitive is tried in absentia, the jury acquits him:

His running' and hid in' didn't make much sense

For the jury had ruled it was self-defense

But our hero is hiding so deep in the 'Glades that he never hears news of the verdict.  Trés ironique, n'est-ce pas?

Here's the Kingston Trio's recording of "Everglades":

Click below to buy the song from Amazon:

Little Big Town -- "Boondocks" (2005)

You can take it or leave it

This is me

This is who I am!

Time is passing at an unacceptably rapid pace.  For example: Little Big Town's top ten country hit, "Boondocks," was released in 2005, which is simply not possible.

"Boondocks" is a very calculated song, but it works for me despite its questionable genuineness.  When I hear it, I always think of my hometown -- Joplin, Missouri -- where I was born and spent the first 18 years of my life, and where my parents still live.

I visit Joplin two or three times a year, and those visits never fail to put me in very odd mood. 

Most of my closest childhood friends have moved away, but I still know a lot of people in Joplin.

But instead of getting together with them for a drink or dinner and waxing nostalgic about our high-school days, I tend to hang around my parents' house (fiddling around on the computer when I'm not obsessively looking through old photos and newspaper clippings from 40 or 50 years ago) -- and I take long, solitary  walks.

The last several 2 or 3 lines posts (or "columns," as one of my Joplin friends is kind enough to call them) were about Las Vegas, where I go on business every September.  The last few years, I've started dropping in on my parents for a few days on the way back from Vegas to my home in suburban Washington, DC.

This year, that trip carried more significance than usual because my parents have had a number of health problems this year and because they were going to fly back to Washington with me to see my oldest son -- and their oldest grandchild -- get married.

When I visit my parents, I always walk through the neighborhood just north of where they live, which was almost completely flattened by the tornado that hit Joplin on May 22, 2011.  

The destruction starts less than two blocks away from my parents' house.  There used to be 22 houses that stood on Alabama between 20th and 22nd streets.  After the tornado, only one house was left standing.  Today, eight new houses have been built or are in the process of being built.   The rest of the lots remain vacant.

Just across 20th street, there's a large tree I've been watching with interest.  It lost nearly all of its limbs and leaves in the tornado, and most experts predicted that it and many other such trees would not survive.

But almost two and a half years later, this tree is still hanging in there.  I would guess that it has grown enough leaves to provide sufficient energy to keep it going, but time will tell.

Since I've explored the hundreds of city blocks that were hammered by the tornado pretty thoroughly, I spent quite a bit of time this year walking the trails that radiate from the Wildcat Glades Conservation and Audubon Center, which is located on the southern edge of Joplin.  The weather was absolutely perfect during my visit, and it wonderful to be outdoors in the middle of the day instead of stuck inside my office in downtown Washington.

Wildcat Glades is at most a ten-minute drive from the house I grew up in, but it seems much farther away.  The most notable natural features found in the area are Shoal Creek, a beautiful Ozark stream with numerous rapids and falls, and the 25 acres of chert glades that border Shoal Creek -- which represent about half the remaining chert glades in the world.

Chert is a very hard rock -- also known as flint -- that was used to make arrowheads.  A glade is an opening in a forest, which usually features a lot of exposed rock.  The areas of a glade that aren't bare rock are usually covered with only a very thin layer of soil, which means that glades are very inhospitable to plant life during dry summers.  (The Wildcat chert glades are home to prickly pear cactus and lizards that are usually native to deserts.)

Shoal Creek is crossed by a primitive little one-lane, low-water bridge that some drivers can't bring themselves to cross.  There's not a lot of room for error.  (You wouldn't have to be Ted Kennedy to get into trouble on that bridge.)

If you turn right after crossing the bridge, you quickly come to Grand Falls -- the highest waterfall in Missouri that flows year round:

The chert formations at the falls are very weathered, full of little nooks and crannies.

If you go away from Grand Falls, the road goes uphill to a small parking lot that marks the beginning of  the "Bluff Trail," which takes you on top of some chert bluffs and is roughly 50 feet above Shoal Creek.  It's not that scary a trail unless heights make you nervous.  (Count me in.)

Some people say that this stretch of Shoal Creek, Grand Falls, and the chert glades and bluffs is the most beautiful natural area in Missouri.  I wouldn't disagree, although there's a lot of Missouri I haven't seen.  

Here's a view of Shoal Creek from the Bluff Trail:

Here's a big crevice in the rock that I hopped over while walking the Bluff Trail:

After half a mile or so, the Bluff Trail gradually descends to the level of Shoal Creek and follows the west bank of the creek all the way to the base of the old Redings Mill Bridge.

We'll take a closer look at that bridge and the trails on the east side of Shoal Creek in the next 2 or 3 lines. 

I liked "Boondocks" the first time I heard it in the spring of 2006, when we were visiting my daughter Sarah, who was a freshman at Ohio Wesleyan University.  (Sarah later figured out what the song was and sent me an e-mail identifying it, which was thoughtful.)

It was "Kids and Sibs" weekend at OWU, so we were accompanied by Sarah's ten-year-old brother.  (Peter was suffering deeply from the migration of his twin sisters to college the previous fall.)

Ohio Wesleyan University

I remember a couple of things from that weekend.  A very funny comedian/magician performed for the students and their families in one of the residence halls, and there was a special showing of the movie Benchwarmers at an old downtown theater.

Benchwarmers is one of the worst movies I've ever seen.  It was basically a Bad News Bears ripoff -- a bunch of misfits and lovable losers get together and beat their snobby, affluent opponents in a baseball game -- except that Benchwarmers was about adults, not 12-year-olds.  (Although those adults acted like 12-year-olds.) 

The movie starred Rob Schneider, David Spade, Jon Heder, and Jon Lovitz -- none of whom were the least bit funny.  (But none of them ever are, so why should we be surprised?)  It featured cameos by ex-Yankee great Reggie Jackson and ex-NFL'ers Sean Salisbury and Bill Romanowski.



I don't find Little Big Town's recording of "Boondocks" particularly convincing.  The two women and two men who make up the group are a little too nice and a little too clean-cut to really pull this song off.

Part of this song is sweetly nostalgic -- there's some stuff about tasting the honeysuckle that grew down by the creek, and hearing the midnight train pass through town, and learning about Jesus on Sunday mornings.  Little Big Town handles that part of the song very nicely.

But the rest of it is about having a big chip on your shoulder about where you grew up -- about getting pissed off when you hear some assh*le from Boston or San Francisco or some other big city make a condescending comment about small towns in general, or your small town in particular.  

The lines from the song that I've quoted above -- "You can take it or leave it/This is me/This is who I am!" -- need to be delivered by a good ol' redneck singer who's got an angry streak in him, or at least someone who can do a convincing imitation of a redneck with an angry streak.  (Toby Keith comes to mind -- I'd love to hear him sing this song.)

Here's "Boondocks":

Click here to buy the song from Amazon:

Steve Miller Band -- "Jet Airliner" (1977)

You know you got to go through hell

Before you get to heaven

In the last 2 or 3 lines, I whined about spending nine hours at the Baltimore/Washington International airport thanks to American Airlines deciding to cancel my 8:15 am flight to Dallas-Ft. Worth and put me on a 4:00 pm flight instead.

I really had no choice but to wait it out.  To paraphrase Steve Miller:

You know you got to go through DFW
Before you get to Joplin

I ending up arriving in Joplin, Missouri (where I grew up and where my parents still live) a full sixteen hours after leaving my house in suburban Washington -- which would have been enough time for me to drive the almost 1100 miles to Joplin.

American Eagle ERJ-140

I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised when American decided to cancel the first leg of my return trip as well.  I was scheduled to leave Joplin at 6:55 am on a Sunday.  An hour before then -- after I had dragged myself out of bed at 5:00 am, eaten some leftover homemade spaghetti red (with beans), and carried my bags to the car -- an American robot gave me a ring and told me I could have stayed in bed.  

The only other flight out of Joplin that day was at 3:50 pm.  That meant I had eight-plus hours on my hands.

Fortunately, it was a beautiful day in Joplin -- there wasn't a cloud in the sky, and the temperature reached almost 60 degrees by late morning.  I decided to head down South Main and take my daily constitutional on the trails along Shoal Creek.

I went across Low Water Bridge and drove to Grand Falls:  

Grand Falls on Shoal Creek (Joplin, MO)

On more than one occasion, a friend and I would head to the spot where I was standing when I took the above picture with some leftover firecrackers.  There were always a lot of empty beer bottles and cans on the ground here, and we liked to bend the fuse on a firecracker into a "U" shape and position it so the firecracker was suspended inside the neck of the bottle or can, with the crook of the fuse over the bottle's lip or can's rim so the firecracker wouldn't fall all the way into it.  

We would then light the fuse and run like hell.  When most of the fuse had burned, the firecracker would drop down into the bottle or can and explode.  I think the resulting explosions sent glass or metal shrapnel flying in all directions, but neither my friends or I were ever injured -- thankfully, neither were any innocent bystanders.

After leaving Grand Falls, I headed to a nearby parking spot I favored when I was in high school and was able to talk a girl into accompanying me there.  They've put up a barrier preventing you from parking on my spot any more -- there's a small paved lot across the road now, which is perfectly usable but has none of the romance of the old spot.  

I got out and hoofed it along a trail that follows a cliff on the west side of Shoal Creek.  I'm not a big fan of heights, so this was a bit nerve-wracking for me -- the trail usually puts you within a foot or two of the edge of the cliff -- but I've walked this trail enough times that it didn't scare me that much.

Here's the view of Shoal Creek looking south from the trail:

And here's the view looking north.  (You can see the trail I was walking on to the left.)

I'm not sure why I haven't thought to walk that trail on any of my recent trips to Joplin.  And there are several trails across the creek at the relatively new Wildcat Glades Conservation & Audubon Center, which I've never visited.

I've got a few other photos from this trip that shouldn't go to waste.  For example, I saw this 2002 Dale Earnhardt "Intimidator Edition" Chevy Monte Carlo SS in the parking lot at Freeman Hospital.  It comes equipped with a 3.8L V6 engine and a "3" decal with a facsimile of Earnhardt's signature.  This car also came equipped with handicapped license plates:

Ecumenism is alive and well in Joplin, I'm proud to say:

Paranoia about tornados is also alive and well in Joplin, although that's certainly understandable.  I bet your local mall doesn't have a big storm shelter/"safe room"  store like the one at the mall in Joplin:

There are many reminders of the EF5 tornado that devastated Joplin in May 2011. I've written about the hundreds (thousands?) of handpainted stars and butterflies that decorated all the street corners in the tornado-ravaged part of the city:

Here's a truck with an inspirational message that I saw parked near my parents' house:

There's a big new Walmart in Joplin, which appears to have been built using British blueprints.  (Note where the "Exit" and "Enter" signs are.)

People at the Walmart transport their six-packs and eight-packs of soft drinks in what I thought was a very curious fashion.  Is this the custom elsewhere?

On the way home from the Walmart, I was tempted to stop here and get my bikini area tidied up a little:

Last but not least, here's a picture of an intriguing structure I saw on one of my walks.  All I could figure was that someone was offering backyard hangings to pick up a few extra bucks (or just for the sheer fun of it):

"Jet Airliner" was written by Paul Pena, a blind singer/songwriter of Cape Verdean descent who grew up on Cape Cod.  (In case you've never heard of Cape Verde, it's an archipelago with about half a million residents located off the western coast of Africa that was uninhabited until Portuguese colonists settled there in the 15th century.  There are quite a few people of Cape Verdean ancestry in Massachusetts and Rhode Island.)

Pena recorded an album that included "Jet Airliner" in 1973, but he and his record label had a tiff, and the album wasn't released until 2000.  Steve Miller heard the unreleased album and recorded "Jet Airliner" in 1977.  It was a top ten single.  

Here's "Jet Airliner":

Click here to buy the song from Amazon: