#Suffer the Children is my number one John Ward song

[slashrabbitbunny]

She John on my Ward till I Mortis ❤️🐰❤️

(Doodles underneath)

[keywestlou]

GOD IS GOOD

God is good confuses me.

The Bible replete with references to the term.

Ta’liyah Baldwin is 5 years old. She has been battling inoperable brain cancer since November 2017.

She is under the care of the St. Jude Children’s Hospital. Her treatment limited to chemotherapy. The treatment leaves her lethargic and causes her to have trouble walking.

Little children often have a specific thing to which they become attached. In Ta’liyah’s case, it is mermaids. Her mother says she constantly talks about them.

Her mother contacted the Make-A-Wish Foundation re a mermaid experience for Ta’liyah. The Foundation came through.

Last saturday, the Foundation sent Ta’liyah and her family to the Boca Beach Club in Boca Raton. Two women dressed as mermaids greeted them and played with Ta’liyah all day. A pair of custom fitted fins had been prepared for Ta’liyah. She was able to splash around the pool all day. Her Mom reported Ta’liyah had “the time of her life.”

Some will say God is good because Ta’liyah is receiving the best medical care and enjoyed the special mermaid experience. I ask if God is good, why did Ta’liyah get an inoperable brain tumor in the first place?

The question has perplexed me my entire adult life. Every time a major disaster affected someone I knew or became aware of.

Forget the answers of the Church and theologians. They are not responsive to “why” bad things happen, especially to a young and good person like Ta’liyah.

Sloan and I worked together for 2 hours yesterday. I have a mechanical dependency. I am not technologically adept. A generation thing. Sloan compensates and keeps me going.

Last night, the Chart Room. Missed Hot Dog Church and the Gardens. Got out too late. Went directly to the Chart Room.

John bartending. A good guy! An excellent bartender.

Local night initially. Chris and Don. We chatted a while before they left for dinner. Jean and Joe there, also. Love them! My saviors when Irma hit. Hopefully, I will be with them tonight at 8 when Alabama and Clemson play. Jean and Joe both Alabama grads. Fanatical.

I have been a steady customer at the Chart Room more than 15 years. Four to five evenings a week. The number of people I have met definitely in the hundreds. Probably exceeds a 1,000. Perhaps more.

I enjoy chatting and engaging with locals and visitors. I consider the Chart Room the cross roads of not only the U.S., but also the world.

We chat about everything. Including politics. The discussions always cordial. Even where we might not agree.

Last night, I met 2 individuals who can only be described as assholes. The issues not political.

Three from Detroit. Two young ladies and a man probably in his mid to late 30’s. First time Key West visitors.

He got into Irma. How bad could it have been? Saw nothing bad. No building damage. Trees all up.

His tone decidedly offensive. The know it all type.

Even after I explained that Irma was more than a year ago and the community had recovered, he still did not understand. I let the issue go and turned to an elderly gentleman seated on my other side.

He was even worse.

From Tampa. He had been listening to my previous talk with Detroit. His first words to me, before any other utterances, was to the effect that the people of Mexico Beach City were suffering because most failed to have insurance.

Michael leveled Mexico Beach City. Located in the Panhandle, took a direct hit at 155 mph. A small community. Working class people. No elaborate beachfront homes. By the time Michael left, very few homes were standing.

People in the Panhandle region have been complaining. Places like Panama City and Mexico Beach City. They feel they have been “forgotten.” They have. The federal government is failing to provide necessary assistance. Most persons eating off the back of food trucks. Their homes gone. Live in tent cities and shacks built from lumber left on the ground. Water and sewage remain major problems.

I did not interact with the man. Impossible to argue with a person who is convinced Mexico City Beach people are suffering because they failed to have insurance.

Stopped at Publix on the way home. An Atkins sale. My breakfast every morning is a small bottle of an Atkins chocolate drink. Contains 15 grams of protein and only 3 of carbohydrates. Bought 16 bottles.

The Duval Street cosmetic shops have been a problem for at least 2 years. Price gougers. Especially of elderly visitors to Key West.

The City of Key West is finally doing something about it. New regulations which will make it illegal to do some of the things the shops have been engaged in while ripping people off.

The first reading of the proposed law passed 5-1. The dissenting vote was by Commissioner Sam Kaufman.

The shops are owned by Israelis. He felt the new law might be viewed as anti-Semitic.

His vote does not make sense to me. True, anti-Semitism is on the rise world wide and in the United States. However, I have not sensed it in Key West. We have enough problems on our plate. No room for anti-Semitism nor should it even be made an issue.

We are One Happy Family.

Deal with the real issues. Traffic, bicycles, parking, affordable housing, etc.

Back to Panama City and the Panhandle.

Little things mean a lot. True statement.

As previously mentioned, Michael knocked the hell out of the Panhandle. Michael considered the third strongest hurricane to hit the United States in recorded history.

Tim West and his 13 year old daughter traveled to Panama City with food and supplies for a family friend. The friend’s home gone, mold all over, no water and sewer.

Tim and his daughter noticed there were many tree stumps. Most of the trees had snapped, leaving only the trunk portion.

They took yellow paint and painted happy faces on some of the stumps. Brought smiles to many faces. They somehow got more yellow paint and continued to paint happy faces on tree stumps all over Panama City.

Tim West and daughter good people!

Today an important one in U.S. history. On this day in 1789, George Washington was elected the first President of the United States.

Not as we do it today, however.

Washington’s election was not by the popular vote of the people. Ordinary citizens were not to be trusted. It was believed men of wealth should control Presidential elections.

The system at the time required voters to cast ballots to elect “state legislators.” The legislators then cast their vote for President.

The right to vote carried 2 requirements. Only men could vote and the men who voted had to own property.

We have come a long way re voting. Unfortunately, we still have a long way to go.

Impeachment continues to be in the air. Today of historical significance re Presidential impeachment.

On this day in 1999, the impeachment trial of Bill Clinton began. Before the U.S. Senate. The Constitution then and now required the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court to preside over the trial and the Senate to sit as jurors.

Christmas has passed. Its aura remains, however.

Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer the topic.

The 1824 ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas mentioned Dasher and Dancer and Prancer and Vixen. No Rudolph.

Rudolph the most famous reindeer of all did not arrive on the public scene till 1947. And then only as a coloring book. Soon followed by a story book. Montgomery Ward responsible. The Company wanted something Christmasy for kids.

The song not even written in 1947. No song till 2 years later.

In 1947, my boyhood western hero was Gene Autry. The original Singing Cowboy. He had become a radio legend. He recorded the new Rudolph song.

An instantaneous hit! Sales hit 2.5 million the first year. The song became the most successful Christmas recording in history after White Christmas. Remained so until the 1980’s.

Enjoy your day!

GOD IS GOOD was originally published on Key West Lou

[blackkudos]

Smokey Robinson

William "Smokey" Robinson, Jr. (born February 19, 1940) is an American singer, songwriter, record producer, and former record executive. Robinson was the founder and front man of the Motown vocal group the Miracles, for which he also served as the group's chief songwriter and producer. Robinson led the group from its 1955 origins as the Five Chimes until 1972 when he announced a retirement from the group to focus on his role as Motown's vice president.

However, Robinson returned to the music industry as a solo artist the following year, later scoring Top 10 solo hits such as "Cruisin'" (1979), "Being With You" (1981) and "Just to See Her" (1987). Following the sale of Motown Records in 1988, Robinson left the company in 1990. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987. Robinson was awarded the 2016 Library of Congress Gershwin Prize for his lifetime contributions to popular music.

Early life and early career

Smokey Robinson was born to an African-American father and a mother of African-American and distant French ancestry into a poor family in the North End area of Detroit. His uncle Claude gave him the nickname "Smokey Joe" when he was a child. He attended Northern High School, where he was above average academically and a keen athlete, though his main interest was music and he formed a doo-wop group named the Five Chimes. At one point, he and Diana Ross lived several houses from each other on Belmont; he once said he has known Ross since she was about eight.

Robinson said his interest in music started after hearing the groups Nolan Strong & the Diablos and Billy Ward and his Dominoes on the radio as a child. Robinson later listed Barrett Strong, a Detroit native, as a strong vocal influence. In 1955, he formed the first lineup of the Five Chimes with childhood friend Ronald White and classmate Pete Moore. Two years later, in 1957, they were renamed the Matadors and included Bobby Rogers. Another member, Emerson Rogers, was replaced by Bobby's cousin Claudette Rogers. The group's guitarist, Marv Tarplin, joined them sometime in 1958. The Matadors began touring Detroit venues around this time. They later changed their name to the Miracles.

Career

The Miracles and Motown

In August 1957, Robinson and the Miracles met songwriter Berry Gordy after a failed audition for Brunswick Records. At that time during the audition, Robinson had brought along with him a "Big 10" notebook with 100 songs he wrote while in high school. Gordy was impressed with Robinson's vocals and even more impressed with Robinson's ambitious songwriting. With his help, the Miracles released their first single, "Got a Job", an answer song to the Silhouettes' hit single "Get a Job" on End Records. It was the beginning of a long and successful collaboration. During this time, Robinson attended college and started classes in January 1959, studying electrical engineering. Robinson dropped out after only two months following the Miracles' release of their first record.

Gordy formed Tamla Records which was later reincorporated as Motown. The Miracles became one of the first acts signed to the label. In point of fact, they had actually been with Gordy since before the formation of Motown Records. In late 1960, the group recorded their first hit single, "Shop Around", which became Motown's first million-selling hit record. Between 1960 and 1970, Robinson would produce 26 top forty hits with the Miracles as lead singer, chief songwriter and producer, including several top ten hits such as "You've Really Got a Hold on Me", "Mickey's Monkey", "I Second That Emotion", "Baby Baby Don't Cry" and the group's only number-one hit during their Robinson years, "The Tears of a Clown". Other notable hits such as "Ooo Baby Baby", "Going to a Go-Go", "The Tracks of My Tears", "(Come Round Here) I'm The One You Need", "The Love I Saw in You Was Just a Mirage" and "More Love" peaked in the top twenty. In 1965, the Miracles were the first Motown group to change their name when they released their 1965 album Going to a Go-Go as Smokey Robinson & the Miracles.

Between 1962 and 1966, Robinson was also one of the major songwriters and producers for Motown, penning several hit singles such as "Two Lovers", "The One Who Really Loves You", "You Beat Me to the Punch" and "My Guy" for Mary Wells; "The Way You Do The Things You Do", "My Girl", "Since I Lost My Baby" and "Get Ready" for the Temptations; "When I'm Gone" and "Operator" for Brenda Holloway; "Don't Mess With Bill", "The Hunter Gets Captured by the Game" and "My Baby Must Be a Magician" for the Marvelettes; and "I'll Be Doggone" and "Ain't That Peculiar" for Marvin Gaye. After the arrival of Holland–Dozier–Holland and the team of Norman Whitfield and Barrett Strong, he was eclipsed as a top writer and producer for the label, and other Motown artists such as Gaye and Stevie Wonder began to compose more original material. Later in his career, Robinson wrote lyrics and music for the Contours such as "First I Look at the Purse", as well as the Four Tops' "Still Water" and The Supremes' "Floy Joy".

By 1969, Robinson wanted to retire from touring to focus on raising his two children with his wife Claudette and on his duties as Motown's vice president, a job he had taken on by the mid-1960s after Esther Gordy Edwards had left the position. However, the success of the group's "Tears of a Clown" made Robinson stay with the group until 1972. Robinson's last performance with the group was in July 1972 in Washington, D.C.

Solo career

After a year of retirement, Robinson announced his comeback with the release of the eponymous Smokey album, in 1973. The album included the Miracles tribute song, "Sweet Harmony" and the hit ballad "Baby Come Close". In 1974, Robinson's second album, Pure Smokey, was released but failed to produce hits. Robinson struggled to compete with his former collaborators Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder and former Temptations member Eddie Kendricks, as all three had multiple hit singles during this period. Former Beatle George Harrison featured the track "Pure Smokey" on his 1976 album Thirty Three & 1/3 as a tribute to Robinson. (Harrison's fellow Beatles John Lennon and Paul McCartney were also fans of Robinson's songwriting and the group covered "You Really Gotta Hold on Me" on their second UK album With the Beatles.)

Robinson answered his critics the following year with A Quiet Storm, released in 1975. The album launched three singles – the number-one R&B hit "Baby That's Backatcha", "The Agony & The Ecstasy" and "Quiet Storm". However, Robinson's solo career suffered from his work as Motown's vice president, and his own music took the backseat. As a result, several albums including Smokey's Family Robinson, Deep in My Soul, Love Breeze and Smokin, saw poor promotion and received bad reviews. At this point Robinson relied on other writers and producers to help him with his albums. He depended in particular on his best friend and songwriter Richard Dickson with help in his career.

Following these albums, Robinson got out of a writer's block after his close collaborator Marv Tarplin, who joined him on the road in 1973 after Robinson left the Miracles, presented him a tune he had composed on his guitar. Robinson later wrote the lyrics that became his first top ten Pop single, "Cruisin'". The song hit number one in Cash Box and peaked at number four on the Billboard Hot 100. It also became his first solo number one in New Zealand. Robinson would follow a similar approach with his next album, Warm Thoughts, which produced another top 40 hit, "Let Me Be the Clock", though it didn't repeat the success of "Cruisin'".

In 1981, Robinson topped the charts again with another sensual ballad, "Being with You", which was another number one hit in Cash Box and peaked at number two on the Billboard Hot 100. It also hit number one in the United Kingdom, becoming his most successful single to date. The Gold-plus parent album sparked a partnership with George Tobin and with Tobin, Robinson released his next several Motown albums, Yes It's You Lady, which produced the hits, "Tell Me Tomorrow", "Touch the Sky" and "Essar". In 1983, Robinson teamed up with fellow Motown label mate Rick James recording the R&B ballad, "Ebony Eyes".

In 1987, following a period of personal and professional issues, Robinson made a comeback with the album, One Heartbeat and the singles, "Just to See Her" and "One Heartbeat", which were Top 10 hits on Billboard's Pop, Soul, and Adult Contemporary charts. They were aided by hugely popular music videos. "Just to See Her" won Robinson his first Grammy Award in 1988. The album became one of his most successful ever, selling over 900,000 copies in the United States alone. In the same year Robinson released One Heartbeat, he was inducted as a solo artist to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, later igniting controversy as the committee had inducted only Robinson and not members of his group, the Miracles, which Robinson was personally offended by. In 2012, however, the committee rectified the mistake announcing that the group would be inducted on their own merit. Though Robinson was not listed as an inductee, he was due to induct his former group at the ceremony in April 2012. The same year he was inducted, the UK group ABC released a tribute song, "When Smokey Sings".

After Motown was sold off to MCA in 1988, Robinson relinquished his position as vice president. Following the release of the album, Love Smokey, in 1990, Robinson left Motown for a deal with SBK Records in 1991. However, the album, Double Good Everything failed to chart. Robinson remained virtually quiet during the nineties (though he would make a notable cameo appearance in The Temptations 1998 miniseries), making a brief comeback in 1999 when he re-signed with Motown and issued the album, Intimate, which included the song "Easy to Love". In 2003, he once again split ties with Motown, releasing the gospel album, Food for the Soul on Liquid 8 Records in 2004. In 2004 Robinson sang the main title theme song "Colorful World" to the American children's animated series ToddWorld for Discovery Kids, TLC and Mike Young Productions. Two years later, Robinson released the standards album, Timeless Love, in 2006 on Universal Records. In 2009, he issued the album, Time Flies When You're Having Fun on his own label, Robso Records. It reached number 59 on the Billboard album chart, his highest showing since One Heartbeat. He subsequently released "Now And Then" in 2010, which peaked at number 131.

Smokey & Friends was released in mid-August 2014. It was an album of duets, including ones with Elton John, Linda Ronstadt and James Taylor. It reached number 12 on the Billboard album chart.

Personal life

Smokey is currently married to Frances Robinson, née Gladney. They were married in May 2002. Robinson married his fellow Miracles member Claudette Rogers in 1959. The couple had two children, son Berry Robinson (b. 1968), named after Motown's first label founder Berry Gordy, and daughter Tamla Robinson (b. 1969), named after the original "Tamla" label set up by Gordy that would eventually become Motown. Robinson has another son, Trey (b. 1984), with another woman, during his marriage to Claudette. After Robinson admitted this, he filed for legal separation and, later, divorce, which was granted in 1986. The Robinsons had separated once before, in 1974, and Robinson conducted an extramarital affair that became the concept of the song, "The Agony & The Ecstasy", later featured on A Quiet Storm.

Robinson has not eaten red meat since 1972. He practices Transcendental Meditation. Robinson is notable for having golden green eyes, which he attributes to having been passed down from his French great-grandmother.

"Smokey" nickname

In 2012, Robinson explained:

My uncle Claude was my favorite uncle, he was also my godfather. He and I were really, really close. He used to take me to see cowboy movies all the time when I was a little boy because I loved cowboy movies. He got a cowboy name for me, which was Smokey Joe. So from the time I was three years old if people asked me what my name was I didn't tell them my name was William, I told them my name was Smokey Joe. That's what everyone called me until I was about 12 and then I dropped the Joe part. I've heard that story about him giving it to me because I'm a light skinned Black man but that's not true.

Discography

Awards and accolades

In 1987, Robinson was inducted to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. That same year, he was awarded an individual star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Smokey Robinson's single "Just to See Her"" from the One Heartbeat album was awarded the 1988 Grammy Award for Best Male R&B Vocal Performance. This was Robinson's first Grammy Award. One year later, in 1989, he was inducted to the Songwriter's Hall of Fame. In 1993, Robinson was awarded a medal at the National Medal of Arts. Two years before, he won the Heritage Award at the Soul Train Music Awards. At its 138th Commencement Convocation in May 2006, Howard University conferred on Robinson the degree of Doctor of Music, honoris causa. In December 2006 Robinson was one of five Kennedy Center honorees, along with Dolly Parton, Zubin Mehta, Steven Spielberg and Andrew Lloyd Webber.

On March 20, 2009, the Miracles were finally honored as a group with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Smokey was present with original Miracles members Bobby Rogers, Pete Moore, (Bobby's cousin) Claudette Rogers, and Gloria White, accepting for her husband, the late Ronnie White, whose daughter Pamela and granddaughter Maya were there representing him as well. Smokey's replacement, 1970s Miracles lead singer Billy Griffin, was also honored. Controversially, original Miracle Marv Tarplin was not honored, against the wishes of his fellow Miracles, and the group's fans, who felt that he should have also been there to share the honor. However, later, Tarplin did receive his star. He was also finally inducted with the rest of the original Miracles, Bobby Rogers, Pete Moore, Ronnie White, and Claudette Robinson, into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2012, 25 years after Robinson's controversial solo induction in 1987. He was also awarded Society of Singers Lifetime Achievement Award in 2011.

In 2009, Smokey Robinson received an honorary doctorate degree – along with Linda Ronstadt – and gave a commencement speech at Berklee College of Music's commencement ceremony. In 2015, he was given a BET Lifetime Achievement Award.

In 2016, Robinson received the Library of Congress' Gershwin Prize for Popular Song. On August 21, 2016 Smokey Robinson was inducted into the Rhythm & Blues Hall of Fame in his hometown of Detroit, Michigan.

Wikipedia

[jefferyryanlong]

Fresh Listen - Arthur Russell, Love Is Overtaking Me (Audika Records, 2008)

(Some pieces of recorded music operate more like organisms than records. They live, they breathe, they reproduce. Fresh Listen is a periodic review of recently and not so recently released albums that crawl among us like radioactive spiders, gifting us with superpowers from their stingers.)

Western music--specifically, musical developments in the United States for the past hundred years or so--encompasses a broad swath of melodic and harmonic expressions, none fixed and immutable, all in a constant state of evolving and developing, becoming. The architectural refinement of classical music, where every breath, every absence of breath, is obsessively plotted. The danger of jazz, pushing the potentiality of musical instruments as complements to thought and feeling, without the safety net of notation. The exhilaration and shame of country and western music, where a Saturday night of honky-tonking inevitably leads to a hungover Sunday morning of heartbreak. The blues, with its restrictive structural conventions shaping the plainest wisdom. The stupidity of rock and roll, where the talentless and aggressive expose that cleverness, and occasionally brilliance, is derived from an attitude infected with poison. Soul, where testifying with a backing band about the love of a girl or boy is equivalent to communing with God, and vice-versa. The lyrical fastidiousness of hip-hop, where the rhythms of words arranged in varying combinations pushes forth new understandings about the human condition. 

None of these classifications exists outside of the other in the corrupted pool of American musical art. Take any rock song, rap track, or country tune released from 1920 until now, and you will see the pulsing strings of inspirations carried over, of sentiments reevaluated, of ideas argued for or against, echoes, echoes, attachments of forms calling out in a voice something more than human, propelled by that elusive rhythm musicians have configured in their struggles to portray the beats of nature or oppose them.

Avant-garde music seeks to uncover the hidden possibilities of the genres of Western music. By expanding their conventions, or disregarding them altogether, avant-garde music manifests its weirdness by pushing a musical point too far, sometimes challenging the expectations of a “musical experience” by forcing the vessels of musical expression to emit noises that are not music, or creating instruments from non-musical objects (computers, for instance) and pressing them into service as musical facsimile. The avant-garde, in its effort to deconstruct not only how music should be played, (or seen, or smelled, or felt, or tasted) does not restrict itself to classical, or jazz, or rock and roll--every semblance of American music is open to vampire’s kiss of “otherization” that avant-garde sometimes gently, sometimes forcefully, lays upon the languorous body of a music, so that its children become alien, bright beings with a language joyously incomprehensible.

Arthur Russell--cellist, singer, composer, and avant-garde disrupter through and through, spent a career (until his life was tragically cut short in 1991 by the AIDS virus) quietly, almost unnoticeably, inflating and making strange the genres of music in which he toiled and had incredible fun, imbuing these musics with ideas that, previously, hadn’t seemed applicable. Though contemporaneously most prominent in his classical and electronic experimentations, Russell was equally besotted with jazz, rock, and most lucratively, dance music. A cellist who played keyboards and sang, Russell’s work comes across as joyful play, invoking his imagination to enhance the music he loved.

Not many experimental electro-cellists have the vocal powers of an Arthur Russell, or the respect for simple, sometimes cretinous, rhyming lyrics that fill out the American music corpus--which makes Love Is Overtaking Me, a compilation of little-heard recordings Russell made from the Seventies through the Eighties, so impressive. Russell doesn’t undermine the country ballad, the soul number, the snotty rock tune, or even the ready-for-radio pop song. Yet each of the pieces on the record, as essentially conventional as they are, is elevated by Russell’s advanced artistry, so subtle that the music never suffers from the self-conscious intellectualism of the avant-garde composer and recording artist. Love Is Overtaking Me is, to be direct, a delight, and I don’t see how any listener could not be moved by the infectious devotion that Russell applies to these songs.

The compilation begins with “Close My Eyes,” a quiet number, just Russell singing along with his acoustic guitar about “where the trees grow together,” a place where the singer and his friend, via their hidden rendezvous, can grow into a shared freedom unto themselves, “down through those grasses so new.” Russell's country and western aesthetic is next deconstructed in “Goodbye Old Paint,” a traditional plains song wonderfully complemented by drone tabla, Indian percussion, and a Copland-esque arrangement of harmonic changes, all of it bolstered by a busy, articulate stand-up bass.  As foreign as these elements sound against on another on this new sonic soundscape, Russell aligns the pieces so naturally, seemingly without effort.

“Maybe She” is the third of Love Is Overtaking Me’s early acoustic string. Presumably through the eyes of a tentative teenager, Russell goes through the externalized motions of talking himself out of talking to a girl. In “Oh Fernanda Why” he takes up the twelve-string and maximizes his voice as instrument, harmonizing with himself on an intimate piece that reminds me of an off-kilter Eighties ballad that could have been a minor hit during the late hours of MTV.

From these acoustic songs, the track list (the record was never programmed by Russell, but is rather a curated collection of unreleased work) transitions to Russell’s interpretations of of rock. “Time Away,” which other writers have rightfully likened to the work of Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers (Russell played with various ex-members of that band through different projects), starts with a Lou Reed-influenced over-articulation in the vocals, followed by some heavy rock percussion and insouciantly strummed punk-electric guitar. Though the sound is all Seventies rebellion, the lyrics are those of a neat freak securing a spot on his schedule so he can do his laundry and make his bed. So that he can feel sane.

“Nobody Wants a Broken Heart” and “I Couldn’t Say It to Your Face” are efforts into the methodical, introspective soul music along the lines of William Bell’s “You Don’t Miss Your Water.” The dynamism of the arrangement is slow, subtle, and moving. “Nobody Wants a Broken Heart’s” sad movement is buoyed, near the middle of the song, by a Dixieland jazz combo, a brassy horn section that calls to mind the funeral waltzes along the Ninth Ward. And “I Couldn’t Say It to Your Face” is one of the most even-handed, compassionate kiss-off songs ever recorded.

“This Time, Dad, You’re Wrong” I interpret as Russell’s musical and artistic manifesto: his lack of adherence to a prescribed path, either high or low (brow), is what makes is output so immediate and effective. “I know I broke the rules / I knew it right there on the spot” he sings, as if describing his career thus far, honoring conventions by not obeying them, playfully probing them.

The heartland sagas of John Mellencamp are evoked in “What It’s Like” a narrative song about the senselessness of youth, the inability to describe complex feelings. It forsakes anthemic urges for  quiet introspection, and the over-processed guitar licks are offset by the needling noise of an organ. From there it is Russell’s foray into art song, his voice echoing his bowed cello in “Eli,” a lament about a dog.

Set against “Eli” is, both jarringly and fittingly, the purest pop song of the compilation (”Big Moon” is a close second), the Sufjan-esque entitled “Hey! How Does Everybody Know,” a deliberate piece of craftsmanship with the weirdness absent, all tame instrumentation that glides along the ear canals, never meant to stick in anyway. The MTV video I’ve produced in my mind includes danced in day-glo colors and floppy top hats, big faces lip-syncing.

While “Habit of You” sounds like the sophisticated home recording of an indie artist, all painstakingly layered background vocals and self-played instruments, ”Janine” is Russell’s exercise in musical textures, a strummed guitar overlaid with keyboard squiggles, electric animals chirping along. “Big Moon,” another pure pop song, is defined by its Eighties-period production, that big bouncy bass song heard in many other recordings of the time. Russell’s sense of humor shines through, bright as the big moon, as he petitions that glowing sphere of rock for some kind of resolve to the teenage romantic crisis in which he’s enmeshed.

In the title track of the compilation, “Love Is Overtaking Me,” Russell creates an implicit, upbeat drone via an insistently played guitar chord. This is a song in which the strangeness of the expressed sentiment is its essence, the whole point, of the song itself. “Love Is Overtaking Me” defies structure and confounds expectations about how popular music is supposed to work. Despite the tricky, ear-bending chord changes, “Love Is Overtaking Me” doesn’t subvert its own sweetness with an abundance of art.

Which could be said of this entire collection of Russell works. Never grim or cynical, Russell takes popular music seriously enough to impose his own flexibility in his compositions and performances. One could say the songs are like no others, which is true, but they are also brilliant versions of songs reawakened in the listener’s memories, songs we never knew were there all along until we heard them for the first time.