thanksgiving (final) field note 3: the homecoming, lucero and mark jacobson

We landed back in San Diego last night after being neither scanned nor pat down twice in one week. The great privacy outrage and National Opt Out Day turned out to be an internet hoax that spread as fast as an OK Go video but faded quickly when people realized that the only ones impacted would be themselves and the rest agreed with my assertion that airport security may be theater but it’s one we like to see.

The not-so-often used minivan was the mode of transportation home from the airport, and we’d left it across the street from The Casbah. As we pulled out of the parking lot I noticed a nice shiny tour bus parked on the side of the club and wondered who it might belong to, as the Casbah is kind of small for a big time act. Their not much for advertising who’s inside on their non-existent marquee, so the kid Googled it on his phone and it turned out to be Lucero. Looks like the first night of a string of shows that will take them up the coast to Seattle and then they’ll fan out across the country.

My book of choice this trip has been Mark Jacobson’s Teenage Hipster in the Modern World: From the Birth of Punk to the Land of Bush: Thirty Years of Apocalyptic Journalism. I grabbed it off a pile of books my kid was returning back to the library as we walked out the door last week because I’d just finished reading his “big book’ American Gangster last month. A New York writer of my generation, I’ve often enjoyed his articles in the Village Voice, Esquire and Rolling Stone, of which the former is comprised of. His profile on drug lord Frank Lucas is here as well, and it’s that piece that begat American Gangster and the subsequent movie which probably brought Mark a helluva payday.

My favorite ramble of his is on the art of Dylanology and A. J. Weberman. I’d almost forgotten about the garbage diving terrorist who Dylan finally punched out after he took some trash and wrote unflattering things about his wife. There’s also a great piece about Legs McNeil who sort of co-founded Punk Magazine and was later listed as a senior editor at Spin.

I listened to 70 songs last night on the flight home. All on shuffle….Beatles, Sadies, Lucy Kaplansky, Gurf Morlix, Patty Griffin, Shelby Lynn, Allison Moorer Son Volt, Simon and Garfunkel, Ricki Lee Jones (her latest not that Chuck E. stuff), Belle and Sebastian, Angus and Julia Stone, Loudon Wainwright III, Moby Grape, James Hand, I See Hawks in LA, Kelly Willis, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Sandy Denny and the Strawbs, Willie, Dylan, Ben Kweller, Lek, Peter Case, Grizzly Bear, Jimmie Rodgers, Caitlin Cary, Rhonda Vincent, Susan Cowsill, Wooden Sky, Be Good Tanyas, Hem, Big Sugar, Shinyribs, Billy Bragg, Kinks, Caroline Herring, Texas Tornados, Emmylou, Levon Helm, Buddy and Julie, Rocky Voltano, the Zombies, Shins, Brinsley Schwartz, Hey Negrita, Shawn Mullins, Martha Wainwright (in French), Matthew Ryan, Leaving, TX, Kathleen Edwards, Bruce Robison, Rose Melberg, Lowell Fulson, Vic Chestnutt, Teddy Thompson and Earle…Steve. Nice flight…just a few bumps.