that long train west

I am currently without TV or home internet access. It's been a long holiday weekend and I've been a bit removed for the past few days from current events. Accordingly, it was in an email received this morning I was informed of the passing of Utah Phillips. He was a giant in american folk/protest music, though apparently not giant enough to get an obit into the likes of The New York Times or any of those mainstream presses.

I suppose Utah's a guy most of us who work in words & music should know of, though it can take a good, knee-skinned climbing of that old family tree to get to his work. He's been covered by Tom Waits and Waylon Jennings, and nominated for a grammy for a spoken-word and guitar album he recorded with Ani DiFranco in 1995.

I'm pretty sure that Ani collaboration was my first introduction. Mid '90s, some carloaded road-trip with my ex and three friends to some concert in Cincinnati and one of them brought a 'utah and ani' cassette along. I have since become familiar with the man's music, but the one thing still ringing in my ears goes back to that August day. It was a rough and sticky trip -- my girlfriend's car had overheated and we were literally on the verge of pissing into the radiator on the side of I-75 to limp the remaining 20 miles or so to our destination. At some point before or after we were listening to that tape & Utah was rhapsodizing on the bankrobbers of the great depression, on how so many americans back then looked to them as heroes. After all, they stuck it to the very banks who had foreclosed on so many homes, farms, dreams ...

All of this is going through my head about an hour after walking up N. Lincoln Ave., where H-wood folks have redone its 2400 block to look something like it may have in 1934, when G-men chased a man they believed to be John Dillinger down an alley outside the Biograph Theater and shot him in the back. This hulabaloo for a new blockbuster movie with Johnny Depp and Christian Bale. I've not read the screenplay, but have skimmed the book, which comes off as at least mildly pro-G-men ...

All of this on a day when politicians spout talking points on remembering fallen soldiers. That's all well and good, but somehow I'm stuck thinking also of folks who died fighting for other things we take for granted -- an eight-hour work day, job security, a livable wage ...