Crazy rhythms

I've been walking more lately. There are several reasons: $2.49-per-gallon gasoline, the iPod, the third year of working at home all the time. There are several positive results too: the burning of lunchtime's calories, stronger calves, seeing more of the city in new and exciting ways. Sometimes you really have to get creative with reasons to leave the house when you work at home all the time, and although it really helps to have a car out here by Fort Miley, the city is best experienced on foot whenever possible. I'm trying to run at least two or three times a week, but walking around town is the next best thing.

After making my own lunch most weekdays for two years, I'm starting to enjoy sitting on the sidewalk eating and reading, or at least going out for coffee after lunch. And then I walk -- sometimes a few miles, all the way home. To that end, I take the bus, fire up the Pod, and revisit neighborhoods all over town -- some familiar ones, and others less so.

There are those who question or lament the rise of urban, public iPod culture. If it's not Andrew Sullivan's nutty "end of society" prediction, it's usually something along the lines of, "We're turning into a nation of zombies." Those are probably the same people who scowl when you brush into them on the bus while they're trying to read the newspaper, zoned out in a slightly different way. I wonder about those people.

I remember when my friend's amigo from Spain was visiting San Francisco. He stepped up onto a city bus and waved hello to all the other passengers. They looked back at him like he had three heads.

Anyway I was iPodding around town yesterday, enjoying song after song, when it occurred to me that I was hearing another band that mixed up swing rhythms and straight ones at the same time. It was the Chess house band -- probably Hubert Sumlin, Otis Spann, Willie Dixon and Fred Below -- behind Howlin' Wolf on the great, great "Back Door Man." Another fabulous mystery groove. I don't know how the heck they sound like that. Whatever Fred Below is doing behind the drum kit, he's not swinging. Heavy stuff.


Just heard: Van the Man's "Street Choir" ("Why did you leave America? Why did you let me down?"), Django and Stephane's lovely "Nuages," and Camper Van Beethoven's mindblowing "Peace and Love"