From: owner-shindell-list-digest@smoe.org (shindell-list-digest) To: shindell-list-digest@smoe.org Subject: shindell-list-digest V7 #20 Reply-To: shindell-list@smoe.org Sender: owner-shindell-list-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-shindell-list-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk shindell-list-digest Saturday, January 22 2005 Volume 07 : Number 020 Today's Subjects: ----------------- [RS] Top 10 Disapointment [adam plunkett ] [RS] FIre On The Mountain ["Bill Chmelir" ] [RS] Wag Dodge and Young Men and Fire [Norman Johnson Subject: [RS] Top 10 Disapointment I am a member of the Boston folk station WUMB and recently they counted down the Top 10 CD's as voted by their "Circle of Friends". I listened and listened but "Vuelta" didn't crack the top 10! In 2000, "Somewhere Near Patterson" ended number one and I personally think "Vuelta" is a better album. Then I looked up the top 10 on their site and I got even more upset. :) Number two was Mark Erelli's "Hillbilly Pilgrim". I took this CD out of the library ands my thought was that the album was much weaker than past recordings by Erelli. Lori McKenna's "Bittertown" was number three and I felt the same way abot that album (though I know many would disagree with me). Number six was Jeffrey Foucault's "Stripping Cane" which is a decen album, but I like his other discs better. Keb Mo's "Peace Back by Popular Demand" is well meaning but the four tracks I've heard on the radio sound like new age music to me. There were some really good albums listed: Eliza Gilkyson's "Land of Milk and Honey", Mary Chapin Carpenter's "Between Here and Gone", Pierce Pettis' "Great Big World" and the winner Patty Griffin's "Impossible Dream". But "Vuleta" is better than all of them....though Griffin's album is awesome as well. Now WUMB tends not to play the more "fringe" folk tracks....for instance they play Susan Werner but not from her piano album. They play Martin Sexton but only certain numbers, they play Steve Earle but not the political tracks. Maybe the internatonal flavor turned them off. (This fall and winter I heard "Che" twice and "Mavis" once and I listen every day.) But still he should have been higher! Yahoo! Mail - now with 250MB free storage. Learn more. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 21 Jan 2005 11:57:15 -0800 From: "Bill Chmelir" Subject: [RS] FIre On The Mountain Hi All, There was a discussion strain about Young Men and Fire and Fire on The Mountain and so I thought I'd contribute my 2 cents. In Young Men And Fire, the story of the Man Gulch fire, as told in Cold Missouri Waters, is covered in the first 75 pages or so. The rest of the book is Norman MacLean telling about his personal experiences in the woods fighting fires when he was a young man. He gets overly philosophical about the subject for my taste, but hey - whatever gets him through the night. My advice - read the first 75 pages and then shelve it. Fire On The Mountain, written John MacLean (Norman MacLean's son), flows much better from cover to cover. It tells the story of the Storm King Mountain fire and the 14 fire fighters who lost their lives. The book also tells the story of the 15th firefighter, Eric Hipke. Eric is a Great Basin Smoke Jumper out of Boise Idaho along with my old friend Steve Baker. Steve is incidentally the guy who turned me on to Richard Shindell about 8 years ago. I went to visit Steve back in 98' and met his roommate Eric and hung out with them for a few days. Eric is a pretty humble guy and didn't talk about what happened to him and his friends on Storm King, but I got the second generation version of his story from Steve. Eric passed up multiple large dollar offers to sell his story choosing rather to tell his story by helping MacLean get the facts correct in his book. That was my first exposure to smokejumpers and sometime during the week Steve mentioned the book Young Men And Fire. Later that year Cry Cry Cry came through Colorado and I heard them in Boulder. Richard sang a song about the book that Steve had told me about. I bought the CD that night and listened to Cold Missouri Waters probably 55 times in a row over the next week. I also called Steve and told him that he had to go out and buy the CCC CD because there was a song about Wag Dodge. He did and called me soon after to say that he and Eric had listened to it and were both moved by it. Not long after that the whole fire base had listened to the song and apparently really liked it. So smoke jumpers dig on Shindell too. At first not realizing that Richard didn't write the song, Steve's critique of Cold Missouri Waters was that "Shindell got it all wrong. That's not what it's all about. Jumping is about camping with your friends, drinking well deserved beers and getting hot chicks". Steve says there are 3 smoke jumper songs he knows of. The first being his own song Smoke Jumpin. The second is a rap song called Smoke Jumper, which is apparently a term used it the south for white girls that date black guys exclusively. The third and best in his opinion is Cold Missouri Waters. Peace, Bill ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 21 Jan 2005 21:47:46 -0500 From: Norman Johnson Subject: [RS] Wag Dodge and Young Men and Fire Bill wrote: >> In Young Men And Fire, the story of the Man Gulch fire, as told in Cold Missouri Waters, is covered in the first 75 pages or so. The rest of the book is Norman MacLean telling about his personal experiences in the woods fighting fires when he was a young man. He gets overly philosophical about the subject for my taste, but hey - whatever gets him through the night. << Well, there's also the last part of the book where MacLean tells the story about figuring out the story-- the exegesis of the story. But Bill's right in that if all you want the story, just read the first 75 pages. >>At first not realizing that Richard didn't write the song, Steve's critique of Cold Missouri Waters was that "Shindell got it all wrong. That's not what it's all about. Jumping is about camping with your friends, drinking well deserved beers and getting hot chicks". << That may be true for most of the jumpers in Dodge's crew but I think James Keelaghan got Wag Dodge right. Dodge (at least based on MacLean's book) was in his 30s, married, quiet, and fastidious. I remember the scene where Dodge's wife said that she was amazed by how unusually unkempt Wag was after Mann Gulch. Cold Missouri Waters amazes me still -- having the story be told from Dodge on his deathbed was a stroke of genius. Norman ------------------------------ End of shindell-list-digest V7 #20 **********************************