Back on the Lazy Saturday Again.

(Editor’s note:  I’m out of town today, so I wrote this post like a week in advance.  The term in the television is “evergreen,” in that this piece is supposed to work regardless of the time that it posts, kind of like every Ken Burns documentary.  (Except way less arty and thoughtfully crafted.)  If something really crazy happened in the world yesterday, like, say, U2 broke up, please excuse the fact that this post completely ignores it.)

That’s a hole up there.  I dug it.  It is roughly nine inches in diameter and two and a half feet deep.  I dug that hole and three others exactly like it today.  Digging holes sucks.  Why’d I have to dig four holes today?  My goddamn fence blew over in a windstorm.  My backyard has looked like an outdoor scene from The Beverly Hillbillies for like four months.  Tomorrow, I’ll put posts in those holes, fill them with concrete (I have no idea how concrete works) and hope for the best.  Sometime next week, I’ll attach fence to the posts that are in the holes I dug.  All of this sucks.  I never took a course on fence building.  I am highly likely to screw it up in the extreme.

Why do you care about my fence?  Because we’d like to be more than music critics here at Citizen Dick.  Ideally, we’d be a kind of life coach.  We haven’t gotten the demographic data back from the folks in our Research Department, but we’re guessing that at least some of our readers are, say, in college or pounding away at their first real job.  Renters, in other words.  People living in apartments.  The message today, kids: KEEP DOING THAT.  Owning a house is cool, because you can have barbecues and play your music loud or whatever, but (this is the important part) you have to take care of it.  Home owning sucks.  Buying a house is for suckers.  You’ve got to do stuff, like dig holes.  If I had a time machine, I’d tell 2004 Brian to rent a sweet apartment and be done with it.  Sure, you’re just paying somebody else’s mortgage for them, but that’s fine.  You don’t have to do stuff.  And, generally, doing stuff that involves your house sucks.

(Editor’s note:  Brian is not a certified financial or real estate consultant.  Some people, his grandfather for instance, would say that owning a home is kind of like a savings account.  Other people, Mrs. Citizen for instance, would say that “grown-ups” do things like own houses.  You should look into buying a house or whatever if it’s “your dream.”)

We’ve got tunes today from two acts that are clearly renters.  Nobody plays the evil hand shaker like The Black Angels and mows a lawn with any regularity.  Those dudes have a bad ass apartment with a ton of black lights and stuff.  You know it.  Les Claypool doesn’t own a house because he is a crazy person.  Syd Barrett lived in his mother’s basement.  Don’t you want to be like those folks?  Renting is cool.  End of story.  (Oh.  And.  The drunk shouting “woo-hoo” at the beginning of “Science Killer” is definitely a renter.)

“Science Killer” – The Black Angels

“Shine on You Crazy Diamond” – Les Claypool