You've probably sorted out by this point that I am prone to bouts of nostalgia.  I pine for my youth and the music I associate with it.  I can occasionally be downright maudlin.  (This might not be the most desirable characteristic in an "internet music blogger," given my peers' general tendency to embrace the new and shun the old.  What's the best thing on an "internet music blog?"  The next thing.  There are (obviously) exceptions to that broad rule (see the AD's recent series on Atlanta for a better reclaiming of youth and youthly things than I'll probably manage today), but the internet (and maybe the culture at large) seems to be about looking forward, not backwards.  That's why there are best of the year lists, right?  So we can cap an annum and dive into the next, walling off a convenient slice of time as "the past?"  That's a long aside.  Sorry.) 

When it gets cold in Ohio, my thoughts turn, without fail, to ekoostik hookah and The Shantee.  When it got cold, we were piling into the car to see one of those bands at Howard's or The Lime Spider or some more anonymous hall of loose morals.  I've written that blog post before and will spare you a rehashing.  I'd guess that we all have a band that we link to good friends and steamy venues, pieces of our musical history that serve to warm the cockles of our aging hearts.

But, in my annual stroll through the back catalogs of my favorite regional acts, I got hung up on one track.  I've had it running on repeat since it popped up in my car last week.  The song, the Sharp in the Flats version of "Moonshiner," sticks in my craw for a number of reasons.  Principally, it was one of the songs that I was always rooting for ekoostik hookah to play when I saw them in the latter part of the last century.  I went into those shows hoping for "Schwa," "Loner," "Keepin' Time," and "Moonshiner."  Bassist Cliff Starbuck took the vocals on "Moonshiner" (they always gave Cliff a song, but it wasn't always the one that I wanted) and that dude poured all of his frenetic, madcap energy into the five minutes he had to step out from the shadows and sing.  He always had a huge grin when he launched in, his manic legs marching to a whacked out cadence that the rest of us didn't quite catch.  The song made me shake my ass and I loved watching Cliff dive into it.  I'm certain I'm not alone there. 

At the time, I did not identify the song as a cover.  I assumed that it was an old folk song of some sort, but I was not familiar with the epochal Bob Dylan version.  (Me and Bob don't really get along.  We've come to an uneasy detente as I creep into middle age, but we were not on speaking terms when I was in college.)  More importantly (at least for this post) I was not aware of the Uncle Tupelo version.  (Who here among us can legitimately say that they cared about Jeff Tweedy before 1999 or so?  I love the back catalog now, but I certainly wasn't clued in until sometime between Being There and Summerteeth.  If everyone who claims to have been on Uncle Tupelo in 1993 actually was, Anodyne would have sold more copies than Thriller (much like 200,000 people claim to have been in the Stadium for Len Barker's perfect game, when we know the Tribe averaged 421 fans per game in the eighties.))

All this to say that I think the Bob Dylan version is fucking depressing (and by extension, I think the Uncle Tupelo version, the Elliot Smith version and every other recorded instance of this song are fucking depressing).  This is a joyful song about booze and rebellion.  It is a dance song.  It is emphatically not a dirge.  It is not a thoughtful rumination on a life wasted.  I may well be the only person other than Cliff Starbuck to hold this opinion.  Everyone else who would weigh in on this discussion thinks that the Dylan version is the one that matters, the one that makes sense.  I'd argue that's only because they never saw ekoostik hookah play it.  The difference (as I meander to a point) is embodied by one critically different lyric:

Bob Dylan (and all those other suckers): "If whiskey don't kill me, I don't know what will."

Cliff Starbuck: "If whiskey don't kill me, I'll live till I die."

No matter how you look at it, this song can't really be about moonshining; it's not about booze (despite my earlier claim to the latter), it's about life.  I don't think that Cliff is defending alcoholism and bootlegging; that's an easy read, but wildly reductive.  I think he's defending grabbing the world by the tail.  Cliff's telling us we've got one spin and might as well make it count.  Bob's telling us to live in fear of what's around the corner, to regret our mistakes, to cower.  Both songs declare that "when the bottle is empty it ain't worth a damn."  Both are clearly using the bottle metaphor to make a stab at a big truth.  Bob would have us believe that the bottle is empty because we didn't fill it with anything meaningful, that we spent our time on the wrong road.  Cliff wants us to know that it's empty because we used it, we took what was in it and we shared it with the people we loved.  I'll take the latter.

So.  Two covers.  The Elliot Smith version is undeniably beautiful.  But it is a bummer.

ekoostik hookah – Moonshiner, live

Elliott Smith – Moonshiner, live

Thanks for toughing your way through that protracted rant.  Enjoy a remix as a reward.  I am a hustler, baby.

The Hood Internet – Just Wanna Dance Yrself Clean (Jay-Z vs LCD Soundsystem)