I’ve had this new Mountain Goats song blowing wind into my wings for the last few days and I haven’t learned or played a song on guitar for a while so today I sat down and did it. But first I played no. 8 “Drain You” and no. 9 “Lounge Act” off _Nevermind_ to get warmed up. (them songs are 2 of my top 5 Nirvana songs but they don’t get much credit so I want to say now that if you haven’t listened to that Butch Viggered wall of screeching bliss in a while, you will find that these two in particular (I got this friend you see..) impart a nice affect to your demeanor)

So after fully rockin I sat down with a sweet new number off _All Hail West Texas_ (recently discussed in the local paper) called “Pink and Blue”. I think it’s the standout on the record. I want everyone to hear it. I put the phone up to my laptop speaker so my friend Rose could be summarily melted by its story of a man and his newborn twins. John does the song in standard MG’s style, on his ten year-old Panasonic RXFT500 boombox with its patented massive wheel grind in the cassette transport mechanism. He makes a lengthy point of its importance to his method and details its resurrection in the liner notes.

The microphone on my laptop is right above the cooling fan which spins up while the hard drive clicks away when I try to record but in the spirit of that old Panasonic, I figured I’d bellow into the slit on top of my Dell and post a rendition of “Pink and Blue”. I wanted everybody to hear John’s version of course, and even though you can probably find it on the internet in about 30 seconds, I didn’t want to just rip and post it here, on my legitimate, honest, website. primco.org: a mulitmedia powerhouse.

So here’s it is “with fan noise included”. I guess you'll have to stop the Aphex Twin sample from playing in order to hear it. Writing that, and suddenly becoming aware of the context into which I'm posting this is more than a little scary.

I have no idea what kind of tree he’s referring to in the first stanza, that’s a guess. And I don’t know what “reception sticks” are either but that’s what I heard.

E  D         A   B            E   D
Wind out of Oklahoma this morning
              A       B        E  D
Smelled like blood an smoke
                   A        B
And the crows discuss their future in the
F#                  A         B        E
branches of their Louisiana ?Lybrook?
     D        A          B
The limbs are strong and heavy and it’s
E      D           A    B    E
Leaves are all aglow
D                  A            B
And the branches brush the upper air
        F#                           A        B
But the roots reach down to were the bad people go

    A                   B                  E
And what will I do with you, pink and blue
F#    A
True gold.
B          E    D  A  B....
Nine days old.

E D               A   B
Nice new clothes on you
        E      D             A          B
And an old cardboard produce box for a cradle
   E       D               A    B
I mash some bananas in a coffee cup
         F#                 A        B
And I fed you there at the kitchen table
E    D               A      B
Crows outside complaining about the
E     D               A  B       E
Finer points of local politics
       D          A          B
Strange wind all full of new smells
F#                 A       B
Rust and fur and reception sticks

And what will I do with you, pink and blue
True gold.
Nine days old.