What's the best Hayes Carll song ever?

 

This Covid lock down in Sydney has been going on for about 398 weeks with what appears to be twice that still to go. 

Living in one of the "bad" local government areas of Western Sydney that is both home to the multi-racial working class that keeps the city running and also needs to be punished with cops and soldiers, we get the added benifit of police helicopters flying overhead yelling through megaphones at kids to stop playing basketball (which of course is the main source of community transmission in Sydney, whatever fake news you hear about it being essential workplaces without proper protections coz employers are a bunch of profiteering fuckers backed by corrupt governments whose attitude to workers' rights is like mine towards booze suuplies in lockdown -- they exist to be demolished).

With nothing else to do, it is only natural our minds turn to key questions such as "What is the best Hayes Carll song ever?"

Such existential questioning about the Texas country singer's two-decade-long career is only deepened by the welcome news of a new Hayes Carll single -- "You Get It All", a heartfelt song of the sort Carll specialises in these days (ie: it's another love song for his wife, fellow country singer Allison Moorer).

Spoiler alert: there is no actual answer to the post's title. There is no "best Hayes Carll song ever", because it is all subjective -- and not just person to person, but anyone of us will change our minds constantly for a 1000 reasons,

It depends a bit which Hayes Carll you want. In the first phase of his career, with four albums released between 2002-11, Carll developed a a clear persona: the drunken poet. By his own admission, he played a character -- the dishevelled troubadour, stumbling from gig to gig all bleary-eyed romance and witty quips.

It was an enchanting character and I certainly loved it. I am just a year or two younger than Hayes Carll, so while he was drinking and gigging his ways through his 30s, I spent my 30s drinking and listening to him and wishing I was him in my weaker moments (after a few drinks, so most of the time).

Then, in the aftermath of the endless touring of his 2011 KMAG YOLO album, Hayes Carll hit a wall.

Playing the role of an outgoing charsmatic frontman of a full band rocking out with tales of debauchery and heartbreak was taking its toll. The character he was playing, that gave the introverted Carll the cover to go out each night, was starting to consume him. He was drinking way too much. His marriage disintegrated.

Hayes Carll called time and wrote a heartfelt piece for No Depression about the need to be himself and express himself as he actually is.

The result was a stripped back and deeply personal album "Lovers and Leavers", released in 2016 to justified critical acclaim. 

His subsequent album (and now the new single) continue in the vein of a more honest portrail of himself and his views. And entering my 40s just after Hayes Carll, I can relate to leaving behind an alcohol-fuelled persona that seems fun in your 30s but leaves you wanting some genuine peace and serenity (I'm only saying this here coz no one will actually read this post).

So the answer to the question "What's your favourite Hayes Carll song?" is which Hayes Carll?

Of the pre-2016 Hayes Carll, you could go for the laugh-out-loud wit of "She Left Me For Jesus" (or possibly "Another Like You"), or the aching barroom romance of "Beaumont"  ("Chances Are" also does the trick). 

Or maybe you just want the "what the fuck is actually going on I am SO FUCKING WEARY" sense of "Wish I Hadn't Stayed So Long" (and I really relate to this one for my own reasons, and if you put a gun to my head I'd chose it as my favourite).

But... getting older just slightly behind Hayes Carll... I find myself relating really strongly "Good While It Lasted" from "Lovers and Leavers".

So as far as tonight goes, I'll choose it as my favourite Hayes Carll song.

I smoked my last cigarette
I drank my last drop
Quit doing all the things
That I swore I'd never stop
I changed my direction
Sang a different tune
Gave up all those childish ways
That made me old too soon
Things were going good there for a while
I tried to straighten out the crooked road that I was on
It was good while it lasted
But it didn't last too long 

I used to play down on broadway
The same song every night
Singing for the tip jar
Underneath the neon light
Had a good time with the women
And the compliments were free
I dreamed of something bigger
But it just wasn't meant to be
But I was happy there for a while
Just like a desperado, out searching for a song
It was good while it lasted
But it didn't last too long 

Nothing last forever
Time knows that it's true
Sometimes a little while's the best that we can do
You ended up beside me
Like some long-forgotten dream
You took my hand and showed me colors
I had never seen
We both said forever, forever till the end
But forever's something different
To a lover than a friend
We thought we had it all there for a while
Just like that perfect moment 'fore the darkness turned to dawn
It was good while it lasted
But it didn't last too long 

The one thing I can tell from all this life that's come undone
It was good while it lasted
But it didn't last too long

 

Shovels and Rope's 'Busted Jukebox Vol 2' and it is great. Like Shovels and Rope-scale great. Which is really great. Really really great.

Shovels and Rope are husband-and-wife duo Cary Ann Hearst and Michael Trent, based in Charleston, South Carolina, and they deliver dirty, sweaty, and insanely beautiful, in turn or all at once, country/folk/bluesy rock with more than a dash of punk attitude.

The magic of Shovels and Rope is their raw energy, combined with often soaring harmonies and wrapped in sheer joy and love for what they do. They sound like Angels from Heaven, but one's who've just escaped Hell. They're beautiful, but singed.

Playing just guitar and drums, and occasionally keyboards, swapping between the instruments mid-show, they are really a band to see live to get their full value -- their records are great, but it's hard  for a recording to fully capture the live dynamism.

That is not to say a new Shovels and Rope record is not a cause for wild celebrations coz it definitely is. There should be street parties. Public holidays should be declared. They won't be, because we are all governed by pricks, but they should be.

So what could be better than a new Shovels and Rope album? Well, it seems the second volume of their covers project, whereby they collaborate a different artist on each track., as with Busted Jukebox Volume 2, which was released on Thursday and which you can and indeed should purchase here.

In all honesty, I didn't full expect that. It follows on from Busted Jukebox Volume 1, where they also recorded a series of covers with other artists.

And that was good. I mean I doubt Shovels and Rope could do bad if they told them their lives and the lives of all their loved ones depended on it. Among other highlights, their version of "(What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love and Understand?" is transcendental. But it never grabbed me as hard as their original music

I'm not sure exactly why I feel Busted Jukebox 2 is different, but it is. It is not just a pretty good record done well and interestingly: every track sounds like a revelation. They take well known songs and turn them inside out, or just add fresh layers and new elements that create a different, but often profound impact.

This is a record features everything that is great about Shovels and Rope... then adds to with a different awesome singer/performer added to each song. They manage to give each track a unique feel with different singers brought it, yet their sparkling performances always makes it sound like Shovels and Rope. It sounds fresh, evocative and full of wonder.

Here, you can also listen to each track with interesting notes specifically written by Shovels and Rope at.

It is hard to know which tracks to highlight as I really like them all. Their version of Faith No More's "Epic" is one of the more interesting. Featuring Lera Lynn (possibly the only good thing about season 2 of True Detective), it is a significant re-interpretation of the song.

However, I've chosen to highlight three other tracks that give a good feel for the vibe -- including,  naturally, their glorious version of the Clash's "Death of Glory" featuring none other than Hayes Carll (who I may have mentioned on this blog once or twice). I post them below, following a playlist of each track on the album.

With a new Shovels and Rope album,t he only thing that will make this week better is if, tonight, the Western Sydney Wanderers do the unlikely and beat Sydney FC in the derby.




A cover of a song by post-rock art-rock band from Iceland, Sigur Ros, Shovels and Rope noted: “A lot of people might not know the original version of this song but it is a beautiful, floating, anthemic soundscape by Sigur Rós."




As brilliant a songwriter as Leonard Cohen was, he often lived up to his reputation as "depressing". This song, which vacillates between declarations of being determined to prove love and admission of failure, comes with more colour and life here than the beautiful but typically more downbeat original.




In their notes, Shovels ad Rope had these lovely words to say: “Hayes Carll was the first guy to take us out on the road when we had absolutely nothing going on. He taught us a lot about what’s important and what’s not in this business and on the road. He’s one of our favorite songwriters and human beings and we owe so much of what we’ve been able to build over these last six years or so to his kindness and generosity.

“We wanted to do a slinky, swung version of this song where we traded off verses and just had some fun with it; loose and raucous. It still sounds like punk rock, but with cowboy boots.”

The full playlist:

Hayes Carll covers Guy Clark's "Magnolia Wind" and I might have to eat my words

Well, earlier this month, unable to stop listening to John Prine and Emmylou Harris's cover of Guy Clark's classic country folk song "Magnolia Wind", I chucked it up on this very blog and opined: "If there is anything more beautifully moving than Emmylou Harris and John Prine singing Guy Clark, I don't think I want to know."

Well, little did I know that Hayes Carll, whom I may have mentioned before on this blog once or twice, was going to step up and release a special cover of the track less than two weeks after my post.

Now, I don't want to suggest the reason for this was my post. I am not saying Hayes Carll religiously reads my blog and took my comments as a challenge. Obviously, i cannot prove this.

But he did once "like" a blog post of mine on Facebook defending him from Steve Earle's stupid insult, when I tagged him in it. So, you draw your own conclusions, that is all I am saying. I am just presenting the circumstantial, some might may say damning, evidence.

The key point is Hayes Carll has just released a cover of "Magnolia Wind", which is awesome news. "Magnolia Wind" is a really amazing song, as so many of Clark's songs are. Tender, poetic and heartrendingly beautiful. And Hayes Carll has a voice raw and broken enough to invoke its tension between melancholy and wonder, a song about love and its inevitable end.

Below is Hayes Carll's version recorded live on Youtube, and you can also do the decent thing and purchase it on iTunes.

You can hear John Prine and Emmylou Harris's cover and Guy Clark's original All three versions are incredible, but I stand by my original view that the Prine/Harris duet is pretty unbeatable. Hayes, if you are reading this as no doubt you are because I am not deluded at all, I still love your version and grateful you recorded it! Keep up the awesome work!



I'd rather sleep in a box like a bum on the street
Than a fine feather bed without your little ol' cold feet
I'd rather be deaf, dumb, and stone blind
Than to know that your mornings will never be mine

I'd rather die young than to live without you
I'd rather go hungry than eat lonesome stew
It's once in a lifetime and it won't come again
It's here and it's gone on a magnolia wind

I'd rather not walk through the garden again
If I can't catch your scent on a magnolia wind

If it ever comes time that it comes time to go
Sis just pack up your fiddle Sis pack up your bow
If I can't dance with you then I won't dance at all
I'll just sit this one out with my back to the wall

I'd rather not hear pretty music again
If I can't hear your fiddle on a magnolia wind

BONUS:

'This world's been shaved by a drunken barber's hand' -- a playlist for my stand up show 'Inspired?'

Slaid Cleaves.

Now, I've been pretty quiet about it, I know, but I actually do have a solo stand up show at the Sydney Fringe Comedy festival next week, in fact on Wednesday and Friday at 7pm and Sunday at 6pm. Just in case if you are interested at all.

I don't care. I don't care if you attend any of the shows at are at the Container room at The Factory theatre, to which you can book tickets here for the cheap, affordable price of $15/$10, which frankly is a fucking bargin. 

It is also a fundraiser for Green Left Weekly, so I guess it depends, like, if you want the planet to survive or not. I mean I'm not saying it literally hinges on this show, I'm just saying you'd have to be some sort of Donald Trump-loving prick to consciously not come. That's all. The choice is yours. Fascism or humanity. Choose wisely. I mean, I don't care myself...

The point is, faced with a show next week, some performers might try to focus on last minute building, or even working on refining the material by going to various comedy rooms to test things or just agonising in front of their laptop over exact wording, pacing and structure.

That is because they are hacks. The key question is to spend your time developing a musical playlist to accompany the show.

And by "accompany", I don't mean literally. I don't mean the songs have any role in the show. Don't worry, you can turn up to the show without country music ruining your night. Or the Hobart-originated Nation Blue screaming about corporate destruction of a small town in rural Australia with lines like "THESE STREETS ARE SCREAMING HELP ME!!!"

They are just songs that I like and happen to relate loosely to the theme. The type of songs I think about when I think about the shit I talk about in my show.

They describe the sort of topics that get discussed, but as is self-evident, they don't as a rule contain jokes and let me tell you... that's one thing my show has! Jokes! Oh yeah! It is sort of the point!

(Of course, the Hayes Carll and John Prine tracks have a couple of witty lines, as they are witty chaps, but still not the same as trying to come up with a 50-minute stand-up show.)

So, my show is called "Inspired?" and it is about the hilarious topic, which is the fact it is fucking hard to be inspired about the world and the prospects for positive change when everything is SO FUCKING SHIT and seemingly getting worse.

This is dealt with by these songs in various ways. It runs through the shit we deal with, the fact life is hard, the fact our politicians are pricks, the fact climate change is terrifying, the fact this is hard to deal with, and then runs through to the crucial question of hope in the face of darkness.

To be honest, with that in mind, the two key songs are the first, Texas folk/country/Americana singer songwriter Slaid Cleaves' "Drunken Barber's Hand", and the last, South Carolina folk/country/Americana husband-and-wife duo Shovels and Rope's glorious rendition of Nick Lowe's "What's So Funny About Peace Love and Understanding".

I feel those two tracks form a great start and end point, and the rest fills the gaps, from Celtic punk band Flogging Molly's self-explanatory "The Worst Day Since Yesterday" to Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit's "Hope The High Road" about combatting despair with hope.

The list includes incredible acts like Tom Waits, Lucinda Williams, John Prine, Jason Isbell ... and more! Some aren't even country/folk/Americana!

Well you can hear it below and my show will be like this, only with jokes. So like if you like these songs... come along! And if you hate them... then fear not, they play no role in my show at all, and forget this post ever existed!

Just... come along if you are in Sydney. You will not regret it. Here's the fucking playlist:





Yar:




I don't need to read the papers
Or the tea leaves to understand
This world's been shaved
By a drunken barber's hand




Well, I know, I miss more than hit
With a face that was launched to sink
And I seldom feel, the bright relief
It's been the worst day since yesterday

Everybody knows it's a hard time
Livin' on the minimum wage
Ah, some people just gonna sneak on through
Others gotta rattle that cage
One of these days, I'm gonna find my way
Or else just disappear
I'm out here in the filth and squalor
And all I wanna do is stomp and holler

Well over the sea, and far away,
Our kids die in deserts, they been sent that way...

Well Hell doesn't want you
And Heaven is full...

Some humans ain't human
Though they walk like we do
They live and they breathe
Just to turn the old screw
They screw you when you're sleeping
They try to screw you blind
Some humans ain't human
Some people ain't kind

From the cradle to the grave
You will always be a slave
To the quiet darkness of your memories
And that's the truth, my friend
The ugly truth, my friend
I've got proof, my friend
And that's the truth

These streets are screaming help me
Burn the town down
Burn the fucking thing down!!!

There can't be more of them than us
There can't be more

I know you're tired
And you ain't sleeping well
Uninspired
And likely mad as hell
But wherever you are
I hope the high road leads you home again
To a world you want to live in

As I walk through
This wicked world
Searchin' for light in the darkness of insanity.
I ask myself
Is all hope lost?
Is there only pain and hatred, and misery?
And each time I feel like this inside,
There's one thing I want to know:
What's so funny 'bout peace love & understanding?

Steve Earle's beautiful ode to Guy Clark (is almost enough to forgive his ugly attack on Hayes Carll)

Without much doubt, the highlight of Steve Earle's latest record, the enthusiastically, unashamedly country So You Wanna Be An Outlaw, is "Goodbye Michelangelo" -- his moving ode to his friend and mentor, the late Texan singer-songwriter Guy Clark who died in the Great Artist Cull of 2016.

Clark was the godfather of the "country folk/singer songwriter" tradition that developed in Texas in the 70s, out of which the younger Earle emerged. The Texas scene in the mid 70s was captured well in the Heartworn Highways doco, at which a young Steve Earle can be seen among the acolytes gathered at Clark's house.

Townes Van Zandt was that movement's guiding spirit, but Clark was its craftsman and the mentor to generations of future songwriters. Clark was more than a country singer, he was a poet and an artist, as I went on about after his death. Earle fucking means it when he sings:

Is this goodbye 'till it comes my time?
I won't have to travel blind
Cause you taught me everything I know
Goodbye Michelangelo

The track makes an interesting counter-point, as the album is dedicated to a different Texan country singer, Waylon Jennings. It is that "outlaw" hard-edged country with rock'n'roll rhythms tradition the album largely draws from.

It is true that, in the 70s, both Waylon Jennings and Guy Clark were associated with "Outlaw country", a rawer, less polished genre off the beaten track from the commercialised, polished Nashville mainstream. But they existed at opposite ends of the "Outlaw" spectrum.

Waylon was a bona fide star, with or without the endorsement of the suits in Nashville. He played big, loud, electrified songs with his up-tempo rock influenced sound.

Clark, by contrast, was the poet, playing carefully crafted tracks with a folk singer's sensibilities, all stripped down to essentials on an acoustic guitar. Not that there was no cross over -- Jennings joined Clark to sing harmony on Clark's 1976 song "Last Gun Fighter's Ballad". The Highwaymen, the country supergroup with Jennings, Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson and Kris Kristofferson, also made Clark's signature tune, "Desperadoes Waiting for a Train", their own.

In general, So You Wanna Be An Outlaw is entertaining and enjoyable, and even touching in places as it pays homage to the style of rough-hewed country developed by the likes of Jennings and Merle Haggard, but... I am sorry to say... it is just isn't as good as Hayes Carll's critically acclaimed and award-winning album last year, Lovers and Leavers.

That comparison may not seem superficially obvious. They are very different albums -- Lovers and Leavers found Carll in a quieter, introspective mood, with deeply personal tracks compared to Earle's homage to often-loud Outlaw country.

But Earle brought this comparison on himself.

In the lead up to its release, he shot his mouth off in classic Steve Earle fashion. He slagged off Oasis and Noel Gallagher as a shit songwriter (he was in Camp Blur). He slammed much of what passes for modern country music as "hip-hop for people who are afraid of black people" (if you think that is an exaggeration, try, if you can, listening to "bro-country" darlings Florida Georgia Line) .

That is all well and good, but especially eye-catching was his comment in a high-profile Guardian interview that his last wife, fellow country singer Allison Moorer, with whom he separated in 2014, had left him for a "younger, skinnier, less talented singer-songwriter".

Now, Earle did not mention Hayes Carll by name, but he did not need to. It is no secret that, both emerging from failed marriages, Carll and Moorer have embarked on a relation both personal and professional (often at the same time, as the many clips of them performing heartbeakingly beautiful ballads together testifies).



Really, all any of us can hope for in this life is to find someone who'll look at us the way Allison Moorer looks at Hayes Carll while they sing a duet.

Of course, Steve Earle's credit as a songwriter goes well beyond his latest album. It is not even that he has written such classics as "Guitar Town" or "Copperhead Road" (as good a song in its genre as anyone can ever hope to write). It is also that his career, while uneven, has been constantly bold and boundary pushing.

For instance, "John Walker Blues" is the most radically humanist song I've ever heard. Released in 2002, just after 9/11, it is a song written from the perspective of a young American man, John Walker Lindh, who was fighting with the Taliban.

Earle, a left-wing socialist, has no personal sympathy for the religious fundamentalist vision that inspired Walker to fight with the Taliban, but, as hysteria took over the US, he released this song empathising with Walker, who was captured and tortured by US forces.



The song's fucking chorus is "A shadu la ilaha illa Allah. There is no God but God." Released just after 9/11. That is courage. That is using your songwriting skills to fucking do something of note. No surprise that the shit hit the fan.

I take nothing away from Earle. He has earned his stripes over a career with 16 full-length releases from the mid-80s on. His legacy is beyond dispute.

But a straight up comparison with Hayes Carll is obviously unfair simply because Earle has been around for much longer. To judge Hayes Carll, you have to look at the impact he has had within the shorter frame of his career, and it is hard to knock.

Carll is very widely respected as one of the best of the younger generation of songwriters and performers, with five quality albums under his belt and many fans built up by constant touring. Plus he has written with, and earned the respect of, many of the greats (including Guy Clark, with whom Carll wrote "Rivertown").

I'm not sure I've ever heard a bad song from Hayes Carll. His reputation is justly huge. Of all the people to pick on... well it is blindly obvious that Earle chose Hayes for very personal, and very bitter, reasons.

But when you look at the comments closer, you see something even uglier. It is not actually Hayes Carll who is the main target of Earle's attack. It is actually Allison Moorer, who he proceeds to basically slander. Hayes is just roadkill.

Earle pretty much suggests she cynically "traded him in" for a younger, skinnier, but "less talented" model. Even worse is his implication that Moorer resents being in New York, despite the fact, Earle says, it is best for their severely autistic son.

This seems a low blow to go with in a public interview. Judging someone from social media and media comments is hard, admittedly, but any brief perusal of Moorer's comments on either strongly suggest someone who deeply loves their son.

And as to their break-up, obviously no one knows exactly what happens in other people's relationships, but it ultimately doesn't matter -- life and relationships are complicated and messy and trying to slag an ex in public is a dog act, no matter your legacy in the biz.

In fact, a man with a powerful legacy in the biz slagging off a woman in the biz coz they broke up with them is really pretty screwed up.

To be honest, it casts a bit of a pall over the second track on Earle's new record, "Looking for a Woman", where Earle is "looking for a woman won't do me like you". Sure, I think the track is not meant to be taken too literally or seriously, it is just a solid mid-tempo "dealing with heartbreak" song, but country music has a less-than-glorious tradition of men blaming women for relationship shit (which Kitty Wells famously responded to in her "answer song" to Hank Thompson way back in the early 50s). I find it hard not to think of Earle's unfair public comments towards Moorer when I hear him sing that song.

Moorer, for her part, dealt with the collapse of her relationship with Earle on her 2015 album Down To Believing. The title track is a heartfelt, deeply moving take on the end of intense relationships -- as beautiful, thoughtful, and sorrowful a song on how relationships end as I have ever heard. You can hear it here -- but a spoiler, it doesn't say "Steve was alright, but then I met this younger, thinner singer-songwriter and sure he's not as talented but he is hotter". Not exactly.



Some might even say Moorer's track is all class... in stark contrast to Earle's comments.

Neither Moorer or Carll have publicly commented on Earle's comments... at least not explicitly.

However, in recent days, social media and the music press has been alight with reports that at Willie Nelson's annual July 4 festival, at which both Hayes Carll and Steve Earle performed (on different stages at different times), Carll used his performance to debut a new song, which apparently included the key line: "I think she left you because you wouldn't shut your mouth."

Not very hard to interpret, that one.

I am grateful for Earle's moving ode to Guy Clark. Steve Earle is the man to write such a song and I am glad he has.

But I also see no reason to forgive his slagging off of Hayes Carll, not only because I am a Hayes Carll obsessive but because it is cover for him slagging of Allison Moorer for the simple reason they are no longer together.

And while I get the bitterness, for a proudly progressive man to use his public media profile to do this, frankly it fucking sucks.

Your favourite bucket hat-wearing blogger with Hayes Carll when he played Sydney last year.

Remembering Guy Clark: 'I believe everything you're saying, just keep on, keep on playing...'

Guy Clark with songwriter and wife Susanna.

Guy Clark, the godfather of an incredibly creative Texas music scene who died on May 17 aged 74, is described, at his official website as a "master songwriter".

There are few who could make such a claim without it jarring as an unseemly boast. But there's no empty boast or inflated ego here. It is simply an accurate description of Guy Clark, who built a stronger bridge than anyone else between country music and poetry.

To mention "poetry" suggests pretensions, but there is zero pretense to a Guy Clark song. They are stripped back, recorded simply and featuring lyrics filled with straight-forward yet vivid images. I hear a Guy Cark song and I can see every bit.

Clark sings his most famous song, "Desperados Waiting for a Train", and I can see the scenes clearly. The old men in the Green Frog Cafe with beer and dominoes; the kid hanging off the old driller (a real character from Clark's life), absorbing everything he sees, driving the elder's car while the drunken man slumps in the passenger seat; and the bemused sadness and nostalgia taking over the fully grown Clark as he watches his hero disappear irretrievably into the black hole of old age.

He sings "The Randall Knife", a story about his father told through his relationship with a famous brand of knife, and I see the knife. I see Guy Clark as a boy managing to snap off half an inch off the prized possession when, in his youthful incompetence, he tries to "stick it in a tree". And I see the adult Clark, opening the bottom draw in his dead father's study, taking out the knife from where it has long sat, being overwhelmed by tears.

That song is as good as an example as any of Guy Clark's mastery of the form. It is filled with sentiment, yet never becomes soppy, or even damp, with sentimentality. It is like Clark's songs were carved from granite and he delivered them with the dirt still on.

Legendary Texas country singer Ray Wylie Hubbard noted of Clark:

"LA Freeway and Desperados – they were like [Sam] Peckinpah movies, they were that powerful. Then he had this ability too to write these incredible love songs that were just so simple in what they said. And turn around and write Dublin Blues that would make you cry."

The simplicity and directness of Clark's songs is not accidental. He crafted them with care and everything extraneous was cut off or filed away, until all that is left is all needed to tell a heart-rending story with a well-packed punch. The result is a collection of songs that, each of them, sound like a picture of the sun setting on a lone tree in the Texas outback that has survived a century of battering storms.

Friend and fellow country singer-songwriter Rodney Crowell said:

Guy Clark was the best self-editor I've ever come across. He had lines that other songwriters could hang a career on, but Guy would throw them out if they didn't fit the narrative. That was the technical part of his skill as a writer.

To consider how consistently great Guy Clark was, his final album (2013's Pictures of You) is of the same quality as his debut, (1975's Old No. 1). If that sounds like a backhanded compliment, implying he hadn't developed over his career, then you clearly haven't heard the debut.

Few debuts can have contained so many classics -- "Desperados", "LA Freeway", "Old Time Feeling", "Anyhow I love You", "Let Him Roll"... Not even Tom Waits, who can make the rare claim to being a better storytelling songwriter than Guy Clark, had a debut of the same calibre. It took Waits probably four albums (until to 1976's Small Change) before he developed from "promising" to "brilliant". Clark's first album was already there.

On "Let Him Roll", Clark sings a chorus in which a wino declares that "Heaven was just a Dallas whore" -- and manages to make the listener feel genuine empathy for the characters, the alcoholic and aforementioned sex worker both. Not for nothing does discussing Clark bring to mind Tom Waits (whom Clark pays tribute to in the bitingly ironic "Cold Dog Soup").

A perfect measure of the quality of Clark's early music is the fact that Johnny Cash covered two songs from his debut ("Let Him Roll" and, with the Highwaymen, "Desperados") -- and then covered a third from his second album. Cash covered many songs from many artists, but I doubt too many could claim such a hit rate with their initial recordings.

It is hard to talk about Clark without raising his late friend and fellow Texas country singer Townes Van Zandt, who died in 1997 aged 52. Hubbard notes:

Guy and Townes – that was the level that everybody aspired to. I don’t think anyone reached that level of writing that the two of them did. But if your heart was in the right place, you would aspire to that caliber of writing.

It can be frustrating to consider the relative obscurity Clark enjoys; in his field he is a giant, but outside is little known, except perhaps some who may have heard "Desperados" at some point. From Sydney, Australia, where there seems an ingrained hostility to country music unless you can package it up in some cool label like "alt.country" or "Americana", that obscurity can seem overwhelming.

Van Zandt, on the other hand, although hardly a household name, has a cult following Clark never developed outside his own genre. Partly, this might be explained by the "doomed romantic" side to Van Zandt -- the genius poet who drank himself to death (unlikely to have felt very romantic to anyone who knew him).

Clark, no stranger to some heavy drinking (just look at the boozy scenes in the great 1976 documentary about the Texas country music documentary Heartworn Highways), was far less a "burn bright and burn out" character.

But partly Van Zandt's cult comes not from myth, but the very real spark of genius that seems to enliven his songs. Clark, on the other hand, was much more the hardworking craftsman. He fashioned songs like a master carpenter fashions a beautiful-yet-functional chest of draws. They last.

Clark was a giant in the history of Texas music and country music more generally -- both for his own music and his role as mentor to more than one generation of up-and-coming songwriters. Clark was a huge source of direct inspiration to a whole generation of songwriters in Texas and Nashville and beyond. You can see his status as the head of a rambling troupe of younger performers in Heartworn Highways (including a young Steve Earle and the aforementioned Crowell).

For instance, one successful country singers (and I reject bullshit labels like "roots music" or "Americana", which are just ways to try to make country music sound cooler to ignorant dickheads who think "country" means OTT country pop singers with stupid cowboy hats leading line dances, as opposed to one of the most vivid and alive forms of folk music) Gillian Welch wrote on Facebook after Clark's death:

Guy was one of my most vocal, and inebriated, supporters when I moved to Nashville. He used to recite my lyrics aloud at dinner parties and barrooms to people who said they had never heard of me. He took Dave and I out on the road with him for our first tour through Texas, where I learned more than I could ever say. I could never thank him enough for his support and his artistry ... 

As his official website noted when he died:

For more than 40 years, the Clark home was a gathering place for songwriters, folk singers, artists and misfits; many who sat at the feet of the master songwriter in his element, willing Guy’s essence into their own pen. Throughout his long and extraordinary career, Guy Clark blazed a trail for original and groundbreaking artists and troubadours.

When I hear the likes of Guy Clark -- when I hear his song about a woman's dash for freedom in "She Aint Goin' Nowhere", for instance, filled with poetic humanism -- I always think that letting this world be destroyed by corporate greed is too insane for words. Who could let a world that produced such beauty be killed off.

I made a playlist of 21 songs by Clark, but below that is a handful of songs of other artists covering Guy Clark (or in the case of Hayes Carll, singing a song he co-wrote with Clark).

But most likely if you are not already a Guy Clark fan, you aren't going to listen to most of these, if any. So if you want one Guy Clark song that best captures his simple, heartrending poetry, then go for the song Guy Clark calls, in the clip below, his own "favourite song". When you listen to it, consider how, like New South Wales where I live, the government is cutting women's refuges.




'She had a way of her own, like prisoners have a way with a file...'

'That old time feeling goes sneaking down the hall...'





'I wish I had a dime for every bad time, but the bad times always seem to keep the change...'





'And I'd rather die young than to live without you. I'd rather go hungry than eat lonesome stew...'





'There aint no money in poetry, that's what keeps the poet free. I've had all the freedom I can stand...'





'How dark is it? It's so dark the wind gets lost...'




'One man's angel is another man's ghost'




'And everything's forgiven that did not wash away ...'

Not a cover but a song that the brilliant contemporary Texas country singer-songwriter Hayes Carll co-wrote with Clark for Carll's 2005 album, Little Rock. Carll was just one of many beneficiaries of Clark's mentorship and collaboration.





'To me, he was one of the heroes of this country...' 

Well, Johnny, Willie, Waylon and Kris know a classic song when they hear one. There is not much that can be said when they cover you.

The Daily Carlo: July 4! Yay America! SONGS!!!

Today's Daily Carlo is published on July 4, which was the day in 1776 that the US Declaration of Independence was issued. This was, of course, a great idea at the time so long as you weren't indigenous or Black. Or poor. Or a woman. But all great things must start somewhere.

(Actually it unleashed, as many great historians have detailed, a new struggle between the poor and dispossessed and the new, growing oligarchic elite. And the history of the United States -- from the earliest days till now, is riven with the struggle of the poor, exploited, dispossessed, enslaved, repressed, overworked, underpaid, declared "illegal" downtrodden majority -- and there are great moments, from the radical democracy at the heights of the Reconstruction, drowned in racist terror, to the huge militant strike wave in the 1930s that did much more to lift working people out of misery than any policy of Roosevelt, through to a mass movement that ended a major war and christ knows what else. But that is another story. The true history of the United States is the history of its victims.)

Yah America!



'All we want to do is take these chains off of us...'

Yar well here is a random collection of songs about the US in some form that I happen to like. I tried not to think very hard about it, otherwise this could never be done.




'To hell with your double standards...'




'First kick I took was when I hit the ground...'




'This country is over, they say...'




'And all the news is bad, is there any other kind...' 




'Everybody knows its a hard time, living with the hate and greed...'


TOO DEPRESSING? WELL HAVE SOME STRUGGLE!!! First, one of the big industrial battles from the 30s... a bitter, violent mining strike in 1931 in Harlem County.



'Poor folk aint got a chance unless they organise...'


And now the battles of today! In a  hip hop reworking of the classic...



'I'm for a world without borders and a better tomorrow...'


There you go. Now fuck off and leave me alone and/or put your own suggestions in the comments, I don't care, this beer won't drink itself.

The Daily Carlo: Things seem bleak, but there is good news! There are new Hayes Carll songs!

Yeah the world is a dark place. God only knows, my last Daily Carlo explained that in this country perfectly well, for those of you paying some kind of attention to anything I rant about.

Let alone the goddamn world, with the horrors of climate change-related extreme weather killing thousands on the subcontinent, the horrors of endless imperialist-inspired violence in the Middle East and beyond and the fact this year has already seen one new Mumford and Sons album so far.

But you know what? There is hope. Good things can happen. Like, for instance, the historic US Supreme Court ruling legalising marriage equality in all US states or the fact that I have just discovered a whole new YouTube clip of an entire Hayes Carll show featuring a handful of new songs!!!

Just one of the good things that has happened.

Yes, desperate for a reason not to launch myself out of my window, I turned, as I so often do, to YouTube clips of songs by the great, widely-lauded Texas country singer Hayes Carll... and I discovered an entire show from a Houston bar on the night before Thanksgiving last year had been uploaded... nearly an hour-and-a-half long!

And, as you might expect from a man who last released an album in 2011, it features several new songs! YAR!!! AWESOME!!! And also, it features a great, and surprising, performance from one of the first songs Hayes Carll ever wrote and recorded, the glorious Easy Come and Easy Go, as it had been requested by a couple of people before the show.

WOW! AWESOME! INCREDIBLE! THE KEY THING IS I DIDN'T JUMP OUT OF THE WINDOW SPLATTERING MY FLESH AND INTERNAL ORGANS EVERYWHERE!!! 

It also features some great Hayes Carll story telling along the way and you can WATCH AND HEAR THE WHOLE THING HERE!

New Hayes Carll songs! 

But perhaps, for some reason, you don't really want to spend an hour-and-a-half listening to some slovenly dressed, shaggy, bearded country singer from Houston with no introduction to the man. So why does such a long show by Hayes Carll matter? Well christ knows where to even start, it could be anywhere... like all good singer-songwriters.

Sometimes all you can ask of a song is it breaks your heart, in one clinical, surgical strike, so as to save you the effort of getting it broken yourself. Hayes is one of those who kindly saves you the effort.

I love what he does so much I think that, all things considered, I'd like to die and be reincarnated as Hayes Carll. I'm tempted to give the whole death thing a go just on the off-chance it might work.

I won't even trouble you with the gloriously amusing She Left Me For Jesus, I'll just point you to these three tracks:

I saw you leanin' on a memory
With your back turned to the crowd
In that little bar on Murphy
Where they play guitar too loud
There were people drinkin' whiskey
There were hearts about to leave
It was cold as hell for Houston
It was almost New Years Eve

I'm gonna leave these blues behind
For some other fool to find
He don't care and I won't mind
Hide me, babe, hide me, babe

Everybody knows it's a hard time
Livin' on the minimum wage
Ah, some people just gunna sneak on through
Others gotta rattle that cage...

And below is a whole series of Hayes Carll songs all in a row live!!




Awesome. Don't thank me, just buy me a beer. Seriously. DO IT! DO IT VIA THE PAY PAL DONATE BUTTON ON THE RIGHT OF THIS BLOG!

The Daily Carlo: The facts blow 'alcohol-fuelled violence' claims away so let me buy boooze post 10pm you bastards!

Day Four of my Daily Carlo plot to blog every day and here is my fourth one! I am on fire!

I never thought I'd make it so far! To be honest, when I launched this new Carlo-Internet initiative on Tuesday, I was far from convinced I'd still be alive by Friday, what with my "lifestyle choices" that have been described variously as "less than optimal for living a long, healthy life" and "how the fuck is he still breathing?"

But I think what has got me this far is definitely my new fitness regime. Yes, thanks to the NSW state-wide 10pm closing time for all bottle shops, I am now in better shape than ever! What with my constant sprinting the bottlo at five to 10 every fucking night!

 Reddit.com/drunkspiration captures the struggle.

But asides from possibly being the only thing stopping my body from total collapse, what possible good does this 10pm shut down do?

I mean, I don't want to repeat myself here. I have already pretty decisively exposed these lock-out/shut down laws in NSW for what they truly are: a plot to give James Packer even MORE billions via his "magically excluded from the lock-out laws" Star Casino, and now I am just waiting for the Walkley Award it shall inevitably earn me.

But still... there may been some of you out there, who just REFUSE TO LISTEN and STILL think maybe this shit is about "alcohol-fuelled violence"... which is an argument I have NEVER understood.

Like, obviously I get there is violence involving people who are drunk in our society. Christ, I know there is drunken violence. The fucking Daily Telegraph WON'T FUCKING SHUT UP ABOUT IT.

But what the violence has to do with being drunk has never been clear to me.

Because, and really this is an area in which I feel I have some expertise, I have never noticed that getting drunk leads to any particular increase in violence. Or "king hits". Or "coward punches". Or whatever the fuck the Daily Tele, whose journalists are famous for their sobriety, are banging on about now.

Like, I have been very drunk many times in many pubs. God knows how many. Over many years. I mean, I like getting drunk. And I like pubs. 

And yet I have somehow manage to refrain from king hitting a single bastard (and fuck knows I've been in pubs with many people just begging for a decent king hit) . 

In fact, I had seen no real violence at all of any note in any pub until I went to Darwin in 2013 (for a comedy gig for a refugee rights group, so you know, thanks government for torturing innocent people, otherwise I'd have never gotten the chance to see the NT!) 

While there, I ended up in some dodgy bar on what they like to call a "main road" in Darwin, drinking with Robbo, who lives up there, and Conehead, who came up for a trip.

Suddenly, at the table right behind us, these off-duty soldiers launched, with no warning, into a brawl that sent beer and chairs flying and only my rapid action in securing our table's beers prevented them joining the sea of spilt booze spreading across the bar room as bouncers rushed over to try to separate two furiously wrestling soldiers, trying to kill each other over God knows what.

Whatever it was, it was clearly not an issue easily resolved, because an hour later, as we sat out on the tables on the footpath, we could see two sides on the road squaring off, headed by the protagonists of the brawl inside the pub.

They stared each other down and shouted abuse before finally fresh kicks and punches started flying in a kinda pathetic half fight in which each side displayed its incompetent failure to actually get a kick anywhere near the other while seemingly imagining they were just like Jean-Claude Fucking Van Damme... 

And you watch that and get a sense of just how horrific it must be to be a poor fucking peasant in Afghanistan or Iraq occupied by these numbskulls, whose only form superiority is their fucking heavy weaponry.

And you know, it was hard to draw the conclusion that the problem here was they had just drunk too much. I mean, they clearly had -- but so had I!

I had just performed a fucking stand up set in a city thousands of kilometres from Sydney to about 20 people as part of an ill-advised, failed and totally well-meant attempt by these activists to "reach out" to Darwin's redneck community to explain why "blow up the boats" -- a solution advocated to me beforehand by a local -- was perhaps a bit problematic, you know from a "let's not murder innocent people" sorta perspective.

So you had better fucking BELIEVE I was drinking. And yet somehow, I managed NOT to be involved in an all-in-brawl. Maybe I just have incredible self-restraint, or maybe, I dunno, the whole "drunkenness leads to violence" thing is utter bullshit.

Turns out there is some solid evidence behind the "it's utter bullshit" view.

Yes, ABC News ran an article headlined "Alcohol-fuelled' violence not caused by alcohol but by 'macho' culture, anthropologist Dr Anne Fox says", that states:

Amidst the introduction of one-punch laws and lock outs, the main concern has been the so-called alcohol-fuelled violence that goes with drunkenness. But one anthropologist believes it is not a result of the booze itself. 

Dr Anne Fox has specialised in the study of drinking cultures in countries around the world for the past 20 years and has been looking at Australia and New Zealand ... 

"Australians, like many other people worldwide, have a very pervasive belief that alcohol can transform your behaviour, that it's a transformative substance, that somehow there's this genie in the bottle that can make you behave a certain way," she told PM's Mark Colvin. 

"Alcohol - as all of the scientific literature shows, which we've reviewed very extensively in the report - cannot be considered a cause of violence. If it was, we'd see uniform levels of violence among all drinkers." 

Countries such as Iceland consume more alcohol than Australia but report less violence. 

"They have a stronger culture of preloading, they have 24-hour bar opening, they even have high rates of gun ownership, but in Iceland there is almost no recorded violence," she said. 

"It's simply not a violent society and they have no belief that alcohol causes violence, and therefore you really don't see any violence in Iceland."  Most of Southern Europe follows this pattern, according to Dr Fox .... 

According to Dr Fox, alcohol "cannot hijack someone's better nature and make them violent" and the term alcohol-fuelled violence is not accurate. She said the focus should be on the causes and triggers of violence itself ... 

"Your inhibitions are just social rules. Anthropologists for decades now have been finding through international cross-cultural studies that the way you behave when you're drunk is mostly the way that your culture teaches you to behave," she said. 

"You can see across the world that people behave very, very differently, despite being morphologically similar human beings and drinking the same amounts of alcohol." 

She said Australia has a macho culture. "We see that it's not so much the patterns of drinking or the levels or consumption that determine how people behave, but other features of culture that are magnified through drunkenness," she said.

YEAH!!! So fuck off with your "alcohol-fuelled violence" bullshit! And most of all... LET ME BUY SOME FUCKING TAKE-AWAY BOOZE AFTER 10PM!!! FOR GOD'S SAKE!!! 

Of course, no one could disagree that the violence used to justify these laws is terrible. There is clearly a problem in our society -- but it is cultural problem not a booze problem. the problem is the macho culture and its ever-present twin -- misogyny.

And not only is blaming alcohol for this missing the real culprit, it is way of avoiding even acknowledging the problem. And this isn't just alcohol, but drugs in general -- as the somewhat ridiculous scandal involving a whole lot of rugby league and rugby players apparently enjoying putting coke up their nostrils shows.

It really says something about the nature of our society and how fucked up our priorities are. Here we have charges and claims centred on the apparently shocking that a bunch of professional sports players enjoyed cocaine at such events as a players bucks night and a post-season booze cruise.

You might think that is something of a personal matter, at most unfortunately a legal matter due to draconian failed drug laws. But no. This threatens to tear apart an entire club, the Gold Coast Titans, and ruin the careers of more than a few players -- despite the fact that some of these players have already been involved in scandals involving far worse actions or allegations.

Rugby player and code-hopper Karmichael Hunt, at the centre of the coke scandal, faced sexual assault allegations in 2008. No dent in his career. Greg Bird, suspended by the Titans over cocaine charges, was found guilty of violently assaulting his girlfriend. His career continued.

You can rape and bash women seemingly without a worry in rugby league, but don't enjoy a recreational drug in your own spare time or you are done.

The irony is it is this kinda pathetic hypocrisy that makes drugs and alcohol so essential to fucking survive this goddamn world in the first place.

Alcohol and drugs can worsen existing problems, but I see no reason why those of us who manage to drink and not punch must be punished. We all relate to alcohol differently... the song below, by that glorious Texas country singer Hayes Carll, sums up my relationship with booze perfectly.... less violence, more pathetic failure at life.

I keep knockin over whiskeys
no ones laughin at my jokes
they got me spinnin round in circles
like a tin can in the spoke

When i left town this mornin
with a smile upon my face
ahh babe i swear i never knew
I'd end up in this place...

So. My fourth Daily Carlo. Don't thank me, just buy me a beer. Via the Pay Pal button on the right of the blog. I promise that after drinking the beer, I won't hit anyone, unless you specifically request it.

I'm so sorry for what I did. Here, have some Shovels and Rope and Hayes Carll to make up for it

You know, it's hard to admit when you are wrong. Luckily for me, then, that I wasn't.

However, it is true that my last post was about that strange and disturbing "celebrity" called (for what I am sure is some horrific reason) "Redfoo" and I did fail to provide a "trigger warning".

Now, as part of my research for that post, I subjected myself to some of the clips for Redfoo's "songs" and, believing pain shared is pained doubled, felt it was only fair readers also had the chance to have their faith in the future of humanity decimanted by posting the clips as part of the post.

It had to be done. I am sorry, but it did. THE WORLD HAD TO KNOW! But I am truly sorry for any suffering my actions caused.

To make it up to my huge number of readers, fans and fanatical followers, I hearby provide some brain-cleansing music from two of the greatest acts on God's Own Earth -- Shovels and Rope and Hayes Carll.

I have ranted on the glories of both on this blog at some point. Hayes Carll is the brilliant country singer-songwriter from Houston, Texas who has never written a bad song. He is your classic drunken and slightly dishevelled troubadour, staggering from gig to gig with various degrees of facial hair, singing songs alternately witty and heartbreakingly beautiful.

Hayes has increasingly made a name for himself in the US with the sheer quality of his songwriting and performances, but he is not well-enough known in this country by any measure. I saw him in Sydney a couple of years ago with maybe 100 others, max, and he was stunningly brilliant.

Also, this beer can from the US reads 'To Carlo, love Hayes' and was sent to me by DonnaCat, my friend/only person I know from Arizona, who got him to sign it after a gig. It may be the most valuable thing I own.

Shovels and Rope... well... they are another act getting increasing well-deserved attention and critical acclaim. They are the truly glorious husband-and-wife duo of Cary Ann Hearst and Michael Trent, both established performers before joining forces -- Hearst a country singer, Trent heading a rock'n'roll band. Together... they are something else.

With the pair alternating between guitar and drums, their music is ragged, rowdy, rough-edged and earthy. It is filled with raw energy and features absolutely beautiful harmonies. That combination -- of the raw earthiness of their frill-free recordings (their breakthrough album O' Be Joyful was recorded in the back of their van while they travelled around gigging endlessly), with the beauty of their harmonies raises their tales of low-life desperados, murderers and battlers to a whole other level.

Listening to Shovels and Rope is one of those all-too-rare experiences in this godforsaken world -- it actually makes me feel happy. They are so good, I feel like crying when I hear them.

There are, of course, countless labels thrown on their music -- from "Americana" to a wide range of subgenres ending in "-folk" or "-country". It is the kinda thing they take up in a good-natured way in their song Cavalier.

But all that really matters is Shovels and Rope are how music should sound, a reminder that late monopoly capitalism has not, despite its best efforts, snuffed out all talent or enthusiastic energy out of popular music.

They have also just released a great new album called "Swimmin' Time" and there is a documentary I am desperate to see about them called "The Ballad of Shovels and Rope". Tragically, I also have no beer can signed by either half of Shovels and Rope.

So here are the clips. One Shovels and Rope song as a taste, then a clip of an extended live performance, then the formula is repeated for Hayes Carll.

AND THEN THERE IS A *TOM WAITS* BONUS!!! I KINOW RIGHT??? A TOM WAITS BONUS!!! Yes, clips of Shovels and Rope and Hayes Carll each covering a Tom Waits song live!


***

Shovels and Rope!!!

'We're hanging here within an inch of our lives, from the day we're born till the day we die...'

'I love you like gunpowder loves a good spark...' Just one of the great lines...

***

Hayes Carll!!!

'Ah, some people just gunna sneak on through, others gotta rattle that cage...'




"I'm gunna leave these blues behind, for some other fool to find...' HA! As if Hayes! As if.



TOM WAITS BONUS!!!




'You're the letter from Jesus on the bathroom wall, you're Mother Superior in only a bra...' Shovels and Rope cover the title track from Tom Waits' most recent album.




'When I see the five o'clock news, I don't wanna grow up...' Hayes' covers Tom's classic from his 1992 album Bone Machine.


EXTRA EXTRA BONUS!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Yeah I know what you are thinking! The Tom Waits Bonus is just AWESOME surely there is NOTHING ELSE AWESOME to give us???

Well... indeed there is an extra bonus after the first extra bonus! And that is... a "duet" between Hayes Carll and Shovel and Rope's Cary Ann Hearst!!! I KNOW RIGHT??? HOW MINDBLOWING AWESOME IS THAT??????????




'You were falling like the Alamo, talking fast and drinking slow...' This duet was featured on Hayes Carll's 2011 album KMAG YOYO.

No need to thank me for all this, world. Just buy me a beer some time. No, seriously, BUY ME A BEER I AM REALLY FUCKING THIRSTY!

So what the fuck's been happening, world? 2013? What *was* that shit?

Yeah well, end of the year, and what a fucking year eh? There were some real horror stories, some real nightmarish "how can humanity DO this?" moments. And I am sure the absolute lowest moment for all of us was the truly stomach-churning news emerging from Nigeria in November:

Police enforcing strict Islamic law in Nigeria publicly destroyed more than 240,000 bottles of beer in an attempt to crack down on alcohol consumption and other "immoral" behavior in the area, an official said Thursday.

Graphic scenes of a beer holocaust emerged from Nigeria in November.

Christ... all that beer... 240,000 bottles... it is so hard to see the good in the world when you read things like this. Man's inhumanity to beer, eh? It gets to you. For God's sake, world, how could we have JUST SAT ON YOUR HANDS WHILE SUCH SLAUGHTER WENT ON?!?

But, amid the carnage, there was progress. For instance, Tilburg has become the latest Dutch city to embracy "drunk voting".

For the next municipal elections in March 2014 Tilburg, the sixth biggest city of Holland, opens a special voting booths at midnight in the city centre to attract more voters. In other big cities like Rotterdam, The Hague and Groningen this was already the case four years ago. Several hundreds of people made a small stop to vote when they returned home from the bars.

Sure, this might seem a small thing, but symbolically this is an important win. I mean, just look around the world and see what happens when you force electorates to vote sober.

It can only improve the political situation.

Meanwhile, in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, Supreme Leader Kim Jong-Un showed the world *just how it is fucking done* by ordering the execution of two advisors to uncle and counter-revolutionary traitor Jang Song-Thaek -- while said to be "very drunk".

Fuck, *that* is how you rule a country! In my opinion, this style of government should be extended globally. The Australian political situation would be a *fuck load* more interesting if you never knew which political figure or high-ranking bureaucrat had been bumped off when you checked the news in the morning.

Hell, I might even start watching Q & A just to see who had survived -- especially if they show footage of the executions from the past week. Among other things, you give Labor hacks machine guns, there goes the "workers' party" in a glorious burst of gunfire and blood splatters.

'I'm drunk! Kill him!' We need a ruler like this, if only to make current affairs programs more watchable.

And they say binge drinking is out of control among young people in this country! Exactly how many people do they execute on an average night out?

The sad truth is it is all a beat up. Kids don't drink *enough*. Seriously, whenever I hear the youth of today are out of control with their drinking, my response is *if only*. In my experience, this is the most sober-minded young generation I have ever had the misfortune to meet.

Sure the media and cops and governments beat up "drunken violence", but stats actually show a *21%* decline in non-domestic violent assaults since 2008.

It is just as an excuse to give the cops more powers. And more often than not, as this horror story of a savage unprovoked violent assault from Brisbane shows, it is the *cops* you gotta worry about if you're out at night having a drink.

But on the youth... I don't get their lack of commitment to drunkenness, I just don't. I mean, I get that the price of alcohol in licensed venues is outrageous... and all the decent pubs are being gentrified into stainless-steel hellholes, and the severe undermining of the social safety net has left a generation dependent on precarious casualised work just to survive, and the pressure of actually making sure the education you increasingly pay more and more for actually translates sooner rather than later into a badly needed job is really high and... well FUCK just typing that shit makes me want a drink.

Of course, shit aint easy all round. The Global Recession begun by the 2008 financial crisis is hitting millions of people really hard, but sometimes, it is the personal stories that really bring it home. Like the heartrending story of England's Princess Michael of Kent.

Princess Michael of Kent has explained how she and her husband have been hit by austerity; meaning they can no longer dine out as it's "too extravagant".

The Princess, who is an interior designer and author, told The Times in an interview to promote her debut novel: "I am in very austere economic times too, thank you very much! We’ve cut back dramatically ..."

The Princess, who lives with her husband at Kensington Palace, added: "We invite people here [Kensington Palace]. I cook. Well, if I’m giving a dinner party I get in help."

She also told the interviewer of her love for budget carrier easyJet saying: "it’s the only direct route to Biarritz [a luxurious seaside town in south-west France]."

But there are good news stories amid all the gloom! Why, here in Australia, we just recently heard the *great news* that 2900 Holden workers have been, in Prime Minister Tony Abbott's words, "liberated" from their jobs.

Yes, no more are these longs-suffering proletarians oppressed by a reliable, livable wage! Modern-day Che Guevaras are the liberation fighters known as General Motors executives, who took millions every year in taxpayer-funded subsidies only to shut down all production when profits weren't good enough.

Sure, liberation is never easy, as Comrade Abbott acknowledges: "Some of them will find it difficult, but many of them will probably be liberated to pursue new opportunities and to get on with their lives."

'All we have to see, is that I don't belong to you and you don't belong to me! Freedom!' Holden workers have learned to appreciate George Michael's wise words now they have been liberated from a regular, decent wage.

And of course, this year we actually got to see the End of the World, and I am not talking about some shit self-referential Hollywood film. I am talking about the End of the World that wasn't broadcast -- in the Philippines post-Super Typhoon Haiyan, possibly the strongest storm to hit land on record.

In the Philippines, you'd struggle to find a single person willing to accept, or even listen to, Australian environment minister Greg "But I read It On Wikipedia" Hunt's insistence that referring to the scientifically-accepted impact of global warming on extreme weather events is "playing politics". It is hard to do that when it is a matter of life or death.

Also, last year was Australia's hottest on record and globally, 13 of the 14 hottest years on record have occurred since 2000. But whatever. Nice planet we had, and all that. In more important news, what has happened in *my* life?

Well, thank you for asking, I thought we'd *never* get round to it! I've been writing my Carlo's Corner column for Green Left, coz the goddamn editor keeps insisting, no matter how hungover I try to point out I am when, a day or so after the deadline, I am pressed for copy.

And in the process of writing "Carlo's Corner", I got blogged by far right-wing climate denying crypto-fascist/Daily Telegraph comment editor Tim Blair -- after I dared to mock Australia's role in destroying the UN Warsaw climate talks -- and Blair's congratulatory celebration of this ugly fact.

I was then predictably attacked in the comment section by Blair's right-wing zombies, which is only to be expected... but one went too far and *dared* to criticise my poetry!!! MY POETRY!!! HE SPECIFICALLY LINKED TO THIS POEM WHICH IS MY ABSOLUTE MASTERPIECE!!!

I then defended my poetry, and another of these bastards, called "Right Wing Demon", said: "Carlo, so I went to the link and read your poetry. Sorry, it is not much better than my poetry which is crap. I wouldn’t be so proud of that effort if I were you."

All I can say is I *really* wanna read Right Wing Demon's poetic efforts, if his poetic efforts (and we can say with 100% certainty we are dealing with a "he") are even worse than my totally serious and and not at all written as fast I could type them while drunk masterpieces.

Asides from that, well I did some stand-up stuff, particularly via the ever-wonderful Comedy on Edge at The Pub Formerly Known As The Shannon in Chippendale). I didn't do a huge amount, really, but when I think on it, I kinda got to do some incredible shit.

* I got to take part in Green Left's annual comedy debate down in Melbourne hosted by Rod Quantock. Performing with Quantock meant a lot to me, coz he is a legend of the comedy scene -- renown for his left-wing political bent and for starring for years in all those ads as Capt'n Snooze. He also said some nice shit about me, which you can read on the poster for my own show a bit below.

* I got flown to Darwin to do a gig for the Darwin Asylum Seeker Support and Advocacy Network in August. Rod Quantock was originally going to perform at the event, but had to pull out. After they almost secured a bunch of performers with actual *names* in comedy, my name got thrown into the mix.

Never having been to the Northern Territory, I was pretty keen... until, having agreed, it was revealed the gig was just outside Darwin in Palmerston at a Sports Club with the explicit aim of drawing in the redneck locals to seek to "educate" them away from hostility to asylum seekers via a free comedy and trivia event.

My mental image of having to make a Blues Brothers-esque escape from the venue as bottles rained down around me was not altered when, before it started, a local, not knowing I was there to perform, cheerfully told me his exact views on these dickheads who'd come to his local to talk about boat people, and his personal solution to the problem of all these boats coming: blow 'em all up.

As it turns out, I had no need to worry. The locals all happily shunned the well-meaning event and stayed in the front bar while I performed to the 20-odd refugee rights supporters who had turned out. Which was fine by me... And then afterwards, I got to see Darwin and other bits of the Top End with Robbo and Conehead, who had made the trip up.

We saw the best Darwin's nightlife had to offer, featuring a violent bar brawl involving off duty soldiers. Then we went to Adelaide River to see far more socially agreeable creatures.

Adelaide River. More agreeable company than off-duty soldiers in a bar. Photo by Conehead.

* I did my first show at a festival, going up to Brisbane for the Brisbane Fringe Comedy Festival to perform "The Yucky County: Just Make Clive Palmer PM". It went well, was quite a lot of fun, and, in passing, I got Rod Quantock to give me a nice quote for publicity.

'Carlo Sands is a sharp, well-informed political comedian who crafts laughter from the absurdities of Left and Right '-- Capt'n Snooze.

* And I performed, along Twiggy Palmer (who interrupted Abbott's victory night speech), Newcastle comic Hannah G, and Michael Hing who has been on TV and shit, at Green Left's enormously successful "Welcome to the Abbottoir" in November. You can see my clip below, and all four performances are here.

'So Adelaide's bus tickets, eh?' If there is one thing I have learned performing comedy across this wide brown land of ours, it is that people love to laugh at Adelaide.

But, of course, it would be totally remiss of me to not mention the most important, inspiring and just GODDAMN GLORIOUS event in the ENTIRE WORLD for 2013 ... the Western Sydney Wanderers winning the A-League premiership in their FIRST EVER SEASON!!!

This feat was achieved in the very final game of the regular season on March 29, when many thousands of Wanderers fans made the trip up the see the mighty red and black down Newcastle 3-0 to conclude one of the most remarkable feats in sporting history.

'Who do we sing for?' Wanderers players (above) celebrate winning the Premier's Plate in the club's first ever season with the fans (below).

Well... fuck, that was glorious. But anyway, here is Texas country singer Hayes Carll summing up what it is like trying to *live* in this godforsaken hellhole of a world.

'And I'm out here in the filth and the squalor... and all I wanna do is stomp and holler...'