MICHIGAN'S UPPER PENINSULA-#1

Hey y'all! Welcome to my inaugural MICHIGAN'S UPPER PENINSULA post. This series of installments will be devoted to records that I shockingly haven't heard before age 25. I'm calling it MICHIGAN'S UPPER PENINSULA, because, as you've probably guessed, I've been mentally lounging around Mackinac Island waiting for T.Rex's Electric Warrior to finally hit the shelves 35 years after its original release. Anyway, The Byrds's "Sweetheart of the Rodeo" gets today's cherry popping honors. Somehow this record was and continues to be hailed as a masterpiece, even though it was made 3,673 times before its release in 1969. It's tuneful, I GUESS, but really, wasn't John Fogerty doing something more authentic and better before and after the "essential" portion of the Birds's career? Please dear readers, inform me as to why Magnet Magazine's bitter 40-something power-pop concubines have spoken so glowingly about it since 1993. I've been listening to Xiu Xiu concurrently, and I must say: post-punk rock is the true heir of Nieztche's observation that music can discover and communicate the language of pathos, passionate desire, and the dramatic events which take place in the depths of man. Wow, that's all folks. What more can I say? I'll never put one of its tracks on a The Streets's Turn The Page-style infinite repeat. It's not bad...it's just...yawn. Gimmie Micachu! Gimmie Xiu Xiu! But do not, under any circumstances, gimmie a bunch of Englishmen trying to channel the pre-civil rights era rural U.S.A. Zeitgiest.