1950s/140: “Farther Up the Road” (Bobby Bland)

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“Farther Up the Road”, Bobby “Blue” Bland, 1957, Don Robey and Joe Medwick Veasey. #1 US R&B, #43 Billboard Hot 100. Dave Marsh’s Heart of Rock & Soul #333.

Thing I was curious about, is Bland’s nickname. “Blue”. What I wonder about is, just how was it his nickname? Was it as simple as, his friends would call him “Blue”? Hey, Blue, I heard your new record yesterday, great stuff. That would be straightforward. But as far as I can tell, his records didn’t get sold as either Blue Bland records or Bobby Blue records. They were either Bobby Bland records or Bobby “Blue” Bland records. So, not the same kind of deal where Gary “U.S.” Bonds’ singles were sold sometimes as just by “U.S. Bonds”. Was “Blue” a nickname that he used at all, or just one that he sort of generally had? It’s not important. But I wasn’t there, so I don’t know.

1950s/141: “Raunchy” (Bill Justis)

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“Raunchy”, Bill Justis, 1957, Bill Justis and Sidney Manker. #2 on the Billboard Hot 100, #1 US R&B, #1 on Toronto’s CHUM charts.

Our first instrumental! Always a good time. I wonder what’s supposed to be so raunchy about it? Really it sounds to me like more of a car song in its cadence.

1950s/142: “Tallahassee Lassie” (Freddy Cannon)

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“Tallahassee Lassie”, Freddy Cannon, 1959, Bruce Moore, Bob Crewe, Frank Slay, and Frederick Picariello (Freddy Cannon’s real name). #6 on the Billboard Hot 100 and Toronto’s CHUM charts.

This has got to be a fun song to sing for a professional. Big flashy rhymes, deep ah-ooos, what’s not to like. I wonder if people who live in Tallahassee are sick of it.

1950s/143: “Cry Me a River” (Julie London)

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“Cry Me a River”, Julie London, 1955, Arthur Hamilton. Gold record.

I always like this jazzy loungey kind of stuff. (Unless I don’t.*) We’ll get to rock’n’roll pretty soon, I promise.

—

*Let me spoil one thing about this countdown right now. There’s no Frank Sinatra in it. Frank Sinatra gives me the pip. I’m not fond of his style and I don’t like his persona at all. Could I make an exception? For the sake of a better countdown, theoretically? Of course. But here’s the thing.

I am consciously trying to include women and people of colour in this countdown. I don’t have quotas in mind; I’m just paying attention. Because I promise you if I didn’t pay attention I would produce a very white male list, and I don’t want it to be that way. (The ’50s part of the countdown is going to be pretty male anyway. Too much so. I can’t help it.) So, while I might stretch a point to get somebody into this countdown, I’m not going to do it for a Sinatra or a Crosby.

1950s/144: “Unchained Melody” (Roy Hamilton)

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“Unchained Melody”, Roy Hamilton, 1955, Alex North and Hy Zaret. #1 on the R&B Best Sellers chart.

This is a song that lots and lots of people have covered, and R&B singer Roy Hamilton was one such person, and he had a big hit with it, and it is the first song in our countdown. You may not know his version, but you probably know a version.

Anyway, if you’re only casually familiar with the song, by anybody, you may not know about the title. You might think that the songwriters considered their new composition and said, “What we’ve got here is a song that derives its grandeur from the possibility of love overcoming great distance and time, and that may inspire in its listeners a sense of freedom. We could just pick out one of the lyrics and call the song that, like, ‘My Love, My Darling,’ or similar. That would work. But I have an idea: for the title, we could dispense with the lyrics altogether and just refer to the song in terms of the emotional and musical liberation we’re trying to evoke. We can call it ‘Unchained Melody’.”

You might think that. That would be a better story. But no. It’s called that because it’s from a prison movie called Unchained. It’s not “Unchained Melody” so much as it’s ‘the Unchained melody’.

Oh well.

Summer 42: runagates

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Dearest Zann,

Crown Prince Erwheel interrupted me. “If I won’t listen to my own family when they tell me I can’t beat the laurans, why should I listen to you?”

“I’m telling you more than that,” I said. “You can’t beat the greenkind and you can’t beat the people of the city, and they can’t beat each other, and they probably can’t beat you.”

“I say we can.”

“You can’t, because you don’t know what’s going on. Why do you think the greenkind are here in the first place?” So much for my prepared speech.

“The laurans. Call them the fucking laurans,” Prolonger said. “‘Greenkind’.”

“Why do you think they’re here?” I said again.

“Who knows why they do anything?” Prolonger said.

“I don’t know,” Erwheel said. “Because they wanted to conquer us.”

“It’s a damn good question,” Castellanatus the wizard said. “I’ve spent some time trying to find out.”

“It’s because they were driven out of the laur,” I said. “They have nowhere else to go. I’ve seen the laur recently. It’s horrible, and there are other things living there now. They can’t go back.”

Wryth, standing behind me, said, “One suspects that if we could only know it, we would find that those who drove out the greenkind were themselves fleeing more powerful foes. And so on through the worlds.” I hadn’t thought of that.

“How in piss did you see the laur?” Castellanatus demanded of me. “I’ve been trying to get in there for I don’t know how long and I can’t do it. I’ve tried everything I can think of.”

“There’s a lost highway north of Crideon. I’ll draw you a map later if you want. But I don’t recommend it.”

“So,” Erwheel said, “you’re saying that the laurans can’t retreat, is that it? That’s why we can’t beat them?”

“Sort of. Also, obviously, they’re more magically powerful. Also, you’re counting on the people of Crideon to join with you against the greenkind, and they won’t. Not for long.”

“They will if they know what’s good for them,” Prolonger said.

“No,” I said, still addressing Erwheel. “They hate you. Your piss-swilling family oppressed the people of Crideon too harshly for too long, and they celebrated when you disappeared. The people of Crideon don’t love the greenkind, but they will never want you to come back.”

Prolonger glared at me. “It really is you. I don’t know what happened to you, but you’ve got the same shit mouth as the Ybel I knew. Did I hear right? Is that really your husband leading the rebels in the city?”

“Where else would he be?” I said.

Erwheel cleared his throat. “All this is interesting and I’m glad to know it, but it’s of no use to me. Ybel, for the sake of keeping the conversation moving, I won’t kill you for insulting my family. At least not right now. I hope you’ve got something to suggest, because I’m not going to give up and grow strawberries just because you don’t think I can win.”

“Ay,” I said. “Sue for peace. Start negotiations with Acea and the people of Crideon, and with the greenkind in the Palace. Agree on a way that all three of you can share the city peacefully. And cooperate to remove Lord Clear.”

“Why should I?” Erwheel said. “It’s my city. Mine. I am the rightful heir of the Talistag family, and I will not negotiate away my birthright to runagates and laurans.”

“I get it,” Prolonger said. “She’s trying to stop the war, because of course she is, but nobody will come to the negotiating table with her, because she’s nobody. So she comes to us, because we’re not nobody.”

“I’m not a woman anymore,” I told Prolonger. “I’m a piss-poor man, I know that, and I never should have gone through the transformation in the first place, but it was my choice and I don’t deny it. You might as well call me ‘he’.” I turned to Erwheel. “I already told you. You should negotiate because you can’t win. More than that, you should negotiate because nobody else can win either, and the war is killing the city. If being a prince means anything, doesn’t it mean that you should act to help your city?”

Erwheel scowled and sat back.

“I told you not to trust him. Her. Him,” Prolonger said.

“Shut up,” Erwheel said. “Youngspar, what do you think?”

One of his other advisors, a middle-aged woman with a burn mark where her left eyebrow should have been, cleared her throat. “It’s not what you wanted, Highness, but it’s what has come to us. I think Ybel’s plan may be the wisest course forward.”

“I want to hear more about this,” Castellanatus said. “I want to know about the relationship between the Valnelatars and Lord Clear. There’s some kind of schism between them? Do I understand you right? And I want to know about this transformation of yours, Ybel, and what it has to do with all of this.”

“The people of Crideon were sporadically rebelling against the greenkind,” I said. “You know that part. The Valnelatars found Lord Clear somewhere and put him in charge of defeating the rebellion, because of how formidable he is. But he immediately went too far and tried to use all kinds of dangerous magic against the city. And eventually he went as far as to seize Cas Crid, which was a strike against the Valnelatars as much as it was against the rebellion, because it gave him, himself, the magical status of the ruler of the city.”

“How do you know that?” Castellanatus said.

“I’m a Rosolla Guard,” I said. “The other Rosolla Guards are compelled to obey Lord Clear now. They’re the backbone of his forces in Cas Crid. But I never swore the oath, so he can’t command me the way he does them.”

“You little shit,” Prolonger said.

“And what about your transformation? How does that fit into this?”

“It doesn’t,” I lied. “It was part of a completely separate adventure. Nothing to do with this problem at all,” I lied some more.

All my love,

Ybel

Summer 41: chase

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Dearest Zann,

We spent the next few days riding to a little town northwest of Crideon. Cranvur. About seventy-five, a hundred miles away from the city. We scavenged horses from some abandoned farms and from some marauders who tried us on and got killed by Wryth. We didn’t have much food, but Wryth had money and we found a couple of places to buy some.

“You don’t really need me on this expedition at all,” I said as we rode.

“One must never feel sorry for oneself,” she said. “This is your country; these problems cannot be solved by an Amaydyan. And you have experience dealing with facets of these matters that I never knew existed. Most of our plan was your idea. I think you may be indispensable.”

“That’s a frightening thought. I suppose what I meant to say was, thank you for coming along on this excursion and buying food and killing enemies. I don’t know how I could have coped without you.”

“Oh, I am happy to do it. You may reciprocate by removing the tariffs on Amaydyan textile exports to Crideon.”

“Consider it done.”

We saw soldiers guarding the approaches to Cranvur long before we ever saw Cranvur. I didn’t want to give anyone any bad surprises, so I beckoned the first pair to come out of the brush. They didn’t know how to take that, but eventually one of them stayed back with a crossbow pointed at us while the other one came out to talk.

“Who are you two?” he demanded.

“I’m a Rosolla guard from Crideon, and I’m here to speak to Crown Prince Erwheel. I’ve been in the palace recently, and Cas Crid, and Lord Clear hates me,” I told him. “This is my colleague Ancient Wryth, representing our Amaydyan allies.”

“Shit,” the soldier said. “I don’t… All right.” He took a blue flag out of his belt. “Ride on in. Show this as you go, the whole time. That will get you into the town.”

We thanked him and rode on. There were more soldiers and encampments on the way. Seemed to be pretty well organized, actually, which I hadn’t expected. I saw some of the Cranvur townspeople, too, and they didn’t look frightened, which was a good sign.

The town was built around a small keep, where Erwheel made his headquarters. There was a lot of activity around the gate, wagons of supplies being unloaded. My first idea was to wait until it was less busy to try to go in, but Wryth pushed us forward and pointed at my flag when the head gate-guard glared at us. He waved us through.

Once inside the keep, we tied up our horses and looked around for the main hall. Before we could make a move, a guard officer stepped up to us. “What’s your business here?” she said.

“I’d like an audience with Prince Erwheel,” I said.

“And I’d like a pony,” she answered.

“Understood. Lots of petitioners and hustlers. Just point me to a person who can say ‘yes’.”

This went on for a while. The officer sent me to a baron. I hate barons. This particular one asked me a lot of questions, including some I didn’t want to answer. I told him just enough of the truth to get him to agree to an audience… the following morning. And in the meantime Wryth and I could piss off out of the keep. I did get a chit from him that would get us back in the gates, so I didn’t think he was lying about the audience.

“If you had told me ten years ago that I’d be begging the Talistag family for permission to save people’s lives,” I said to Wryth as we led our horses out of the keep.

“They aren’t worse than any other ruling family,” she told me placidly.

“No, they aren’t,” I said. “No, they are not.”

“We probably wouldn’t have been friends ten years ago, I suppose.”

“No, I was a lot more fiery back then. What were you like?”

“Oh, nowhere near as fiery as I am now,” she drawled.

We managed to keep out of trouble that evening, and presented ourselves in the main hall of the keep the next morning. Crown Prince Erwheel was standing beside the end of a long table, surrounded by advisers, as petitioners came and went around them. Wryth identified two of the advisers as Castellanatus, a wizard, and Kista, a caravanner. Castellanatus had three eyes.

When we had an opening we stepped to the end of the table. “Your Highness,” I said. “I’m a representative of the Rosolla Guard, and I’m uniquely familiar with the situation inside Crideon, and most of the major players. I’ve come to propose a plan–“

“I know that voice,” said one of the other advisers. I hadn’t gotten a look at him before. He had shaved the mustache and beard, too, and put on a bit of weight. “You’re… oh… Ybel, that’s the name. From the Boltmarch. But you–“

It was Prolonger, a nasty mercenary who had been the scourge of the peasantry seven years ago in the Boltmarch. Under normal circumstances, he was the last person I wanted to see, and these weren’t normal circumstances. “I don’t want to hear it, Prolonger. I’m here on serious business and you’ll shut your head if you don’t want to be chasing it down the street.” Wryth raised her eyebrows. Well, one of them.

Prolonger drew his sword, but Erwheel seemed delighted. “Prolonger? You know this man?”

“Know? This man? Not as well as I thought! But you shouldn’t trust him, I can tell you that!”

“Now I’m curious. Ybel? Sit down and tell me your story. Put up your sword, Prolonger, you obviously want to hear it too, put up your sword.”

I didn’t like this at all, but at least Erwheel was listening. As I sat down, Wryth rattled her own sword and caught Prolonger’s eye with her own stern one. He folded his arms.

I started into my planned speech. “Nobody can win the war in Crideon…”

All my love,

Ybel

Fifteen quotes for our time

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I’ve been collecting things that seem to me to be of the moment, or for the moment. Here are fifteen quotes that you’ve probably seen around. I think they do a good job of describing or explaining our time, and I thought it might be a good idea if someone like me put them all in the same place.

They’re in alphabetical order. Please let me know if you have others to suggest.

“Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition …There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.” – Crooked Timber blog comment, classical music composer Frank Wilhoit

“First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.” – Martin Niemoller

“I told them to fix their hearts or die.” – Twin Peaks, David Lynch

“If the rule you followed brought you to this, of what use was the rule?” – No Country for Old Men, Cormac McCarthy

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” – I, Candidate for Governor; Upton Sinclair

“Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.” – Anti-Semite and Jew, Jean-Paul Sartre

“One day, when it’s safe, when there’s no personal downside to calling a thing what it is, when it’s too late to hold anyone accountable, everyone will have always been against this.” – One Day Everyone Will Always Have Been Against This, Omar el Akkad

“Shit is fucked up and bullshit” – Occupy Wall Street protest sign

“Sin, young man, is when you treat people as things.” – Carpe Jugulum, Terry Pratchett

“That which can be destroyed by the truth should be.” – Seeker’s Mask, P.C. Hodgell

“The cruelty is the point.” – The Atlantic, Adam Serwer

“The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters” – Antonio Gramsci

“The purpose of a system is what it does.” The Heart of Enterprise, Stafford Beer

“Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity. – “The Second Coming”, William Butler Yeats

“Yes, the planet got destroyed. But for a beautiful moment in time we created a lot of value for shareholders.” – New Yorker cartoon, Tom Toro

[Edited Oct 31 2026 to add this one:] Spider-Man: “You can rewrite DNA on the fly, and you’re using it to turn people into dinosaurs? But with tech like that, you could cure cancer!” Sauron: “But I don’t want to cure cancer. I want to turn people into dinosaurs.” – Elliott Kalan, Spider-Man and the X-Men v1 #2

Choosin’ Texas (Ella Langley, 2025)

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Choosin’ Texas – Ella Langley (2025). #1 on the Billboard Hot 100. Longest-running #1 song in the history of the Hot 100. Song of the summer for 2026 (citation needed). #1 in Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, and the U.K. Certified platinum in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the U.K., and the U.S. The English-speaking world, give or take!

This is a pleasant little country song that somehow captured people’s attention this year and thereby achieved unprecedented success. It’s pretty good. I don’t love it; Langley leans on too many of the words and drags them out too long, and it slows down the whole enterprise. That’s not a criticism of her; she’s doing what the song needs her to do. It’s a song with a lot of drags in it. There’s no help for it. But it’s still a pretty good song.

I promise you the next paragraph is not about current politics.

Like all right-thinking people I have no time for all the mythology around Texas, like, everything’s bigger and better there, and the people are tougher, or whatever it is. And there are so many songs that lean into that. I mean, I’m sure it is a beautiful place, and I’m sure that a lot of the people of Texas are super great. I agree that it’s special! Just like every other place on the big blue marble! Anyway, I was worried that this was going to be one of those kinds of songs, like a Texas-chauvinistic anthem, and it’s not. That’s not what it’s doing at all. So that’s fine.

The lyrics are clever. “I wasn’t a match for that kind of spark”? That’s pretty good is what that is. There are allusions to other singers and songs, which I always like. Langley has a nice voice. It’s a solid effort all around.

But the discussion at the moment on the soshs is about whether it’s reasonable to expect people to have heard “Choosin’ Texas” or not. A lot of people haven’t. I hadn’t, until a couple of days ago. I had heard of it, and figured I might do well to check it out. But here’s the thing: all the people who are saying they haven’t heard it? They have heard of it. You can tell they have, because they’re involved in a conversation about it. Which means that the system is working.

Even today, with curated playlists and the continued withering of mass media and shared culture, you can’t hide from the blockbuster country hit. A song this successful should be well-known outside the boundaries of its genre, and it is! So there’s no problem!