Guru - "Pooley". A training regimen. A parade of many different floats. A decade of variegated boyfriends. A very tall smoothie. A bag of weird 78s. A rave on the steppe. "Pooley", by Ghana's Guru, is all these things to me. It's a broken virtuoso, a lopsided shuffle. No one dances like this song dances. Guru has revealed he is replacing the word 'Shashi' with "Pooley" and wants everyone to be aware of the change in name.¹ Sorry Shashi, hello Pooley. Fall down/get up. Read this post aloud and maybe you'll get what I mean; maybe the images will fire in your brain, like pistol-shots, like bursting seed-pods. I had a dream where all my papers fell out of my pockets, scattering, lost. And I was OK with it. Let's hear the song again. I like that since they were invented, dance-clubs have never stopped: every year, every place, there is a discothèque. Last night I listened to the poet Eileen Myles read about responsibility, dogs, mail-men, never-ending life; I felt her lines like pistol-shots, like bursting seed-pods; I thought: When she was born, when she was grown-up, when she was writing this, there were always discotheques. [Guru's twitter]

Doug Paisley - "It's Not Too Late (To Say Goodbye)". I would love this song even if only for the reason that it has Mary Margaret O'Hara. Mary Margaret O'Hara singing, singing back-up, with black in her hair and youth in her voice, the country belle she never was. But more than Mary it's a song of good chord and perfect verse - the kind of tune you want to get broken in the jukebox, be doomed to repeat. Paisley sings without self-consciousness or ambition - sings just plainly, truly, with a heart of gold. Take this song into the wilderness, build a brave city with a melancholy name. [buy]

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Happy birthday, dad.

(image by Micah Lidberg)