In 2004, I actually struggled to come up with a whole column's worth of screw-ups and bad calls. Not so this year. Ugh. After trawling through the files, I was hard-pressed to find a handful of Border Radio columns that didn't trigger a painful jolt of self-loathing upon review.
Lots of guys like to swap pants with new friends. Especially after sharing a few pitchers of cheap domestic beer. To his credit, singer/guitarist Brent Lorang of local foursome Grownup Trouble didn't flinch when I proposed this randy display of male bonding during our first interview last June. Miraculously, we both had the common sense to check our pockets before trading. If only we'd been as on-the-ball weeks later when we undid the deed. I didn't notice that there was an extra set of car keys in my trousers until the next morning... by which time Brent had been forced to call a locksmith to get into his vehicle. As the French say, "les oops!"
In November, I may have lied to a publicist by saying The Stranger had already gone to print when, in fact it hadn't, just because I didn't want to excise something juicy from Border Radio. That was unprofessional. But hell, the comments pertained to a member of Led Zeppelin, and provided the only noteworthy paragraph in a column I otherwise squeezed out of my ass in order to conform to that weird "Touched by an Uncle" theme.
Getting in to see Dierks Bentley play to a sold-out Showbox in July? Free... after badgering a lot of very kind people at the last possible minute. More Jack-and-Cokes than I can remember? Well, I can't put a price tag on that either, but I know my wallet was very empty the next day. Having my picture taken with the curly-locked CMT darling after he had done the post-show grip-and-grin with a million other fans? Worthless. By that time I was tanked to the gills, and in all our photos together my eyes are rolling back in my head. (Kudos to Dierks, though, for keeping a safe distance, thereby making it easier to crop my drunken mug out of some otherwise handsome shots.)
Earlier this month, The Stranger covered the Townes Van Zandt film Be Here to Love Me in not one, but three different places in the paper (Stranger Suggests, On Screen, and Border Radio). Yet in none of these instances did we point curious readers toward the excellent DVD edition of Heartworn Highways, James Szalapski's documentary about the reemergence of alt-country in Texas circa the late '70s. Sheesh. Rent it immediately, and enjoy additional footage of Townes, as well as Guy Clark, John Hiatt, Steve Earle, and Rodney Crowell.
And what of last year's promises to do better? Well, I finally stopped name-dropping Neko Case every other week... only to replace her with Eddie Spaghetti. Who will be Mr. or Ms. Ubiquitous in Border Radio for 2006? Right now, odds-on favorite is Mark Pickerel.
