I've been out of town for several days and I come home to the news of Lee Hazlewood's death. I saw nothing in the Tahoe papers so when I got home I dug around online and found unfeeling blurbs. This upsets me. I knew he didn't get the attention here he deserved but I had no idea his death would be met with near total indifference. I scoured the news sources and found mostly single paragraphs. NPR did a relatively nice piece but nothing was deserving of the man's stature.

Lee moved to Sweden because America didn't get him, and it's times like these that I have to put down my Euro-attack card and call the continentalers superior. They got Lee, and we didn't. Fuck us.

There is so much to ridicule across the pond, but sometimes they get art in a way we miss. Dead Moon plays to thousands over there, and even Thin White Rope conquered Belgium. I go to the Stork Club to see Bob Log and twelve people show up. Over there, they declare a BLIII show a national holiday. It makes you wonder. Of course, they embrace their share of shite, but still.

So Lee is dead. And I am sad. Aside from Townes Van Zandt, Lee has dominated my turntable more than anyone else for the past three years. Lee was a product of a different era, in which beautiful women were goddesses, Scotch was mandatory at 4:00, and work was what you loved and then put aside for drinking. Lee made hits for money and then music for laughs.

Very few "celebrity" deaths hit me, but this one did. I'm not gonna mourn the man by playing his music because I've already been doing that for years. Tonight, I'm gonna sit outside on my deck and look at the stars (the next best thing to a hamick), and I'm gonna think about a girl named Phaedra. We all know her. And I'm gonna raise my lust to Lee.