04 No. Central Iowa (I'm Sorry)
I'm sorry about the title being a pretty blatant R.E.M. ripoff. I probably did not need to do that.
OK, so a few things to note about this song:
(1) I did, in fact, spend my childhood years not that far from Buddy Holly's flight path from Clear Lake, IA (not Mason City) to Sioux City. Now that I look it up, it's actually about an hour away, but whatever, some of Buddy Holly's atoms must have passed through me at some point.
(2) The crazy drums on this one are courtesy of the great Dave Hanson (RIP), the original drummer in the band I mentioned in the last entry. Among the funniest people I've ever known, and a wild one, and I am sad that I will not be getting any emails in the future with phrases like "buttocks ahoy from some madmen."
(3) This song was the last song on a split tape that I did with the great Charlie McAlister (RIP), another wild Southerner, a true one-of-a-kind spirit who deserves more than just a paragraph. Charlie was one of those people you only meet once in your life, and I was lucky enough to see him at least three times.
(4) Recorded live in Studio B at the college radio station, all live. Let it be said that college radio, much like the four-track, was one of those things that changed everything. So many hours spent trudging up to the odd-smelling fourth floor of that building, listening through headphones to the thousands of records and CDs, taking in everything, blasting it out to a little chunk of the western suburbs of Philadelphia.
