Not surprisingly my podunk internet has been down for 4 days, so pardon my absence and Happy new Year to you all. I am digging out from a massive backlog of work, so brevity will be my friend today on Wadio. King of California is a solid movie I watched New Years Eve with my cat whilst drinking green tea starring Michael Douglas as a bi-polar mental patient who is released perhaps a little too soon. He moves back in with his teenage daughter and begins looking for a buried treasure he discovered the clues to whilst reading a Spanish missionary’s journal in the hospital library. The movie is about their relationship and its many strains more so than a National Treasure-type booty hunt, and Douglas’ ‘Charlie’ is a sad character that you will want desperately to believe. But does the treasure actually exist, or is this another mental episode? The DVD will be out in a few months.
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WcMsB3mYPMs[/youtube]
As the closing credits began to roll, and I sat laughing at the film’s one final twist involving “naked Chinamen” as Charlie likes to call them, a wonderful song I’d never heard before began to play and I looked it up this morning as soon as my web access corrected itself. It’s a little-known B-side by Wilco entitled “California Stars” and has already been added to my desktop’s “songs I want to learn to play on the guitar” text file of chords. Here is a live version from a few years ago, and I hope you enjoy it.
This is actually one of my most favorite songs- ever.
Happy New Year.
This is on a Woody Guthrie tribute CD called “Mermaid Avenue” (1998); it’s a collaboration between Billy Bragg and Wilco. Yeah, I know, go figure, but it’s a fine thing.
I got a couple of emails chastising me for not knowing this tune as well. Better late than never, kids.