"President say, 'Little fat man, isn't it a shame/What the river has done to this poor cracker's land.'"

The Song: "Louisiana 1927," Randy Newman. Words & music by Randy Newman. Track 1 of Good Old Boys, 1974.
When/how acquired: Purchased LP, 1987.
Listen/watch here.

Today's post is going to be a little scattered, I'm afraid. I'm a little scattered. Yesterday I got lost two separate times, driving to two familiar places in daylight, just because I missed the turns I needed to take. It's more than a metaphor.

But things could be worse. I live on top of a hill, in part of the United States that is not currently underwater. Nothing, not even fire, is as devastating as flood; as Randy Newman says, it washes everything away, and ruins even things that may look unharmed. It's time for me to make another blood donation, and while I do that I'll see what spare change I can scrape together for the Red Cross. It's important.

This album may have been the last I bought on vinyl. It was either this one or the New York Shakespeare Festival recording of Threepenny Opera (which I lost somewhere, and would love to have again in any format). I didn't even own a record player, though my then-fiance did.

I bought this album when I had no money to spend on anything. It was the soundtrack for Arena Stage's production of the musical adaptation of All the King's Men, which I had seen as my friend Carla's guest (she was working there). That's still one of the best things I've ever seen on stage, and I don't understand why it's not produced more often. Candy Buckley was devastating as Sadie, Casey Biggs was remarkable as Jack Burden, and the great Stanley Anderson was phenomenal as Willie Stark. All the King's Men was, in fact, a play before it was a novel, and its roots in Greek tragedy are obvious on the stage.

But I digress. I've been digressing. I feel flooded myself, and need to shake things out and dry things off and save whatever's salvageable. And yes, I know that's cryptic. I don't quite understand it yet myself.