"The Dark End of the Street"

All problems are easily remedied if one has plenty of energy. Energy is the key. When one is feeling ill, exhausted, compromised, low, angry problems are not so readily solved. Routines conserve energy. A variation -- a radical variation -- the introduction of an unknown -- produces stress. Stress is a sudden energy purge; it is the "fight or flight" response. If one could merely rest after undergoing a "fight or flight" response all would be fine. But the rat race, such as it is, does not allow rest; hence, the importance of a steady routine.

Waiting for the train this morning I saw my companion from last week's commute fiasco. I'm pretty sure he saw me as well. But while just recently we might have been good buddies talking and speed-walking past crime scene tape, we were dead to each other now. We said not a word and cast not another glance each other's way. We were back to the routine the rat race demands; it conserves energy. And energy solves problems.

Tonight upon arriving home I headed into the kitchen and turned on Greg Vandy's The Roadhouse, which appears on KEXP every Wednesday at 6 PM. He's doing a tribute to the "Muscle Shoals Sound." I heard a snippet of Dan Penn saying that the finest version of "The Dark End of the Street" is James Carr's, which reached #10 on the R&B charts in 1967. Vandy played it. I listened. Yes, it is good. But I'm partial to the Sufi Hippie version by Richard and Linda Thompson from 1975. You be the judge.