Intonation Fest

I spent the weekend covering the Intonation Fest, which was a blast. Lots of good music, more acts to put in my mental Rolodex as bands I've seen (Roky Erickson), and I got to talk with Jon Brion for over an hour late last night. How cool is that?

On the way home, though, something spooky happened. On the train, with the rain just beginning to trickle down, a homeless guy (or at least someone stoned into an approximation of a homeless guy) interrupted the silence on the green line with a haunting, haunted, hushed rendition of a few versus from "Stairway to Heaven" sung to no one. That song is sometimes invoked as a punchline, but boy, was it powerful last night, not unlike Gavin Bryers' fascinating, hypnotic "Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet.".

Imagine a soulful but very subdued voice offering this to an audience he may or may not have been aware even existed:

And as we wind on down the road
Our shadows taller than our souls
There walks a lady we all know
Who shines white light and wants to show
How everything still turns to gold
And if you listen very hard
The tune will come to you at last

And then he went silent.