Americana Pipe Dream

Thomas Peters, author of American Papist, is a rising young mainstay in the Catholic press and media, and a "go-to" guy with the cable news networks for all things Catholic. Nice work if you can get it. Anyway, he appears to have an issue (although I could be wrong about this) with a recent tee-shirt design being sold by Old Navy.

I have always had a vision of leading my own band. There would be four of us, the genre somewhere between indie-type "nerd rock" and Americana, with the occasional Afro-Celtic vibe. Maybe one day we'd be famous, and do a music video for a John Prine tune called "Take A Look At My Heart."

It would go like this. I'd be on the rebound from getting dumped by an old girlfriend, who suddenly appears at the bar where we're playing, accompanied by her latest meal ticket. The others in the band would see her too, and knowing that I was still on the mend, remind me of how the show must still go on. And this is the hit song we would do, with an eye in the direction of the lovely couple. The gal would do her usual baby-doll schtick, and the guy would be a little too eager to please. So I'd have a message for him in the bridge.

Do you think you can
    be her lover,
And not become her fool?
Do you think that you are
The exception to the rule?

And, to top it off, as the singer does the "hook" of the song “take a look at my heart” on voice-over, it would cut to a two-second clip of me opening my outer shirt to reveal an image of the Sacred Heart, with a sudden zoom to extreme close up. If only to keep the dream alive, this item of apparel would definitely fit the bill. Which is why I'm buying three tonight, one for each of the "family."

To provide the soundtrack for this bout of wishful thinking, is The Coda Band, which describes itself as a "country rock band based in Rome and Florence," which "comprises English, Italian, Irish, [and] American members."

You might say, it's an idea after my own heart.
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