Nebraska Review

The story is well worn and it matters. He recorded these at home on a portable four track, carried the cassette around in his pocket, then tried them with the full band and found the arrangements destroyed them. So the demo came out as it was, hiss and all, and the hiss is part of the meaning: the record sounds like something found rather than made. The subjects are murderers, failing farmers, men who take a job they know is wrong, and a state trooper who lets his brother go.

Highway Patrolman is a five minute short story with a complete moral argument in it. Atlantic City turns a news item into a doomed romance. Used Cars is about humiliation in front of your own family. Judged as an experience it is genuinely hard company, and I do not put it on often. Judged as writing it is the best thing he has ever done, and it changed what a big artist was allowed to release.