Comfort’s made a mess, all along the fault, ripe enough to rain and once again the minds of the Califone arbiters race to goop in the waning harvest moon. It finally hits me to make a playlist of Wilco and Califone, their sort of sister group and fellow Chicago cohort, finding my Wilco selections to be obvious and my Califone selections to undulate, palpitate and magnify before the eyes of individuals with high blood sugar or who have recently traversed Chicago’s Midway airport. Lo and behold, it won’t post. This is the first playlist I’ve made in like five years or so that won’t embed a preview: it just sits there, squatly, like an angry paraplegic, as a Spotify link, an eyesore, a “stepdaughter” who might be compelled to quip something like “Bury me shallow and scratch out my name / I’ll make every mistake all over again”. Earlier, I’d been searching for “Burned by the Christians,” a song about having homosexual inklings and which ends on this most superb tonic guitar tone I’ve ever heard. I can’t find it on Spotify. There’s a reason for that. It’s listed as “Burned by Christians,” along with its Roots & Crowns brethren “Rose Petal Ear” and “3Legged Animals,” now rechristened “Rose Petal Eat” and “3Leged Animal,” respectively. And I don’t really know what to think. Well, I’m terrified. So there’s that. The days are getting darker, we’re getting closer to Halloween, COVID season and Shaq’s commentary on TNT. And the hills are alive with the sound of music? Probably too much so — these Spotify geeks in Sweden sure as He** ate the lotus. And I don’t really know what else it means but this 50-year-old lady just ran out of her apartment with a Margarita in hand in Tuscon on a 75-degree-night and she will not… stop… laughing…