Tangled up in what, now?

Songs can just fly under the radar, just out of my field of vision, for years and years, and then suddenly hit me right between the eyes. Often, I'll buy an album and think, "That's a good album, but not right now." Elvis Costello's collaboration with Burt Bacharach would be a case in point -- beautiful, poignant, daring in its own way, and yet not where I was when it came out. Now it can make me cry. Caught the performance on a Trio rerun of Sessions at W. 54th the other night, and it honestly moved me.

But the song I'm actually writing about now is "Tangled Up in Blue." I've long liked Dylan's songs, but not Dylan singing them. A generality, but a fairly accurate one. And I've always had this one in the back of my head from late nights in bars with Dylan-oriented jukeboxes (they tended to have a lot of Clapton, too, and the only thing I could ever find to play on them was Dire Straits' "Sultans of Swing," on which the George Harrison-like restraint of the lead guitar always killed me). But not too long ago I found a copy of the Indigo Girls' live cover of "Tangled Up In Blue," and it blew me away. They OWN that song, like Johnny Cash owns "Hurt," and this is coming from someone who really couldn't be called an Indigo Girls fan. They're there, they're fine, I get bored with musicians who have to make a point, but man, their cover of that song just kills. Headphones-on-full-blast-screaming-along-while-doing-the-dishes-rock-'n'-roll.

Trio does a nice little public service after it plays Letterman reruns: it plays a single music video, every night just before 11. A couple of nights ago it was Aimee Mann's "Pavlov's Bell," very enjoyable. Last night it was someone I'd never heard of, Lizzie West, singing "Sometime." Loved it. Wrote it down. Checked the Apple Music Store, and guess what? Lizzie West EP, with the song I want. $3.96. Or, ONLY the song I want, $0.99. So, I ask FYE and the other music distributors -- is that so fucking hard?

Mr. Johnson may not be off this singles rant for some time