The 333 Best Pop Songs of the 2000s: #287

#287: "O Katrina" (2007) - The Black Lips

A couple of weeks ago, my wife was browsing her friends' MySpace pages, and ran across one of her (and my) pals--a military man stationed in Biloxi--whose quote next to his profile picture excoriated Gustave, Hannah, and Ike. My wife and I laughed at the ridiculous nature of cursing hurricanes* as if they were people, but we certainly understood the anger. Seems like Atlanta's Black Lips do, too. In "O, Katrina," they've recorded a rarity: a song addressing, questioning, and protesting weather**.

In the past three years, a myriad of artists have recorded songs about the effects of Hurricane Katrina, some blaming the government, and some bemoaning the victims, and I'll list some of those songs in the months to come, but I figure the best place to start would be with a record about the storm itself. In "O, Katrina," the Lips' Jarred Swilley plays a distorted bass riff (echoing the storm's thunder), and then someone turns on a wind machine and lets it run for the remainder of the song. Ten seconds later, the rest of the band comes roaring in, sounding musically and vocally like the Kingsmen, with the drummer standing out two-thirds of the way through as he rolls and stomps until the sound of his trap set melds with the wind machine, roaring like the titular storm itself. The band whips up rock and roll as unrestrained and racous as the hurricane, trying to fight fire with fir...uh...wind and rain with wind and distortion. And for two minutes and fifty-three seconds, they beat the storm back into the Gulf, which is what the best rock and roll so often does.

Notes

*In 1991, I foolishly traveled from Starkville to Meridian in the middle of the night to see a friend--just as the effects of Hurricane Andrew flooded Highway 39, causing my little Sunbird to hydroplane into a deep ditch. Luckily, I had passed a convenience store only about five miles before I wrecked. I climbed out of my car, crawled up the steep embankment, and walked those five miles face first into fifty-plus miles-per-hour winds to reach the convenience store. I called my cousin from the pay phone outside, and he said he'd come get me. I hung up, walked back out to the deserted highway ('cause who'd be stupid enough to drive in weather like that), and screamed as loud as I could, my anger directed at the hurricane. I called it a few choice names that I can't repeat here.

In about twenty minutes, my cousin picked me up. I asked him if he thought we should call someone to pull the car out of the ditch. He just laughed at me. He told me he'd call someone in the morning. He did. We went back out to my car that next morning to discover the exterior halfway submerged in water, the interior filled completely. When the wrecker arrived, he looked at the submarine and asked, "What stupid #%$#@! did that?"

**Actually, there've been numerous records about the weather...just none (that I know of) that curses one storm specifically.