I've been listening to George Jones this evening. The stuff right after Tammy Wynette and he broke up. I'd been looking for a copy of his album
The Battle for decades and finally came up one. It was something of a bummer when it came out on account of its being besotted with heartbreak, but it's really good. That got me to thinking about his 1988 song "The King Is Gone (So Are You)," which was introduced to me at a Rodeo Kill rehearsal. It's a crazy song about getting so drunk that you start to talk to all your novelty collectibles. The Highwaymen did a live version of it as well, in which Waylon Jennings introduces it thusly: "This may be the best song you've ever heard in your whole life. Then again, it may not be." I fall in the middle but trending towards the former.
