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From The Desk Of The Jayhawks’ Mark Olson: Movies

Gary Louris and Mark Olson left Jayhawks fans in a lurch when they parted ways rather abruptly in 1995. Turns out Olson had tired of all the obligations and trappings that came with the Minneapolis-spawned group’s hard-won success. So he escaped to the Mojave Desert to ply a rootsier, salt-of-the-earth trade with the help of wife Victoria Williams. Ah, but time—and perhaps a little fiscal motivation—has a way of smoothing over the rough patches in many productive creative partnerships. (Unless you’re Bob Mould and Grant Hart.) And 15 years later, the Jayhawks have returned to us more-or-less fully intact. For how long, no one really knows, but they just did a string of shows to back the enhanced reissues of 1992’s Hollywood Town Hall and 1995’s Tomorrow The Green Grass (American/Legacy). With their sugary (if unrefined) harmonies, rugged intelligence and casual accessibility, the albums are to the alt-country movement what One Of These Nights and Hotel California were to ’70s SoCal country rock—even if the comparably modest sales figures may not indicate as much. Louris and Olson will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. Read our brand new Q&A with Louris.

Olson: In Yucca Valley, Calif., there used to be a video store run by an enthusiastic owner and his children called Paladin Videos. They had a large collection of old movies, and the main point of going there was to hear him rant and rave about storylines, style and acting in these bygone pictures. He never charged us when we brought the movies back late. Cairo Station (a gritty black-and-white film shot at the Cairo train depot with a scene about the beginnings of rock ‘n’ roll) and Grass (a silent movie about a tribe set off in search of better pastures with a scene about goats) are the two films that I could watch over and over that he told us about. I hope you can find something out about these films; the owner of Paladin Videos had unique sources of information.

Videos after the jump.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=STxMpmVceoY