THE DAILY SOUNDTRACK: The other day I mentioned how much I've been enjoying WHIMSICAL REVOLUTION, the blog written by theological ethicist (I just love typing that) Mark Gammon. One of the things Gammon regularly writes is a feature he calls "The Greatest Song in the World Today." Granted, he's not the first blogger to memorialize a song-of-the-moment, but nonetheless he's the inspiration for what henceforth will be a recurring feature of our BLIND CAMEL.

The first-ever DAILY SOUNDTRACK (I know, lame name, but I reserve the right to rename it at a later date) is Josh Rouse's "Late Night Conversation," a near-perfect single that glided out of my car speakers this morning. Why this song on this day? (From now on, this question will be embroidered into the subtext of our friendly DAILY SOUNDTRACK entry, but for today I'm all about overt exposition.)

On my way out the door this morning, I grabbed a few of the compilation discs I have from my days as an Internet radio programmer (back during my RollingStone.com days, one of my more entertaining responsibilities was participating in the programming our RollingStoneRadio product) and inserted 'em into the six-CD changer in my trunk. As I pulled out of the driveway, one of the discs kicked off with a meandering acoustiballad that didn't match my mood. Too wimpy. Click. Now a pumped-up techno number, replete with samples from some old movie or another. Click. A punk-tart offering from some young power-chorders with a great producer. Nah. Click.

See it's foggy this morning in Chicago, fifty degrees-ish, dull. Oh and yesterday I took my first emergency-room trip with my one-year-old son, so there's that bit of melancholy still stuck to me. (He's fine, just a high fever as a result of a rampant ear infection.) But then Josh comes on, layered guitars engineered to sound like a string orchestra, full, textured, even a bit like late-career, pre-drum machine REM. "Late Night Conversation" is a kind of propulsive ode to melancholy, an "I came out on the other side" paean to when things went wrong, but didn't kill ya.