I SAW A MAN HOLD A CHICKEN TO HIS HEAD

I work right around the corner from where the Zacarias Moussaoui trial is being held.

Every night I drive past the media trucks lining Eisenhower Avenue, with their random assemblage of antennas and satellite dishes poking at the dry air in search of a signal.

This morning I sat in traffic sandwiched between two sparkling black Mercedes-Benz SUVs, the exhaust from my $3-per-gallon gas mingling with theirs.

And with the courthouse in plain view, I heard The Mekons again: "Vengeance is not ours, it belongs to those/Who seek to destroy us/How much more is there left to lose?"

I neared the parking garage, and yielded to a car with an oval "W" bumper sticker, allowing it to enter ahead of me.

When I reached my assigned parking spot, I found a disoriented VW sitting there. The license plate read NY1DC, and carried the custom "Fight Terrorism" logo of the World Trade Center surrounded by the Pentagon.

It was a pretty confusing morning...

ICE CREAM FOR CROW

Someone burned me a copy of Pour Down Like Silver by Richard and Linda Thompson, which made me realize that Richard Thompson is one of my many musical blind spots. I don't think I've heard more than two songs total from him and all his various iterations.

Captain Beefheart's another one.

And forgive me, but I've never actually owned a Stooges album.

It feels so good to come clean...

HE AIN'T HEAVY

Nature equipped me with a brother whose temperament was nothing like my own.

We did not see eye to eye on anything, until I grew enough so that we saw eye to eye literally, at which point we forged a hard-won agreement that he would never again push me around.

Around this same time, I walked into the basement of a new friend, and my eyes were drawn to a room on the left at the bottom of the stairs, which looked to me for all the world like Aladdin’s cave.

The floor was covered with copies of Musician, Rolling Stone, and The Village Voice, to the point where actual floor was really just a rumor. The bookshelves were thick with Doonesbury compilations and music books, and charged with a couple of mini Realistic speakers.

This was Larry’s room. He was my friend’s older brother.

Once he adjusted to my unkempt hair and my occasionally lidded eyes, Larry and I bonded rather quickly over our shared love of music, shared sense of humor, and shared sardonic tilt.

He was a professional drummer, and at the time he was also the artist behind the ads for the Lone Star Café that appeared in the Voice each week.

He played with bluegrass bands, zydeco bands, you name it. He even spent several years playing with Tony Williams of the original Platters.

Larry was the one who sent me the music that became Spanish Wings, and had the infinite grace and patience to wade through all my private mutterings for many years.

Larry has a new gig now, and to say I’m proud does not do my real emotions justice.

If you happen to catch Bruce Springsteen playing out or on TV in support of his new disc, take some time to take note of the man in the hat on the drum riser, the man helping to lend the perfect beat to a regular hoedown of a hootenanny.

That man on the riser is Larry.

That man is my brother.

WUNNERFUL

Turns out that Blue Velvet was originally published by... The Welk Music Group.

There but for the grace of an aitch...

WARMER THAN MAY

The only song I sang out loud this weekend was Blue Velvet.

And that was just because my kids were playing with these reusable Mr. Potato Head body-part stickers, and my daughter affixed a big old ear to the green grass section of a Winnie the Pooh tapestry that is hanging in my son’s room.

So it was a natural.

On the agenda this week: More singing out loud…

MY HEART HAS A MIND OF ITS OWN

There was a lot of interesting stuff happening musically on the West Coast in the early '80s.

You had Slash with bands like X, Dream Syndicate, and Green on Red.

SST with Black Flag and The Minutemen.

The 415 bands: Romeo Void, Red Rockers, Wire Train. And Translator.

For some reason, I’ve been thinking about Translator a bunch the last couple of days.

I’ve been thinking about how great Everywhere That I’m Not was. You know the song—it goes like this:

Well, that impossible, that’s im,
That’s impossible, that’s im-poss,
That’s impossible, that’s im-poss-ible…

It’s a gas to hear them build the word “impossible” —it sounds like a kid trying very hard to understand what it actually means.

More particularly, I’ve been considering Un-Alone as one of the great “lost” songs of that era.

It shimmers and chimes like the best contemporary R.E.M., Let’s Active, Plimsouls material, with just the right amount of ache.

If it’s not part of your collection, I’d recommend dropping the buck-minus-a-penny at iTunes. You won’t regret it…

WHELK

Whelk.

AND A ONE-A, AND A TWO-A

Yesterday’s post regarding my perfect drive-time playlist initially contained a couple of additional paragraphs after the list of songs.

And I kid you not, this was the last sentence:

“Those moments when you channel the sounds coming out of the whelk shell pressed against your ear.”

For some reason, about halfway through the day yesterday it became a weird imperative for me to use the word “whelk” on sliced tongue.

I didn’t hear it anywhere, or read it anywhere, and believe it or not, it didn’t come up in conversation.

But there it was, rattling around my brain, looking for an escape hatch. Whelk, whelk, whelk…

So when I reflected on the songs that I’d heard on the way home, I found a vague yet visceral connective thread. Something to do with the public communion of private insecurities…

And by way of vague yet visceral explication, out came the whelk-shell image.

Holy shit, am I glad that I employ a team of editors to go over this stuff. Because, you know, that would have been mortifying if I had actually posted it…

I DON'T KNOW NO SHAME

Goddam, was this a great soundtrack for the commute home on a cool blue Virginia spring evening:

Heart Full of Soul-- The Yardbirds
In the Aeroplane Over the Sea-- Neutral Milk Hotel
Shine a Light-- Wolf Parade
Mandinka-- Sinead O'Connor
Tell Balgeary, Balgury is Dead-- Ted Leo & the Pharmacists
Happy Hour-- The Housemartins
Tobacco Road-- The Nashville Teens
I Am a Scientist-- Guided by Voices

I FOUND THE F

I was cleaning my PC keyboard today with a can of 1,1,1,2-tetrafluoroethane-propelled compressed air, and I realized that there is something immensely satisfying about the whole experience.

You aim a long thin straw at the crevices between all the jumbled numbers, letters, and symbols on the keyboard, pull a trigger to release the air, and a mix of dust and debris jumps out of the cracks.

The longer you hold down the trigger, the colder the can gets, so you need to take periodic breaks. Which is a good thing, because you’re only supposed to use it in well-ventilated areas, and I’ve seen folks get a little lightheaded after protracted exposure.

Coincidentally, I’ve made the exact same observations and come to the exact same conclusions regarding Broadcast’s Tender Buttons…

DAMMIT I’M A MAN

Another number of note on my trip was 295. As in used CDs for $2.95.

Now, used-CD stores are like mammoths with one foot in the tarpit, and you feel a bit sorry for them when they don’t seem to realize it.

So please note, Used-CD Store, that trying to sell used copies of the Arctic Monkeys’ disc for $9.95 is not going to fly. Not when the big-box retailers are featuring it new for $8.99, or when it’s a couple of clicks away on iTunes for $9.99.

If you want to forestall that inevitable moment when your trunks go under and you’re blowing sad little tar bubbles into the gloaming, you need to rethink your paradigm. The $5.95 range might buy you some time.

But $2.95? Well, back up the truck.

Amidst all the overpriced, cracked-cased, heavily fingerprinted $8.95/$9.95 nonsense clogging the racks at Empire Discs in Garden City, I found the following for $2.95 a pop:

R.E.M.- Automatic for the People
Neu!- Neu! 75
Primal Scream- XTRMNTR
New Order- Movement
Can- Ege Bamyasi

I'M NOT A NUMBER

I hope you'll allow me the indulgence of sharing the companion piece to yesterday's poem. Same origin story, same fate...


Suburban Gossamer

Ho
That's
Not
A
Rail-
Road
That's
A
Crease
In
The
Map

FEEL LIKE A NUMBER

Random moment #1 from my time away from home...

I saw a tunnel clearance sign on the parkway on my way out of NYC that read 10’01”.

Which reminded me of a poem I wrote a while back:


THERE ARE NO FREE BEARS IN NYC

Gentle Ben
Took the 10:01
Out of Kennedy.

He was tired of scratching his ass
On a lamppost caked with poster paste
And handbills.


I had put this together about ten years ago for a friend who was working on a zine named Doggone It, which was aimed primarily at Japanese ex-pats living in NYC.

The person running the zine was in the states illegally, and she was deported after running off a few issues, so this poem never saw the light of day.

So, light of day, meet slight, whimsical, and slightly poignant poem for Japanese ex-pats living in NYC…

MIKE RENO'S HEADBAND

A little business/pleasure (well, the equation is actually more like
business -> pleasure) time afoot. Be back next Wednesday.

DO YOU REMEMBER?

News of The Replacements adding two new tunes to an upcoming "best of" got me to thinking about the greatest bands who have broken up, and never felt the urge to reform, even though all of their original members are still alive. (And still sentient, for you space proggers who would nominate the original Floyd...)

Sure, I thought of The Smiths. The Jam too.

However, one band keeps placing itself at the top of the list: Husker Du.

Maybe I'm missing an obvious choice, but from where I sit in 2006, Husker Du is the one.

Now go turn on the news...