CAPTAIN TRIPS

A new-music fix on the way, courtesy of Newbury Comics, and the raves of brain coral: Art Brut and Danielson.

I really like what I've heard of Art Brut, and I'm getting over my concerns that they're a novelty act.

Haven't heard any of of the Danielson Famile stuff, so my mind is wide open.

I ordered Eno's Music for Airports too. Into every life a little ambience must fall...

I have a business trip following the upcoming holiday, so I won't be posting for a while. What say we meet back here around about June 7th?

Peace.

DAD ROCK

The 80s
He might be a father,
But he sure ain't a dad...
-Androgynous, The Replacements

The 90s
I tried hard to have a father,
But instead I had a dad
-Serve the Servants, Nirvana

Did the 00s get this shit sorted yet?

UMBILICAL NOOSE

Chances are that your copy of In Utero is sitting on a shelf somewhere, the walls between the pits of data wearing away slowly. It will one day be a mirror that makes no sound.

I pulled my copy out a couple of nights ago, and listened from start to finish.

And there it was again. The 18th Century repulsion at the physicality of birth, and the 19th Century horror at being born.

And, oh, the 20th Century.

Really, In Utero is already a mirror that makes no sound...

FIFTY ACORNS TIED IN A SACK

The five worst Beatle Number ones.

Which I realize is akin to picking the five worst $100 bills from a stack of $100 bills.

But slag I must…

5. Yesterday
The slow and “serious” song that made it safe for the bluebloods and bluehairs to indulge in a bit of Beatles.

4. The Long and Winding Road
Slathered in strings and Spector's waning relevancy. And frankly, long and winding roads make me carsick...

3. Lady Madonna
Eleanor Rigby done flippantly.

2. The Ballad of John and Yoko
Sorry, but I just can't find a reason to give a measurable fuck. Presaged martyrdom? Yawn. Dawning of the modern cult of celebrity? Strettttch. Bed-inism? Bagism? Onanism? Scratch scratch scratch...

1. Let it Be
These choices make me look like a confirmed balladophobe, but I swear that's not the case. I just don't like them when they're as cloying and unctuous as this...

ONCE THERE WAS A WAY TO GET BACK HOMEWARD

I entered a long weekend distracted and kind of disjointed. The mingled aroma of the past, present, and future was swirling around me, encouraging a fog.

As I set out to drive my daughter to what was ultimately the wrong dojo for her white-belt test, She Loves You came on the radio. Alvin and the Chipmunks’ version.

I heard a giggle rise up from the backseat. “I know this song!” my daughter chirped. My head began to bob back and forth, and I started to sing along in my best approximation of a heliumated Beatle.

We laughed together through two right turns and the length of a stoplight.

Later that same day, as we prepared for her birthday party, I heard All You Need is Love.

And I remembered a moment when I was driving with my mother back from Mt. Sinai Hospital, where my brother laid in ICU recovering from a liver transplant.

I remembered how we listened to the same song on that long quiet drive, and how our eyes met when we heard the line “No one you can save that can’t be saved.”

I remembered how I said to her in a near whisper, “I know. I know.”

I remembered that this same day full of dojos and birthday parties would have been my brother’s 45th birthday.

Happy Birthday Jeff. Happy Birthday…

I DON'T KNOW

The whole thing essentially blew apart with Let It Be, and, hell, have you ever seen a balloon unpop? That should have been The End.

So Abbey Road was a grace note.

It's a very Paul album for certain, but what I really like about it is the fact that two of the best songs belong to George.

Here Comes the Sun is damn near rapturous, and Something is the confusion of longing made melodious.

Peace to you George...

I READ THE NEWS TODAY, OH BOY

Though their roads diverged, John and Paul’s one commonality was that they each found a kindred soul to share their respective journeys.

Paul came to desire a country idyll unburdened by heavy thought, and he and Linda made together a green world of simple pop and continued commercial success.

John’s chosen avenue was protest, politics, and primal scream, while privately he invested in a course of aggressive self-medication. He and Yoko stumbled through the 70s and emerged ready to face the challenges of a new decade.

Of course, both of these love stories ended sadly, as love stories will by simply ending…

THE WORD

Top 5 favorite Beatles' lyrics

5.
Nothing's gonna change my world
Across the Universe

4.
The movement you need is on your shoulder
Hey Jude

3.
Waits at the window, wearing a face that she keeps in a jar by the door
Eleanor Rigby

2.
Sitting in an English garden waiting for the sun,
If the sun don’t come, you get a tan from
Standing in the English rain
I Am the Walrus

1.
No one I think is in my tree
Strawberry Fields Forever

HELLO, HELLO

My wife wanted to hear The Beatles.

Familiar Beatles, so I grabbed 1...

A couple of songs in, she asked a question.

“Did you ever wish you could see The Beatles in concert?”

Before I knew it, the geek in me was yammering on about screaming teenyboppers, eroding musicianship, 1966, blah, blah, blah, yeah, yeah, yeah...

But what she was really asking me about was magic.

Ineffability.

So dear, here is my delayed response: Yes.

All this week-- random thoughts on The Beatles...

MAN IN THE BOX

OK, so me and Doonesbury go way back.

But even a generous suspension of disbelief will not allow me to accept that uber-genius Alex is now choosing between attending her pick of prestigious schools or... taking a year off to follow “influential Seattle band” Alice in Chains on tour.

Alice in Chains? Is this really what the uber-genius kids are grooving on these days? So much so that they don't even care that the singer's been dead for five years, and had chalked up a good five years of heroin-induced inactivity before that?

Um, Garry, 1994 called-- it's looking for its relevancy...

NO MORE WILL MY GREEN SEA GO TURN A DEEPER BLUE

The last time I heard my brother's voice was a couple of days after he was gone.

There was nothing mystical about it. My mother mentioned that his answering machine was still turned on, so I called to listen to the recording.

It was a pretty standard greeting, except for the fact that Paint It, Black was playing conspicuously in the background.

I said "Goodbye" before the beep and I did not leave a message...

ALMOST FAMOUS

So You Are a Star-- The Hudson Brothers

Return with me if you will to the land of Suck, where we intrepid travelers will find the Hudson Brothers, catching a quick shave and splashing on some Hai Karate…

These guys actually had their own TV show once upon a time, genus Varietius crapus maximus, and one of them went on to marry Goldie Hawn and breed the Kate that we all know and love.

This one finds them making odd Mind Games type Lennon noises. There’s a hint of ELO in there too.

Gaze in awe, friends, but don’t get too close—you might get some Suck on you…

LOVER'S LANE

For years I've kept The Go-Betweens in reserve.

I always figured that during some fallow point to come, I would build the relationship, and that it would probably turn out to be strong and lasting.

And that has not changed.

But in a strange sense I feel like I have betrayed them.

Grant McLennan died over the weekend, and I am now one extra number that never showed up in his ledger...

MAKIN' IT

It's not often that I get to reference Mr. Rogers, Stuart Smalley, and David Naughton in the same day, let alone in the service of describing a single individual.

So thanks for the opportunity, vaguely unsettling New Age-inflected Health and Wellness seminar guy...

THIS IS YOUR CORRESPONDENT, RUNNING OUT OF TAPE

Eisenhower Avenue has been stripped of news vans, save for a lone Fox truck that lingers on, agitating for an execution...

WE WANT TO DO WHAT WE WANT FOREVER

Last night I needed to hear Room With a View by Let's Active.

I never picked up the CD pairing of Afoot and Cypress, and my cassette copy of Afoot, if indeed it still exists, is hugging the corner of some box that I haven't unpacked in at least a couple of moves.

The best that iTunes could offer was a version by Marti Jones from some tribute album populated by the likes of Failed Energy Giants and The Trolleyvox (yeah, me neither).

I dug up one or two Mitch Easter fansites, but no one seemed to have any media files on offer.

I took a slight right turn and headed to YouTube, thinking maybe I could at least see that Every Word Means No video with the puppy dogs. No dice.

Put on my trenchcoat and searched Morpheus as a last resort, and didn't get a single hit. Not even any similarly named porn...

In the end, my fix was a 29 second sample from Amazon.

Sigh.

MOLLUSK HATCHET

I choose to believe that the image on p. 30 of this month's Wired is of a whelk shell.

Because, you know, I must...

YOU DID IT AGAIN

There's a picture of me in my high school yearbook with Adam Ant face paint and rings of sprayed color encircling what looks like a helmet of hair.

Thanks to the tender mercies of cropped photos, there is no official record of the leopard-skin tights I wore the same day...

Somewhere also there is a video of me at a Sweet 16, wearing the dirty cap from a standing ashtray on my head, miming Whip It with a couple of friends.

So I can imagine how Al Jourgensen feels about the video for Revenge...

NOW, THAT SIDE WAS MADE FOR YOU AND ME!

My daughter is an American citizen and a Japanese citizen.

When she comes home from school singing the Star Stangled Banner or America the Beautiful, I take comfort that the reverberating militancy and Manifest Destiny will be counterbalanced by Japanese folk songs about raccoons, kindly bears, and magic pockets. Or something.

But when she comes home singing God Bless the USA, that scary-bad piece of Reagan-era tripe by Lee Greenwood? Cut that shit out, public school system. Just cut that fucking shit out…