THE SAME WHEREVER YOU GO

So I can’t say the Pogues saved my life. But they did help me live. And for that I owe them a tremendous debt of gratitude.

They’re coming around again in March, and brain coral and I bought our tickets yesterday.

I can see doing this every two years or so for as long as it holds up…

Happy Xmas and a Merry New Year, all. I’ll be back in early January

A FREEBORN MAN

Once upon a time, I had an argument with my mother.

Something to do with wasting potential and the lack of a rudder.

I remained calm throughout, as she pushed me for answers: What was I going to do? Where was I going?

“Somewhere. You'll see.”

“What, when you're dead?”

I flinched. She had to have noticed that I flinched.

God, no. Death had nothing to do with it.

She shut her bedroom door, and I retreated to my room without answering her.

“When I'm alive, mom. When I'm alive”

MISFITS



So this dude? Totally Kurt Cobain's claymation doppelgänger. Right down to the “You can't fire me/I quit” philosophizing.

Too bad Kurt couldn't defang the Bumble...

BLOWFISH

Of course, it is best to defer to Hootie in times like this:

"Sometimes you're crazy and you wonder why
I'm such a baby 'cause the Dolphins make me cry..."

And I did actually cry small tears of joy when the 0-13 Fish caught a break and found their way to a win in OT. Thrust my arms in the air and cried...

THE NECESSITIES AND MORE

And then there's this:

"Honest to goodness, the bars weren't open this morning,
They must have been voting for a new president of something.
Do you have a quarter?" I said "yes" because I did.
Honest to goodness the tears have been falling all over the country's face.
It was better before before they voted for what's his name,
This was supposed to be the new world...

"I said 'yes' because I did" seems like a throwaway line, until you let down your defenses a bit. Then suddenly it's a punch in the gut, and you're embarassed by how easy it is to lose your elemental humanity.

And really, fuck all the what's his names...

THE FACTS WE HATE

And no, for once and for all, X were not hardcore. They were beatniks—beatniks who met in poetry workshops, fell in love sloppily, and wanted to play fast with a big old grin on their face.

They also said this:

"I'm guilty of murder of innocent men,
Innocent women, innocent children,
Thousands of them!
My planes, my guns, my money, my soldiers,
My blood on my hands,
It's all my fault!
I must not think bad thoughts."

Like I said, beatniks.

But if that doesn't resonate with you at all here in America v.2007, you're just about three-quarters fucked...

SASON ACCENT

Another thing I like about Jens Lekman is that he pronounces the word "father" like it's something you should be feeding to a cow...

THE SWEET SWEDE SWAYED SWEETLY

One thing I like about Jens Lekman is that he writes songs with his name in them, so that phonetically inclined yakkos like me have a clue how to pronounce it.

It's still not too late for you, Sufjan!

UNLEADED

A couple of weeks ago I stopped to get gas on the way to work. It was about 7:45 AM when I pulled up to the pumps. My windows were down halfway, and I was playing the untitled instrumental from In the Aeroplane Over the Sea. Pretty loudly, if you must know.

While I was filling my tank, a woman pulled up to the other side of the island. She was probably in her early 60s, and as she peered around to my side, I was sure that she was about to complain about the volume of the music.

"What is that?" she asked, with no rancor and obvious curiosity. "Is it Irish?"

I was so prepared to apologize that it took me a few seconds to formulate a different response.

"There's some Celtic in there I guess. But they also have roots in Louisiana."

"Louisiana. Huh." She paused to listen some more. "Very interesting."

I thought about that woman all day...

GREAT SCOTTSO!

It's good to know that the classic-rock folks have a sense of humor.

I heard a promo on satrad the other day that went something like this:

"Madonna is nominated for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame this year, and Bad Company still sit on the sidelines waiting? The Beastie Boys are considered for induction, and Jethro Tull still stand outside the door?"

The tone was incredulous, and if you didn't know any better, you might have thought for a second that it was serious. Hee.

Goddam, I love it when the classic rockers get wacky...

WHO'S THE LEADER OF THE PUNKS...

I swear I read the other day that Johnny Rotten is now married to Ari Up's mom.

In 1990s Mouseketeer terms, this would be like Justin Timberlake marrying Keri Russell's mom.

Yo.

OF MONTREAL

Taeko had never heard Arcade Fire until yesterday.

She doesn’t usually take note of the music I’m playing in the car, but as we drove to Costco everyone was strangely quiet. So quiet that I kidded myself that they were all listening intently.

“Then we think of our parents/Whatever happened to them?”

I imagined Lana and Sebastian sitting there in the second row of the minivan getting a chill up their little spines.

Taeko, though, was the first one to speak.

“What kind of music is this?”

I didn’t know how to answer that, and I told her so.

“I mean, what genre?”

Again. Um, OK: grandiose, gently avant rock that hitches up right close to the mainstream?

“Sounds like David Bowie,” she said.

Right, David Bowie. That’s basically what I meant.

She didn’t come out and say so, but I think she liked it…

20TH CENTURY BOY

Waiting out in front of 9:30 for brain coral and his brother, I noticed a guy slip out the door for a smoke with a group of four or five others.

He was short and slightly built, with straight-leg skinny jeans and a haystack of hair on his head.

He bantered with his friends for a few minutes, and when the group broke apart he headed back toward the front door of the club. He stopped mid stride and spun on his heel. “Can I have a kiss, honey?” he said very gently to one of the women in the group, and she complied.

I saw him smile and enter the club, noting for the first time the laminate attached to his shirt.

So when this fun, unremarkable trio named the 1990’s opened the show, and I saw that he was the singer/guitarist, I liked the band just a little bit more than I probably would have otherwise…

FREEZE, MAN, FREEZE

Multiple choice quiz.

Place the following description: “Whipped up fluffy chocolate-on-chocolate taste!”

(1) From the liner notes for One Nation Under a Groove
(2) From the poster for Sweet Sweetback's Baadaassss Song
(3) From the wrapper of my fun-size 3 Musketeers bar

If you said (1) or (2), you're probably right. If you said (3), you're right for sure-- I have the wrapper right here in front of me...

ET TU, BRUT?

So as my buddy brain coral will happily attest, Art Brut ruled the night at 9:30.

Eddie Argos was all louche charm, with a loose flannel shirt draped over a pillowy gut.

His greatest innovation? Referring to the band by name at every opportunity.

“Art Brut, are you ready?” he’d bellow, and I’d feel a giddy little tug at my heart.

You had me at Art Brut, Eddie…

RUNAWAY AMERICAN DREAM

Nature does not spit out Bruce Springsteens casually.

I was reminded of this the other night watching Craig Finn of The Hold Steady flail around the 9:30 stage looking like your eighth-grade social studies teacher infected with the rage virus.

The boy’s got lyrical faculties for sure, the kind where it wouldn’t at all surprise you to hear him break into Blinded by the Light at any given moment.

He’s vulnerable to the same traps as early Bruce as well, e.g., the tendency to drop in syllables where silence would do, and a hella blind spot regarding real, actual women. Sandy, meet Holly. Holly, meet Sandy…

But Craig is a zero-charisma guy, whereas 70s Bruce dripped the stuff. And sex, too—I remember one dirtbag who passed first-year Spanish just because Ms. Krebs thought he looked like Bruce.

And I’d imagine that Bruce never used his encore as an opportunity to tell the audience what a sincere joy it was to be onstage performing for them.

I’m pretty sure he just let the encore(s) do the talking…

HEY, KIDS, ROCK AND ROLL

I took the kids to a friend's house last month, and there was a big old trampoline in the backyard, encircled by a thick wire-mesh enclosure.

The kids bounced around for an hour like radical ions.

A couple of weeks later, I saw The Go! Team at 9:30, and the experience was much the same.

I liked the Sonic Youth-y moments the best, and I was crushing on Kaori Tsuchida for sure.

Tomorrow night: Art Brut and the Hold Steady.

Ooh, my soul...

CODA

There was actually one more session, several days later.

We invited our friend Howie, who was assuming the role of "manager."

And yes, we were po-mo enough to say it with air quotes.

However, with Howie sitting in, we became paralyzed by self-consciousness. We abandoned anything we attempted.

Howie was our Yoko.

ONE MORE SONG

Mike, Larry, and I would soon find ourselves moving in different orbits.

I started to see less and less of Mike, and rumors of him wearing outrageous makeup in NYC clubs gained quick currency. The rumors accreted until it was said that he was living in the village with his boyfriend.

The last time I saw him was on the day of our 10th high school reunion, in a local pizza place with a girl I did not know. He wore a drab flannel shirt and jeans, with nothing on his face except a bit of dark stubble.

I lost track of Larry at around the same time I lost Mike. Folks said that he was living with a 40-year-old woman and her 10-year-old daughter, and I eventually heard a rumor that he had been institutionalized.

I have not seen Larry again.

I retreated to my poetry and to my books, and I am sure there was a surfeit of colorful rumors about me as well.

But before all that, there was time for one more song.

Just one more song…

Listen for: 0:38, Mike bringing the backup vocals. 1:33, as we get together one more time…

WE CAN'T HAVE THAT

I thought about leaving this one out.

The first half at least is just ugly and vituperative.

Well, except for Larry's drum solo at the start, which is pretty sweet.

I give teenage me a little credit for locating the anger more properly in the second half of the song, and yeah, “I can't have that/We can't have that” gets at the spirit of 17.

Listen for: theatricality masking pain, pain masking theatricality, throughout...

FLASH

Rumor had it that a flasher had been spotted on the grounds of JFK High School.

So this was our trenchant commentary on the situation.

Listen for: 1:48, a lesson learned from the Dolls on the simple glory of the word "trash"...

I LOVE YOU

And this one goes out to all the lovely ladies of Plainview!

Listen for: 2:09, where, for the love of Paul McCartney, I sing "But I can't let me go on like this." Well, at least I was just making it up as I went along...

TWIST

Now it can be told: I invented emo.

Listen for: me inventing emo.

FLIP FLOP

Jocularity!

Listen for: Speaking in tongues, 1:37.

I HATE YOU

I totally spit the bit on this one.

I mean, Mike and Larry brang the noise, but I just didn't bring the funk.

I'm thinking in particular of the moment at 0:48 when I resort to counting to four. Twice.

Listen for: OK, the “Ready, leeettt's go!” part at 0:11 sounded promising. And the Johnny Rotten homage at 1:56 is kinda cute...

HAPPENS ALL THE TIME

And then it was the day after that.

We got together again, and this time with intent. We wanted to make more songs.

We headed over to Mike's house, but soon realized that he was locked out (which became lyrical fodder for the walking blues of track 1). So we recorded instead at my house.

Listen for: the inexcusable run of irredeemably off-key singing that starts at 0:53. If I could change anything about any of these recordings, I would wipe both passes at “Glad you're not around.” The “Couldn't find a key, and then it hit me” part at 1:14 is pretty punktacular, though...

LET IT LIE

Mike's mother would be home soon, and we could see from the small window on the cassette that there was not much room left on side A for recording. So we'd do one more.

And a manic one it was. It starts off propulsive and then falls off a precipice-- you can hear it twisting in midair, with only a slight updraft of shambles to keep it from hitting the ground.

Then at 1:45, there's a parachute. The whole thing gies and haws in the wind a little, and damn if it doesn't land with force to buckle but not break our knees.

Listen for: my most heartfelt yelp of satisfaction at the very end...

WAR IS KING

This one starts out with Mike trying out his Invisible Sun chords. And promptly getting annoyed with me because I wasn't singing.

That's what his little whistle at 0:15 means: “Dude, this is tasty shit, OK? Make some noise.”

But it was taking me a little time to figure out where to go with this one. So by the time I did start singing, I was kind of pissed myself.

Bands, those funny little plans, that never work quite right...

Listen for: Larry's martial beat at 0:37. You goddam appropriate bastard, you.

GIANT HAND

This one starts out with Larry dragging a pencil across the wooden slats of Mike's louvered window shade. Then Mike joins in with a riff from Turning Japanese, done 16 RPM style. And we're off to the races...

Listen for: the “bridge” at 1:02, where with a couple of head gestures we somehow lock together for a mean tempo shift. Also, that “Hurts, man” at 2:12 is insou-sou-souciant...

WHAT AM I TO DO?

A few months ago I was rummaging through a box of old mixtapes, and I came across a beaten TDK shell I'd recognize anywhere. The label was partially torn off one side, leaving behind a thin white layer of paper. The label on the other side was intact, grayed and browned with age, with one word written in caps: SLEAZE.

This was the master tape of the songs that Mike, Larry, and I had recorded.

I handed it off to my friend DJ Birdhouse for digitizing.

So here is track 1, side 1. You'll hear that it starts during the outro to The Magnificent Seven, which is not a statement or anything. We just pushed “record” and went, paying no mind to the condition of the tape...

Listen for: the scream at the 2:30 mark. Dang.

WATCH THE TAPES

From a boombox perched on the pebbly black roof of a '73 Maverick we played our songs.

A group of about a dozen kids, a couple of years younger than us, gathered to listen.

“You guys are rock stars!”

No. No, we were not.

We were three bored teenagers killing a couple of early summer afternoons making noise.

And when I say “noise” I am not being immodest.

Mike had been practicing guitar in secret, stealing his little brother's acoustic and trying to recreate the new wave hits of the day.

Larry did not appear to have any ambitions that involved drumming, but he was game to grab a couple of pencils, and sit in front of some empty cassette cases and overturned trash baskets.

I was the most verbally inclined of the three of us, so there was a good chance that I'd find something to say when it came time to sing.

So we sat and improvised, recording four songs one afternoon, and another eight the very next day.

The results were often horrendous. Rhythm, pitch, meter-- we violated just about any organizing principle of music you might care to name.

And yet, there were these rare moments when our streams met, and carried us along for five or seven seconds of something resembling magic. You would not need to listen very hard to hear us smiling.

We were rock stars...

RIP PURR

Bye-bye Smoltz. Hope you're slinking around somewhere with Lemke, chasing invisible mice...

SHOOTS COLORS ALL AROUND

I paid £1.95 for my In Rainbows.

The way I understand the global economy, that comes out to about 6 bajillion American dollars.

This better be good, Radiohead...

SWEET HASSLE

Excellent inadvertent Lou Reed quote of the day, courtesy of Lana, who was setting up the chessboard for a game:

"I wanna be black."

IT'S LIKE THAT

Classified ad of the day, from the Washington Post:

"Tape deck - $50. Old school, single cassette-deck, plays all my old Run DMC tapes OK, though."

50 bucks? That sounds like a $5,000 item if I ever heard one...

SMOKEN

"Look at this!" I said, my voice registering equal measures of excitement and disappointment.

"The May-cones," my wife read, as I dragged my finger along the text in the Post.

"Mekons! Mekons! I missed the Mekons, and they were 10 or 15 minutes away from my house. Son of a monkey!"

As much as she loves me, it was pretty clear that Taeko didn't much care. So I called her into the playroom after dinner, and put on Flitcraft.

"Here, listen. Mekons. See, it's important for you to know that this stuff can make me cry it's so damn brilliant."

She sat on the floor with one leg stretched behind her and cocked an ear. "Sounds like The Pogues."

Um, well, yeah. If you want to get all technical and shit...

CREDENCE

Dude, John Fogerty is way pissed...

HADES

You know, 10 years on and I still haven't really forgiven Radiohead for ending Let Down with such a horrid Stygian thud.

And by Stygian here I mean "sounding like goddam fucking Styx"...

CENTERFIELD

I spent the late afternoon on Sunday playing baseball with Sebastian, realms away from the men who toil at it for a living.

We played with a tennis ball, a Nerf football, and even took a couple of disequilibrating whacks at a speckled Ben and Jerry's frisbee.

It was a pretty perfect farewell to summer...

THE 30-YEAR OLD VIRGIN

Three decades of exposure to Peg and I never realized until now that Michael MacDonald provides the backing vocals.

Dollars to donuts that Rerun knew this shit straight away...

A NAME WHEN I LOSE

Deacon Blues was one of my favorite songs when I was 12.

It had the perfect mix of fatalism and self-pity, with a hint of triumph, to suit my 1977.

It became clear in 1977 that the crush I had harbored for black-haired Shelley since the fourth grade would never be requited. I would never get closer to her affections than the jewelry box she fished from a neighbor's trash and gave me one day in 1975, with a short inscription of friendship on the back.

In 1977 I was in so many ways ready to move on, and terrified at the very thought of it.

It's a fine thing for sure to be 12...

ANGULAR BANJOS

I downloaded Aja by Steely Dan on impulse from the iTunes this weekend.

And hearing it now with relatively fresh ears, the Becker/Fagen double helix in Stereolab becomes plain...

BLACK HOLE

I DVR'd the Tonight Show last night, because the program guide said LCD Soundsystem was going to be on.

So I woke up this morning all eager, turned on the TV after my shower, and four-arrow fast forwarded my way to the end.

And what did I see?

Chris Cornell, singing some crap with his hands in his pockets.

It was like going for a nice refreshing swig of lemonade and getting a mouthful of Clamato instead.

I blame you, Leno, you motherfucker...

THE LANATICIST 2

My eight-year old daughter Lana checks in this week with her thoughts on Keep the Car Running, by Arcade Fire:

"I think this song is good for when you are riding a car."

THE TIME OF YOUR LIFE

One of the first songs that I learned all the way through was Meet the Mets.

This was the pre-PC “Bring the kiddies/Bring the wife” version, and it sounded like Rheingold and sunstroke.

By the mid 70s, I had altered the opening lyrics, to reflect the fact that the team was in a torpor: “Meet the Mets/Beat the Mets/Step right up, defeat the Mets...”

I am reminded of this now because they are in the midst of an epic freefall.

And I almost wish I had never learned that damn song at all...

PROCLAIMING

Drove 500 miles to go grocery shopping on Saturday.

Sounds grim, but it weren't, mate. Went to the Mitsuwa supermarket, the Japanese used-book store, and Mars New York toy store. Got some NY/NJ pizza, and some NY/NJ bagels.

Sure, I was haverin' a bit on the way home, but a good time was had by all...

CORNERS 1

Sitting in a Tokyo hotel on a rainy afternoon, reading McElligot's Pool and listening to Deerhoof...

BLOSSOM

Things were not looking good for the project.

My wife listened to Jimmy by M.I.A., but the most she could muster was what appeared to be a very sincere “I like it.”

She said that she couldn't find any other words, so I suggested that she do it in Japanese, and then translate to English.

But in any tongue, she was blocked.

Just then, Lana stepped up, and offered to give it a go. Here is her unedited review:

“I feel like I am in a disco party. One of the expressions sounds like aliens dancing in the wind.”

So, you can be damn sure I'm now in negotiations with her to do this once a week...

LITTLE SUPERSTAR

I'm going to do my own little music genome project.

Based on her fondness for Airport by The Motors, I have a theory that my wife will like Jimmy from the new M.I.A. disc, in all its Bollywood glory.

I've asked her to listen and give me a quick review by tomorrow. Now we'll see if she can write on deadline...

APPLEPLEXY

Which iPod are you?

I am all about the 160GB Classic, which is $50 cheaper than the 16GB touch.

touch, schmouch-- gimme gigs, bitches. What?

RAKE AT THE GATES

I needed to e-mail someone by the last name of Anderson today.

So I began typing. A-n-d...

I looked up and saw that a name had been autocompleted: Anderson, Ian.

Damn you, Windows 2007 Prog Edition...

LEAVE HOME

Yesterday was Pinhead Day around the house.

Every time I turned a corner, one of the kids was shouting “I don't wanna be a pinhead no more!” or “Gabba gabba, we accept you, one of us, one of us.”

And I couldn't think of a better soundtrack for the day before the first day of school...

GIFTED AND TALENTED

Listened to Thunder, Lightning, Strike all the way through today, and, you know, there's not a duff track on there.

I suspect it's pretty much the mid-aughties version of Odelay, and will sound in the teens as artifactual as Beck does today.

But the shit/giggle factor is mighty high, so that's OK.

Now, just back away from the E-meter slowly, Go! Team kids...

HILLY

Tonight I will wear my CBGB shirt to bed.

I will dream about a bowl of Kix and a bowl of Trix.

And in that dream, I will dump the Kix in the trash.

And I will eat the Trix straight, no milk.

A transistor radio on the kitchen counter will crackle with something dumb from the ‘70s, like Paper Lace.

The bowl of Trix will shake perceptibly, and maybe a red Trix will hop over an orange Trix.

First I will be a little scared, and then I will smile.

Tonight I will wear my CBGB shirt to bed.

EN EM AITCH

My daughter was looking over my eBay watch list the other day.

She skimmed past the usual suspects-- Be@rbricks, 1971 Mets' cards in NM-MT condition, 7” singles-- and stopped at one particular item.

“What's that?”

It was a drawing by Jeff Mangum.

I explained how much I wanted one, but told her that the last one I saw sold for over $400.

“Can I see it closer?”

She put her elbows on the desk, pushed her nose toward the monitor, and considered the drawing.

“Is it so popular because he can draw like a kid?”

That's it exactly, dear. Exactly.

A HABIT THAT STICKS

Maya Arulpragasam.

I feel like I should smoke a cigarette after just saying her name...

UN CHIEN

The morning of the Styx/Foreigner/Def Lep show, I awoke with a nagging compulsion to listen to Debaser.

I think it was precautionary, kind of like dousing yourself with a thick coat of mosquito spray before you go frogging in a swamp.

I don't claim to be the biggest Pixies fan ever, but there are times when I'm convinced that Debaser is the greatest motherfucking song in the world...

HUDDLE FORMATION

Just bought five tickets for The Go! Team show on Halloween eve.

[Pointing hands out and wiggling fingers slowly] "Don't suck, Proof of Youth. Donnnnn't suuucccck..."

ROCK OF AGES

Here's the musical scorecard for the Styx/Foreigner/Def Lep extravaganza.

We got stuck in some commuter traffic out on 66, so we missed most of Styx. I heard Renegade rolling down a hill as I got my ticket scanned, but by the time I hit my seat, they were winding up with who knows what.

Foreigner, of course, opened with their customary cover of Throbbing Gristle's 20 Jazz Funk Greats, then changed things up a bit with a sweet version of Dennis Wilson's Pacific Ocean Blues. And then came the hits: Bran Barn Rabble, The Entire, Pop a Tremolo, Busty Clog Hop, Pincer Snare... well, hell, you know them all! They encored with John Cage's Atlas Eclipticalis, as the lighter flames swayed in the Virginia gloaming.

The Lep came on and rocked a mean Pop Goes the Weasel, segueing right into The Wheels on the Bus. The woman next to me nearly pissed her pants when Joe Elliott took off his jacket to reveal a sleeveless Union Jack t-shirt, and bellowed so loud they could hear him in Birmingham: “His name is my name too! John! Jacob! Jingleheimer! Schmiiiiiiiiiddddddt!” I have to admit, it was a pretty electric moment.

So for these of you haters who think the Rock is dead, well, the Nissan Pavilion had a response for you last Friday:

Not by a long shot, mister. Not by a long shot...

FOOLING YOURSELF

But the reality is that I was cringing that night just as much at myself as I was at my surroundings.

Because the people at the concert were good people.

They hugged, they high-fived, they exchanged brief biographies. They told each other where they had been, where they were now, and where they were going.

They danced, and I sat in my seat and thumped the knee of my pants in rhythm every now and again.

Feeling superior and inferior, amid an untroubled crowd...

IN CONCERT

Yes, I felt out of place.

And when you get right down to it, I think it was the complete and utter lack of irony that made me feel like an alien.

I mean, there was not a quotation mark in the house.

A woman near me lectured her boyfriend that he had to get over the affair she had with his brother back in 1991, and “stop living in the past.”

Um, you might want to check your ticket stub there, miss…

HARD TO BELIEVE SUCH A CALAMITY

The first rock concert I ever saw was Aerosmith.

It was the tail end of their first wave, I was 14 or 15, and my brother gave me a couple of joints to smoke at the show. A life of unvarnished cool was surely ahead.

A year or so later, I found myself at Nassau Coliseum, sitting center stage but a mile back, for the Paradise Theater tour. I even walked away from the show with a black-sleeved Styx baseball shirt.

Cool, it seems, would prove to be a slippery fish.

I'll be sure to let you know how tomorrow's Styx/Foreigner/Def Leppard show goes...

THIS BOY CAN REALLY FLY

An e-mail dialogue between a lifelong Mets' fan and a lifelong Yankees' fan, on the death of Phil Rizzuto...

Mets: Holy cow. The Scooter died.
Yankees: Makes me sad for some reason.
Mets: Me too. I think for us it kind of ends an era that actually ended 20 years ago.
Yankees: Yeah, it's my childhood.

RIP Scooter. RIP Pix. RIP Lindsey Nelson. RIP Murph. RIP WOR.

RIP childhood. RIP...

COME ON, BABY, YOU CAN DO MORE THAN DANCE

See, the thing of it is, it's not even the real Styx and Foreigner.

They both have some Rock-Star-Supernova-Mark-Wahlberg-I-grew-up-on-their-music-man Dennis DeYoung/Lou Gramm manque swinging the mike.

As if Lawrence Gowan could truly INHABIT Kilroy. As if Kelly Hansen could play more than adequate head games...

The Lep, it must be said, are still mostly intact.

LONG NIGHTS, IMPOSSIBLE ODDS

Yesterday I received an exceedingly kind, surpassingly generous, and completely nonironic invitation to a Styx/Foreigner/Def Leppard concert this Friday.

Not sure what to do with this one.

I mean, I'm curious to see what type of crowd a triple bill like this draws in 2007. But I'm also a little frightened.

Seriously...

UNTITLED

As a writer (and I mean that in the sense of “one who writes things down,” inclusive of shopping lists, epic novels, pie recipes, etc.), I find myself on rare occasions having written something that I actually kind of like.

For example, in that song about Russ Tamblyn, I had a strong initial reaction to seeing this part written out: “The damp concrete/Smells like birdseed/So the starlings circle idly/With open bills.”

My practice when I write anything that resonates with me is to then read it over in my head semi-obsessively, until I finally hate it. I then assign a level of merit based on just how long it took for me to hate it.

So, if you see me skip a day of posting, there’s a good chance it’s because I’m still working on developing a healthy enmity for all or part of the previous post…

MONSTER

Here's a little song I wrote while the kids dried off from their baths tonight.

The Green and the Brown

Russ Tamblyn's got stories
About War of the Gargantuas,

And I am waiting on a platform
For a train to take me to him.

The damp concrete
Smells like birdseed

So the starlings circle idly
With open bills.

Yeah, Russ Tamblyn's got stories
About War of the Gargantuas,

The memory of bounced checks
And bowls of sticky rice.

Day-for-night shots
And Toho backlots

Kumi Mizuno weeping
For Nick Adams.

Oh, Russ Tamblyn's got stories
Russ Tamblyn's got stories
Russ Tamblyn's got stories
Russ Tamblyn's got stories
Russ Tamblyn's got stories
Russ Tamblyn's got stories
Russ Tamblyn's got stories
Russ Tamblyn's got stories...

SINGLES 45 AND UNDER

I decided on a sudden today that I'm going to start a small collection of 45s.

I will wrap them in plastic outer sleeves, and keep them all in a nice little box.

Fortunately, a lot of my favorite bands cater to this kind of object fetishism, so I won't need to start listening to Balkan death metal or pretending I actually like Sigur Ros or anything as drastic as all that...

SO HOLOGRAMIC

1. Life! It's a Shame, Gang of Four
The purity of GoF's downward trajectory was almost admirable. They're at about 3000 ft here, and the ground is getting rapidly closer...

2. Loose Translation, The New Pornographers
I like my New Pornographers' tracks to go doodle doodle doodle. This one only goes doodle doodle...

3. United States of Surrealism, Turn On
A Stereolab/High Llamas side project. Look, I know I have a problem, but I swear I'm getting help.

4. TVC 15, David Bowie
If you can possibly withstand that “Oh oh oh oh oh” stuff at the beginning, you just don't know your robot. And shame on you for it...

5. Helen of Troy, John Cale
A “shiny, shiny” that lies somewhere between Venus in Furs and Hayse Fantayzee. That's some pretty fucked up real estate right there...

SINGLE OF THE WEEK

The one thing I did pick up at Plan 9 was a two-disc comp called CD86.

It’s a survey of the C86 movement that flowered briefly in the UK back in the mid 80s.

The whole movement was actually named after a cassette that the NME gave away back in 1986.

Near as I can tell, there’s not a unified field theory for this one, but I hear a lot of jangly guitars and seriousness of intent/purpose that tilts my head Athens-ward.

I bought it new for a little less than $25, which for 50 or so songs feels like a bargain.

It also feels like a bargain because there are so many bands I don’t really know.

Bands I do know, at least a little:
Primal Scream, June Brides, BMX Bandits, Talulah Gosh, Television Personalities, JAMC, Primitives, PWEI, Wedding Present, Age of Chance, Half Man Half Biscuit, Darling Buds, Pooh Sticks, Soup Dragons, McCarthy, Mighty Lemon Drops, Pastels

Bands I’m pretty sure I don’t know at all:
Hurrah, Loft, East Village, Servants, Another Sunny Day, Sea Urchins, Siddeleys, Boy Hairdressers, Hit Parade, Weather Prophets, Mighty Mighty, Dentists, Razorcuts, Bodines, Raw Herbs, Laugh, Jasmine Minks, Fizzbombs, Fourteen Iced Bears, Close Lobsters, Meat Whiplash, Bachelor Pad

It’s probably not all great, but it’s an education…

I CAN EVEN FIND IT IN MY HEART TO LOVE MIKE LOVE

1. Un Secret Sans Importance, Monade
Thank you Norman Conquest, for making me feel intelligent enough to actually understand what that title means. Vive le rock!

2. Misty Morning, Albert Bridge, The Pogues
Last night as I laid in bed and fought and fought to fall asleep, I had the urge to listen to this album. So I'm glad the iPod came through with a piece of it...

3. Downs, Big Star
When Alex Chilton turned into a hot mess...

4. Navigator, The Pogues
OK, another Pogues track had me rushing to their Web site to see if Shane had fallen down a well or something. (“What's that, iPod? You say Shane's in trouble?”) The kick in the pants is that I see Phil Chevron has throat cancer, and has taken a medical leave from the band. Peace and love to you, brother.

5. Funky Pretty, The Beach Boys
“What's that iPod? You say the Beach Boys are in trouble?”

LIVING THROUGH ANOTHER CUBE

The best part of "Gleaming the Cube" is about three minutes in, when skate-rat 47 says to skate-rat 3 "Gleam that cube, man!"

Um, yeah. Fuck yeah.

FUNKY KICKS GOING DOWN IN THE CITY

Going on hiatus for about a week.

The family is coming back from Japan tomorrow morning, and I expect that I'll have a case of Jet Lag By Proxy Syndrome for some time.

See you in Aug!

BLUE RIDGE RANGER

Charlottesville exists in my memory as a place where I left something.

Something less than vital, but more than trivial. Something undefined.

So every time I visit, I feel like I'm looking for it, whatever it is. And of course I never find it...

On Sunday, I stood in Plan 9 flipping through racks of used CDs. Occasionally I picked up a disc in which I had no interest, like Teenage Symphonies to God by Velvet Crush, and entertained the possibility that this exact disc had been part of their stock for the last 13 years. And that I might have passed over this exact disc back in 1994.

And in some strange way, this made me feel almost as if I had found what I was searching for...

OUT OF THE PAST

Here's a short poem I wrote as I drove home from Charlottesville yesterday...

Eurica

Land.
Grandparents' furniture.

Wednesday night prayer service.

Racial hatred.
Shaved ice w/ cherry syrup.

Crystal meth.
A trailer cap.
Two Harris Teeters.

Antiques and junktiques.

Calves for slaughter.
Housesale by owner.

TV PARTY TONIGHT

Just finished watching a couple live performances of note...

Fell in Love With a Girl, The White Stripes (Later With Jools Holland)

I realized watching Deerhoof on Carson Daly (?) the other night that a really great live TV performance should make you squirm a little. There should be just the right mix of nervous laughter, embarassment for the performer, and some kind of awe.

This was apparently The White Stripes' first time on UK TV from back in 2001, and Jack is all twitchy and jibber-jabbery and he rocks, and they nailed it. Meg is cool like Keith Moon on xanax.

And I suppose there's some way to watch this and not develop a huge crush on Meg, but it escapes me completely...

Intervention, Arcade Fire (Saturday Night Live)

If you're willing to buy into the earnest intensity even just a little, this is massive. A new religion, if the room is small enough.

And now I'm kicking myself for missing them at the 9:30 Club, and then missing them again at the DAR Hall.

Because I know that the venues will continue to get bigger, and the gestures will grow more outsized along the way.

Because I know that the new religion will become a sullen ritual...

PHOTOGRAPH

It's Google image search shuffle night.

I do an image search for the title of each song the shuffle deals, and postify the results.

Odds of random unexpected porn: 34%.

SafeSearch is off, baby!


1. Banana Fish, Shonen Knife

2. Coral Moon, John Cale

3. Mellotron, Stereolab

4. Surf's Up, The Beach Boys

5. Venus in Furs, The Velvet Underground (April 1966, Scepter Studios)

MIDNIGHT TO YOU

1. Discovering Japan, Graham Parker and the Rumour
This sounds very different when your family has been there for a month or so. See you soon, guys.

2. Ominous Cloud, Broadcast
If I called this Stereolab's The Flower Called Nowhere played sideways, would you hold it against me? Yeah, I don't really blame you...

3. Half a Person, The Smiths
As I drove home tonight after a 10-hour day at the office, I thought about living in the Maine woods, surrounded by cool air and clean water, and how much that would suck.

4. The Cool Out, The Clash
It's a dubby remix of The Call Up. There's this one part where the guitar sounds kind of New Romantic, and it kind of freaks me out...

5. Nothing to Do With Me, Stereolab
“Well it won't go away overnight/But it will go away in the end” pretty much sums up how I feel about Sound-Dust.

P.S.- That copy of Tigermilk went for $359.33.

ELECTRONIC RENAISSANCE

1. Rhineland (Heartland), Beirut
If he ever adds some emotional resonance to the mix, the kid will be a comer...

2. A You You Never Knew, Future Bible Heroes
Sometimes I feel like a Stephin Merritt side project...

3. Air, Talking Heads
“Air can hurt you too.” See, this is why people worried about David Byrne back in the day.

4. Valentine, The Replacements
It borders on tragic to hear the Replacements burdened with this obnoxious 80s drum sound. As if they were ever meant to belong to a decade...

5. She's Losing It, Belle and Sebastian
There's 21 hours to go on a copy of Tigermilk on eBay, and the bidding stands at $167. Sweet bumbling bees...

I DON'T CARE WHAT THEY SAY ABOUT US ANYWAY

1. Pagan Poetry, Bjork
Jose Pagan was a middle infielder with the Giants and the Pirates in the 60s and early 70s. A lifetime .250 hitter, he finished 11th in the NL MVP voting in 1962, a year in which he batted .259 with 7 HR and 57 RBI, and sported a .312 OBP.

2. Alarm Call, Bjork
Well, someone's feeling a bit Bjorky tonight, huh Mr. iPod?

3. Soul Survivor, The Rolling Stones
The early 70s can be summed up by the fact that the Stones use the phrase “bell bottom blues” in this song, nicking it from the Derek and the Dominoes track of the same name.

4. Buddy Holly, Weezer
I remember brain coral mocking my love of this song while we moved aimlessly one day through the music section of the Charlottesville K-Mart back in 1994...

5. Summer Crane, The Avalanches
The first time I owned a radio with a tuning knob, I spun it with as much torque as I could muster. It sounded like an avalanche...

THE GRAY SHARK

Life is full of random edits.

I left the office tonight 15 minutes or so later than usual. My family is in Japan for a month, so there is less imperative to get home for dinner by 6:15.

The area around my building was crawling with traffic, so I made a right turn where I normally make a left. This led me to a large traffic circle.

Cars were backed up a bit along the circle, and I waited for a light to change ahead of me, so that things would unclog and clear the way for me to circumnavigate my way around.

As I sat there, a dark gray Range Rover pulled up next to me. I powered down my passenger-side window when I saw the driver gesturing at me.

“Do you know the nearest place to get gas? I'm really low.”

I explained to him the route to the nearest station, which was maybe a mile or so down the road.

“I'm almost empty. Is there anywhere closer?”

I shook my head, and wished him luck as the light turned green. He would need to get in my lane to follow my directions, so I found it a little curious when he said “You go,” and waved a hand over his side-view mirror.

I began to make my way around the circle, and noticed immediately that he was behind me. I turned off the circle, to head for the avenue that would take me to the beltway, and he made the same turn.

I did not think too much about it at this point. I figured that he had made a strange decision, given his apparently dire gas situation, but people make strange decisions all the time.

I made some incidental lane changes as I went down the road, and I took notice of the fact that he mirrored my changes precisely. My grip on the wheel grew tighter.

I came to a red light, and he pulled up next to me again. He mumbled something about needing gas, and I said “You have to make a right here.”

“I'm going to keep following you,” he said, and I saw vacant menace in his eyes. He now had a small ragged white towel wrapped around the steering wheel.

“I'm not going anywhere near a gas station,” I said. I left the stop line in a hurry when the light changed.

Sure enough, he worked his way behind me. We were heading for the beltway.

I took out my cell phone and flipped it open right up by my ear. I pantomimed pressing a few numbers, and moved my lips as if in conversation for about 15 seconds, pointing periodically to the Range Rover behind me.

I folded the phone, and made the left turn that would take me to the beltway. He stayed close behind me.

When I hit the entrance ramp, I accelerated dramatically, in an effort to put some cars between us. It worked momentarily, but he sped around any slower cars and resumed his place behind me. I made a couple of other evasive moves, but they all had the same end result.

I had at this point seen enough to convince me that some other action was needed. I called 911 and narrated my situation to three different people, the last of whom was a cop.

“I'm coming up to my regular exit. Should I get off here, or keep going?”

He told me to get off, and began explaining how I should navigate the cloverleaf traffic pattern I was about to enter, in an effort to shake the Range Rover from my tail.

I had to cross over a solid white line rather suddenly in order to make the exit, and the Range Rover did the same.

The cop told me to take the west-bound exit. I explained that this was my normal route home, so I was familiar with the area.

And suddenly, as I headed for the west-bound exit, the Range Rover veered quickly onto the east-bound ramp. I explained this to the cop, and then gave him a quick description of the vehicle.

For the rest of my drive, I kept one eye on the rear-view mirror, half expecting the Range Rover to pop up like a predatory shark...

As this evening goes on, I'm sure that I will eventually start to walk past windows without grinding my teeth a little. As this evening goes on, I'm sure that I will eventually stop stealing furtive looks at the street outside my house. As this evening goes on, I'm sure that I will eventually sleep.

Eventually...

THE FRAGILE DEFENCE OF WORDS

1. Ocean of Noise, Arcade Fire
The attempt to rhyme “noise” and “voice” sounds like a pair of ragged claws scuttling across the floors of silent seas, people. Nails on a chalkboard. Dry fingers rubbing styrofoam...

2. Unreleased Backgrounds, The Beach Boys
Fifty seconds of random wordless harmonizing from the Pet Sounds sessions. It has cleansed mine ears...

3. Stutter, Elastica
Well, hello 1995. How have you been? Seen Weezer around?

4. Come and Play in the Milky Night, Stereolab
I think they actually nicked the “come and play” part from the Sesame Street theme, which is wholly appropriate. This is coin of the same realm...

5. Oh, You Pretty Things, David Bowie
I imagine that a line like “Gotta make way for the homo superior” made some newspapers shake down round the pub in 1971. So points for that, DB...

RISE IN THE COOL OF THE EVENING

1. Sacrificial Bonfire, XTC
See, now that's a beauty way to end an album. And then the American label tacks on the cack single and fecks it all up. Dear god...

2. Jack-Ass, Beck
Odelay seems like a relic from a far-away place and time. This one made me misty in that long ago (“gravity shackles” and braying donkeys notwithstanding), and it's still pretty damn affecting...

3. Skip Steps 1 & 3, Superchunk
Step 2, apparently: Start proto-emo band.

4. Devil House, Shonen Knife
The first time I went to Japan, I met someone who recorded on the same label as Shonen Knife. He gave me a small coin purse to remember him by, and I gave him my Zippo.

5. Go Mental, The Ramones
Speaking of Shonen Knife. And this is sad and self-parodic like a good half of Rock Animals...

THE SCENERY CIRCLING THE MALL

1. Venus, Bananarama
OK, this is the 'Rama at their soulless fembot worst. Shocking Blue says shame on you...

2. Purr, Sonic Youth
All the smart/dumb SY stuff the kids love so much. Smart being the noise, dumb being the words.

3. One More Time, The Clash
I'm looking out of the corner of my eye at a Casey Stengel baseball card from 1962 that's sitting on my desk. We still miss you, Joe Strummer...

4. Washington, D.C., The Magnetic Fields
This was our theme song when we were considering our move from NY to the D.C. area. And I don't see how anyone could hear this and not move to D.C.

5. The Villain, Lieutenant Pigeon
As if the name Lieutenant Pigeon was not cool enough, they were actually an offshoot of another band: Snavely Makepeace. May the sun never set on you, 1970s Britain...

PEOPLE WHO DIED

On this date in music history, both Brian Jones (1969) and Jim Morrison (1971) died.

What say you in tribute, iPod?

1. Lucky Number, Lene Lovich
OK, not for Brian and Jim it wasn't. Full confession: the name “Lovich” makes me laugh...

2. Tell That Girl to Shut Up, Holly and the Italians
My obsession with female-fronted New Wave acts of the early 80s continues unabated. Apparently.

3. The Jury, Morphine
I kid you not, and holy shit: Mark Sandman, lead singer of Morphine, died on July 3, 1999. That's just fucking weird, man.

4. When Doves Cry, Prince
Leave it to 1984 Prince to give a song a silly name like When Doves Cry, and then have the pure genius to actually make it sound like doves crying. And then to get the avant-funk shit up to #1...

5. HiBall Nova Scotia, The High Llamas
See, Sean O'Hagan has spent his musical life trying to make his songs sound like his titles. But still no When Doves Cry...

MATH ROCK

A quick Monday shuffle.

1. What Is Happening, Cornershop
Any song that repeats a sample of someone saying “turkey gravy” can't be all bad. Just mostly bad.

2. Come Live With Me, Heaven 17
“I was 37, you were 17/You were half my age...” OK, first of all, this sounds biographical, so: Yuk. And douchebag, 17 isn't half of 37...

3. Beginning to See the Light, The Velvet Underground
More math: This is 50% a goof, and 45% the sound of your life being saved. The remaining 5% is inactive ingredients...

4. Psychotic Reaction, Count Five
Frug. Just, frug. That is all.

5. You Got The Silver, The Rolling Stones
Not the Let It Bleed version, with Keith on vocals, but an early Mick take. The backing instrumentation is pretty much the same, but I have to say Keith brought this a certain vulnerability that Mick could not really muster...

TROMPE-L'OEIL

1. Escape Pod [From the World of Medical Observations], Stereolab
I hadn't heard this in a couple of years, and now it's the second time I've heard it today. And I still can't help singing “Savior Faire is everywhere” on the verses. Somewhere Klondike Kat purrs his approval...

2. Flitcraft, The Mekons
Every song ever should be called “Flitcraft”...

3. Miss Modular, Stereolab
Ah, Miss Modular. Or as I like to call it, Flitcraft.

4. Snake and Martyrs, TV on the Radio
Pretty damn sweet for a bonus track. This is one of those albums where the single was just so strong that I sought it out continuously at the expense of the rest of the disc. There might just be a relationship here yet...

5. Jesus, Etc., Wilco
The first album I remember buying for myself was Fantastic, a K-Tel comp featuring 22 sometimes truncated versions of the biggest hits of 1972 and 1973, crammed onto a single slab of brittle vinyl. It had a garish rainbow cover with “Fantastic” written at the top in 48 pt Have A Nice Day font, and damn it meant the world to me. This was the tracklist:

Tie A Yellow Ribbon 'Round the Ole Oak Tree - Tony Orlando and Dawn
Crocodile Rock - Elton John
The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia - Vicki Lawrence
Twelfth of Never - Donny Osmond
Power to All Our Friends - Cliff Richard
Hocus Pocus - Focus
Little Willy - Sweet
Lean On Me - Bill Withers
L.A. Freeway - Jerry Jeff Walker
It Sure Took a Long, Long Time - Lobo
Rock N' Roll, Part Two - Gary Glitter
Free Electric Band - Albert Hammond
Misdemeanor - Foster Sylvers
I'm Doin' Fine Now - New York City
I'm Gonna Love You Just a Little Bit More Baby - Barry White
The Morning After - Maureen McGovern
Twistin' the Night Away - Rod Stewart
Go All the Way- Raspberries
Armed and Extremely Dangerous - First Choice
Randy - Blue Mink
Back When My Hair Was Short - Gunhill Road
Rocket Man - Elton John

BOP BOP SHOOBIE DO WAA

Shoufflé for one...

1. You Make Me Feel So Young, Frank Sinatra
The whole world knows that I'm a swingin' lover...

2. Girlfriend is Better, Talking Heads
Between this album and Pilgrimage by R.E.M., 1983 was the year of speaking in tongues. Wasn't sure what to make of that in 1983, not sure what to make of it now...

3. Come Back From San Francisco, The Magnetic Fields
Exquisite, except for that “I miss doing the wild thing with you” part. I would have preferred “fucking.” Heck, maybe even “humping.” Or how about “unskinny bopping”? Eh, not so much...

4. I Can't Win, The Strokes
Once saw them play a hall that's since been converted into an upscale off-track betting palace. The Moldy Peaches opened, and they were juvenile, stoopid, and great. A folie a deux shared by 200, or whatever the capacity was. The Strokes played the 13 songs they knew, and then disappeared into the upper-middle-class night...

5. More Than Physical, Bananarama
I swear, I have no idea where this came from. Maybe my wife put it on here....OK, OK, I own the damn greatest hits album. Shy Boy? He Was Really Sayin' Something? Robert DeNiro's Waiting? Cruel Summer? Genius, each one of them.

POLYPHONY

1.
One day in 1996 as I was commuting home through thick traffic along Deer Park Ave, I looked out my car window and saw a gaggle of geese lounging on a median strip, poking at the dry grass.

And if geese have eyes, then our eyes surely met…

2.
Taeko and I pulled out of Charlottesville towing an overloaded U-Haul trailer with an ’89 Camry. We strained over steep hills heading north, and when we stopped for the night in Gettysburg, we saw that the weight of the trailer was separating the bumper from the car.

In an effort to lighten the load, we jettisoned some nonessential furniture and boxes of books and notebooks, making a silly promise to ourselves that we would one day return to Gettysburg, to reclaim at least the boxes.

Grad school was over, and I was heading to New York to look for a job…

3.
I’ve seen what happens out there in the wind on the wire. And I chose instead the pursuit of safety…

STRANDED IN THE JUNGLE

Meanwhile, back in the early 90s…

My grad school essay was a sweet, naïve little manifesto in support of bite-sized art.

Rather than decrying short attention spans and the dagblasted MTV, I wrote about the importance of recognizing that we were entering a new stage in our cultural evolution, and that we should embrace its potentials.

My poetry—or what was left of it— attempted to support this notion, by being as popcompact and resonant as I could make it.

Median Geese
I’ll no longer
For the caliph
Pile
The golden sand
Of impulse

Talc
I will miss
The suit against dawn
The mountains bring

My Grail a Recliner
I saw
Karl Wallenda
Falter

And on slow summer days, I like to pretend that My Grail a Recliner is the last poem I ever wrote…

60 MINUTE MAN

OK, it's a late night, so I just have time for a quick Andy Rooney moment. It's partly cloudy... with an 80% chance of curmudgeon!

“Why is it that it takes iTunes four days to send me an e-mail receipt for my download of Silent Shout by The Knife and Face the Fire by Dan Fogelberg? Just what in the heck are those micronaut geniuses at Apple up to anyway?”

I'M A PILL

1. Immature, Bjork
From my favorite album to feature the Icelandic String Quartet. Though of course one could make a strong case for “Dóttir þeirra hét Guðrún”...

2. This Is Not a Love Song, Public Image Ltd
This is not a bad song, but the album is just pure evil in its mediocrity. I will smash that album to bits anytime that it crosses my path.

3. Jungle Music, Special AKA
OK, when it first started, I rolled my eyes and groaned a little. I was still stuck on the sheer biliousness of that Public Image shiite, I suppose. But you won me over in the end, Special AKA.

4. Desifinado, Antonio Carlos Jobim
I made a mix CD over the weekend that included Girl From Ipanema, which I heard this morning and stayed with me straight through until evening. So hearing this now puts a nice warm circle on my day...

5. What Do You Do When Love Dies, Dusty Springfield
Dusty Springfield kicks Janis Joplin's everloving ass.

TRANSMUTATION

1. Orgiastic, Stereolab
I think I'd like this best if I was sitting on a swing, going moderately high, with steady intermediate pumps encouraging an unvaried pace. But right now I'm sitting on my ass on a busted Ikea swivel chair...

2. Moon Rocks, Talking Heads
LCD Soundsystem's raw DNA.

3. Beasley Street, John Cooper Clarke
“There's a dead canary on a swivel seat...” Um, did he get it at Ikea?

4. Flabbergast, Komeda
“Flabbergast” is one of the top ten words ever. If I had a whaling ship, it would be named “Flabbergast” and I'd never catch a single whale. I'd dress up warm each night and drink iced Calpis while watching the northern lights...

5. On Your Wings, Iron and Wine
I think I like Sam Beam's God...

I NEED AN ORDER

It's short shot shuffle Thursday, sheriff.

1. I Love a Man in a Uniform (Dub), Gang of Four
Pointless like sugar-free Bubble Yum.

2. A Pretty Girl is Like..., The Magnetic Fields
Look, there were 69 of them-- they weren't all going to be ribbon winners.

3. The World Backwards, Broadcast
Ah, but the world backwards is so very dlrow...

4. Doubt, Stereolab
[He picks up the iPod, and shakes it vigorously, trying to peer behind the small screen. He is amazed that it has followed a Broadcast song with a Stereolab song] “Show yourself, miniature DJ. I know you're in there!”

5. Failures, Joy Division
Gee Davey, I don't know about this early punky JD...

FEEL THE GREASE

1. Home of the Brave, Spiritualized
Your life has been diminished if you have not spent any time with this album. I wouldn't recommend too much time-- when you find the right amount, you'll just know it. Anything more would be intemperate...

2. Becalmed, Brian Eno
About half a kilometer down Ambient Rd. there's this really neat oxygen bar. The walls are white, and all the dead people you once loved serve you cool water in conical paper cups. And this is G14 on the jukebox.

3. One More Robot/Sympathy 3000-21, The Flaming Lips
Wow, we're onto something here. This is the most perfect three-song sequence the iPod has dealt to date. Will the circle remain unbroken?

4. Truckdrivin' Neighbors Downstairs (Yellow Sweat), Beck
OK, that's the sound of the circle being smashed to kingdom come. And also the sound of me ROTFL...

5. Listening to Marmalade, Go-Kart Mozart
I prefer listening to the Higsons, but fair enough...

HE CAN’T BE A MAN ‘CAUSE HE DOESN’T SMOKE THE SAME CIGARETTES AS ME

It was 12 years ago today that I quit smoking.

I woke up that morning with my then-standard chest-rattling cough.

I looked over in the trash can at the broken pieces of my Godzilla-paw ashtray, with its awesome glow-in-the-dark nails. I had knocked it off the night table inadvertently a couple of days earlier.

After breakfast, I was sitting on the couch reading the newspaper, and I realized it was time.

I went into the closet in my bedroom and grabbed an open carton of Doral Lights, with six full packs remaining. I handed the smokes to my wife, and let her know I would not be needing them anymore.

In honor of this anniversary, I just wanted to share a recent obsession of mine.

This Newport ad is so mind-bendingly cynical on so many levels that it actually becomes a piece of tragic art…

I'M AN ALTO

My promise to you: today's shuffle will not end right smack in the middle of Journey's Don't Stop Believin'...

1. If Money Talks, Jason & The Scorchers
Ahead of their time? Eh, I don't know about that. Raucous, smart, and a hell of a lot of fun? Yes, yes, and yes.

2. Pete Standing Alone, Boards of Canada
Music for when your robot is having “issues.” I would've called it Twiki Standing Alone, but what the fuck do I know...

3. Orange County Suite, The Doors
Never heard of it? It's a bonus track on the L.A. Woman reissue, and it's basically a real song. Not a particularly good one, but a real one. Lyrics to cringe by...

4. Prelude to 110 or 220/Women of the World, Jim O'Rourke
My somewhat tortured metaphor for this back when it came out compared it to building an onion layer by layer, rather than peeling an onion layer by layer. And I'm sticking with that.

5. Wrong Time Capsule, Deerhoof
Deerhoof make magical little songs for magical little people, and it suits them just fine. Thank you, Deerhoof. Thank you.

A DREAM I HAD IN 1995

I swear I have music on this thing that came out in the 21st century, all available evidence to the contrary.

However, here's another five songs to refute that notion...

1. Autonomy, Buzzcocks
Half a great song, but they can't quite bring it home. And I've long been suspicious that they want “autonomy” to sound like “on top of me,” and further, that they think this clever.

2. Break Down the Door, Special AKA
Special AOR, Special MOR, Special DDT, Special DOA, Special FUCK.

3. Young Ned of the Hill, The Pogues
One of those non-Shane numbers from Peace and Love that ain't half bad. Making “Ireland” sound like a simple compound word...

4. The State I Am In, Belle and Sebastian
The version from the Dog on Wheels EP. Not the one from Tigermilk. Sweet merciful crap, am I a geek...

5. If the Kids Are United, Sham 69
The cool thing about baseball in Japan is that they do these modified terrace chants for each individual player. If I were a gaijin playing for the Hiroshima Carp, I would ask that the fans sing the chorus to this song each time I came to bat.

DADDY WAS A COP

Back from Chicago.

And I don't want to cause no trouble/I'm just here to do the iPod shuffle...

One word per song style.

1. Painters Paint, The High Llamas
Supercalifragilisticbeachboysalidocious.

2. All I Want, The Mekons
Wobble.

3. In the End, Green Day
Bandstanding.

4. God Is a Number, Sleater-Kinney
666 X 4.17 = 2777.22

5. A Summer Wasting, Belle and Sebastian
Mustering.

HIGH IN THE MID 70s

A holiday weekend ahead, and then a business trip to Chicago. Be back and posting on June 6.

Now, let's roll them bones. Daddy needs a new pair of shoes! (Note, however, that daddy does not need Nu Shooz.)

1. Don't Come Close, The Ramones
As punk as a frosted brown sugar Pop Tart. And just as much a miracle of modern science...

2. My Life is Right, Big Star
Before they tripped over into wiggy darkness, Big Star did yearning and melancholy as good as anyone. And those are my middle names, and this is my crack.

3. Telephasic Workshop, Boards of Canada
Aww, it's Twiki from Buck Rogers' birthday! And someone bought him a copy of ProTools. Go, Twiki from Buck Rogers, go!

4. Sprung a Leak, Superchunk
From No Pocky for Kitty. The best Pocky I ever had was this special Winter edition I picked up at the Japanese grocery store a few months ago. It was fecking sublime. Mmm... pocky...

5. Frankenstein, New York Dolls
It was Roger Grimsby's Manhattan. He just let the rest of us visit...

LIVING ON THE CEILING

Episode 46, in which the iPod steadfastly refuses to play anything new, again.

1. Carry That Weight, The Beatles
It's weird to hear this on its own, and not as part of the Abbey Road side 2 suite. Several years ago I ran into one of my best friends at a National Wholesale Liquidators in the middle of the afternoon on a work day, and it feels kind of like that...

2. Promises, Promises, Naked Eyes
Best 80s synthpop duo? Blancmange had their moments for sure. I guess Soft Cell would have their supporters. These guys would only scrape the bottom of my top 10...

3. This Fire, Franz Ferdinand
Um, I'm very discouraged with this shuffle so far. My admiration for Jacqueline the other day was not meant to convey that I needed more FF in my life. I was just having a moment. Now cut the shit, iPod.

4. Torrey Canyon, Serge Gainsbourg
Mais oui, le iPod. Mais oui.

5. White Girl (single mix), X
“Yeah, Exene, if we just flatten it out a little bit, and punch up some of the harmonies, we're just bound to have a hit. Jinkers, I just know we will. And then everything will be technicolor swell.”

MONKEY GONE TO HAVANA

1. Five Years, Yo La Tengo
From their debut, and trust me, in a blind taste test, there's no chance you'd know it's the Real Thing...

2. Surfer Girl, The Beach Boys
“In my Woody, I will take you everywhere I go.” Sorry, that still makes me laugh. But, damn, they make it sound like The Lord's Prayer. And maybe it is, Beavis. Maybe it is...

3. Dear Grandma and Grandpa, Tortoise
This is a good opportunity to mention that I had occasion to multiply 666 by 4.17 today while I was crunching some numbers at work. I'll save you the trouble: the result was 2777.22. Now, I'm not a religious man, and numerology holds little sway with me, but it pleased me greatly to see those three sixes turn into three sevens, surrounded by three twos.

4. Preciso Dizer Que Te Amo, Cazuza & Bebel Gilberto
I logged eight credits of intermediate Spanish in college, and passed only because I had a very cool instructor who knew that passing was a requirement for me to get into grad school. But I'll take a shot at translating that title: “What a Precise Cigar, Dizer.” Not 100% sure who Dizer is, but I think he was a painter...

5. Champs, Wire
Woo hoo-- post-punk handclaps!

THE EXCITING WORLD OF HIP

Might as well face it, I'm addicted to shuff...

1. I'm the Man Who Loves You, Wilco
I suppose calling them a post-rock Grateful Dead would sound like an insult. But there it is. Now deal.

2. I Am a Tree, Guided By Voices
I suppose calling them a post-post-rock Grateful Dead would sound like an insult. This one is positively epic for them-- it's almost five minutes long, for chrissakes. And they pretty much sustain, except for the parts where they torture the metaphor (“So climb up my trunk and build your nest”-- um, ew).

3. Download Sofist, Mouse on Mars
Pretty like a car commercial...

4. Prologue, Dimitri From Paris
Believe it or not, I paid someone $35 to buy me the Japanese version of Sacrebleu when it was first released. It came with a bonus disk, which I've never even listened to. I really liked the album itself though. And here's 36 seconds of it...

5. Blue Spark, X
There are a few identikit X songs on Under the Big Black Sun, and this is one of them. It at least has the grace and good sense to not stretch far beyond two minutes...

YOU BLEW IT UP

Shuffle short shot Friday...

1. New Music Machine, Cornelius
Ape shall not kill ape. But ape shall make ace shoegazer/Shibuya pop.

2. Days of Being Wild, ...And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead
Wow, that was a pretty seamless transition. Well played, sir. Well played.

3. Too Personal, The Mekons
Comfortably Numb for people who don't do drugs or easy self-pity. So, certainly not numb, and definitely not comfortable. But that last minute is just weird, man.

4. Me and the Major, Belle and Sebastian
Another in the line of songs that name-check other bands, in this case Roxy Music. If I had the energy, I'd make a list, and probably start with the T. Rex songs (All the Young Dudes, You Better You Bet)...

5. Everything Merges With the Night, Brian Eno
And speaking of Roxy. If Eno looked like Bryan Ferry, the world would now be at peace.

OLDIES NIGHT

The shuffle function got a little creaky tonight.

1. European Son, The Velvet Underground
This one is not about the words. It's about breaking the glass, grinding the glass, and then trying to fuse the glass back together when it is already ground to dust. Almost works, too...

2. Born Under Punches (The Heat Goes On), Talking Heads
“Born Under Punches (The Heat Goes On)” is actually a perfect anagram of “European Son.” Well, it's not really, but it should be.

3. Corner Soul, The Clash
Except for the extreme wankery toward the very end, I've always thought that Sandinista! is a pretty excellent album. Let's try making it into a single album:

Hitsville UK
The Leader
Somebody Got Murdered
Up in Heaven (Not Only Here)
Let's Go Crazy
The Sound of the Sinners
Police on My Back
The Call Up
Washington Bullets
Charlie Don't Surf
The Street Parade

Now go round up all the contemporaneous albums that are better than that. It's OK, I'll wait...

4. Villiers Terrace [early version], Echo and The Bunnymen
I always wanted the Bunnymen to be better than they usually were. Oh well, at least we'll always have The Cutter and Killing Moon and Silver.

5. Painting the Town Blue, X
Right before they lost the plot. OK, this one is actually the sound of them losing the plot. But if you still don't own Wild Gift and Under the Big Black Sun, I am saddened. Truly saddened...

MECO COME

A midweek shuffle...

1. Subject to the Ladder, Broadcast
This struck me initially as a transitory song. Then I realized that most of the album is transitory. And that is its particular genius...

2. This Empty Place, Dionne Warwick
From the Bacharach/David songbook, before she went shitcracker psychic-friend crazy. Or maybe she was shitcracker crazy back then too-- it just didn't matter.

3. Goin' Out West, Tom Waits
I once had a theory that every other song on Bone Machine was great, like the Star Trek movies or Bret Saberhagen's career. But honestly, I couldn't tell you if this was one of the odd songs or one of the even songs...

4. Orgy of Bubastus, Add N to (X)
This sounds kind of like Devo's version of Satisfaction being covered by Heaven 17 in the Korova Milk Bar. Or Flight 505 being covered by the Mos Eisley Cantina Band. Whichever is the geekier reference...

5. In the Backseat, The Arcade Fire
Funeral helps define late 2004 for me, but I swear to jebus I've never, ever heard this song until now. And I don't mean that in the sense of “I've heard it 1,000 times, but now I'm really hearing it for the first time, man. I mean really hearing it, you know?” No, I mean I've just never heard it with my ears before...

LIMITLESS MINNOWS

1. Monkey & Bear, Joanna Newsom
OK, so the monkey represents the body and the pleasures of the flesh, and Ursala the bear is spirituality. Or something like that. I was playing Freecell for some of the 9:28, OK?

2. Games People Play, The Spinners
All hail supperclub soul! And some basso profundo to boot. Love the way the various vocal lines finish each others' sentences. You know, like the games people play...

3. I Don't Want to See You, Camera Obscura
From the perfectly named album Underachievers Please Try Harder. Does seem a little strange that the iPod would go there again so soon, though.

4. Small Song IV, Broadcast
For the last six or seven years, I've been more interested in what Broadcast will do next than in what Stereolab will do next. And I have not been disappointed. Ha Ha Sound is up there with Dots and Loops as one of my all-time favorite albums of tonight...

5. Please Let Me Wonder, The Beach Boys
Many years ago I borrowed the Good Vibrations box-set from my buddy Tom. My then-toddler daughter was entranced by the faux wood-grain box, and figured she could improve on it with a little well-placed doodling. Well, she did improve on it, dammit. Plus, she inadvertently scored me my very own doodled-upon version of said box-set. And got for Tom a nice clean new version. Let's just say it was a win-win-win...

DO PI

Seems to me a person could dedicate a blog to the daily results of their shuffle.

But this is not that blog.

Except when it is.

Like this week.

Shuffle week on the tongue...

1. Staring at the Sun, TV on the Radio
I promise to one day like these guys more than I do currently. Just meet me halfway fellas...

2. Keep it Clean, Camera Obscura
Yeah, it's like Belle and Sebastian if Isobel was Stuart. But I like it. As long as the dude doesn't sing. This I call the Sugarcubes rule, and it translates roughly as “Dude, shut the fuck up.” Deerhoof, I'm looking at you, too...

3. Stay Free, The Clash
Up there with the very best of Mick Jones. Sentimental, but not treacly. And some excellent nongratuitous profanity. I remember when radio loved this song, but had to play the shits and fucks in reverse. Silly radio.

4. One More Hour, Sleater-Kinney
When they're on (like here) they give me the chills. The lead vocal is so damn committed, and then the backing vocal on the chorus is kind of sardonic-- it's an amazing contrapuntal kind of thing. And then that “Don't say another word/About the other girl” part? Damn, damn, and damn...

5. After Me the Deluge, Deerhoof
And speaking of Deerhoof... And dammit, the dude is singing! Must you mock me, iPod? But you know what? Actually, it's pretty OK. I take back what I said dude from Deerhoof-- you can continue to sing on occasion. And PS, I vote for “Apres moi le deluge” as one of history's coolest quotes...

MY POD

The end of a long and draining week...

What have you got for me, o mighty shuffle feature?

1. Abernant 1984-85, The Mekons
Yeah, that'll do. A little sloppy moral outrage.

2. Dear Sons and Daughters of Hungry Ghosts, Wolf Parade
“But God doesn't always have the best goddamn plans, does He?” Cute.

3. Chop That Child in Half, The Mekons
Whoa, what's with more Mekons? And now we've moved from God to Solomon. What's next, Jesus from the third Velvets album? Maybe a cut from Speaking in Tongues?

4. Twist and Crawl, The English Beat
I Just Can't Stop It really is a great album. I saw in the paper today that these guys are playing locally soon. I wonder how many original members are in this iteration. Maybe Ranking Roger and a Dave Wakeling-alike?

5. Halfway to a Threeway, Jim O'Rourke
Gotta love that nutty post-rock math. This is a little creepy the first few times you hear it, then it eventually becomes kind of pretty. Then: creepy, creepy, pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty, creepy, pretty, creepy, creepy, pretty, creepy. I'm not sure what happens after that...

6. Raquel, The Specials
The ska bands borrowed a bunch of cool stuff from the punks. It's a shame that The Specials had to borrow the misogyny as well. And no, this isn't the only example.

7. Slack Motherfucker, Superchunk
“I'm working/But I'm not working for you!” Now that's a Friday lyric. A 1990 lyric, too.

8. Jaqueline, Franz Ferdinand
These guys knew what they wanted to do right out of the box (be a stylish Gang of Four), and they did it well. And look, another Friday lyric: “It's always better on holiday/So much better on holiday/That's why we only work when we need the money.” Aye, me wee bairns...

9. Live at Dominoes, The Avalanches
Ooh, listen, I think they just sampled an old “How to Shoot Snooker” instructional record. You know, the one that came out on Deram in 1968. The one with the green and red cover. Kooks.

10. Ladyflash, The Go! Team
OK, iPod, I have about 5,000 songs on there. There's no way you could've followed The Avalanches with The Go! Team by accident. Nice.

SWEEP THE DEBRIS

Shuffling with the 2GB nano is like going to an office party. You know you're going to run into the same people you see every day, just in a slightly different context.

Shuffling with the 30GB is a different shindig. You end up meeting people you had long forgotten, or just never really knew.

Take tonight for example.

I had ages ago written off Beck's Mutations, and strode confidently through the years convinced that there was nothing there for me.

But then shuffle dished out Lazy Flies, and I was kinda sorta blown away.

I doubt I'll have the time/inclination to go back and completely reassess Mutations.

But it was good seeing you, man. Good seeing you...

IT WAS FORTY YEARS AGO TODAY

Damn, between Strange Days and birthdays, I feel like I'm trapped in 1967.

Summer of Love, bitches! What?

SUDDENLY IT JUST HAPPENED

The number one song in England on this date in 1967 was Puppet on a String by Sandie Shaw, a piece of piffle that was the UK's entry in Eurovision that year (and the overall winner).

In America, the number one song was The Happening, which proved that The Supremes could turn shit into hit with the blink of an ess.

But all this is trivial trivia when considering that on May 7, 1967 my wife was born.

Happy 4oth dear. I love you, always.

I WON'T NEED YOUR PICTURE UNTIL WE SAY GOODBYE

Maybe it's the long week speaking, but when all is said and done, there's probably a place on my all-time top 20 for Strange Days.

It's kind of easy to dismiss The Doors in general as a remnant of my adolescence, but this particular album has a purity of vision and execution that puts it in league with stuff like Closer and Psychocandy.

And this way I can feel like I knew a little something about something when I was 15...

AWKWARD INSTANT

Strange Days was on my mind because I picked up a copy at Costco on Sunday for $7.79.

I was curious to see what remastering had wrought.

Oddly though, very little had changed, except for the random fillip or two on When the Music's Over.

Not sure if this means that Strange Days is considered more sacrosanct than Morrison Hotel, or if there's just less flotsam floating around it...

WAITING FOR ME OUTSIDE

One night when I was 16 I bribed my brother with a joint for a ride across town.

Usually I would have walked, but it was raining, and I had a party I needed to get to, dryly.

“Wait about 20 minutes— I’m going to take a shower,” he said.

So I retreated to my bedroom and started listening to Strange Days.

My brother came into the room right as When the Music’s Over ended. “Come on.”

I rolled off my bed and spun out of my bedroom into the hallway. My brother was blocking the way, so I came to a stop on the clear plastic runner that covered the carpet.

“Don’t you even listen to your own music?” he said.

I paused for a few beats, and then realized that he was telling me to turn off the light in my bedroom (“When the music’s over/Turn out the lights”).

And I fear, my friends, that this was the cleverest thing I ever heard Jeff say...

EAST BAY

Speaking of hardcore, I realized today that I simply can't explain the Dead Kennedys.

I was talking to someone who was born in the early '80s.

“Jello Biafra. Holiday in Cambodia,” was about all I could muster before I just waved my hand to dismiss the topic.

It's probably all for the best anyway...

THIS IS HARDCORE

Just got back from science and technology night at my daughter's elementary school.

My favorite experiment? I call it "Nine-year old red-headed boy in Black Flag t-shirt."

Because seriously, how the fuck does that happen?

LYRES

Hey, Joanna Newsom. The Renaissance Fair wants you back at Ye Olde Mead Tent, ASAP. Your break was over 20 minutes ago.

OK, I’ll stow my snarkiness for a second and admit that I kind of like Ys. I mean, I dip in and out of consciousness while I listen, but the words are pretty swell.

Yea, verily...

Guðmundsdóttir

Welcome bjack, Bjork!

It was good to see you on SNL.

Wish you’d hit a few more major population centers on your upcoming tour— I’d love to take my seven-year old daughter to the show.

I’ve always looked to you as a good potential pop-culture role model for my girl.

Except maybe for the batshit-crazy reporter attack at the airport, and the strange tolerance for hectoring Sven back in the Sugarcube days, that is...

Rock odd!

sliced tongue

YOU GOTTA FEIST FOR YOUR RIGHT TO PAAARRTAY

Damnit.

I was trying to post the Mushaboom video-- seemed like the perfect gently optimistic tonic for the week that was.

But YouTube and blogger are doing their level Hatfield/McCoy best to keep it from happening.

So I'll just sing it for you...

Ooooold dirt road (mushaboom)
Knneeee deep snow (mushaboom)
Raaaaamblin' rose (mushaboom)
Watching the five pound essskimo (mushaboom)
Poookey Reese goes in the hole (mushaboom)
Rooooww your boat (mushaboom)
Kriiiispy, cocoa (mushaboom)

I love that dagblasted song!

SO IT GOES

Billy Pilgrim died.

And then I got a fever.

I dreamed that night about building telescopes and transistor radios.

And I woke up unspeakably angry.

Then, another fever dream: An English major at a technical college had massacred dozens.

We are ill, America. Unspeakably ill...

PLAYING IN JAPAN

Lord knows I love me some Be@rbricks, and I was all about the punk rock wonsaponatime, so it's a pretty safe bet that a little slice of my tax refund is going to go toward a set of these:

And if you think this somehow cheapens the memory of the Pistols, I say to you: Sod off, wally...

HOW DO YOU CALL YOUR LOVER BOY?

Things I found in the trash (well, my work PC recycle bin, to be precise):

-A very short wav file of a machined voice saying my boss’ first name.
-A wav file of the grits courtroom scene from My Cousin Vinny.
-A folder named “Edits and Whutnaught” that contained an MP3 titled “hOUSE mARTY (olive oyl edit).”
-An empty folder named “Fook Hid.”

I’m sure these all have interesting genesis stories, but the one that really intrigues me is “Fook Hid.”

I need to know who Fook is, and what he/she was hiding from...

CORONA

Frank Sinatra’s version of Mrs. Robinson is pure punk.

It’s downright thrilling to hear him whip it out and piss all over the folkie pretense of the thing:

The PTA, Mrs. Robinson, won't OK the way you do your thing,
Ding, ding, ding.
And you'll get yours, Mrs. Robinson, foolin' with that young stuff like you do,
Boo, hoo, hoo, woo, woo, woo.

And oh yeah, it’s funny as shit to boot...

EASE SUM KONK

The other carrot that's supposed to attract you silly wabbits to this latest round of Doors reissues is the presence of bonus tracks.

Which in the case of Morrison Hotel consists in part of about 20 minutes worth of alternate takes of Roadhouse Blues.

Wherein we discover that Jim was pretty taken with the idea of prefacing the track with some spoken word crap, a la The Soft Parade (“When I was back there in seminary school...”).

This time around it boils down to “Money beats soul, every time” plus whatever stream of folderol pops into Jim's head.

There's also this bit of dialogue, from a Peace Frog outtake: “Boy, you guys sound like a drunken cripple walking up a flight of stairs, man.”

Charming.

The one passable extra is a “jazz” version of Queen of the Highway-- John gets to brush his drums, and Jim gets to indulge his Sinatra jones. Like, cool, man.

So, the five-word review of the bonus tracks goes something like this: Money beats soul, every time...

TOMORROW WE ENTER THE TOWN OF MY BIRTH

Our memories create mirages, as we reshape our pasts by accident or design.

But art creates order out of chaos. The song remains the same, as it were.

This is by way of explaining how I was a little goosed by an impulse purchase I made while I was up in NY last week: the remastered edition of Morrison Hotel.

Now, I assumed that “remastered” meant that some audible impurities had been cleaned up. Maybe the faint voice that counts off during the false ending of Peace Frog had been removed. Maybe some tape hiss had been replaced by deep-space silence.

But this was no ordinary remastering. It seems that they’ve gone back to the source multitrack masters and resurrected pieces that had been excised from the original release.

It doesn’t amount to anything revelatory. John Sebastian’s harmonica line is more prominent in Roadhouse Blues, which now ends with Jim yelling “Yikes!” You Make Me Real opens with a catcall whistle. Ship of Fools starts with someone saying “16” (the number of that particular take?), and ends with a slightly different vocal.

Oh, and that voice counting off in Peace Frog? Gone.

I’m used to it by now, and I’ve filed the disc safely away on my iPod. I’ll probably get a once-a-year buzz to listen to it a couple of times.

But for a passing moment, Morrison Hotel created a mirage. It transcended art and became memory...

MAYBE WHEN I'M OLDER

I did my taxes last night, and I'm going on vacation tomorrow, so gaze in awe and wonder as I pull a list out of my ass.

TOP 10 FAVORITE VELVET UNDERGROUND SONGS

10. She's My Best Friend
9. White Light/White Heat
8. Sweet Jane
7. What Goes On
6. Lady Godiva's Operation
5. Rock and Roll
4. Sunday Morning
3. Head Held High
2. Sister Ray
1. Candy Says

See you again on April 9th.

EPMJ

OK, it's time for round two of "Eddie Plank or Mick Jones?"

IN PLAIN VIEW

I.

David Sheridan lived in the Home for Wayward Boys.

Well, that’s not what it was really called. County social services owned a large green patch in the center of my hometown, on the crest of a slight hill. In some ivy-accented brick buildings, they housed teenage boys from broken homes.

Around about my junior year of high school, the county decided to integrate these kids into the local school system.

By the time David Sheridan showed up, I was a regular habitue of the school detention center. Hell, my best friend and I lent it what came to be its long-term name: The Rubber Room.

I was what passed for a local suburban badass. I carried around a copy of Beyond Good and Evil, not so much because I was interested in Nietzsche, but because I knew it would be unsettling. The Rubber Room teacher, with the smell of wine stuck to his clothes, would plead gently with me to read Studs Terkel instead...

II.

Yesterday, my wife introduced me to someone who grew up in the same hometown. We did some quick calculations and concluded that our ages and years of residency did not sync up. I asked him where he had lived.

“Do you know the bowling alley?”

“Of course,” I said. I had bowled there a bunch of times, but had actually spent more time dropping quarters into their video games.

“I lived kind of across the street. Remember there used to be a vacant field right across the street? Man, I think they’ve built that up.”

“Yeah, they have— a bunch of houses.” I probably drove by there not more than six months ago.

“Me and my friends used to play in that field all the time,” he said. His young daughter spun around in her chair and knocked her knees on the table.

III.

One night, probably about three months after he came to our school, David Sheridan and his closest friend were together in that field across from the bowling alley.

That night, David Sheridan’s friend brought down upon his head a large cinder block.

And David Sheridan was dead.