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.

A NEW SONG

Wrote this last night in bed. Except for the Sweet Adeline part, which was written in a barbershop back in aught-three...

Pittsburgh Got Its Aitch

I’m a fat town elder,
I went to school with your father.

I got this cough in the mill
And you will too.

I met my love one summer
Over a piano.

She played Sweet Adeline,
With ringlets of hair
In her eyes.

Sweet Adeline,
My Adeline,
At night, dear heart,
For you I pine.
In all my dreams,
Your fair face beams.
You're the flower of my heart,
Sweet Adeline...

PACMAN'S BURNING

The new Arcade Fire is nice music for when I’m feeling completely and utterly humorless.

Meaning no disrespect. It does happen, and it’s nice to be able to soundtrack the mood.

I just wish that the lyrics were a little less clunky.

Mon dudes are signifying here like prime-era U2...

.

DON'T SETTLE FOR WALKIN'

RIP Larry Bud...

WHAT'S MY NAME?

A new feature debuts on the tongue today: “Eddie Plank or Mick Jones?”

It’s pretty simple. I’m going to post a picture, and you need to guess whether it’s turn-of-the-century Hall-of-Fame pitcher Eddie Plank, or Clash vocalist/guitarist Mick Jones.


























Stumped?

DOES YOUR CHEWING GUM LOSE ITS FLAVOR...

And now another question, this one from reader Tom in Voweltopia, NY: What candy do you associate with the 1910 Fruitgum Co., of Simon Says fame?

Sweet high-fructose Jebus, Tom in NY. Your little ontological trickery just about made my head explode.

Have you no respect for the sanctity of Fridays?

SWEET EMOTION

Loyal reader Cranston from Biloxi, MS asks: Hey sliced tongue, what candies do you associate with some of my favorite classic-rock bands?

Well, first off, thanks for reading, Cranston.

Now here’s a quick sampling:

Jethro Tull = Mary Jane
Led Zeppelin = Mounds
Pink Floyd = Almond Joy
The Who = Marathon Bar
Aerosmith = 100 Grand Bar, né $100,000 Bar
The Beatles = Milky Way
The Rolling Stones = Snickers
The Kinks = Three Musketeers

Keep those requests coming!

IN DREAMS

Every 35 weeks or so I get a bug to own The Medicine Show by Dream Syndicate.

And every 35 weeks or so I’m reminded that it remains out of print. I found a copy on eBay with a BIN price of $120. To which I say “Ha.”

Ha.

It doesn’t appear to be available from any legitimate download sites either. I do have some 35-week-old MP3s that betray their vinyl origins by hissing and cracking and popping.

I know it’s not the greatest album. Steve Wynn’s bullshit redlines occasionally, and it’s sludgy where the first album was sharp.

But still, it has enough good moments to deserve life as a CD or DL.

Get on it Rhino and/or eMusic...

EAT THE DISHES, BITCHES

Upon further reflection, it’s become clear to me that I have a very particular form of synesthesia.

Specifically, there is a cross-sensory union in my mind between rock bands and candy.

So, even more than recognizing that eating licorice and listening to Gang of Four was a moment of acute sensual pleasure, I will go so far as to posit the following:

Gang of Four = licorice

Here are some further rock/candy equations:

Chuck Berry = Rock candy
R.E.M. = Blow Pops
The High Llamas = Nik-L Nips
Stereolab = Lik-M-Aid Fun Dip
Pearl Jam = Peanut Brittle
Television = Peppermint Patty
James Brown = Butterfinger
Bruce Springsteen = Bubble Yum Original
Sufjan Stevens = Aero Bar
Beck = Crispy M&Ms
Bjork = Twix
Art Brut = Razzles
Sonic Youth = Charleston Chew

WHITE NOISE IN A WHITE ROOM

I discovered quite by accident yesterday that the perfect thing to do while listening to Gang of Four’s Entertainment is eat licorice.

I was sucking on an herb menthol Lackerol on my way home from the bookstore, and I popped in the disc. It was warmish out, so I had the windows rolled halfway down.

I was working the little saucer of licorice from corner to corner in my mouth, and that part of Ether came on where it just goes “THRUM THRUM THRUM” and eventually gets cacophonous enough to sterilize bugs, and I just had a big old grin on my face...

Perfect.

NOISE CANCELLATION

And speaking of buds: Deerhoof, you all owe me a new pair.

I started playing Friend Opportunity the other day at a not-obscene volume, and The Perfect Me just jumped right out of the iPod.

The thing tore through my standard-issue earbuds, which started buzzing and popping on the concha of my pinnae.

I’ll be waiting for you to hook me up, D.

PODFELLOW

But that’s not to say that headphones have not led to the occasional great discovery.

Just the other night, after a good 25 years of steeping, it became clear to me that I had the lyrics to What Goes On all wrong.

So it’s not
“What would a poor woman do,
Walking it up, and walking it down”

It is, rather
“One minute born, one minute doomed,
One minute up, one minute down”

Thanks buds!

SIMPLE HEADPHONE MIND

In the days before the iPod I did not often listen to music through headphones.

I kind of liked the sloppy olio that music made when it mixed with ambient noise.

Long ago I walked around with a boombox, revelling in the way that the opening guitars in Have You Seen Your Mother echoed across the rim of the local sump late at night.

Or how the Sex Pistols version of No Fun bounced off the exterior walls of my high school, Johnny Rotten’s “fuckology” competing with the third-period bell.

Or, perched on the steps of the Haagen-Dazs takeout, how White Riot seemed to accelerate the cars puttering down Old Country Rd.

Alchemy, plain and simple...

YOU TALK ABOUT JUST EVERY BAND

I have in the past felt the same passion evidenced in the previous post for the following songs:

I’ve Been Working on the Railroad, Go All the Way, You Are the Sunshine of My Life, Fox on the Run.

Just to give you a little perspective, is all...

LIQUID CRYSTAL DISPLAY

Watch the Tapes by LCD Soundsystem is the greatest song ever.

Greatest. Song. Ever.

Like, in the entire history of recorded sound.

All you good people who have selected music as your art form of choice should just go out and buy a nice 20 lb bucket of gray-green plastilina. You know, redirect your energies and all.

Because the pinnacle has been pinnacled. The apex has been apexed. The acme has been acmed.

And I’ll probably be sick of it by the time the CD comes out in a couple of weeks...