ANOTHER YEAR OVER

Winter break time-- I'll be back posting in early January.

Happy holidays to you and yours!

Peace.

SO FRESH, SO CLEAN

My iPod has been talking to me again...

This morning on my way to work, it served up Do It Clean by Echo and the Bunnymen and then followed with Keep It Clean by Camera Obscura.

iPod, do you think I'm dirty?

MUSIC FOR BOYS

No amount of year-end persuasion is going to convince me that The Suburbs is a good album.

I will admit, though, that Sprawl II is a larf.

I'm beginning to think I might have Win Butler issues...

I'LL TUMBLE 4 YA

Big ups to Sebastian for helping his team take first place at their gymnastics meet this past weekend down at William & Mary. He won three gold medals overall, including the all around. (Then I spent the first half hour of the drive home explaining that the medals are not really made out of gold.)

Here's his winning floor routine...

YOU AND ME

We got our iPhones this past weekend.

I downloaded a ringtones app, and it's like deep-fried crack to me.

I've made about a dozen or so. Right now my all-purpose tone is the first 5 seconds of We're Not Adult Orientated.



My dedicated tone for when Taeko calls is the opening of Du Og Meg:

She fell in love with a boy
Who spoke her second language
And who lived across the ocean
In the Evil Empire

Which is pretty perfect...

WHO MADE THE GRADE

A ONE-A TOKE-A OVER THE LINE

Over on the other blog, I'm about to drop a reference to Brewer and Shipley (worst tease ever, I know).

Which led me to this. Gail and Dale doing "one of the newer songs" on the Lawrence Welk Show.

Hang around to the end and hear Mr Welk call it a "modern spiritual."

Sweet Jesus...

SMOKE AND LIGHTNING

It took me quite a while to get around to watching Anvil: The Story of Anvil.

I tend to react snarkily to heavy metal of any stripe, from Black Sabbath to, um, Stryper.

But it turns out the movie has a lot to say about the value of friendship and family and dreams. It’s subtle in ways you might not expect.

Hell, by the time they got to Stonehenge (and they did, literally, get to Stonehenge), I was too caught up in the small-scale human drama to get tripped up by the large-scale Spinal Tappiness of it all.

I think the best thing I can say about Anvil: The Story of Anvil is that I rarely laughed…

BROKEN GLASS EVERYWHERE

My hip-hop history?

Well, I can rap about 45% of Rapper’s Delight. Probably deliver about 90% of The Message. And I'm familiar with varying degrees of PE and BDP. But not much beyond that.

I know Kanye West more as a meme-tastic media figure than as an artist.

But all this buzz about My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy (10.0! A! *****!) has inspired me to take the plunge.

OK, accolades, plus a $3.99 price tag from Amazon.

We'll see how it works out...

KNOT MUSIC

So while the official release date for the new Stereolab was 11/16, apparently it was available on iTunes about a week prior.

The curious thing is that it’s not currently available for download from Amazon.

Which leads to the question: Does Apple’s business model really get micro enough to cut deals for windows of exclusivity with relatively low-end unit shifters such as Stereolab?

If so, I don’t know whether to lean toward outright awe or plain derision.

Fun fact: Sebastian took a quick look at this cover the other day and thought it was pretty cool that someone would name an album “Snot Mucis”…

ZING! WENT THE STRINGS

New Stereolab released? Check.

Beatles on iTunes? Check.

The musical highlight of my day? Here...

IF YOU WANNA GROW UP

OK, one good thing about the Xbox motion-gaming appendage: it's got semi-obscure new-wave nugget Kinetic by Hilary stuck in my head...

RAKE AT THE (BILL) GATES OF HELL

When all is said and done, I guess I appreciated the irony of that Cadillac “lust for vomit” commercial from a few years back.

Once upon a time, Caddies were emblems of a version of the European immigrant dream (see “The Cadillac stood by the house/And the Yanks they were within” from The Body of an American), and I could see something circular and clean about GM putting a bit of money in the Pogues’ pockets.

That being said, I don’t think I’ll ever be able to reconcile the sandblasting irony of Microsoft using Natural’s Not In It by Gang of Four to sell the Xbox Kinect.

They‘re just utilizing the instrumental opening, but here are the subsequent lyrics:

The problem of leisure
What to do for pleasure
The body is good business
Sell out, maintain the interest
Ideal love a new purchase
A market of the senses
Dream of the perfect life
Economic circumstances
Ideal love a new purchase
A market of the senses
Remember Lot's wife
Renounce all sin and vice
Dream of the bourgeois life
This heaven gives me migraine

Coercion of the senses
We are not so gullible
We all have good intentions
But all with strings attatched

Fornication makes you happy
No escape from society
Natural is not in it
Your relations are of power
We all have good intentions
But all with strings attached
The problem of leisure
What to do for pleasure

Repackaged sex, your interest
Repackaged sex, your interest
Repackaged sex, your interest
Repackaged sex, your interest
Repackaged sex, your interest
Repackaged sex, your interest

The problem of leisure
What to do for pleasure
The body is good business
Sell out, maintain the interest
Dream of the perfect life
Economic circumstances
Ideal love a new purchase
A market of the senses
Remember Lot's wife
Renounce all sin and vice
Dream of the bourgeois life
This heaven gives me migraine
This heaven gives me migraine
This heaven gives me migraine

So, no. Just, fuck no...

PARAN MAUM

Finally got around to watching the slight but sweet Japanese movie Linda Linda Linda.

I’ve long had a soft spot for the Blue Hearts song that informs the plot, but it took Netflix to put the movie back on my radar.

It’s the story of a band of teenage girls preparing to play at a high school festival. They lose their singer, and end up recruiting a new one on a whim— a Korean exchange student who speaks very little Japanese.

The singer is played by Korean actress Doona Bae, who was in The Host (which is an entirely different flavor of awesome). She has a nice comedic touch— Keatonesque, minus the buster.

In case you never feel motivated to see the movie, take a few minutes now to watch the climactic festival performance…

NANKER

I should be nothing but indifferent to Keith Richards' memoirs.

But I read a couple of excerpts this week, and I was actually kind of disgusted. Not morally or ethically or aesthetically-- just sort of boringly disgusted...

SCOTLAND IS FOR ME

The iTunes genius was playing an 80s mix last night.

It hit Don't Talk to Me About Love by Altered Images, which I was sure would be familiar to Taeko.

Nope, never heard it.

Next up was Oblivious by Aztec Camera. Didn't think she'd know it from Adam's off ox.

And of course, she was singing along not 5 seconds in.

Her knowledge of 80s British pop (OK, Scottish pop) is so very unpredictable.

Full disclosure: This post was originally supposed to cover my current indifference to Belle and Sebastian's Write About Love. And in a way, I guess it did...

WE DON'T CARE ABOUT LONG HAIR

This showed up in my box the other day. It's a pic of one of the members of this band.

Can't remember which one...

Accoutrements of note: safety pins (natch), bike-chain lei, choke collar, spray-painted Clash shirt, indeterminate heart-shaped pin, and curling bar from a set of free weights.

HOUSE OF CARDS

Launch

ONE TIME IS ALL I NEED

Taeko loves the taste of coffee, and I really like the way it smells. By reasonable extension, I think you can say that we both like coffee.

Brain Coral and I have a similar relationship when it comes to musical taste. He noted this the other day when he was discussing Everything in Between. His current favorite track is Chem Trails, and he suspected that mine might be something different.

And sure enough, so far I'm favoring the shimmery atmospherics of Katerpillar, and those weird In Utero guitar squalls on Fever Dreaming.

But by reasonable extension, I think you can say that we both like No Age...

COMFORTABLY NUMBER

The 69 Love Songs entry in the 33 1/3 canon is too clever by 1/2...

CASH FROM CHAOS

(Turns out that Tubthumping had been used already as a theme song for FIFA 98. I have got to get out more.)

One day in the advertising office, early 2010…

Boss: OK, we need to come up with a campaign for FIFA 2011. Music ideas? Yes, Jenkins.

Jenkins: How about Tubthumping?

Boss: Tubthumping?

Jenkins: Yeah, you know (thumping his tub): “I get knocked down, but I get up again, you’re never gonna keep me down. I get…”

Boss: (Interrupting) I know the GD song, Jenkins. Particularly since it was used as a theme for FIFA 98. No, what we need is something equally as mindlessly Anglo and rousing, but obscure enough that music bloggers can feel self-satisfied as they point out that they recognize the song. Perhaps these bloggers will even embed videos of the group miming the song on some old show, like, I don’t know, Top of the Pops.

Jenkins: Top of the Whuh?

Boss: You're dead weight, Jenkins. Clean out your cubby.

Jones: I’ve got it, boss! How about Swords of a Thousand Men by Tenpole Tudor? It’s sort of like Skids if Skids weren’t Scottish. The singer Eddie Tenpole was once pegged as the replacement for Johnny Rotten in the Sex Pistols. He sang The Great Rock 'n Roll Swindle.

Boss: Jones, you're a genius! Cocaine for everyone, on me!

HOPE IN OUR ENGLISH HEARTS

So the ad wizards behind the new FIFA 2011 video game went a little left field (uh, left pitch?) and used Swords of a Thousand Men by Tenpole Tudor in their campaign.

Bravo, says I. This is infinitely preferable to, say, Tubthumping, which was probably Monday's choice.

I'm still not buying the game. Or soccer, for that matter. Sorry, Rest of World...

THE RENTALS

A Japanese business model that never made its bones in America is CD rental.

Many of the large media stores in Japan offer this service, and have for at least the last 20 years or so.

It costs about $2 a pop to rent a disc for a day. When we were there, I grabbed 5 of the Beatles remasters that I had not bought, ripped them losslessly, and returned them the next day.

The selection of Western music skewed pretty heavily to classic rock, with some occasional veins of weirdness, but it's a good way to round out your catalog a bit.

MUSIC HAS THE RIGHT TO CHILDREN

It struck me on Sunday that listening to music has been a solitary pursuit for many years.

Once upon a time it was different. We sprawled out on the ring of a sump on summer nights and blasted My Eyes Have Seen You. We sat in Mike’s bedroom and listened to the Stones, trying to make out the words. We “borrowed” Howie’s mom’s old Peugot and hung out in the high school parking lot at dawn, dancing to Generation X.

Then slowly but surely, our lives became more compartmentalized, separate, private. Growing up, I think they call it.

I became more and more accustomed to listening to music through headphones or alone on half-hour commutes.

Having kids presented an opportunity to commune with new ears, and Lana in particular has developed a temporary passion for things like Deerhoof and The Go Team. But in general, my kids latch on to Taeko’s J-Pop with greater enthusiasm.

And that’s what we usually listen to when we’re out together on the weekends. But on Sunday, we were using my car. I put on Magical Mystery Tour, figuring you can easily form a consensus around the Beatles.

During one quiet moment, I Am the Walrus came on. The moment remained quiet throughout the song, and in this context I really heard it for the first time in decades.

Because we hear music better when we are together…

DESIGNED TO BLOW OUR MINDS

I took a six-month subscription to Rolling Stone for $1. Here are a couple of Arcade Fire facts I learned therein recently:

-Their latest album, The Suburbs, is their finest album to date.
-Their best song is No Cars Go. Because, you know, they released it on two different albums. So it must be good.

I'm enjoying my subscription immensely. It's like a bi-weekly ticket to Bizarro World...

TUESDAY'S OFFERING

Seemingly out of nowhere, Broadcast released an EP last month.

It's called (deep breath, now) Broadcast & The Focus Group, Study Series 4, "Familiar Shapes & Noises."

And it's more of the same psych Broadcast + library records stuff that they released on the last mini album (deep breath number two) Broadcast and The Focus Group Investigate Witch Cults of the Radio Age.

They're so inscrutable that it tickles...

LOSING MY EDGE

I’ve been very lethargic recently when it comes to new music, more so than usual.

A certain languor is part of my MO: I’ll listen to something a couple of times, find a reason to dismiss it, and then circle back later, sometimes to develop an obsession (say, Ships by Danielson), sometimes just to confirm my initial impression (say, Veckatimest).

I’m in this cycle now with Janelle Monae (“Waahh,” says I, “It’s toooo looonnng and schizo”), Arcade Fire (*cough* one-trick pony *cough*), and I fear I’m about to enter the cycle with False Priest (libido + logorrhea = libidorrhea).

But I’m troubled by the fact that I still have not even listened to the most-recent LCD Soundsystem. It’s sitting there on my iPod just taunting me…

CONTROLLER SPHERE

I bought False Priest on the cheap from Amazon yesterday.

So far, the last 1:30 of Our Riotous Defects has been worth the $2.99.

Probably not a great sign that this makes two OM albums in a row where I've been grabbed more by soundscapes than by songs...

WAIT AND SEE THE LIST OF SHIT YOU MADE

Of all the new release-y goodness on tap for fall/winter, I think I'm most looking forward to the new No Age.

I mean, I have a pretty good idea of what a 2010 Belle and Sebastian album will do for me.

I've listened to a bit of the NPR stream of the new Of Montreal, and I expect it will be more lamping than hissing.

And we are down to the last wispy contrails of Stereolab at this point...

But I don't know quite what to expect from No Age, which is one of their essential strengths...

AGAIN, I SWORE OFF CANADA

My friend He Knew He Was Right (HKHWR, as the kids call him) has been in the blogging business now for six months.

He writes primarily about family, horticulture, music, travel, sports. And don't be scared off by the moniker-- he's not a Glenn Beck or a Rush Limbaugh. It's just the title of a Trollope novel that neither you nor I have ever read...

In my 'umble opinion, this is his most affecting post to date. His conflation of the trials and tribulations of landscaping and his efforts to fill out his family tree have particular resonance for me, what with my black thumb and meager family line.

The piece is what I consider the best of HKHWR-- it is eloquent, elegant, and teaches me about things I know and do not know.

I thank him for it, and look forward to more.

Happy Anniversary!

BITTERSWEET SYMPHONY

My box of Japanese snacks is getting light.

I had budgeted $100 to buy snacks for the office, and another $150 for myself. The last traces of the office snacks (cheese and almond Doritos, ramune corn puffs) were gone by the start of the second week of my return.

My box is now down to some gum and watermelon hard candy. (I do have two bags of taco Doritos that I bought at the Costco in Chiba— I just need to reconfirm that they’re veg friendly.)

But all of my chocolates and my various vending-machine drinks are gone.

I expect that I’ll restock a bit up at Mitsuwa in November, but it just won’t be the same…

ICE ICE BABY

At the end of our street in Shibuya there was a kakigori stand. It was an elegant little box of a building, with dark wood paneling and a tropical feel.

Kakigori is a typical summer treat in Japan— ice is shaved from a block, and then covered in sweet syrups. Basically, it is the diamond to a Sno Cone's quartz...

We did not find the right time to stop and have a taste until the afternoon of our last day in town. It was 3:00 pm— lunch was enough of a memory and dinner sufficiently far off, and the temperature was skimming 100 degrees.

So we paused under one of the umbrellas in front of the stand and looked over the pictures of all the flavors. Grape, melon, sweet red bean, lemon, strawberry— it was quite a list.

Our choices made, we went around to the window and placed our orders with the lone man inside. He first filled a bowl halfway with ice, and then swirled a cloudy syrup of condensed milk over the top. The kids had ordered caramel, so that was the next syrup flavor to be drizzled over the ice.

He then added a second layer of ice, until a Fuji-esque mound teetered in the bowl. Another dressing of milk and caramel syrups, and he was done. He handed it through the window to Lana and Sebastian, who quickly found a table for two and began deconstructing it with their spoons.

I ordered a ramune-flavored ice— ramune is essentially lemon-lime soda, but with a longer finish than Sprite or 7-Up. I assumed there was no way I'd be able to polish it off, but 10 minutes later I was staring at an empty bowl, scraping the bottom with my spoon in vain...

YOU SET THE SCENE

Shibuya was a scene, once upon a time.

The Shibuya-kei sound was made popular back in the early 90s by artists like Pizzicato Five, Cornelius, and Fantastic Plastic Machine. It was frothy, electronic, and fun.

The scene may be gone, but our weekly mansion was surrounded still by music stores big and small. If I were a gear head, I’m sure I would’ve been in heaven— as it stands, I was satisfied enough to take a picture in front of one particularly impressive guitar shop.

There were also a number of recording studios up and down our street. Every day we’d walk past the kids loading in or loading out, sucking down CC Lemons and smoking Mild Sevens, and I’d wonder what kind of noise they were making inside.

And every day we just kept on walking…

I WISH YOU COULD SWIM LIKE THE DOLPHINS CAN SWIM

The Shinagawa Prince Hotel has among its amenities a small aquarium and a couple of aqua stadiums. The hotel is right across the street from Shinagawa Station, where we met some old friends from our New York days.

After lunch at the Dean & Deluca in the station, we all walked over to the aquarium. It had the slightly musty feel of a 90s tourist attraction, which registered to me as charm. One of the main features was a glass tunnel that intersected the primary tank—we were lucky enough to be there for feeding time:



There was a 2:30 dolphin show in the main aqua stadium, and Lana, Sebastian, and I staked out our front-row splash-zone seats 30 minutes before it started. I bought two ponchos, in an effort to stay dry from top to bottom. Well, I flinched instinctively with the first impending splash, and tore the poncho covering my pants. I yelled too, ensuring myself a nice lingering taste of dolphin water.

I sat in wet pants through the seal show at the smaller aqua stadium, but I was dry by the time we hit the gift shop. And although I chewed a few pieces of Fits gum on the train ride home, I still tasted the briny salt all the way back to Shibuya.

I didn’t care a bit…

ART LOVER

I first heard about the Bridgestone Museum back in college.

I was an English major, but a brief half semester with an alcoholic “Bible as Literature” professor once had me considering a switch to Art History. I dropped the class instead, and stayed the course.

So I put the Bridgestone on our itinerary for this trip, and in doing some research I discovered just how deep are the treads of my own ignorance: I never realized that Bridgestone Tire is a Japanese company. The founder’s name was Ishibashi, or “stone bridge”…

It’s a relatively small museum, located in the Bridgestone headquarters, amongst an accumulation of nondescript concrete midrises. We went on a quiet weekday morning, but word is that the foot traffic in the museum is rarely heavy.

The general focus of the collection is on Impressionism/Post-Impressionism, and many of the key players are represented by two or three paintings. The lack of a crowd allows for a leisurely pace—Lana told me somewhat breathlessly that I had spent 117 seconds looking at a Renoir. Which in 11-year-old art-museum time is like 3 hours…

The kids were eager to move on to the Pokemon Center, so we only clocked about an hour and a half total in the museum, but it was a morning well spent.

MANSION ON THE HILL

In Shibuya we stayed six days in what the Japanese call a “weekly mansion.”

You and I would call it a one-bedroom apartment, but I submit that we'd suffer in the comparison.

Our place was on the 5th floor, and a small elevator with about a 600 lb capacity groaned as it shuttled us up and down.

The apartment itself-- excuse me, mansion-- was comfortable and sleek. There was a single full-size bed, and an appointment of futons for us to lay out on the floor each night. A 37” LCD was in the corner of the living room, and at the other end was a two-person leatherette couch.

The kitchen held a refrigerator the size of the kids, a range, a grill, and a microwave. The WC had a toilet with more buttons than I'm accustomed to seeing on a toilet-- the pictures made it pretty clear what the buttons did, but I was sufficiently happy just to flush.

Not to harp on toilets too much, but it is a common feature of Japanese toilets to have a small faucet on top of the tank that runs every time you flush. This is mainly because the WC is separate from the washroom.

Our washroom contained a small dual-use washer/dryer, and we put it through its paces every sweaty day.

Adjacent to the washroom was the shower room. I love Japanese shower rooms almost beyond reason. First, there is a deep tub for soaking; then, the remainder of the room is essentially a large shower. No concerns here about splashing water on the floor, and not a hint of claustrophobia.

My only disappointment was that Taeko and I could not steal the time to take a bath together...

WORKING FOR PEANUTS IS ALL VERY FINE

Yachimata in Chiba prefecture is proud of its peanuts.

One morning on the way to take the kids to see the latest Pokemon movie, our gracious hosts stopped at a roadside peanut farm/gift shop.

We milled about for a little while, and soon noticed that a table at the front of the shop was starting to fill up with small, clear cups of peanuts.

In all, about a dozen varieties were brought out, followed by peaked wedges of iced watermelon and cups of cold, simple tea. We were encouraged to sit down and sample.

There were nuts enrobed in white cheese, nuts drenched in dark chocolate, and nuts dusted with a mild, tangy chili powder (my favorite). We tried them all, and leveled our watermelons, and drained our cups of tea.

It didn't cost us a thing, and it might have been my favorite eating experience of the entire trip...

GHIBLI

The Ghibli Museum was several stations from Shibuya, in Mitaka.

At Mitaka Station, we waited for a bus to take us to the museum. I hoped against hope that it would be a catbus, but it was not quite.













The line in front of the museum snaked in an orderly fashion, and was propelled forward by my constant prayers to escape the heat. After 15 minutes or so, we crossed the threshold and produced our advanced tickets—this got us both admission and tickets to a museum-only short film.

The film tickets were themselves made up of three cels from various Miyazaki movies. Lana and Sebastian got Spirited Away, and Taeko got Ponyo. No one could quite fix the source of mine—it was three nearly identical scenes of Miyazaki greenery.

The film we were going to see was called Mei and the Kittenbus, which is a 12-minute extension of Totoro.

But first we went up to the top floor so that the kids could spend some time on the catbus. Any potential self-consciousness about playing on a giant stuffed animal melted away pretty quickly. Lana crept inside the bus and stuck her head out the window, cooled by an imaginary wind. Sebastian leapt from the roof of the bus, not trying to fly, but flying.

We then walked outside, where a spiral staircase surrounded by a wrought-iron turret brought us to the roof of the museum. There was a small arbor there, where we met this fellow:













It was hot on his watch, but he didn’t seem to care. I stood sentry with him for a bit, gave him a little bow, and then headed back to the air conditioning.

We rushed down to catch the next viewing of Mei and the Kittenbus—the ushers told us we’d need to sit on the steps, but we found some empty bench space there in the Saturn Theater.

The movie was adorable—Sebastian next to me stomped his feet gleefully several times, and talked about it for days after. I was very happy just to spend more time in that world.

We toured the rest of the museum. There were many nice displays that spoke to the sheer mechanical effort of traditional animation. The final thing we looked at was truly amazing—a large wheel filled with figurines from Totoro in slightly different poses. The wheel spun quickly under a strobe light, and the figurines themselves became animated. I was dumbstruck. I want one.

The gift shop was sizable, and contained many items that were not available in the Tokyo toy stores. Sebastian got a pewter Nausicaa robot and Lana got a stuffed Teto; I picked up a t-shirt.

We took the bus back into town for lunch at Pancake Days. I ate a small stack of three fluffy pancakes with a perfect round scoop of vanilla ice cream on the side.

And days don’t come much better than that…

E(-)M(A)I(L) UNLIMITED EDITION

The price I paid for two and a half weeks out of the office was 1,847 e-mails. Took the better part of a day to clean them up.

But for damn sure it was worth it...

COMPACT

Walking around the Shibuya HMV shop, it's clear the world has changed. Four years ago, I was mesmerized by the Tower down the street. But now I don't really need CDs-- I'm happy to download, and bypass the extra cost that comes with the production and marketing of physical media.

So yeah, I bought a few CDs, but they're more like souvenirs-- of the trip, and of a time gone by...

THERE GOES TOKYO

Spent today in Harajuku. These kids with their crazy fashions...

It was ungodly hot, so we ducked into every little shop on the slightest pretense. I almost bought a "Japan exclusive" pair of Converse for $150, but Taeko was quick to talk me out of it.

Spent a couple of hours in Kiddy Land, a 6-story toy store. I bought a nice selection of blind-box Be@rbricks, a very cool mini robot (Taeko wrinkled her nose at the $35 price tag, but come on: mini robot), and some sundries.

We ate freshly made crepes at a stand around the corner from the Condomania shop. I had the chocolate/fresh cream-- crepe, not condom. If I close my eyes wistfully, I can still taste it.

Visited the Johnny's Shop, to see if Taeko could score some Arashi swag. Turned out they mostly just sold 8 x 10s. A scarily massive number of 8 x 10s, all things considered.

Tomorrow: the Ghibli Museum, and the fulfillment of my years-long dream of meeting Totoro...

THE EAST'S NOT SO FAR AWAY

Leaving tomorrow morning for a couple of weeks in Japan. See you in early August!

HOPELESS UNBELIEVER

I finally got to the bottom of this...

The thing wot nicked from The Housemartins was the chorus of If You're Feeling Sinister.

GOOD TIMES COME TO ME NOW

You ever have one of those nights where compulsion drives you to watch as many videos of Haysi Fantayzee's “Shiny Shiny” as you can dig up?

Well, last night was one of those.

I find the male Haysi particularly compelling. No matter the venue, he does the same bloody “I'm Walking, I'm Walking, Whee! I'm Stepping on the Tiny Ants” dance.

The 80s were the shit...

BECAUSE THE WORLD IS ROUND

Answer time here:

Michelle
Sun King
Komm, Gib Mir Deine Hand/Sie Liebt Dich

WWWW

Another summertime special here on the tongue.

95th caller to answer today's trivia question scores a pair of free tix to Summerfest out at the Coliseum, featuring Starship and the Speedwagon. Summerfest, brought to you by Burns Ford and AAA Siding!

So strap 'em on, race fans, 'cause here we go:

The Beatles sang significant parts of songs in at least three languages besides English. And we're not talking just balalaikas here, silly Russkies-- we're talking numerous words and phrases. Name at least three songs where those lovable moptoppers were speaking in at least three (sliced!) tongues.

The lines are open now. Remember, you gotta bean it to wean it, weiners!

MEET A BEATLE

My niece took a field trip down here to DC a few weeks back, and she ran into this guy out riding his bike...

When I was a kid, all I ever saw on my field trips was stuff like the back room of the Waldbaum's butcher shop.

Which leads us to this Reese's Peanut Butter Cup moment:

UNDERSTANDS ME WHEN I'M FALLING DOWN

Name me a musical archeological dig that was ever more fruitful than the Velvet Underground's VU.

A dozen years after their implosion it was both an illustration of their enduring brilliance and a demonstration of how thoroughly Lou Reed could lose the essential plot.

For evidence, look no further than the VU version of She's My Best Friend and the solo version that showed up on Sally Can't Dance.

One will make you weep, and the other will make you cry...

I'LL GIVE YOU A MAN WHO WANTS TO RULE THE WORLD

We watched The Spy Next Door for movie night this past weekend.

It's a Jackie Chan family film in which he plays a Chinese spy on loan to the CIA. He is deep undercover as a nebbishy suburban pen salesman. He's dating the divorcee next door, who has two kids and a step kid. The kids all hate Jackie Chan because he's such a square. Little do they know, amiright amiright?

Anyway, the truly surreal aspect of the movie is that it turns on the plot conceit of having the nerdy middle-school son attempt to download a “rare” concert by the early 80s British hardcore band GBH. You see, having this “rare” (and there are those pesky quotation marks again) concert is supposed to be currency with the mouth-breathing bullies who make our young protagonist's life a wedgie-tinged hell.

Well, it turns out that the GBH file is actually an encrypted Russian file, and not an early 80s British hardcore concert. So of course the bullies are enraged. Atomic wedgies ensue.

But here we get our first hint that Jackie Chan is something cool. He comes through for the nerdy boy and burns him a CD of the “rare” Iggy Pop/David Bowie Shanghai concert that all the middle-school bullies are mad for these days.

And how'd he get a hold of it?

He was there, motherfucker. He was there...

NEVER TOOK NO SHIT FROM NO ONE

There it was in my mailbox. A request from a long-ago friend to write a letter to the judge who is preparing to sentence him to prison.

Looks like it will be 12-18 months, and I suppose it's standard practice for lawyers to solicit letters speaking to the character of the accused, in an effort to draw the shorter end of that sentencing range.

So what to do? Well, if you have a stubborn Irish belief in the concept of redemption, you consider writing the letter.

Aw hell, who I am kidding? I wrote it at lunch today...

To Whom It May Concern:

I am writing this letter to speak briefly about my relationship with X.

X and I became friends when we were both 14 years old. X at that young age was distinguished by his expansive heart and his abundant generosity.

I had lost my father three years prior to becoming friends with X, and my family was in a financially vulnerable state. Unbidden, X would pay for the slices of pizza I sometimes couldn’t afford, or help cover the cost of movie tickets that my summer job would not allow.

I recall in particular the car stereo that had been given to him by an uncle who worked in the electronics business, which X gave to me as a gift when I was 14. This act of largesse was the essence of X: the basic impulse was noble and good, if a bit impractical (I was at that point a few years away from even having a driver’s license). The stereo sat on my bookshelf in its box untouched, a dusty symbol of the type of friend I hope everyone has been lucky enough to have at that age.

My conscience requires me to note that X and I have not been in close contact for over 20 years now. He has made me aware of his current situation, and it has taken me back to that 14-year-old boy. He was impetuous, impractical, and impish. He was generous, kind, and fiercely loyal to those he loved. Even separated as we are by years and miles and circumstances, I trust in my heart that X is still all of those things.

It is my hope that the resolution of the current situation will come with its necessary lessons, but allow X to keep intact the abiding spirit of my 14-year-old friend.

ET CETERA

Just back from a week in Chicago, where I found myself explaining post-rock to a table of people who didn't give a toss. I have got to work on my dinner-conversation skills.

I am going to burn a copy of Millions Now Living Will Never Die for one lucky winner...

PLEASE RELEASE ME

Lots of comfort food on the way this year...

LCD Soundsystem, This is Happening
Happened already. I bought it, but I haven't listened yet. I'm sure it's yummy.

M.I.A., Maya
Watch yourself, gingers.

Panda Bear, Tomboy
Yes!

Arcade Fire, The Suburbs
This comes out in August, but if the shitilicious first single is any indication, I suspect they really did shoot their wad with Funeral.

Belle and Sebastian, TBD
DAR Constitution Hall in October? OK, I'll be there.

of Montreal, False Priest
Pretty sure this is still on tap for the fall. So... yay.

Stereolab, Not Music
This is the second half of the Chemical Chords sessions. I'm sure the Lab in their grave will continue to drop music Tupac style...

PHISH

Mother Nature took the brown acid at Woodstock...

IF YOU BELIEVED THEY PUT A MAN ON THE MOON

OK, first there was this.

And now this:

The Mets just completed a three-game sweep of the first-place Phillies, tossing shutouts in all three games. This is something the Mets have done once before, against... you guessed it... the Phillies, in... wait for it... 1969.

Again, just saying is all...

FLICK TO KICK

I realized today that I have two songs with the word "Subbuteo" in the lyrics: All I Want for Christmas is a Dukla Prague Away Kit by Half Man Half Biscuit, and My Perfect Cousin by The Undertones.

Not sure if I've cornered the market yet: drop me a line if you know of another.

WE WON'T BE SEARCHIN' ANYMORE

Word of the day:

exLostion (n): the quality of langour that attends on a Monday after having stayed up until 11:30 on a Sunday to watch the series finale of a beloved show. (See also, Sopranorific.)

MAKE EVERY SONG YOUR FAVORITE TUNE

OK, so I worked through my hissy fit, and decided to go ahead and buy the 3 genuine alternate Exile tracks: Loving Cup, Soul Survivor, and Good Time Women (protozoan Tumbling Dice).

So now when my Amazon package with the new LCD Soundsystem and Janelle Monae shows up, I can just get on with my life...

DON'T NEED NO JEWELS IN MY CROWN

Exile on Main Street didn't really make much sense to me until I was 18 or 19.

But it's been with me-- and vice versa-- ever since.

Of course I was thrilled when I heard that the Stones were compiling a “deluxe” version.

Now, I'm not enough of a trainspotter to go chasing after outtakes and such, but I'd certainly be a willing consumer of Exile-era flotsam if it showed up on a silver platter.

And if the Beatles could squeeze three double-disc anthologies out of their archives, surely the Stones could support at least one disc's worth of interesting 1971-2 material.

But the Stones being the Stones, they apparently decided we couldn't handle the rough stuff, so they went and added new vocals and such to a bunch of the old tracks.

And again their legacy is ill served.

Well, that's $20 that will stay in my pocket, at least...

ARC OF A HOLY DIVER

To us dwellers outside the gates of Heavy Metal, Ronnie James Dio means Holy Diver.

Plus, we know he was a replacement for Ozzy in Black Sabbath. But we only know this because we once had friends on the inside...

So yeah, it's a reductive view, but it's the best I can do.

RIP, RJD...

PROUD TO BE A PART OF THIS NUMBER

Saw The Doors Soundstage performances last night. These have been out on DVD for years, but I’m long past the point of spending money on The Doors.

Still, it was an interesting watch.

The first footage was from 1967, before Light My Fire blew up. They performed The End in front of a group of slightly baffled teens and twenties.

The next clip was When the Music’s Over from 1968. Even though there was no audience, Jim played to the camera with that reptilian charisma he had, leather panting and lip licking for a solid 10 minutes.

The last segment was the PBS footage from 1969. This was post Miami, and feels like it. Jim seems drunk, disinterested, and demeaned as he works his way through some old stuff and inconsequential new tunes (Tell All the People, Wishful Sinful).

But he snaps to life about halfway through The Soft Parade, and it’s like seeing a jet fly with one engine out…

THE TIME TO HESITATE IS THROUGH

Used to be that unless you were Like a Rolling Stone or Hey Jude, you were cut down to 3 minutes for a 45. No need to prattle on with your moon/June/spoonisms for 7 minutes. Hence, this:



This logic prevailed into the video age. So unless you were Thriller...

Hence, Stereolab made a video of the single version of Jenny Ondioline, and not the 18 minute album version. After all, 18 minutes is 15% of 120 minutes.



So now that both radio and MTV are long dead, I find this hard to explain. Titus Andronicus goes and makes a 3 minute single/video out of a 7 minute track...

THIS GREAT BIG WORLD

When I look for a song that best demonstrates the genius of the Beach Boys, I tend to land on one I don’t actually like very much: California Girls.

First the bad stuff: it’s callow, insipid, and it’s got too much Mike Love by a mile. But then…

The great early Beach Boys songs are additive-- they accrete and grow, melodically and in their narratives. And by this measure, California Girls is a great early Beach Boys' song.

The first verse is spare: Love’s vocal, a bouncy little keyboard line, and a discreet rhythm section. The lyrics are descriptive, observational: East Coast girls are hip, Southern girls are knock outs, Midwest farmer's daughters make you feel alright, and Northern girls keep their boyfriends warm.

Then comes the chorus, which like many Beach Boys' choruses might cloy, were it not for the activity and temporal growth happening in the verses.

The second (and last) verse kicks in, and the drums are perkier. Backing vocals have been added, first smooth and steady, and then contrapuntal (oo-wa-oo-wa-oo-wa)-- the effect is one of pure forward motion. Likewise the lyrics, which pick up initially where the first verse left off, and then make a crucial shift from simply cataloguing to catapulting-- a shift to action: “I couldn't wait to get back in the states [oo-wa-oo-wa-oo-wa]... ”

It would probably sound ungenerous to call this a formula, but it really is the essence of great early Beach Boys' songs. It is why I Get Around and Don't Worry Baby are great songs. It is also why Help Me Rhonda and All Summer Long are merely very good songs-- they run, but they run in place.

Oh, and we'll talk more later about the prelude that opens California Girls, OK?

CONTROLLER SPHERE

How do I love thee, Hissing Fauna?

Enough that I tossed my dusty old 128 kbps files for some fresh 320 kbps files from the Polyvinyl site this past weekend.

Five bills, and they threw in a PDF of the CD art, and most of the Icons tracks.

And you can bet I'll be dropping cash on the whammo-blammo 10^th anniversary injectable edition come 2017...

KIKI DEE

Had lunch with an old friend today.

We shared some honey-vanilla Greek yogurt, and talked about wax museums and vertigo and death and phlox.

I need more lunches like this in my life...

LIVING FOR THE CITI

OK, the Mets just wrapped a 9-1 homestand, which they have done twice before: 1988 (won NL east, lost to Dodgers in playoffs) and 1969 (walked on moon, won World Series).

Just saying is all...

THEY REALLY THINK WE'RE GETTING OUT OF CONTROL

When I hear tea-party talk radio blasting from BMWs in the Capital Gymnastics parking lot, I am reminded of these wise words:

"Patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels."

A NICE DAY TO START AGAIN

Marrying Taeko was such a solid idea that I did it twice, and today is the 17th anniversary of the second time.

And as Rog is my witness, I'd do it all over, twice and again and again.

My love to you, dear...

WHERE ARE YOU TONIGHT?

Woke up this morning with Absolutely Sweet Marie in my head. It had the yips and eeyahs of the Scorchers version.

Not sure about the dream that put it there, but I've got no complaints...

COME ON NOW CHILD, WE'RE GONNA GO FOR A RIDE

Lucinda Williams was responsible for one of the most awkward nights of my life.

One afternoon back when Lana was around 4, we were playing in Pottery Barn Kids. Mind you, I don’t think I’ve ever bought so much as a pillowcase from a Pottery Barn, but they had a good selection of toys for freeloaders of fun like us.

Lana started playing with a little blonde girl, and Taeko struck up a conversation with the girl’s mom. I was floating around the edges of the store— a satellite, unaware.

When my orbit finally crossed theirs, I found them talking about Lucinda Williams. Car Wheels On a Gravel Road had been out for some months, and Taeko knew I was a fan of the album.

It turned out that the girl’s mom was the organizer of a benefit that Lucinda Williams was going to be playing that weekend at Old Westbury Gardens. She asked if I’d like to bring Lana, so that our daughters could play together some more. I said sure thing, and after a couple of phone calls, we had arranged for me to pick up tickets and meet them in the event staging area.

The weather forecast for that night was terrible, and the early returns were in— heavy rain, and stiff, persistent winds. We parked the car, picked up our tickets, and ran across the grounds, dodging widening puddles.

We finally made it to the staging area, after some twists and turns. I reintroduced myself, and Lana and the girl made some tentative attempts to reconnect.

But really the girl was too distracted by the night’s events to spend much time with Lana. Her mom was caught up in the welter of her responsibilities, and did not have any time for us beyond the initial greeting.

It was a tony affair, and I felt way out of place, particularly now that my connection to the whole thing had pretty much fizzled before my eyes.

The saving grace would be when the concert started, I thought— until I realized that our tickets were lawn seats. There was a large tent set up with actual chairs, and all but the most peripheral residents of the tent remained dry. But we were out on the grass.

Lana and I crouched under a golf umbrella on the lawn, angling it against the prevailing winds. I gave up after 4 or 5 songs, concerned for Lana’s health, and just wanting to be home. Not to go home— just to be home.

We drove all the way back with the wiper blades on high. I called the next day and left a message for the girl’s mom, thanking her for the tickets— I never heard back, and I never considered calling again…

HUMBLE FOLKS WITHOUT TEMPTATION

Lana came home from school earlier this week singing Poker Face.

Now I got no qualms with Lady Gaga. Girlfriend works waaaay too hard at being “ “unique” ” (she earns those bonus quotation marks), but whatevs.

Anyway, I think she made it into my house via a recent episode of South Park. One of the more vocal boys in Lana's class seems to be a big South Park watcher.

And this is when I wonder if I'm sheltering Lana too much. I make an effort to monitor her pop-culture intake, and I would not willfully expose her to South Park.

Don't get me wrong-- I fucking love the show to this day. It remains one of the few viable outlets for true satire in our culture, as most of the others have pissed their slacks and devolved into easy cynicism and lazily referential irony. South Park still cares enough to be angry.

And I care enough to keep that anger from my 10-year-old daughter for just a little while longer...

SONGS MEAN A LOT WHEN SONGS ARE BOUGHT AND SO ARE YOU

I still remember the first vinyl album I bought with my own scratch. K-Tel's Fantastic. 22 original hits, 22 original stars, a cheap plastic dream.

My first cassette purchase was Weird Scenes Inside the Gold Mine, a two-tape brick of pyrite that set me back $14.98. A princely sum for a 14 year old whose mom was still buying the groceries with food stamps.

The first CD was Megatrax Vol 2, a Rolling Stones bootleg that I picked up in Japan before I even owned a CD player.

But I'll be damned if I can remember the first MP3 I ever bought...

ANYTHING THEY GOT

That Kidz Bop version of Career Opportunities on Sandinista! is more poignant now that those little Olivers are pushing 40...

LIFE SO SWEET

When I told Babs that Sugar, Sugar meant more to me than Beethoven, it was designed to provoke.

We were having one of our endless High Art/Low Art arguments, and you can probably guess my position on the matter (I favor a peaceful coexistence, for the record).

But it's true, dammit. I have been lifted spiritually by The Archies, and I ain't ashamed...

SUGAR, SUGAR

When I was a kid, we used to dream of the blessed day when Quaker Oats would make a cereal out of nothing but crunch berries.

Come the late 90s, America was feeling good about itself again, and lo and behold, our friends at QO dropped Cap'n Crunch Oops! All Berries on us.

We also hoped one day for an Entenmann's Crumb Cake made entirely of crumbs, but to my knowledge this has not yet come to pass.

Now Vitamin Water has answered a prayer we never placed, and released a flavor called Spark. Which, make no mistake, is nothing more or less than liquid SweeTarts. With vitamins. Yummy, yummy vitamins...

CARELESS MEMORIES

I try not to get too peevish here (I swear), but I've been chafed recently by a number of people who, upon hearing me drop some useless bit of pop-culture trivia, will share that they weren't aware of it because they “played outside” when they were kids.

OK people, I played baseball all day in the summer, then hide-and-seek from dinner to dusk. I played Nerf football in the snow, and mapped the craters of the moon in the subfreezing cold.

I caught fireflies, butterflies, garter snakes under planks at the lumberyard, and bullfrogs in empty peat-moss bags at a swampy pond a couple of miles from my house. To which I rode my banana-seat bike...

Hell, I rolled hoops and whitewashed fences and rafted down the ole Mississipp. Practically.

So don't deride me for being able to do all that AND watch TV, read books, and listen to the radio. And, heaven forfend, remember some of it in detail.

Y'all need to step off...

THE MYSTIC CHORDS OF MEMORY

So my absolute first thought about Titus Andronicus (that's the band, Poindexter) wasn't actually a thought at all. About two minutes into The Monitor, I just busted a big crooked grin.

But gosh, didn't we do the “tramps like us” riffing with The Hold Steady already?

And much like The Hold Steady, I've yet to work out whether there's more than some decent words and Clash/Pogues/Replacements/blah blah blah going on here.

I'm encouraged that they at least seem to recognize the second civil war when they see it...

AMERICAN HOT WAX

Three key demographics (collectors/cranky old dudes who think “everything was better back then”/hipsters) collide to give us this-- the top 10 best-selling artists on vinyl in the US for 2009, sourced from Record Collector (total sales in parens):

(1) Radiohead (45,700)

(2) The Beatles (38,800)

(3) Michael Jackson (30,400)

(4) Metallica (30,200)

(5) Wilco (29,600)

(6) Bob Dylan (24,500)

(7) Animal Collective (20,600)

(8) Pearl Jam (19,900)

(9) Bon Iver (17,100)

(10) Iron & Wine (16,600)

A PLACE FOR YOU IN BETWEEN THE SHEETS

I'll always remember my MLB bed sheet. It was cheap and thin and I wore it through.

I would pull the covers up past my chin on autumn nights and see all the team names on the underside written in reverse. Some were just meaningless strings of backward letters, but others seemed to be secret messages, dyed in the low-thread-count cotton.

“Boston” was “not sob”-- a fair state of mind for any New England baseball fan at the time.

The “Astros” were “sortsa,” which was sorta “sorta.” Which was sorta how I felt about the team.

The “Yankees” were “seek nay.” A quest for negation. How appropriate.

And the Mets. The “Mets” were “stem.” Like an apple's umbilical connection to the tree.

Like goddam Eden before the fall...

SAY IT AIN'T SO

This is a story about Joe Jackson.

No, not the shoeless one. The chinless, Gumpish New Waver.

During his transition from Elvis Costello-manque Joe to easy-listening Joe, he released a song called Right and Wrong, which contained this unexpected lyric:

“So what you think,
You like the Yankees or the Mets this year?”

This seemed to be less voice-of-Joe and more man-on-the-street, kind of like Mark Knopfler's loathsome Money for Nothing.

It sure was a sop to 1986, and guaranteed some extra airplay on contemporary New York radio.

Savvy bastard...

THE GIANTS AND METS WILL PLAY

I love it when my twin obsessions intersect, all the more so when it happens unexpectedly.

I don't think it's any surprise when a Simon or a Fogerty or a Springsteen drops a baseball reference into a lyric. But when a Scottish pop band does it-- and with a startling level of specificity at that-- I tip my cap.

Piazza, New York Catcher is a fine piece of Belle & Sebastian, baseball content aside. But then it drops in details like Piazza's lifetime batting average at the time (.318), and a great play on words regarding the Giants' statue of Willie Mays: “The statue's crying too/And well he may”...

That's a doubleheader sweep right there.

TALKIN' BASEBALL

My twin obsession to music is baseball.

I am a Mets fan. Have been since I was 4. Given my essential melancholia, there was never any other choice.

Because I think I knew even then that being a Yankees fan means living a lie.

And it's the worst kind of lie, I'm afraid-- one that tells you that the only thing worth celebrating is championships.

Being a Mets fan means that you learn to savor your own little victories. You will bear a 66-96 season if Craig Swan leads the league in ERA.

You learn to elevate the mundane to ridiculous heights and savor it beyond all reasonable measure.

And this is a valuable skill for those who would dare to enjoy life...

O MY SOUL

“Who's Alex Chilton?”

Even a small measure of grief can make it hard sometimes to speak with the unaffected.

“Alex Chilton. Singer for Big Star.”

“Big Star?”

Some are older, some are younger, so it's not just a generational thing.

“Big Star. They were like The Raspberries with a chemical imbalance.”

“Who were The Raspberries?”

OK, fuck y'all. Alex Chilton died. In 1973, he made music that I cared about in 1993. He didn't do too much that registered with me after that. But 59 is too young.

And December boys still got it bad...

COUNTING YEARS

I didn't do anything more profound to celebrate my Irish heritage today than listen to If I Should Fall from Grace with God.

Come to think of it, I guess I did plenty...

TIME HAS COME TODAY

Nothing better illustrates what an abstract concept time is than trying to explain DST to a 7 year old.

“You can't just change time!” exclaimed Sebastian more than once, as the clocks conspired to steal from him an hour of sleep again...

THE M-Z

By popular demand, here is the rest of the alphabet in songs that share titles.

And the "Strange Bedfellows" award goes to... Bananarama and Television! Take a bow, boys and girls...

Maria, Blondie
Maria, Leonard Bernstein

Modern World, The Modern Lovers
Modern World, Wolf Parade

The New World, X
The New World, Damon & Naomi

Old Man, Love
Old Man, Neil Young

One of These Days, Camper Van Beethoven
One of These Days, The Velvet Underground

Polly, The Kinks
Polly, Nirvana

Shine a Light, Apples in Stereo
Shine a Light, The Rolling Stones
Shine a Light, Wolf Parade

Ship of Fools, John Cale
Ship of Fools, The Doors

Silver, Echo and the Bunnymen
Silver, Pixies

Sixteen, The Buzzcocks
Sixteen, Iggy Pop

Special, The Mekons
Special, New Order

Spoon, CAN
Spoon, Cibo Matto

Surrender, Cheap Trick
Surrender, Elvis Presley

Take It Or Leave It, The Rolling Stones
Take It Or Leave It, The Strokes

Temptation, Heaven 17
Temptation, New Order

These Days, Joy Division
These Days, R.E.M.

Tonight, Iggy Pop
Tonight, Marnie Nixon & Jim Bryant
Tonight, TV On the Radio

Underwear, The Magnetic Fields
Underwear, Pulp

Valentine, Liz Phair
Valentine, The Replacements

Venus, Bananarama
Venus, Television

Victoria, The Kinks
Victoria, Shane MacGowan & The Popes

THE WHITE STAR LINER SANK IN THE DOCKS

This is... well, I have no fucking idea what this is.

Near as I can tell, it was intended to be part of the "songs of celebrities" series, like Thomas Pynchon, Gedde Watanabe, and Russ Tamblyn. But the wheels came off before the first ellipsis:

"The thin-lipped spawn of Suzy Amis and Jim Cameron
Was sipping a Corona down by Venice Beach..."

YOU CAN CALL ME A-L

It's spring cleaning time, so I'm going to clear out a few abandoned posts this week.

The ambition behind the first one was to catalog all of the songs I have in iTunes that share a title but are discrete entities, ie, no covers. Then, I wanted to determine through a complex Olympic-style scoring system just which title was the best, overall.

Then about halfway through the exercise, I got tired. So here's the list up to the L's (and I'd say the early leaders were Come Together, Good Times, Heaven, and Let's Go Crazy-- Lust for Life could be a comer):

Airplane, The Beach Boys
Airplane, Pizzicato Five

All I Need, Air
All I Need, Radiohead

All I Want is You, John Cale
All I Want is You, U2

All My Friends, LCD Soundsystem
All My Friends, Pavement

Beautiful World, Devo
Beautiful World, 宇多田ヒカル

Blue Moon, Big Star
Blue Moon, Damon and Naomi

Candyman, Cornershop
Candyman, カヒミ・カリィ

Cars, Gary Numan
Cars, To Rococo Rot

Changes, David Bowie
Changes, The Zombies

Clouds, Cibo Matto
Clouds, The Go-Betweens

Come Together, The Beatles
Come Together, Spiritualized

Contact, Big Audio Dynamite
Contact, Stereolab

Cool, Russ Tamblyn and the Jets
Cool, The Simpsons
Cool, Superchunk

Don't Stop, Fleetwood Mac
Don't Stop, The Stone Roses

Dreams, Fleetwood Mac
Dreams, TV On The Radio

Electricity, The Avalanches
Electricity, OMD
Electricity, Spiritualized

Emily, Joanna Newsom
Emily, John Cale

The End, The Beatles
The End, The Doors

Eyes on the Prize, Bruce Springsteen
Eyes on the Prize, M. Ward

Flower, Liz Phair
Flower, Sonic Youth

Flowers, Cibo Matto
Flowers, Chug

The Fool, Camper Van Beethoven
The Fool, Neutral Milk Hotel

Glass, Gang of Four
Glass, Joy Division
Glass, Robyn Hitchcock and the Egyptians

Gloria, Laura Branigan
Gloria, Patti Smith

Go, Moby
Go, Tones On Tail

God Only Knows, Cornelius
God Only Knows, The Beach Boys

Gone For Good, Morphine
Gone For Good, The Shins

Good Times, Jim O'Rourke
Good Times, The Rolling Stones
Good Times, Chic

Grass, Animal Collective
Grass, Robert Wyatt
Grass, XTC

Halloween, Dream Syndicate
Halloween, Sonic Youth

Harvest Moon, Jason and the Scorchers
Harvest Moon, Neil Young

Heaven, Robyn Hitchcock and the Egyptians
Heaven, Talking Heads

High and Dry, The Rolling Stones
High and Dry, Radiohead

I Believe, The Buzzcocks
I Believe, R.E.M.

I Don't Know, Chris Bell
I Don't Know, The Mekons
I Don't Know, The Replacements

I Should Have Known Better, The Beatles
I Should Have Known Better, Yo La Tengo

I Want You Back, Bananarama
I Want You Back, Hoodoo Gurus
I Want You Back, Jackson 5

Leave Me Alone, Altered Images
Leave Me Alone, New Order

Let's Dance, David Bowie
Let's Dance, The Ramones

Let's Go Crazy, The Clash
Let's Go Crazy, Prince

Liar, New Order
Liar, The Sex Pistols

Lies, The Knickerbockers
Lies, Thompson Twins

Little Bird, The Beach Boys
Little Bird, The White Stripes

Lust for Life, Girls
Lust for Life, Iggy Pop

SPARKLE AND FADE

MEOW MIX

And the difference between "Kissing cunt in Cannes" (Casino Boogie) and "I bet you keep your pussy clean" (Starfucker) is essentially the difference between Exile on Main St and Goat's Head Soup...

CAN OF TASTY FOAM

So, yeah-- “Star Fucker” (or, if you prefer, “Starfucker”; or, if you are prudish and prefer, “Star Star”).

It is really quite sad as it strains to offend.

The only saving grace is this, which sounds more like a cry for help than a cocksman's boast:

“Honey, I'm open to anything/I don't know where to draw the line...”

OK, OK, there are a few other saving graces:

-It's, um, catchy. However, you might not want to catch it, nor will you likely know what to do with it once caught.

-The sudden spasm of guitars in the last verse, which I assume are there to obscure John Wayne's name in the lyrics.

-And I swear that amidst all the “you're a star fucker”-ing Mick slips in an “I'm a star fucker” somewhere toward the end. Damn straight, you are...

WHEN WILL THOSE CLOUDS ALL DISAPPEAR?

I suppose that for the 70s Stones of the Month club to serve its educational purpose, I'm actually going to need to listen to the damn things.

I bought Goat's Head Soup last week, and tried one night to listen start to finish on my iPod.

But I was tired, and I fell asleep about halfway through. One minute Mick was whispering “Angie” and the next thing I knew he was bleating “Star fucker, star fucker, star fucker, star fucker, star.” Now I don't mean this priggishly, but that right there is not a pleasant way to wake up from a nap.

The weird thing about “Angie” the song is that there's another version floating spectrally right beneath the surface. This sounded intentional on the radio when I was 8, but now, listening through headphones, it's so pronounced that it seems like plain old sloppiness...

MERSH

It should not go unremarked that the current McDonald's filet-o-fish commercials, um, borrow from of Montreal.

I see three potential scenarios here:

(1) With the evidence of the Outback commercial in hand, McDonald's assumes that of Montreal are whores to be had for some filet-o-cash. Kevin Barnes rebuffs them, and they stick out their tongues and write a nonactionable pastiche.

(2) Someone in the McMarketing department is a fan, and decides to do a bizarre, sideways homage.

(3) The same theory that postulates that, given enough time, 100 monkeys with 100 typewriters would eventually produce Hamlet.

I'm not going to sweat the whys and wherefores, I'm just going to enjoy...

SUCKING IN THE 70s

I realized last week that the most-recent Stones album I own on anything other than cassette is Exile on Main Street.

So, seeing as I'm in a bit of a new-music dry spell, I've decided to start my own 70s Stones of the Month Club.

Each month, I'm going to buy one of the studio albums between Goat's Head Soup and Some Girls, chronologically.

Some Girls is the one I know best from front to back, so it will be interesting to get more familiar with the outer edges of things like Black and Blue...

DOES YOUR CHEWING GUM LOSE ITS FLAVOR ON THE BEDPOST OVERNIGHT?

I first encountered Trident gum as a kid, when I found it swimming between
bangle bracelets and Kleenex at the bottom of my grandmother's purse.

I picked up a 3-pack the other day, based more on price than Proustian
resonance.

And now I'm here to say that original flavor Trident is just damn refreshing...

GRANDPA'S THEORIES

Somehow, Danielson snuck a single by me back in November.

It's called Moment Soakers, and I have it now. It would not sound out of place on Ships, so you know what to do. (Um, buy or don't buy.)

The B side is an Abba song called Eagle, which serves to remind you that, hey, Abba made albums. For some reason...

MARKS THE SPOT

It’s amazing what’ll stick in your craw…

I have held a grudge against Ira Robbins for years, because he referred to X once as “appalling noise.” I assumed it was in an issue of Trouser Press, even though their old rekkid guide treats X generously.

Well, I was looking through the July, 1986 issue of Creem the other day, and there it was in a review of Green on Red/Rain Parade: “A reassuring antidote to even the appalling noise of X.”

And I was pissed anew. Watch where you’re casting those appallings, bitch…

WHITE PUNKS ON SNOW

I gave my car a reverse snowhawk...

A PUT ON

I had tickets to a Who concert once. Shea Stadium, 1982.

Thing is, I had no interest in seeing The Who. I liked their early mod stuff well enough, but in 1982 I was positively oppressed by Eminence Front, in the same way I was oppressed by In the Air Tonight: from the backseat of a black Z-28 with a custom Blaupunkt stereo pumping 100 watts, so I couldn't hear my thoughts think. And it got loudest when the driver really liked a particular section.

“Listen to the drums. Listen. You can practically feel them.”

I hated it like fuck.

So why did I have the tickets? Well, Scott and I were primed to see David Johansen and The Clash, who were opening the show.

After The Clash wrapped up, we made our way back through the bowels of Shea (and Shea did indeed have bowels, make no mistake), and headed for the exit gate. When we got there, we found it closed off with three or four guards sitting sentry.

They stopped us. “Show's not over. You can't leave.”

“But we're done.”

“Whattaya mean, done? The Who didn't even play yet.”

“We came for The Clash.”

After about 5 minutes of this, they finally let us leave, shaking their heads and clucking behind us.

People still shake their heads and cluck when I tell them this story, but they do so in a way that assumes I now recognize that this was all folly, and that I tell the story as a tale of regret.

But I don't regret it for a second...

AMPED

When I think about my 64GB iPod Touch I touch myself...

THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW

Aaaaaahhhh! The snowpocalypse is coming!

I'ma head to the Public Library and make Jake Gyllenhaal my full-flavored bitch...

EDITORS

Just finished reading Zeitoun, by Dave Eggers.

It's an important story, told artfully and with restraint.

I have to say, though, that the first edition I read was a bit sloppy.

Now, the old Copy Editor in me could bear the injury of the occasional missed space between punctuation. And that missed period that nearly stopped my heart? Over it.

But to see the Strait of Hormuz referred to as the Straights of Hormuz, particularly in the context of this book, and mindful of the events of 1988, well, that stung a little more acutely...

CURSIVE

The kids were talking about “bad” words.

“I know the 'S' word,” offered Lana.

Before she had finished her sentence, Sebastian had revved up his own.

“Oh, I know, I know! It's 'stupid'!”

“Yes,” continued Lana, “And we're not allowed to use it even though daddy sometimes does.” She said this in the melodic, lawyerly tone with which a ten-year old girl will say such things. It was fairly charming.

Sebastian had more to add to the conversation.

“I know the 'F' word.” I was prepared to be charmed again. “It's 'fuck'!”

I was... “Wait, what?”

“Fuck!”

I missed a beat, and Lana noticed I was off rhythm. “What does that even mean?” she said.

I asked Sebastian where he had learned the word. I asked more as a diversion than anything else.

Well, apparently one of his seat mates in kindergarten last year had access to the outer reaches of the “bad” word list, and had shared it with him.

I was actually pretty impressed that he'd sat on it for all this time...