TIME-DELAYED PIL

Willikers, out of nowhere here's a video I tried to upload two weeks ago. John Lydon, at his die-rock-die finest.

Hard to believe that wankerdom was waiting just around the corner...

Ever get the feeling you've been careering?

ICB

My five-cent knowledge of Existentialism characterizes it as the realization that existence is pointless, which makes it our imperative to find a point.

Nihilism, on the other hand, is the simple opinion that existence is pointless.

And yes, nihilism sucks.

So to illustrate, this performance of Transmission by Joy Division is Existentialism embodied. Especially the part where Ian Curtis rips the mike from its stand and starts howling about how “the things that we’ve learnt are no longer enough” and incanting “dance, dance, dance, dance, dance to the radio.”

If you’ve never felt exactly like this, I envy you and I pity you, simultaneously.

Ian Curtis’ suicide was pure nihilism...

GENTLE PEOPLE WITH FLOWERS IN THEIR HAIR

What was it in the hippie zeitgeist that made the May-September Mrs. Robinson/Summer of ‘42/Maggie May axis so resonant?

I think a clue can be found in Maggie May itself:

“But you turned into a lover
And, mother, what a lover, you wore me out.”

Now, I realize the intention here is to use “mother” as a mild oath, but it doesn’t take much syntactical trickery to tease out the Oedipal:

“But you turned into a lover and mother,
What a lover, you wore me out.”

So in this scenario, what the hippies were craving was a return to “original” love— in a broad sense, a return to the womb. Perhaps they were feeling the third-law pull of vulnerability that attaches to the impulse to rebel.

I’d argue that this drama plays out quite openly in the grooves of the mid-60s Beatles’ albums, where you can hear the band entering gradually into a tuck, which culminates in the full-on fetal position that is Sgt. Pepper’s.

So, kill the father and fuck the mother?

OK Jim. OK...

HEY JACK KEROUAC

I know I counseled The Hold Steady against cleverness for its own sake, but that riff on Born to Run in Charlemagne in Sweatpants (“Tramps like us and we like tramps”)?

Winning!

Can’t wait for Boys & Girls in America to drop tomorrow...

PB&J

And speaking of Dead or Alive, shouldn’t someone as flamboyant as their lead singer have had a less pedestrian name than “Pete Burns”?

I mean, that was the name of my 6th grade gym teacher. Or my crabby neighbor across the street who was obsessed with his bluegrass lawn. Can’t remember which...

No, Pete should have been named Plexi Shiningstar, or Ray D.O. Antenna, or Lockie McGlow, or Sweetpepper Gingersnap, or Mr Mister Mister, or Fishnet Twango, or Pendelum McDuff, or January Flipflop, or “Cowboy” Cal Stern, or Bobbing Flopsy, or Ducker Al-Shoot, or Wickie Fern, or Blanket Cuddleswap...

But not Pete Burns.

YOUTHQUAKE, BITCHES

Satellite roulette.

Brand New Lover— Dead or Alive

OK, we're all in clear agreement that this is actually a better song than You Spin Me 'Round (Like a Record), right?

Kind of like Coming Up Close is a better song than Voices Carry.

The one-hit wonderdome is a place of great whimsy and caprice...

FORGETTABLE FIRE

I’m generally pretty cold to U2. Always have been.

Occasionally I’ll let them in, if they promise to behave, wipe their feet, and leave the messianic crap out in the Mini.

In their journey from young punks, to Christian new-hope rockers, to self-important prigs, to postmodern “R*O*C*K” stars, to Classic Rock icons, the following bits and pieces have resonated with me:

-Two Hearts Beat as One, 12” extended mix.
-Bad (live), from Wide Awake in America. Compare this Christian new-hope version to the self-important prig version of the Rattle and Hum era for a dramatic rendering of that particular trajectory.
-Three Sunrises. Psychedelicious!
-Most of The Joshua Tree, except of course Bullet the Blue Sky. And those last two songs. Otherwise, it’s the perfect version of what it is.
-Lemon. Because, come on— Lemon.

EMPIRE BURLESQUE

I can't tell you anything about Bob Dylan that you don't already know.

Once upon a time I thought he was nothing but a charlatan.

Then I grew up and realized that he was a charlatan and so much more.

And now I'm making plans to see him in concert for the first time.

He is enveloped in twilight, and I am in its early tinge.

I can't tell you anything about Bob Dylan...

ICICLES MELT

Satellite roulette.

Birds Fly (Whisper to a Scream)— The Icicle Works

Suburban New Wave, like its bastard cousin I Melt With You by Modern English.

The sound of days spent studying for the SATs in a 5BR, 3BA split ranch, and nights spent stealing joints from your parents’ stash.

A life sacrificed for the new nirvana...

YES YES YES

True confession Friday.

The other day, I listened to Roundabout. The whole thing, nearly.

I mean, mountains came out of the sky, they stood there, and I kept right on listening.

It helped that every minute and a half or so it basically turned into a different song.

Which explains the original title:

Suite: (i) The Wizard Meets the Gnome and They Dance With Small Sacks of Colored Stones Around Their Necks. (ii) Lotusland Doth Rejoice at No Longer Being Overswept by the Shadow of Pinthorn the Dragon. (iii) The Mouse and the Maid Lie Down Together in the Barley, and Their Dreams Evanesce.

Would history have been as kind to the song if Rick Wakemen hadn’t objected to the implied slaying of Pinthorn in that title?

I guess we’ll never know. I guess we’ll never know...

STILLS GNASH

Satellite roulette.

I’m going to push a button. I’m going to hear a song. I’m going to write about that song.

Didi mau! Didi mau!

Love the One You’re With— Stephen Stills

From 1970, a distillation of why the 60s had to die.

Now, I’m not being fogyish and hating on all the free-love babble, as weedy and opportunistic as it might be.

I’m not denying the patent pending harmonies and the organ-grinding organ, thick and redolent as patchouli.

But “There’s a rose in a fisted glove/And the eagle flies with the dove”?

Is that supposed to be sexy? Or worse yet, sexual?

Because, I have to say, that “rose in a fisted glove” image is pretty damn terrible either way.

Take a bath, hippie.

I ENVY YOU, SO MUCH ROCKING TO DO

My goal yesterday was simply to blog Yo La Tengo’s Sugarcube video.

Before I even set about to do that, I learned that the Sugarcubes were going to be reuniting for a single show.

Sugarcubes, sugarcubes everywhere...

Now, I actually kind of sort of really disliked the Sugarcubes back in the day. Bjork was obviously a cool force of nature, but I couldn’t stomach the hectoring Sugarcube, the one I call Sven. “That leetle girl showed great interest in all the mo-tor crashes in the neigborhood...” Shut the fuck up, Sven.

Anyway, YouTube was being all uncooperative, and wouldn’t let me blog the YLT video. So instead, I’ll just describe it for you.

It opens on the highland moors, a great mist washing over three lone figures draped in red. The mist rises, and finally clears, revealing... Yo La Tengo! They smile knowingly as the opening drums trip in. There is then a quick cut to the band riding in the cab of a pickup, crossing the George Washington Bridge. It must be the 4th of July, because this huge, awesome American flag is hanging from one of the towers of the bridge.

The footage is then sped up, like one of those videos where you watch a flower bloom, and when it finally slows down the band are set up on a softball field in Edgewater, New Jersey, with the Manhattan skyline as their backdrop. They continue to rock, and a mist comes in off the river and envelopes them as the song comes to a close.

Oh man, it’s just so cool.

I didn’t really do it justice, so feel free to head over to YouTube and search for “Yo La Tengo Sugarcube”...

I GOT IT

Dear Yo La Tengo,

We first met over 13 years ago, when you released Painful. I was living down in Charlottesville, and I heard From a Motel 6 on TJU.

I loved the Dylan reference in the title, the Velvets reference on the noisy bridge, and the reserved post-punk cool of the vocals. I made a few mix tapes that year, and this had a spot on all of them.

Thing is, I wasn’t as charmed by the rest of the disc. I liked Georgia’s turn on Nowhere Near, and I guess I was impressed that you included an Only Ones cover that was not Another Girl, Another Planet. But really I didn’t often play it from end to end.

Still, I was involved enough to buy Electr-O-Pura, with its bedeviling hyphens, when it came out a couple of years later. This time, it was Tom Courtenay that grabbed my attention. And again, unfortunately, not much else. It was starting to feel like my late 80s relationship with The Wedding Present.

When I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One came out (and sweet Jebus, has it really been 9 years?) I was naturally wary. The reviews were good, but they usually are. But I decided to give it one more shot.

Well, I’m glad I did, because you really got me with this one. It was waaayyy expansive and way terse at the same time, and I dug it from start to finish. I’d say that with ICHTHBAO you created one of my top 15 favorite albums to date, and for that I’m most grateful. And that Sugarcube video kicks ass.

From this high, I went back to being mostly nonplussed by And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside Out, so much so that I confess that I didn’t even purchase Summer Sun.

And now it is late September 2006, and I am vulnerable to all manner of autumnal melancholy. You guys fit that program perfectly (Autumn Sweater and all that), so yesterday I picked up I Am Not Afraid of You and I Will Beat Your Ass.

I’ll drop you a line sometime soon and let you know how everything worked out.

Best regards,

Sliced Tongue

ELEGY

Some of the last poems that I wrote tracked the dissolution and death of my brother.

Time and tide had abraded my lyricism, and turned my verse angular and ironic.

Taurus

Have you ever seen
The ashing of a soul?

The agent fire
Beating its black wings

To rise above
The trespass of a song

Jeff showed up for Thanksgiving dinner with a bloated belly, sitting high on his thin frame. My mother, who had seen this before in dramatic close up, knew instantly that he was in real trouble. I tried to reassure her that it was a simple beer belly, but to her the complexities were clear.

A month later I was called to the emergency room. The slow course of suicide was beginning to have its effects.

Compulsion

Do not worry about the cups--
They are in the 2nd drawer,
Prone, interlocked,
On top of your cassettes
And the box of sour gum + hard candy.
Do not worry--
They preceded you by a bottomless age,
And will float past your death
To eternity.

We sat in Jeff's room at Mt Sinai Hospital, biding the time with small talk and periodic glances up at an elevated TV. The murmur of passing daytime talk shows filled the empty holes in the conversation.

He was propped in bed, a new liver sewn inside to yank him back from the edge. And still he was typically condescending and gruff, particularly to my mother. He fussed about things of no consequence, culminating in a blowup regarding some misplaced cups.

When my mother left the room, I shot him a look informed by a mix of plain disgust and pity. “She drives 100 miles to see you here almost every fucking day, and you treat her like this?” I hissed, “The way you've always treated her.”

I drove back home with my mother, still furious at Jeff's behavior. “I know he loves me,” she said, “And he doesn't have anyone else. I'm his mother.”

Elegy morphine

Are you
worthy of
the putrid swans

whose sooty wings extended
War with
Grace

The funeral was quiet and quick. An urn with Jeff's ashes was interred not more than 200 yards from the altar on which the service was offered, in the graveyard on the grounds of the 'Neath the bell tower church.

Because my father was in the army, my mother has a plot reserved for her in the local national cemetery. But she waived that right some years ago, opting instead for a spot on the church grounds right next to my brother.

My life as a poet ended about a dozen years ago.

I live now a narrative life. A life that requires narrative. A life that could not stand on lyrics.

But I will never forget who I was, I will never forget what I was:

A poet...

LYRICAL BALLADS

Rice Farms

Ably, with a tongue of dust
Came the riders of a golden knit,
With an eye of smoke and a tender trust—
The women were more lovely for it.

They ambled precious on the wing,
Those lyric young undaunted,
And I could not but softly sing
“The women are more lovely for it.”

This Rice Farms was half a mile down the road from the church referenced in ‘Neath the bell tower.

When I was 16, a couple of my friends took horseback riding lessons there on Saturday mornings, and I would walk over to watch.

Black Pants

When the cream goes bitter on the spoon
The children stray, children stray.
The tailor sings his folly tune
And we slip away.

And we fall flat from the bastard’s hand
On such a day, such a day.
We turn the dirt off our shoulders and
Shhh... slip away...

I see now that this is largely “about” transcending decay and death.

Also, all of my pants were black. It was not a goth thing. It’s just, all of my pants were black.

I have typed up three different ways to summarize this post, and each one reads like an apology.

An apology for being anachronistic. An apology for being a poetaster.

But you know what? I’ve decided not to apologize...

DISARRAY

Forgive the indelicacy of today’s post, but it is all in the service of delivering some important information:

Poetry can get you laid.

Prism

Dance a broken step with civil disguise,
Give not a handsome tremble to the blacking rise,
Lay no bed in the violet waves of winter.
Things established are demonic vice,
Disarray, a ritual blend.
Dance with me angel!
Dance a broken step!

A couple of years after I wrote this piece, I met a girl. She was a statuesque bottle-blonde surfer, entering her sophomore year. She liked LSD and scaring her parents.

We spent only a couple of weeks in each other’s company, and I’m left with a disjointed collection of memories:

A night spent house sitting, in a den that was literally crawling with crickets...

A night out with some of her friends to see The Deceivers...

Meeting her parents as they sat and watched Matewan on video...

I thought back to this poem when I first met her, so I wrote it out longhand and dropped it in an envelope, along with a crystal prism I snatched from a decorative lamp.

She melted, and I confess I did not discourage the idea that the poem was custom written for her.

When she went back to school, we continued for several more weeks with a flurry of regular phone calls, effusive letters, and new poems.

But soon she returned to her broken steps, and I to my civil disguise...

NO COUNTRY

I once believed that I remembered every word I ever wrote...

Then one day several years ago, I was going through some manila envelopes stuffed so full of papers that their seams were splitting.

The envelopes were filled with four or five years worth of my poems, some crammed onto found pieces of stationery, some written and rewritten on expansive lined paper.

I thumbed through all the old familiar files, the Xs and arrows on each page helping to reconstruct the essential DNA of all the old familiar words.

The final page that I found in one of the envelopes contained the following, with not an X or arrow in sight:

'Neath the bell tower sits a well,
Where colonies of uniform grass
Awakened, bend and draw to glance
Upward at her knell.
'Neath the bell tower sits a well.

'Neath the bell tower they converge--
Brassy children sprung out from mothers' side,
Agitated by restraining ties,
In her toll there are none to be heard.
'Neath the bell tower they converge.

'Neath the bell tower I stand,
A-cast in silent revelry,
Prizing the four winds' buoyancy,
And the clap of her simple hand.
'Neath the bell tower I stand.

It was instantly clear from the subject matter that I had written this, a remembrance of my boyhood churchgoing days.






















But that moment of clarity was clouded quickly by a betrayal of memory. This was the only poem in the reams of paper that I just did not recall.

I lost my equilibrium as I tried to bring back the experience of writing the poem, in an effort to place it in my personal timeline. But I was never able to elevate the experience much above the category of a light fever dream.

And as I made my peace with that fact, my dizziness was tinged with a bit of sadness. I thought back to that 21/22-year old with a formal 9th grade education, aspiring to be an impractical poet.

Who, with Hopkins and Yeats in his head, but without steady knowledge of sprung rhythm or scansion to get him through the night, wrote on through that night nonetheless.

Some of it is embarrassing for sure, but some of it has a luster partially borrowed, partially earned (“Colonies of uniform grass/Awakened, bend and draw to glance” and “Prizing the four winds’ buoyancy/And the clap of her simple hand”).

Welcome to poetry week on the Tongue...

TO HELL WITH POVERTY!

I had planned on bookending the pre-Labor Day Billy Bragg clip with a post-Labor Day Gang of Four clip, an intention that lay dormant until I read this phrase in the Washington Post yesterday, delirious soft-soap newspeak for “torture”: irregular interrogation methods.

WHEE!

Into every life, a little bit of this must fall...

GOING DOWN TO THE HONDA SHOP

I ran over a broom today on I-95, somewhere near Ft. Meade.

That's right-- a fecking broom.

I think this means that my car and I-95 are now officially married...

DAMAGED GOODS

I have an order sitting in my Newbury Comics’ shopping cart. It’s been there for a couple of days now.

One of the items in the cart is the new Broadcast comp, The Future Crayon, which has occasioned me to take this role as the Prince of Denmark.

To buy or not to buy, though, is not really the question. I will buy. The question turns more on how I will buy...

I can click the order button over at Newbury and have delivered to my door an 18-track CD for $12.95 plus whatever portion of the shipping will be attributable to one disc in a multi-item order.

Or I can one-click my way to a 20-track download of the same CD over at iTunes for $9.99.

So the math that counts here is as follows: iTunes offers two extra tracks and costs about $3.50 less. Seems like a no-brainer.

And yet. And yet.

And yet I pause...

I’m still enough of a pop-culture fetishist that I prefer to drop my dimes on tangible objects.

I like the anticipatory struggle with the CD wrapping, which can be as challenging as prying a Giger alien off a host face.

I like sliding out the accompanying booklet to see what manner of liner notes have been provided, and reading through them at the dinner table.

I like the game of sliding the booklet back into the case under the little plastic nubbins that will ultimately keep it from shifting around all willy nilly. Shit, I ripped a corner!

I like to see if there was any effort to screen print a personality onto the actual face of the disc.

I like to see the final results of all the artistic and practical decisions that went into creating the object in my hands.

And yet I pause...

WORKERS PLAYTIME

And here’s to you, Billy Bragg.

Because lines like “Here comes the future and you can’t run from it/If you’ve got a blacklist, I want to be on it” got me through the dark end-days of Ronald Reagan’s America.

Waiting for the great leap forwards...

SPY VS SPY

I was 21 years when I wrote this song
I'm 22 now, but I won't be for long...

These, of course, are the opening lines to A New England by Billy Bragg, from lo, those many years ago.

But it was just yesterday that those lyrics put me in a crisis.

Let’s parse the ontology, as the French kids like to say...

One would think that the phrase “wrote this song” is meant comprehensively, that is, I wrote the music and the words. But if that is indeed the case, how does that “now” come into play?

Did he write the song when he was 21 with a different second line? Say,

I was 21 years when I wrote this song
Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong

Then, by the time he scored a record deal and hit the studio, he was 22 and updated the lyric to its present state?

That has to be it. Otherwise, this song bends all known laws of temporal physics. And gives me a splitting headache to boot...

GASSED AND FLACCID KIDS

Guilty pleasure

Along Comes Mary—The Association

My music teacher in middle school— Ms Cutler?— was an unreconstructed hippie. She reveled in the opportunity to share with us kids the wondrous sounds of the 60s.

Unfortunately, the wondrous sounds of the 60s to her meant the likes of Simon and Garfunkel’s Richard Cory (social commentary!), CSN’s Marrakesh Express (drugs!), and Along Comes Mary (more drugs!).

We’ll-call-her-Ms-Cutler used to try to replicate the whole psychedelic experience by flipping the classroom light switch on and off maniacally while a crackly version of one of the above songs played on a portable record player.

Sigh. Fecking hippies.

Still, though, Along Comes Mary survives in my esteem...

DIE CUT

If I ever bothered to make a list of my favorite videos, this would be a resident.

I've never technically had a dream where I came to on a typical suburban street after a car accident, wended my way past the wreckage, wept at the sight of a burning chair, ran off into the woods, found a box, opened the box, and was bathed in a pod of light.

But fuck, I actually sort of have...

Broadcast-- Tender Buttons

NEWS OF THE WORLD

I mentioned to my friend Tom a past affinity for Spread Your Wings by Queen, and he was kind enough to send along a link to the video.

It took a minute for me to reconstruct what the song had meant to me.

Hearing it again, it sounded harsher and more abrasive than I remembered. I think in my memory it was meeker.

But really it was me who was meek...

I stood in Michael’s basement, an expansive room crowded by a pool table, a ping pong table, and scores of orange Hot Wheels’ tracks. I stood, an 11-year old among a party of 12-year olds, and cried. Michael had slapped me across the face for sport.

He was a year older, and I called him my friend. And he was once, but as time wore on, the relationship became defined by his abuse and my passivity.

I left this party in tears, and ran out into the teeth of a winter storm...

By the time we reached high school, I enacted some empty revenge by terrorizing Michael when he strayed into a bathroom to which me and some of my buddies had staked a claim. But this did not wash away the aluminum aftertaste of my former timidity.

And so in Spread Your Wings, part of the soundtrack to those days, I do not hear perseverance and victory, but rather the echoes of humiliation and defeat...

EVERY SPERM IS SACRED

If Stephin Merritt, Salvador Dali, and your ninth-grade biology teacher got together, they would eventually concoct the Chiba Lotte Marines seventh-inning stretch:

DOLLS

I tried it out on the kids tonight...

"Dad, she pushed me!"

"Dear, don't push your brother. If you do it again, I am going to sell your womma."

I'm a parenting genius.

KISS THIS GUY

I picked up a copy of the Dolls' Too Much, Too Soon in Japan-- it appears to be out of print over here.

Reading the lyrics in the CD booklet is as disconcerting as listening to a lunatic rant.

Like, occasionally there are moments of lucidity where they flat get it right.

Then there are moments where, with some effort, you can reconstruct a bit of the logic behind the babble:

“That reminds me of Will Rogers
Back in 1933
And that was the year when he crashed on down
And his engines all packed up”

OK, yeah, Will Rogers died in a plane crash. Sure it was in 1935, but it was a plane crash. And I suppose that would cause one's engines to, um, pack up.

Of course it makes zero sense contextually. Here's the real deal:

“That reminds me of Buck Rogers
Back in 1933
That was the year when he crashed on down
And all the decos got stacked up”

And in moments like “Dad's gonna sell your womma” (“That's when I saw your momma”) I succumb to human frailty and avert my eyes...

IT IS TIME, TIME, TIME, TIME, TIME, TIME, TIME, TIME, TIME...

I have an awesome video of Arthur Lee performing You Set the Scene on Later from a few years back that now plays like a valedictory.

It laughs at life, and it laughs at death. It stresses that decay is just a trite physical process.

Because the soul does not decay.

I can't find a clip of that video, so here's a vintage promo film for Your Mind and We Belong Together.

RIP Arthur Lee.

男の子やあ

Sweeping generalizations suck monkey, but here's one for a welcome back: The Japanese loved my Creem t-shirt.

And to a lesser extent, my Davey & Goliath t-shirt...

THE SHINE OF YOUR JAPAN

I’m leaving on Friday for two weeks in Japan, and the next couple of days will be dizzy with last-minute preparation, so I’ll see you again on August 21, jet lag willing...

Here are some Japan lyrics off the top of my head. Ganbatte!

I'd rather be in Tokyo,
I'd rather listen to Thin Lizzy-oh,
And watch the Sunday gang in Harajuku,
There’s something wrong with me— I’m a cuckoo...
-I’m a Cuckoo, Belle and Sebastian

Oh no, there goes Tokyo—
Go go Godzilla!
-Godzilla, Blue Oyster Cult

"This is a special news report.
Godzilla has been sighted in Tokyo Bay.
The attack on it by the Self-Defense Force has been useless.
He is heading towards the city. AAAAAGGGGHHHH!!!!!"
-Superman, R.E.M. (Japanese-language opening)

My woman from Tokyo
She makes me see,
My woman from Tokyo
She's so good to me.
-Woman from Tokyo, Deep Purple

Turning Japanese,
I think I'm turning Japanese
I really think so...
-Turning Japanese, The Vapors

I will wait here for my man tonight, it's easy when you’re big in Japan.
When you’re big in Japan, tonight,
Big in Japan, be tight, big in Japan, where the Eastern sea's so blue.
Big in Japan, alright, pay, then I'll sleep by your side,
Things are easy when you're big in Japan, when you're big in Japan...
-Big in Japan, Alphaville

She rode to Japan,
And we entered a town...
-My Wild Love, The Doors

I dreamed headlong collisions in jet lag panavisions,
I shouted “Sayonara!” it didn't mean goodbye.
But lovers turn to posers,
Show up in film exposures,
Just like in travel brochures
Discovering Japan, discovering Japan...
-Discovering Japan, Graham Parker and the Rumour

Everywhere in the world is good,
But Osaka is the best town, Osaka is the best town...
-My Favorite Town Osaka, Shonen Knife

WHEN BEAUTY MEETS ABUSE

Listening to Marquee Moon while I mow the lawn makes me feel infinitely cooler than the lawn.

NYC, bitch. What?

But then of course I finish, and I realize that the lawn is infinitely cooler than me...

BORN INSIDE THE BELLY OF ROCK ‘N ROLL

Fifty percent of what there is to know about me can be extracted from this simple fact: The video for Memphis, Egypt by the Mekons brought me to tears last night.

Why?

-The fact that there is such a thing as a Mekons video.
-The fact that in said video they are simultaneously taking the piss and touchingly earnest, because they didn’t give a shit and they most certainly did...
-“Destroy your safe and happy lives before it is too late.”
-The fact that my three-year old had slept with me the night before and through some wild somnambulistic gymnastics managed to kick me in the head at least twice, leaving me past exhausted come the morning.
-Sally Timms dancing.
-Rock ‘n roll!

WHEN UPTOWN COMES DOWNTOWN

The New York Dolls got me into grad school.

One of the pieces of supporting documentation that I sent with my application was an essay on Frankenstein I had written for a Romantic lit course. The piece took in Shelley’s book, Whale’s movie, and the Dolls’ song, with a few words spared for the Edgar Winter Group.

It was, um, lightly researched, but I suppose it had a certain brio/moxie.

Little did I know that the director of the program was an old-school New York punk fan, and had spent many formative hours at CBGB and Max’s in the company of the Dolls, Patti Smith, Ramones, Television, et al. We had an enthusiastic discussion about it at this pre-semester meet-and-greet cocktail-party type thing.

He seemed to think that I might add a bit of topspin to an entering class heavy with Lacanians, Foucaultites, and Derridaistes.

It is one of the few measurable regrets in my life that I instead spent my time quietly harvesting A minuses...

TRASH

Or it can kill you if you want to die...

That guitarist who was sharing the mic on the choruses in yesterday's clip? With the hair that looks like a Breck girl gone for a couple of spins on the Cyclone? That was Johnny Thunders.

Waiting for Johnny to die became a sort of sick sport in the early 80s. (See Johnny's Gonna Die by The Replacements for some further context.)

Here's the sad spectacle of Johnny attempting to perform Sad Vacation, his paean to another formal nihilist, Sid Vicious.

Watch it once, never watch it again, and never forget it...

LOOKING FINE ON TELEVISION

Here's the essence of the Dolls, in 3:36.

Cack musicianship, gutter fabulousness, and gristly semiotics. And a pink drum kit.

It can save your life if it needs saving, and if you'll let it...

SOMETHING MUST HAVE HAPPENED OVER MANHATTAN

On the eve of the release of a new New York Dolls album, we are left to ponder the fate of a name...

Which is appropriate, because if the Dolls were “about” anything, it was identity: losing it, finding it, and holding onto it.

By 1975, the Dolls name was industrial-strength commercial poison.

So David Johansen’s first solo album sported a look-at-me-I’m-a-regular-guy-no-fishnets-and-mascara-here-no-siree-bob cover and a bunch of look-at-me-I’m-a-regular-guy-no-fishnets-and-mascara-here-no-siree-bob tunes.

The best of those tunes were the ones written by Johansen/Sylvain.

And here we sit in 2006— with Nolan, Kane, and Thunders having gone to that great plastic bordello in the sky— awaiting an album full of new Johansen/Sylvain songs.

A New York Dolls’ album.

It is a New York Dolls’ album because the Dolls name has evolved into a viable brand: The epitome of scuzzy cool, but with the real scuzz scrubbed away.

Much like New York, New York itself, I guess.

So tomorrow, I’ll pop on my CBGB t-shirt (available in a wide variety of colors and styles), and hit the local Best Buy for my copy of One Day it Will Please Us to Remember Even This.

I’ll get back to you on that title...

KIPPERS FOR BREAKFAST

Welcome to the jungle, bitch.

This liquefies my narrative brain...

COULDN'T HIT IT SIDEWAYS

This shouldn't crack me up, but sweet Jiminy Fucking Cricket it does...

CIGARETTES WHERE THERE WERE SUPPOSED TO BE EYES

OK, my little hoodrats-- here's a taste of The Hold Steady, in case you're not familiar with them.

And if you are familiar with them, here's a chance to recall that the singer dude looks nothing like you thought he did...

NIX

Memo to The Hold Steady:

The Humbert Humbert stuff is fine-- it's the clever clever stuff that palls.

Like, in a blind taste test I can barely tell if this is you or the Barenaked Ladies on their period:

"Silly rabbit, tripping is for teenagers..."

So just be careful out there, OK?

Sincerely,

sliced tongue

HORNETS!

Forgive a latecomer, but I've been spending a fair amount of time with The Hold Steady's Separation Sunday over the last couple of months.

The Springsteen comparisons are duly noted, and classic rock fans will indeed have much truck with the music.

But what I'm taking away from it is the assonance, the flow.

Like this:

“You came into the party with a long black shawl, and the guys from the front lawn were making jokes about the white swan.”

The shawl/lawn/swan triptych is faceted, and made brilliant in its setting of long shiny surrounding vowels and sharp en sounds.

I haven't heard words roll out of a white guy with such seeming ease and apparent connection since peak Eminem...

FUCK THE MAN

A component of the Sex Pistols' creation myth is the story of young John Lydon skulking down the streets of London with the words “I HATE” scrawled on a Pink Floyd t-shirt.

But watching that interview clip from yesterday, wherein the right Hans Keller larded the discussion with condescension and disdain, helped draw for me a straight line from Floyd to the Pistols...

GAMES FOR MAY

In my zeal to get the best of Pink Floyd up yesterday, it seems I elided Pink.

It wasn't until today that I realized that Syd is not even in that See Emily Play promo clip.

So, to redress the oversight, I give you this. Skip past Astronomy Domine if you must, but be sure to catch the interview at the end...

I HATE PINK FLOYD

Fuck Nick Mason.

Fuck Echoes.

Fuck Dark Side.

Fuck David Gilmour.

Fuck Wish You Were Here.

Fuck Animals.

Fuck Rick Wright.

Fuck The Wall.

Fuck The Wall again, for good measure.

Fuck The Final Cut.

Fuck Roger Waters.

Fuck drugs.

Fuck mental illness.

Fuck death.

Fuck all that.

Fuck all that.

Rest in peace Syd...

MERRIWEATHER REPORT

About the show itself...

Ted Leo and the Pharmacists had the power-trio thump of The Jam, the working-class humanity of The Jam, and twice the sense of fun of The Jam. Good stuff.

I want Broken Social Scene to play for two hours in my basement. (OK, I don’t actually have a basement, but you get the point...)

Belle and Sebastian struggled a bit with the venue.

Stuart Murdoch noted that he felt like they were playing to three disparate audiences at once: the Saturday-night dancers up front, the cinema folks in their seats, and the picnic crowd on the lawn.

As a result of this somewhat schizo setup, the group never really found the right pace. When they soared, they soared pretty high (If You’re Feeling Sinister, Sleep the Clock Around, I’m a Cuckoo), but when they were pedestrian, they were footsore...

KIDS IN AMERICA

Boy, was it heartening to see 17-year-old kids jumping up like Jacks-and-Jills-in-the-Box, with favorite-song glee, for the likes of Ted Leo, Broken Social Scene, and B&S...

MY GENERATION

Tomorrow: A summer night out with mr. and mrs. brain coral, brain coral's brother, a couple of their friends, Ted Leo, Broken Social Scene, and Belle and Sebastian.

It's enough to make a boy not give a fuck about being 40...

KNOW RETURN

The earnestness.

The hair.

The earnest hair.

The dry ice.

The creamy oval frame.

The fun picking and easy strumming.

The pink tuxedo shirt.

I say again: The pink tuxedo shirt.

Best. Dagblasted. Video. Ever.

LIVING IN THE PAST

I come not to bury Jethro Tull, but to praise them.

Well, not really. But I did hear the Tull parody No New Tale to Tell the other day...

And would anyone really be willing to join the argument that Love and Rockets were in some intrinsic, verifiable sense a “better” band than Tull?

I imagine that the mid 80s Love and Rockets kids were basically the same as the late 60s Tull kids: White, comfortably middle class, and longing to be a part of the Alternative or the Underground (take your pick). Just so long as the Alternative didn’t alternate too much, and the Underground didn’t run too deep...

LED IT BE

For some mysterious reason, preset number 4 on the satrad has been stuck on a classic rock station all week. I tried switching it to old-school hip-hop, I tried switching it to whatever the hell the determinedly eclectic station is called, but no dice.

It's made for an average of one amusing moment per day. And yesterday it was What Is and What Should Never Be, that mockjestic Zep text rimed with the hoarfrost of 35 stoned winters...

Sure, it's got a castle, and a trip way up high in the sky.

But the best thing bar none is that channel-jumping riff that precedes the gong. And oh yeah, the gong...

Fucking hilarious.

RIBBON

It’s the rock and roll Goldilocks equation.

Some bands are too big. (How the fuck did Stone Temple Pilots ever sell 17 million albums?)

Some are too small. (Why the fuck didn’t The Pixies sell 17 million albums?)

And some are juuuuusssst right.

Superchunk was juuuuusssst right...

YOU KNOW I'M ALRIGHT NOW

Guilty pleasure

Feelin' Stronger Every Day— Chicago

Chicago was as doomed from the point of conception as poor Tristram Shandy, what with all that incessant cocking about with Got to Get You Into My Life horns. I mean, sweet muted Jesus, of all the Beatles tangents on which to base a career...

But this one crackles with so much winter-into-spring, got-to-tape-it-off-the-radio energy, that for 4:14 you forgive the soulless bastards.

Especially that part where the tempo shifts and gets all metronomic and in your face.

Nyah-nyah-nyah...

WOMEN OF THE WORLD

I pulled out Jim O’Rourke’s Eureka to play for some friends as we navigated our way to Georgetown for lunch last week.

“He’s a post-rockin’ genius!” I exclaimed, with two parts enthusiasm, one part consciousness that they were staring at the CD cover of a rotund bald dude coyly hiding his genitalia behind a stuffed rabbit.

What I didn’t mention was that O’Rourke’s version of Women of the World was the soundtrack to my daughter’s birth...

It was around 11:30 pm on May 29, 1999 when my wife went into labor. We tiptoed out of our bedroom, each tipping of her toe punctuated by a heavy breath.

Her parents were visiting from Japan and sleeping on the floor in the living room, and as we stepped out the sliding door, her mother lifted her head slightly and watched us exit into the darkness.

It was a Saturday night, but the Long Island Expressway was uncharacteristically serene and cooperative. We made it to the hospital in about 30 minutes.

Our daughter was born—quivering, beautiful, and from another world— at 6:47 am on Sunday morning. My wife’s blood pressure spiked right after the delivery, so she was moved to critical care as a precaution.

For the next three days I shuttled back and forth from the house to the hospital, bringing visitors and gifts.

In quiet moments, I held my daughter to my chest, and brushed the hair from my wife’s forehead with my fingers.

And as I drove up and down the Expressway for those three days, I listened to Women of the World almost exclusively.

“Women of the world, take over, for if you don’t the world will come to an end, and it won’t take long...”

CYCLONE RANGER

I know just enough Japanese to titter whenever I read about Asobi Seksu...

Titter.

I SAY A LITTLE PRAYER

Epic, window-rattling, twig-snapping, biblical thunderstorms last night.

Dionne Warwick, Her All-Time Greatest Hits today.

Ahhh...

WE LOVE YOU P5!

I love this dagblasted video...


Pizzicato Five-- Twiggy, Twiggy

WHAT WOULD I DO TO BELIEVE?

So here I sit, a committed agnostic. And yet, I am drawn to faith...

The woman I love is a devout and lifelong Buddhist, and I am warmed to see my children kneel before her altar and chant.

My mother, after many years in retrograde, has returned to the very church that I abandoned on that long-ago Christmas Eve, and I find myself encouraging her to attend.

And as long as they do not proselytize too aggressively, I connect very well with folks like Sufjan and Stuart Murdoch. Committed Christians.

I guess that the mystery inside me never truly died away...

ANGELS WE HAVE HEARD ON HIGH

The last time I attended a church service was the Christmas Eve when I was 15.

It was the first time that I recall incense being incorporated into the ceremony. The priest slathered it on until the elderly portion of the congregation was clasping wrinkled silk handkerchiefs to their collective noses. The elongated vowels of Gloria in Excelsis Deo competed with brisk, spirited coughing.

It all seemed so absurd at that moment, in the special unvarnished way that things seem absurd when you’re 15.

I excused myself from my mother’s side and slipped out the front door. I walked the mile and a half home in a damp cool midnight, with still-white streetlamps throwing large dots of light across the periodic darkness. It was peaceful— Christmas Eve peaceful— and all I heard was the faint hum of mystery dying inside me...

CUT LOOSE LIKE A DEUCE

A little Friday rock math...

Oh! Sweet Nuthin' + Blinded By the Light = How a Resurrection Really Feels

TONIGHT I’M GONNA PARTY LIKE IT’S 199

It’s the Sliced Tongue 200th Post Gala Black Tie Celebration!

Now without further editorial ado, here are the best 10 and worst 10 posts to date...

BEST
August 12, 2005

September 8, 2005

September 16, 2005

October 7, 2005

January 26, 2006

March 3, 2006

March 8, 2006

May 22, 2006

May 24, 2006

June 12, 2006

WORST
August 3, 2006

September 22, 2006

October 3, 2006

November 2, 2006

February 6, 2006

February 7, 2006

February 17, 2006

March 30, 2006

April 17, 2006

May 12, 2006

I AIN’T GOT NO PAPERS ON MYSELF

I periodically spin on my chair to open a drawer and catch my eye wandering out of my sixth-floor window to the green below, where more and more people gather in shirt sleeves to eat, smoke, sun, and gab.

For the last couple of days I’ve played nothing but the Francis Albert Sinatra & Antonio Carlos Jobim CD, in an effort to bring a little outdoors indoors...

DO YOU BELIEVE IN MAGIC?

I spent a couple of hours yesterday scouring the perimeter of the Wolf Trap parking lot, hunting for bottle caps with my three-year old son.

We got a good three-year old’s handful, some shiny and pristine, some rusted, nicked, and flattened.

At one point, I picked up a discarded ticket stub from the New Cars/Blondie Road Rage Tour. I showed it to my son, who threw it on the ground with quick disdain.

“That’s not a bottle cap, silly!”

Rock on, Sebastian. Rock the fuck on...

LITTLE T&A

OK, I have to confess that I'm not above tittering at the fact that El Perro del Mar is the nom de rock of someone named Sarah Assbring.

Damn, who am I kidding-- I'm not even above tittering at the word “tittering”...

BECAUSE THE NIGHT

I got home on Monday a little after midnight, in time to see Larry play on national TV.

Sweet.

But damn, The Tonight Show sucks so hard it's in real danger of turning itself inside out.

Good to be back...

CAPTAIN TRIPS

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

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

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

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

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

Peace.

DAD ROCK

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

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

Did the 00s get this shit sorted yet?

UMBILICAL NOOSE

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

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

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

And, oh, the 20th Century.

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

FIFTY ACORNS TIED IN A SACK

The five worst Beatle Number ones.

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

But slag I must…

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

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

3. Lady Madonna
Eleanor Rigby done flippantly.

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

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

ONCE THERE WAS A WAY TO GET BACK HOMEWARD

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Happy Birthday Jeff. Happy Birthday…

I DON'T KNOW

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

So Abbey Road was a grace note.

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

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

Peace to you George...

I READ THE NEWS TODAY, OH BOY

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

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

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

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

THE WORD

Top 5 favorite Beatles' lyrics

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

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

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

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

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

HELLO, HELLO

My wife wanted to hear The Beatles.

Familiar Beatles, so I grabbed 1...

A couple of songs in, she asked a question.

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

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

But what she was really asking me about was magic.

Ineffability.

So dear, here is my delayed response: Yes.

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

MAN IN THE BOX

OK, so me and Doonesbury go way back.

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

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

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

NO MORE WILL MY GREEN SEA GO TURN A DEEPER BLUE

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

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

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

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

ALMOST FAMOUS

So You Are a Star-- The Hudson Brothers

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

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

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

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

LOVER'S LANE

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

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

And that has not changed.

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

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

MAKIN' IT

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

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

THIS IS YOUR CORRESPONDENT, RUNNING OUT OF TAPE

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

WE WANT TO DO WHAT WE WANT FOREVER

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sigh.

MOLLUSK HATCHET

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

Because, you know, I must...

YOU DID IT AGAIN

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

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

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

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

NOW, THAT SIDE WAS MADE FOR YOU AND ME!

My daughter is an American citizen and a Japanese citizen.

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

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

I SAW A MAN HOLD A CHICKEN TO HIS HEAD

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

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

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

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

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

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

It was a pretty confusing morning...

ICE CREAM FOR CROW

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

Captain Beefheart's another one.

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

It feels so good to come clean...

HE AIN'T HEAVY

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That man on the riser is Larry.

That man is my brother.

WUNNERFUL

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

There but for the grace of an aitch...

WARMER THAN MAY

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

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

So it was a natural.

On the agenda this week: More singing out loud…

MY HEART HAS A MIND OF ITS OWN

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

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

SST with Black Flag and The Minutemen.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

WHELK

Whelk.

AND A ONE-A, AND A TWO-A

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I DON'T KNOW NO SHAME

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

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

I FOUND THE F

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

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

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

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

DAMMIT I’M A MAN

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

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

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

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

But $2.95? Well, back up the truck.

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

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

I'M NOT A NUMBER

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


Suburban Gossamer

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

FEEL LIKE A NUMBER

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

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

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


THERE ARE NO FREE BEARS IN NYC

Gentle Ben
Took the 10:01
Out of Kennedy.

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


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

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

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

MIKE RENO'S HEADBAND

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

DO YOU REMEMBER?

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

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

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

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

Now go turn on the news...