EPMJ

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

IN PLAIN VIEW

I.

David Sheridan lived in the Home for Wayward Boys.

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

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

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

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

II.

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

“Do you know the bowling alley?”

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

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

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

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

III.

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

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

And David Sheridan was dead.

A NEW SONG

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

Pittsburgh Got Its Aitch

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

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

I met my love one summer
Over a piano.

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

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

PACMAN'S BURNING

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

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

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

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

.

DON'T SETTLE FOR WALKIN'

RIP Larry Bud...

WHAT'S MY NAME?

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

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


























Stumped?

DOES YOUR CHEWING GUM LOSE ITS FLAVOR...

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

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

Have you no respect for the sanctity of Fridays?

SWEET EMOTION

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

Well, first off, thanks for reading, Cranston.

Now here’s a quick sampling:

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

Keep those requests coming!

IN DREAMS

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

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

Ha.

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

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

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

Get on it Rhino and/or eMusic...

EAT THE DISHES, BITCHES

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

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

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

Gang of Four = licorice

Here are some further rock/candy equations:

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

WHITE NOISE IN A WHITE ROOM

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

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

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

Perfect.

NOISE CANCELLATION

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

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

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

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

PODFELLOW

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

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

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

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

Thanks buds!

SIMPLE HEADPHONE MIND

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

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

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

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

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

Alchemy, plain and simple...

YOU TALK ABOUT JUST EVERY BAND

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

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

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

LIQUID CRYSTAL DISPLAY

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

Greatest. Song. Ever.

Like, in the entire history of recorded sound.

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

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

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

BRITNEY SHEARS

The Murder Mystery brings the third Velvet Underground album to a grinding halt. Voices to the left of me, voices to the right of me...

The one line I’ve always loved, though, is this: “Shaving my head’s made me bolder.”

I’ve done it twice myself.

I did it last summer before a trip to Japan, because I knew I was going to be met with stifling heat and humidity, and I was determined to stay cool.

The only burden turned out to be an aesthetic one, and a series of baseball hats helped succor my vanity.

The other time was four or five months before I left my previous job. It was not exactly a cry for help, but it was a clear assertion that I found myself in need of a fundamental change.

And shaving my head made me bolder.

Razamatazz, Brit. Razamatazz...

I GET MY ADVICE FROM THE ADVERTISING WORLD

But I do have to say that Cesar dog foods’ use of I Think I Need a New Heart by The Magnetic Fields totally sold me on their product.

In fact, I am going to the local puppy mill tomorrow to pick myself up a yippy little lap dog, just so I can feed it Cesar gourmet meals.

Because my manpurse-friendly puppy will deserve only the finest: porterhouse steak, filet mignon, pork tenderloin.

Yip yip yip...

BALLS TO YOU BIG DADDY

Dear General Motors,

I appreciate that you’d like to sell me a Cadillac. Heck, I admit I’m even a little flattered.

My grandfather owned a Caddy back in the day. It was stolen from in front of his house in Queens Village one night in the mid 70s. Oh, don’t worry GM— the story has a happy ending. Seems it was boosted by some kids for a relatively painless joyride. The nice officer who wrapped up the case was even kind enough to show me how the car had been hotwired.

But I regret to say, it’s not going to happen.

So that money you spent on licensing The Pogues’ Sunnyside of the Street didn’t quite close this particular sale.

However, I do give you points for choosing to highlight the following lyrics in your TV spot:

“And I saw that train, and I got on it
With a heartful of hate and a lust for vomit...”

Mad love,
sliced tongue

CHIMPAN-A TO CHIMPANZEE

Tiny random thoughts on a Friday afternoon.

-You can do worse when driving straight into a blinding sun on the Beltway than listen to Wig Wam Bam by Sweet.
-Headline from today’s Post: For First Time, Chimps Seen Making Weapons for Hunting. We’re doomed, folks. Flat out doomed.
-Also in today’s Post, macrocephalic Family Circus girl to grandma: “Do caterpillars know they’re going to be butterflies, or does God surprise them?” Again people— utterly fucking doomed.
-But I can at least amuse myself with the notion that there will one day be a chimp Britney. I am pleased by this mental picture.
-Hope There’s Someone by Antony and the Johnsons is a tragic and beautiful thing. But I’ll be damned if I can find a way into the rest of the disc. Does that make me a bad person?
-Would Apeman have been a bigger hit for The Kinks if Ray had not insisted on slurring that “The air pollution is a-foggin’ up my eyes” so that it sounds exactly like “The air pollution is fuckin’ up my eyes”?
-Speaking of The Kinks, the liner notes (by John Mendelsohn) to The Kink Kronikles are one of the few must reads in the whole genre. Definitely worth the squint to read in CD-booklet form.
-The most absurd liner notes I’ve ever seen in CD form are the list of credits for The Avalanches Since I Left You. One day, our chimp masters will mock us for sure…

A TUMBLER

I wrote this many years ago in direct reaction to a moment 5:03 into Born Under Punches...

ASIA IN PASTE

When I find
The holy drone
My spine
Will turn
To sugar cane,
And I will be invisible
To the engine
Of despair

I'M CATCHING UP WITH MYSELF

“Drowning cannot hurt a man!
Fire cannot hurt a man!”

Born Under Punches is damn near holy...

LOVE OF INDICATIONS, PARTS 1, 2, AND 3

I wrote this on the drive home tonight.

JOHNNY RAMONE

Have you seen this band The Thompson Twins?
They're not even twins.
All this British shit,
All this British shit.

It's not like when we were kids,
With Spencer Davis and T Rex,
Spencer Davis and T Rex.

This is a '66 Topps Willie Mays,
And it's in mint condition
It's hard to find in mint condition.

It's hard to find in mint condition
Because it's number 1 in the series,
And number 1's tend to get damaged
By rubber bands,
Yeah, rubber bands.

And it's unusual for the number 1 card
To be a star
In the 60s.

Usually number 1's are league leaders.
Yeah, league leaders.

I bought it at a Gloria Rothstein show
In White Plains,
Yeah, White Plains.

And Subterranean Jungle is up to 83
On the Billboard charts.
Yeah, 83.

83, 83, 83, 83,
83, 83, 83, 83...

INDICATIONS OF LOVE, PART 3

Happy Valentine's Day!

And remember, it floats back to you...

INDICATIONS OF LOVE, PART 2

My wife would prefer it if I were still a practicing punk.

She’d like the Pogues to pogo off the living-room walls, Nirvana to grace the Odyssey, The Clash to rattle the kitchen...

I mean it, man!

I don’t think it’s about aesthetics. I think she just finds the mutability of my passions to be a little disconcerting.

It’s as if life would hold one less little puzzle for her if my musical taste had ossified the moment we met. If my passions could have remained fixed...

But they have, dear. They have.

INDICATIONS OF LOVE, PART 1

We went to a birthday party for a couple of kids yesterday. It was at a gymnastics studio.

My wife and I were sitting on a folded tumbling mat, and over the PA came Funkytown.

About 10 or 12 feet away from us, a couple of dads entered into a conversation.

“Man, this is an oldie. I’m embarrassed to even say that I know it.”

“Yeah, me too. When did this come out, like 1982?”

“Mmm, 1982, uh-huh. Can’t remember who did it.”

One of them grabbed a large, nubby sky-blue ball, and began bouncing it. The other drifted over to the parallel bar, where his kid was leaping in vain to grab hold.

My wife looked at me, and did not say a word.

“1980. Lipps, Inc,” I replied...

INTERSTELLAR BURST

Here's to survival.

To crashing. Recovering.

Shooting past redemption.

U-turning. Missing your exit.

Asking for directions.

Saving the universe.

Surviving.

Happy Friday!

HYSTERICAL AND USELESS

Damn you, music of the late 90s.

I have so much relatively new music over which I should be obsessing, and you keep throwing these distractions in my path.

First it was In the Aeroplane Over the Sea. Now OK Computer has poked its head through the crusty winter ground like some 10-year cicada.

I've been particularly obsessed with Let Down, and quite specifically this: “One day I am going to grow wings/A chemical reaction...”

Um, yes.

And hell yes.

And fuck yes.

Yes.

KLAXON, KLAXOFF

Heard a dumbshit band named The Klaxons today.

How dumbshit, you ask?

The song I heard, Atlantis to Interzone, actually built its hook around the sound of a klaxon.

Of course, this shifts straight into sublime genius if they have a klaxon sound in every one of their songs.

I mean, just think about how much less The Alarm, say, would have sucked if they had an alarm sound in every song.

“Come on down and meet your maker BUZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ!”

“Sixty eight guns will never die, sixty eight guns, our BEEEEEEEEEEPPPPP!”

"I-I, love to hear the rain in the summer time, I-I love to AND IN LOCAL WEATHER, THE CHANCE OF PRECIPITATION IS 60%.”

You have willed yourselves the opportunity to be extraordinary, Klaxons. For the love of Lava soap, don't fuck it up...

67:07

Here are my top 5 songs over 10 minutes on the iPod.

There's very little aimless wanking here-- lots of well-aimed wanking, instead...

5. Trainspotting, Primal Scream
4. Hallogallo, Neu!
3. Marquee Moon, Television
2. Jenny Ondioline, Stereolab
1. Sister Ray, The Velvet Underground

RUN LIKE A VILLIAN TO THE SUPER BOWL

I'm going to take a brief moment away from the usual music content to give my annual, highly anticipated Super Bowl predictions.

I don't want to tout my touting too too much, but thousands of people have made millions of dollars by following my picks. No shit.

So, this year's matchup seems pretty even on paper.

The favored Virginia Squires are of course led by the record-setting quince-pence Finster, who can sling the gherkin like nobody's business.

But you better believe that those Rochester Lancers can answer the bell. Everyone recalls that pitch back in June where it seemed certain that the Butte Trundlebucks were going to overtake the Lancers. But then the Lancers festooned the cork on three consecutive possessions, and, well, by the end of the sixth quatrain they had hoisted the Bag O' Mud and Rapturous Joy high over Tertiary Stadium.

So I'm going to say, take the Lancers in an upset. I think they'll probably juuuust squeak it out and win by a chaucer, but win they will.

For my specialty bets, I'd go with the Squires to marinade the first pay phone, and I think their designated speller will upset the first apple cart. Look for the Lancers' Billings to matriculate the first whistlepig, while his counterpart Shoney will surely be the first to wear the kelp.

Goddam, am I excited!

Rah.

ROCK OF AGES

Happy birthday Tom!

WHO'S GOT THE 10 MINUTES?

The other day, brain coral mentioned his general distaste for songs over 10 minutes long.

It was in the context of his recent purchase of the new disc from Deerhoof, which ends with an 11 minute track. He expected to hate it...

Well, he’s confirmed that the Deerhoof song pretty much sucks, and I admit that I share his lack of surprise.

(I really liked The Runners Four, and I suspect the rest of this one is probably pretty great, so I’m going to pick it up as well. And probably never listen to that one track.)

This led me to wonder what my iPod looks like in its current state, in regard to songs over the 10 minute mark.

Not counting suite-type stuff like Godspeed You Black Emperor! or Pure Phase by Spritualized, here’s my list of seam stretchers, from longest to “shortest”:

DJed, Tortoise
Jenny Ondioline, Stereolab
Night Falls On Hoboken, Yo La Tengo
Refractions In The Plastic Pulse, Stereolab
Sister Ray, The Velvet Underground
1/1, Brian Eno
Cop Shoot Cop, Spiritualized
Track Goes By, The High Llamas
Pree-Sisters Swallowing A Donkey's Eye, Neutral Milk Hotel
Debra, Beck
"Animal or Vegetable (A Wonderful Wooden Reason...)", Stereolab
Sailing By, Ronald Binge
Soop Groove #1, Stereolab
1/2, Brian Eno
The Story Of Yo La Tengo, Yo La Tengo
The End, The Doors
Blue Milk, Stereolab
Static/Diamond Bollocks, Beck
Sad Eyed Lady Of The Lowlands, Bob Dylan
Marquee Moon, Television
Pass The Hatchet, I Think I'm Goodkind, Yo La Tengo
Spec Bebop, Yo La Tengo
Trainspotting, Primal Scream
Won't Get To Heaven (The State I'm In), Spritualized
Soup, CAN
Do I Do, Stevie Wonder
Viðrar vel til loftárása, Sigur Rós
Hallogallo, Neu!
Svefn-g-englar, Sigur Rós

WE'RE ALL BOZOS ON THIS ARQUEBUS

Nights in White Satin by The Moody Blues (oh crap, I lost you already, didn't I?) was a nicely overwrought piece of overorchestrated hippie fluff. The Late Lament, that little poem tacked onto the end, pushed the needle way into ludicrous.

“A new mother picks up and suckles her son”-- sheesh.

But, lo, this morning I heard Departure, the little piece that segues into Ride My Seesaw (which-- full disclosure-- is a pretty cool song), and it takes things to a whole different level.

“Or the strength of an arquebus deep in the ground”...

To which I say, “What?”

Or, more properly, “What the fuck?”

I know it's of no consequence to us the living, but my mind was considerably blown nonetheless.

I gained some much-needed grounding this evening on the links page of a Moody Blues fansite, where I found myself one click away from “your one-stop source for custom embroidered bandanas.”

As I pondered the connection between the band and the bandanas, I read a little further, and hit the epiphanic moment:

“Everybody loves bandanas!”

This, then, is my new mantra. For I know it to be true...

Everybody loves bandanas!

G-O-T to the H-I-C

I am not a Goth.

I have never worn black nail polish.

I have never worn black lipstick.

I did, however, download Specimen’s Returning From a Journey from the iTunes last night. (Which for some reason called it Returnung From a Journey.)

What an awesome song.

It’s got this damn-near headbanger beat cut with a little disco, and a chorus that’s as fat as a summer plum.

I listened to it like five straight times last night, and had to suppress the urge to shout “Yeaaahhhh!” at the top of my lungs each time it was over.

Sweet Bela Lugosi’s beard!

But I am not a Goth.

KANDER CAMERA

All this talk of Germany has stirred in me memories of my childhood dream to write for the musical theater.

I sketched out a piece called Germania! (you know, like Beatlemania!) back when I was 12 or so.

The milieu is the decadent final days of the Weimar Republic, and the story revolves around the relationship between a bohemian performer and a possibly gay writer.

A lot of the action takes place in this club, where there’s this wry and knowing master of ceremonies. He serves as sort of a Greek chorus for the whole thing, and... huh? There’s a...? Caber-what?

Son of a monkey bitch...

VERSCHWORUNG

The latest CD that wouldn't rip? Doolittle, by The Pixies.

Now, as everyone knows, this album was named after James Doolittle, who as a Lt. Colonel led the famous "Doolittle raid" on Japan in the early stages of America's involvement in WWII.

Doolittle rode the PR wave of these raids to eventually become a Lt. General in the European Theater. His most noteworthy tactical move in this role was his decision to allow bomber escort planes to attack enemy airfields. And who was that enemy? That's right... the Germans.

And so our eerie conspiracy continues apace.

Looking at the stack of discs I have in front of me tonight, I'm thinking Iggy Pop's Lust for Life (recorded in Berlin) is pretty much guaranteed to lock up...

A LAND OF CHOCOLATE

In my ongoing quest to fill the iPod, I run into the occasional disc that iTunes obstinately refuses to rip.

Here's the list to date:

Car Wheels on a Gravel Road, Lucinda Williams
Achtung Baby, U2
The Gift, The Jam
Source Tags & Codes, ...And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead

At first I figured it was just random, maybe some arcane commonality in the manufacturing process that discouraged ripping. But then I thought about it a little more...

It helps to know first off that The Jam CD is an import that was made in Germany.

Next, it's a little known fact that the word “Achtung” is actually German. I believe a rough translation is “Gee, the view from up here on the precipice of a career slide sure is pretty. And postmodern, too. Yeah, very postmodern.”

After zero research and much speculation, I have decided that Lucinda Williams probably maybe has some German ancestry.

Finally, no doubt some critic somewhere has used the term “Germanic” as shorthand to describe ...AYWKUBTTOD's icy and aggressive soundscapes.

The conclusion, then, is clear and stunning: iTunes hates the Germans.

Oh sure, it humored me by taking care of my Neu! discs, but I'm betting that Tago Mago is pretty much doomed...

PHILOSOPHY OF THE WORLD

Another shower, another song...

WHO IS DROPPING PANS ON THE LITTLE ROBOT’S HEAD?

I’ll dress up like a frog for you,
I’ll dress up like a ghost.
I’ll climb up every ladder for you,
And pick up all your trash.

Oh, if you’re sitting in a corner
Crying ‘bout your mom and dad,
I’ll hand you a green green ring
To twirl around your arm.

There’s not a wrapper or a can or a crumb
That I won’t come upon
And sweep up with my heart.

No, there’s not a wrapper or a can or a crumb
That I won’t come upon
And sweep up with my heart.

I’ll make all the pirates and gurus smile,
So they won’t steal your change.
I’ll take your daddy’s toothbrush out
And clean up all the stains.

Oh, I’ll solve the final mystery
Out on my last patrol,
Then contract into a dot of light,
Forever on your console.

There’s not a wrapper or a can or a crumb
That I won’t come upon
And sweep up with my heart.

No, there’s not a wrapper or a can or a crumb
That I won’t come upon
And sweep up with my heart.

AND IF THEY SHOULD BAR WARS...

Song of the day: Star Wars Theme/Cantina Band (12” mix), Meco

Star Wars was the first movie I ever went to see alone. I rode a few miles on my banana-seated bike in a late-spring rain to the Manetto Hill Twin.

I was pretty much awestruck, right from the opening scroll.

When it was over, I sat through the end of the credits, fished a few wrinkled dollar bills from my pocket, went to the box office, and bought a ticket for the very next show.

The movie had opened exactly one week after my father died, and in retrospect it’s no surprise that so many of the themes resonated like a hammered bell.

I saw the movie a good 20 times in the theater over the course of that summer.

And I came out of the summer with little to nothing in the way of Star Wars ephemera.

No cards, no action figures, no die-cast Millennium Falcons, no lunch boxes, no light sabers, no board games, no comic books, no Halloween costumes.

All I carried was gratitude at having been transported from a suburban home thick with grief, guilt, and shame, to a galaxy far, far away...

NEW YAWK, NEW YAWK

The first time my wife heard You Can’t Put Your Arms Around a Memory, she was convinced that Johnny Thunders was singing “You can’t pajama ‘round a memory.”

Well dear, you can pajama ‘round me any old time you want.

Happy Anniversary!

WHEN DOVE CRIES

Look, it's another one of those songs from the shower that today's kids love so much...

MOTORIKY

(2, 3, 4)

This is a song.
It’s two minutes and thirty-four seconds long.
It doesn’t have a chorus
But
It’s
Got
A ton of love.

This is a song.
It’s two minutes and thirty-four seconds long.
It doesn’t have a chorus
But
It’s
Got
A ton of love.

A ton of love, a ton of love, a ton of love, a ton of love, a ton of love, a tunnel of love, a ton of love, a tunnel of love, a ton of love, a ton of love, a ton of love, a ton of love, a tunnel of love, a tunnel of love, a tunnel of love, a ton of love, a ton of love, a ton of love, a ton of love, a tunnel of love, a ton of love, a ton of love, a ton of love, a tunnel of love, a tunnel of love, a ton of love, a tunnel of love, a ton of love, a tunnel of love, a ton of love, a tunnel of love, a ton of love...

ARLO, FOLK SONGS ARE SERIOUS

Another in our series of songs you've never heard, this one from back in 1988 or thereabouts...

BURNING TIRES, BURNING HAY

I went out singly to open the fence
That kept me from being where I was meant.
I pulled off a board, I pried off one more,
And I sat in the glow coming through.

Burning tires, burning hay
We are bringing in the water with the corn today.

I shimmied through the hole I had made,
Sucked in my stomach, slim as a blade.
Was borne to the rain, falling so white and plain,
And I sat in the puddles it formed.

Burning tires, burning hay
We are bringing in the water with the corn today.

What I looked on was neither a kingdom nor jail,
And no beaten signs read “Heaven” or “Hell.”
No high trumpets rang, no low bells did clang,
And the wicked and good were not ‘round.

Burning tires, burning hay
We are bringing in the water with the corn today.

LA NANO

So what became of the Nano? Let’s just say it fell into good hands.

The hands of someone who woke up this morning about an hour before her usual waking time, sat in the corner of her bedroom next to the forced-heating vent, and, through eyes squinty in the dark, navigated the click wheel to find Fox on the Run or Cherchez la Femme or the theme from the most-recent Japanese Pokemon movie.

Good hands. Good hands.

LA LUNE EST LIBRE

Tonight's iPod ripping: all Stereolab all the time!

Well, I did make some room for side projects and off shoots like Turn On, Monade, Snowpony, Uilab, Cherry Cigar, Ankle Whimsy, Doktoor Kilnfish, Mock, Slabitslabitgrabitnowhitit, Bonger, Liberte/Egalite/Frente, Shampooo, Onan Trespass Mark II, Aquaggaswhack, Esso 67, and Cinque Cool Whip...

BABY BUBBA

Hit a random vein of mid 90s as I was ripping for the 30 gig tonight: Vivadixiesubmarinetransmissionplot, Trainspotting, Post, Millions Now Living Will Never Die, Sacrebleu, Let's Knife, Portishead, To Bring You My Love, Cold and Bouncy.

I wonder where Bill Clinton is sleeping tonight...

CAN IT BE THAT IT WAS ALL SO SIMPLE THEN?

Now normally, aging another year erodes my available memory. Brain cells do their dance of death, and I stand on the elevator and wonder which button to push.

But in an ironic twist, this year's birthday brought a quindecupling of memory.

So it came in the form of an upgrade from a 2GB Nano to a 30GB iPod. Beggars can't be something something...

"Feed me, feed me," it purrs, and I obey.

LISTING

Some of my favorite musical moments from 2006 (and forgive me if some of them are your favorite moments from 2005, or 2001, or 1998):

-To Go Home, M. Ward
-The quarter second at the beginning of Wolf Parade’s Shine a Light where you think it’s going to be Get Back. And yes, I timed it.
-A good half of The Life Pursuit.
-I’m Waking Up to Us, Belle and Sebastian. I finally downloaded this, and it’s damn near the best thing they’ve ever done. Bitter, blunt, and sweeping.
-Yo La Tengo’s I Am Not Afraid of You and I Will Beat Your Ass, for the title. I expect it might show up on my 2007 list for the music.
-A Pillar of Salt, The Thermals
-Lloyd, I’m Ready to Be Heartbroken, Camera Obscura
-The three hours I spent in Tower Shibuya.
-The 30 hours I spent in various USA Towers, watching them die.
-Belle and Sebastian (2X), Stereolab, and The Pogues, with brain coral. Plus, The New Pornographers, Ted Leo, and Broken Social Scene, beyond the headliners.
-Wolf Like Me, TV on the Radio
-The “New York Dolls” making a “comeback” in fishnets and quotation marks.
-The Jam’s performance of ‘A’ Bomb in Wardour Street from the Old Grey Whistle Test, Vol 3 DVD. I still don’t know how Paul Weller could sing and chew gum at the same time.
-Record Collector magazine
-In the Aeroplane Over the Sea, Neutral Milk Hotel. Any discussion of my 2006 year in music needs to end with my full-on discovery of this, something I had for years dismissed unheard as ephemeral neopsych. I can’t even begin to tell you how wrong I was. There are rare albums that are profoundly moving, profoundly funny, profoundly unhinged, profoundly bad, profoundly sad, and/or profoundly unfounded. This might be the first album I’ve encountered that is quite simply profound.

A SIMPLE PROP

Last night while my daughter was squeezing her long hair dry with a towel after her shower, she suddenly started singing “Fiyehehahh!”

I blinked a few times, and then remembered that I had left a copy of Eponymous in the Odyssey. She was singing The One I Love.

“Why does he say ‘fire’ daddy?” she wondered, dropping the towel in a damp heap. I asked her what she thought.

“I think he’s angry,” she offered, rocking on the balls of her feet. She threw her hands behind her back to catch herself as she fell against the wall.

“I think you’re exactly right.” She gave me a stinging high five and collapsed in my lap, laughing at the very idea…

POPTONES

I switched cell-phone carriers last month, and got in the bargain three free ring tones.

The available selection is just random and weird, but I found three keepers:

Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, Pt 1— The Flaming Lips
Ping Pong— Stereolab
Wouldn’t It Be Nice— The Beach Boys

And now I love it when my phone rings.

I use my wife’s phone to call myself all the time, just to hear my tones.

It’s the little things, don’t you know…

A WORLD IN WHITE GETS UNDERWAY

Another new song, since I know you loved Thomas Pynchon to death.

Happy New Year!

GEDDE WATANABE

Long Duk Dong, At Toon
Oishi Kazihiro

Duncan, Hiroshi
Matty, Kuni, Max

Taki Mifune
Tran
Guru Prem

Mr. Takadachi
Mr. Katsuji

Takeo, Steve
Detective Onoda
Play-Tone Photographer
Mr. Oh

Enzo, Yoshi, Chan
Kuni, Ling

Asian Tourist

Ed
Waiter
Nobo Nakamura

Greg
Factory Foreman
Japanese Father

Ling
Ling

Principal Nakamura

Dr. Suzuki
Kenji
Cafe Owner

Japanese Proctor
Cyril

Professor Bob Chen
Dr. Phil Ling
Nurse Yosh Takata

Charlie
Wing
Ling

Art 'Papa Joy'

Milton
Ling
Mr. Yu

Eliza's Dad, The Doctor

O TREW OR WET WE ROT WROTE

OK, if you’ve learned anything about me, you’ll probably already know that I went back to Tower one last time. On the last day.

And I was there for last call, when they announced that all remaining stock was on sale for 50 cents or less.

These were my last puchases:

Morehappyness, The Aluminum Group
Instant Wigwam and Igloo Mixture, Go Kart Mozart
Tearing Up the Album Chart, Go Kart Mozart
The Greatest Hit, The Blue Orchids
Zeroes and Ones, Eleventh Dream Day
Tower of Love, Jim Noir
Snap, Crackle, & Bop, John Cooper Clarke

The capper was a CD called The Trip, a two-disc set compiled by Jarvis Cocker and Steve Mackey of Pulp. List price was $33.99, and dig that crazy track list:

Disc 1
Gassenhauer, Carl Orff
Release the Bats, The Birthday Party
Rubber Room, Porter Wagoner
Just Drifting, Psychic TV
Lady with the Braid, Dory Previn
Cool Summer, Bob Lind
24, Sycamore, Gene Pitney
Sock It My Way, Animated Egg
Feel Flows, The Beach Boys
Winter's Going, Bonnie Dobson
I'm Going Home, Arlo Guthrie
Don't Think Twice, It's All Right, Bobby Bare
Jukebox Babe, Alan Vega
Waiting for the Man, Liam O'Mdonlai, Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark
Rock 'N' Roll/Night Clubbing, The Human League
King Wasp, Add N To (X)
Lost in Music, The Fall
Villain, Lieutenant Pigeon
Pastoral, Moondog

Disc 2
Jet Boy, Jet Girl, Elton Motello
John, I'm Only Dancing, The Polecats
Wop Doowop, ElectroniCAT
In Zaire, Johnny Wakelin
Anonymous Face, Quix*o*tic
Eqypt Reggae, Jonathan Richman & the Modern Lovers
Pour Man, Lee Hazelwood
Flashing Lights, Lord Sutch
Beasley Street, John Cooper Clarke
Rock On, David Essex
Les Visiteurs, Georges DeLaRue
Pammie's on a Bummer, Sonny Bono
I Wonder If I Care as Much, The Everly Brothers
Purple Haze, Dion
Going Nowhere, Neil Sedaka
Sailing By, Ronald Binge

SAY IT LOUD...

...RIP James Brown.

TRANSLATOR

OK, this is the babelfish translation of a message a friend of ours sent to my wife in Japanese.

I'm having a hard time figuring out what my favorite part is, although I have to admit that the translation of "play group" as "plague loop" has a special place in my heart.

"T, Today the card two, it received also メールカード from T, was delightful at all is. As writing on the card, the fact that truly this year the opportunity which the variety meets is many in the family, can encounter with the family for us very was lucky thing. The sunflower the soldier/finishing garden does inside at March, but don't you think? in addition we ask also next year may with the opportunity which meets with プレイデイト and the like not to change. So, also birth meeting of the plague loop of セバスチャン met, it is, don't you think?. It is possible finally relieved with this, don't you think?. Because I finished the Christmas lapping swiftly, enormously in the rear end eye soaking in room, it increases M who is flurried. Today my mother arrives safely, my Christmas preparation ending, is the feeling that with this it will be relieved. By the way, it is case of 29 days, but thank you. There is one schedule during morning, but in the afternoon you think that it is all right. When time and the like and it becomes close, communication it will scramble? Don't you think? or it is Mami's schedule circumstance. Inside, while the mother is, you insert the reservation of the dentist with the notion that where you call, because the り which is what it has done, it meaning that 29 days are most convenient, it does, but if so you say, also 26 days have been less crowded. So returning home on the 25th, perhaps, inside Mami, schedule of the following day is busy, don't you think?. From Mami receiving message in absence electricity, increasing, when we can meet in winter vacation after all? Because with the っ which means saying it is, T and Mami and, in addition meeting soon, it increases the fact that story it is possible in the pleasure. To that, as for first impression it is funny the one which has settled, with each time sliced tongue's of the impression which is said image hears story and others and others to keep being broken bitterly, is. (It does not translate into English and the て well enough is) the tea eye sliced tongue properly doing future participating is expected. ' Please pass cute holiday in sliced tongue. Just the message which ' with is said may even from now on translating into English, please convey? . So with, please pass cute Christmas. ま ど?"

I'll be taking a little break from posting after today, so what more can I say than "Please pass cute Christmas"...

HAROLD ANGEL

Holiday malaprop, part 1

I was looking over some holiday cards that my wife was getting ready to mail, and my thumb stopped at one addressed to "Mr. Noir Strange."

"Do we really know someone named Mr. Noir Strange?" I asked, excitedly. "That's goth-tacular!"

Well, a quick trip to the address book revealed that we don't know anyone named Mr. Noir Strange. Just someone with a name that sounds kind of like Mr. Noir Strange.

And we are the lesser for it, I say...

Holiday malaprop, part 2

I took a bit of a long cut back from the market, so the kids and I could see some Christmas decorations.

"Look at that one!" my daughter enthused. "It's got a candy cane, and flashing lights, and a little Baby Genius."

Ah, Baby Genius. That's really what Christmas is all about, isn't it?

IF THEY WERE ME, AND I WAS YOU

For you Sebastian, with much love, from the 80s...

ENTHUSIASM FOR LIFE DEFEATS EXISTENTIAL FEAR

I don’t expect I’ll ever set foot in another Tower Records again.

One of our four local branches is now shuttered, and the other three are soon to follow.

Of all the items that I picked up there over the last month or so, this is probably my favorite:





It’s a CD single of The Flaming Lips' Waitin’ for a Superman b/w two tracks from Zaireeka-- a neat little gimcrack-tasctical thing that cost me 50 cents. I'll probably never even play it.

I almost can’t explain why I like it so much.

I almost can’t explain why it almost brings me to tears...

WORD UP

And just remember, when you hear all the kids over on the MTV saying "framjabulous," well, you heard it here first.

My word, bitches.

SING, ALL YE CITIZENS

For many of my boyhood years, I sang in the church choir.

I sang mostly because I liked to sing. I found the humorless practicing to be a chore, and I thought a lot of the songs were colorless and boring.

I did like sitting in the choir loft, though. It was a great location from which to pursue boyish daydreams of rescuing the congregation from some interloping force or another.

“And just then,” it would go in the retelling, “Just then he swooped down out of the loft, his red choir robe partially unzipped, and landed a staggering blow on the heads of the church robbers/marauding alien forces/zombie hordes. What bravery! And, you know, he’s also quite the alto.”

The one exception was Christmas Eve. I did not daydream on Christmas Eve.

Being up in the loft at night lent the whole experience a tinge of mystery that trumped daydreaming.

Plus we got to sing a whole range of cool songs: Silent Night, O Come, All Ye Faithful, Angels We Have Heard On High, Joy to the World, O Little Town of Bethlehem, It Came Upon a Midnight Clear, Hark! The Herald Angels Sing.

Man, Christmas hymns are the new punk rock...

NICO COIN

I just wanted to comment on the Velvet Underground acetate that sold recently for upward of $150,000 after being purchased at a flea market four years ago for 75 cents.

Comment: Holy shit. Holy framjabulous shit...

IT’S SUCH A GAMBLE WHEN YOU GET A FACE

Back when I was 17, I worked as a dishwasher at a Howard Johnson’s.

The chief benefit was that I was able to boost the occasional industrial-sized carton of cheddar Goldfish when I made my nightly Dumpster runs.

(OK, my conscience requires a brief PSA at this point: Workplace theft kills, kids. Don’t do it. Keep your eye on the sparrow. Thank you.)

Anyway, the night manager was a bit of a well-meaning tool. He was in his mid to late 20s, and intoxicated by the power that comes with managing the restaurant at a HoJo’s.

One night, I was cleaning up my area and listening to music on my JVC box. Suddenly, the manager slid into view, air guitaring and singing along, right near the top of his lungs.

“I’m waiting for my maaaaan!”

I had a look of horror stenciled on my face. “You like the Velvets?”

“Oh, yeah. Me and my frat brothers loved this album!” he enthused, still windmilling at the ether.

Needless to say I was troubled by the image of a whole house full of fratboys like this huckleberry swigging PBRs and listening to the Velvets. This was my music, damnit. My private music.

Well, this past Saturday morning I went to Hollywood Video to rent a copy of stop-motion Rudolph for that evening’s family movie night. I was greeted by a lone clerk, probably 17 himself. He was dressed in black from head to toe, except for the interruption of his moon-blue name tag.

And instead of the usual endless loop of promos for Failure to Launch and Barnyard, the clerk had Richard Hell cranked up on the store’s PA.

As I went to pay, I handed him the DVD and my membership card. “Richard Hell, huh?” I said, nodding in the direction of the ceiling.

And of course he shot me a look. “This is my music, damnit. My private music,” said the look...

COME INSIDE

I should note that Karn Evil 9 wins some kind of weird daily double, since it comes from an album that also bears one my least favorite titles ever: Brain Salad Surgery.

I mean, it’s no Tormato, but it’s pretty damn bad.

Turns out they nicked it from Dr. John’s Right Place, Wrong Time. Huh. Strange bedfellows...

Oh, and Tom? You sing like a stuck pig.

SEE THE SHOW

This “song title that sucks” brought to you by the good folks at Emerson, Lake, and Palmer. Personal injuries a specialty.

Karn Evil 9, ELP

The main thing to hate about this is that ELP clearly think it’s clever.

But really it’s just designed to give stoners pause while they clean the seeds out of their red.

“Karn? Dude, what’s karn? Is that, like, Australian or something?”

And then the moment of revelation:

“Oh, man. Karn-evil. I get it! It’s like, like, carnival, except it’s evil. These guys rock, progressively!”

I confess I’m not stoned enough myself to know what the 9 is for. Nor why they needed to break it down into 1st Impression, Part 1; 1st Impression, Part 2; 2nd Impression; and 3rd Impression.

Fecking proggers...

DECISION ROCK

Bad title. Bad.

Puncture in the Radax Permutation, Stereolab

OK, my Franco-Brit friends, you know I pledged my troth many years ago.

But this is just brutal.

I still don’t know what the hell “radax” is. A game for the Commodore 64? A prescription antidepressant? A really bitchin' guitar?

What doesn’t help matters is the fact that the lyrics read like a sketchily translated synopsis of episode 6 of Bubblegum Crisis. “Humble biped you’ve come undone/You detached the mechanical”...

But just to prove my love, here’s a compensatory list of Stereolab song titles that kick the collective ass of all comers:

Our Trinitone Blast
Pack Yr Romantic Mind
Lock-Groove Lullaby
French Disko
John Cage Bubblegum
Avant Garde M.O.R.
Ronco Symphony
We’re Not Adult Orientated
Three-Dee Melodie
Fiery Yellow
Pop Quiz
Heavenly Van Halen
Metronomic Underground
Cybele’s Reverie
Tomorrow is Already Here
Diagonals
Velvet Water

IT AIN’T EASY BEING GREEN

Welcome to least-favorite-song-title week...

Skank Bloc Bologna, Scritti Politti

First things first: I don’t think I’ve ever actually heard this song.

I doubt that hearing it would improve my opinion of the title, though.

I mean, I’m sure the song is an urbane, witty, and caustic social commentary.

Or something. Sweet Jiminy Fuckit, for all I know it’s an instrumental.

But let’s diagram this.

OK, point one: Skank.

Skank is just an ugly word, independent of its meaning as a descriptor for an unwholesome woman.

And even if it’s being used more in the ska sense, it still hurts my brain.

I don’t have a connotative opinion about “bloc” but its use right next to skank only serves to bring out the ugly in it.

And then there’s “bologna”...

Yes, bologna— the most put-upon of all the pressed deli meats.

“Hey, Bologna, somebody named Tony called and wanted to know where the hell you get off rhyming with him, being spelled like that and all,” shouts Mortadella.

“Hey, Bologna, what’s your first name again?” taunts Salami.

And all the while, Head Cheese turns away silently and faces the German potato salad, weighed down with equal measures of guilt and empathy.

Bad choice, Scritti. Bad choice...

THE NEW WORLD

As Tower’s bankruptcy sale winds down, it is interesting to see what kind of merch continues to clog the racks even at near-giveaway prices.

The rows of Poison CDs speak of a store buyer too confident that hair metal was due for a comeback, and a hard comeback at that. Perhaps somewhere a Duane Reade is overstocked with Aquanet...

And apparently not even the most ardent jam-band fan needs a live CD of every show that the String Cheese Incident played in 2005. Imagine that.

But I do have to confess to a certain sadness and resignation when I see all the unsold copies of the first three X albums.

I want to get on the PA and make an announcement:

“Hello. Do you people realize that you can get a copy of Wild Gift, with bonus tracks, for $5.20? Back away from that David Gray CD very slowly, and meet me over here at the end of the alphabet.”

But still it remains the unheard music...

DADDY COULD SWEAR

OK, OK, under great pressure I’ve been forced to take the following oath:

I, sliced tongue,
I, sliced tongue,

Do hereby solemnly swear
Do hereby solemnly swear

That I will never again
That I will never again

Build a post
Build a post

Around something I did
Around something I did

While I was in the shower.
While I was in the shower.

And that means “never”
And that means “never”

As in “the twelfth of...”
As in “the twelfth of...”

As in “never say...”
As in “never say...”

OK?
OK.

Got it?
Got it.

I mean, seriously now.
I mean, seriously now.

Like, if something noteworthy does happen in the shower,
Like, if something noteworthy does happen in the shower,

For the purposes of this blog
For the purposes of this blog

I will pretend
I will pretend

It happened
It happened

Somewhere
Somewhere

Else.
Else.

DO IT CLEAN

I wrote a song in the shower this morning.

Thomas Pynchon

Thomas Pynchon does not exist.
If you think you’ve read his books, you haven’t.
If you think you’re him, you aren’t.

And if you think this is a song
About Thomas Pynchon
You’re wrong.

I wrote a song about gladiolas
And Thomas Pynchon stole it.
He’s a drunken whore and you know it.

But if you think this is a song
About Thomas Pynchon
You’re wrong.

Because Thomas Pynchon does not exist.
His library card is made of chintz,
And your imagination is a magnet.

So if you think this is a song
About Thomas Pynchon
You’re wrong.

And if you think this is the end of the song
You’re wrong, you’re wrong, you’re wrong.
It is the beginning...

MR. SPARKLE

My good friend brain coral was talking the other day about Mark Linkous’ pre-Sparklehorse days, and he mentioned something that I damn sure should’ve known, but damn sure never did: Linkous was in the Dancing Hoods.

Now, the Dancing Hoods were a mid 80s Long Island band that received some local airplay on WLIR. What I remember most about them is that they sucked.

But wait, maybe they didn’t suck. Maybe my reverse provincialism colored my opinion to such a degree that I was blind to their inchoate brilliance.

Maybe their music was made of flowing ribbons of color, ribbons worn supple in a warm, rippling milkbath of sound.

Perhaps their music was informed by the melancholy of the ages, sung sweetly with a tongue forged of ice and fire.

Or maybe it was a future sound. The sound of gleaming crystal spires and the open synapses of biomechanical connectivity.

Nah, I think I’ll just stick with my original story: They sucked...

BEAT SURRENDER

That's entertainment, cassette style.

Setting Sons, Sound Affects, Snap! THE JAM

I picked up The Gift at the Tower flameout, but not these. I have a sentimental attachment to the disc that outweighs its general merits because it is where I hopped on with The Jam.

Little did I know that when I hopped on, they were just about getting ready to pull into the station. Which led to the gloomy sequence of breakups that dotted 82/83: The Jam, The (English) Beat, and The Clash.

I remember hearing about The Clash breakup on MTV. I was at my friend Larry’s house, and his punk cousin from SF was visiting. Right after the news, they played Spandau Ballet’s True video, and the cousin remarked on the negative connotations that song was sure to carry for me until the end of time.

Ironic then, that at the same exact time, about 8,000 miles away, the woman I would one day love was busy knitting a sweater for Spandau’s Gary Kemp.

Life can be gloriously strange, you know?

A LUGGAGE LABEL TIED TO HIS TONSILS

Random thoughts on last Friday's Raconteurs/Bob Dylan concert...

-The Raconteurs portion of the show worked best when they stowed the egalitarian bullshit and acknowledged that Jack White is the only qualified front man in the bunch. That this shift occurred during a delirious cover of Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down) made it all the better.

-One of the good folks with whom I went to see the show misheard The Raconteurs as The Raccoon Tours. And sweet underlined, boldfaced, italic Jebus, would I pay $60 to see that! They could just set up garbage cans all over the stage and have those cute little buggers knock them over for an hour or so. Sure, one or two rabid ones might get into the first couple of rows, but that front-row population could use some thinning anyway, so no biggie...

-There’s something to be said for sitting in a college-basketball arena and hearing Like a Rolling Stone performed by its author. There’s something to be said against it as well...

-Overheard, from the grayed boomer to my left: “The only protest singers this generation has are the Dixie Chicks.” OK, first of all: What? And second of all: What?

-AARP card + hippie dancing = CASH ENTERTAINMENT!

PAGING JANET PLANET

Still more Morrison on the cassette front...

Moondance, Saint Dominic’s Preview, Irish Heartbeat, VAN MORRISON

Moondance was Brother Van’s apotheosis of the pop/jazz/mystic. I probably can’t stand 90% of the people who really love this, but I love it too.

The air quotes are starting to show on Saint Dominic’s Preview, and the two 10+ minute tracks either make you see visions or the inside of yer eyelids.

Working with the Chieftans, it would’ve been hard to eff up the mostly traditional songs on Irish Heartbeat, and he didn’t. Nice, pleasant, ruly, and as essential as a bell on a beagle...

KIMCHI WILD

And by the way Korean grocery store, thanks ever so much for the $5 copy of the Criterion DVD of Gimme Shelter with the easily suppressed Korean subtitles.

Please acquire for future sale $5 copies of the following: Kiss Me Deadly, Heimat (the region 2 Tartan print, ideally), and The Tube Anthology: The Best of Series 1.

Thanks in advance Korean grocery store...

Your pal,

sliced tongue

CASUAL JOYS

Morrissey. Morrison. More cassettes I never replaced.

The Queen is Dead, Louder Than Bombs, THE SMITHS

Louder Than Bombs comes within a few hairs of being all I need of The Smiths. I’d be happy to own it on disc/download, but I know in my heart I’d rarely have cause to listen.

Strange Days, Morrison Hotel, THE DOORS

When I was a mid teen, a friend of mine bought me a new copy of Strange Days for my birthday three years running. The first two copies were out of necessity, as I had worn out the cassettes. The third was a joke, as I had worn out The Doors. Hey, Kenny, my birthday’s in a month and a half or so. I have an idea for a gift...

Last week was pleasure travel—now business travel will eat a couple of days off my calendar. Back next Wednesday...

TAKE IT IT'S YOURS

The Replacements, Tim
"The ones who love us best are the ones we'll lay to rest
And visit their graves on holidays at best.
The ones who love us least are the ones we'll die to please
If it's any consolation, I don't begin to understand them"

If it's any consolation? I can't think of anything more consoling...

The Velvet Underground, VU
More than just fag ends. I have most of this scattered about Peel Slowly and See, but I should really have the whole thing. Forgive the sacrilege, but I'm more likely to listen to this all the way through than I am the first album.

Various, DIY: Blank Generation
This is awesome from head to toe. And hot cans of piss, the CD's even better...

SHOPPING

My laptop monitor got cornholed somehow, so getting access to my list of cassettes would require some patch work that I'm not up to at present. Damn you, cornholed laptop monitor. Damn you to hell.

What I did on my fall vacation: Trawled the aisles of the Huntington Tower. I promised I wouldn't bite until the discounts hit 30%. They did, and I bit, as follows:

The Jam-- The Gift
Dusty Springfield-- Dusty in Memphis Special Edition
Deerhoof-- The Runners Four
Broken Social Scene-- You Forget It In People
The Jesus and Mary Chain-- Psychocandy (reissue)
TV on the Radio-- Return to Cookie Mountain
DJ Shadow-- Endtroducing
X-- The Unheard Music (DVD)
New York Doll (DVD doc on Arthur "Killer" Kane)

All in all, a nice haul...

HOME TAPING IS DESTROYING MUSIC

The Clash, Give ‘Em Enough Rope, Combat Rock, 1977 Revisted, THE CLASH

I received the Clash on Broadway box as a gift back when it came out, and I’ve let that function as a stand in for The Clash, Give ‘Em Enough Rope, and Combat Rock for far too long. I’ve seen all three CDs (four, if you count the UK edition of the debut) hit the racks for $7.99, so it’s pretty hard for me to claim that the dollar made me do it.

The 1977 Revisited comp was a godsend when it came out in 1990, as it was the first real release to include the tracks that had been removed from the original version of the first album when it finally dropped in the states (1977, Deny, Cheat, 48 Hours, Protex Blue), as well as Groovy Times, Gates of the West, and a couple of others that had not seen the light of US day.

I’ll be on the road early next week, and will return to the cassette survey on Wednesday.

May you have a 120-minute, chromium-dioxide, write-protected, Dolby II, Type IV weekend...

YOUR CASSETTE PET

Can't buy a thrill. Haven't bought an upgrade...

Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited, Blonde on Blonde, BOB DYLAN

Subterranean Homesick Blues kicks off Bringing It All Back Home with a khat-y rush, and then the words just keep on coming...

Some of my favorite lyrics from this period:

Take what you have gathered from coincidence (It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue)

Well, John the Baptist after torturing a thief
Looks up at his hero the Commander-in-Chief
Saying, “Tell me great hero, but please make it brief
Is there a hole for me to get sick in?”

The Commander-in-Chief answers him while chasing a fly
Saying, "Death to all those who would whimper and cry"
And dropping a bar bell he points to the sky
Saying, “The sun's not yellow it's chicken” (Tombstone Blues)

Now when all of the flower ladies want back what they have lent you
And the smell of their roses does not remain
And all of your children start to resent you
Won't you come see me, Queen Jane? (Queen Jane Approximately)

Oh, the ragman draws circles
Up and down the block... (Stuck Inside of Mobile With the Memphis Blues Again)

For good measure, I should note that I’ve also never replaced Blood on the Tracks.

And for the life of me, I can’t tell you why...

BOW WOW WOW

What’s all that barking in the Classic Rock pound?

Why it’s these puppies, who never made the upgrade from tape...

The Rolling Stones, Aftermath
Anybody can write a song about masturbation. Lord knows anybody can write a masturbatory song. But rare’s the song that is actually the act of masturbation. So a cramped thumbs-up to you, Going Home. And aside from some awkward “I am so the new Lord Byron, dammit” lyrics from Mick (“Like a withered stone/Fears will pierce your bones”), I Am Waiting sure is purty...

The Rolling Stones, Between the Buttons
The sound of life becoming irretrievably strange. One of my favorite things when I was a kid listening to my sister’s album collection was the way Mick sings the word “from” in Ruby Tuesday. It’s actually the kind of sound you’d expect to come out of the frog-like, three-quarters—dead Brian Jones pictured on the album cover...

The Rolling Stones, Beggars Banquet
This is really kind of slight, which is one of its overlooked charms. Sure, Sympathy for the Devil is all self-consciously “heavy” and Street Fighting Man is a slippery revolution, but most of the rest is loose country bluegrass and blues (and other music for urban gourmandizers). And about Street Fighting Man. Let’s take a minute to imagine what might have been if Mick had kept to his original vision. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you perhaps the Worst Lyrics Ever. Pay Your Dues:

“Chief to scorn his friends make love to his re-la-tions
He beats his wife and made her life a to-tal wet va-ca-tion

Now did everybody pay their dues?
Now did end up with tribal blues?
All the braves and squaws and the maids and the whores
Did, everybody pay their dues?

He's a tribal chief his name is called dis-order
His flesh and blood he tears it up when acting right is nor-mal

Now did everybody pay their dues?
Now did any of them try to refuse?
All the braves and squaws and the maids and the whores
Did, everybody pay their dues?

See all the children roses pi-ling
What's all with us to be grown up is to be good at ly-ing

Now did everybody pay their dues?
Now did any of them try to refuse?
All the braves and squaws and the maids and the whores
Did, everybody pay their dues?”

I mean, sweet sunstriped Jebus...

The Rolling Stones, Some Girls
Sure, they stooped to offend, sometimes to good effect (When the Whip Comes Down), and sometimes to ill (Some Girls), and the country stuff was, oom, yawn— oh, excuse me— but yeah, this was pretty decent. Call it a comeback...

C30, C60, C90, GO!

A little weekend archeology turned up my cassette collection, and over the course of the next week or so I'm going to list the albums that to date I have not upgraded to digital (CD or download).

Soundtrack, Sid & Nancy
You might have guessed that I didn't buy this for the four Pray For Rain tracks, nor for Joe Strummer's Love Kills (which is pretty excellent), nor for John Cale's She Never Took No For An Answer (which is likewise). Rather, The Pogues were the draw-- a couple of instrumentals and Cait doing Haunted, which Shane redid in more lugubrious fashion with Sinead O'Connor on his solo debut. Too bad this stuff and the Straight to Hell soundtrack pieces didn't make it onto the recent Pogues' reissues...

XTC, Waxworks
I lost them as the 80s wore on (did Dear God suck or what?), but wearing this one out was a giggle.

Black Flag, Damaged
Desperate for daddy love, and not afraid to skronk about it. TV Party was fun, and Rise About was good and anthemic. The rest was risible noise...

Joy Division, Unknown Pleasures
Black, and white.

Joy Division, Closer
White, and black.

Camper Van Beethoven, Our Beloved Revolutionary Sweetheart
One of the few of the 80s indie crop whose major-label debut (that would be this) outstripped their cred-building early efforts. In the back of my mind, I've been thinking of Neutral Milk Hotel as a less-well-adjusted version of CVB, and now I realize that both “Sweetheart” and “Aeroplane” have instrumentals titled The Fool...

R.E.M., Chronic Town
The sound of coalescing sound.

EGGSHELL MIND

It's Sliced Tongue at its most ireful today, as we debut a new feature, the Shut-the-Fuck-Up-No-I-Mean-Really-Shut-the-Fuck-Up Award.

The worthy winner is former Doors' drummer John Densmore who, commenting on the death of Arthur Lee, had this to say:

“Then, in Arthur's honor, I lit some white sage given to me by some Native American musician friends, to help him with his crossing.”

Um, John? Shut the fuck up. No, I mean really. Shut the fuck up.

COME OUT OF THE CUPBOARD

Fridays was ABC’s attempt to counter SNL with its own brand of hip, edgy sketch comedy.

The show itself sucked in myriad ways. It was crass, loud, vapid, and about as funny as an oil slick.

One occasionally redeeming quality was the music.

At the time, it was deathly hard to find decent music on TV. SNL itself generally betrayed the fact that it was being run by a clutch of wayward fecking hippies. Anne Murray? Oooh, I hope she does “You Needed Me”! Andrew Gold? Come on, “Lonely Boy”! The Yale Whiffenpoofs? The Yale Whiffenpoofs? But please sir, it’s Christmas...

Hope they can work out a way to get some of the musical performances from Fridays released on DVD one day.

But for now, here’s the American TV debut of The Clash, in dodgy res.

Happy Friday, y’all.

PF PS

Back when Syd Barrett died, I gave you an establishing shot of my complete and utter lack of use for post-Syd Floyd.

The other day, however, I did spend a few nice minutes with Shine On You Crazy Diamond.

If you’d care to do the same, feel free to follow my surefire path to listening pleasure: Start from the beginning of the song, and turn it off the very second you hear the drums start to come in. And I mean right away— you should not even hear the drums finish coming in.

Triumphal!

IN THE MIDDLE OF THINGS

Holland, 1945 is the wounded heart of “Aeroplane”:

“The only girl I've ever loved
Was born with roses in her eyes,
But then they buried her alive
One evening, 1945,
With just her sister at her side...”

It is the death of Anne Frank told in strokes of magic realism, which seems appropriate for something as phantasmagorical as the Holocaust.

The song starts with singer Jeff Mangum counting off “2, 1-2-3-4.”

And starting the countoff with 2 seems appropriate as well.

Because we are always falling in and out of events in medias res.

And things don’t often start at 1...

PIANOS FILLED WITH FLAMES

See if you can cut through the murk of a 1998 camcorder and the leaden musk of drunken fratboys to catch some of the intensity of this— Neutral Milk Hotel performing The King of Carrot Flowers Pts Two and Three...

SIGNALS THAT SOUND IN THE DARK

Back in ’97 or so I picked up a disc by the Apples in Stereo.

It struck me as frothy and weightless. Let’s call it egg-white soul.

So I broke out my broad brush and painted all the Elephant 6 bands with it.

I’d been through one Paisley Underground already, thank you very much...

This is all by way of explaining my quite-delayed intro to Neutral Milk Hotel’s “In the Aeroplane Over the Sea.”

Sure, I’d heard the growing rumble of raves buiding over the years. Seen it pop up on the heady end of many best of the 90’s lists. Heard the title track a number of times and thought it pretty swell.

I finally took the plunge and downloaded the album using my trial subscription to eMusic.

“Aeroplane” is framed by the fear of death, the love of Anne Frank, and the love of death.

It straddles the zigzag line between commitment to a theme and incipient mental illness: “I will float until I learn how to swim/Inside my mother in a garbage bin.”

It is scary, exhilirating, and in the end, life-affirming...

EVERYDAY I WRITE THE BOOK

I realized many years after the fact that the action in just about all of the stories I wrote in 6th grade commenced on October 19th. And I wrote a lot of stories...

My teacher Mrs. Trueman was a rare bird. She encouraged creativity without bounds. She was unconcerned with my pre-adolescent predisposition to the grotesque, the snarky, the wry, and the whimsical. Room 224 was a safe haven, a place where I could adopt the nom de limerick “The Porno Poet” with no fear of reprisal. Mrs. Trueman would simply conceal a blush, and ask for more poems, more stories...

One of the October 19th stories was set on the Roosevelt Island tramway, and centered on a tram car throwing a wheel off the track, stranding me and my family in midair. By the second page, I realized that I didn’t have much more than the setup, so this was the payoff when the reader turned to page 3:

“Aw, the hell with it. The line snapped, the car plunged to the ground, and we all died. The end.”

She returned it with an “Oh well, back to the drawing board” comment, and a small handwritten smiley face.

Mrs. Trueman helped me navigate through a year of hazards that saw my father hospitalized in March and dead by May.

She sponged off any embarassment I might have felt when the $150 check my mother wrote for the annual 6th-grade trip to the Poconos bounced.

She nursed the wounds of my unrequited crush on dark-haired Shelley.

I looked her up on the internet four or five years ago. I wanted to thank her, and to let her know that for all the stories she might’ve heard over the years— about the long hair and bare feet, the drinking, the drugs, the punk rock, the dropping out, and any other rebellions great and small— that for all these stories, I had made it through.

All I could find when I searched “Eileen Trueman” was her obituary from about a year earlier. Cancer.

So now the tale I tell myself each October 19th is a story about this tolerant, kind, gentle-humored woman. A story that always ends exactly the same:

“I love you, Mrs. Trueman.”

DEADHEAD STICKER ON A CADILLAC

Late in 1984 I abandoned the unexamined life.

By 1985, one of the things that came under reconsideration was my lifelong love of baseball.

For the first time since I was a few steps out of toddlerhood, my beloved Mets were playing meaningful baseball.

Keith Hernandez came over from the Cardinals, Darryl Strawberry emerged with a colorful name and a long loping lefthanded stroke, and Dwight Gooden arrived as a force of nature.

The team finished second to the Cubs in 1984, and with the off-season importing of Gary Carter from across the northern border, 1985 was shaping up to be special.

But early in the season, I could not find any real enthusiasm in my heart. I could not reconcile the absurdity of having my emotional temperature regulated by the performance of a bunch of well-paid athletes.

As the season wore on, I made my peace with the notion, and quickly reembraced the sport and the team.

By September, I was spending evenings sitting in my car in a hurricane-ravaged parking lot, my apartment without power for 10 days, listening on the radio to key pennant race games.

The 1985 team came up short to the Cardinals. In 1986, the Mets won 108 games, and played a couple of memorable game 6’s on their way to the World Series title.

And now tonight, in a conflation of 1985 and 1986, the team is again facing the prospect of losing out to the Cardinals, this time in a playoff environment, in the arena of another game 6.

My intellect tells me that there are no miracles in store this year. Or rather, that the miracles might belong to the Cardinals, and ultimately, the Tigers. The Mets’ pitching staff has taken some critical hits of late, and a number of the key young players on offense are clearly tired from the strain of the longest season in their young lives.

So if heartbreak is necessary, it won’t be acute. I am ready for it.

Let’s go Mets.

Let us go Mets...

NOISY CATS ARE WE

And wouldn’t Swan Swan Leong or Janna Journeycake have been great names for the videogenic technicolor clotheshorse lead singer of an extravagant mid 80s British new wave/disco high-bpm synthpop band?

I’m looking at YOU, Pete Burns...

CAN YOU NAME, NAME, NAME, NAME THEM TODAY

In my job, a passel of interesting names crosses my desk year in and year out.

These are two of my favorites from 2006: Swan Swan Leong and Janna Journeycake.

No doubt Swan Swan has siblings named Cuyahoga Leong, Hyena Leong, and Superman Leong.

And no doubt Janna’s ancestors were big fans of Steve Perry and the gang.

And, um, cake. Yummy, yummy cake...

I'M NOT NO LIMBURGER!

In Preston Sturges’ “Sullivan’s Travels” Joel McCrea plays John Sullivan, a successful director of comedies who comes to believe that it is his mission to helm a serious film.

He sets off on his quest to make “O Brother, Where Art Thou?”

This will be his big statement. It will be a drama of great Meaning and Purpose.

Well, what he ultimately discovers along the way is that comedy is important, and that it too has great Meaning and Purpose.

He realizes that the ability to bring joy into peoples’ lives is a singular gift.

Substitute “Mesopotamia” for “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” and you pretty much have the story of The B-52s.

And on a side note: Veronica Lake, I love you.

THE PEACH PIT

More funny.

A little Electric Company rock from The Moldy Peaches.

Who, no, were not nearly as clever as they seemed to think.

But I once saw them open for The Strokes and blow Fab/Nik/Albert/Nick/Julian’s dour downtown downtrodden trust-fund asses off the stage by sheer force of an infectious love of trash culcha.

They’ve got the crack...

HONEY HONEY

Psychocandy was clearly one of most awesomely hilarious albums ever.

JAMC’s subsequent career would seem to indicate that they were not fully aware of that awesome hilarity.

Pity, that.

But we’ll always have this...

A DISQUISITION ON THE DEATH OF TOWER RECORDS

It has been clear for some time now that Tower was not waving, but drowning.

I’ve lived near one Tower outlet or another for many of the last 15 years, and I’ve spent time disproportionate to money there.

Because Tower for me has always been more a communal experience than a consumer experience...

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that I often seem to spend a couple of hours there on Christmas Day.

I get in my car, hit the quiet winter streets, and soon round a corner to see a scarred moon struggling to lift itself above the red backslanted type.

I wend my way through the aisles.

I look, but I do not covet.

I am at peace.

Goodbye Tower.

WE'VE GOT THE TEAMWORK TO MAKE THE DREAM WORK

Trust me, I've earned this...

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...