WAITING FOR ME OUTSIDE

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

EAST BAY

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

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

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

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

THIS IS HARDCORE

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

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

Because seriously, how the fuck does that happen?

LYRES

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

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

Yea, verily...

Guðmundsdóttir

Welcome bjack, Bjork!

It was good to see you on SNL.

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

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

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

Rock odd!

sliced tongue

YOU GOTTA FEIST FOR YOUR RIGHT TO PAAARRTAY

Damnit.

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

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

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

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

I love that dagblasted song!

SO IT GOES

Billy Pilgrim died.

And then I got a fever.

I dreamed that night about building telescopes and transistor radios.

And I woke up unspeakably angry.

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

We are ill, America. Unspeakably ill...

PLAYING IN JAPAN

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

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

HOW DO YOU CALL YOUR LOVER BOY?

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

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

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

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

CORONA

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

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

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

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

EASE SUM KONK

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

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

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

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

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

Charming.

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

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

TOMORROW WE ENTER THE TOWN OF MY BIRTH

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

MAYBE WHEN I'M OLDER

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

TOP 10 FAVORITE VELVET UNDERGROUND SONGS

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

See you again on April 9th.

EPMJ

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

IN PLAIN VIEW

I.

David Sheridan lived in the Home for Wayward Boys.

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

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

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

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

II.

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

“Do you know the bowling alley?”

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

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

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

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

III.

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

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

And David Sheridan was dead.

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?