I remember exactly what I was doing the first time I heard it.

I was a computer systems consultant for Arthur Andersen, in Dallas, Texas. It was a new project assessing the systems at an eyeglass manufacturing plant way out in Mesquite. Only a (half hour?) drive from downtown, but a world away. Mesquite is the home to the major rodeo in the area, with everything that implies.

The partner on the job was coming from another client, so I was going to drive out separately. He would introduce me to the CEO and CFO I we would tour the plant.

It was a blazing hot Dallas afternoon. I worked on the 52nd floor of a 70-story building on Main St. Had to park three blocks away. When I got to my car, I pulled my jacket off and laid it on the passenger seat. It was my double-breasted olive Hugo Boss knockoff. My favorite. I was drenched in sweat.

I blasted the A/C on max, unbuttoned my sleeves and alternately hands on the wheel, so I could raise each arm in turn and get a long blast of cold air into my shirt to dry down.

Halfway there, not quite dry, this deep, booming, slightly gravely woman's voice came on the radio. Johnette Napolitano. I had heard a couple Concrete Blonde songs by then, but had never been swept away.

The first two lines she laid down in about the calmest, soothingest tones I'd ever experienced. The first word, just the name Joey seemed to stretch out forever.

Then BAM! she leapt up four octaves into this piercing, pleading, gut-wrenching lament:

Joey, baby -- don't get crazy

Detours, fences . . . I get defensive

I know you've heard it all before --

So I don't say it anymore

I just stand by and watch you

Fight your secret war.

Although I used to wonder why --

I used to cry till I was dry.

Still sometimes I get a strange pain inside

Oh, Joey, if you're hurting so am I.

Joey, Honey -- I got some money

All is forgiven. Listen, listen

And if I seem to be confused

I didn't mean to be with you.

And when you said I scared you,

Well I guess you scared me too.

But we got lucky once before

And if you're somewhere out there

Passed out on the floor.

Oh Joey, I'm not angry anymore.

I had to pull over.

Not to listen to it, when it was done. Spent, totally spent. I literally pulled over on the shoulder of the expressway, stopped the car and breathed. Didn't cry, but felt like I was about to. Like I already had, actually. That whole fierce ride of that song was like one intense dry-heaving cry.

Only time a song has ever forced me to pull over.

Hadn't heard it in years. Hadn't thought about it. Was just rifling through a stack of old CDs late last night, and my heart soared. Put it on just now over breakfast. Wow. I've missed her.

Hey. You might have noticed I'm rarely here during the week these days.

Yes, by design. Trying to keep my focus entirely on my book during the week. Hence the big one-day bursts on Saturdays and Sundays. So look for me then. (Or on Mondays when you get back to trolling the web at the office, while your boss is away. heeheehee.)

OK, better try that bigger:

LOOK FOR ME MOSTLY ON THE WEEKENDS UNTIL THIS BOOK IS DONE!

Occasionally I may stop by in an evening, if I've had a great day and deserve an indulgence, or maybe once in awhile for a quickie. (Like just now. I figured since I was here to let you know this, I could pound out a quick reaction to the Housewives.)

But hopefully you'll see a lot of self-control.

See you Saturday.

. . . Ramona sing.

Nothing more to add, really.

Just had that song running round my head for three days, inexplicably, so I thought I might stick it in yours.

---

And here's a surprise. A lyric that actually stands gloriously on its own.

---

(Apparently I always have something to add.)

. . . then we take Berlin.'

Ahhhhhh. Leonard Cohen. Poking his pen into my life all over the place suddenly. Hmmmmm. And I'd nearly forgotten he'd existed. Until I finally caught up with that exquisite OC episode I missed at the end of the first season.

I didn't even know who he was first heard that manhattan/berlin line in 1991. (Don't tell anyone.) That line was all it took.

That and the weird kinda inklings I had heard about the guy, and the lineup of great bands on the tribute album, I'm Your Fan.

Bought it immediately. Wow.

Of ccourse, in my standard style, I chickened out of ever buying an actual one of his discs. Would it ever live up? God. I hate myself sometimes.

Suddenly, he's all over me, though. Lloyd Cole brought him my way, this time. Man. Forgot just why I adored that song. Or Suzanne.

The shocker at the time was that my favorite was not The Pixies, though I've since come to learn that their covers nearly always disappoint me, their glorious take on "Head On" notwithstanding. 

Uh oh. I digressing. Point: I like their cover. But . . .

Click on this site to hear snippets of all the songs. Brace yourself. They all brought me to the edge of tears again.

Hallelujah, way past.

OK. Guess it's time to torture myself with that final sequence from the first season of The OC again. (Lyrics here.) Can't bring myself to clear it off the Tivo. But had to make myself stop replaying it for awhile. (And nothing close to matching it in the second season. Why did it start to unravel toward the end there?)

Still haven't bought the Jeff Buckley disc with it on there. Need to do that. Along with Smile. But I need to see Ryan's stepmom agonizing again; not quite collapsing into Peter Gallagher's arms, kinda dissolving into them.

Hmmmmm. Don't quite want to leave it there. Parting thoughts?

"I forgot to pray for the angels / And then the angels forgot to pray for me."

"You told me again you preferred handsome men / But for me you would make an exception."

And of course:

Don't go home with your hardon /  It will only drive you insane / You can't shake it (or break it) with your Motown / You can't melt it down in the rain

No you can't melt it down in the rain
You can't melt it down in the rain
You can't melt it down in the rain

Watching Brian Wilson on Charlie Rose.

Took me years to get how this guy was a genius--just sounded like bubblegum pop to my eight-year-old ears--but I'm totally getting it now. The appearance 40 years later of the phantom album Smile finally bumped me over the top.

I didn't even buy the disk--as usual, I was just kind of afraid to. Afraid of being let down, of course. How could it ever live up to the 40 years of awe?

But I just heard enough of it played on the radio, with enough articulate commentary, that--as with most classics--I discovered how so many of the little things I take for granted now in pop music didn't exist until Brian Wilson invented them.

Oh.

And now here he is with Charlie, describing it as "a wonderful, jovial, happy teenage symphony to God. It's a three-movement rock opera. It's got heroes and villians . . ."

Wow. What have I been waiting for? Who cares if it's not perfection?

What do I think held it back for 40 years? God.

Brian can't quite admit it when Charlie asks him that question. He says the world wasn't ready for it. But Charlie is stepping lightly, painfully aware that he's dealing with a man who's been in and out of mental institutions for years, on very shaky mental ground. So he accepts the answer greaciously and moves on. For awhile.

We all know Charlie's problem of answering his own question, but he can also be extremely adept. He waits for the right moment. He sifts through a long, interesting passage of Brian explaining how driven he was to be a perfectionist. And then Brian explains that he has a sandox next to his piano in the living room, because it takes him back to the beach. "It takes away fear. It takes fear out of me when I sit in the sandbox. It takes the fear out of me. All the fear."

"Fear has always been there," Charlie says.

"Always."

"Fear of failure," Brian continues. He enumerates a long list, and Charlier returns to fear of failure, then asks:

"Is it fair to say that you didn't release this for so long, not because you waited for the world to catch up, because you feared that it would not be--"

"Yes. I feared that it wouldn't go over with people. That it would bomb out, no one would like it. That I'd get bad reviews. People would say, 'No, I don't like that album! I don't like it at all!' Those are some of my fears."

Yow. That is so heartbreaking to listen to. Forty freaking years. One of the great musical masterpieces of our age. All because of fear. Because he knew it was his masterpiece and he needed it to be perfect and he was terrified that was a level he couldn't quite achieve.

Like listening to a tape recording of my own shrink sessions. God, at least he waited till he was creating masterpieces. Heeheehee. I know I'm a long way from there, still, but I want every piece to be exquisite, as perfect as I know how to create right now, and I can still never measure up to that. Shuts me down something awful.

No, I'm not talking about my book, thank God. I've been working on this side project for a little while now, a magazine piece, and it had me bottled up for ages. Wanted so badly to get it all right, and it was so hard to sort it all out and feel secure that I was capturing this guy, that I was being fair to him--fair about his achievements and his flaws--and that I was making the prose truly sing. God. So much. So scary. But only because I let it.

And then I sit here this afternoon watching Brian Wilson, and good God, this is what it comes to when you let the fear assume control.

Could I ask for a more vivid cautionary tale, right there on my TV screen?

Luckily, he was able to salvage some of it before he died. But all those other masterpieces he had inside him, all those decades of potential sanity and happiness. I don't want to lose all those. Time to get a handle on this fear thing.