Dave Cullen: Music

A strange pain inside

Sat, 19 Nov 2005 17:15:31 GMT

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.

NOTICE: See you on the weekends

Mon, 26 Sep 2005 18:17:40 GMT

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.

I heard . . .

Thu, 15 Sep 2005 21:27:36 GMT

. . . 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.)

First we take Manhattan . . .

Tue, 19 Jul 2005 19:03:49 GMT

. . . 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

Fear

Thu, 30 Jun 2005 00:21:53 GMT

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.

Halleluljah

Fri, 27 May 2005 19:59:34 GMT

They're rerunning The OC this year.

Hmmmmmm. The title may appear like a response to that first line. Not exactly. I have often gushed that wantonly, but I wouldn't cheapen that word that way at this moment.

They started with the finale of the first season, which I missed due to a Tivo glitch that still had me smarting. Wow. Ryan leaves at the end. Had me all blubbery several times, but I had no idea. The doorbell rang, he turned to go, and . . . the most beautiful guitar notes began. So familiar, but I couldn't place them. Until Jeff Buckley started to sing:

I've heard there was a secret chord
that David played, and it pleased the Lord
But you don't really care for music, do you?
It goes like this
the fourth, the fifth
The minor fall, the major lift
The baffled king composing hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah

Man. And that's just the first verse.

One of my all-time favorites, and I have only the vaguest conception why. Some of its power I'm aware of, but something else moves it me, moves very powerfully, that I can't come close to grasping. (In a way that only Leonard Cohen songs ever seem to. Hmmmmm. I wonder if Josh named the lead characters after Leonard.)

For the next three and a half minutes--the last of the season--Josh Schwartz told his story entirely in pictures; while three more amazing verses of that song ripped my heart out. And I don't mean he pieced together some cheesy montage. I mean he told a story in pictures. It had a plot, powerful characters, harsh choices, moral dilemmas, and more grief than I could bear.

All playing out over a soaring melody and bitter, brutal, yet strangely joyful and glorious lyric which at once echoed, commented upon, and stood apart from the picture show.

Man. Anybody who thinks this show is just cheap, silly, bubblegum filler has no idea what art is.

The other six verses:

Your faith was strong, but you needed proof
You saw her bathing on the roof
Her beauty and the moonlight overthrew you
She tied you to a kitchen chair
She broke your throne and she cut your hair
And from your lips she drew the Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah

You say I took the Name in vain
I don't even know the Name
But if I did, well really, what's it to you?
There's a blaze of light
In every word
It doesn't matter which you heard
The holy or the broken Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah

Baby I've been here before
I know this room, I've walked this floor
I used to live alone before I knew you
I've seen your flag on the marble arch
But love is not some victory march
It's a cold and broken Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah

There was a time when you let me know
What's really going on below
But now you never show it to me, do you?
But I remember when I moved in you
And the holy dove was moving too
And every breath we drew was Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah

Now maybe there's a God above
But all I ever learned from love
Is how to shoot at someone who outdrew you
It's not a complaint that you hear tonight
It's not someone who's seen the light
It's a cold and lonely Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah

I did my best, it wasn't much
I couldn't feel, so I learned to touch
I've told the truth, I didn't come here to fool you
And even though it went all wrong
I'll stand before the Lord of Song
With nothing on my tongue but Halleluljah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah

I hope it comes across on the page. You've got to really sing out those hallelujahs, like you were in church, like you did when you were six years old, when you still believed with a purity and intensity that the world hadn't clouded, and with an innocence beyond the words, when your heart pounded in your chest at the mere intensity of the musical emotion. (Your early childhood may vary, but perhaps you've met a little boy like me. Surely.)

Just makes me want to sit down here and create something beautiful. Hard to compete with, but inspires me to try.

Especially since, of all the things that song is about, not the biggest thing, but definitely on the list, it's a song about writing. About creation, for sure, exaltation at the joy of Creation, and the humble attempt to echo it vocally. That's what any hallelujah is, right? And this one in particular can't you feel it bubbling up inside him as he writes it? Hallelujah.

He opens with the musical creation idea with the secret chord, but naturally it's the part about birthing the text that speaks to me. There's a blaze of light in every word? Yeah. Only a writer would say that. Or put another way, how could anyone feel that and not write?

Hmmmmm. What a stupid thing to say. Because they can't, I guess. How many thousands of times have I thought that about music? And not an ounce of talent to produce it. So I guess only a writer or reader would say that.

And then there are the last lines from the fifth and seventh verses:

And every breath we drew was Hallelujah.

Obviously that's primarily about the intensity of the love affair. (And God, what a way to express it!) But somehow, as a writer, and maybe I'm just projecting here--so what if I'm projecting, isn't that's what art is for, to draw from and project back upon?--I can't help but hear him exuding an equal joy at his ability to express it. A second little hallelujah for capturing the first one so profoundly.

And the last line. With nothing on my tongue but Halleluljah. That whole last verse. Man. Standing before God to be judged, and the god specifically of his particular art, asking for final judgement on the work he has just created. And nothing on his lips but exaltation at the idea. Or is it nothing on his lips but the name of his own song?

Ahhhhhhh. Exaltation at your own work. Someday I'll be that proud of what I've done.

---

And if you find bits of it as baffling as I do, great discussion of it here. (Also the place I cribbed the lyrics. Thanks.) Just a bunch of people trying to make sense of it all. Doing a pretty good job of it. At least one person is. The opening entry kind of made me gape, not in a good way, but hey, he was trying, and he got the discussion going. Luckily I chanced into page 5 of the discussion, and a person named Shamanka really helped me unravell some of it, here.

And quotes from Leonard about it over the years here. One slightly surprising one which really made me smile:

"It's a rather joyous song . I like very much the last verse. I remember singin' it to Bob Dylan after his last concert in Paris. The morning after, I was having coffee with him and we traded lyrics . Dylan * especially liked this last verse "And even though it all went wrong , I stand before the Lord of song With nothing on my lips but Hallelujah"

Leonard COHEN (interview,Paroles et Musiques,1985)

Randy and the Gilmores

Wed, 18 May 2005 07:11:17 GMT

There's just no good way to end a great series, is there?

Always seems to be a letdown. Except the second Newhart. That was priceless.

The final Raymond wasn't bad, but somehow . . .

Somehow, not enough.

Now season enders, those can be a load of fun. Take Gilmore Girls tonight. Loreli unexpectedly proposing to Luke in the last eight seconds. (Unless you watched the previews, which I avoided, because they ruin everything on that show, though my sister partially gave it away, but by then I figured she had it wrong.)

And that amazing song played just before the final scene. So familiar, but I couldn't place it. Haunting lyrics (though we only got the first verse on the show):

Broken windows and empty hallways
A pale dead moon in the sky streaked with gray
Human kindness is overflowing
And I think it's going to rain today

Scarecrows dressed in the latest styles
With frozen smiles to chase love away
Human kindness is overflowing
And I think it's going to rain today

Lonely, lonely
Tin can at my feet
Think I'll kick it down the street
That's the way to treat a friend

Bright before me the signs implore me
Help the needy and show them the way
Human kindness is overflowing
And I think it's going to rain today

Looked it up. Randy Newman, that explains it. "I think it's going to rain today," from his first album, way back in 1968. (I never thought of him as part of the 60s. Always the 70s for me.)

Still not sure who that was singing. Nina Simone? I will here confess that I don't actually know her work, but that's how I've always pictured her. I know I'm supposed to. Now I'll have to get on that.

Loads of people have covered it. Pretty sure it wasn't Bette Midler. Or Neil Diamond. Dusty Springfield?

Got me rifling through all the Randy Newman lyrics, though. God, I love him. Baltimore is my favorite, I think. Though I could never explain why. Or maybe Guilty. The way Bonnie Rait sings it. Almost everything on Little Criminals breaks my heart. (You can listen to snippets from every song on it at that link.)

Saddest of all the sad songs on that album, Texas Girl at the Funeral of Her Father. The entire lyric:

Here I am lost in the wind
'Round in circles sailing
Like a ship that never comes in
Standing by myself

Sing a sad song for a good man
Sing a sad song for me
Sing a sad song for the sailor
A thousand miles from the sea

Here I am along on the plain
Sun's going down
It's starting to rain
Papa we'll go sailing

The absolute final proof how great lyrics can totally fail, stranded on the page. No melody, no inflection, no response.

Even knowing the song, loving the song, absolutely cherishing the song, it looks kind of senseless there. But listen. Prepare to fall apart.

So ashamed

Tue, 10 May 2005 19:08:25 GMT

So much of my happiness has revolved around music. And my insights. Shaped my whole attitude on life. I could hardly claim to be an expert, but easily qualify as aficionado.

So how do I explain the world beginning with Buddy Holly?

I have a problem, I realize, which my agent would probably strangle me for admitting here (she counsels me occasionally about what reviewers will someday use against me). Hard for me to appreciate certain kinds of art that don't resonate with my own time.

Strange. I was going to just say "art," but even as I wrote it, I realized I tend to flip that around with painting. Most of what I like was done 1860-1940. And books, I tend also to favor those written a bit farther back than my contemporaries. (Haven't gotten around to gushing about The Sheltering Sky, yet. Still kind of shaken by it.)

But movies. That's where I've noticed it most acutely. I've seen plenty of classics--thanks mostly to film classed in college--and I appreciate them, but almost never do I feel them. They just feel like a different reality to me. Maybe I'm trapped in a realist aesthetic or something, I don't know, I just can't get sucked in the way I do with, say:

Wild at Heart, Moulin Rouge, Trust, Eternal Sunshine, Hope & Glory, My Own Private Idaho, The Grifters, Heathers, Harold & Maude, 35 Up, Streetcar (OK, there's one), Manny & Lo, Life of Brian, Sammy & Rosey Get Laid, The Big Sleep (two) , Crouching Tiger, Apartment Zero . . .

Music, that's the other problem child. My most beloved of all the arts, the one that's fed me most deeply, and it's not just that I dislike everything pre Buddy Holly, I don't even know what exists there. Of course I'm aware of Beethoven, Motzart and the various "classics" I also struggle to appreciate. And then this great big hole until Jerry Lee Lewis and Little Richard suddenly materialize out of nowhere and spawn Elvis.

I'm aware of a few intermediaries, few of which I have ever liked: various bluesmen, and jazzmen, Sinatra, Crosby, Judy Garland, though I'm finally starting to appreciate her. Hmmmm. OK, I guess I'm aware of Duke Ellington, Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, people in that vein, and appreciate them, though I've never spent much time with them.

I'm not completely clueless, but it's a fairly muddy haze. Suddenly, the minute blues and country fuse, I tried to know everything.

I was aware of The Carter Family. I kinda knew the history, in very sparse terms, and a few of the hits. I had this vague recollection of Kasey Kasum saying they were the first country act ever to make the charts, and of course, I knew and loved June--(one of the first entries when I relaunched this blog in 2003 was titled June Carter Cash is still dead)--and Carlene dragged me in slightly deeper.

But only the way you would be vaguely aware of a good friends' grandparents, seeing them as the old codgers they shriveled into shortly before their deaths.

But man. Just watching this American Experience on them, and I feel like I'm in musical kindergarten. How could I have come so far, known so little about where all this came from? Listening to Maybelle invent some of the guitar techniques I take for granted--that my life would have been so empty and miserable without . . . God. I feel like such a dick.

Not sure where to head from here. Flea markets to find old vinyl 78s? Maybe some record company has made it easy on me with a boxed set.

The singing is still a little tough to relate to sometimes, but it's a start.

All feels so daunting, though. I'm 43. And only in kindergarten? Don't know if I have the stamina to live out a whole nother grammar school and high school again.

---

Update:

So far, I've been to the site on this show, and found lots of great stuff, including four original recordings you can listen to online (apparently).

I didn't mention, but I'm only 15 minutes into the show, and already amazed. And having to "watch" with no pic, cause of a local affiliate snafu, but still enraptured.

Here's a summary of the documentary, from the film description page of the website:

Their music lifted the nation's spirits during the darkest days of the Depression. Their lyrics captured the joys and tragedies of everyday life: loves won and lost, dreams attained and shattered, separations and reunions. Their original sound, first heard 75 years ago in a makeshift recording studio in Bristol, Tennessee, continues to resonate throughout America.

This hour-long documentary by Emmy Award-winning producer Kathy Conkwright explores the lives of A.P., Sara and Maybelle Carter, starting with their childhood in Poor Valley, Virginia, and following their story through the early 1940s, when they stopped playing and recording together. The film features rarely seen family photographs, memorabilia, and archival footage that chronicles the life and music of this famous and influential trio. Robert Duvall narrates.

"Through this film, I wanted to chronicle the amazing contributions the Carter Family made to American music," says Conkwright. "Their songs and style remain the most copied in American folk and country music, and have influenced artists across all genres." Artists Marty Stuart, Gillian Welch, Rodney Crowell, Ralph Stanley and Joan Baez appear in the film, together with A.P. and Sara Carter's children Janette and Joe (who died in March 2005) and granddaughter Rita Forrester.

Sara, her husband A.P., and sister-in-law Maybelle lived the poverty and heartbreak of the poor rural Americans they sang of. Through music, they brought a dignity and understanding to an often-misunderstood culture. Carter Family songs like Wildwood Flower, Will the Circle Be Unbroken and Worried Man Blues laid the foundations for country, folk and bluegrass music.

A transcript will be available here after the show finishes airing around the country. That's really nice. Don't think I'll ever let go of that. The story is as heartbreaking as the music. It starts out in Poor Valley--seriously--where they can barely get by during the Roaring Twenties. You can only imagine what that place was like once the depression hit.

But it's the personal story, particularly A.P. and Sara. It opens with the family about to appear on the cover of Life magazine, stardom beyond their wildest dreams, but the whole thing is crumbling, A.P. and Sara are secretly divorced . . . As tragic as the songs they've been singing.

God, I just want to immerse myself in this story indefinitely. I wonder if anyone has written up a first-rate bio on these people. Guess I'll be getting back to you on that soon.

But will they include Carlene?

Mon, 09 May 2005 18:12:22 GMT

PBS is doing an American Experience tonight on my favorite country clan--yes, I have one--The Carter Family.

Maybelle, June, A.P., Roxanne Cash . . . But they always neglect Carlene. My favorite.

I know she was never influential like her mom or especially her grandmother, and her early albums were kind of uneven, and then she gave up the blend that made her unique for standard radio country, but she left a deep mark on me.

I got her first album, Carlene Carter, my senior year in high school. "Alabama Morning" made me hungry for the South that had always given me the shivers, and the tragic love songs--her voice was angelic, but sincere. I couldn't wait to experience love so I could feel crushed like that.

I liked this site that sets out to plug her greatest hits album, but does a nice little job briefly capturing her career. (Not much sign of that in the past decade.) The best part was this quote from Carlene herself, on that first effort:

"I wanted to do something different. I didn’t want to be just another girl singer and do just another album in Nashville with the same session pickers who play on every other girl’s album."

I knew she was special the first time I slapped it on the turntable. I wasn't sure exactly who Nick Lowe or The Rumor were, but I understood they were some important brit rockers working with this kinda country chick and I really enjoyed the fusion.

Good take on that here:

By recording her debut album in England, Carlene Carter served notice that despite coming from a legendary American country music family, she intended to make her own way in the biz and establish her own musical identity. So while there's a strong country-rock vibe throughout Carlene Carter, it's filtered through the British pub rock sensibilities of the Rumour, whose members produce, arrange, and play on all of the tracks on this album (with occasional cameo appearances from pub rock icons Graham Parker, Terry Williams, and Nick Lowe). The results of this transatlantic crossbreeding are generally winning, if a little uneven; on a few tracks, it seems as if both Carter and the Rumour are keeping some of their energy in check as they try to feel each other out.

Such a promising start, but the longer I watched her, the more her life turned into a cautionary tale. Nobody wanted that delerious fusion. Not the radio stations, anyway. Rock or country, pick one. Goofballs.

So decades later, few of us have ever heard of her. But enough, maybe. Who knows who was out there listening. Me, for example. Heehehe. I still think Musical Shapes ended up the finest Rockpile album, but that first attempt is the one I tend to look back on wistfully.

OK, just dug it out of the vinyl stack buried in my closet. Apparently you still can't get her early stuff on CD over here (the U.S.). Luckily, I finally got a turntable a few months ago, after maybe a ten-year absense.

Wow. Listened to the ones she wrote, "Who Needs Words" and "I Once Knew Love," and I'm blissful but balling my eyes out. ("I once knew love, but it never knew me well . . . Who needs words, when there's eyes like yours.)

Got that wish about getting crushed a few times. Can't remember if this is how I imagined it.

Not too far off on the feeling, I think, but the source of the pain, that one I did not see coming. The feeling is very similar to what I was experiencing then: not the pain of love, but the pain of withholding it. Just cuts a lot deeper once you've held it in your arms lost it.

Don't think I realized that would be the hard part. I expected the pain to be about the wounds inflicted in the fighting. Nope. The album closes with this line from "Who Needs Words": "There's no friends like old lovers, and there's no one like you."

No one in the world like D. Or T. Or G. I can feel right now, the way each one of them made me glow when they walked in the room. Each in a different way. That I never felt before. And never will again.

Elvis vs. Reality (TV)

Fri, 29 Apr 2005 19:20:32 GMT

No, not talking about some ratings war. Not even talking about that Elvis. The good one, not the dead one.

Heeheehee. I actually like both elvi, but I never fail to snicker at the expression, and since Mr. Costello is so clearly the good-er of them, it sort of fits anyway.

Hennyway.

Elvis. Alison, specifically. (Thanks to several readers for the spelling correction.) One of his first songs and still one of his finest. Just belting out of my lungs out of nowhere over breakfast this morning. (Man, what's with me and breakfast today?) Must have been trigged by the Loving somebody title of my last post, but my memory really gets strong a couple lines later, with the tragic chorus:

Allison
I know this world is killing you,
Oh, Allison
My aim is true
My aim is true
My aim is true.**

That's a chorus that really demands to be belted, but then I had to quiet down with one of the verses:

Well I see you've got a husband now
Did he leave your pretty fingers lying in the wedding cake
You used to hold him right in your hands
Ah, but he took, all that he could take*

God, how I loved that part. Careful girl--or guy--he's only going to take so much.

But is he/she? Twenty-odd years now I have lived with that truism in my head, but I'm not sure I've seen it. So many old married couples together one or both of them still taking it on the chin. My parents for example. (I'll decline to comment here on who's taking, who's given. Luckily they never read anything I write, unless published in a reputable journal.)

Immediately, the reality shows sprung to mind. A little of Survivor, but particularly the Amazing Race. We have seen the most gruesome couplings, many of whom are not yet locked into the commitment, and who not only have the experience to warn them away, but a tape of the experience.

Who the hell gets that lucky? To see it documented in cold, hard videotape. He/she treats me like total crap. And/or he brings out the absolute worst in me. We're horrible together. We'd like to announce our engagement.

That's how these bitter mismatches all seem to end up.

Is it a perverse demographic? Perhaps the egomania inherent in so many people drawn to engage in reality shows and even more prevalent in those actually cast, carries with it the related gene of blindness to ones own strengths and weaknesses.

Plausible.

But the main value in reality shows has never been in proving phenomena, but illustrating it. The sample size is far to small, and the subject pool too distorted to prove anything. But the power to illustrate--I have found that to be quite extraordinary.

The data on couples taking it on the chin is all around us. But we quickly grow oblivious to the pervasive, like the oxygen we're sucking in this very moment. Elvis Costello wrote a song so powerful he convinced me to shut my eyes to the obvious for 20 years.

No. Most people don't reach their breaking point. Alison has been married to that poor sap my entire adult life.

Thanks, Amazing Race. I never would have seen it without you.

---

* There seems to be some disagreement on that last lyric line. The two sites I checked out had it differently, and both different than my ear tells me. So I went with mine. Alternates:

- But did you give more than he could take

- I bet he took all that he could take

The latter sounds a lot more likely--contestant #1 alleges three times the number of syllables actually pronounced by Elvis prior to the first 'he'--and #2's site came up first on google.)

---

**My Aim Is True.

Oh, to ever write a line that good, a title that great. Can't really ever hear that song without a long wistful reflection on the title. His very first, his very best.

(Which has always struck me more than slightly sad, too. Still my favorite Elvis album, far and away his best title, the opening line of the whole thing is one of my all-time favorites by anybody . . . Peaked a little freaking soon.)

(The line is, "I used to be disgusted /now I try to be amused." Save me, that one. Plus I get to snicker over the followup: "But since their wings have got rusted / You know the angels want to wear my red shoes." -- Thanks to Catastrophile for the heads-up on my lyric screw-up.)

Allison gets the song title, but that line captures the album title. Will I ever hear a line so sweet and so viscious at the same time? I could swear there was a third meaning, but at the moment, I can only find two: how earnest his intentions are, and how precise the aim of his gun. Man. Kind of gives me the shivers.

(Hey, sort of the theme of the bible, too, isn't it? Man, I've got God on the brain this morning. But isn't that the big tension of that book: the angry, spiteful God always threatening to smite you at any moment, and the kind, loving earnest God, whose intentions are always true?)

I know this world is killing you.

There's this song . . .

Fri, 22 Apr 2005 02:18:15 GMT

Normally, I'm not so good with the old stuff. Pre-Buddy Holly, I'm kinda imusicate. But this one song . . .

Dere's an ol' man called de Mississippi;
Dat's de ol' man dat I'd like to be!
What does he care if de world's got troubles?
What does he care if de land ain't free?
Ol' Man River,
Dat Ol' Man River
He mus' know sumpin' But don't say nuthin',
He jes' keeps rollin',
He keeps on rollin' along.
He don't plant taters,
He don't plant cotton,
An' dem dat plants 'em
Is soon forgotten,
But Ol' Man River,
He jes' keeps rollin' along
You an' me, we sweat an' strain,
Body all achin' an' racked wid pain -
Tote dat barge!
Lif' dat bale!
Git a little drunk,
An' you land in jail...
Ah gits weary
An' sick of tryin';
Ah'm tired of livin'
An skeered of dyin',
But Ol' Man River,
He jes' keeps rollin' along

(Lyrics based upon those from the libretto for the recording of Jerome Kern's Show Boat, with lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein 2nd. Hayes Middlesex England: EMI Records Lmtd.1988)

Man. I'm just a mess every time.

Mosh!

Thu, 28 Oct 2004 03:30:50 GMT

My God.

I just saw it.

Couldn't get the download to work yesterday. A reader sent a new link.

Eminem. Mosh. If you thought Farenheit 911 was powerful.

Watch.

And then go request it for MTV's TRL. I'll get the links when I get home. I'm late. Was late to begin with, only supposed to check out a few seconds of it. Couldn't pull my eyes away. Or my ears.

Still shuddering.

The enduring lyric mystery

Mon, 11 Oct 2004 21:11:26 GMT

OK, so I think I know the answer to this question, so why won't I accept it? Maybe that's the better question.

The original question, which has gnawed away at me for what, 20 years, is why can song lyrics affect me so powerfully, yet taken cold, without the music or the vocals, they seem flat, sometimes verging on idiotic?

And that's if you've heard the song. When you haven't, they just sound like complete garbage. Often.

How can a little singing and melody transform them so profoundly?

Why won't I accept that they do?

The latest trigger came this weekend, when some trivial statement tripped a mental wire and my all-time favorite song erupted inside my head and I got all wistful and meloncholy for it. I tried to explain to person I was talking to, even pulled up the lyrics online, knowing how fruitless it would be--and of course, received the dreaded Huh?

And yet I'm going to post them here anyway. Just because I want to. And maybe because one or two of you adore the Clash as well--though "adore" seems an odd word to pair with that group--and will smile at the feelings it provokes.

In this case in particular, I think the full power of the song does emerge completely from the sincerity and intensity of the way he pleads those last two words. Stay free. The rest is just prelude.

But what a prelude.

And those two words--what two words. So much power in them to begin with. And then they created a scene, a vivid world, where they meant so much.

I'm reading back through it again for the tenth time in as many minutes, and for me, having experienced it audibly, it just tears me apart inside. The last verse, I mean. The prelude--it's all about setting up the payoff, isn't it?

The intimacy between the two characters. Almost embarassingly candid the way we glimpse them. Slightly painful toward the end, when he more or less apologizes for not writing enough, saying he did his best, obviously a little remorseful that it wasn't enough.

And the candor. Pissing on everyone in the school is not exactly an endearing quality. But it's the truth, you can feel where the anger comes from, and he still feels release at the memory of fighting back any stupid way he could figure out at the time. And it's delivered so preposterously yet sincerely, how can you react with anything but a snicker?

All building toward that huge rush of emotion as he hears that 'you' were free. It's the fear, I guess, of losing it again once you felt it.

It's also a matter of who this comes from. The Clash was right on the edge back then--their first album had exploded in the UK, but Epic Records refused to even release it in the U.S., claiming it was too incendiary. This was their second outing, Give 'Em Enough Rope.

They had to be feeling a lot of danger--to their career, if nothing else, to their art, maybe to imprisonment if things got too out of hand. You can hear that coming through, their sense of innocence and anarchy one moment, the fear of ominous repurcusions the next.

God, just look at the song titles on that album:

Safe European Home
English Civil War
Tommy Gun
Julie's Been Working for the Drug Squad
Last Gang in Town
Guns on the Roof
Drug-Stabbing Time
Stay Free
Cheapskates
All the Young Punks

Nearly every one evokes danger, just occasionally safety from it.

Julie has been turning people in to the drug squad, by the way. That one is comically lighthearted, mixed with suddend bouts of sobriety: You got fifteen years -- that's a mighty long time.

"Last Gang in Town" gets vaguely paranoid: "You better watch out for they're all comin' around . . ."

And the one that hit me hardest immediately and stayed with me forever oscillates wildly between the anarchy and the price to pay. I guess that's why this song tugs at me so badly year after year. Always drawn to the danger, terrified of where it may lead.

Them too.

I've made a few risky choices. Last Christmas, one of my sisters informed me I was the black sheep of the family. I protested, and most or all of my eight siblings--everyone present, except, oddly, my mother--joined in. Adamantly. "I can't believe you weren't aware!" one of them, said.

I don't think of my choices as dangerous at the time, but I do tend to find myself in some risky situations. Physically, financially, psychologically.

I said I don't think of the choices as dangerous, but I often do sense of feeling of danger. Meaning, I guess, that I don't feel like there's a real choice. I know what I have to do.

And the real fear comes later. After I'm committed, but before I can really see the consequences. Because usually they're going to be murky, especially with the psychological ones.

And then I hear The Clash hurtling through these scenes, no real telling what shape the danger might take; plunging blindly ahead anyway. With that one constant emotion cutting through all the rest: Whatever becomes of us, whatever price we might pay, just leave us free to keep doing it.

Huh. I guess it wasn't so much the lyric mystery I wanted to write about. I wanted to explain why that song keeps ripping my guts open. Nobody ever understands. They never seem to have heard the freaking song, and I can't for the life of me explain what's so freaking special about it. Maybe I didn't want to soil it trying.

I'll never capture the power of their pain with words alone, but at least I figured out what it was doing to me. Sometimes, I get scared.

Them too. I've been waiting 20 years to find that out.

Enough out of me. This little treasure from the Clash. (Written by Mick Jones and Joe Strummer.) Best song I've ever heard, or at least the one that affected me most deeply.

Stay Free

We met when we were in school
Never took no shit from no one, we weren't fools
The teacher says we're dumb
We're only having fun
We piss on everyone
In the classroom

When we got thrown out I left without much fuss
An' weekends we'd go dancing
Down streatham on the bus
You always made me laugh
Got me in bad fights
Play me pool all night
Smokin' menthol

I practised daily in my room
You were down the crown planning your next move
Go on a nicking spree
Hit the wrong guy
Each of you get three
Years in brixton

I did my very best to write
How was butlins?
Were the screws too tight?
When you lot get out
Were gonna hit the town
We'll burn it fuckin' down
To a cinder

Cos years have passed and things have changed
And I move anyway I wanna go
I'll never forget the feeling I got
When I heard that you'd got home
An' I'll never forget the smile on my face
'cos I knew where you would be
An' if you're in the crown tonight
Have a drink on me
But go easy...step lightly...stay free

Update:

I found this site where you can hear 30 seconds of it.

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

Glorious.

I forgot the abandon in his voice.

And the music. Vicious thrusts of sonic anarchy after that throwaway "menthol" line. And then right back to the utter sincerity of him closed up in his room hacking away at his art. Punctuated by gleeful bursts of exquisite guitar squeels.

God, the intensity of this song. Every emotion played to the hilt, but never melodrama, just raw, hearfelt emotion.

In my heart, I always knew I was meant to be a writer, but I really wanted to be a musician of some sort: singer, songwriter, producer, instrumentalist. All together, preferably. Prince, but without the affectations.

This is a brilliantly-written song, but not as a stand-alone work, only as a trealise to weave all the power of the vocal delivery, and the abstract soulbursts from the guitar transmitting anger one moment, elation the next.

And finally, one deadpan line, a delivery you might not expect out of a group calling itself The Clash, particularly on the title phrase of the most powerful song they ever produced. They didn't need to belt the line out like "Born Free," though, by the end of the song, it speaks for itself. And it isn't meant as a rallying cry or manifesto, it's the quiet little voice whispering in the back of your head as the forces are marshalling at the barricades, drunk with mob power, oblivous to the personal consequences. Stay free.

That TIAA-CREF song

Thu, 16 Sep 2004 17:05:51 GMT

Did you see the TIAA-CREF commercial about a hundred times during the Olympics?

I watched the first week non-tivo'd (still no tivo in the chicago home), so I actually saw the commercials. And I didn't hate that one, in fact I really liked it. Because it was barely more than a snippet of this really subdued, yet wistfully moving song--"There's a place for us. A time and place for us. Hold my hand and we're halfway there. Hold my hand and . . ."--over some soft, matted images. Really evoked something powerful in me, though I couldn't quite put my finger on what.

And I could swear I knew that song, and it was dredging up old associations from it, but I couldn't place it or them either.

They've been playing it more since then, and I spot it now and stop the fast forward to listen, let it take me back there. Somewhere.

Somehow.

Someday.

Somewhere.

Ahhhhhhhh. I finally googled it. From West Side Story.

But I thought I hated musicals. Especially that musical. (That "I want to live in Amedica" thing sticks to my cerebellem like day-old chewing gum. Just one chorus is bad enough, makes me shudder, visibly, and then it won't get out!)

But Somewhere. That's the title of it, but you knew already, right? You were way ahead of me. Somewhere, that song is haunting. Powerful. I had no idea where it came from. Maybe I should reconsider.

I'm curious, though. Anyone else stirred by it the past month? Did you know what it was they were working on you?

Lyrics here, by the way. And the mysterious company behind it, with the worst corporate name ever, topping even Accenture, is even more ridiculous without the acronym: Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association-College Retirement Equities Fund. (Sic on both the missing apostrophe and the hyphen-playing dash.

Beach Boy genius?

Sun, 12 Sep 2004 20:44:45 GMT

Great story in the nyt today about Brian Wilson finishing up his Smile album 35 years later.

It's heartbreaking and insightful.

And I've always been fascinated by Wilson, partly because of his downward spiral into mental illness--the classic artist gone mad story--but more, I think, because he was one of the handful of consensus geniuses of the rock music era, and all I could hear were silly surfer songs.

They assure me Pet Sounds is a materwork, and I believe them, but I've just never found the time to go back and discover why. I can hear strong hints of it in Good Vibrations--which actually was pulled off Smile, the album that was supposed to top it--but I have no context for how simplistic melodies were before that I guess I'm just a hair shy sufficient interest to study it all closely enough to find out.

Actually, I kind of hate the music from that era. Early Beach Boys were OK for silly singalongs, but three minutes at a time was plenty. I can't stomach the early Beatles, even. That includes Revolver. Nothing pre Sergeant Pepper, which was a response to Pet Sounds, so there you have it.

I understand that everything I do like owes a great big debt to Pet Sounds, so I'll just leave it at that and not plunge back into the stuff that annoys me to grasp just how great the guy was.

Ahhhhh. That's why I'm so drawn to this guy. I'd love a fuller appreciation, but I've got too many other demands on my time to make it worth it. But the Times piece filled in a few of the holes for me, and reminded me of many others. It was a great read, and if you've always been a bit mistified about how a Beach Boy could have been heralded as a genius, this is a great intro.

---

Nine hours later, and I can't get "John P. Sail" (is that the name of it?) out of my head. Usually that's an awful thing, but I'm kind of enjoying it there.

So hoist up the john p sail

See how the main sail sails

some-thing some-thing the shore and let me go home

i wanta go home.

Those may or may not be the words, but that's whats whirling round my head. Rich, lush harmonies, makes you feel like you're out on the rolling waters. Complex music--hey, he's not a simpleton!

About those lyrics, though. First time I heard it, I thought, "How corny is that!"

But it grew on me. Can't be too cool for that song, just have to embrace the splendor of the image. Close your eyes and list out to sea. It's tranquil out there. And sweet, somehow.

I will be explaining more about the Columbine killers on NPR's Talk of the Nation today

Wed, 21 Apr 2004 17:30:53 GMT

(See Update at the bottom of this post for the details. You can listen to NPR's tape of the show here--go about 1/3 down the page for the link directly to my segment. Much thanks to Mike Ditto for sending the link.)

I may be jumping the gun slightly, because they just called, but it looks pretty definitely, and I wanted to give you all a heads up.

I've gotten hundreds of emails on the Slate Columbine piece and I know you guys have a ton of questions.

NPR just called and we chatted about the story and they want to do a piece with me this afternoon. It's tentatively set for 1:40 Chicago time, but I was too stupid (flustered) to ask basic questions like what show it's for and whether that's live or taped for later. The specificity of the time suggests live to me, but I'm just guessing here. (And I also would not count on radio/TV things happening exactly when scheduled. Or even if scheduled.)

But I should have more info pretty soon. Check back here and I'll update at the bottom of this post. (I'll just leave all this copy and add to it, below a big red Update word.)

Thanks for caring.

And thanks SO much for all the comments and emails. I'm blown away by all the interest, and I'm thinking more and more that I will do this book after all. You guys have inspired me. And convinced me that there is an audience out there--and much as I hate to consider commerce along with art, if I'm going to spend two more years on this project, I can't afford to do that unless I can convince a publisher there will be a market when I'm done.

Uh oh. I am SO off track again. I'm excited. I'm just an Exciteable Boy.

UPDATE:

OK, it's going to be live, on Talk of the Nation.

I will be on for the last 20 minutes of the first hour. (In Chicago/central, that's 1:40 - 2:00 p.m. Add or subtract accordingly.)

And you can call in, so feel free, but don't be too rough on me. I haven't done one of these in awhile.

If you have already missed it by the time you're reading this, they have links to all their old shows, where you can hear it all on your PC. (If it hasn't aired yet and you're just lazy and want to hear highlights later, you'll damn well go listen to it live young man/young lady. Heeheehee.)

(Sorry if you're new to this site and I'm not acting like a Serious Journalist. I can't be serious all the time. That's not what a blog is for. If you want faux seriousness, go watch Diane Sawyer. Yow. (How do you make that wwwu-wwwu-wuu shivering shound?) Just that name gives me the shivers.)

First they came for the vibrators, then they came for Janet, now they're came for Howard . . .

Wed, 14 Apr 2004 06:19:22 GMT

Last December, I linked to a great little piece Atrios titled "First they came for the vibrators." God, little did we know. Just seemed like an oddity at the time.

Then Janet showed a breast, and our puritan country had a heart attack. Now George Bush's FCC appears to really be knocking Howard Stern off the air. And God, what a coincidence that Stern has been ruthlessly attacking Bush, with serious stories being written about Stern's huge audience being a huge potential problem for the pres.

Hard to decide whether that's more appalling or just the free-speech issue.

Salon has a pair of cover stories on it just posted. Dan Savage is oddly not up to his usual stunning prose in the sidebar, but the main piece by Eric Boehlert is pretty freaking scary. (Just in case, I'm not using the word fucking on here anymore.)

The Who reunion: audio equivalent of all those horrible Barbara Streisand movies

Thu, 25 Mar 2004 19:28:54 GMT

Can you believe it's been 22 years since we've heard a new song out of The Who? Can you believe this is the best they could come up with?

Perhaps you haven't heard their new little disaster, apparently titled "Real Good Looking Boy." No, it's even worse than the title.

It opens promisingly enough, until Roger Daltry hits his first note, or takes an admirable shot at it. Nothing horrible, he the voice is just gone, straining the whole time, nowhere to reach.

Bummer there, but I figured I could just listen around that. The songwriting, that should only get better, right?

Check the whole lyric out here, or I'll give you a taste. The first verse has him looking into the mirror for the first time as a kid and exclaiming several different times, "That's a real good looking boy." So he runs to tell his mom how great he looks and verse two--all of verse two--runs:

She said, son, well, you know, you're an ugly boy,
You don't really look like him.
In this long line there's been some real strange genes,
You got 'em all, you got 'em all, with some extras thrown in.

Now I love the opening of that--best moment in the song. Jarring, almost staggering, suddenly I was engaged again after that odd, hokey, perplexing opening. You're an ugly boy? Yow. Where's this going?

Nowhere. You got bad genes? That's it? And the climax of the pivotal verse: You got 'em all, you got 'em all, with some extras thrown?

Lyrics don't always translate to print well, I know. It's much worse when you hear it. His voice really gets ahold of that line like it's the pay off, You got 'em all -- louder, stronger, reach for it: You got 'em all -- and now the big payoff: with some extras thrown.

What? Are you kidding?

It really gets worse. Verse three cuts to him holding his baby, realizing what true beauty is, and how he survived--yes, he really uses the word: "managed somehow to survive . . ."--in spite of his ugly-duckling childhood, because God also endowed him brains, and grace and sweet sweet love.

Isn't that the theme of every God-awful Barbara Streisand movie of the past 20 years? Ugly duckling to all the world's eyes, but she's truly a treasure just waiting to beheld. OK, hers is slightly harder to swallow: in her versions, it always turns out that she merely appeared to be the ugly duckling; she's actually stunningly beautiful in body as well as mind and soul. Pete concedes the homely face--Barbara does too, with her camera; her screenplay just doesn't acknowledge it--but feels compelled to assure us how beautiful his soul is in spite of appearances.

We know Pete. You had a stunning songwriting career. And some of us enjoyed your voice on some of your solo stuff, too. Rough Mix still ranks up there with my all-time favorites. But this desperate attempt to articulate it for us -- in such awkwardly clunkly language, no less . . . Man, you're just begging us to take the laurels away from you.

I'm so embarassed for the guy, only hope this project sputters and disappears quickly. (It's one of two new songs--the better of the two, presumably?--included in a new greatest hits package.)

But now that I'm done writing this, I feel really sad for the poor guy, too. Man, those kids must have ripped his heart out when he was a boy. Still not over it. A staggering career, decades of adulation, two beautiful daughters (at least they looked hot on that album cover way back when), and the ugly-face demon has still got the poor sucker by the balls. Isn't that what plastic surgeons are for?

Yet so much better today

Mon, 01 Dec 2003 06:53:53 GMT

God, what a rollercoaster weekend. (If you're wondering what I'm doing better than, check out the previous post.)

Had a bit of a freakout experience last night, left me a little shaky, but oddly, I feel also incredibly refreshed. Or like I will be, once the jittery part dissipates, which it will. Once I get some sleep, and more than a meal or two a day.

Man, did I have a night last night. But I'm a little leery of blurting it out here in public.

Jean Genet wouldn't have any fear about it. (Not that I was robbing anyone last night. Don't go too literal on me.)

That's what's odd about this, though. I think I could in a book. I write those things--books, stories--by myself. Yes, I hope to publish them at some point, but never the point I'm writing them. That's just hanging out there as some future danger, that I brush off as something I'll just have to face down the road some time. Very different than facing it in the present. Or is it just because a book feels more like one time. Gather all your sins together in one place and confess the whole lot of them at one time: Even St. Augustine pulled that one off, he's been a religious hero for nearly two thousand years for doing it. Of course he had a slightly different take on his sins. That they were. I use the term more ironically. He just confessed the sins to repudiate them. I still hope to write a response to that book someday, but I really need to get around to reading it first. I tried once and it was tough going. I was chugging along anyway for a little while, but then I conveniently forgot it on a plane, and never bothered to re-order a new one. (A recent translation was highly recommended by one of my most prized recommenders, Miles Harvey, whose link I bet you've never clicked on down there in the bottom-left corner. I had to get the bookstore to special-order it, and you know how much of a psychological block shit like that can be. Worse than finding a stamp.)

Well, it's going to have to wait for a book, I think, and God knows how I'll ever work this shit into a book. But I didn't get to sleep until three this afternoon, so you can imagine I was having a pretty good time. Mostly. Afterhours club closed at five, afterparty started at 5:10. Dance dance dance. God I love to dance. Ever see Billy Elliot? Exactly how I felt all my life, minus the talent. But exact same level of need.

People are so weird. Most adults never dance, never to speak of anyway. I can't comprehend. Dancing, writing, eating and sleeping, any one of those make me cranky when I don't get enough, but those are the only four I have identified. OK, homeless would suck pretty bad, and I've never tried to stop breathing more than (two minutes? oddly, that was my favorite ownpersonalsport growing up, and i was amazingly good at it.) I dance because I have to--how come other people don't have to?

Warren brings me to Laurie.

Thu, 13 Nov 2003 20:43:59 GMT

Anderson.

Someone on the Warren Zevon lyrics site just brought up this line: "I never liked the way he cut your hair." Apparently the last straw before he dumped her, when everything about the person you thought you were so wild about suddenly seems defiled.

Don't know the song, and don't can't say I love the line out of context, but it dredged up a Laurie Anderson fave I hadn't heard of in years.

Starts out, "I no longer love your mouth. I no longer love your eyes. . . " works her way down to no longer loving the color of your sweaters, and finally, "I longer love the way you hold your pans and pencils."

Funniest lines ever, or easily in the running.

Full lyric:

Sweaters (from Big Science)

I no longer love your mouth. i no longer love your eyes. i no longer love your eyes. i no longer love the color of your sweaters. i no longer love it. i no longer love the color of your sweaters.

i longer love the way you hold your pans and pencils. i no longer love it. your mouth. your eyes. the way you hold your pens and pencils. i no longer love it. i no longer love it.

Warren Zevon on the rest of my brain

Thu, 13 Nov 2003 09:07:01 GMT

Well I got started on Warren, and God knows I can't let go.

Just found this wonderful thread on the official Warren Zevon site where people are sharing their favorite Warren lyrics. Some of the most memorable lines of my life.

And as luck would have it, Jean Genet led me to Nabokov, which led me to check out my little Nabokov page to see what I had quoted from him there, and that landed me back on that wonderful Shakespeare passage I transcribed a few months ago (. . . Would through the airy region stream so bright / That birds would sing and think it were not night.), that got me thinking about that boy I broke up with this spring, and of course all the tragic Warren Zevon songs are running through my head, cause did he write any other kind?

Still waking up in the mornings with shaking hands
And I'm trying to find a girl who understands me
But except in dreams you're never really free
Don't the sun look angry at me

That was my favorite song of his, Desperados under the Eaves. Don't the sun look angry at me.

But here's the one really stuck in my head at the moment. I've been wrestling with it for weeks, interweaving the lyrics with some other song, couldn't find a solid way in.

But then somebody on the Zevon site posted half a verse and it all came back. And then I looked it op on the web, and here's the whole thing. (Try picturing Linda Ronstandt singing the Descant in the most angelic voice she ever summoned, while he lamets throwing down diamonds in the sand over and over again.)

Empty-Handed Heart

All these empty places
I try so hard to fill
Will I find another love?
I pray to God I will
Girl, we had some good times
But time does not stand still
It's rolling like a rockslide down a hill

I've met someone I care for
I know she cares for me
Will I fall in love again?
It's a possibility
Girl, we had some good times
That time cannot undo
No one will ever take the place of you

Heart jinxed condition
Never sure how I feel
Trying to separate the real thing
From the wishful thinking
Sometimes I wonder
If I'll make it without you
I'm determined to
I'll make my stand
And if after all is said and done
You only find one special one
Then I've thrown down diamonds in the sand
Then I've thrown down diamonds in the sand
Then I've thrown down diamonds in the sand
Then I've thrown down diamonds in the sand

Descant:
Remember when we used to watch the sun set in the sea
You said you'd always be in love with me
All through the night, we danced and sang
Made love in the morning while the church bells rang

Leave the fire behind you and start
I'll be playing it by ear
Left here with an empty-handed heart

___

So hard to pick out my favorites from this guy's career. Sometimes I love Warren cause he takes me places I've never been, sometimes I love him for taking me right where I spend my whole life. "Trying to separate the real thing from the wishful thinking?" Me too, buddy. Me too.

Last words from Warren

Thu, 13 Nov 2003 07:45:16 GMT

Not the last words he uttered, or even the last words I heard from him, but definitely the last ones that mattered. I finally watched the second half of the tragic VH1 "Inside Out" special on Warren Zevon getting his death sentence from his oncologist and rushing into the studio to make one last album.

I watched the first half the night it aired, and sobbed uncontrollably every two to three minutes. They chose all the right songs to play in the background, lot of brilliant counterpointing: Warren would be saying or doing one thing, usually with at least a whiff of sarcasm or irony, and a stunning Zevon song with a wickedly different take on the same subject would keep in to sweetly heckle him. No words, but if you grew up on those songs like I did, all it takes are few notes to bring back the rush of feelings they provoked. Sometimes a few words, but never all the way to the climax. I've quoted this one before, but it may be the alltime greatest title, so how can I stop myself:

The phone don't ring
And the sun refused to shine.
Never thought I'd have to pay so dearly,
For what was already mine.
For such a long, long time.

We made mad love
Shadow love
Random love
And abandoned love.
Accidently like a martyr.
The hurt gets worse
And the heart gets harder.

Loses something without the music, but go find it yourself if you're so damn dismissive. "Accidently Like a Martyr." Just one title like that, that's all I ask for.

Oh, so the show was just tearing my heart out, so I decided I had to share it with someone, and that should be my ex, but he doesn't come round here much anymore, so I had to wait a couple months, and I started it back at the beginning, but it didn't make much of an impression on him, cause he was only moderately aware of the music, from the times I forced it on him on long drives. And I don't think he liked some of the violence. Read off a list of titles and I'd be hard pressed to supress a smile at "Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner," but he would just furrow his brow and wonder why he was dating me.

So it's been weeks since he was here and I decided I wouldn't torture him with the rest of it. Dissappointing ending, because they spent so much of the last quarter on "Dirty Life and Times," a really lame rocker from the last album. I don't care if Bruce Springsteen sang it with him, it's completely uninspired, the worst example of the biggest problem with the album. But at least they finished with the last song he ever recorded--at home, because he was too weak to get to the studio. "Keep Me in Your Heart." Hard to listen to that one without breaking down.

And in those final minutes, they also played a glimpse of "Accidently Like a Martyr," and in minute 46, I heard what I think I'll remember as Warren Zevon's final words:

He's sitting in a chair, lamenting: "I haven't been reading at all lately, since my diagnosis." He pauses a moment, starts again. "You know, my (candywife?), Schopenhauer, said 'We love to buy books, because we believe we're buying the time to read them.' Isn't that grand?"

Extremely. That explains why I've got two or three hundred of them stacked up all around this apartment. I believe that's exactly how I delude myself each time I purchase one.

So they weren't even Warren's words, nor were they his last, or even the last to me, but none of that will matter in another ten or twenty years when I look back fondly on Warren shattering one of my great illusions with his dying words.

I've learned one thing about memory: only the strong stuff survives, and 14 minutes more blather on the making of one of his unmemorable songs will slowly evaporate and that quote will be the last thing I ever heard from him.

Not for you, though, because I'll keep on quoting him incessantly on this blog, someday maybe I'll retitle after his album title that first woke me up to who I was, shortly before I turned 18. It was his second album and his second best, (Dead or Alive doens't count--it was just a stack of shitty demo tapes, released later over his objections), but he'll never top the title.

He's just an Excitable Boy. Me too.

Just an excitable boy

Thu, 11 Sep 2003 02:48:26 GMT

I'm supposed to be packing and scrambling to do 1800 things before I leave for NY in the morning, but the Warren Zevon documentary started, and I just took a peak as I started a snack and it's half an hour in now, and ripping my heart apart.

(Before I proceed--actually, I'm writing this last, but hate cluttering up the ending. VH1 will be showing it several times this week: InsideOut, and you want the one specifically on Warren. It runs an hour, and there's a little more on it here. It's absolutely amazing--if you like him--and packed with a lot of his best songs, which are just killing me.)

I don't think I explained properly before. I was horrified when John Lennon was shot down and depressed when Joe Strummer died, but the loss there was limited to a great artist, someone whose work I greatly admired. The Clash probably the single most powerful effect on me of any artist ever, so when Joe Strummer died, that was a blow. But nothing quite like Warren Zevon. Of all the artists and celebrities and characters real and fictional since the beginning of time, only Holden Caulfield ever gave Warren a run for the title of person I most identified with.

Love at first sight is a silly little fantasy. I never came close to believing it. Recongition at first sound, that's a different animal entirely. Excitable Boy. Did that register anything with you? Probably not. I must have played the song for 200 people in the past 25 years, usually they say it's cute. Or mormid, if they listen to the lyrics. Obnoxious, sometimes. And they have to listen through for some time before a reaction registers at all. I must have understood the reason very quickly, but it took years for me to accept it. They aren't excitable boys.

I smiled the moment I saw the album cover. I hadn't known. I was just an excitable boy.

It's a simple song ("Excitable Boy" gave its name--my name, our name--to a song and the album), so it wasn't my favorite--that would be Roland The Headless Thompson Gunner, hands down (from that album, and for a longtime from his whole body)--but it's the phrase I played over and over in my head. And smiled. I'm just an excitable boy.

Such a relief to finally learn who you are. I was 17. About fucking time.

It's a simple song, I guess, because it's a very simple explanation. It doesn't really work ever with other people--the explanation I mean, any more than the song does. They can't grasp what we mean by it, or how it could be so all-consuming. When you're an excitable boy, that's pretty much all there is too it. So I explain things that way to people all the time, but hardly ever out loud. I give these long, involved explanations that leave them nearly as puzzled, and then I say, silently, "I'm just an excitable boy," and I know there's an explanation. Occassionally I'll mutter it out loud, but if anything it just provokes an eyeroll. Who needs that?

So Warren told me who I was, and it was also who he was, and of course that was only the start of the relationship that never brought us into physical or even phone contact. I did see him give a concert once, and it was a small place (Park West, in Chicago), so I was pretty close, but I didn't get much sense of him as a person and he certainly wasn't aware of me.

But I got to watch him all those years, wrestling with his neuroses in public and on record, and now he's gone, and the lead bushwacher clearing the brush for my path just stopped clearing this week. How am I going to see where to go now?

Warren Zevon finally lets go

Mon, 08 Sep 2003 18:24:55 GMT

Sad, sad day. (Yesterday, actually, but I only found out this morning. Thanks Ben.)

Thank God we knew it was coming, or I would be crushed right now. Warren Zevon was one of my all-time favorites. I got Excitable Boy the month it came out--my junior year of high school--and I believe I reviewed it for my high school paper. I quickly went back to grab the one previous album, Warren Zevon, and could scarely believe it was even better. There was nothing left to mine, so I had to wait real time for each new release.

Really like obit in the Washington Post, aside from the cliche at the end of the lead. (AP here.)

He (Richard Leiby, in the W Post) also slips in a quickie review of the new album:

As the years rolled on, he released some good albums that not many people bought, and that's too bad. But he isn't the type to tolerate phony praise or pathos, so we'll offer none for "The Wind."

The album is uneven, offering only echoes of the artfulness we've come to expect from Zevon, who penned such classics as "Poor Poor Pitiful Me" and "Hasten Down the Wind." Still, let's give the man a break. During these sessions he was numbed by morphine, his voice strained by pain, his body wasting away. He had to tape a couple of songs at home when he grew too sick to make it into the studio. It's as if he willed himself to finish "The Wind" to fulfill a pledge he made in song long ago: "I'll sleep when I'm dead."

Sadly, I was getting ready to write something similar here, though I wanted to listen a few more times just to make sure. And I wasn't sure I had the heart to do it, but Leiby figured out a nice way, didn't he. There's no "French Inhaler," "Carmaleta," or "Desperatdos Under the Eaves Here." And certainly not a rocker like "Lawyers Guns and Money" or "Looking for the Next Best Thing."

There doesn't have to be. He's already got a catalogue full of them. If you're a longtime fan, The Wind is a really sweet goodbye, with every song suppused with secondary meaning. If you never heard of him till he got sick, get the first album* and find out what all the comotion is about. He never quite matched it, but he tossed us quite a few more gems before giving out.

***

* There was also an album recorded in the 60s, not released because it was so bad, called "Wanted Dead or Alive." After he had some success, the company owning it was going to release it over his objections, so he agreed to try to improve it. But he considered it basically failed demos from before he was ready. At least that's how I remember the story.

***

Coincidentially, the series "Inside Out," which chronicles him making the album, premieres tonight on VH1. Don't miss it. Update: That info was from the W Post, but my Tivo guide says the Warren episode is not on until Wednesday (maybe they moved it up?) And if you're searching it's "InsideOut," with no space.

I used to order just to watch her float across the floor

Mon, 08 Sep 2003 09:00:39 GMT

Quotes streaming through my head tonight.

That one's from Neil Young, "Unknown Legend" on Harvest Moon:

She used to work in a diner
Never saw a woman look finer
I used to order just to watch her float across the floor . . .

What a sweet sentiment, what a beautiful image, what an amazing opening.