The Least Great Show on Earth

Greetings From Fabulous Budget Inn-Fall Church

The Sands, it ain't.

Hell, it's not even the Bates.

I'm in Northern Virginia for 24 hours to attend the wake and funeral of the mother of a very good friend. And, man, did I pick the perfect setting to hole up during this bummer of a trip.

The hotel is perched on the top of hill, and it is set way back from the main road.

Between the building and the street is a stonecutting shop, a parking lot half full of half-stripped cars bearing handwritten signs like "For Parts" and "You Tow," and a fungus-choked cement pit surrounded by a thoroughly rusted but ornate fence that I can only assume used to be a pool.

I appear to be the only guest.

If one's life really is a movie, this scene would need no dialogue. Which is as it should be. All I have to offer my friend is my presence. It's all anyone has when a loved one passes. Words fail, but life prevails. Let's hope that's enough.

R.I.P. ES. You raised one hell of a son.

Not Keeping Up With The Smithses

Album: The Lightning Seeds, Cloudcuckooland, 1990

Best Track: "Pure"

Lasting Memory: The very first time I saw the video for "Pure," I was floored. I remember trying to remember whether I'd ever heard a better song. Not being able to come up with anything at the time, I made sure that The Lightning Seeds' album Cloudcuckooland was on my Christmas list.

I received that very cassette, and as too often happens with love at first hearing, I quickly soured on the song and the entire band.

My disenchantment began as soon as I realized that The Lightning Seeds had a very thin catalog of quality songs. The first track on the first side of Cloudcuckooland, "All I Want," is every bit as good as "Pure." Everything else on the album ranges from forgettable to annoying.

So love was out, but companionship would surely still be possible, right?

No.

Because what I came to realize within a few years was that The Lightning Seeds were doing nothing new or interesting. To encapsulate: The Lightning Seeds sounded like The Smiths when The Smiths were trying to sound like The Beatles. Why settle for an imitation of an imitation?

I wasn't able to bring myself to do so. I had come to know too much. But I still get a little wistful for what I believed could have been when I saw that first video. Like Billy Bragg noted, "Scholarship Is the Enemy of Romance."

Up Next: Live, Throwing Copper, 1994

Writing the Book of My Last Pages

Album: Let's Active, Big Plans for Everybody, 1986

Best Track: "Fell"

Lasting Memory: I'll probably most remember this album for rediscovering the song "Writing the Book of Last Pages" this very morning. It captures what I'm feeling right now: "LAST PAGE! Woo! I mean ... woo!"

Last week, right through the weekend, was quite a blur for me, as I pretty much adopted the Edisonian practice of napping, working, repeat around the clock for days in a row. I made my deadlines, and I haven't yet heard from any clients that I made too much of a hash of anything. Keep your fingers crossed.

I can definitely understand how Thomas Edison managed to be so creative. A man can get some strange ideas on whether a comma should go there at 1 a.m.

I can also confidently nominate Big Plans for Everybody as 1980s alternative music's sine qua non. Or its mirror.

I can't decide whether Let's Active started every trend of the time -- from looped, bell-like guitar riffs to quiet-loud dynamics -- or just syncreatized those ear-catching attributes into a song as great as "Fell" (which I can't find a dedicated link for).

It probably doesn't matter whether Let's Active were forebears, peers, or followers. What does matter is that the band produced an excellent template/revue of what was the greatest payoff for paying attention to music during Reagan's second term. Listen for yourself by clicking through the song samples here.

Up Next: The Lightning Seeds, Cloudcuckooland, 1990

P.S. A big shoutout to my brother, James, who had back surgery last week. The procedure went well, and he's recovering apace.

P.P.S. A big Bronx cheer, possibly, for my brother James who insisted yesterday that I needed to join Facebook. His argument was that having a profile on the site is a great way to keep up with friends and family without having to put the effort in writing a blog post, composing an e-mail, or picking up a phone. I might find these points persuasive except for one fact: Facebook.

The very idea of a social networking site offends my mild misanthropy. And that doesn't even bring into the discussion what being on Facebook would do to my chances of ever forming and leading a band of rabidly apathetic hermits.

Still, I'll put the proposal to a vote of the readership. Should I join Facebook? Elaborations on yes and no votes will be appreciated. As always, the final decision will rest with the Florida Election Commissions and President of Zimbabwe Robert Mugabe.

Post This

Once again, I haven't been posting because I'm staring down the barrel of multiple deadlines.

This makes me wonder how other people--especially writers and editors--manage to keep up with almost daily blog posting schedules. Do those folks have a 25th hour I don't? Seeing as how I get out of bed at 4 am most mornings and have to compile two e-mail newsletters by 10 am, I know for dang sure that no extra time is to be found in the earliest hours of the day.


Or maybe the problem is me. I could just be typing articles and copyediting manuscripts slowly.

Whatever the explanation, I'm unlikely to have time for doing a substantive post until some time next week. Thanks for visiting to see nothing much. And thanks, as always, for your patience.

Activatism

Album: Let's Active, Cypress, 1984

Best Track: "Blue Line"

Lasting Memory: Let's Active once bumped me from a gig.

I can't recall the exact date, but sometime in 1991, Let's Active played a show at Buddy's in Blacksburg, Va., on a Sunday night. Sunday nights were comedy nights at Buddy's, and the very evening that Let's Active blew through town, I was scheduled to be the featured comedian.

The gig wouldn't have paid me anything but a free meal and maybe some comped beers, but I remember that I would have opened the regularly scheduled comedy show, introduced all the other comedians, and closed the show. I didn't get the chance to do that that one night, and I didn't even get to see/hear Let's Active play because Buddy's filled up to the point that I left through the kitchen rather than deal with the sweaty, writhing mass of humanity.

Damn you, Let's Active, for stealing my limelight and for being more popular than I was. Damn you straight to hell.

But, hey, thank for the music, and all.

Let's Active was and is fronted by indie super producer Mitch Easter, whose Drive-In Studio in Winston-Salem, N.C., launched the mainstream careers of a surprising number of the best East Coast acts of the 1980s, including R.E.M.

As a musician, producer, arranger, and sound engineer, Easter champions the jangle, which as near a I can tell is a sound marked by open tuned guitars, 4/4 beats, and country-ish vocals. In other words, jangle pop is audio nirvana.

I take points away from Let's Active because most of the vocals are provided by the two female members of the band, Faye Hunter and Sara Romweber (who has to be some relation to the main guy from Flat Duo Jets). I just generally don't like female singing.

Still and all, "Blue Line" is as good an example of the transition from the arena/art rock of the 1970s to the informed-by-the-gospel-and-bluegrass-origins-of-rock-'n'-roll that was the alternative music revolution of the late 1980s and early 1990s as you're ever going to hear. "Flags for Everything" is also pretty genre-defining.

Samples of all the songs on Cypress are available here as tracks 1-12. You could do much worse than clicking through those samples.

Up Next: Let's Active, Big Plans for Everybody, 1986

My New Favorite Thing

Weird Al is the Nolan Ryan of song parodists. Nearing 50, the man just keeps setting 'em up and knocking 'em down.







This is apparently a rip on a number-one song by a rapper who goes by the nom de chanson T.I. I have no idea who T.I is. I've only ever heard Weird Al's version of this song. I guarantee you the parody is better than the original.

Knowing a Place Too Well

Album: Lemonheads, Come on Feel the Lemonheads, 1993

Best Track: "Style"

Lasting Memory: Following on the heels of the massively popular It's a Shame About Ray, this album must have been a disappointment to the Lemonheads and the band's label, Atlantic. Come on Feel the Lemonheads produced only a couple of minor hits, none of which has survived in the playlists of the modern rock stations that, born in the heyday of early '90s grunge, are increasingly becoming classic rock stations whose playlist reach only as far back as 20 years.

One of which was "Into Your Arms." The song is a rather saccharine ditty, whose chorus runs, in part

I know a place
Where I can go
When I'm alone
Into your arms whoa
Into your arms I can go

This is both forgetable and something you will never be able to stop from running around inside your brain. But what I most remember about the song is that someone produced a parody version. The chorus of the parody, which I can't figure out how to Google successfully, ran

I know a place
Where I can go
To buy cheese
Hickory Farms whoa
Hickory Farms I can go

I prefer the parody version because, hey, I like cheese.

I am lukewarm about the entirety of Come on. It lacks the overall catchiness of the band's previous albums while it amps up what should have been offputting about the songs all along, namely the dismal view of the prospects for romance and the full embrace of drug addiction. "Great Big No" and "Big Gay Heart" overplay the first theme, and "Style" overplays the latter. (BTW: The rotten video and sound quality on the 'Style" link are totally appropriate for a song about getting high despite not wanting to get high. This is probably just how lead Lemonhead and heroin enthusiast Evan Dando saw and heard that particular performance.)

It's unsurprising that the band would continue going to the well that fed their success. After all, they knew a place, and it was a scene of autobiography. The problem with going to a well so often is that the good stuff gets deeper and darker before eventually running out all together.

Deep into the Lemonhead world wasn't a place too many listeners, including myself, wanted to be. And, later, who wanted to support a band that couldn't pump out anything new? Few, that's who.

Come on, Wikipedia tells me, went gold. The Lemonhead's next album for Atlantic barely charted, and all subsequent releases have been on independent labels. It's been a shame about Evan since 1993.

Up Next: Let's Active, Cypress, 1984

Step 1: Panic

I haven't thrown up a music post this week because I haven't listened to any music.

Instead of enjoying -- or not -- albums by the Lemonheads, Let's Active, and the Lightning Seeds, I've been spending my workdays listening to NPR, BBC World News, and, in very small doses, Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity. The world's financial markets are in full meltdown mode, and I am morbidly fascinated.

I am not heavily invested in stocks, and I couldn't cash out my IRA without losing nearly all the principal anyway, but I've been obsessed with all the reports about what has been happening on the world's stock exchanges, among banks and insurers, and with investment houses because it's like watching every train on earth crash at the same time.

As you all know, nothing any government or private individual has done so far has helped avert what seems like certain disaster. I couldn't even begin to do justice to recapping the bad news, but if you find yourself as interested as I am, my advice is to hook into the BBC newsfeed. For some reason, Armageddon sounds less scary when it's being described in Etonian accents.

And just like I can't explain what has occurred, I have no idea how to fix the core problem. What I can offer, however, is an excellent idea for a first step toward finding a resolution.

Panic.

I don't mean "panic and sell all your stocks" or "panickedly pass legislation." I mean have yourself a full-on, screaming with arms your flung to the heavens and running around in circles panic. Yell, cry, and curse whichever God you embrace. Do some random destruction.

Then catch your breath, clean up a little bit, and start focusing on solutions.

As near as I can tell, the reason that most serious long-term problems don't get resolved is because people panic last.

Panic should always be the first option when immediate action is not required. While panicking is obviously unhelpful when you have a real or proverbial gun pointed at your head, when the schedule allows, engaging in a good fear-fueled tantrum can clear the mind wonderfully. A clear mind is an important thing to have when it's time to begin making the hard decisions. It does no one any good to see the solution after the absolute worst has happened.

I hope the presidents, prime ministers, and finance ministers meeting in Washington, D.C. this weekend have at least most of one morning cleared for a primal scream session.

Like Flies to a Hot Tin Roof

Against my better judgment, I stayed up well past what has become my accustomed bedtime last night to watch the town hall debate between Barack Obama and John McCain.

While I received little reward for my heavy-lidded attentiveness to the machinations of the American presidential politics, I did hear one thing that nearly caused me to change my decision to vote for Obama come November 4.

At the 60-minute mark of the debate, following up to a follow-up response to an initial question about how America and its armed forces can serve as peacemakers around the world, Obama said this:

Now, Sen. McCain suggests that somehow, you know, I'm green behind the ears and, you know, I'm just spouting off, and he's somber and responsible.

Huh?

What?

Say again?

"Green behind the ears," really?

It bothers me when people mangle colloquial expressions. It absolutely kills me when people who would never normally utter such an expression do so in a transparent attempt to appear folksy and wind up mangling the colloquialism.

The very idea makes me swimming mad. I see blue. I juast want to tear my hair into next week.

And last night, Obama's verbal gaffe almost got me to throw the baby's bathwater into the ring.

---------

On a separate note, I had an actual real, live political candidate come to my door Monday evening. I don't know if he knocked, though, because I surprised the guy when I was getting back from walking the dog.

The candidate was obviously surprised to see me loom around the corner with Molly, but he recovered well by going into a spiel about he loved dogs and how his daughter's dog had been stolen last years.

'So you're running on a very strong anti-dognapping platform?" I asked.

"It's not on my flier, but maybe it should be," he said.

That guy just might get my vote for city council.

At a Loss for Not Losing

Album: Lemonheads, It's a Shame About Ray, 1992

Best Track: "Bit Part"

Lasting Memory: For me, listening to this album evokes feelings of complete contentedness, competence, and conviviality. This has everything to do with where I was and what I was doing when this album came out in 1992 and when I just about played my cassette copy blank throughout 1993.

For 20 of the 24 months during that two-year period, everything was right in my world. I was in my early 20s and enjoying all the extracurriculars being legal in a college town can offer. I had a steady job. I was wrapping a magnum cum laud bachelor's degree. I got to spend an entire month just driving around the United States. I even got halfway decent at shooting pool.

In short, my life back then was the exact opposite of the ones being lived by the characters in nearly all of the songs on It's a Shame About Ray, who are shiftless drug addicts, emotional cripples, and just not all that bright.

Ray features exactly two happy songs, "Rockin' Stroll," which really is about a kid being pushed in a pram, and "Kitchen," which I'm pretty sure is about having met-cute while shooting up heorin. (H/T Mixtape 4 Melfi).

"My Drug Buddy" might have counted as a happy song as well if the platonic love wasn't being directed more toward the drugs than to the person with whom lead Lemonhead Evan Dando is getting high.

"Allison's Starting to Happen" also might qualify as happy, but there's such a subtext of Allison becoming unattainable at the exact moment that she becomes interesting that I can't help but throw the song onto the sad pile.

All the rest of the tracks on Ray are stone bummers lyrically. The songs rock for the most part, but as "Bit Part" and "Rudderless" show, even things that are enjoyable in the moment are bound to have regrettable consequences. I can't tell you how many times I've thought of adopting the coda to "Rudderless" as one of my lifetime soundtrack songs. I mean, how cool and appropriate would it be to have this playing in the background of every one of my that-was-really-dumb moments:

Slipped my mind that I could use my brain
Ill stay up all night and crash on the plane

Ship without a rudder is like a ship without a rudder is
Like a ship without a rudder is like a ...

Handmaiden to addiction and stupidity, loss is also a prevailing theme on Ray. The title track is about the death of fellow junkie Dando sort of knew. The two cover songs that close the album are "Frank Mills" and "Mrs. Robinson."

Odd, then, that this album should stir such fond memories. I guess it's all about context trumping content.

Up Next: Lemonheads, Come on Feel the Lemonheads, 1993

Debatable

Anyone know the story of Chuck Wepner?

He is a long-retired heavyweight boxer who served as the inspiration for Rocky by unexpectedly lasting 15 rounds against Muhammad Ali after being inserted as a last-minute fill-in for a title fight in 1975.

I thought about Wepner quite a bit while watching Sarah Palin not embarrass herself during last night's vice presidential debate. She came in as a largely unknown and presumably overmatched contender. Despite expectation, Palin stood in and dodged just enough to make it to the final bell. She absolutely did not win. She will get a lot of credit for just not being decimated.

And fair play to Palin, even though she stated quite early in the debate that she would not be playing fair.

Asked more than once by moderator Gwen Ifill to speak directly to the question of what she would do if elected vice president, Palin said, "I'm still on the tax thing because I want to correct you on that again. And I want to let you know what I did as a mayor and as a governor. And I may not answer the questions that either the moderator or you want to hear ... ."

I understand that obfuscation and dissembling are principal tools for any politician, but can those strategies work if a politician just outright says, "I'm going to obfuscate! I'm going to dissemble"?

No. Because the audience will then spend the rest of the time listening closely for when the politician is not answering questions as asked. Playing that game of gotcha is what kept me up well past my bedtime.

The other time that Palin completely blew it was when she called for and defended deregulation of financial markets but also blamed the worldwide economic crisis on "corruption on Wall Street. And we need to stop that. Again, John McCain and I, that commitment that we have made, and we're going to follow through on that, getting rid of that corruption."

I really wish Ifill had asked Palin how she and McCain planned to punish corruption in the absence of any rules to prevent corruption.

The upshot is that I remain confirmed in my belief that Palin is unqualified for the vice presidency.

As for Biden's performance, he neither thrilled nor worried. My sister wondered on her blog what qualifies a person to be vice president. Being able to open your mouth most of the time without getting people all in a twitter seems like a baseline.

Spaceholders R Them

I won't be able to do another real post until Saturday because I have too many deadlines this week.

Here's a video that sums up my current attitude.



Boss can format his own bibliographies, far as I'm concerned.

Here's a second video.




I'm not at all miserable, but I have always enjoyed the opening lines of that Smiths' song.

How's your job treating you?