A Magical Musical Journey to ... Here?!

Words Fail

2009-07-07T06:59:00.002-04:00

I need to put the blog on indefinite hiatus.

Bereft of freelance gigs for the time being, I'm cranking out anywhere between four and seven articles for various content Web sites every day. The pay per piece is poor, so volume is key.

Either staring down a day of producing 2,000 publishable words by dawn's early light or mentally panting from the effort of having typed out 2,000 words as the sky turns reddish-orange from the sun's set, I am finding it impossible to muster the energy to type for fun and no profit.

I will eventually resume this project, edifying you at some future time on the wonderments of The Wonder Stuff and warning you away from Wilco.

Thank you for reading. Hope to be back soon.

Perfection Takes About 17 Minutes

2009-07-04T05:53:00.003-04:00

I have several Smithereens' albums queued up for the next round of posts, so I won't go into depth about what makes the band's debut EP Beauty and Sadness such a perfect distillation of the essence of power pop.

Instead, I'll just steer you to the songs themselves, link you to this rave retrospective review of the album and others, and remember at you that the cover art for Beauty and Sadness spent many years as a huge panel attached to the outside wall of the Tracks record store at Wards Corner in Norfolk, right next to the Arc of a Diver panel. I loved driving past -- and going into -- that record store.

Check out the Beauty and Sadness tracks for yourself. You'll be lad you did.

Up Next: The Smithereens, Especially for You, 1986

The Thought Counts

2009-06-29T06:29:00.003-04:00

Album: Sex Pistols, The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle, 1979 (UK Import)

Best Track: "My Way"

Lasting Memory: Two video clips always run through my mind when I think about or hear any Sex Pistols' song. The first clip is the one of Sid Vicious singing "My Way" on French television. (I actually conjure the Sid and Nancy movie scene, but here is what purports to be the original performance.)

The second mind film I always see is Johnny Rotten ending the Sex Pistols' final show in 1978 by asking a San Francisco audience, "Ever get the feeling you've been cheated?" Because, yeah, I end up feeling a little disappointed by the experience of listening to the Sex Pistols.

The band always worked much better as an idea than an act. Sex Pistols founder, producer, and manager -- but never performer -- Malcolm McLaren never made any bones about that, even naming the group's postbreakup collection of studio outtakes, hits, overseas remixes and ephemera, as well as its accompanying documentary, The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle. Just in case anyone missed the joke at their expense, the first track on the Swindle soundtrack is a spoken-word piece in which McLaren explains that he selected the members of the Sex Pistols based on the eventual members' looks (Sid), attitude (Johnny), criminal background (Steve Jones), and proximity (Glen Matlock and Paul Cook) rather than musical vision or ability.

Taking McLaren at his word, it's easy to convince yourself that the Sex Pistols were either a latter-day Monkees or a forewarning of the Spice Girls. In fact, the Pistols did produce a credible garage band version of "Stepping Stone" and a disco remix of "God Save the Queen," both of which appear on Swindle.

But then the party line on Swindle is that the story McLaren tells is highly fictionalized and self-flattering. I'm not so sure. The Sex Pistols never would have succeeded on their musicianship alone. It's more than telling when the lads try and fail to perform covers of Chuck Berry's "Johnny B Goode" and the Modern Lovers' "Road Runner," only to have Johnny Rotten ask his bandmates, "Don't we know any other fucking people's songs" before requesting, "Stop it! It's fucking awful."

Where the Sex Pistols did excel was in pushing attitude and image. "Anarchy in the U.K." was absolutely a thumb in the eye of British culture, and the song certainly hit the airwaves as a much-needed corrective to the music of the Atlanta Rhythm Section. But the sentiment of "Anarchy" is more bratty than rebellious, and for all of their wussiness, the boys in ARS were far superior musicians.

All of this is not to say that I dislike the Sex Pistols. My point is that I have to appreciate them as a concept instead of as an actual band. The Sex Pistols did inspire dozens of other groups that did channel ennui and disenfranchisement into powerful rock songs, though, and that deserves respect. Also, Sid Vicious' "My Way" is punk through and through in the way it embodies the message of the lyrics while subverting the paradigm from which the song emerged. And then a song like "Friggin' in the Riggin'" is just plain fun.

On balance, then, I'll take the Sex Pistols' legacy even as I feel, well, swindled by the band.

Up Next: The Smithereens, Beauty and Sadness, 1988 (cassette reissue)

Serenade You Like a Gentle Rain

2009-06-25T08:00:00.003-04:00

Album: Scorpions, Love at First Sting, 1984

Best Track: "Rock You Like a Hurricane"

Lasting Memory: I have promised innumerable people innumerable times that I would rock them like a hurricane simply by showing up or doing my job. I have always failed to deliver on the grandiose pledge.

So did the Scorpions on Love at First Sting.

"Bad Boys Running Wild"? More like Rum-Tum Tugger slinking through alleyways.

"The Same Thrill"? More like the same four chords I've heard in every other song you've played so far, only faster.

"Crossfire"? Maybe if I duck and cover my head, I won't be able to hear this song any longer.

But you know what? You would have to pry this album from my cold, dead boom box. I revel in the lameness and inanity. If that's a crime, lock me up and throw away the key.

Whatever auditory sins the Scorpions commit when they strive for the heavy side of metal, they more than atone for by including the powery-est of ballads like "Still Loving You" (see above) and "I'm Leaving You" on Love at First Sting. Those songs just tug at the heartstrings, or maybe someplace else.

Up Next: Sex Pistols, The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle, 1979 (UK import)

Know This Now

2009-06-23T19:20:00.007-04:00

Even when I don't post for a spell, know that

I'm still loving you.

What's the Hurry?

2009-06-21T05:57:00.003-04:00

Album: Rush, Moving Pictures, 1981 (dub)

Best Track: "The Camera Eye"

Lasting Memory: Rush's Moving Pictures was the third album I ever bought with own money. It's probably among the first five acquisitions of every man who matches my demographic of 40, paunching and white. Sometimes it's good to be part of the gang.

It is always great to hear "The Camera Eye," Rush's 10-minute rock ode to rock opuses. Jam bands like Phish and Rusted Root could learn a lot from studying "The Camera Eye" (or Rush's other masterwork "YYZ," for that matter). The song never hurries, but it also never meanders. "The Camera Eye" is, for my money, the tightest 10 minutes in rock 'n' roll.

Of course, Rush did not have a hit with "The Camera Eye." Where Canada's answer to Yes made its splash was with the one-two punch of Moving Picture's "Limelight" and "Tom Sawyer." Both tales of alienation -- the former through fame and the latter through, apparently, sociopathy -- practically compelled the suburban adolescents of the early '80s to run to their local record shops and fork over $7.99 for Moving Pictures. Why these songs still hold such appeal for me and millions of other classic rock radio fans is probably speculation left unspeculated.

What I will cop to is that I'd dearly love to jump in MP's fabled "Red Barchetta," crank up the "Spirit of Radio," and "Fly by Night" out of the "Subdivisions" and get "Closer to the Heart." Even though not all those songs are on Moving Pictures. But you know what I'm saying.

Up Next: Scorpions, Love at First Sting, 1984

Stones Soup

2009-06-19T11:33:00.004-04:00

Album: The Rolling Stones, Gigantes del Pop, 1982

Best Track: "Get Off of My Cloud"

Lasting Memory: This exceedingly eclectic collection of Rolling Stones songs produced for the Spanish market includes the band's cover of "Not Fade Away." I have always loved that song. So have dozens of other people judging by the no-doubt partial list of covers appearing on Wikipedia. In fact, the "Not Fade Away" has been covered so many times so faithfully that I almost always forget that Buddy Holly and the Crickets performed the song first and best.

But I'll resist trying to get back into my go-nowhere rant about the Rolling Stones being a covers band (see below) to gape at the jukebox-style discography of the band's volume of the Gigantes del Pop series:

Side A
Carol
(Get Your Kicks On) Route 66
Fortune Teller
I Wanna Be Your Man
Poison Ivy
Not Fade Away
(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction
Get Off My Cloud

Side B
Jumpin' Jack Flash
Connection
All Sold Out
Citadel
Parachute Woman
Live With Me
Honky Tonk Women

Now that's what I call olio!

But you know what? It works.

The Stones installment of Gigantes del Pop comes nowhere close to qualifying as a greatest hits compilation, or even a hits collection. It sure does present a comprehensive overview of the best years of the band's career, though. Hell, throw "Sympathy for the Devil," "Dead Flowers," and "Miss You" on the album, and call it day for what you need to know about the Stones' influence and legacy.

Good job anonymous Spanish song licensing negotiator.

Up Next: Rush, Moving Pictures, 1981 (dub)

Following in Footsteps

2009-06-17T08:26:00.005-04:00

Album: The Rolling Stones, Stone Age, 1971 (cassette reissue)

Best Track: "Paint It Black"

Lasting Memory: This past weekend while hanging out with some friends who are way more into music then I am, I went off on a rant about how the Rolling Stones stole their shtick wholesale from underrecognized American bluesmen and R&B acts. Suspecting I was being unfair I gave myself a few days to back off from that observation. And I will, a little bit.

Certainly several songs on the singles and studio outtakes compilation Stone Age are true originals. "Paint It Black" and "As Tears Go By" stand out and stand up as worthy contributions to the rock canon from Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. But then there are the too-faithful covers of songs like "My Girl" and "The Spider and the Fly" that make me wonder if the Stones did anything more creative than Pat Boone did when he had the hit with "Tutti Frutti" rather than Little Richard.

Having thought on this longer than probably necessary, I'll give the Stones credit for being artists rather than appropriators. For one thing, the Stones always called attention to the sources of their material, and it may well be the case that far fewer people would ever have heard "It's All Over Now," for instance, had the Stones not recorded the Bobby and Shirley Womack song.

Second, and something I only learned this morning, the Stones had no intention of making their career on the work of others. The band didn't want their versions of "My Girl" and the like released on album. So good on them for that.

Shame I had to waste that rant, though. I'll just have to wait and see what else I can get myself work up about.

Up Next: The Rolling Stones, Gigantes del Pop, 1982

Les Is Most

2009-06-10T06:58:00.021-04:00

Happy belated birthday to Les Paul, who for all intents and purposes invented the electric guitar. Mr. Paul turned 94 yesterday, and he is shown seated here (in a video I tried to load directly all damn day) playing a duet with Chet Atkins.

Check out a minibiography of Les Paul here.

Since my original idea for this post was an epic fail, I'll salvage something by posting the following story about an idea that spiral into unimagined success.

I wrote this history of the spirograph for a pittance for a Web site called eHow. The Web site dictates the slightly awkward format Enjoy.

++++

Spirograph History

First sold in England in the spring of 1965, more than 100 million Spirograph kits have been sold worldwide. The overlapping spiral designs created by clipping pens into interlocked gears and moving the pens appeared widely in late 1960s art and fashion and have entertained children and adults for more than four decades.

The Inventor
Denys Fisher invented the Spirograph during the summer of 1963. Born in Leeds, England, on May 11, 1918, Fisher studied at Leeds University but left before receiving a degree to develop machinery for his family’s lubrication firm, Kingfisher Ltd.

Building on work with fine springs he began at Kingfisher, Fisher formed his own company in 1960 and quickly landed a NATO contract to design components for canon shell detonators.

Fisher offered the first Spirographs for sale through a Leeds department store in March 1965, in a box reading “Pattern drawing by revolving stencils.” Spirographs began selling quickly after being featured on the UK children’s program Blue Peter.

Although Fisher’s toy company, appropriately named Denys Fisher Toys, got out of the Spirograph business within four years, Fisher continued consulting on the development of his creation until late in his life. Fisher died Sept. 17, 2002, in Furness.

The Idea
Fisher developed an interest in mathematics and geometric patterns known as hypocycloids, in particular, when a childhood illness confined him to bed with the text An Elementary Course on the Infinitesimal Calculus by Horace Lamb.

The Web site WolframMathworld defines a hypocycloid as “the curve produced by a fixed point on the circumference of a small circle … rolling around the inside of a larger circle.” Less technically, the Pittsburgh Steelers helmet logo includes three hypocycloids.

Fisher began his work on perfecting a way to draw hypocycloids by trying to improve upon machines developed during the 1800s. According to Fisher’s memoriam in the October 26, 2002, TimesOnline, Fisher “was listening to Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, and as the choral movement ended he had a vision: the new device would be made out of a series of perforated plastic cog-wheels and racks.”

Early Success
The Spirograph became the largest-selling toy in the United Kingdom in the same year it was introduced. The drawing kit, which Fisher had originally conceived of as a draftsman’s tool, also took honors as the leading UK educational toy for 1965, 1966 and 1967.

The Kenner company introduced the Spirograph to the United States market in 1996, and the kit became the top U.S. toy in 1967. Kenner took full control of the Spirograph brand in 1970.

Cultural Impact
TimesOnline characterized the “trippy, floral” Spirograph patterns as “ideally suited to the era of psychedelia and flower power.” During the late 1960s and early 1970s, Spirographic images appeared on items ranging from evening gowns and op art prints to lampshades and Christmas cards.

Hasbro
Hasbro acquired Kenner in 1991, taking control of the Spirograph brand. The latest version of the toy, Spirograph Deluxe, features seven gears, a gear template, a drawing template, a pen and paper.

A True Musical Artifact

2009-06-08T09:41:00.004-04:00

Album: Martin Roach, If We were Up Your Ass You'd Know Who We Were, 1990

Best Tracks: Every damn one of the six.

Lasting Memory: I was weighing relating how this group took its name from a longtime Virginia Tech student radio program manager who was a self-proclaimed "party cow." Then I was thinking about telling about how in awe of these guys I was that I found it hard to serve them during my brief, ill-fated stint as waitron at Buddy's in Blacksburg.

After writing about either of those things, I was going to share with all the awesomeness of all the songs on If We Were Up Your Ass You'd Know Who We Were. But I found out this morning that the band Martin Roach, in addition to not being up either my ass or yours, is nowhere to be found on the Web.

What a loss. All I've got is an extremely homemade cassette -- the tape is Memorex, and the insert is photocopied and handcut 80-weight coverstock -- the memories that liner note names like George Wade, Mookie, and Howard Petruziello of Rock 105 evoke. If I had the technology, I'd digitize and upload all of the following myself:

Cheeseworld
Dad
Send Me
Eliot's Dog
Buckle Down
Stick Up

I do not have the technology. Should I ever acquire the technology, I'll revisit this post and get Martin Roach the Web archive they deserve.

Anybody else out there have a band from back in the day who they loved and now can't share with anyone else?

Up Next: The Rolling Stones, Stone Age, 1971 (cassette reissue)

An Old Gray Lady

2009-06-07T07:12:00.003-04:00

One of my goals for today is to read the local paper I have delivered to my house every morning cover to cover. It is now a little after 7 am, and I am extremely pleased to report that I am least 80 percent of the way toward achieving that goal. As I noted when first starting this blog, my goals tend to be very modest.

Reading the Virginian-Pilot, though, is an important part of what I consider to be my daily routine. First, it seems like if I don't, no one else will. The leading media story for the past six months has been that printed newspapers are quickly going the way of the mullet -- rarely seen nowadays and never appreciated in a proper fashion.

You shouldn't feel obligated to thank me. I'm no hero. I'm just a guy who truly enjoys the whole act of newspaper reading. I love the feel of newsprint, and don't get me started on the subject of folding and smoothing and refolding. Plus, I find that I absorb and analyze information most easily when it is presented in an ink-on-paper format. A lot of that has to do with the tactile nature of newspaper reading. A well-accepted learning theory posits that people process information when more than one nondistracting sense is engaged. That is, holding a book or newspaper is conducive to learning, while listening to the radio while driving or watching television while talking on the phone are not.

I took a several days off this past week because for the first time in several months, I could. For me, "time off" means time off from everything. I still walked the dog, ate, and watched a whole lot television and Youtube videos. I also caught up on all my Onion A.V. Club reading while listening to NPR. If you can find a more accurate description of what being white, suburban, middle class and middle aged with pretensions toward maintaining hipster status and achieving intellectualism, you use it!

What I did not do while taking time off was blog (obviously), attend to incoming mail, vacuum, or read the Virginian-Pilot. Three of those "nots" make me lazy. The last made me noticeably ignorant. I can't tell you what the City Council did last week, though I'm sure it would have made me angry. I can't describe what dementedly ingenious new ways the Washington Nationals employed to lose games, though I'm sure the latest installments of this seasonlong Baseball Bloopers audition reel would have left me amusedly amazed. I can't even remark knowledgeably about how Family Circus maintained its Ripken-like decadeslong record of sucking, though I'm sure the streak remains intact.

I know the world is none the worse for me not knowing these things, but I also feel dumber for not knowing them. I got back to work a little unwillingly yesterday, and I'm re-adding the Virginian-Pilot to my to do list today. My next post should be markedly better informed.

A Fine Line

2009-05-30T13:18:00.007-04:00

Album: Lou Reed, Mistrial, 1985

Best Track: "The Original Wrapper"

Lasting Memory: On the rare ocassion that I play Mistrial, I'm always reminded of how cool Lou Reed used to be. On this last paly through, I was struck by how fine a line there is between awesome and awful.

Sure, everyone knows there is a thin line between love and hate, just as there is a fine line between clever and stupid. But note how one of the following rules, while the other drools.

All of Mistrial drools. Especially "The Original Wrapper," which, unfortunately, is the best song on Mistrial. "No Money Down" and "I Remember You" aren't the worst sonic crimes ever committed, but they aren't especially good, either.

In the title track of this album, Lou Reed pleads for a mistrial to clear his name. If I were the judge in such a case, I'd uphold the original judgment against Reed and order him to play nothing but his hits from the 1960s and early 1970s. You know, when he he the very model of a modern major heroin addict.

"Original Wrapper" and "Wild Side" aren't so different in sound and tructure, but one rocks while one blows. Can there be any explanation other than the reduction in Reed's drug usage?

Up Next: Martin Roach, If We Were Up Your Ass You'd Know Who We Were, 1990

I'd Procrstinate, But What's the Rush?

2009-05-26T09:00:00.006-04:00

The less I have to do, the more likely I am to put off doing it.

Declutter Your House

I cannot be alone in this, but I probably surpass practically every other person when it comes to lacking the motivation to do something unless it needs to be done now. Or even better, yesterday.

While this procrastinatory proclivity ill suits someone of whose greatest professional responsibility is to meet deadlines, I have in all but two notable occasions been able to bestir myself in time enough to complete assignments in enough time. Which is why I am much too comfortable typing out this blog post on Tuesday morning instead of working on a handful of one-hour projects that are each due by close of business this coming Friday.

Understand, I am no daredevil. Nor am I under any delusion that I "work better under pressure." The simple truth is that I tend not to work at all unless I'm forced by circumstances to do so. This is why I have tried to keep myself consistently overcommitted for the past year and a half. This is also why my television goes months at a time without being dusted. Most to the point, this is why Thursday and Friday will be quite busy for me.

Self-actualization is purportedly the highest psychological achievement for humans. I wonder what Maslow would say about someone who has come to accept slothfulness, bears no hard feelings toward slackness, and has figured out how to meet deadlines consistently with seconds to spare.

All Their Songs Are Sad

2009-05-24T06:42:00.004-04:00

Album: R.E.M., Automatic for the People, 1992

Best Track: "Nightswimming"

Lasting Memory: The first time I watched the video for "Everybody Hurts," the second or third single off of Automatic for the People, I was convinced that it was the saddest thing I had ever seen. That first impression, as so often happens, was mistaken. I now know this to be the saddest thing I've seen. Followed closely by this.

The "Everybody Hurts" video is right up there on the list of sad artworks, though. That first viewing, in a hotel room about 20 miles west of Knoxville, Tenn., on the night of the first and longest day's drive of a 28-day sojourn through the south and central parts of America with my sister Clair, was like taking a punch to the solar plexus. Every song on Automatic is pretty emotionally raw, which goes a long toward placing the album in the ranks of great art. To quote the immortal G.K. Chesterton out of context but in support of the axiom that sad equals good,

His harp was carved and cunning,
His sword prompt and sharp,
And he was gay when he held the sword,
Sad when he held the harp.

For the great Gaels of Ireland
Are the men that God made mad,
For all their wars are merry,
And all their songs are sad.
(The Ballad of the White Horse, 1911)

I mean, who doesn't love themselves some "Greensleeves" or "Danny Boy" or "Come on Eileen"? Irish eyes aren't smiling, dammit. They're misting.

So were R.E.M.'s, obviously, when they threw together an album that included two heartfelt tributes to Andy Kaufman, a retrospective piece on Montgomery Clift, several cry-it-out-and-move-on message songs, and the most wistful song about lost youth committed to tape by any rock band since Traffic gifted the world with "Low Spark of High Heeled Boys" in 1971.

Automatic opens with the morose "Drive," which, as all rock songs should, employs the road as a metaphor for life. The album closes with "Find the River," which substitute a waterway for a highway and gently implies that listeners can get clean by returning to where they once went swimming at night.

While driving, you're bound to hurt when your personal hero -- be he a sidewinder or a man on the moon -- pulls off on the great exit to the sky far to soon. And when someone you admire gets a raw deal, that can make you catch your breath. But don't dwell. Sweetness follows.

Up Next: Lou Reed, Mistrial, 1986

An Album Too Far

2009-05-22T06:44:00.004-04:00

Album: R.E.M., Green, 1988

Best Track: "You Are the Everything"

Lasting Memory: During the week before Green was released in September 1988, MTV engaged in an absolutely over-the-top promotional campaign for the album and for R.E.M. that, in retrospect, appeared specifically designed to Def Leppard's yearlong stranglehold on the number-one spot on the Top 20 video countdown. The 6 pm EDT Monday world premier of the video for "Orange Crush" was teased several times each hour. The band was interviewed repeatedly. Kurt Loder all but ordered every viewer to camp out on the sidewalk outside their nearest record store so they could purchase Green as soon as it was uncrated.

I complied. Kurt Loder is not a man you want to cross. When the last time you heard anything from Tabitha Soren?

Shame, then, that Green is such a mediocre album. Despite producing the great-when-you-first-hear-it-but-poke-your-own-eardrums-out-on-the-fourth-listen hit "Stand," fails to make much of any impression at all, good or bad.

For listeners willing to focus, "You Are the Everything" and "The Wrong Child" can be sweetly and melancholicly moving, respectively, but it's easy to zone out on both songs because of they are embedded in such a mire. It was probably inevitable that R.E.M. would put out a relatively weak album in 1988, especially since the band had been touring nonstop and releasing a studio record every year since 1983.

The band recovered its fastball later, and it was welcome relief in the fall of 1988 to finally have videos to watch that were not "Pour Some Sugar on Me," but my copy of Green has spent all but a couple of days of the past 21 years in its tape box slot for a very good reason -- it's not great.

Back to box, Green.

Up Next: R.E.M., Automatic for the People, 1992

The One Positive

2009-05-19T13:27:00.009-04:00

My official period of underemployment has begun. The one positive in this situation is that I can honestly report

Or I will be for most of Wednesday.

I haven't had any proper time off from work in months. It is only minisculely overstating the case to report that since January 1, if I've been awake, I've been working in one way or the other. This leads me to hope two things. First, I hope I haven't forgotten how to enjoy time doing nothing. Second, I hope I'm busy again very soon.

Line Readings

2009-05-18T09:23:00.004-04:00

Album: R.E.M., Dead letter Office, 1987

Best Track: "Bandwagon"

Lasting Memory: Dead Letter Office features one of my all-time top-10 favorite songs, "Bandwagon." I'd actually forgotten that until yesterday, which was the first time I had listened to the album in going on 20 years. What I have never driven from my mind through either the acquisition of new knowledge or the thorough washing of gallons upon gallons of Irish whiskey and American beer is this liner note regarding the last song on DLO, "Walter's Theme"/"King of the Road":

I suppose if we had any shame we would have never allowed this little gem to see the light of day. This was recorded at the very end of a long alcohol soaked day, and I can barely remember cutting it. This first part was an attempt at writing a commercial for Walter's Bar-B-Q. The second part is King of the Road, kind of. If there was any justice in the world, Roger Miller should be able to sue for what we did to this song.

R.E.M. guitarist peter Buck wrote -- even signed -- that statement included on the cassette insert by of explaning how and why the conjoined songs wound up on DLO, which was a contract-fulfilling final Island recording that cleared R.E.M. to switch labels to Warner Brothers. Buck annotated each of the outtakes and (mostly) Velvet Underground covers that make up DLO's discography, and all the notes are classics of insightful concision.

For instance, regarding "Burning Hell," Buck observed

Sometimes you write a song without even trying. Sometimes those songs are the very best ones. That's not quite the case with this one however.

Outtake from Fables of the Reconstruction.

Buck was also maybe too honest about the cover of Pylon's "Crazy":

A song by Pylon. I remember hearing their version on the radio the day that Chronic Town came out and being suddenly depressed by how much better it was than our record.

Outtake from Fables of the Reconstruction.

As the model for delivering recorded music moves away from the use of physical media, the loss of liner notes is inevitable. When there is no longer a vinyl LP, cassette, or CD, there can no longer be a sleeve or insert that captures the identities of all the contributing musicians and whatever 1,00 words or less thoughts an artist wants to share with listeners. And that strikes me as more than shame.

To my way of thinking, liner notes have several advantages over Web sites, blogs, and MyFriendsterFaceSpaceBook pages. First, liner notes are permanent and frozen in time. Written in the moment and at the end of what were often long and stressful recording sessions, liner notes compelled artists to share information that would stand the test of time. But since they were written then, that information could be subject to dramatically different readings years or decades later. You know, like a book.

Liner notes also forced artists to write short and edit. Infinitely to Buck's credit, the liner notes for DLO are exactly the opposite of Fred Durst's apparently dormant blog.

The last and best thing about liner notes was that they only let listeners as far inside the artist's head and work as the artist allowed. Now that literally everything can be learned about an artist by someone with Web access and too much time to kill, there is no real distance been musicians and audiences. It has become impossible to truly idolize anyone anymore because it is inevitable you will learn that he or she had an unfortunate incident on an airplane, for instance.

I'm with Aerosmith on this one. Toys should be kept in attics.

Up Next: R.E.M., Green, 1988

When Good Things Happen to Great Bands

2009-05-16T07:34:00.003-04:00

Album: R.E.M., Document, 1987

Best Track: "It's the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine)"

Lasting Memory: As I wrote a long time ago, I saw R.E.M. in concert in 1987, when the band was touring in support of Document. While the boys from Athens were largely outshone as a live act by their Atlanta-based opening act Drivin' n' Cryin', R.E.M. did deliver for me my first lighter-waving moment.

It is such a cliche to wave lighters overhead when a band slips into its iconic power ballad that it can only be done ironically now -- and with cell phones.

Twenty-two years ago, standing on a basketball court, listening to "King of Birds," I would have raised my lighter high if I'd had one. I was already swaying like a mofo, and I may even have gotten a lump in my throat. I couldn't have told you then what the song was about, and I can't tell you now, but dang if "King of Birds" doesn't still grab me and make me all emotional and shit.

Document grabbed many millions of people. The Mrs. Now quatrain "The One I Love" broke R.E.M. into the Billboard Top 10, and the apocalyptic party anthem "It's the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine)" secured R.E.M.'s promotion from "120 Minutes" poster boy to MTV after school staple.

The other thing Document did was set a rigid template for every subsequent R.E.M. album. It's a great template. Don't knock the template. But also recognize that every post-Document recorded document from R.E.M. contains precisely the same mix of mild political protest, quasi-electronica noodling, and sunshiny pop with a dark core. Further, almost all the later songs sound like slight variations of ones on Document.

By 1987, no band deserved superstardom more than R.E.M., and I'm glad the band got its due. R.E.M. just maybe didn't deserve its due for Document. Even though Time.com lists Document as one of the greatest albums of all time (only American, English, and Irish acts need apply), there is a strong case to be made that Document is only the fourth or fifth best album in R.E.M.'s own catalog. It is certainly not seminal in the way 1983's Murmur was, nor is it iconic in the way 1991's Out of Time would become.

Still, there is not even the faintest whiff of the sell out about Document. It's not as if R.E.M. completely changed its sound and look just so the band could enjoy some chart success. So, good on them.

Up Next: R.E.M., Dead Letter Office, 1987

A Modest Proposal

2009-05-13T08:56:00.004-04:00

According to estimates made public late yesterday, Medicare and Social Security are going bankrupt sooner rather than later. A commentator on today's NPR Morning Edition said that securing the financial viability of these federal safety net programs would be as simple as noticeably raising payroll taxes or substantially lowering payments to beneficiaries.

I believe I have a better idea. Legalize narcotics and encourage people to use them in copious amounts. Get preteens smoking cigarettes again. Convince everyone that Jerry Springer-guest fat really is where it's at. Lift all speed limits and remove seat belts, airbags, and child seats from cars. Do away with most environmental and food safety regulations.

The underlying problem with Medicare and Social Security is that too many damn people are sticking around long enough to collect benefits. When president Franklin Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act into law in 1935, eligibility began at age 60 and the average life expectancy for Americans born in 1900 was just longer than 47 years. Ah, the good old days of promises the government didn't have to keep.

But even more than that, it seems like everyone has just lost their interest in doing right by society by checking out early. Anymore, no one seems willing to ignore that lump. Fewer and fewer people want to do their civic duty and not call 911 after that chain saw accident.

So here's the choice: Pay more and get less or work to keep people out of the pool. But, you know, only those people who aren't related to me. And certainly not my friends and aquaintenances. All of those people deserve every cent the government can spend and more.

Once Through This Portal, There Is No Return

2009-05-09T05:24:00.004-04:00

Album: R.E.M., Life's Rich Pageant, 1986

Best Track: "I Believe"

Lasting Memory: A good portion of every paycheck I got from every job I worked in high school was spent on cassettes. No sooner would I have deposited my $167 for 80 hours of labor, then I'd be at the mall record store spending about a quarter of that money on magnetized cellophane encased in plastic.

I don't want to give myself too much credit, but I think it's fair to say that I was the fuel that drove the engine of the mid-1980s American music industry. Without my weekly contributions of 30 or 40 bucks, the whole system of rock 'n' roll would have come crashing down and the world would never have been able to basic in the sonic wonders of big stars like White Lion and Pebbles.

Being unschooled in the ways of art and unable to appreciate the true awesomeness of such radio staples, however, I always opted to spend my hard-won cash on album's like R.E.M.'s Life's Rich Pageant. I should probably feel foolish -- if not outright ashamed -- to this day for making such choices, but the ear's heart wants what it wants.

R.E.M. in 1986 was a year and an album away from scoring a Top 40 radio and MTV hit, but they were on the cusp of breaking big with Pageant in terms of both sales and sound. In fact, I could not listen to Pageant just now without being struck by how transitional most of the songs on the album are. Pageant stands as the collection where R.E.M. made the switch from Southern Gothic bar band to arena rockers.

The change was not entirely unwelcome, but it was sharp and sudden. In sentiment, lyrical content, and tonality, there is little enough difference between Murmur's "Sitting Still" and Pageant's "I Believe," but the execution of the two songs couldn't be more different. Whereas "Sitting Still" is raucous, "I Believe" is ROCKous. The former is fun, the latter is big.

R.E.M. was obviously swinging for the fences on Pageant, and why the first single off the album, "Fall on Me," wasn't the band's first huge hit is anyone's guess. "These Days," "Hyena," and "Just a Touch" also wrap up the jangle thing on which R.E.M. had made its name in listener-friendly packages that radio programmers largely ignored for reasons known only to themselves.

The problem, if it can be so named, with R.E.M.'s turn to the rock mainstream is that once they put themselves on that path, they could never turn back. From the moment the opening chords of "I Believe" were first written in 1985, it was inevitable that "What's the Frequency, Kenneth" would be written in 1993. R.E.M. had perfected the formula for creating noisy crowd pleasers, and they weren't going to abandon that formula.

To quote some of the band's "I Believe" lyrics back at them,

... practice, practice makes perfect
Perfect is a fault
And fault lines change

Fault lines never return to their original shape, however. Without hating the latter-day version, I miss the old R.E.M. Good thing, then, that I held on to my cassettes.

Up Next: R.E.M., Document, 1987

It's Kind of a Concept

2009-05-06T08:45:00.003-04:00

Album: R.E.M., Fables of the Reconstruction, 1985

Best Track: "Life and How to Live It"

Lasting Memory: I harbored delusions of rock stardom for exactly 19 years too long. Which is why, at age 19, I toyed with the idea of joining a college friend's cover band as a singer. Specifically, this friend wanted to perform a lot of R.E.M. songs.

I pretty much already knew at that time that I couldn't carry a tune in a bucket, but trying to master the vocal stylings of Michael Stipe and Mike Mills ultimately shamed me into giving up my never-started music career.

If you need to be similarly disabused of your dreams, try singing "Maps and Legends" or "Driver 8" off of R.E.M.'s Fables of the Reconstruction. If you think you have succeeded, you are either lying to yourself, or you are Michael or Mike. If the latter is the case, how you guys doing?

R.E.M. didn't record Fables to crush my groove, of course. Rather, it appears the band's intent was to construct something very much a like a concept album about living in the last days of antebellum Georgia. Peopled with characters such as "Old Man Kensey" and "Wendell Gee," the world of Fables is very much one Flannery O'Connor would recognized.

All the residents are barely harmless madmen like the real-life person whose tale is told in the album standout "Life and How to Live It." In a story that I can't remember why I heard but which I will never forget, Michael Stipe once explained that "Life and How to Live It" was the title of a self-published book Stipe found hundreds of copies of while helping neighbors clean out the house of a recently deceased, familyless other neighbor.

The book, discovered in the basement of a house divided exactly down the middle and having different sets of furniture and clothing in each half, explained that the best thing a person could do to remain sane was live as one person for six months or so, and then live as a completely different person for the next period of time.

To borrow the lyrics of another one of Fable's songs, "Maybe these maps and legends have been misunderstood." But then again, "the power lines have floaters so the airplanes wont get snagged."

Driving home the concept that Fables was aimed at expressing, the original album cover -- not the one shown above -- was printed in such a way that the title could be read as either Fables of the Reconstruction or as Reconstruction of the Fables. Then the band throws a reinterpretation of "Green Grow the Rushes," which describes the collapse of the agriculture-based economy of the rural South, onto the album. Then the band throws the original "Auctioneer (Another Engine)," which describes the collapse of the dual ties to the people and the land alongside the increasing difficulty of escaping from either, onto the album.

The world of Fables was a weird and depressing place, much like most of the American South in the century and change following the Civil War. Good thing, then, that Georgians have finally put their Confederate legacy to rest and fully emerged as the model of twenty-first century citizens of the world who are not at all haunted by their past.

Up Next: R.E.M., Life's Rich Pageant, 1986

And Then for Something Completely Different

2009-05-05T07:45:00.004-04:00

Album: R.E.M., Murmur, 1983 (dub)

Best Track: "Catapult"

Lasting Memory: Arranged chronologically from 1981 through 1985, the record of my album acquisitions would start strongly with the Who's The Kids Are Alright and quickly reach the nadir of Twisted Sister's Stay Hungry. Taping R.E.M.'s Murmur off a friend's dubbed copy of Murmur during the fall of my freshman year of high school righted my musical ship.

In fact, listening to Murmur was a downright conversion experience. I taped the R.E.M. album over my up-to-then revered copy of J. Giels Band's Showtime. Also, as near as I can figure, the only cheesy heavy metal album I bought for the first time after 1984 was Triumph's greatest hits compilation Classics. Still can't get enough "Fight the Good Fight," even to this day. But that's a post for another day.

What is most cromulent now is that there was something about the sound of R.E.M.'s music that grabbed me pretty much instantly and never let go. That reads stupid, I know. All music sounds, but what I'm trying to convey is that the strained-almost-to-breaking jangle and nearly indecipherable not-quite-high-lonesome vocals appealed to me in a way that no other music ever really had.

R.E.M. was my gateway to the contemporary urban folk of artists like Billy Bragg, the traditional country of titans like George Jones, and yet-to-be fusioned alt country of bands like Uncle Tupelo. And R.E.M. was so much unlike any other band being played on the radio in the early 1980s that the music it made, for all any high schoolers knew in those pre-Internet days, constituted a genre unto itself.

Of course, it bears mentioning, as someone who I can no longer identify accurately did decades ago, that no album has ever been more accurately titled than Murmur. Without looking them up, just try to figure out all the lyrics to "Radio Free Europe" or "Shaking Through."

But don't they sound great?

Even greater sounding, to me anyway, are "Perfect Circle" and "Catapult," in which the pretty nonsensical lyrics are reasonably audible. Maybe the inverse property applies, meaning R.E.M.'s lyrics make more sense the harder they are to understand. I'll never know because I truly enjoy the murmuring. It's very comforting, especially when heard coming off my 27-year-old third-generation dubbed cassette and through the impossibly cheap speakers of my 19-year-old mini boom box.

Two other standout tracks off the truly seminal debut full-length album that is Murmur are "Laughing" and "West of These Fields." I've no further insights on the songs, but in chasing down the video links, I found myself marvelling at what advanced sound board recording and stage videotaping setups R.E.M. had when they were first starting out. The boys from Athens, Ga., must have know from the beginning that they would be one of the biggest bands in the world.

Time and events proved them were correct, but the presumption seems a little, well, presumptuous.

Up Next: R.E.M. Fables of the Reconstruction, 1985

Up From Under

2009-05-04T07:38:00.005-04:00

Ol' Gil is comin' back. Cha cha cha ...

Last week, I copyedited the equivalent of two scholarly books -- more than 400 pages in all, with extensive bibliographies, tables, figures, and footnotes. Plus, the two sets of manuscripts used different editorial styles.

The week before last wasn't much better workload-wise.

But by noon today, my desk will be clear. WHEW! It'll be nice for a while to not have to work 14-hour days. That written, if you have projects that start after May 15, I'm available.

Expect regular-ish postings to resume tomorrow. In honor of my reentry into the world of the worldly, here's a video:

(H/T Joe Guse)

The Bass Is Base

2009-04-18T09:06:00.003-04:00

Album: R.E.M., Chronic Town, 1982

Best Song: "Stumble"

Lasting Memory: Early R.E.M. was a revelation--a bolt of Americana lightning from a clear blue sky.

So, of course, I didn't pick up the band's 1982 debut EP until 1988, and even only then under duress. I'm always late to the party, and I only arrive after having taken a wrong turn.

An hour after I won my high school's local league heavyweight wrestling crown, my family car stalled out while I was driving home from the tournament. Stranded a dozen miles from my home and in the parking lot of one of Tidewater's foremost music stores, Tracks at Ward's Corner, I called my dad and headed for the $1.99 cassette bin.

Purchasing R.E.M.'s Chronic Town was my true victory of that late February day. I am pleased that I earned a sports title to add to my lifetime resume, and I'm grateful to this day that my father was willing to drive out and rescue me. But I'm karmicly indebted to that shitty Ford Fairlane for forcing me to be in a position to pick up Chronic Town.

Of all of R.E.M.'s 14 albums, Chronic Town is my favorite because it is both charmingly unpolished and a précis on what the band from Athens, Ga., would go on to accomplish.

It bears noting--which I will fail to do in the course of my next seven posts--that what R.E.M. went on to accomplish was taking over the world by making the U.S. airwaves safe for alternative music.

The open secret to R.E.M.'s success is that, following the Who and sometimes the Kinks, lead singer Michael Stipe and guitarist Peter Buck allowed bassist Mike Mills to take the rhythm and melody lines of the band's songs. This not-exactly innovation makes "Wolves, Lower" and "Carnival of Sorts (Box Cars) " instant classics.

It also helps to sell R.E.M.'s music when the vocals are mixed way below the instruments. The band would break from this style dramatically on the album that inevitably made me fall out of love with the group whose drummer used to be Bill Berry.

But, good grief, who could resist the siren call of the half-Byrds and half-Velvet Underground anthem that is "Stumble"?

Up Next: R.E.M., Murmur, 1983

Dude, We Call That "Therapy"

2009-04-17T07:48:00.003-04:00

Yesterday, the world learned that an admitted Al Qaeda leader is terrified of caterpillars.

Having an unnatural and highly mockable aversion to moths myself, I could almost relate. That is, I was semiprepared to spare Abu Zubaydah the tiniest bit of fellow feeling until I also learned that he considered it torturous to be placed in a small room with an arthropod.

Dude, that's not torture. That is desensitization therapy.

I also found myself questioning Zubaydah's choice of career and the lifestyle it imposed on him. As an al Quaeda operative, the man was required to spend a majority of his time in caves, swamps, desserts and many other places that were absolutely crawling with insects.

If this terrorist was truly terrified of bugs, wouldn't he have been much happier doing anything else than rising through the ranks of al Qaeda? If Zubaydah can't act in his own best interest, he gets no sympathy from me. He should be made to lay in his own bedbugs.

In fact, if you want to send some bad vibes Zubaydah's way, go here and think in his direction. Your country has pledged not to prosecute you for your service.

What's in a Name?

2009-04-14T15:46:00.003-04:00

Album: Rancid, Let's Go, 1994

Best Track: Pick 'em

Worst Track: Pick 'em

Lasting Memory: In early 1994, I saw Blacksburg, Virginia's own Pietasters play live for the first time. Instantly, I was a ska kid. A nearly 25-year-old ska kid, but, man, I was hooked. I set about buying every ska-related album I could afford, which was about one every two months.

Rancid's Let's Go was acquired during this saddest, slowest record-buying frenzy ever, and it didn't disappoint. Let's Go is as close to a ska punk template as anything anyone could name. None of the songs are absolute classics, but a couple are pretty darn good, particularly "Sidekick" and "St. Mary." Also, and this is a huge accomplishment for any punk band, none of the songs on Let's Go are awful. "Name" and "I Am the One" aren't great, mind you, but they are tolerable enough.

If motivated and at leisure to take the time to do so, I could probably describe exactly why some of these songs sound appealing and other less so. But I'll let myself off the hook with the observation that the band's music doesn't not live up to or down to its name. There is nothing rancid about this album.

What really sold Let's Go when it was released in 1994 was Rancid's history of being composed of several members of the seminal band Operation Ivy. What sells Let's Go in 2009 is the knowledge that Rancid would release an album titled Out Come the Wolves ... that is loaded with great songs and which I sold my copy of in 2000 to get beer money.

Selling possessions for beer money, now that's punk.

Up Next: R.E.M., Chronic Town, 1982

Rejoice! He Is Fabricated

2009-04-13T07:42:00.003-04:00

Lego Jesus Loves You

He just wants everyone to fit together.

The Sum of One Fear

2009-04-10T11:53:00.004-04:00

Inspired by an Onion AV Club feature on childhood scares, wanting to weasel out of doing a by-this-blog's-rules post on the pretty mediocre Ramones album Brain Drain that spans the audioscape from heavy to metal, and feeling appropriately confessional on Good Friday, I'm posting this video

and admitting that there is a scene in the 1989 film Pet Semetary that still creeps me the eff out. It's when the sick woman suddenly sits up in bed. Having exposed myself to it again, I may not sleep for a week. Enjoy, if you dare.

Up Next: Rancid, Let's Go, 1994

P.S. Fred Gwynne was a fascinating, immensely talented man. If you ever get a chance to watch his Biography Channel biography, do so. It will be time well spent.

Inspiring Words From an Inspired Band

2009-04-08T10:02:00.003-04:00

Facing serious underemployment in exactly three weeks and two days, I find myself in the ironic situation of having a ridiculous amount of work to deliver on deadline before the end of April.

It'll take a miracle to meet my deadlines. It may well take another miracle to quickly and fully replace the income I'll be losing come May 1. Fortunately, like the Ramones, I believe in miracles.

Wish me luck storming the castle.

Own Your Onus

2009-04-04T08:33:00.004-04:00

Album: Ramones, Animal Boy, 1986

Best Track: "Love Kills"

Lasting Memory: To my ears, the best song on Animal Boy is the Dee Dee Ramone-penned eulogy/cautionary tale "Love Kills." The song is about the doomed-because-drug-fueled romance between Sex Pistols bassist Sid Vicious and American lost girl Nancy Spungeon. The love affair is excellently captured in the movie Sid & Nancy, so every time I listen to Animal Boy, I think of the movie.

The person who put together this fanvid also seems to also have had trouble separating the movie from real life and from the chanson d'hommage.

It's more than a little ironic that Dee Dee Ramone would warn listeners about the dangers of heroin use and the rock 'n' roll lifestyle, since he was addicted to both. Takes one to warn another, I guess.

And it's not like Dee Dee was alone among his bandmates in having addiction problems. Noted drinker Joey Ramones contributed no less than three songs about his highball hobby to Animal Boy--"Somebody Put Something in My Drink," "Crummy Stuff," and "Hair of the Dog."

I wonder if the Ramones were cagey enough to claim their drug and drink costs as business expenses? Their iniquities did lead to some pretty kickass songs.

Up Next: Ramones, Brain Drain, 1989

Just 'Casue It's a Just Cause

2009-04-02T12:10:00.003-04:00

I used to own a "Hands Across Your Face" t-shirt.

This song, off of the still-unprofiled Animal Boy, contains one of my favorite verses of all time:

If I was stupid or naive
Trying to achieve what they all call contentness
If people weren't such fags and I never made mistakes
Then I could find forgiveness

I like this song -- and this verse in particular -- because it does something I've repeatedly taken the Ramones to task for not doing. The song and verse express postadolescent disappointment with oneself and everyone else succintly and understandably while bordering on incoherency. That's a job for punk rock, yessir.

The entire song works because it employs the timeless trope of using slapstick-y comedy to couch and cover a real expression of pain and anger.

What Dee Dee Ramone was feeling so upset about when he co-wrote "Something to Believe In," I can't say. But it's good for listeners that he was going through whatever whenever.

A Plea for the Plebians

2009-03-31T12:47:00.009-04:00

Or maybe an even better title would be "A Prayer for Owing Meanly."

Either way, in honor of my upcoming, hopefully short, period of underemployment, I give you . . .

The Thamesmen!

The real video is here.

Politics Sux, Yeah We Know ...

2009-03-27T09:44:00.005-04:00

... because the Ramones tell us so.

A conversation with my sister Kathy last night put me in the mind of how everybody has a threshold for the shenanigans of elected officials. I won't rehash her screed point by point, but what the Obama economic team has been doing has made her ready to string 'em all up and let the CPAs sort 'em out.

What she had to say also got me thinking about the Ramones anti-Ronald Reagan call-to-arms, "My Brain Is Hanging Upside Down (Bonzo Goes to Bitburg)" off of Animal Boy.

(That full-album post is coming soonish.)

A decidedly nonpolitical band, the Ramones just couldn't wrap their heads around why then-President Reagan would attend a wreath-laying ceremony at a German military cemetery to mark the 4oth anniversary of the end of World War II hostilities between the Allies and the Germans. The graveyard at Bitburg is the final resting place of many SS soldiers.

It couldn't help the Ramones' opinion of Reagan's blatantly political play to the extreme right of the Republican Party that two of the boys in the band were Jewish. But even more than that, what comes across in the song is a real sense of disillusion and loss of hope that anything a politician does will ever make anything better.

Seems a lot of the people I know are reaching that psychological breaking point these days.

Go Hard and Stay Home

2009-03-24T10:48:00.002-04:00

Album: Ramones, Too Tough to Die, 1984

Best Track: "Chasing the Night"

Lasting Memory: The house my family lived in for most of my childhood had four levels, with the first and fourth levels being separated from the second and third levels by three-step stairways. The Ramones' Too Tough to Die makes me think about the set of stairs that led from the ground floor to the main floor. Listening to this album, I can practically smell the dingy green carpeting on that short stairway.

What to make of that memory, I have no idea. And that's pretty much how I feel about Too Tough to Die. The album's songs are split roughly equally between hard core punk (e.g., "Warthog") and the power poppery upon which the band had made its reputation (e.g., "Howling at the Moon [Sha-La-La]"). The album is also rife with unwelcome "message" songs such as "Planet Earth 1988."

While the resultant mix of music doesn't exactly rise to the level of genre-hopping, Too Tough to Die does strike the ear as more of a compilation of at least two different bands' songs. One of those bands would be the standard-issue Ramones about which I've been enthusing for a couple of weeks. This is the "staying home" piece of my post title.

The other band goes hard and bears little resemblance to the standard-issue Ramones. While I can personally attest from several concerts' worth of experience that the Ramones pulled off their hard core material pretty well in a live setting, those songs transfer poorly to magnetized tape.

Unfortunately for my personal tastes, the Ramones edged further into hard core territory with each subsequent album after Too Tough to Die. Which only goes to prove the point that most punk bands strive to make -- and which the Ramones hammered away on in "Human Kind" -- the more things change, the more they suck.

Up Next: Ramones, Animal Boy, 1986

Pure Alchemy (or, "It's Gold, Jerry! Gold!!)

2009-03-21T08:06:00.007-04:00

Album: Ramones, Subterranean Jungle, 1983

Best Cover Tracks: "Little Bit o' Soul" and "Time Has Come Today" (tie)

Best Original Track: "Psycho Therapy"

Lasting Memory: Invoking the statute of limitations for petit larceny in Virginia, I can now admit that I stole the Ramones' Subterranean Jungle from my sister Sue sometime between September 1987 and May 1988. The exact date of the crime escapes me, but I know the time frame because my lifting of the cassette was a crime of opportunity compelled by artistic considerations.

Sue went away to college that fall, and she left behind Subterranean Jungle. Taking it out of her vacated bedroom and pretending it had always been mine was absolutely the punk rockest thing to do. Perfection in acquisition, if you will.

Appropriate, then, that Subterranean Jungle pivots around the song that I will nominate as the quintessence of the Ramones aesthetic, "Psycho Therapy."

If "Psycho Therapy" sounds an awful lot like most other the Ramones' songs, well, look up the definition of "quintessence." Subterranean Jungle features other strong, enjoyable songs, such as "Outsider" and "Somebody Like Me." It also closes with the best-named song ever, "Everytime I Eat Vegetables It Makes Me Think of You."

But no song better encapsulates the bubble gum-meets-gutter punk sound the Ramones were going for than does "Psycho Therapy." While the lyrics and fuzztone tell a tale of violent, felonious mental illness, the backbeat and melody seem directly lifted from an Archies recording session. I love it. You should, too.

Up Next: Ramones, Too Tough to Die, 1984

Two Jokes, No Waiting

2009-03-19T11:01:00.005-04:00

I'm feeling lazy, so here are two jokes in lieu of an actual post. One of these jokes is an Ed Lamb Original^TM. Can you guess which one?

Joke 1

Q. What is the hardest thing about fish farming?

A. Getting the wetsuit on the scarecrow.

Joke 2

A baby seal walks into a club.

Let Us Now Praise Famous Men

2009-03-17T11:43:00.004-04:00

I learned last week that my name is on the Wall of Champions in the wrestling room at my former high school.

Weird. Deserved, inasmuch as I did win conference regular season and tournament championships in both my junior and senior seasons, but still very weird.

To begin with, I have never been a great athlete. In my most self-aware moments, I'd probably even admit to never being a particularly good athlete. The whole reason I took up and stuck with wrestling after I had tried and quit baseball, basketball, and football was because wrestling didn't instantly make my heaviness, slowness, and extreme near-sightedness and lack of depth perception insurmountable barriers to achievement.

But even then, it was essential to any success I enjoyed that I wrestled in the heavyweight class. Picture some high-quality amateur wrestling. Be assured that was not the kind of wrestling I did. Picture more of a sumo match that involves no rice throwing and a lot of lying flat on one's stomach.

While I took pride in being the best pusher and splay-outer in my conference for two years running, it needs to be noted that the conference included just six teams and that not every team had a heavyweight wrestler. If memory serves, I won two matches at the conference tournament my junior year and three matches at the conference tournament my senior year.

It also needs to be noted that my glory ended at the conference level. Stupid wrestling my junior year and a tough but fair call my senior year prevented me from going anywhere in the state tournament. The stings of these disappointments were compounded by the overwhelming success of my teammates at the state level both years.

And as if being overshadowed on my team wasn't tough enough, I was far from being the best athlete in my immediate family. That honor would go to my all-high school-everything sister Peggy. I was even farther from being the best athlete in my extended family. That honor could go to any number of my cousins who, respectively, played NCAA Division I football, soccer, and softball.

So what the hell is my name doing on that wrestling room Wall of Champions at my old high school? And what must a kid think when he sees my name up there?

The answer to the first question -- already stated quite simply -- is that for two years in the late 1980s, I beat the kids who weighed close to what I did and lived nearby. That counts.

Trying to come up with an answer to the second question that goes beyond "nothing" is what makes having my name on the wall weird and why I was prompted to assay this rambling essay.

Unfortunately, "nothing" seems to be the only possible answer other than a rare, random, and quickly dismissed without follow-up, "Who was Ed Lamb?" Those would certainly have been my reactions to some guy who got his name stenciled on a wall just because he captured some meaningless sports title two decades ago.

I suppose I should be a little bummed that my athletic legacy is essentially a blank, but in actuality I'm glad. Knowing me as well as I do, I know that I should not serve as an inspiration to anyone who wants to be a successful wrestler.

First, I wasn't all the great in my time or even in the sepia-tinting mind's eye of reflection. For their sake, I hope all the wrestlers in that room my name overwatches wind up being better than I was. Second, I have other signature accomplishments in which I can take pride and which I would be happy to see others hold in esteem. Those noteworthy accomplishment are often "signature" in the literal sense that I am a bylined writer.

Still and all, I recognize that it is better to have my name on that wall for the right reasons than in the papers for the wrong reasons.

Today's Theme: Themes

2009-03-15T10:08:00.004-04:00

Album: Ramones, Pleasant Dreams, 1991

Best Track: "This Business Is Killing Me"

Lasting Memory: I mentioned a couple of posts ago that attending a Ramones show during the summer of 1986 was one of my first real concert-going experiences. While I can't remember the exact month or date, I know that the concert took place on a Thursday night and that I had to go to work the following Friday morning.

All that Friday at work in the Little Creek Navy Exchange warehouse, I was completely jacked up from seeing the Ramones because the band was, at the time, my favorite. I was also nearly deaf because, not knowing any better at the time, I had stood directly in front of a speaker tower throughout the Ramones' set.

I spent the entire workday shuffling through the stacks and, I thought, singing songs off of Pleasant Dreams such as "We Want the Airwaves" and "All's Quiet on the Eastern Front" under my breath to myself. Shortly after lunch, I was informed by a couple of my co-workers that I had been singing quite loudly the entire time and they thought I was high or drunk or they didn't know what.

All I have to say in retrospect is screw 'em if they don't like music. Especially since two of the songs that recurred in my repertoire were "It's Not My Place (In the 9 to 5 World)" and "This Business Is Killing Me."

Did I mention I was working in a warehouse?

If 80-plus years of talkies have taught us nothing else besides how to pay too much for cable movie channel packages, it has taught us that there is undoubtedly at least one perfect song each moment and situation. The work-hating songs on Pleasant Dreams have been remarkably resilient as theme songs for me at different time of life. Their thorough lodging in my subconscious undoubtedly played some role in my decision to become a freelancer a few years ago.

As an aside that builds to the larger point, at least one more song on the album seems to serve as another theme for another meme. "The KKK Took My Baby Away" seem to be thematically linked to an intraband love triangle involving Joey, Johnny, and the woman who left Joey for Johnny.

It's probably the case that every song has a specific meaning and message. After all, even the ridiculous but ear-catching "Abacab" contains the chord-progression coded message that Genesis would be turning from prog rock to pop. It is certainly not always the case that a singer or songwriter can successfully communicate and inculcate his or her message. Just watch the next American Idol contestant misinterpret "Poppa Was a Rollin' Stone" as being about having an Indiana Jones-esque adventurer as a father. (I hate myself for even knowing that performance exists.)

The Ramones absolutely did succeed time and again in making their songs stick as theme songs for the moment and the lifetime. Just don't let your Ramones-penned and -performed theme be "You Sound Like You're Sick" or "Sitting in My Room."

Up Next: Ramones, Subterranean Jungle, 1983

THIS Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio

2009-03-13T14:18:00.004-04:00

Album: The Ramones, End of the Century, 1980

Best Cover Track: "Baby, I Love You"

Best Original Track: "The Return of Jackie and Judy"

Lasting Memory: Shortly after I discovered End of the Century existed during my freshman year of high school, I dubbed it from a friend of mine, quickly replaced that dub with an actual cassette reissue of the album, and just about played the tape blank. You name something I did between the fall of 1984 and the winter of 1986, and I did that thing at least once while listening to End of Century -- up to and including listening to other tapes and LPs in my then-minuscule collection.

End of the Century is as perfect a rock 'n' roll album as it is possible to make. Other self-contained collections of songs may match its scope and execution, but none could surpass what the Ramones accomplished while working with, and thoroughly hating, Phil Spector to produce End of the Century.

Opening with the love letter/mission statement "Do You Remember Rock 'n' Roll Radio?" and closing with the sign of things to come proto-hard core ditty -- yes, "ditty" -- "High Risk Insurance," End of the Century is the epitome of everything every band at any time was trying to accomplish when its members plugged in their guitars, screwed down their snare heads, and rolled three-quarters inch tape in the studio.

In between the all-time classic bookends already named and hotlinked fall the all-time classic punk tour song "Danny Says," the all-time classic happy heroin addiction song "Chinese Rock," the all-time classic high school screwup song "The Return of Jackie and Judy," the all-time classic Ronettes cover "Baby, I Love You," and the all-time classic filler track "All the Way," which has the all-time classic lyrics "Doomsday, doomsday is coming like the 8:01/ But until than, Lord, I'm gonna have some fun."

Which is all not to even mention that End of the Century features the definitive version "Rock 'n' Roll High School."

I was, and still am, affected.

Up Next: Ramones, Pleasant Dreams, 1981

Cretin Hopping With the Surfin' Bird at Rockaway Beach

2009-03-10T10:23:00.003-04:00

Album: Ramones, Rocket to Russia, 1977 (dub)

Best Cover Track: "Surfin' Bird"

Best Original Track: "We're a Happy Family"

Lasting Memory: Somewhere in my father's extensive collection of stuff he just never got around to throwing away, there exists a videotape shot during the course of a celebratory family dinner in 1986 or 1987. On that video, I'm shown wearing my Boy Scout uniform and singing, along with my much younger brother, "We're a Happy Family."

To drive home the enormity of this impropriety, here are the lyrics to that song:

We're a happy family
We're a happy family
We're a happy family
Me mom and daddy

Siting here in Queens
Eating refried beans
We're in all the magazines
Gulpin' down thorazines

We ain't got no friends
Our troubles never end
No Christmas cards to send
Daddy likes men

Daddy's telling lies
Baby's eating flies
Mommy's on pills
Baby's got the chills

I'm friends with the President
I'm friends with the Pope
We're all making a fortune
Selling Daddy's dope

So, so wrong and untrue. We never lived in Queens.

But, lord help me, I've always misheard "We're a Happy Family" as a short ode to an actually happy family, and not as the nightmare the Ramones obviously intended. I'm not sure why, though, especially since Rocket to Russia is rife with songs that definitely are pleasant recollections of youth and hearth.

"Rockaway Beach" really is about a nice daytrip with the folks. "Cretin Hop" and "Do You Wanna Dance?" really are about wanting to have some fun at the high school dance. "Surfin' Bird" really is about, um, nothing. Sure is fun, though. And that bird seemed to be the word, or so I heard.

Joey, Johnny, Dee, and Tommy did make their first successful attempts at working on the darker side on Rocket to Russia, though. "I Wanna Be Well" and "I Can't Give You Anything" aren't about happy families, so good for them getting right their depiction of wrong things.

Up Next: The Ramones, End of the Century, 1980

Trust Redemption

2009-03-06T11:32:00.006-05:00

Psalm 51, in the King James Bible, begins

Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy loving kindness: according unto the multitude of thy tender mercies blot out my transgressions.

Wash me thoroughly from mine iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin.

Horton Foote committed this message to film most memorably in his screenplay for Tender Mercies, a film whose 1983 trailer makes the journey from sinner to, if not saint, at least not-sinner much easier than it proves to be.

Until I heard news of Foote's death earlier this week, I didn't know who he was, and I would never even hazard a guess as to whether he personally believed the words he put into the mouth of Robert Duvall's Mac Sledge: "I don't trust happiness. I never did, I never will."

I have known for decades that I love Tender Mercies and that the movie has brought me several days' worth of hours of enjoyment. It is one of three films that I will watch until it's over every time I happen to come across it on television. The other two are Duvall's The Apostle and Steve Buscemi's Tree's Lounge.

It can be no coincident on my end that each movie is about a man stumbling -- often hammeredly -- toward grace.

Nor is it possible to miss the shared moral that while happiness is often difficult to find and impossible to hold indefinitely, redemption is always only a word, an action, a person away.

Thanks for the lesson, Mr. Foote.

Hey! Gabba, Gabba Right Back Atcha

2009-03-05T13:14:00.005-05:00

Album: Ramones, Leave Home, 1977 (cassette reissue)

Best Original Track: "Pinhead"

Best Cover: "California Sun"

Lasting Memory: One of the first real concerts I attended was a Ramones show at the Boathouse in Norfolk in July or August 1986. I was 16 at the time, spending my summer not dating, deciding not to continue playing football, and working 10 hours a day in a minimum-wage job as a warehouse laborer. In short, I was a standard-issue, postpubescent American loser.

The Pinhead came out on stage when the Ramones fired up on "Pinhead." It was exactly like not looking into a mirror, if you know what I mean.

I don't know, either, so don't sweat it.

What I think I'm trying to write is that the Ramones largely failed at fulfilling the raison d'être of a punk band, which is to capture and convey the alienation and anger of teenagedom.

The Ramones were always too damn much fun to be avatars of anomie. While the excellent band documentary End of the Century makes clear that the lads had more than their share of personal problems -- ranging from heroin addiction to social anxiety disorder and New York City Jewish liberalism -- those issues rarely came across in their performances, even when the performance was explicitly about those problems.

There was no wallowing in the Ramones discography. Catalog songs like "California Sun" did more than lighten the mood. They banished almost all the darkness.

No wonder "Sheena Is a Punk Rocker."

Up Next: Ramones, Rocket to Russia, 1977 (dub)

Let's DANCE

2009-03-03T10:22:00.004-05:00

Album: Ramones, Ramones, 1976 (cassette reissue)

Best Track: "Let's Dance"

Lasting Memory: Remember that time that absolutely rocked? That was the time I was listening to the Ramones debut album because, you know, Ramones rocks.

1, 2, 3, 4 ....

Lots of bands before and since 1976 have rocked. What always set the Ramones apart from their progenitors, peers, and progeny, though, is that beneath the leather jackets and power chords beat the pure heart of a bubblegum pop act doing girl-group numbers.

Would the New York Dolls have been anything but scary if they had sung "I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend?"

If the Sex Pistols had suggested "Let's Dance," would the audience have agreed?

Could Green Day sound as deludely charming when claiming "Today Your love, Tomorrow the World?"

No, no, and good God no.

The highlight of many a Ramones album, as I'll make eye-bleedingly clear as I blog through damn near the band's entire discography over the next couple of weeks, is a garage punk cover of a Motown, Stax, or Brill Building classic. And even on a majority of their originals, the Ramones' essential sweetness shows through.hat

Picture Slipknot recording a song titled "Beat on the Brat," for instance. I guarantee you t you didn't conjure this, which for all of its intended menance plays more like a lullaby than a felony.

Up Next: Ramones, Leave Home, 1977 (cassette reissue)

Who's Baddest and Who Is Best

2009-02-28T12:38:00.006-05:00

Album: The Rainmakers, The Good News and the Bad News, 1989

Best Track: "Reckoning Day"

Lasting Memory: Several times each week, I find myself quoting anywhere from a line from to the complete lyrics of a song off of the Rainmakers' The Good News and the Bad News. Lead vocalist and songwriter Bob Walkenhorst did some genius work on the album, and I was pleased to discover today that he hasn't lost his fastball over the past two decades.

He certainly wasted no time in giving Good News listeners the good stuff, kicking off the record with "Reckoning Day":

Well I was thinking about Abraham Lincoln
And the enemies of the truth
But I could not tell a Kennedy
From a John Wilkes Booth

Now outta my way
Outta my way
Outta my way
Hot rocking on reckoning day

And I feel like picking a fight
With anybody who claims they’re right
All the preacher men the politicians
The critics and the things they write

Outta my way
Outta my way
Outta my way
Hot rocking on reckoning day

And this is a call to arms
This is a call to hands
This is a call to the voices and the minds
Of the people in every land

Outta my way
Outta my way
Outta my way
Hot rocking on reckoning day

We’re taking the history test
Who’s baddest and who is best
(a) Lennon the brother
(b) Lennon the sisters
(c) Lenin the communist

Outta my way
Outta my way
Outta my way
Hot rocking on reckoning day

Reckoning day put the money in the mattress
Reckoning day put your pennies where they count
Reckoning day nothing left to believe in
Nothing to doubt nothing left to wait for

And getting him to tell the truth
Was like pulling a wisdom tooth
And though he never would admit it
Everybody knew he did it
When he burned down the voting booth

Outta my way
Outta my way

And we are the immigrant flock
Shipwrecked on Plymouth Rock
From the Monitor the Merrimack
From the Thresher and the Pueblo and the Titanic

Reckoning day put the money in the mattress
Reckoning day put your pennies where they count
Reckoning day nothing left to believe in
Nothing to doubt nothing left to wait for

How could that cavalcade of historical revisionism, rhetorical riddles, and aphorisms fail to recur to me during the past month?

I experienced the same pleasant haunting from "Shiny Shiny" whenever I've had reason to think about my father's rusting but redoubtable 1965 Mustang. The lines "She's the one he never sold/ Some things are classic, some are just old" whispered in my mind's ear nearly every day until my old man finally did sell the car in the winter of 2007.

No doubt the many lyrics' staying power was enhanced by the fact that they were played and sung in a manner that suggested Steve Forbert was fronting a supergroup made up of members of the dB's and the Hooters. [ED: If you do nothing else today, click on the Steve Forbert link. It will make your day. I always feel good for hours after hearing "Romeo's Tune." You will, too.]

The effect is strong and welcome. "We Walk the Levee" is the soundtrack to my thoughts about Hurricane Katrina. "Spend It on Love," which opens with

Hear tell of a man who took a hundred dollars
Spent it on lottery tickets and beer
Won a couple million, left his wife and children
Lived himself for dead in a couple of years

Should have spent it on love
Spent it on the children
Spent it on the ones who need it the most

runs through my head every time I'm down at the Breez Inn buying lottery tickets and beer. Duh.

Then there's "Thirty Days." As Walkenhorst helpfully reminds listeners and rememberers, "Thirty days has September/ April June and county jails." That's a lesson best not forgotten, as is the song's later description of a God who, rather than resting after six hard days of creating "got drunk and lonely/ Created trouble and time alone" -- a God who "Each thirty days he shoots out the full moon/ Just to remind us we're on our own."

Try not to keep that in mind the next time you're enjoying an eye-opener on Sunday morning instead of sitting in a church pew.

Up Next: Ramones, Ramones, 1976 (cassette reissue)

Destroy the Village to Destroy It

2009-02-25T10:40:00.006-05:00

Thor played Loki yesterday, blowing up NASA's Orbiting Carbon Observatory satellite before it could get into orbit and begin transmitting observations on the gaseous composition of Earth's atmosphere.

For this ultimate act of hilariously ironic meddling in the affairs of mortals, I will dedicate my next bull slaughter to the Norse god of thunder.

Few single events -- if any -- create more so-called greenhouse gas emissions than a NASA missile launch. If the global warming theorists are correct in asserting that human- and livestock-generated carbon dioxide, methane, and ozone are the principal cause of global warming, then how can they justify sending objects such as the OCO into space?

Along the same line of inquiry, what does flying dozens of political functionaries to and from Antarctica to personally hear information they could as easily and more effectively receive in an e-mail do other than generate several metric tons of supposedly ice-killing carbon dioxide?

Until every member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change can recite Matthew 7:5 by heart, I refuse to take them seriously as individuals committed to solving a purported problem.

Whores Woody Allen Has Known

2009-02-23T10:28:00.004-05:00

While I have not seen Vicky Cristina Barcelona, I was never more sure of anything in my entire life than I was that Penelope Cruz would win a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her role in the movie.

The whore in the Woody Allen film always wins the Best Supporting Actress Oscar. Well maybe the woman does not always win, and maybe the woman is not technically a whore, but peep this:

Mariel Hemmingway, 1979, nominated for playing the 17-year-old lover of Allen's 41-year-old teacher in Manhattan

Judy Davis, 1992, nominated for playing an unfaithful wife in Husbands & Wives

Mira Sorvino, 1995, won for playing a call girl in Mighty Aphrodite

Penelope Cruz, 2008, won for playing the slutty ex-wife of a painter in Vicky Cristina Barcelona

I will never know whether any of these actresses deserved their awards from the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences because I am observing a one-man boycott of Woody Allen. I find the Allen morally repugnant, physically off-putting, psychologically alien, and generally unfunny. As for Sra. Cruz, I find her neither attractive nor interesting.

That's just me, but, hey, you gotta know what you don't want.

What Academy voters want, it seems, is whores. Just scroll through the list of Supporting Actress nominees since 1936. Starting right off the bat with Beulah Bondi in The Gorgeous Hussy (1936) through Donna Reed in From Here to Eternity (1953), Jodie Foster in Taxi Driver (1976), and Judi Dench as Queen Elizabeth I in Shakespeare in Love (1998), being shown putting your virtue up for sale seems to be a sure way to earn Oscar buzz.

There's an Aesop-level metaphorical moral about the nature of Hollywood success in there somewhere.

Keep a Lamp Trimmed and Burning

2009-02-22T06:48:00.006-05:00

Album: The Radiators, Zig-Zaggin' Through Ghostland, 1989

Best Track: "Fall of Dark"

Lasting Memory: The name of this album, as I recall from hearing an interview with some Radiators band members on FM99 in 1990 when the station had "7 Album Sides at 7" show on Sunday nights, came from a Vietnam vet the band knew who described his time sneaking through the rainforest during night maneuvers as "zig-zaggin' through ghostland."

I am too lazy to do an Internet search to either confirm any part of my memory or determine whether the term was standard slang. I hope both are true, though, because the image is so evocative, perfectly conjuring what it would look like to run from covering tree and to obscuring fern as the sky overhead was intermittently made day-bright by flares, tracers, and phosphorous shells. The blur of motion, play of shadows, and constant fear would definitely make a man feel as if he were moving randomly through a haunted world.

Great use of the language, there, that restores some of my faith in native English speakers, which has been taking some pretty serious hits lately.

The Radiators conjure many nice musical and lyrical moments on Zig-Zaggin' Through Ghostland, especially in "Fall of Dark":

The line from the chorus that runs "Keep a lamp trimmed and burning" is particularly effective as a metaphor for the band's continuing to perform and record into their fourth decade and for encouraging the cyclically wounded American economy and workforce to keep the faith and keep an eye out because the light chases and follows the dark.

And not to get too heavy, but the second-best song on Zig-Zaggin' is the cover of "But It's Alright," which makes hope nonmetaphorically personal by assuring a lover that everything will be OK.

There's a lot to like on Zig-Zaggin'. Not enough to win over millions of people in the record-buying public, but that's a regret probably best not dwelt on when rueful reminiscences can be as easily spent on "Memories of Venus," for instance.

The other reason to follow the Radiators' admonition to keep a lamp burning is because the songs on Zig-Zaggin' are chock-a-block with phrases and references that may soon be as arcane as Chaucerian Middle English.

The best example of this is "Confidential," the first track on the album. The lyrics include mentions of local newspaper classified ads, payphones, and four-party lines. I'm old enough to remember when every household subscribed to a newspaper, payphones were ubiquitous, and home phones were mandatory. Any kid first hearing "Confidential" today might not be able to make heads or tails of the song's tale of the underbelly of society simply because the modes of communication being described have no meaning for the kid.

In that sense, then, we need to keep the lamp burning just to ensure that there will be lamps in the future. Anymore, technologies aren't becoming obsolete, they're being abandoned and almost willfully erased from society's consciousness.

Here's hoping that that trend stops.

Up Next: The Rainmakers, The Good News and the Bad News, 1989

Even More History of Words Meaning Stuff

2009-02-20T10:49:00.004-05:00

Bloviation and delusion. I'm increasingly convinced that anything I hear on news radio is all no more than bloviation and delusion.

Two things I heard this morning convinced me of this.

The first thing has been malleating at my incus for a while now, and I'm most likely as much as two decades too late to the angry mob on this one, but I want to literally puncture my timpanic membrane every time I hear Rush Limbaugh say "drive-by media" during one of the recap/teaser bits that get played each morning on "Macrini's Morning News Team," which is a show I actually enjoy very much.

Limbaugh obviously intends the term be insulting, but it infuriates me not because it offends but because it is inherently and extrinsically meaningless and because its appropriate replacement would be even more effectively insulting.

"Drive by" can mean one of two things, those being "passing by without noticing or engaging" or "attempted assassination from a moving vehicle." Limbaugh employs neither of these meanings in his coinage, nor can he because the news media undeniably notices and engages and does not assassinate anyone's character without sticking around for the days, weeks, or even years it requires to go methodically through the stages of annoying, wounding, killing, and dancing on the grave of its chosen targets.

What does Limbaugh intend to accuse news reporters of, then? Probably that reporters tend to focus only on the surface of a news event and then move on too quickly to cover another event. This would properly be characterized as "hit-and-run media," which is more damning and equally as euphonious.

I have no hope that Limbaugh will ever begin using the English language correctly. He is, after all, a big, fat idiot.

I used to have faint hope, however, that some people somewhere would sometimes use words in ways that indicated that those people knew what those words meant. That hope died a Studs Terkelian death this morning when I heard a fortuneteller tell an NPR interviewer that she believes the tarot readings she performs empower her clients to take control of their future.

Read that again.

Yes, a woman with a job title that explicitly states that "fortune" exists and can be "told" -- whose entire self-identity is predicated on her alleged mystical ability to descry the immutable future -- believes that people can determine their own fates.

I wonder if the fortuneteller foresaw me banging my forehead repeatedly into my desktop?

Yours malapropitiously,
Ed

The Problem With Perfection

2009-02-18T10:13:00.007-05:00

Album: The Radiators, Law of the Fish, 1987

Best Track: "Like Dreamers Do"

Lasting Memory: Two very specific, completely unrelated, and head-shakingly insignificant memories are cued like grainy 16-mm home movies in my mind's eye every time I spin The Radiators' Law of the Fish.

The first shows me sitting on the top step of the staircase leading from the living room of my family's first house in Virginia Beach to the second floor, listening to "Boomerang" on my knockoff Walkman tape player and thumbing through a Boy Scouts uniform catalog. The details of that pointless moment remain perfect 22 years later, but to what purpose?

The second memory reel has me waiting at a table in the Lafayette Branch library repeatedly singing "Doctor Doctor" to myself while waiting for my group project partner from 12th-grade religion class to show up and complete our "wedding" budget. The first verse and chorus to "Doctor Doctor" run

Talk about the heartache,
Talk about the pain
Ti Jean said the only real thing,
Was to live and love in vain
Talk about the silence, and the
Pre-dawn firing squad
Lost cigarette, never will forget
That look on the face of God

Doctor doctor, you know I feel so bad
Doctor doctor, she was the best
Thing I never had

I guess I didn't have high hopes for my and Vicky's(?) ersatz couple actually making to the imaginary altar. But, again, why that particular memory would be formed and recur makes little sense.

I'll leave the mysteries of memory unsolved for now and instead take intellectual refuge in the certainty of the statement that "Like Dreamers Do" is one of the most perfect rock/pop/New Orleans blues/blue-eyed soul/toy piano/bad junior high poetry songs ever recorded.

Doubt me? Watch this video (can't get the thing embedded).

Still not convinced? Read these lyrics:

I've been waiting for you
'fore I call your name
I've been longing for you
In sunshine and rain

Oh oh black diamond,
Oh how she shine
Oh black diamond,
Let's close our eyes

I've been pulling for ya
In everything you try
I've been weeping with ya
Every time you cry

Now the sun Is sinking,
Can't wait to get to sleep
See the black diamond
Shining in the deep

I'll meet you on the vast plains
Behind the gates of dream
Laughing dancing in the sand
Like dreamers do, uh huh uh huh
Like dreamers do, uh huh uh huh
Like dreamers do

Won't you look at you now
Oh you crazy fool
Won't you look at you now
You mad molecule

I'll meet you on the vast plains
Behind the gates of dream
Laughing dancing in the sand
Like dreamers do, uh huh uh huh
Like dreamers do, uh huh uh huh
Like dreamers do

Perfection, thy name is "Like Dreamers Do." The problem is, the song is so good in every way that even the strongest other tracks on Law of the Fish, like "This Wagon's Gonna Roll," wind up sounding like filler. The very good pales alongside the perfect. Pity about that.

Up Next: The Radiators, Zig-Zaggin' Through Ghostland, 1989

Don't Rock the Yacht

2009-02-16T11:19:00.003-05:00

Album: Poi Dog Pondering, Poi Dog Pondering, 1989

Best Track: "Circle Around the Sun"

Lasting Memory: Poi Dog Pondering has a lot of goodwill attached to it for me because it was a go-to album for dinner parties hosted by my graduate school classmates. I wouldn't characterize my class as a community of scholars, but we did fully embrace the aspects of Renaissance and salon culture that involved eating well and drinking a little too much a little too often while heatedly debating questions such as "Is oxygen really any different from phlogiston?"

Excellent times, those.

Without the overwhelmingly positive associations, the PDP would hold little appeal on its own because it is essentially gimmicky background music. The gimmick is Hawaiian-meets-70s soft rock, and the atmosphericness is exemplified by the track "Wood Guitar."

PDP does have a couple of standout songs, and readers may even remember hearing "Living With the Dreaming Body" back in the day. The best song is "Circle Around the Sun," which would not be at all out place on a 12o Minutes-based version of VH-1's 40 Most Softsational Soft Rock Hits.

Like all yacht rock, the music on PDP is best enjoyed through inattention -- Muzak for the less-than-mundane.

Up Next: The Radiators, Law of the Fish, 1987

Love Conquers Some

2009-02-15T06:59:00.003-05:00

Album: The Plimsouls, Everywhere at Once, 1983

Best Track: "Play the Breaks"

Lasting Memory: The Plimsouls were the bar band in the classic 1983 teen romantic comedy Valley Girl. The band's "Everywhere at Once" plays as Romeo stand-in Nick (what happened?) Cage escorts Juliet surrogate Deborah (still a major crush) Foreman past the bouncer and to the night club table right after the "save the radio" scene."

Then, the band fires up with "A Million Miles Away." You won't find a more on-the-nose musical number this side of "76 Trombones." Still, it works. And it's what led me to fish Everywhere at Once out of a $2.99 bargain tape bin 20 years ago and enjoy the album's "Magic Touch" ever since.

I love Valley Girl. I love The Music Man. Hell, truth be told, I'm a sucker for any well-done rom-com. Give me The Truth About Cats and Dogs over Star Wars any day, and give me Say Anything, The Philadelphia Story, and Some Like It Hot twice on Sunday. This makes me a sap -- a 6-foot, 300-pound, goateed, wrestling-refereeing sap. But for all that, a well-entertained sap.

And if I had a single word to describe The Plimsouls' Everywhere at Once, that word would be "entertaining." The album is the acme of early-80s power pop. The guitars chime and lope (especially on "Play the Breaks"), the lyrics are just deep enough to stick with you, and lead Plimsoul Peter Case's voice is just rough enough around the edges to be engaging and endearing without being distracting. Plus, having produced no actual radio hits, the Plimsouls are just under-the-radar enough to gain me back some much needed street cred.

The way I see it, it's okay to have Bringing Up Baby on my DVR "Do Not Delete" list as long as I have Everywhere at Once in my music collection. Right?

Right?*

Up Next: Poi Dog Pondering, Poi Dog Pondering, 1989

* Thank goodness Facebook doesn't have an e-wedgie app.

Tell Me Some Tales

2009-02-14T06:34:00.002-05:00

Regular posts resume tomorrow. Ain't that ...

the oldest story in the world.

And Now, We're Communists

2009-02-04T12:53:00.004-05:00

I promise to get back to the music posts eventually. Until at least some time next week, though, I'll be too busy to do anything with this Web forum but clear my political throat.

Here is an e-mail that I sent into my local NPR current-events call-in show, Hearsay. It was read over the air and everything. This is my second Hearsay appearance in the past 70 days. I may be becoming a crank, but I still have a long way to go down that slippery slope before I can be found typing my manifesto in a one-room cabin.

Anyway, Obama's talk about pay-plan limits for bank executives makes my palms itch. What do you think?

=======

Kathy,

I have two questions about President Obama's announcement that annual salaries for some financial institutions' executives will be capped at $500,000. I have no answers, but I'd be interested in hearing thoughts other than my own, which come down to, "While I'm as upset with the likes of John Thain as anyone, I also think setting hard limits on executive pay is a bad and probably illegal idea."

Here are my questions:

-- Without fully nationalizing the banks and making bank executives federal employees, how can the government set salaries?

-- If pay is limited to $500,000 per year, what will happen to the rest of the, say, $25,500,000 that had been paid out to bank executives in the last few years? It seems likely that the money will just disappear. How can actively taking money out of circulation during a financial crisis help anyone? I suppose the cap satisfies some desire for vengeance, but isn't that kind of cutting up our credit cards to spite our wallets?

=======

A Paypal Penny for Your Thoughts

2009-01-31T08:52:00.008-05:00

I have no time to share my own thoughts, so I'll post this video from one of my favorite bands, The Old 97s.

The song is about lead 97er Rhett Miller asking his girlfriend to marry him, but its chorus encapsulates an essential exitential poser:

Someday
Somebody's gonna ask you
A question you should say "Yes" to
Maybe tonight
I've got a question for you

What will you say when asked the big question?

If asked today, I'd have to say, "Sorry, I'm on deadline."

Ain't that a shame.

Tim Geithner ... SUPER Genius

2009-01-27T10:48:00.005-05:00

The man who let the horses out the barn has just been hired as the world's foremost gate-closing expert.

Confirming Tim Geithner -- shown at left making his "grrrr" face -- as U.S. Treasury secretary makes as much sense as electing John Rambo to be mayor of Hope, Washington.

I'll readily confess that I've drunk three-quarters of a gallon of the Obama Kool-Aid, but I just can't swallow Geithner's nomination and confirmation to the post of financial savior. Unlike most people, I care not a whit that Geithner cheated on his taxes. What makes me pig-biting mad about his ascendancy is that

A. As a Clinton administration official, Geithner played a key role in building the financial house of cards that began collapsing this past summer;

2. The five years that Geithner spent working for the International Monetary Fund were probably the worst half-decade the IMF ever experienced in terms of efficacy and esteem; and

iii. As chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Geithner failed to see, prevent, or stem the tsunami of bank and investment house failures.

How could a man who has done nothing throughout his career but prove his incompetence rise to such a powerful -- and at this moment, world-shaping -- position? Sure, Wiley E. Coyote got a multifilm deal on account of being a colossal screw-up, but I cannot understand why Geithner should be rewarded for failing spectacularly at everything he's ever done in his chosen profession.

All I can figure is that the primarily long-serving members of the U.S. Senate Finance Committee chose not to press him Geithner on his leadership role in putting the world's economy on the brink of unprecedented disaster because they didn't want light shed on their own complicity in setting the stage for the crisis. So dang them all to heck, as well.

Given his track record, my unfortunate prediction for Geithner's run as Treasury secretary is that he will make us pine for the excellence Alberto Gonzales showed at Justice. I hope I'm wrong, but Geithner has demonstrated little to merit such hope.

Did They Get You to Trade?

2009-01-24T07:47:00.004-05:00

Album: Pink Floyd, Wish You Were Here, 1975

Best Track: "Wish You Were Here"

Lasting Memory: The summer between my freshman and first sophomore years of college, I worked as a lot attendant for a family friend's budget rental car company.

The work was dirty, hot, and long, as jobs for youngsters with an unearned sense of entitlement should be.

The job was also damp. Very damp.

My principal responsibility as lot attendant was to wash and vacuum out returned rentals. So, of course, I was outside for most of two month, catching backspray from a high-power hose, sweating in the 90-degree/90-percent humidity weather, and getting caught in the regular thunderstorms that crop up during a Tidewater summer.

I also once got my leg stuck in water main access tube, or whatever you call those tiny sewer-like ports on lawns and driveways that house meters. I stepped on the cover of the one for the rental car lot while mowing the grass, the cover slipped, and I found myself thigh deep in a standpipe.

As I recall -- probably incorrectly -- the same day the Norfolk Public Works Department nearly became the permanent proprietor of my right leg, I heard "Wish You Were Here" on the AM-only radio of my parents' second-hand, baby blue 1979 Ford Fairmont while driving home. The radio-static-to-plaintive-piano-chords-played-on-a-guitar fade-in kicked in at the same moment as the sky filled with ominous storm clouds. Nice confluence of mood, music, and setting, that was.

If it, you know, actually did happen like that.

While mulling this post instead of writing it this past week, I got to thinking about how thinking about how you can think ideas into a song. Specifically, I got to thinking about how the lyrics to "Wish You Were Here" could be mapped onto President Barack Obama's Inaugural Address.
I'll spare you the college senior thesis-level of show-offy hermeneutics, but check this out:

Did you exchange
A walk-on part in a war
For a lead role in cage

versus

As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety
and our ideals.

And then there's this:

Can you tell a green field from a cold steel rail?
A smile from a veil?

versus

We will harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our
factories. ... To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the
silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history; but that
we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist.

I'm making two points here. The first is that "everything original's been said much better better years ago by someone else, anyway ... anyway." This, obviously, was said by someone else.

The second point, and I'm a little chagrined to only be fully realizing this now in my fortieth year of hearing stuff, is that the message one takes from what one hears depends nearly 100 percent on the milieu in which it is heard. For example, I can read Obama's messages into a Pink Floyd song because I heard both close together and because I felt some compulsion to opine on both.

Does that mean that my observations carry any weight? Not in itself, but you have to admit that I'm pretty authoritative. Hence, vir bonus dicendi peritus, you should go with me on this.

Or you can go with what Roger Waters had to say about Wish You Were Here and its title track around the time that both were released. But he was probably high at the time.

Up Next: The Plimsouls, Everywhere at Once, 1983

A Teardrop Falls

2009-01-20T12:47:00.002-05:00

Kodak commercials aside, I'm not one given even a tiny bit to cheap sentiment or easy emotion. But I'll admit that tears welled when I saw Barack Obama rise to take the Oath of Office as president of the United States.

Too many people much smarter and more eloquent than myself have spilled rivers of ink capturing what Obama's election means for completing the project that is America. All I can add is, "Fuckin' A! Forty years from Martin Luther King's assassination to a black president. Is this a great country, or what?"

Of course, it's easy for me to say that because I have a nice place to live, and overfilled belly, and, for now, money in the bank and work on my desk. Too many people in this country aren't as comfortable. So many people around the world aren't as comfortable that they are probably the ones who should move me to tears.

Electing Obama represents a very small part of what is best about America. To fully realize the American dream, as Obama noted,

There is work to be done. The state of the economy calls for action, bold and
swift, and we will act -- not only to create new jobs, but to lay a new
foundation for growth. We will build the roads and bridges, the electric
grids and digital lines that feed our commerce and bind us together. We will
restore science to its rightful place, and wield technology's wonders to
raise health care's quality and lower its cost. We will harness the sun and
the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories. And we will
transform our schools and colleges and universities to meet the demands of a
new age. All this we can do. And all this we will do.

Accomplishing any one of those things would be a tall order. Indeed, most presidential administrations have failed to even make progress toward a single one of the goals Obama listed.

I got the feeling this afternoon, though, that Congress and most American citizens finally stand ready to make the hard choices and do the hard work to prove that our "ideals still light the world, and we will not give them up for expedience's sake. ... [And] that America is a friend of each nation and every man, woman, and child who seeks a future of peace and dignity, and that we are ready to lead once more."

So God guide you, Mr. President. Make the right choices, and we will follow.

Strawberry Fields for Now

2009-01-17T06:20:00.004-05:00

Album: Sam Phillips, Martinis & Bikinis, 1994

Best Track: "Wheel of the Broken Voice"

Lasting Memory: In 1994, back when I still had a social conscience and believed in financially supporting stuff that I could get for free -- you know, when I was in college -- I donated $10 to Virginia Tech's student-run radio station. In return for my minuscule largess, I was allowed to pick any cassette from a USPS tub.

(Aside: WUVT had to give away all the promo cassettes it received because by that point in its evolution, its studio only had turntables, CD players, and a CART deck, which is a slightly fancier version of an 8-track player. The I'm-being-generous-in-a-screw-you-way transaction ran both ways.)

I grabbed Martinis & Bikinis pretty much at random and don't know if I ever played it until this week. I suppose I missed out.

As this slightly too-effusive Rolling Stone reviewer points out, Sam Phillips does a remarkable job of channeling and reinterpreting mid-period Beatles on Ms&Bs. To be honest, I completely failed to catch the Beatles sound on my two plays through the album, thinking the whole time that Phillips' songs slotted right into country-inflected power pop niche created for and by bands like the dB's -- a subgenre some call "jangle pop." I hate the phrase "jangle pop," and I suppose what I really missed was how indebted so many of the bands from the 1980s that I loved were to the Beatles.

Live and be abashed at what you still need to learn, that's my motto.

Anyhow, Ms&Bs is a fine album that I'm still unlikely to listen to ever again. No fault to Ms. Phillips, but there's my whole avoision of female singers thing for me to continue. And then there's always the option of listening to the Beatles when I want to hear music that sounds a lot like the music the Beatles would make.

You are under no such constraints to restrain Sam Phillips from getting her fair hearing, however. If you click over to the Rolling Stone review linked above, you can preview the entirety of Ms&Bs. If you just want to hear the song I tabbed as the best because you implicitly trust my taste and judgment and would blindly follow my musical ear wherever it points,* then go here to hear "Wheel of the Broken Voice."

Up Next: Pink Floyd, Wish You Were Here, 1975

* This metaphor was mixed at 160 beats per minute for your Texas Two-Steppin' pleasure

The Strings on His Axe Go Jangle, Jangle, Jangle

2009-01-12T13:30:00.003-05:00

Album: Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Pack Up the Plantation LIVE, 1985

Best Track: "Rebels"

Lasting Memory: Every single gol'durn one

I have so much to say about the music Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers recorded between 1976 ("American Girl") and 1985 ("Southern Accents"), I don't know where to start.

Famous movie director Peter Bogdanovich had so much to say, he didn't know where to stop, stringing together a 4-hour documentary that somehow still doesn't do the subject justice.

Learning from Bogdanovich's noble failure, then, I will just assert that -- rather than try to explain why -- while 'The Waiting" is one of my top-5 all-time favorite songs it doesn't measure up to the live version of "Rebels" on Pack Up the Plantation LIVE.

I'll also pass along the "Rebels" lyrics because I find them funny and sad in equal measure:

Honey don't walk out, I'm too drunk to follow
You know you won't feel this way tomorrow
Well, maybe a little rough around the edges
Or inside a little hollow,
I get faced with some things, sometimes
That are so hard to swallow, hey!

Chorus

I was born a rebel, down in Dixie
On a Sunday mornin'
Yeah with one foot in the grave
And one foot on the pedal, I was born a rebel

She picked me up in the mornin', and she paid all my tickets
Then she screamed in the car
Left me out in the thicket
Well I never woulda dreamed
That her heart was so wicked
Yeah but I keep comin' back
'Cause it's so hard to kick it, hey, hey, hey

(Repeat Chorus)

Even before my father's father
They called us all rebels
While they burned our cornfields
And left our cities leveled
I can still feel the eyes of those blue-bellied devils
Yeah, when I'm walking round at night
Through the concrete and metal, hey, hey, hey

Oh, the stories that man can tell.

Up Next: Sam Phillips, Martinis & Bikinis, 1994

Son of a Son of a Finally Getting Around to It

2009-01-09T11:26:00.004-05:00

Album: Ivan Neville, If My Ancestors Could See Me Now, 1988

Best Track: "Not Just Another Girl"

Lasting Memory: Probably more than any other, this album's presence in my cassette case prompted me to pursue the project of listening to every album in my music collection.

By the quirk of the English alphabet, Ivan Neville's If My Ancestors Could See Me Now would always wind up smack dab in the middle of a line up of records, whether the records were filed by artist's first name, artist's last name, or album title's first word. So it was with my collection. And I just never pulled If My Ancestors out and listened to it. Ever.

Conspicuous by its neglect, this album has long made me feel a little guilty about having so much music I could be enjoying but was intentionally relegating to the status of taking up physical space.

I should also mention that If My Ancestors has been playing the role of unheard nag for more than 20 years now. I either purchased this cassette, or received it as a gift, in 1988, and I don't think I've given it a spin since then. I've always meant to play it, but, "Hey, is that Dire Straits? I haven't heard Making Movies since last week."

And so it went, and went, until I finally set the goal of just starting from the beginning and listening to every record I owned from Aerosmith to Zodiac Mindwarp and the Love Reaction. That was most likely in 1991, and achieving the goal also involved doing nothing but driving around the backroads of the United States and creating my own American myth.

I'm still fantasizing about going mobile, but I'm finally well into working through my music, and what is this blog if not a form of self-mythologizing?

Plus, I have at last gotten around to listening to If My Ancetors.

It wasn't worth a 20-year wait. At the the same time, it didn't warrant all the self-castigation.

The songs on the album, recorded by the son of Aaron Neville, range from the one should-have-been-a-hit "Not Just Another Girl" to the nice-but-forgettable "After All This Time" to the should-never-be-heard-by-anyone "Out in the Streets."

Maybe I'll pull If My Ancestors out again in 2018.

Up Next: Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Pack Up the Plantation LIVE!, 1985

What Gives You Nothing Like Your Selfish Television Throwing Things

2009-01-07T13:09:00.003-05:00

Album: Ned's Atomic Dustbin, God Fodder, 1991

Best Track: Pick 'em

Lasting Memory: I've owned this cassette since pretty much the day it was released in 1991, but I never realized until this morning that the title God Fodder is a rather poor homophonous pun. Sound it out for yourelf if you want a good groan.

I also learned that homophonous is a real word.

Let's score that a push, with a loss on the pun and a win for learning a very cool word.

I'll score this album a push as well, with two red exes for having a dumb title and being made by a band with an even dumber band name, and two green check marks for being packed with songs that are both rocking and fun.

There's little difference among "Kill Your Television," "Gray Cell Green," "Throwing Things," and "Until You Find Out." There's also a lot to like about that sound, which, according to an unofficial Wikipedia entry is "Grebo" -- " a blend of garage rock, the more alternative forms of rock, pop, hip-hop, and electronica." Fair enough.

The upshot is that if my God Fodder cassette were an old-school vinyl record, I could drop the stylus anywhere and have a good listen for the exact same reason. What I'll term "equiphonism" probably isn't great art, but it's good enough for rock 'n' roll.

Up Next: Ivan Neville, If My Ancestors Could See Me Now, 1988

Living in the Future Tense

2009-01-05T11:13:00.005-05:00

It is the fifth day of 2009, which probably doesn't merit a blog post, but I'll give it special attention because it is friggin' 2009.

How futuristic does "2009" sound? Very. To me anyway.

Everyone must have at least one moment in their lives when they look up and say, "How did it get to be XXXX year?! That was so far away."

I had my chronological wake up call today, and it was almost certainly overdue.

So what to do when the time starts to pass like it does in cartoons where the calendar pages fall off the wall -- slow at first, then with increasing speed. This isn't a midlife crisis sort of thing. For starters I'm too young to be middle-aged. Also, there's not much about how I'm living I would change even if I could.

It's more of a "here have all the days gotten to" sort of moment. I've been think that over this morning, but I have no deep insights beyond "time keeps on slippin' into the future" and wondering if I would recognize "the future" if I ever saw it.

I doubt I would because everyday I get out bed is "today." I can makes plans for the future, but once the days come on which I have something planned, those days are inevitably more todays, soon to be a yesterdays.

I know this about as profound as something a high school freshman would say when getting high for the first time. I also know that sharing my sophomoric philosophy with you has helped me get these thoughts out of my head and into yours.

You're welcome.

The last thing I know is that if I ever do get to future, I want a jetpack.

Bringin Down the Grouse

2008-12-31T10:12:00.003-05:00

The year of our Lord 2008 has certainly been a collection of 366 days, hasn't it?

I've not done at all badly for myself, and I hope you can say the same in your own regard.

Either way, may we all always be able to sing along with this classic and mean every word in a good way.

Happy New Year!

A Diamond in the Goth

2008-12-29T11:21:00.003-05:00

Album: Peter Murphy, Deep, 1989

Best Track: "Cuts You Up"

Lasting Memory: I salvaged this cassette from the detritus of a former D.C. housemate. I'm pretty sure the guy's name is Paul, but I can't swear to that because I've tried to forget as much about him as possible.

The guy was a walking disaster -- psych discharge from the Air Force, failed Scientologist and Mormon, and debtor to several very insistent college loan issuers -- who I voted against allowing to move into the group house in the first place. I remember as much as I do about the guy because I had to gloss over it so he could get a Russian work visa and stay well the hell away Washington and my house once and for all.

Did I mention that the guy actually moved to Russia before he secured his work visa? He was that kind of guy. He was also the kind of guy who left behind his music collection, all but a handful of his books, and a microwave as "payment" for the nearly $1,000 phone bill he managed to roll up during his month and a half in the house.

I eventually tracked him down through the U.S. Embassy in Moscow and got him to pay his phone bill in return for not at least entering extradition processing. I also kept this copy of Peter Murphy's Deep and a wallchart of the young-Earth creationist's time line of world history from Adam and Eve until about 1980 AD.

The wallchart is more interesting than the tape, but you'll probably recognize the hit single "Cuts You Up" from Deep since it was exactly everything a fin-de-80s alternative track should have been and it still gets played on the better sorts of radio stations.

What you won't know, and what I never realized until I gave Deep a listen yesterday, is that whatever appeal Peter Murphy holds, he holds in large measure because he sounds exactly like Neil Diamond. In fact, the similarities between the former leader of goth godfathers Bauhaus and the leather-lunged troubadour are nothing short of eerie.

Compare the vocals on Murphy's "Marlene Dietrich's Favorite Poem" to Diamond's "Heartlight" and then tell me if you have ever seen both men in the same place at the same time.
You hear what I'm saying, right? I'm not just way off base here, am I?

Beyond the voices, both men are partial to wearing pseudo pompadour hairstyles, engaging in-concert theatrics, and sucking blood.* What other proof do you need?

Up Next: Ned's Atomic Dustbin, God Fodder, 1991

*Editor's note: While Mr. Diamond's taste for "red, red wine" is well-documented, it has never been confirmed that Mr. Murphy actually dines on the sweet nectar of humans.

Turning to Partly Sunny Later in the Day

2008-12-27T10:29:00.003-05:00

Album: Bob Mould, Black Sheets of Rain, 1990

Best Track: "It's Too Late"

Lasting Memory: Exactly one day after receiving Bob Mould's Black Sheets of Rain as a 21st birthday present in 1990, I was involved in what should have been a very serious automobile accident on Interstate 64, just south of Williamsburg, Va.

The whole thing was fittingly poetic, but not in the way that the album's title would suggest.

The day was perfectly sunny, and the pavement was bone dry. The album is a mostly light-hearted recap of the leadup to and aftermath of the breakup of a long-term relation. There is only a smattering of doom and gloom on the album, and there was certainly no impending disaster on the horizon for me at that moment.

The stretch of highway I was on is flat, straight, and separated by a completely treeless and guardrail-less expanse of median. It is also maddeningly prone to total traffic stoppages for no reason at all, during which every driver has to decelerate from 75 mph to 0 mph in less than a minute.

While grooving to Black Sheets of Rain, I ran up on one of these parking-lot occurrences and stomped on my brakes. Not owning my own car at the time, I was driving a rented Dodge 4-door something. All fiberglass and relatively low to the ground.

Not knowing the car well enough to know if I would be able to stop in time before running into the car in front of me, I jerked the Dodge onto the shoulder of the center median and coasted to a stop. No harm so far, and it turned out I could have stopped within the lane after all.

So glancing into my rearview mirror to see if I have space to pull back into traffic, I saw an SUV of indeterminate but very large make squarely in my hindsights and growing bigger and bigger at an alarming rate.

Having nothing else to do, I took my foot off the brake and pulled hard to the left, into the median. This evasive action did little to minimize the impact, as the SUV must have been going about 30 mph when it smacked into my rented Dodge and pushed me into the center of the median.

And whaddaya know? I wasn't injured. The Dodge wasn't dented, and the SUV suffered just a cracked cover of one its headlights.

The only losses were a couple of oranges, which got knocked lose from an overstuffed grocery bagful of Thanksgiving leftovers and which rolled out of my driver's side door when I got out to yell at the SUV driver.

I still miss those oranges.

And I still don't know what that friggin' SUV driver was doing driving on the lefthand shoulder when he had more than enough room in the lane since I was no longer occupying it.

What I do know is that Black Sheets of Rain is everything I earlier complained that another album Bob Mould recorded with his band Hüsker Dü, The Living End, isn't. The production on Black Sheets is clear, and the songs are catchy while also being insightful. I might even go so far as to describe "Disappointed" as playful, life-affirming, and '60s pop-like:

Well I'm sorry you're disappointed
But times they change and so did I
Standing still and getting nowhere quicker
Well it seems I didn't have to try
But now I've found a reason to move on
And you won't miss me much now that I'm gone
You don't seem disappointed

The three years I went to college
Didn't make much of a difference to me
Made me feel so safe I didn't have to think
About the things I really wanna be

So don't get caught up in that trap
They'll make you feel like you've been trapped
Into owing them your gratitude
And all the other platitudes
That make you feel important when you go
But now I've found a reason to move on
And you won't miss me much now that I'm gone
You don't seem disappointed

'Cause when you're gone, somebody else will come along and take your place
It doesn't make me feel any less a member of the human race
This ain't no race

Well I'm sorry you're disappointed
But I don't feel that way today
I am free from all the crazy games you played
I am free from all the things you say
And I don't mean to make a mockery of the things
you thought I'd say when I left, but I'm not disappointed

And if I felt the urge to say you're wrong
Well, I just hold the words inside and laugh
And you'd be disappointed
So disappointed
So disappointed

Nothing on Black Sheets of Rain is exactly a day at Chuck E. Cheese's, but it's all nice enough. Even the ominous-sounding title track ends with this affirmation that the sun shines even when we can't see it:

A little rain is all we need
(Someone stopped the sun from shining)
Where will you be in my darkest hour of need?
(I never see the sun stop shining)
Where will you be in my darkest hour of need?
(Someone stopped the sun)
Here it comes again

The heart of the album are the songs that proceed most directly to its dual theme of the recognition of and resignation to loss, "It's Too Late" and "The Last Night." But, just as the album's title baits and switches, "Last Night" describes the beginning of the end, while "Too Late" is the tale of moving on.

All of Black Sheets is pleasingly ironic, which, to finally get to my point, is what made it a fittingly poetic soundtrack for a car crash that destroyed nothing but oranges.

Up Next: Peter Murphy, Deep, 1989

So Happy Christmas ...

2008-12-24T09:14:00.004-05:00

Leave it to The Pogues to capture the best and the worst of the Christmas experience all in one song.

It really is a hopeful song. The hope of the damned, but that sort of thing has its times and places. Like theNew York City drunk tank on Chistmas Eve.

Here's hoping you only experience good things this holiday, and all next year, too.

2008-12-22T10:27:00.003-05:00

Album: Mötley Crüe, Shout at the Devil, 1983

Best Track: "Looks That Kill"

Lasting Memory: I was a loser when I was 13. Full stop. No gainsaying. I was a loser.

For no other proof, you need to know that I really, really liked Shout at the Devil when I was 13.

I may still be a loser, but I no longer enjoy Shout at the Devil. The album is exactly lame as it predecessor Too Fast for Love is not lame (see below).

Vince Neil may be a pretty, pretty man, but that can't make up for the fact that he is less appealing than any of the chicks in the video for "Looks That Kill." And all of the songs on Shout fail to rock precisely because they try to rock. "Red Hot" comes closest to being closest to being unbad, but it is also the most beige of all American hard rock songs.

If anyone wanted to rock out, they could definitely do better than "Bastard," but they could absolutely do as well.

I hate to harsh on a band that I just praised highly, but I have to think that Mötley Crüe both rushed out its sophomore album and aimed for the lowest common denominator with Shout. Certainly, the band did much better with its follow-up albums, such as Girls, Girls, Girls. Or at least that's what I think every time I'm at the Hustler Club in Baltimore.

Up Next: Bob Mould, Black Sheets of Rain, 1990

Judge This Tape by Its Cover, or Else

2008-12-19T12:19:00.003-05:00

Album: Mötley Crüe, Too Fast for Love, 1982

(Parental Advisory: This album cover may be laughably homoerotic.)

Best Track: "Merry-Go-Round"

Lasting Memory: This is one of only maybe three cassettes I ever replaced with a cassette after I finally broke down in 1991 and purchased a CD player. The analog Too Fast for Love tape that got dropped and stomped on during one of my infinity-plus-one moves in the late 1980s and early 1990s had too much sentimental value to me to be supplanted with a digital disk.

I couldn't today tell you what that sentimental value was, but I know I held the tape dear and that only a cassette would fill the void created by its destruction.

Playing the replacement tape through a couple of times this morning, I am convinced I made the right choices in both re-adding Too Fast for Love to my music collection and in going analog. The Crüe's major-label debut benefits from the murky sound and a slight echo that are the hallmarks of magnetic tape and which are inevitably scoured away on digital recordings.

"Starry Eyes," for instance, would just suck if it was, you know, good. But since it sounds so amateurish, the song endears and rocks much more than it has any right to.

The whole of Too Fast for Love is like that. The album is a guilty pleasure of a hard rock album that no one should need to feel guilty about enjoying.

Certainly compared to almost all of their Sunset Strip hair band brethren -- your L.A. Gunses, your Hanoi Rockses, your Poisons -- Mötley Crüe proved itself to be the most talented. And while it can be fair to counter that even Beckley, W. Va., has its best little ballerina,* being the best of/from will always merit its own deserved respect.

Then there's this: The songs "Merry-Go-Round" and "Live Wire" kicked ass when I was 12, and they kick ass when I'm 39.

So 27 years on, I throw my horns and am happy to let Mötley Crüe go "On With the Show."

Up Next: Mötley Crüe, Shout at the Devil, 1983

* Good night, Craig McC, wherever you are.

Let Me Send You Glad Tidings

2008-12-17T12:48:00.004-05:00

Album: Van Morrison, Moondance, n.d. (cassette reissue)

Worst Tack: "Come Running"

Lasting Memory: While I was sitting in a Blacksburg hippie coffee shop/ice cream parlor named Gillie's with a couple of friends on some cold, drizzly February night in 1990, a guy I kind of knew named James (I'm pretty sure, wouldn't swear) appeared out of nowhere and started singing along with a three-piece jazz combo that was playing "Moondance" near the front door of the establishment. You could have heard a pin drop, as everyone in the place -- struck by how perfectly the song, James' voice, the weather, and the general mood of being young and worldly wise/sheltered all came together -- fell silent and lost themselves in the vibe.

Everyone needs to experience more moments like that.

Fortunately, all anyone needs to do to set the scene for such reverie is to play Van Morrison's Moondance. Ranked 65th on Rolling Stone's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time, Moondance is the album you need when you just want to feel great about being alive while not completely forgetting that the world isn't always the greatest place to be living. (RS pollsters actually ranked Morrison's Astral Weeks higher on the GOAT list at No. 19, but since I don't own that album and can't unequivocally affirm that I have ever heard any songs off of Astral Weeks, I'll stick with my assertion that Moondance is Morrison's masterwork and add that Astral Weeks can go suck it.)

Every song on Moondance would be a career-maker for most other singer-songwriter -- even "Come Running," which I tagged as the album's worst track only because I couldn't see the point of listing every other song as the album's best. "Come Running" is a good song. In fact, it was the American single when Warner Bros. released Moondance in 1970. But set alongside with such timeless classics as "Caravan," "Everyone," "Into the Mystic," and "Glad Tidings," "Come Running" comes up a little short. Maybe it should give up smoking and drinking and really get itself in shape for the next listening.

For all of the greatness of its individual songs, though the best ting about Moondance is that it is a completely coherent album. In writing, recording, and sequencing the songs, Morrison and his band and production team took great care in constructing a collection of songs that have similar lyrical themes, similar musical sounds, and similar effects on listeners. As I blog through my music collection, I'm finding that most of the albums I praise highly are the ones that are albums qua albums. I'll try to remember to write more about this when I get to my Tragically Hip CDs sometime in, oh, 2011 at the current pace, because the Hip more than any other band I could name tends to pick unique moods and riffs to build entire album's worths of songs around.

For now, I'll just sign off and look forward to transitioning from the sublime to the ridiculous when I get around to making my next post on:

Up Next: Mötley Crüe, Too Fast for Love, 1982

Anarchists Who Attend Meetings Miss the Point

2008-12-15T12:06:00.004-05:00

Album: Mojo Nixon, Otis, 1990

Best Track: "Don Henley Must Die"

Lasting Memory: Whenever I catch an episode of The Andy Griffith Show, I think about this album because the inside of the cassette cover features a list of famous Otises -- Otis the Drunk, Otis the Elevator, Otis Sistrunk, etc.

Played by prolific and deceased voice actor Hal Smith, Otis Campbell is right up there with Frank Pembleton at the top my of list of all-time favorite television characters. As written, the character of Otis was the most responsible alcoholic who ever lived. He had and kept a good job. He was reasonably happily married. He had his own keys to Mayberry's police station and holding cells so he could lock himself up when he needed to sleep off a bender. Otis was fictionally a man who knew how to balance his vice with virtue.

I suspect that Mojo likes Otis Campbell for the exact same reasons I do. Because while Mojo espouses anarchy -- consequence-free irresponsibility, actually -- in songs like "I Ain't Gonna Piss in No Jar" on Bo-Day-Shus!!! and "Took Out the Trash and Never Came Back," he clearly understands that in real life that with great libertarianism comes great responsibility. Here's what Mojo had to say about his political and social philosophies during a 1999 interview with The Onion A.V. Club:

Onion: Can you outline your political platform?

Mojo Nixon: Basically, I'm just saying one basic thing: Take responsibility for your own actions. You make decisions, and you live by 'em. If you were dealt a bad hand, you've still gotta play cards. Or you can fold and get another hand. But you can't sue somebody and get a new hand! People always want to blame somebody or something. It's always somebody else's fault. But it's your own damn fault. The government, the church, the state, the lawyers, the doctors. ... It's not their fault, it's not your parents' fault, it's your fault. People always want to blame someone else -- right-wing talk-show hosts, or rap musicians, rock 'n' roll, or whatever. All this whining and crying and pissing and moaning and suing everyone has gotta stop. You make decisions and you live by 'em. And then you die. Then other people get to make decisions and live by them. It's pretty fuckin' simple! Now, it's who can hire the most lawyers and wear the other person down so they give up and you win. Whoever has the most money can hire the most lawyers and eventually win. Same thing with the election process. The idea is that there's supposed to be a marketplace of ideas and you vote for who you think is best. But that's not true at all. It's whoever can raise the most money, can hire the smartest people, and make the best button-pushing ad to get elected. We have diluted justice and democracy by putting money into it so deep. I've been working on this thing, The Mojo Manifesto. I'm gonna solve all these problems. I'm just having a little trouble figuring it out.

O: Do you vote?

MN: No, I don't vote. I think the last time I voted, I voted for Carter. I don't think it makes a difference. I think the Republicans and the Democrats are just selling us the same bag of shit with different colors on it. They're both battling in the same middle 10 percent of the total spectrum of political ideas. People were so excited -- and I, too, was excited -- when Clinton was elected, but all Bubba can really do is put a smiley face on things. The giant bureaucratic machine, the Defense Department, the Department of Transportation, the IRS. ... All these things just ride along. They don't even know Bubba's there. And look at Bubba--he can't stop these things. Look how worn-out and beat-up he is. Because of the way the whole system is based, you get the most money, which comes from the most evil people, whether it's cigarette money or HMOs or whoever, and they're going to keep things the way they are. They're going to bamboozle us into making us think we're getting reform when what they're really doing is protecting their asses. In the big picture, the Republicans and the Democrats don't have a clue. They don't have any intention of solving any of our problems. Their only plan is to get re-elected; their only plan is save-ass: "If you give me money and vote for me, I'll try to save any stupid thing you want." It's sound and fury signifying nothing, and I'm calling for a new constitutional convention. If that doesn't work, I'm calling for armed insurrection! I mean, we're totally drifting around in a sea of stupidity and indecision. We agreed 200 years ago to have a constitution and to fight the king. We need to agree on something now besides football and pizza.

O: Are you thinking of joining a militia?

MN: No, I'm not going to blow up people; I'm going to blow up the infrastructure. I'm gonna shoot satellites out of the sky. And I also think that the ideas of doctors and nurses and HMOs are lousy and inefficient. It's all just a big money-grab, hiding behind the veil of, "We want to help you." They don't care about helping people. If you want to make money, there are plenty of ways. Become a lawyer. Become a widget salesman or something. Medicine should be about finding cures and healing people, not about making more money. If people are sick, we should try to make them well, not try to get as much money out of them as possible and keep 'em just alive to milk 'em 'til the end. It's wrong.

O: What's your solution?

MN: We need to reform the whole thing. We need instant voter registration when you turn 18. They're still using paper to register people to vote! You should be able to walk in anywhere with your social-security number, and they can check the computer and see if you've voted already. We need to get rid of the Electoral College; we need to open things up a little bit. That's why I'm calling for a new constitutional convention to unveil Mojo's new 10-point plan. I'm also calling for a billion dollars in research for the male G-spot. If you're gonna waste money, let's waste it for a good reason.

I agree with everything he said here except for abolishing the Electoral College. All people have the inalienable right to be occasionally reckless so long as they are more often responsible. Mojo for president, indeed.

Double indeed.

Up Next: Van Morrison, Moondance, n.d. (cassette reissue)

Comedy = Others' Pain + Your Distance

2008-12-14T10:13:00.011-05:00

I have a long post on libertarianism vs. the social contract to put up tomorrow. You'll be surprised by my choice for the winner.

While I get my thoughts sorted, enjoy this bit of irreverent comedy from The Office creator Ricky Gervais, which may just be the most wrong -- and most spot-on -- four minutes of social commentary ever filmed.

And don't miss out on Gervais calling out Nazis for sloppiness and Anne Frank for laziness ("no sequel").

Ain't Gonna Pay for Tapes Any More

2008-12-11T11:45:00.004-05:00

Album: Mojo Nixon & Skid Roper, Root Hog or Die, 1991

Out of Order Posting Excuse: I no longer have this cassette in my music collection because someone at WUVT, the Virginia Tech student-run radio station, stole it after I brought it in to play a track during my short-lived show but forgot to take it with me when I left.

Damn alterna-kids.

So since I can't do a proper post on Root Hog or Die, and I'm too strapped for time today to do a legitimate post on the earlier album I do still have, I'll just share these two Mojo-esque videos of songs from Root Hog or Die.

The first is no "Stuffin' Martha's Martha's Muffin," but it's fun to think about Mojo and Debbie spending any time together at all, let alone spending time in flagrante delecto.

This second offering ain't a great song, but Mojo's wall-eyed commitment to being a public kook is admirable if nothing else.

Up Next: Mojo Nixon, Otis, 1990

Ode to an Easy Job

2008-12-09T12:38:00.004-05:00

Mojo Nixon, "Shane's Dentist," Otis

(H/T Blues Brews and BBQ)

Montage lifted from J-Walk.

Let record show, unbelievably, that Shane McGowan will be 51 years old this coming Christmas Day.

We Gotta Have More Soul!

2008-12-08T11:39:00.002-05:00

Album: Mojo Nixon & Skid Roper, Bo-Day-Shus!!!, 1987

Best Track: "Wide Open"

Lasting Memory: Listen to "We Gotta Have More Soul" or "Wash No Dishes No More" and understand how rarefiedly ridiculous it may seem for me to write the following words: I experienced a true epiphany on July 23, 1991, while listening to the Mojo Nixon & Skid Roper album Bo-Day-Sush!!!.

Sitting in my car, at around two in the afternoon, parked in front of a company-owned townhouse in Germantown, Md., where I was camping out while serving a co-op stint with a government management consulting company at the U.S. Department of Energy satellite headquarters, listening to "Wide Open," I understood, all in a flash, what was so great about rock n' roll and America.

"Wide Open," like a majority of the songs on Bo-Day-Sush!!!, preaches the desirability of -- and sometime the absolute requirement for -- freedom in dancin', drinkin', and hair stylin'. But the real root of Mojo and Skid's message is conveyed in the bridge to "Wide Open," during which Mojo drops into sotto voce to tell listeners

I'm out in Pittsylvania County
On Highway 7-1-8
Middle of a cornfield
Know I'm not too late
There's about thirteen
Thirteen '67 Chevy Malibus
In a circle
In the cornfield with their headlights on
And I can feel it

I can feel it!

And everybody's dancin' in the headlights
Dancin' in the headlights
And off
In the distance
You can hear 'em sing . . .

"I'm feling wide open"

That. Is. It. That is the power of music and the blessing of having been born in the United States. If you need further explanation, I can't help you.

But if you do need some further proof of American Exceptionalism, give "B.B.Q. U.S.A." a click and a spin.

Up Next: Mojo Nixon, Otis, 1990

I Want to Believe

2008-11-30T18:05:00.004-05:00

More soon ...

Do Wolverhampton Houses Have Garages?

2008-11-28T14:58:00.004-05:00

Album: Mighty Lemon Drops, Out of Hand, 1987

Best Track: "My Biggest Thrill (Live)"

Lasting Memory: I taped this album from my sisters friend Nancy during the summer of 1989, when I was working as a lot attendant (read: carwasher) at Nancy's father's rental-car lot.

That was a tough summer, during which I also became super serious about working out. I dropped between 50 and 60 pounds in a little over two months, between the working outside for 9 hours a day, 6 days a week and then spending 2 hours in the weight room for 4 or 5 evenings each week.

What ever became of that Ed kid who could pull of that kind of schedule?

Rhetorical question: He realized he liked having beers more than not having beers, and he also aged 20 years.

It happens. Even to the likes of you. Don't judge me.

It also happens that good bands and their songs get lost to time, which is what became of the Mighty Lemon Drops. But much like Randall with a certain term, I'm bring them back.

Out of Hand isn't as good as the Mighty Lemon Drops' World Without End, which I praised in my previous post, but Out of Hand is pretty good. Rawer, more garage band-y than its immediate follow-up, Out of Hand opens with a strong title track and keeps right on rocking with slightly psychedelia overtones through the closing song, "The Other Side of You (Live)."

I particularly like the song "My Biggest Thrill (Live)" because it, in 1987, promised exactly what the Mighty Lemon Drops delivered in 1998 on pretty much all of World Without End -- power pop of the purest kind, which can only be produced in garages by late-teen and early-twenties musicians who are too naive to understand that they can't really change the world by causing a few asses to shake.

Which raises the question, "Do houses in the city of Wolverhampton, England, where the Mighty Lemon Drops formed, have garages?" Apparently not, judging by the picture of the Wolverhampton townhouse development to the right. So good show by the lads for never saying, "Count Me Out" when confronted with this muse-denying limitation.

Up Next: Mojo Nixon & Skid Roper, Bo-Day-Shush!!!, 1987

Yep, Every Year

2008-11-26T12:09:00.006-05:00

Today's Long-Distance Dedication goes out to

Peggy, Susan, Chris, Dave, and a man who made so much of all we've accomplished possible.

Popping Off

2008-11-25T13:02:00.003-05:00

Album: The Mighty Lemon Drops, World Without End, 1988

Best Track: "Inside Out"

Lasting Memory: When I started the project that constitutes the basic purpose for this blog -- listening to all of the cassettes and CDs I've collected since my early teens -- I was hoping I would make some great rediscoveries of bands I had all but forgotten about. To date, such rediscoveries have been rare but welcome, especially in the cases of Firehose and House of Freaks.

I am happy to now add The Mighty Lemon Drops to the list of bands whose music I unwisely relegated to the deepest depths of my tape rack, to be played again probably never by chance or choice. But World Without End has come up in the blog queue, and I am here to report that it is as charming a collection of power pop as was ever recorded and released.

The album opens with the one Mighty Lemon Drop's song that I can recall ever receiving any airplay in the United States, "Inside Out." It's a great song, to put a none-too-fine but completely accurate point on things. I don't know that my picking the song apart to explain why the song is great would be helpful in any way. I do know that whatever the separate and combined elements of that greatness are, they extend to all but probably one of the songs on World Without End.

I was particularly impressed anew with "Hear Me Call," "Fall Down (Like the Rain)," and "One by One." Enjoy at your leisure.

Up Next: The Mighty Lemon Drops, Out of Hand, 1987 (out of order, but what can you do?)

Influential Influences Influence

2008-11-23T13:24:00.005-05:00

Album: Meat Puppets, Meat Puppets, 1982 (reissue)

Best Track: "Blue-Green God"

Lasting Memory: I bought this debut EP from Meat Puppets in February 1992 after I had read the eleventy billionth interview in which Nirvana's frontman Kurt Cobain cited the Meat Puppets as an influence.

In truth, the Meat Puppets were a template for Nirvana. Every riff and lyrical conceit of Nirvana was lifted wholesale from the Meat Puppets, right down to the angular A chord that served as the base of each chorus.

I won't swear to the A chord, but I would go to the Supreme Court to defend the proposition that Nirvana stole their shtick from the Meat Puppets. I'd also have to concede the fact that Nirvana did the Meat Puppets much better than did the original puppeteers.

Comparing the Meat Puppets' "Blue-Green God" to Nirvana's "Negative Creep" is as informative as it it is unfair. It's like wondering why Hank Aaron topped Babe Ruth in total homers. Aaron would never have been swinging for the fences if he he hadn't followed Ruth, but Aaron threw his lumber with much more style and grace.

I don't dislike the Meat Puppets, and I definitely like Nirvana, but seeing the strings that connect both bands definitely reduces the "wow" factor whenever I hear either group's songs.

It's also the case that the student should surpass the master. Only if Led Zeppelin reworks "When the Levee Breaks" from Kansas Joe McCoy will rock 'n' roll magic happen.

Since Nirvana found the pop hook in the sonic sludge that the Meat Puppets created, more power to Nirvana. Fair play, after all, has to allow imitation and, sometimes, outright theft.

Maybe you can find it in your heart (or ears) to be blown away by "Tumblin' Tumbleweeds" and excuse/laud Nirvana for "Heart Shaped Box." (Work with me, here. The songs sound totally similar, even though the lyrics are different.)

Up Next: The Mighty Lemon Drops, World Without End, 1988

Le Loi Est Moi

2008-11-21T12:10:00.005-05:00

Have you ever caught yourself wondering what would be one of the things I would do if I were king?

Well, wonder no more!

Now you, just like the fortunate residents of southeastern Virginia and northeastern North Carolina, can learn how I would reform the federal tax system.

This priceless information is available to you -- FOR FREE! -- if you click on the link to the WHRV local-events talk show Hearsay With Kathy Lewis.

I was one of the listeners whose idea on big fixes for the U.S. economy was chosen for consideration by a prominent local economist. I come in at about the 23-minute mark. I haven't listened to myself except to make sure that I wasn't edited out. Counterarguments or kudos are welcome from anyone who gives the program a digital spin.

In a nutshell, my idea is to set a living-wage floor on what earnings are taxable (e.g., the first $40,000/year are untaxed) and then to only collect very small percentages of money earned above that floor in a graduated manner (e.g., 2 percent on $40,000 to $49,999, 4 percent on $50,000 to $59,999).

The top marginal rate would be 10 percent, and separate FICA witholdings would be eliminated. To replace revenues lost by not taxing the first dollar earned, there would be a 1 percent federal sales tax on all nonfood items. There would be no deductions or rebates/returns on federal taxes paid.

I'm flexible on the dollar amounts, marginal rates and a very small number of allowable deductions.

What's your big idea?

Theirs, Yours, Ours

2008-11-20T12:49:00.006-05:00

Album: Lowen & Navarro, Walking on a Wire, 1990

Best Track: "Walking on a Wire"

Lasting Memory: I almost saw these guys in concert in 1993, when they came through Blacksburg, Va., and played a very small club. Instead, I went to the mall movie theater and watched Rudy.

Life is a series of bad choices.

Walking on a Wire, on the other hand, is a veritable cornucopia of excellent choices for any rock-leaning pop music artist. In fact, the Lowen and Navarro-penned "We Belong,' which anchors the B side of the this album was a huge hit for Pat Benatar. The L&N version is quite different from Benatar's, but it is easy to hear what drew Benatar and her then-husband/producer/lead guitarist Neil Giraldo to the song. The raw emotion, quiet-loud dynamics, and slow build without true crescendo are perfect for Benatar.

Most of the songs on Walking are perfect for someone, and plenty of those good fits have been found. As L&N write on their official Web site, they are "songwriters of notable cachet ... [whose] works have been recorded by artists as diverse as Pat Benatar ..., The Bangles, The Four Tops, Dave Edmunds, The Temptations and a host of others."

I spared myself and you the tedium of tracking down the other artists' interpretations of L&N's songs, but I bet Edmunds would kill, just kill, "Walking on a Wire" and "She Said No." Luka Bloom was born to sing "Oh Mary."

"What I Make Myself Believe" would sound much worse when sung by an American Idol contestant, but it is aching for some David Archuletta to give it a go.

If these guys would put more of their music online, I'd share it with you. And they would be raking in quite a few more royalties. As things stand though, the bulk of Walking is hard to track down. "C'est la Vie."

Up Next: Meat Puppets, Meat Puppets, 1982 (reissue)

P.S. Two very special people were born on this date -- people who have meant a lot to me throughout my life. Survey says .... this should be a 10 a birthday for Bo Derek and Richard Dawson!

Serious, Moonlight

2008-11-19T11:07:00.004-05:00

Album: Los Lobos, By the Light of the Moon, 1987

Best Tracks: "One Time One Night" and "The Hardest Time"

Lasting Memory: My freshman year was the first time that Virginia Tech offered every dorm resident access to cable television. My roommate Barry's parents were kind enough to buy him a television a few weeks after the fall semester began, and we immediately signed up to have all 20 channels pumped into our 12 x 14 foot castle.

One of the very first shows I watched in the dorm was a half-hour special that a group of (I think) University of Oklahoma students had cobbled together to hip their peers around the country to the joys of Americana music and what would soon become known as alt-country. I can't remember the name of the show, but I distinctly remember that the host was a rather large, bearded gentlemen who wore denim overalls but no shirt. I also remember that one of the videos was the Bodeans' "Fade Away." Another video was Los Lobos' "One Time One Night."

I love those songs, but especially the Los Lobos one because it so perfectly portrays how sadness and tragedy lurk right around every corner while never becoming resigned or fatalistic. The last full verse of the song, which also serves as the bridge, kills me just about every time I hear it:

The sunlight plays upon my windowpane
I wake up to a world that's still the same
My father said to be strong
And that a good man could never do wrong
In a dream I had last night in America

Plus, dig that accordion coda.

The entirety of By the Light of the Moon teeters on the edge of melancholy without ever taking that plunge. Even the rockingest tracks, "Shakin' Shakin' Shakes" and "Set Me Free (Rosa Lee)," are all about two things: being scared of and scarred by romance and pursuing romance anyway. (Plus, for family members, who else thinks Cesar Rosas, the lead singer here, looks like Dad when he was younger?)

There are a couple of outright sad songs on the album, as titles like "Is This All There Is?" and "River of Fools" would suggest, but then "Tears of God" actually delivers the message that even

When your only escape
Is a cheap neck of wine
And the peace you need in your heart
Is so very hard to find

....

You find out true
What mother said to you
The tears of God will show you the way
The way to turn

For my money, and for whatever that's worth, By the Light of the Moon is Los Lobos' strongest album. Undoubtedly, its year of release, 1987, was the most successful for the band, as it was then when they had their ultra megahit cover of "La Bamba." So even if all the actual music critics concur that Kiko is Los Lobos' masterpiece, I can at least rest easy at night knowing that the band got their due a couple of decades ago. No reason to be down in the dumps about that.

Up Next: Lowen & Novarro, Walking on a Wire, 1990

What Are Words For?

2008-11-10T10:34:00.004-05:00

"Post-Racial."

This neologism has been bandied about like something that gets widely bandied ever since Barack Obama became a serious contender for the U.S. presidency. Since Obama's election victory last Tuesday, the question, "Is America now a post-racial society?" has been tackled on just about every political discussion show I listen to on the radio and watch on TV.

The unanimous answer ha been a resounding "No," and a frequent tidbit offered to support this conclusion is that voters in two states, Nebraska and Colorado, passed referendums making it illegal to use race or other physical characteristics as primary factors when making decisions regarding hiring, school admissions, or the awarding of government benefits.

Jettisoning the prima facie biased policy of affirmative action strikes me as a post-racial move. Judging people by the content of their character and not by the color of their skin was Dr. King's vision, right? And even if that is ignored, the fact that words mean stuff has to come into play.

But to hear the commentators tell it, the affirmative action bans are proof that people only care about race.

I do understand that some people voted against affirmative action because they are a little bit to a lot racist. At the same time, though, the result of abandoning affirmative action will exactly achieve the desired outcome of looking past race (and other things) and only rewarding individuals on their positive merits when it comes to hiring or university selection, or current hardships when it comes to doling out benefits.

When I hear the pundits discuss how America is not becoming a post-racial society, I can only conclude what Inigo Montoya did in The Princess Bride:

Vizzini: HE DIDN'T FALL? INCONCEIVABLE.

Inigo Montoya: You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

The Spanish Word for Polka Is "Polca"

2008-11-08T05:53:00.004-05:00

Album: Los Lobos, How Will the Wolf Survive?, 1984

Best Track: "Will the Wolf Survive"

Lasting Memory: How Will the Wolf Survive? was one of the first tapes I owned, so I listened to it a lot while mowing the lawn, riding the bus to sporting events, doing homework, and all the other stuff that marks an American suburban teen's drama-free everyday life.

I figure I've listened to this album at least 500 times through the years, and it has never failed to entertain and, sometimes, comfort. I've also thoroughly enjoyed all the times songs from Wolf such as the cover of "I Got Loaded" and the original "Don't Worry Baby" have been included on movie soundtracks.

The entertaining and comforting aspects of the music on Wolf can be traced to the same source--the accordion.

Almost as maligned as the bagpipes (another instrument I love the sound of, by the way), a well-played accordion just has a way of getting inside one's ear and producing exactly the effect the musician intends. Try not to at least want to dance when listening to "Corrida #1." Try not to get just a little wistful while listening to "The Breakdown."

By making such extensive use of the accordion, and by including "Serenata Nortena" on Wolf, Los Lobos placed themselves firmly in the Mexican musical genre of Norteno.

Norteno is the oompah music you hear blasting out of, well, everywhere in heavily Latino neighborhoods. Heavily influenced by the German and Eastern folk songs of the mid- and late-1800s white settlers of Texas, Norteno is essentially polka music with Spanish lyrics instead of Czech or Austrian lyrics. And like polka, Norteno can grate as easily as it enthuses. But as performed by Los Lobos on Wolf, Norteno rules.

Much of the reason Los Lobos' take on their own traditional sound works is because the band mixes in just enough rockabilly and Chicago blues to take the sharpest edges of the "pah" off the "oom." The band also dives headfirst into country folk when telling the tale of the indomitability of the immigrante in "Will the Wolf Survive":

Through the chill of winter
Running across the frozen lake
Hunters are out on his trail
All odds are against him
With a family to provide for
The one thing he must keep alive

Will the wolf survive?

Drifting by the roadside
Climbs each storm and aging face
Wants to make some morning's fate
Losing to the range war
He's got two strong legs to guide him
Two strong arms keep him alive

Will the wolf survive?

Standing in the pouring rain
All alone in a world that's changed
Running scared, now forced to hide
In a land where he once stood with pride
But he'll find his way by the morning light

Sounds across the nation
Coming from your hearts and minds
Battered drums and old guitars
Singing songs of passion
It's the truth that they all look for
The one thing they must keep alive

Will the wolf survive?
Will the wolf survive?

Ostensibly about first-generation Mexicans in Southern California, specifically those in East Los Angeles, this is a song that captures the challenge of all newcomers everywhere. Plus, it sounds good.

Up Next: Los Lobos, By the Light of the Moon, 1987

Gone Votin'

2008-11-04T11:36:00.004-05:00

Over the past week, I have received four phone calls from Barack Obama, three calls from Michelle Obama, and one call from an actual person working with the Obama campaign.

I can only conclude that the man obviously finds me irresistible and is stalking me, both personally and through proxies.

Instead of filing a restraining order, though, I will shortly go to the polls and cast my vote. I figure that will convince him to leave me alone.

In the Long Tradition of Traditionalism

2008-11-02T11:02:00.003-05:00

Album: The Long Ryders, 10-5-60, 1983

Best Track: "10-5-60"

Lasting Memory: My strongest memory of the Long Ryders is that the band did one in a series of Miller beer ads in the mid-1980s. The theme of the ads, as I also mentioned way back when I posted unenthusiastically about the Del Feugos, was that Miller was American beer suitable for Americans who enjoyed American music.

Boy howdy, are the five songs on the 10-5-60 EP American music. Each is an equal blend of honky tonk, psychedelic folk (think: late-period Byrds), and garage rock. The title track shows how this can work in a revved-up format, while the charming love song "Born to Believe in You" shows how blending these styles can work in a slower format.

I don't have much else to say about this band or album, but as roots rockers went, the Long Ryders were just about the rootsiest.

The vocals of lead Ryder Sid Griffin may be a bit of an acquired taste, but it appeals to me and fits the material very well. For me, there are few things that sound better than a cracking voice over a moaning steel guitar line. Feel free to disagree, which will just mean more of that stuff for me.

Up Next: Los Lobos, How Will the Wolf Survive?, 1984

My Bast Is Thoroughly Bombed

2008-11-01T07:39:00.003-04:00

Album: Live, Throwing Copper, 1994

Best Track: "Stage"

Lasting Memory: Throwing Cooper is one of the exceptions to my general rule of not owning albums whose songs get played on the radio all the time. I don't know what brings me to ignore that rule in the abstract, but in the case of this album, I specifically remember wanting to be able to listen to the Live song "All Over You" any time I wanted.

I was impressed by the song's intensity and emotion. I was right there with lead singer Ed Kowalczyk every time he got that catch in his throat while transitioning into the chorus, "I ... I ... I alone looooove YOU!"

The song got me going every time, and I figured it wouldn't stop doing that as time passed.

I was right about the lasting effect of "All over You," but wrong about needing to needing to own Throwing Cooper so I wouldn't lose the opportunity to hear the song.

Turns out, radio has never taken "All Over You" or "I Alone" or "Lightning Crashes" out of middling rotation since their release 14 years ago. I don't blame radio programmers for using the songs as a few of their many, many crutches. Each is immediately arresting, have good beats, and on-the-surface interesting lyrics. How could anyone whose job it is to prick up people's ears ask for any more? And could a listener do better than any of these singles?

Those songs are the aural equivalent of a bacon cheeseburger followed by mint chocolate chip ice cream. Even if you're a vegetarian or allergic lactose intolerant, you can't help but want that meal and enjoy it completely when you get it.

Would you want it every day, though?

From it's first note to its last, Throwing Copper is all burger and ice cream. The volume and emotion are constantly set to 11. This makes listening all the way through the album exhausting; I know my bast will require a few days to fully recover from being so bombed by the album.

Constantly ratcheting up the pathos and import of the songs also leads Live into many melodramatic minefields. The lyrics of "All Over You" and "I Alone" can't miss being interpret ted as creepy stalker stories, and "Lightning Crashes" is about a stillbirth.

Things get really beyond the bearable on the last official track on Throwing Cooper, "White, Discussion":

I talk of freedom
You talk of the flag
I talk of revolution
You’d much rather brag
And as the decibels of this
disenchanting discourse
Continue to dampen the day

The coin flips again and again, and again, and again
As our sanity walks away
All this discussion though politically correct
Is dead beyond destruction
Though it leaves me quite erect

And as the final sunset rolls behind the earth
And the clock is finally dead
I'll look at you, you'll look at me
And we'll cry a lot
But this will be what we said
This will be what we said

Look where all this talking got us, baby

Heavy stuff. Self-consciously heavy and decidedly nonrocking stuff. The kind of heavy that verges into the land of portentousness.

I tabbed "Stage" as the best song on Throwing Copper precisely because the lyrics are unintelligible.

When a hidden track titled "Horse" pops up after "White, Discussion" it is a welcome reprieve because it is country-ish, humorous, and muted. A sample lyric runs "She rode a horse inside my head/ Now they're running wild." I would have welcomed more cranking things back to 6 or 7 like this.

Up Next: The Long Ryders, 10-5-60, 1983

The Least Great Show on Earth

2008-10-30T15:40:00.005-04:00

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

2008-10-29T09:50:00.003-04:00

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

2008-10-28T09:41:00.007-04:00

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

2008-10-23T10:24:00.003-04:00

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

2008-10-18T07:50:00.003-04:00

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

2008-10-15T12:34:00.007-04:00

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

2008-10-14T10:57:00.005-04:00

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

2008-10-10T10:23:00.009-04:00

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

2008-10-08T11:15:00.004-04:00

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

2008-10-04T10:10:00.004-04:00

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

2008-10-03T10:22:00.003-04:00

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

2008-10-01T13:46:00.006-04:00

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?

The Dark Side of the Sun

2008-09-27T08:42:00.009-04:00

Album: Lemonheads, Lovey, 1990

Best Track: "Stove"

Lasting Memory: George was convinced in 1992 that "Ballarat," the first song on side A of Lovey was both the most musically impressive and funniest song he had ever heard. George was mistaken on both points, but it certainly was bold of the Lemonheads to open the major-label debut with an audio vignette of cheerleaders being massacred with a chainsaw (which does not appear in this clip of the song).

But who was I to argue with George? He was the music scene in Blacksburg back then, fronting the band Not Shakespeare, providing sound for pretty much all the local bars that had live music, and operating a recording studio out of his basement. Plus, he was doing a favor for my friend Brad and me by recording our hymn "Jesus Ain't No Cocksucker." (He isn't, which is a point Brad and I made most clear.)

Lovey contains no hymns. In fact, it's hard to figure out exactly what any of the songs are about because lead singer/songwriter/guitarist Evan Dando has sloppy enunciation, plotting, and fret technique. The music is inspired by both 'mid-1970s punk and late-1960s bubble-gum rock. Which is to write that the Lemonheads sound like Richard Hell and the Voidoids on "Left for Dead" and like the Lemon Pipers on "Half the Time."

Using a not-at-all-rigorous scoring system, I've determined that the Lemonheads come down on the side of the sunny poppers, primarily because they scored 1,783,254 points in this category for their cover of "Brass Buttons." Admittedly, that is not a happy song, and I've linked to the Gram Parsons original rather than the Lemonheads version. As sad as the song is, it has the undeniably airy and free "California" sound.

The Lemonheads replicated this juxtaposition of dark lyrics with lilting melodies on all of their best songs, as I'll discuss in my next post. But to set the stage for that, here are the bluntly symbolic but still sad lyrics to "Stove" (the link is to, appropriately, a cover):

The gas man came, took out our electric stove.
I helped him carry her.
He told me he had been a prize fighter once.
Shuffled her through and out the door.
We walked back in talked 'bout his boy at U.V.M.
And we began to put the new stove in.

But I miss my stove.
She's all alone.
Call it love.
She's been replaced.
I miss my stove.
She's all alone.
She's right out front and looks a mess.
Unwanted guest.
We lied to her.
I miss my stove.
Feel sad I guess.

I know I shouldn't think about it anymore.
What's the point? you say.
But I'm reminded each time I walk out my door.
My stove is gone to stay.
He walked back in talked 'bout his boy at U.V.M.
And we began to put the new stove in.

But I miss my stove.
She's all alone.
Call it love.
She's been replaced.
I miss my stove.
She's all alone.
She's right out front and looks a mess.
Unwanted guest.
We lied to her.
I miss my stove.
Feel sad I guess.

Up Next: Lemonheads, It's a Shame About Ray, 1992