Step 1: Panic

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

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

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

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

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

Panic.

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

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

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

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

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

Like Flies to a Hot Tin Roof

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

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

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

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

Huh?

What?

Say again?

"Green behind the ears," really?

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

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

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

---------

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

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

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

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

That guy just might get my vote for city council.

At a Loss for Not Losing

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

Best Track: "Bit Part"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Debatable

Anyone know the story of Chuck Wepner?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Spaceholders R Them

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

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



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

Here's a second video.




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

How's your job treating you?

The Dark Side of the Sun

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

Life Is Just a

Fantasy!

Could you live that fantasy life? Do you wish you could wear that leopard-skin bodysuit half as well as he did? Would you believe that Aldo Nova called Montreal home?

I heard this song on the radio this morning for the first time in probably 20-plus years. It made my day, and since I lack the time to do a proper post today, I figured I'd share the song's classic video, dredged from the depths of YouTube. Enjoy.