From the Vault--PIL and Eric Bogosion

I'm finally getting back into my CD dump, which is a process I never saw myself engaging in--that is, taking all my CDs and digitizing them.  So much for "Kill Your iPOD."  The only thing that would make my iPOD more lovable was if I could get Walton Goggins' face on my iPOD case.

The process is actually helping me rediscover music I'd either ignored or completely forgotten about, which has been an absolute joy.  Right now I'm listening to PIL's "Disappointed," which was part of the musical tapestry that made up the last half of grad school and my now ex-stepdad leaving, an event so catastrophically devastating that I have yet to be able to write about it other than to tell people what a lying cockwad he is and leave it at that.  Because he pretty much ruined my life and it has only been in the last year or so that I've managed to hustle things back into some semblance of order.  But it wasn't fun

Oh you handsome devil

Eric Bogosian's Pounding Nails in the Floor With My Forehead was the other big album at that time.  I was obsessed with Eric Bogosian, both on Law and Order: CI and as a writer; I'd seen him read from The Perforated Heart at AWP and fell in love.  His writing was so visceral that it made me physically uncomfortable, which I sort of liked because it was a nice distraction from crying all the time.  Matthew got me a signed copy of Nails and I read it while working costumes for Beauty and the Beast.  It also helped me get through that clusterfuck.  Eric Bogosian pretty much saved my soul.

I was especially fond of "Blow Me."  I loved the explosive, raw frustration of the piece because it was exactly how I was feeling.  The whole world, as far as I was concerned, could just fuck off.  At one point, my mother, with whom I was having a pretty rough time with post-ex-stepdad-leaving, suggested that I get a tattoo.  I whirled on her and snarled I'm going to get a tattoo, I'm going to tattoo my EYELIDS and they're going to say BLOW. ME. so that when I close my eyes the whole world knows how I feel about 'em.

She never brought up getting tattooed again.

There was a time where I could recite "Blow Me" from memory.  I was going to perform it at the Stonecoast Talent Show but Matthew talked me out of it because he is occasionally a buzzkill.

I still love Bogosian, but I'm at a point in my life where I need a little more smooth.  Where people yelling doesn't make me feel better, it makes me feel worse.  The man is a comic genius, an amazing performer and very handsome (also, a sweetheart, he replied to my email).  Things have gotten surprisingly better, for the most part.  I've mended.  I don't think I've listened to Nails or 9 since that time, but oddly enough, it brings with it a weird sort of nostalgia, not putting me back in that awful, dark time, but rather, reminding me that somehow, I got through all of it. 

From the Vault/Saddest Songs: The Magnetic Fields 69 Love Songs Vol. 1

My friend Bix understood exactly how I felt about the Magentic Fields 69 Love Songs vol 1.  I had put "The Book of Love" and "All My Little Words" on a mix I made for him, and he came up to me with this wonderous look on his face, as though he couldn't believe I knew the Magnetic Fields too.  Because with all the white noise of music out there, between Lady GaGa and Nickleback and Katy Perry and Justin Beiber and all the other billions of bands overtaking the airwaves, it's almost wonderous to find someone who knows the same little band you do

He, like me, played that album over and over and over, terrified to listen to anything else by them for fear it wouldn't be as good.  "Then I heard "Papa Was a Rodeo," he told me one night over champagne at an art gallery in Brunswick Maine.  "And I played that one over and over.  And I knew."  He had this dreamy, sincere look on his face, as though the two of us were speaking the secret language only Magnetic Fields listeners understand.  Because there's something so intimate about the music that you swear you must be the only person on earth who feels the lyrics, and when you find someone else who feels them that same way, it's almost magic.

My sister Shaun, giver of all things wonderful and musical (including The Smiths and Siouxsie and the Banshees) gave me 69 Love Songs for Hanukkah one year.  I took to it instantly, playing it through headphones on my discman, laying on the inflatable mattress I slept on during visits home, mouthing along in the dark as though the words on my breath might somehow reach their intended targets in the universe.

69 Love Songs was my album for boys who had no intentions being for me what I needed or wanted them to be.  "Luckiest Guy on the Lower East Side," "Absolutely Cuckoo" and "My Sentimental Melody," in that order, were all songs for Dwight, spelling out the ever-deepening emotional divide between us.  "Come Back from San Francisco" went on the first CD I made Michael, "I Don't Want to Get Over You" was for James, who I eventually got over and "Reno Dakota" was for Jay, who had a habit of vanishing for years on end, leaving me wondering if or when he might ever reappear. 

And like any good album, it grew on me.  I discovered songs that I'd skipped in early listenings now held a curious truth to them, like the cleverness of "Chicken With it's Head Cut Off" and I can't hear "All My Little Words" without picturing Jay Karns in the shower and Walton Goggins lifting weights.  

From the Vault: The Pretenders "Back on The Chain Gang" or, The Hardest Pop Song On Earth

I've been trying to get back into singing lately.  My friend and Odd Couple co-star Tio was a finalist for the local Idol competition, and I've been thinking about trying out.  I did a lot of singing in high school--musical theater, showchoir, chamber ensemble and all the terrible things that come with them.  That, and I never scored below a 5 out of 6 (usually getting a 6) at NYSSMA.

But a neck injury in college and a bout of infection that left me sounding like Tom Waits for six weeks when I was 22 more or less ruined my chances of ever being the screeching soprano in a metal band (or opera, whichever) and my descision to no longer persue musical theater left me with very few options for professional singing.  I don't play an instrument and there aren't a lot of karaoke options here, so I just sort of reduced myself to singing in the car and, occasionally, karaoke.

But I was listening to the Pretenders, and I was thinking about all my friends that do Idol every year, and thought that maybe I should get back into it.  I put "Back on the Chain Gang" on my record player, looked at my cat sitting politely on the couch, and, as I began to sing, I made a discovery.

"Back on the Chain Gang" is the hardest song in the world to sing.

My friend/writing partner Matthew makes fun of me for loving this song.  He calls out Chrissie Hynde as being a proto Natalie Merchant, a whispy little thing with a fairy voice.  Her voice is a little on the fey side, but what she does have is a master's control over it.  "Back on the Chain Gang" is riddled with grace notes, which less-talented singers usually gloss right over.  This explains why American Idol-type covers of The Pretenders always suck so monumentally.  Because they key isn't sliding up and down the scale, it's about hitting each one of those notes individually and moving to the next one.  It's a lot harder than it sounds.

This, by the way, coming from someone who routinely (and against her will) sang "Seasons of Love" from Rent, which a lot of musical theater types will agree is the hardest song in the genre to not screw up.  "Back on the Chain Gang" is a million times harder. Because not only are you trying to hit each of those notes, but you're trying to convey the same tough/tender/melancholy/hopeful tone of the song.  It's not about making it sound "pretty," it's about making it sound as real as Hynde makes it.

Maybe someday I'll get it . . . but for now, I'm having fun trying.

From the Vault--Shameful 90's Edition

There's a burger joint on St. Mark's Place that I take everyone who's company I enjoy--I discovered it while out with my friend Eeon, and then we took Pete (also of Canned Laser), and last weekend, I took Matthew to thank him for driving eight hours to see me in The Odd Couple.  It's an awesome place, a tiny, cramped little joint with sliders topped with carmelized onions, 3 beers on tap and Guiness milkshakes, pecan pie and the best fries on Planet Earth.

But this time, for some reason, they'd set the satellight radio to the 90's station, and it got progressively worse as our meal went on.  It started off promising enough, "Allison Road" by the Gin Blossoms (I have an unabashed love for the Gin Blossoms that Matthew claims he will never understand) and "No Rain" by Blind Melon (which I'm trying to decide whether or not it's an inanely stupid song or a bright bit of pop genius, like "Brian Wilson" by the Barenaked Ladies) . . . but then the unthinkable happened.

Whether it was because lunch hour was over and everyone else with normal hours and normal cubical jobs was dragging themselves back to another half a day of soul-crushing work, the tone of the radio turned from nostalgia to the Toaster-In-The-Bathtub Hour.  It started with Semisonic's "Closing Time," which I have hated since it spawned (my ex-friend Caitlin maudlinly used the lyric "Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end" as her senior quote . . . in 2001) and then went to the Verve Pipe's "Bittersweet Symphony" and then "Desperatly Wanting" by Better than Ezra.

Audrey Hepburn does
not endorse Deep Blue
Something

. . . and then, in case you weren't already about to stick your genitals in the deep fryer, came Deep Blue Something's "Breakfast at Tiffany's."

I know a lot of bad songs.  A lot of them.  But "Breakfast at Tiffany's" was the "Hey Soul Sister" of the 90's.  It's inane, it's whiny, it's really, really dumb from a band with a faux-intellectual name.  And you just know at least one guy in the band was a lit major with bad facial hair. 

A sample of the brilliantly crafted lyrics:

"So what now?

it's plain to see we're over

and I hate when things are over"

That is easily the most crybaby lyric in history.  Here's the chorus, won't you?

"And I said
what about
Breakfast at Tiffany's
She said, I think I
remember the film
and as I recall, I think
we both kind of liked it
and I said, well that's
the one thing we've got"

They're sticking together because of a film they can't remember whether or not they liked?  I guess there are only two things left to do.

1) Netflix Breakfast at Tiffany's and watch again to see if maybe this time you can be sure whether or not you liked it.  I had to watch The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension three times before I could say that I liked it.

2) Break up.  This girl sounds like a moron if she can't remember whether or not she liked a movie.  Then again, you're in Deep Blue Something, so it's not like you're going to do much better unless she's deaf.

The wonderful thing about "Breakfast at Tiffany's" is that you can make up lyrics really, really easily.  They don't have to rhyme or fit or anything!  It's plug-and-play songwriting, like

"And I said
what about
Buckaroo Banzai?
and he said
I think I remember the film
and as I recall
you fell asleep when we watched it
and I said, well I, tend to do that"

Or:

"And I said

\what about

Breakfast at Tiffany's?

and you said 

That's my favorite song

and I'm pretty sure

I left you in the parking lot

oh well, at least I

know all this now" 

From the Vault--Happy Father's Day

Don McLean has not aged well. When I was in, oh, eighth grade or so, I thought “American Pie” was a good song, and “Vincent” a better one, but “American Pie” has been reduced to a pile of self-righteous hippy cheese and although “Vincent” still remains a haunting piece of music, when paired with the rest of McLean’s tortured-artist songbook, seems like just another trite piece of “oh, pity the artist” schlock.

I can, however, point out every single reference and allusion in “American Pie.” My dad was a master of drilling us full of two kinds of trivia—music and local history. To this day, I can still point out all the caves between my dad’s house and the church we attended. While all my friends were waiting on their dial-up internet to research each line for a frankly lazy history assignment (which is what we did before Wikipedia and Google) I simply played through the song and wrote it down in numerical order in about 10 minutes. My then-friend Caitlin said it was cheating, but let’s face it—she was just jealous.

Then again, you never know

The song that stays with me is from this same playbook, but it’s a rare one, from his first, eponymous album. “Bronco Bill’s Lament” is the first-person narrative of an ex TV cowboy. It’s sad and it’s beautiful and it’s been forgotten to everyone but vinyl junkies. Even the concept of the singing TV cowboy is something almost too nostalgic for most people. Although the western is making a mini-comeback,  I doubt we’ll see any of the old-timey cowboys with the glittery shirts and the guitars.

It’s sort of like Elton John’s “Candle in the Wind” only simpler, prettier and more haunting. The eponymous narrator has finally accepted his fate and is perhaps singing to some magazine interviewer charged with digging up a fluff piece on an old legend. And he sings:

“Oh I always liked the notion of a cowboy fighting crime
This photograph was taken in my prime
I could beat those desperados,
But there’s no sense fightin’ time . . . .”

The poetics are very basic, almost high-schoolish, but in their simplicity lies their charm. Much like Elton John’s “Your Song,” (which is better sung by Ewan McGregor) “Bronco Bill’s Lament” does not suffer from complexity or an attempt to be deep, which “American Pie” has a fatal case of.

My sister had this song on a mix tape my dad made off the live album, and we used to play it over and over and over on the stereo in the room we shared for ten years. Because when you’re a kid, something like this seems so deep and meaningful, and a lot of that meaning has stayed with me. No one wants to be forgotten. No one wants to be used up and thrown away. In a way, I suppose I feel sorry for Don Mclean. He probably had something to say, in his self-righteous hippy way, and just wasn’t good enough to be remembered for anything but “American Pie.” He had all Dylan’s ambition and much of the same intentions, but his lyrics were too straightforward, too similar-sounding, too whiny. It’s the curse of a lot of musicians, to be damned by their one hit song. Hell, Warren Zevon would forever be the “Werewolves of London” guy, and his entire catalogue is made up of nothing but amazingly genius songs. Even jokey-sounding songs like “Gorilla, You’re a Desperado” still drip with his sarcastic, caustic wit and charm.

But ultimately, my love for this song comes back to my dad. My father is a consummate music lover and a musician himself, the man responsible for most of my music collection--Warren Zevon, the Talking Heads, Steely Dan, Men at Work, Oingo Boingo, the Pretenders, the Vapors, the Gin Blossoms and Cyndi Lauper. One could also accuse him of causing me to hate the Beatles from overplaying, but I say that blame rests more on my sisters than on him. We always had music playing in the car and he was constantly singing—sometimes replacing lyrics with fart noises, other times replacing them with the name of our cat, Scallion (my favorite being, “I see a red cat and I want him painted black”). Music was like breathing to him—it was a constant. My sisters and I all have very different tastes, but we all come back to those few common threads. Driving home from visiting my grandmother in the nursing home for what would be the last time, we played Steely Dan’s Pretzel Logic because it’s hard to be sad during “Barrytown.” Everybody loves “Barrytown.” And it all comes back around to my dad, a quiet man in his own right, the keeper of the sacred songs.

The rest of Don Mclean, except for “On the Amazon” (which always makes me think of my friend Will Ludwigsen) sucks for the same reason the rest of the Don Mclean catalogue sucks—it’s self-righteous hippy garbage.  But this one song almost makes up for it, a gem among rubbish, a reminder that even when we think we are most forgotten, someone somewhere remembers us.

Happy Fathers Day, Dad.

Saturday, I'm in Love

I recently rediscovered The Fontanelles, and damn it, they're awesome.

For those of you who missed the episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000 where the 'bots skewed Rick Sloane's Hobgoblins (more on this on Monday) there's a scene where our heroes go into Club Scum and listen to The Fontanelles play "Kiss Kicker 99" ("Love Me Not," my favorite, plays when they're just outside).  I always liked "Kiss Kicker 99," and it wasn't until the magical invention of The Internet that I even had a chance to dream of getting it.  My friend Chris managed to find it for me, and I played it over and over and over, but it was the only song of theirs I could find, and this made me sad.




(And for those of you familiar with the MST3K treatment of it, well, we did call a guy I went to grad school with "Pig Liquor," after Mike Nelson's mis-heard lyric and declaration, "I would not want Pig Liquor"--in all fairness, his last name sounded, well, like Pig Liquor if you said it fast enough, and although Pig Liquor wanted me, I did not want Pig Liquor)

BadCultMovies is selling copies of the soundtrack on ebay, and seeing as how my chances of getting their original 45 are pretty slim, I went ahead and bought the 7-song EP as a little treat to myself.  I almost never buy CDs anymore, but this was too good to pass up. 

Holy Crow, is it good.  Even better than I expected.

It's very Cure-esq on the guitars (think "Killing an Arab" or "The Lovecats") and lyrically, there are a lot of cool fairy tale/nursery rhyme allusions, (especially on "Love Me Nots" and "ShooFly") but not in a weird lame way.  And as for the jangly melodies, well, they ultimately lack the Cure's melodramatic silliness and keep with in the originally intended punk spirit.  This is probably because Spit Spingola is a much cooler name than Robert Smith. 

From the Vault: Mix Tape Blues

Something about the summer heat makes me drag out old mix CDs, and this time, I'm listening to the mixes my BFF Matthew and I made for our frequent road trips to conferences and grad school residencies. 

Mix CDs are almost as good as records.  Mix CDs are almost always made with a specific purpose in mind and the memories of that event get locked into the music itself.  When I played "Bizarre Love Triangle" on Beautiful, Terrible Things: The Best (So Far) of Libby and Matthew, I was transported back to the Chicago AWP dance floor, watching two skanks in matching lace-trimmed satin nighties do the whole "get down on my knees and pray" bit more than was called for.  The pounding rhythm of Duran Duran's "Last Chance on the Stairway" is the pavement beneath our tires on peach-colored summer morning drives to workshop and the Psychedelic Furs "The Ghost in You" is pure, nostalgic bliss.

The driving mix CD is the best of the bunch.  It is an adventure for an adventure, a tangible culmination of anticipation and execution.  I've been listening to a mix I made for our January trip to our grad school residency in Freeport, Maine.  Getty Lee's voice on "Fly By Night" reminds me of New Haven, cold and icy and a little bit thrilling.  I cannot hear Squeeze's "Tempted" without hearing our friend Ben groan and roll his eyes from the backseat of our rental car, and I can't hear The Servant's "Beautiful Thing" without remembering how quiet and crystal-cold and beautiful the Haraseekett Inn was.  And when it's 80 degrees and humid in my house, I can't help but long for the snowflakes that fell as "Bring on the Dancing Horses" played.

Come July, I will have been out of graduate school for a year.  I've got the framed diploma and the student loan payments to prove it . . . but the only thing I really miss is that trip, those 6-8 hour drives when it was just us and bad coffee and good music and the frantic, caffinated conversation we're famous for, a language we speak that no one else understands.  We didn't need any major momentous moments . . . just the quiet, intimate ones captured and held forever, a memory in melody.

From the Vault: Nightmare of You

By all rights, I should absolutely hate Nightmare of You.  It's a holy hell of pop-indie cliche horrors by a dude who has clearly never, ever been touched by a girl and takes this out by playing his Smiths albums and crying.  Don't get me wrong, I have cried over many, many Smiths songs ("Rubber Ring" is perfect for all occasions of weeping, from break-ups to quarter-life crises, although I have shed tears for "William, it Was Really Nothing" and "These Things Take Time")



It's as though lead singer Brandon Reilly dug through Morrissey's garbage and found his high school notebooks, helping himself wholesale to lyrics so melodramatic that would make even Robert Smith say, "dude, chill."  From the ever-present romanticism of death (especially car crashes (a la "There's a Light that Never Goes Out") as featured/stolen in "Dear Scene, I Wish I Were Deaf" and "I Want to Be Buried in Your Backyard") to use of Morrissey-tinged words like "dismal" and "charming," and seriously, (stop using the word "romantic") and the sort of creepy obsession with violent crime, the whole package reeks of scattered gardenia petals and sad, lonely desparation.

And you just know Brandon Flowers of the Killers could take this guy in a fight.  And I could take Brandon Flowers in a fight.

But they've also got these charming Johnny Marr styled melodies, which make even shlock like "Why am I Always Right" (sample lyric "I love you terribly/I swear that this is true/but I just can't stop my hands from smothering you," which I put on a mix CD for someone and probably shouldn't have been surprised when he broke up with me) is undeniably catchy.  I like to think of it as Morrissey for beginners--because listening to the Smiths is a life-changing experience.  I remember listening to my older sister Shaun's copy of The Queen is Dead and hearing that opening melody and knowing that my life would never be the same.  That song forever changed how I heard music and how I understood lyrics.  It had a profound effect on me as a writer, the beginning of a change in style from overwrought to carefully, cleverly constructed.  I won't say I've gotten to Morrissey-level lyricism yet, but I'm making strides.

When you're a teenager, it might just not be possible to absorb that much change.  I'm still absorbing the Smiths, still hearing new melodies and understanding new lyrics (the vinyl really helps on the former) even though I've been listening to the same songs for 10 years now.  Although I only recently discovered "Our Frank" and any song that more or less declares, "If you do not stop talking, I will puke blood" speaks volumes to me.



But alas, I guess we can't all be Morrissey.  And for those days when we can't be Moz, Nightmare of You will do.

New Column: From the Vault

(The blog is going to be changing over the next few weeks (i.e. when I get around to it)  There's going to be more focus on writing, and I'm going to try and bring back some of the music stuff.  Less ranting, less swooning and more essays . . . but don't worry, as long is there is Train, there will be ranting, and as long as Walton Goggins lives and breathes, there will be swooning.

I think I have that same scarf!

I've never really liked Saturdays.  When I was a kid, this meant that I had to go to my dad's, and although I love my Dad more than anyone on the planet, he lived in the middle of nowhere and I was too young to drive anywhere and even if I could, it wasn't like I had any real friends to drive and see.  When I got older, I had to work Saturday nights, and even now, my boyfriend works Saturday nights, so I'm stuck here alone.  Other people, people with social lives and friends and cable have something to do, but I just hang out, write, listen to records and, occasionally, discover something I'd forgotten.

I have a vague recollection of adding Ryan Adams' "My Winding Wheel" to a country mix CD I was making bacj when I was living in Binghamton and obsessively collecting music.  I don't know why I downloaded it or if I ever listened to it, but a few weeks ago I pulled out the country CD and threw it on to try and work by.

I ended up skipping over most of it.  One of these days, I will develop a taste for country music, but despite being born in Oklahoma, it just never caught on.  I like Meryl Haggard and I do a version of Cracker's "Lonesome Johnny Blues" that'll knock your boots off, but for the most part, I tend to skip that station.

There was something about that Saturday that was particuarly lonely.  For some reason, my heart was a rock in the pit of my stomach.  I was missing a phantom piece of myself, something I had no recollection of ever posessing but knew I was sorely lacking.  And when I heard the strains of "My Winding Wheel," something just clicked.  Something felt right. 




Adams' raw, quaking voice and Springsteen-esq guitars give the song this beautiful, sad, hopeful dispair.  His suggestion that his girl "buy a pretty dress/wear it out tonight/for any boy you think could outdo me" is a challenge, and not necessarily a cruel one.  She has a choice.  He wants her to go with him, but he offers her a chance to go find someone, anyone, who will love her as much as he does, pretty dress and all.  It's a song for lovers separated by time and distance and the folds of life . . . and it's so simple and pure and pretty, and I listen to it over and over and dream.

The only downside is that I discovered it right as I was finishing up the first season of Justified, and for some reason whenever I hear it, I picture Ava.  And you all know how I feel about Ava.