Let it Ring in the Air

Respect.

One of my college professors loved to say "where there's poetry, there's hope. Hope for redemption, hope for change."

Sheila, who never met that professor, bit into her bottom lip, her voice quivering. "How do I know I'm not just a bad person? Maybe that's why these things keep happening to me."

And I stared at her, wondering what to say.

"I've done some bad things," she said, almost whispering.

And she listed them. And I tried not to look shocked.

Because some of them were bad. Really bad.

And before I could answer, before I could reassure her, she said "But I know I'm a good person."



And she left, reassured.

Ironically, I wasn't so sure.

Because she didn't seem to learn from what had happened. She repeated the same behaviors. The ones we both thought were bad.

Except that she pulled back and decided that, even if they were bad, she was good.

It seemed absurd.

But who was I to judge? I didn't know her heart. I didn't know her intentions.

Besides, shouldn't it count for something that she was asking the question... even if she wasn't getting the right answer?

One in a Million

How Do I Explain

"There's a fine line," she told me, "between wistful and melancholy."

And I agreed. A fine line.

"You're crossing it again."

Maybe. Maybe so.

"It worries me."

It shouldn't. I know what side of the line I'm on.

"Do you?"

Yes.

"Really?"

Sure. Well, mostly.

"Right. That's where the worry comes in."

It's fine. There's nothing wrong. It's fine.

"Right. Fine. Like the line."

There's nothing to worry about.

"And yet. I worry."

Don't.

Then we sit in silence for a while.

"Are you sure?"

And I pause. Because you can't really be sure at the time. Only when you're looking back.

I'm sure.

And she looks satisfied. For the moment. As I stare into the middle distance, blurring the line between wistful and melancholy.

And When the Cat's Head Grins

You've heard it a million times before.

He likes her. But she likes someone else. And that someone else? Doesn't know what's going on.

This shouldn't come as a surprise.

But it does.

Every time.

And you hope when you're a kid to grow out of it so that you'll all just be able to say what's going on. And who likes whom.

And sometimes it does get easier. Sometimes people just say "hey, I like you."

Sometimes.

And sometimes everything feels like you're still back in High School. There's too much darkness.

And all you want is light.

Sunlight.

You want to reach up and out. Become your better self. Feel what you were put on this earth to feel.

You'd think it would get clearer. You'd imagine it gets easier.

But maybe the problem isn't that everything else hasn't changed.

Maybe, just maybe.

The problem is that you still want to burrow into the ground when you should be reaching for the stars.

And when you see the girl with her face tilted up, drinking up the sunlight, it just reminds you that winter's coming.

In Sorrow Not in Anger

There's 52 Stations on the Northern Line
None of them is yours, one of them is mine...

The very streets themselves are overlayed with memories.

This is the place you went that night when you were drunk.

That's the supermarket where you argued about organic vegetables.

Here's the place you bought her soup when she was sick.

That's the Starbucks where you waited, lost... until you realized you were at the wrong Starbucks.

And the place with the flowers. And the theater where you saw that movie with the actor she liked. The one you can't stand.

And the bar where she kissed you and the street where you fought.

And the corner where she said that horrible thing... that you never got over.

So you stay away from those places, those streets.

But sometimes, late at night, you smell something. And suddenly, you're back there. Many years removed, but still drawn to it.

But you can't participate anymore. You're gone, even though you're still there.

Like a mirror on the wall.

And the silence of the middle of the night lets the memories come rushing in.

Until you can almost see her, smell her hair, reach out to her.

Except she's not there.

She's in your heart. And everywhere you go without her, you carry her memory, you carry her essence.

You carry her still.

Wordless and Painful and Old

Even Tried Voodoo Right Outside Your Home

There was an author. He struggled for years writing novels that no one read.

Then, on a foggy night with a full moon out, he took a pen name. And started churning out short stories. Simple, witty, memorable pieces. Quick reads. And always centered around a tragic love affair.

And as the stories grew more and more popular, Hollywood came calling. Six of the stories were turned into movies. But the movies were all horrible and the author took his name off the credits of all of them.

Nearly all the stories were narrated by broken men, devastated by heartbreak and unwilling or unable to come to terms with their pasts.

For years, the author avoided interviews, until he learned he was dying and finally agreed to talk to the press.

The question they all wanted to know was how he could write such memorable and completely different women -- each of whom managed to break his narrators' hearts in completely different ways.

And each time he admitted that he had no special gift for female characters. All the women were the same woman. The one who'd broken his heart in a million pieces. The one he pretended he'd forgotten.

The one who haunted him every day of his life.

Because he thought that maybe, if he just talked about her, he could finally break free of the hold she had on him.

And it might have worked -- except that each of the interviews and articles ran long and had to be cut. And in every case, the fact that the different women were all the same was edited out before publication.

Which wasn't what he wanted... but was the way he would have written it himself.

The Summer Turns to Winter Overnight

Or Basingstoke. Or Reading.

This is the most depressing day of the year. At least if you have a job.

The day after the clocks change in the Fall.

The sunset has been getting earlier and earlier. But you could maybe pretend it wasn't true. That you were still stuck in that endless summer lull.

But not today.

It's one thing for the sun to set at 7. Or even 6.

But when it's dark at 5 or 4, you know the winter's coming on.

And with it all the darkness the year has kept at bay.

It's a smooth, long glide into dead trees and snowfall.

And then the long, cold winter.

But maybe this winter will be the exception.

An endless railroad trip north. Farther north than you can imagine.

Until the sound of the wheels on the track fades away and the sound of ice and snow under your boots takes over.

And you wonder again, as you have every year around this time, if this is the year you finally push yourself over the edge to madness.

And you turn up your collar, brace yourself against the cold, and head home in the dark, knowing every day you'll lose a little more daylight.

And every night you'll have a little more time.

To dream.

Non-Summer Rerun

It's too late for summer reruns... but I couldn't get this song out of my head, so I'm reaching back into the archives (originally published January 5, 2010):

I was making great time...

...until the car caught fire.

I was trying to make it to Cleveland. And from there sleep and a good days drive into Massachusetts.

But I was also trying to save money, so I was on a small deserted highway a few miles from the turnpike (because I didn't want to pay tolls).

I saw smoke coming from under the hood, but there was no good place to pull over, so I thought I'd crest the small hill first.

When smoke started pouring in through the steering column, I figured it was time to pull over. And when the flames licked out at my legs, I knew things were getting serious.

I thought I could put the fire out. Maybe blow it out.

But when the windshield started to melt, I gave up on that idea. I was having an out-of-body experience. Shocking. And surreal.

I should've gotten my bags out of the back, but I was afraid the gas tank would explode. (It eventually did, but minutes later.)

And as I was trying to process what was happening right in front of me, a guy with a cell phone pulled up and called 911 (and this was back before everyone had cell phones). We stood and watched flames engulf the car. And waited. And saw the gas tank explode.

The fire truck came a few minutes after that. They put the fire out quickly, but everything inside the car was gone. I knew the car used to have windows and tires, but I couldn't see any sign of them.

I finally realized I wasn't going anywhere near Cleveland. My plans flickered in the night, then vanished in the smoke. It was all like a dream, like the darkest dream in the world.



I wanna be Robyn Hitchcock in a future life.

Not just because I want to have floppy silver hair and be a cult hero traveling the world with a guitar and a bunch of stories.

Not just because I want to have everyone in my band switch instruments and record an off-kilter, we-can't-really-play-these-new-instruments version of "Rock 'n' Roll Toilet" as a CD bonus track.

And not just because I want to throw myself a huge party when I turn 50 and recreate a concert that's still whispered about decades later.

Among the many, many reasons I wanna be Robyn Hitchcock is so that I can call up my favorite band and convince them to get back together and make their first record in ten years. Which they will insist that I produce. So I'll come to town a week earlier than I need to finish my album and bang out their record in five wonderful days.

Oddly enough, I believe this might just be possible. Because everyone has to believe in something.

It's Propeller Time...

Peter Gabriel, eat your heart out.

Remember when you were a kid and every inanimate object was a toy. You'd invent stories about the salt shaker having a blood feud with the candlestick and various utensils would root for their favorites.

Robyn Hitchcock does.



Times like these make me wish MTV still played videos. This one would be in heavy rotation for sure.

Don't Be Evil -- Fail

Not Cool.

Recently a number of music blogs (written and run by great, amazing people) have been shut down.

Now I'm not talking about the guy who posted all 27 volumes of the Have a Nice Day series for anyone to download. Or the guy who posted the new U2 album the week before it was released.

I'm talking about music fans and enthusiasts who post one or two tracks they love by bands they love. These bloggers do more to generate interest in music than almost anything else (short of having songs placed in a teen drama on the CW). And recent studies have shown that people who download music from those blogs turn around and buy music by the artists they like in numbers far greater than the general public at large.

(Also, I should add, almost all these bloggers post MP3s for a limited amount of time or have prominent notices offering to take down any music on request of any artist or record company.)

So what do blog-hosting companies like Wordpress and Google (parent company of Blogger) do? They take down blogs without warning, without telling bloggers which post (or which piece of music) they object to (sometimes wiping out years of archives in the process), then tell bloggers they can have their blogs reinstated if they can prove they did nothing wrong -- which is basically impossible since they neglect to mention which posts or pieces of music prompted their actions.

Plus, in some cases, bloggers are posting music that was sent to them to be posted by the record labels or their representatives. Then, the legal team of those same labels complains to Google or Wordpress (which kills the blogs without bothering to investigate the complaints or determine whether the bloggers had permission to post the tracks in question).

In the past several months, this has happened twice to bloggers on my blogroll (to your left) and numerous times to other music bloggers.

The only possible response is this.


Seriously, Google -- is Franz Kafka running your company now?

What ever happened to "Don't Be Evil"?

Read more about it here.

You Can Dream Yourself to Cleveland

I was making great time...

...until the car caught fire.

I was trying to make it to Cleveland. And from there sleep and a good days drive into Massachusetts.

But I was also trying to save money, so I was on a small deserted highway a few miles from the turnpike (because I didn't want to pay tolls).

I saw smoke coming from under the hood, but there was no good place to pull over, so I thought I'd crest the small hill first.

When smoke started pouring in through the steering column, I figured it was time to pull over. And when the flames licked out at my legs, I knew things were getting serious.

I thought I could put the fire out. Maybe blow it out.

But when the windshield started to melt, I gave up on that idea. I was having an out-of-body experience. Shocking. And surreal.

I should've gotten my bags out of the back, but I was afraid the gas tank would explode. (It eventually did, but minutes later.)

And as I was trying to process what was happening right in front of me, a guy with a cell phone pulled up and called 911 (and this was back before everyone had cell phones). We stood and watched flames engulf the car. And waited. And saw the gas tank explode.

The fire truck came a few minutes after that. They put the fire out quickly, but everything inside the car was gone. I knew the car used to have windows and tires, but I couldn't see any sign of them.

I finally realized I wasn't going anywhere near Cleveland. My plans flickered in the night, then vanished in the smoke. It was all like a dream, like the darkest dream in the world.



I wanna be Robyn Hitchcock in a future life.

Not just because I want to have floppy silver hair and be a cult hero traveling the world with a guitar and a bunch of stories.

Not just because I want to have everyone in my band switch instruments and record an off-kilter, we-can't-really-play-these-new-instruments version of "Rock 'n' Roll Toilet" as a CD bonus track.

And not just because I want to throw myself a huge party when I turn 50 and recreate a concert that's still whispered about decades later.

Among the many, many reasons I wanna be Robyn Hitchcock is so that I can call up my favorite band and convince them to get back together and make their first record in ten years. Which they will insist that I produce. So I'll come to town a week earlier than I need to finish my album and bang out their record in five wonderful days.

Oddly enough, I believe this might just be possible. Because everyone has to believe in something.

We're As Far As We Can Tell

One last story for 2009.

Wishing you a happy and safe new year...

Boston, the 1980s: I'd gone to a forgettable rock show in a small club with a quirky girl who almost always wore red tights. After, I wound up back at her place with a bunch of her friends. They all knew each other really well and I felt like an outsider. We sat around drinking in her small apartment in an old brick building about a mile from my crappy one bedroom. Heat was included in her rent (because there was only one thermostat for 45 apartments), but the entire building was sweltering. And, like most winter nights, the windows were open.

They traded familiar stories while listening to the radio. They were a tight group who had their own shorthand (which I didn't get) and in-jokes (which I likewise didn't get). Still, I loved what the radio was playing (this was during those few months when it looked like the music I'd adored all my life would become mainstream and take over the world) as the rain from the evening gradually turned to sleet and then to snow. She smiled when she caught me daydreaming, perhaps knowing I was imagining what it would feel like to run my fingers along those red tights.

The night was soft and quiet. Even with the windows open, we couldn't hear much traffic. It was late, it was snowing, and there just weren't any cars around.

And then it happened. But not like the movies. Not like you see on TV.

There was no squealing of brakes and no spectacular smashing of glass. Just a huge thunk. And then screaming.

"We should help," I said and ran to grab my coat.

"No," she said. "It's cold. Someone else will help. We're safe and warm. And we're young and we live in the best city in the world for young people."

The others agreed with her. She handed me another beer. I glanced at the red tights.

And I hesitated. Because I wanted to stay. And be young and carefree. And maybe even fit in with a group and have my own shorthand and in-jokes.

"We should help," I said again. And she smiled, thinking I was looking for an excuse not to.

"Someone else will help. We should dance."

And she started swaying back and forth. From far away, I could hear an ambulance.

"See?" she said, dancing faster. "Help is coming. We don't have to do anything."

I nodded, then put down my beer. "I'll be right back."

Downstairs, there were a dozen people gathered around the new car, which had crashed into a telephone pole. A woman was bleeding from her forehead and sobbing as the crowd tried to help her male companion. A few year later, cars would have airbags and both passengers would have walked away. Back then, an ambulance drove them off into the snowy night, paramedics working frantically on the guy. There was blood on the white snow, but a fresh dusting covered it before the cops determined there wasn't anyone around who'd actually seen the crash.

Years later, I can't remember the crappy band we saw that night. And I can't remember all the people drinking up in the overheated apartment. But I remember the red tights I'd never touch. And I remember looking up at the open windows and thinking of these lines from a Robyn Hitchcock song:

"There's nothing happening to you
That means anything at all..."



So I turned away from the building, took one last look at the wrecked car, and walked home... about a mile through fresh, beautiful snow.

Viva Sea-Tac

And also the Swedes.

I was in Seattle, for about 12 hours.

No time to sing the "Space Noodle" song.

No time to get cheese curds at the Public Market.

No time to marvel at the rotating elephant.

Just enough time to sing "Viva Sea-Tac" by Robyn Hitchcock (from Jewels for Sophia:

Viva Seattle-Tacoma
Viva, viva Sea-Tac
Viva viva viva viva viva Sea-Tac
They got the best computers and coffee and smack.

Sliced through 50-degree darkness at 4am to return an SUV considered an economy car.

Cut through the thickest fog I've ever seen at LAX until the runway was visible two seconds before the wheels touched down.

Anyway, since YouTube is not the boss of me, you can still hear the song here.

UK Blast From the Past

92 is the new 64.

How retro is the music industry in the U.K.?

The Queen of the British charts is Dame Vera Lynn, known for her patriotic songs from World War II. The 92-year-old known as England's "forces sweetheart" has the #1 album in the U.K.

I know she's a huge deal in England, but I'm not English, so they first time I'd heard of Vera Lynn was in this Robyn Hitchcock song:


And how about this: 4 Beatle albums in the top 10. 16 Beatle albums in the top 60. Both stereo and mono remastered box sets make the charts (stereo at #24 and mono at #57). Not bad for a band that hasn't existed for the last 39 years.

Maybe they'll be as big as Vera Lynn in 2035.

Pushing Too Hard on... Gene Hackman?

Michael Jackson made me think of Gene Hackman.

This all makes perfect sense, although perhaps only in my head.

So Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett die on Thursday. And I find out two days later that Sky Saxon, leader of legendary garage rockers the Seeds, also died that day.

"Pushing Too Hard" was featured on one of my favorite albums Nuggets, a great two-record set of the finest psychedelic and garage music of the 60s. (The record was assembled by Lenny Kaye, who selected the tracks and wrote great liner notes. I remember distinctly having a two-hour argument in college between 2 and 4 in the morning about what made Lenny Kaye cooler: Nuggets or playing lead guitar in the Patti Smith Group... although I can't remember which argument won out.)

Anyway.

This made me think of the great Australian band Hoodoo Gurus, whose 1984 debut album Stoneage Romeos was named for a Three Stooges short and was dedicated to characters from Get Smart, F-Troop, and Petticoat Junction. That album features a great rave-up celebrating all things Nugget-y called "(Let's All) Turn On," which kicks off:

Shake Some Action, Psychotic Reaction
No Satisfaction, Sky Pilot, Sky Saxon
That's what I like...

(and just gets cooler from there, name-checking everyone and everything that made Little Steven want to host the Underground Garage radio show).

But I digress (again).

So... I go onto YouTube to look for Hoodoo Gurus videos and find a song I'd never heard of called "Gene Hackman." I played it (and you should too) because I thought it was the same as the Robyn Hitchcock song "Don't Talk to Me About Gene Hackman." But it's not -- it's a totally different song (which -- as far as I can tell -- first appeared on 1998's Electric Chair album).


Hitchcock's song is a hidden bonus track on the Jewels for Sophia album... and, due to YouTube's recent frenzy of take-downs, I couldn't find it there. But here's a link to a live recording.

Both songs came out in the very late 1990s, both by musical artists I love (and started loving around the same time in the 1980s). Both songs are fun (and very much in character with their creators), but they couldn't be more different. And yet, both of these songs are about the exact same thing: the fact that Gene Hackman seemingly was in every movie that came out for a period of 3 or 4 years.

What are the odds of that?

Probably about the same as Michael Jackson, Sky Saxon, and Farah Fawcett all dying on the same day.

(On a related note, I'm happy to report that Gene Hackman is still alive and well...)

Alternate Universe Father's Day

Happy Father's Day.

I'm a father in several alternate universes, but not in this one.

Then again, there are alternate universes where Bolton (the English city) is world famous and Michael Bolton runs a small auto-supply business in Chicago.

When I was in college, I fell in love with someone who was totally and completely wrong for me. She dumped me over an argument about the relative merits of Michael Bolton and the Buzzcocks (but in retrospect there may have been other issues as well).

The first time around, the Buzzcocks (led by Pete Shelley and Howard Devoto) released a series of amazing records that combined the ferocious energy of punk with a strong sense of melody (and were collected in the great Singles Going Steady collection).

I should have known that my college romance was doomed when we fought about the Buzzcocks' crowning glory, "Ever Fallen In Love with Someone." She felt that Pete Shelley's vocals were unlistenable and ignored everything else. Over the course of 30 years and multiple breakups and reunions, Shelley's singing certainly got better. At the same time -- as you can see from this 2006 Craig Ferguson appearance -- the band's full-frontal attack and the inherent power of the song never went away. (Unlike the ex-girlfriend, whom I haven't spoken to in an eternity that still doesn't seem long enough.)


I thought of this ex recently when I saw a sappy TV report on Father's Day which featured an aggressively sappy and over-the-top Michael Bolton song. She probably loved it and probably sang along with her wimpy husband and their daughter.

Meanwhile, in a different alternate universe where I'm a father (with a much more suitable woman), my son asks me how you know when you're in love. And the only possible answer is this:


(By the way, I read this post to my cat, who says some people should only be parents in alternate universes... or are better suited to raising pets than children. He then demanded salmon and lobster wet food and meowed a gorgeous harmony vocal.)

John Lasseter Wants to Be an Anglepois Lamp (Yeah!)

A Tale Told By a Lamp, Full of Sound and Fury, Signifying an Obsession with Robyn Hitchcock.

Did John Lasseter (writer/director of Cars, Toy Story, A Bugs Life, and Executive Producer of Wall-E) listen to much music by Robyn Hitchcock (eccentric British singer/songwriter famously obsessed with fish, death, sex, and insects) and the Soft Boys? Is there some kind of DaVinci Code-like clue that will explain the inspiration for everything Lasseter (whose obsession with visual in-jokes is well-documented) has done?

I can't say for certain. But signs point to yes.