Yo Yo Ma, Yo

Growing up, I knew a girl who played cello.

Her parents were both college professors and their family would spend the evenings sitting in their living room reading the classics of literature and listening to scratchy old records of the greatest performances from the classical music universe.

She was supposed to grow up to be Yo Yo Ma.

They didn't have a television set until she was 12 (and even then they were only allowed to watch Great Performances on PBS).

One day she told me that she didn't want to play the cello anymore. She said the entire instrument was too sad and she felt like she was "milking a fountain of misery" every time she played. Instead, she to play an instrument that made people happy. She told her father and he expressly forbade her from playing any woodwind instruments. He agreed to think about brass, but warned her that most brass instruments were "unsuitably frivolous."

She smuggled a scratchy copy of Carole King's Tapestry into her house and was teaching herself some of the songs on the piano when her father caught her, broke the record by slamming it against a tiny marble statue in their vestibule, and grounded her for a month. She went back to the cello, but with no real enthusiasm.

And then, on a whim, she went with some friends to see the Who. After that night, she never picked up her cello again. She told her father she was done with music, but she bought herself a cheap guitar which she kept at a friend's house.

After High School, she went to college, put pink and green streaks in her hair, and joined a punk band. The other band members kicked her out after two months, saying she played her guitar like it was a cello. She moved to New Mexico a couple years later, and owns a small shop that sells jade jewelry and crystals.

This all could have been avoided (including the jade jewelry and crystals) with a hardy dose of Matson Jones. They play classic two-guitar-bass-and-drums rock songs with guts and intensity, only instead of the two guitars, they have two cellos... which Anna Mascorella and Martina Grbac play like rock stars (if anyone can do windmills on the cello, it's these two). Their latest release is an EP with the amazing title The Albatross Mates for Life But Only After a Lengthy Courtship That Can Take Up to Four Years. What's not to like? (NSFW link for Gmail subscribers.)

Stairway to 11:51 pm

Radio used to be different.

In the 1970s and early 1980s, every single station in the U.S. (with the possible exception of the airport information stations) was required to play "Stairway to Heaven" by Led Zeppelin immediately before midnight. So any teenagers fooling around in cars with the ratio on would always have warning -- even if they were listening to 24-hour news stations, opera stations, or NPR -- that they needed to stop what they were doing in order to get home in time for curfew. And teenagers without dates would know that they were one day closer to being able to go off to college and escape the small-minded hypocrisy of their hometowns.

And, by the way, do we really want the radio suggesting just before midnight that there might be a bustle in our hedgerows (whatever that might mean)?

As a result, anyone who grew up listening to radio in the 1970s or 1980s never needs to hear this song ever again.

Unless it's performed like this.


Or maybe like this.

Jane Siberry Visits from The Past and Future

Jane Siberry Always Seemed Like She Came Unstuck in Time.

The best music usually does. And the music of Jane Siberry always sounded like it had one foot rooted firmly in the past and one foot in the distant future.

So, starting at the end and working backwards:

In 2006, Jane Siberry gave away all her house and all her possessions (except for a single guitar) and changed her name to Issa. She's still writing songs, recording, and touring (including giving university lectures on creativity).

Throughout the 1990s, Siberry continued recording, releasing a series of albums (on Reprise and then on her own label) that never did much for me -- including an album consisting entirely of songs she'd written in her teens (which I bought but only listened to once or twice). I saw her live in the mid-1990s in a very disappointing show that concentrated on new material. Much as I admired her for following her own muse, it wasn't taking me anywhere I really wanted to go. Somewhere along the way, she started a website and pioneered the idea of "self-determined pricing" for her music.

Her 1989 album Bound by the Beauty dispensed with synths and returned to simpler song structures and more direct songs. I saw her tour behind this album at a show recorded for possible release as a live album (that never came out). The show was a late show that was supposed to start at 10, but the early show didn't get out until 10:45. We all assumed that meant that the late show would be shorter (and would probably suck), but she put on an amazing show and played until well past 1:00 am. I'd still love to hear the recording from that show.(Link for email subscribers).


Reprise signed her on the strength of her third album and she released The Walking in 1987. The album was complex, bizarre, surreal, and wondrous, filled with long songs (2 clocking in at more than 9 minutes) that turn around on each other like Mobius strips. I bought this on vinyl and it took years and years to grow on me (probably because I literally had no clue what most of the songs were about. (Link for Gmail subscribers).


Her third album The Speckless Sky came out in 1985, consolidating and building upon that went before. Her concerts became a synthesis of performance art, insanely captivating improvised poetry, and pure pop music. (Link for Gmail subscribers.)


By the time of No Borders Here in 1984, Siberry had largely abandoned her folk roots and was playing strange and wonderful music based around synths (and dozens of tracks of her vocals). "The Waitress" seemed like a classic the first time you heard it, fusing past and future in a goofy synth-pop confection that included the line "And I'd probably be famous now if I wasn't such a good waitress." But the album's tour-de-force is "Mimi on the Beach," a 7 and 1/2 minute evocation of life, death, teen angst, and Jesus that seems more like a great movie than a great song.

Her first album Jane Siberry came out in 1981 and channeled late-60s folk, then twisted it through the prism of an alien from a distant future with off-kilter songwriting that put Laurie Anderson, Joni Mitchell, and Kate Bush through a sausage grinder, then added some bizarre spice that you can never quite identify. Her songs were weird and vibrant, geeky, and wondrous, then sugarcoated by her vocals, usually multitracked to sound like an amazing choir of angels -- just what you'd expect from an overachieving Canadian with a degree in microbiology.

It's the End of REM as We Know It...

Some People Say When You Get Older, You Become More Mature.

I'm still waiting.

Meanwhile, I'm exactly immature enough to get a huge kick out of Stuckey & Murray eviscerating REM (with footage from the Edinburgh Fringe Festival). This is extremely NSFW... and may offend those with a low tolerance for profanity. You've been warned.

... Other Times It's Raining Out!

I'm a sucker for punk remakes of sappy songs.

I used to go to this record store on the second floor of a mini-mall above a Chinese restaurant. Everything I bought there smelled vaguely of that sticky red sweet and sour sauce.

So when I heard the Pop O Pies punk retread of the Grateful Dead's "Truckin'," I flipped went over there and plunked down 4 bucks for the The White EP. On the back cover, it explained that most bands use the same members to play different songs, but Pop O Pies used different band members to play the same song -- "Truckin'."

Early in their career, the band was infamous for gigs where they would play "Truckin'" over and over again -- in different styles, with extended jams and altered lyrics ("Sometimes the light's all shining on me... other times it's raining out!" or "I'm tired of traveling, I wanna stop at McDonald's!"). And, if by some miracle they weren't booed off the stage and got called back for an encore, they'd just play "Truckin'" again. Eventually they expanded their repertoire (and even developed a more or less stable lineup) and went into the studio. The White EP contains two versions of "Truckin'" (punk and rap) as well as originals like "The Catholics are Attacking" and "Timothy Leary Lives." It may not be something you'd want to hear over and over again, but it's definitely worth a listen. The Chinese food smell may have faded away after a few years, but this record always brings me back to that cramped record store on the second floor. The EP is sadly out of print now, but you can check it out here.

Speaking of punk retreads of sappy songs, where would the Twin Cities be without Mary Tyler Moore and Husker Du? (And what better way to celebrate the Twin Cities than combining these two pop-cultural touchstones?) Husker Du's version of "Love is All Around" (the theme from the Mary Tyler Moore Show) was originally the B-side of the "Makes No Sense at All" single (from Flip Your Wig. I tried to buy this, too, but by then the record store above the Chinese restaurant had gone out of business, replaced by a Hallmark Store; I never bought anything at the Hallmark store -- all their cards smelled like dumplings! (Link for Gmail subscribers.)

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.

Alternate Universe Prom

I never went to my High School prom.

Partly because I didn't have a girlfriend at the time. And partly because I hated getting dressed up. But mostly because of the music. Sappy power ballads and crappy "dance music" played by a third-rate band or a bored, clueless DJ? "Celebrate good times, C'mon!"? Thanks. But no.

So I didn't go. And I might never have given it a second thought. Except for the music (which I was sure sucked because most of my classmates had musical taste that ran the gamut from mainstream pap to dreck).

A few months go by and a friend of mine tells me I should've gone to the Prom, I would've loved it – the Prom theme was “White Punks on Dope.” By the Tubes. Which suddenly made sense to me. It was literally like a light bulb suddenly appeared, shining brightly, above my head.


See, I grew up in a college town filled with angsty, disaffected White kids whose parents worked at the local colleges. In my High School, we never bothered to read Faulkner because we were too busy reading Kurt Vonnegut. Political correctness may not have been born in my hometown, but it definitely bought its first free-range organic kale snacks there.

Knowing my Prom theme transformed my view of my hometown. So for years, I would brag about my hometown, using our Prom theme as proof of what an amazing, progressive place it was. My only regret? Not going to the Prom.

For more than 15 years, I told people that story... and everyone would chuckle or nod, amused at the idea of a school cool enough to select “White Punks on Dope” as their Prom theme (and perhaps secretly wishing they'd gone to my Prom, too).

Then, a few months ago, I tell a friend this story and she stares at me, confused, then asks what the Prom theme really was. "'White Punks on Dope.' By the Tubes," I say. She shakes her head sadly and looks at me with pity. "No way in hell that was your Prom theme. Proms are official school events. School officials have to approve the theme. And there's no school official who would approve a theme like 'White Punks on Dope.' No matter how cool and amazing you think your school was."

And then I realized the worst part: the High School friend who told me this months after the Prom must have been joking with me. And I didn't realize it. Maybe this person was cruel or just didn't want to take away my enjoyment by telling me the truth. (And I can't even remember who it was to double-check.)

Suddenly, the story I'd told myself and others for years is just wrong. And in retrospect, my High School is just a lot less cool.

But in an alternate universe, there is a school somewhere that would select "White Punks on Dope" and have the school officials approve it. I'd give almost anything to live in that world -- even go to the Prom.