Surrealistic Pillows (Watching They Might Be Giants Watch Themselves)

Doc will solo!

So I'm sitting with John and John from They Might Be Giants. They're watching themselves on TV and sitting on my crappy $20 couch near the one window with an ocean view. (My ex-girlfriend recently claimed the couch had fleas, but I'm pretty sure you only got fleas with the $10 couches).

I'd been a They Might Be Giants fan going back to Don't Let's Start and thought their smart-ass geek-rock (with accordian) was often perfect. Plus, they name-checked the dBs and the Young Fresh Fellows on their new album (and had written a song about James K. Polk), so their bona fides were well established in my book.

The Johns had been plugging that TV appearance for weeks ("and Doc will solo!" they'd proclaim). This was before they had a real band -- it was just John singing and playing guitar and John singing and playing accordian live to prerecorded backing tracks (bass, drums, etc.). And every night my ex-girlfriend's uber-cool brother would control those backing tracks; "it's like remixing an album live every night," he said.

Now, I'm sure it was much cheaper not to bring a band on the road (plus, it was weird and quirky, just like They Might Be Giants). But obviously they wanted a real band and the freedom that would bring to change tempos and not limit their performances to preset times and rhythms.

That afternoon, they were in Burbank in front of hundreds of cheering fans and gushing guest-host Jay Leno. (I was at my crappy day job being cheered by no one.) But by 11:30 at night, they were in my small apartment on the beach on my crappy $20 couch (with or without the fleas) watching themselves on TV. I glanced at it, but mostly I watched them watch themselves. It was surreal -- and they gripped our couch pillows (which may have cost more than the couch, come to think of it) in horror. I think they'd been on TV before, but nothing on the scale of The Tonight Show.

After, they had absurd crticisms about their perceived physical flaws ("my forehead is enormous!") which no one else noticed.

Watching that performance now, it's clear they kicked ass that night (as they did most nights). And, as promised, Doc did solo. (Link for Gmail subscribers.)


But I wondered if, in their minds that night on the couch, what they saw looked more like this. (And which of the Johns was the fez-wearing shark?)

The Ludwig Wittgenstein of Rock

I was obsessed in college with a girl who was obsessed with Ludwig Wittgenstein.

We were taking a class whose name escapes me. But we read Kierkegaard and Wittgenstein. And the professor apologized that we were reading 12 books in the semester since we easily could have spent an entire semester on any of those 12 books.

Everyone in the class had a crush on her. At the time I thought she didn't realize this, but looking back I'm not so sure.

Anyway, I pursued her and we seemed to have an amazing connection. I loved that she preferred me to the other guys in the class and I desperately wanted to be the guy she already saw me as. For weeks, we'd hang out talking until the middle of the night (about the most important and most trivial of topics) and soon fell into a relationship. We dated for most of the semester and it was wonderful.

One night she told me she hated Neil Young because after she lost her virginity, the guy drove her home and "Like a Hurricane" came on the radio. And she heard the line "You could have been anyone to me" and realized he didn't love her and never would. I told her he was an idiot, but wondered if she'd missed the overall point of the song by focusing on that one line.


In class, we read Ludwig Wittgenstein's masterpiece, a dense, hard-to-understand work called Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. The book is all about language and how people communicate and the fact that when different people use the same words they often mean different things. Language that is not based on observable facts is inexact and it has a foggy cloud of possible meanings. The best we can hope for as people as that our foggy clouds overlap enough that we can approximate communication.

Bertrand Russell wrote an introduction to the book and most publishers were only interested in it because of Russell's introduction. This greatly pained Wittgenstein, who felt that Russell completely misunderstood and misrepresented his work, yet no one would read it without Russell's wrongheaded description.

Now, this girl had read Wittgenstein before. And she had very strong opinions about what he meant. So, after we'd both finished our final papers for the class (we both wrote on Wittgenstein), I made the mistake of comparing Neil Young to Wittgenstein. As proof, I brought up "Like a Hurricane." I said that, when words can't convey what Young means, the guitar takes over, bringing you to that place he wanted you to go all along. If Young could make it happen, the guitar solo on this song would continue forever in some realm where Young and his dream-girl find ultimate love and happiness: "that perfect moment when time just slips away between us on our foggy trip."

I finished and felt very pleased with myself and my arguments. We sat in silence for a long time and I thought we were perfectly in synch, time slipping away, and the two of us united and happy.

And then she got up and told me I was worse than Bertrand Russell and I had completely misrepresented everything Wittgenstein ever meant. And furthermore, Neil Young's commitment problems had made life a living hell for David Crosby, who simply wasn't as strong as everyone thought. As she was walking out the door, she turned back and said "I can't believe you'd take my ex-boyfriend's side."

And I suddenly wanted to slide into the fog of that guitar solo, because I knew that Wittgenstein was right -- she and I used the same words and meant drastically different things. Or else she was right and I just didn't understand Wittgenstein or Neil Young. And maybe that's the best proof anyone could ever offer that Neil Young is the Ludwig Wittgenstein of rock 'n' roll.

And that's midnight to you

Squeezing Out Sparks is a masterpiece.

Stung by mistreatment from his first record company and the lack of his early records to capture his band's sound, Graham Parker ditched Mercury Records (leaving behind the scathing "Mercury Poisoning") and lit out for greener pastures.


Determined to make a record as fiery as his legendary live shows with the Rumour (Bruce Springsteen once famously said that Graham Parker was the only performer he would pay money to see), Parker ditched the horn section, dialed down the R&B shadings, and delivered a near-perfect album that combined the familiarity of pub rock, the raw power of punk, and the angularity of new wave with literate imagery and wordplay rarely seen in rock.

Someone could write an entire book about Squeezing Out Sparks (and if I had more time I'd do it myself).

Although the album was a critic's favorite, it barely registered with American recordbuyers -- maybe they felt their "angry young man from England with great lyrics" quota had already been met by Elvis Costello.

Parker would spend much of the 80s and 90s bouncing from record label to record label (Atlantic signed him, ordered him to write with "more commercial" songwriters and told him what he really needed was the big 80s drum sound popularized by Peter Gabriel and Phil Collins and featured on nearly every rock album of the 80s; when Parker balked, Atlantic dropped him without releasing anything) trying to recapture the lightning-in-a-bottle that was Squeezing Out Sparks while searching in vain for the superstardom that would have been his in a more righteous world. By the end of the 90s, Parker was recording for indie labels and still giving great live performances (even if the dream of superstardom had faded away). And if his latest records don't quite measure up to Squeezing Out Sparks, they're still great -- Parker recently has been alternating between a more mature and resigned attitude and rip-snorting angry anthems that could stand with his earliest work.

But I digress.

Squeezing Out Sparks explodes with energy from the start. "Discovering Japan" is a frantic rocker about the strangeness of foreign cultures. Or the uncertainty of relationships. Or how the spreading globalism destroys what's precious and unique. Or how the horrors of war leave their mark on countries and their people. Or the inherently doomed nature of romance. Or all of the above and more, set to a pounding rhythm and scorching guitar work.

The lyrics fit in perfectly with the music and seem jumbled without it ("As the flight touches down/My watch says 8:02/But that's midnight to you"). It's the type of song you could listen to again and again, hoping to glean some understanding of what must be a very important message (and wishing for footnotes that explain everything) before you realize that the real message is something that can't be put into words (and can barely be translated into music). (Link for Gmail subscribers.)


It's possibly the perfect way to open an album.

But, then, snuck in just before the end of Side 1 (from back when there were two sides to recorded music -- kids, ask your parents), there's this:


What the hell is that doing on an album of screaming rock songs?

"You Can't Be Too Strong" is filled with disturbing imagery and simple instrumentation that play up the words. Greil Marcus of Rolling Stone knocked the entire album on the basis of this song, which he misinterpreted as an anti-abortion anthem. It's not. And it's definitely not a pro-abortion song, either.

It's ultimately a sadness-drenched song about a man unable to face up to his responsibilities. The song examines the choice the man's girlfriend makes to terminate her pregnancy, recognizing with regret her decision will have a profound respect on a lot of people (and implicitly, that none of her choices are really very appealing). More than anything, it's an lament about the weakness of the original man (and, Parker has claimed, based on his own experiences). Allmusic.com does a much better job of capturing the song's complexities.

Perhaps years later, that's still the relationship that haunts "Discovering Japan" and the disconnect and jumbled memory of that song echoes the disconnect and pain of "You Can't Be Too Strong":

But lovers turn to posers
Show up in film exposures
Just like in travel brochures
Discovering Japan!

Geeky Bonus: When Squeezing Out Sparks first came out in 1979, Arista shipped it to radio stations with a bonus disk called Live Sparks, which contained live versions of all the songs in order. When Arista remastered the album for a CD re-release in 1996, they included Live Sparks and live versions of "Mercury Poisoning" and a cover of the Jackson 5's "I Want You Back" all on one CD. Needless to say, if you don't have the original LP, that's the version to buy.

Driving Through Snow with a Time Machine

Like most really weird things, this started late at night.

Driving through the snow, caravanning.

We weren't exactly heading to the same place, but there were mountains and the road was curvy.

I was driving a Chevy Citation, which was a gutsy little front-wheel drive car. And she was in a Jeep with four-wheel drive. I was 22.

It was dark and the road was slippery and I was listening to a cassette tape someone had thrown through a wormhole from the future and the tape was playing the long version of this song, the one that builds forever before the vocals start:


And as the tension built and built, she speeded up. And by the end of the song, I was at an intersection. And there was no way of telling which way she went.

So I got out of the car... and I looked down the road to the left: darkness and trees. A quiet town and a warm motel room on my way somewhere else. And the girl in the Jeep? Long gone.

And down the road to the right: the Jeep parked in front of a bar. A long conversation over pitchers of beer. Wonder and passion. And heated arguments. Long periods without talking and recriminations and massive hurt feelings. And more arguments and long silences. And I got back in the car and steered to the right.

Surely the wonder and passion would all the bad stuff. Right?

Wrong. Of course, it took years to figure out how wrong. Years that erased the magic and wonder. So I bought that Death Cab for Cutie cassette and built the time-machine and put it in the tape player of the Citation back when I was 22. But this time I wrote "this is a warning from the future" on the tape. That would get my attention, right?

And I stood there in the woods... all those years ago again.

And I watched the Jeep go right.

And waited.

Ten minutes later, the Chevy Citation pulled up. And I watched myself get out and look down both roads. And I wondered why I'd ever worn such a stupid hat.

And I heard this song coming from the tape deck. And knew I'd never pay attention to the warning. So I watched the Citation go off to the right. And hoped this version of me would figure out a better warning system.

Fedora? No (My) Way

Frank Sinatra always seemed old to me.

When I was growing up, the Rat Pack already seemed impossibly old and out of touch. And my friends and I puzzled over why people would ever pay attention to them.

Growing up, there was only one kid in school who listened to Frank Sinatra (and he would regularly wear a fedora, suspenders, and powder-blue boat shoes instead of scuffed-up jeans and sneakers). The school bullies thought his retro act was so weird that they left him alone (perhaps for fear of catching the virus that caused worship of Nelson Riddle).

So while most of our contemporaries needed a backbeat and electric guitars, my fedora-wearing friend was content with a big band and old Sinatra albums. And only the old albums. If you made the mistake of mentioning "My Way," he'd scoff and dismiss it as crap.

It was a feeling Sinatra shared. And yet that song fueled his live act for nearly 30 years (and stoked demand for that live-act in the post-Beatles era).

Sure, Sinatra was too much of a showman and too musical to ever completely destroy a song. But still I can't help wondering if Sinatra, when he was doing this...


...would have been happier doing something more like this:


And more importantly, what would Sid Vicious have looked like in a fedora, suspenders, and powder-blue boat shoes?

An Incredible Simulation of Music News

So I guess there's a new version of the Sims starring the Beatles. (Let's hope there's a cheat-code involving Yoko Ono!) I'm not a huge fan of the Sims, but this does look pretty cool.


Meanwhile, the entire "literal video" idea goes full-on classic rock with the promo film for "Penny Lane":

Ukelele + Vintage Zep t-shirt = Irony?

I hunt for the weird shit on UkeTube? so you don't have to.

I live in Los Angeles, which is well-known as an irony-free zone. But even the most hardened Angeleno will tell you that the surest recipe for irony is to combine a ukulele with a vintage Led Zeppelin t-shirt. Because happy, shiny, ukulele picking can turn the saddest dirge about junkies overdosing into a toe-tappin' happy tune!


Finland is not known for surf music (and, as a nation, they've never quite recovered from the fact that the Beach Boys snubbed them on the Holland album). So you may ask yourself what would Finnish Tweens know about surf music played on ukuleles... and the answer is plenty!


And it's hard to mention Ukuleles without posting something from the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain (whose cover of "Shaft" is well worth a look), so here they are with Kaiser Chiefs (who might be my favorite recent band even if they didn't send me special videos on my birthday) doing a kick-ass version of "Ruby."