Wrapped in a World of Imaginary Grace

The feeling is gone... this means nothing to me.

In college, I knew a girl named Eleanor who was famous for having won a prestigious art scholarship (endowed by Andy Warhol with a selection committee headed by Picasso's long-time mistress). In most years, no student in America was good enough to win the scholarship; in good years, there was one. My year, it that was Eleanor.

She was pretty famous for the scholarship, but even more famous for the cult of personality (which she actively encouraged) that emerged around her. And also the fact that she wore stockings and flapper dresses.

I met her in a class on experimental German cinema and we hit it off. (I impressed her with a bilingual pun about the 15-hour version of Berlin Alexanderplatz.) Then she asked me if I thought the stockings were sexy. I did and told her so. She said she only wore them as an ironic statement. But the sexiness wasn't ironic (even if her awareness and mockery of it was). After class most nights, we'd climb up on the roof of the art building (she had a key, naturally), where she'd smoke Gauloises and we'd both drink generic beer.

She told me about the semester she spent in Vienna and how she'd fallen in love with an impoverished Duke who wrote her sonnets while she filled sketchbook after sketchbook with charcoal drawings of his penis in repose. She claimed that he was impotent and had told her he could only make love again after his family regained their long-lost fortune.

Oddly, this passed for a normal conversation at the time.

Then I'd tell her stories about fin-de-siecle Vienna (a phrase I'd learned just weeks before) and describe the meeting places of the great poets, writers, and artists from nearly 100 years earlier. She'd nod, offer me a cigarette (which I'd always decline), and tell how she'd been to that pub and this cafe, and how the alleyway I'd described had been rebuilt and was now part of some resort hotel.

She invited me one night to this bar downtown that she claimed was hosting a combination "funk night" and 80s video dance party. I couldn't say yes quickly enough, hoping this would lead to our magical moment together (during which she would fall completely and irreversibly in love with me). I spent hours trying to figure out what to wear, going for a combination of splashy and nonchalant, but ultimately looking like the dork I really was (only with mousse in my hair).

Eleanor, as usual, looked amazing (but also as if she'd closed her eyes, reached into her closet and thrown on whatever she touched). The one thing I remember is that she wore huge hoop earrings and a gigantic purse that matched their color.

When we got inside, I slowly realized that Eleanor was only half-right about the music. There were no synth drums or 80s tunes, just hardcore funk jams and long-forgotten R&B songs from the early 70s. Just about then, I noticed two things: we were literally the only White people in the place and Eleanor was completely wasted. She later opened her purse -- which was stuffed with about five pounds of marijuana. "Shhh..." she whispered. "Don't tell anyone."

And then she wanted to slow dance. To James Brown. Perhaps because there weren't enough people staring at us. I remember feeling out of place; her wonderful quirky nature suddenly felt crazy and dangerous. I convinced her to leave after about an hour; ten minutes later, there was a huge fight and two people were stabbed. But I didn't know that until days later.

As we walked home, I just wanted to escape; I'd given up on finding our perfect magical moment together. She stopped in the middle of the block and it took me five steps to realize she wasn't keeping up. I turned to see her posed under a streetlight, looking adorably quirky again. And she waved me over and I forgot to be annoyed with her. And then she gave me the sweetest, most amazing kiss, and I forgot I'd ever been annoyed with her. "I stop the world and melt with you," she declared. And for a few minutes, she really did. (Link for Gmail subscribers):


And there was nothing else in the world that mattered. It was just the two of us, nowhere to go, nothing to do but kiss under a street light. With five pounds of marijuana at our feet. Her arms wrapped around me, my heart wrapped in a world of imaginary grace.

She led me back to her small, dirty apartment off-campus. And while she went into her bedroom to change out of her flapper dress, I looked at her books and her record collection. And we were talking the whole time, even though I was in a different room. It was a fairly typical student apartment. But there was no art -- no drawings, no paintings, nothing to indicate that a prestigious scholarship student lived there.

And then I saw her passport. And picked it up. The photo was amazing, of course.

And she was telling me, from the other room, about Vienna and how she'd felt freer sexually there than she could ever feel in America. And I thumbed through her passport, looking for the stamps. But they weren't there.

I put the passport down just before she came out of the bedroom. And she poured us both drinks and I wondered where she'd been the semester she wasn't in Vienna. And why the lies poured so easily out of her. And why she thought she couldn't impress people just by being herself.

And she kissed me again and it felt great. But it also felt bad. And she asked me if I wanted to go in her bedroom. And I really, really did.

But I knew I couldn't.

Her stories were great. But they weren't real.

And I needed the real thing. Because the fake stuff, no matter how wonderful and titillating and exotic, would soon feel much worse than having nothing at all.

"Can I show you something I learned in Vienna?" she asked. And my body was screaming yes but my heart said no. And I followed my heart.

A few weeks later, Eleanor took off in the middle of the night. She never finished school and the story slowly leaked out over the next several weeks. She hadn't painted or drawn anything in more than 3 years. But her professors were so impressed with her scholarship and her prizes that none of them would fail her even though she refused to do any of her work. They listened to her, watched the crowd around her, and believed. Or at least wanted to believe.

And her "semester abroad"? There were different stories -- she got pregnant; she worked in a coal mine; she walked every mile of Route 66. I wanted to believe every larger-than-life story about her (even though I knew deep down the truth would be simpler, sadder, and far less poetic).

Years later, when I finally got to Vienna, I couldn't stop thinking about Eleanor. It was cold and cloudy, a city wrapped in mystery and filled with promise. I'd like to say I thought I saw her around every corner (or at least under every streetlight), but it just wasn't true.

Which makes it exactly the type of story she would have told. But that means nothing to me... (Link for Gmail subscribers):

Mailbag

I get emails.

Joan writes: I noticed that since you wrote about "Here Comes the Kónguló" it became the number 1 song in Iceland. Coincidence? I think not!"

I'm not sure I did that much, but if my blog can help push Hafdis Huld to the top of the charts, I'm all for it.

As many of you know, that song is actually about "Spiderman" Alain Robert, not about the superhero Spiderman.




Terry writes: Do you ever worry that the girls you write about will hunt you down and kill you while playing the song you associate with them?

It never crossed my mind until just now.

And I'm also a little scared of you, Terry.




Sal writes: John or Paul?

John.


Sal writes (back): Ramones or Sex Pistols?

Ramones.


And finally Sal writes: Theremin or tuba?

There are some things a gentleman never discusses.



If you've got a burning question that you don't want to leave in the comments, shoot me an email.

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...)

It's a Suicide to Choose

Another band that should've been huge.

If you lived in Boston (or almost anywhere in New England) in the mid-to-late 1980s, you couldn't escape from O Positive.

Their sound was laid back but insistent, desparate but hopeful, grounded but oddly ethereal (like a harder-rocking Death Cab for Cutie). The band -- led by singer/songwriter/guitarist Dave Herlihy and guitarist Alan Petitti -- performed up and down the East Coast, building buzz wherever they went. They signed with Throbbing Lobster (a Boston-based garage-oriented indie label) and released an EP in 1985 called Only Breathing, which was played a lot on cool local radio station WBCN, constantly on cooler station WFNX, and occasionally even on Boston's uncool stations. And while a lot of people compared O Positive to REM, it was clear that there was something entirely different going on.


The first track, "With You," was a tale of a relationship that seemed doomed from the start. I'd get lost in the song every time I heard it (and not just because the captivating intro lasts for over 40 seconds before the vocals kick in). At the time, I never could quite figure out if the singer was berating himself or his girlfriend with lines like "It's your five-week anniversary/Put a rope around my neck" or "Smoke a cigarette/Think it'll get you through it" and best of all: "I could love you/It's a suicide to choose." I bought the EP at the Newbury Comics upstairs in the Garage in Harvard Square in Cambridge (and picked up the great Don Dixon-produced Dumptruck album at the same time). And then I went downstairs and bought a tabouli and feta cheese stroller (a pita wrap that you could eat while walking around) from a place called Stuff-Its. (The Garage and Newbury Comics are still there, but Stuff-Its and O Positive are both long gone.) (Link for Gmail subscribers.)


O Positive switched to Link records for the 1987 EP Cloud Factory (and Link later released the two EPs together on one CD). I've always thought the highlight of Cloud Factory was the great song "Up, Up, Up" (which struck me as a sequel of sorts to "With You," with the same singer looking back fondly at the doomed relationship he tried to escape from in the earlier song). Epic signed the band soon after, eager to capitalize on their growing fanbase (and hoping to find a group that would be as influential as REM). But their 1990 album ToyboatToyboatToyboat sounded a bit too slick and watered-down and the band parted ways with Epic after disagreeing about their future direction. Another indie release and a live album and the band was done. Link for Gmail subscribers.)


Years later, I thought back on a woman I knew who loudly and violently denounced anyone who smoked as weak and pitiful. While I don't like smoking (and have never smoked myself), the virulence of her attacks was shocking. When I learned she'd been a heavy smoker herself, the attacks seemed even stranger. Millions of years after the fact, I remembered how much she'd scared me. And wondered if I was just to weak to love her. Suddenly, in a moment of crystal clarity, I understood what "With You" mean (at least to me) and why it stayed with me after all those years.

When it's a suicide to choose, a little part of you dies no matter what you do.


Unrelated Postscript: Dave Herlihy, who is a huge star in the alternate universe with the best music, is now an entertainment lawyer in this universe. But you can tell he's still cool because his photo on his website shows him posed in front of a shelf of law books with his guitar.

There's Demons Closing In From Every Side...

The chair is (still) not my son.


Has there ever been anyone who achieved so much, had so much talent, then so completely disintegrated in public over so many years in attempt after painful attempt to achieve what he once was able to do almost effortlessly?

Attention, Hipster Doofi

And you know who you are...

When it's nearly 100 degrees out...

And it's so hot that you're wearing shorts and flip-flops...

Do you really need to wear that wool cap? Do you really think making yourself sweat while wearing it convinces anyone you're cool? Is there nothing else that you can do to brand yourself as a hipster doofus?

I'm just asking...

There is No Real Perfection

Someone in Badfinger must have done something awful in a past life.

When I was in High School and college, I was obsessed with the band Badfinger.

I might add that most of my college friends had musical obsessions, ranging from the fairly normal (Springsteen worshippers) to the obscure (Robyn Hitchcock aficionados) to the downright weird (Richard Harris, as a singer not as an actor). In that crowd, being a Badfinger freak didn't seem so strange.

Now, rarely in history has a band seemed as doomed as Badfinger. Yeah, they were discovered by the Beatles, signed to Apple Records, had a hit off a song Paul McCartney wrote for them, appeared on John Lennon's Imagine album, George Harrison's Concert for Bangladesh, and on Ringo's "It Don't Come Easy" single. In addition, they had a string of hits -- power-pop masterpieces with chiming guitars and great harmonies -- that remain classics to this day. But they also had a manager who ran off with all their money, multiple lawsuits, and a record company that pulled one of their greatest records a week after its release (and its rave review in Rolling Stone), then rejected their next record (again for financial impropriety, and again a minor masterpiece). Pete Ham, the group's leader and chief songwriter was so despondent that he hung himself, declaring in his suicide note that the group's manager was a "soulless bastard." Years later, Tom Evans, the group's other major songwriter would hang himself after being sued by a promoter.

And, although I seem to say this a lot in this blog, there's an alternate universe out there where Badfinger became huge stars, filling stadiums and selling millions of records well into the 1990s... and even if I can't live in that alternate universe, I'd give almost anything to be able to pick up their radio broadcasts.

But back in this universe, Badfinger's music was unavailable (except if you had enough patience and got lucky in used record shops). I haunted local used record stores for Badfinger albums and was thrilled when -- after at least six years of searching -- I was rewarded with my then-musical Holy Grail, a used copy (in very good condition) of Straight Up, their amazing 1971 album produced half by Todd Rundgren and half by George Harrison (who also plays the slide guitar solo on "Day After Day").

(Parenthetically, I should add that one day when my girlfriend at the time -- yes, the one who liked Michael Bolton -- called me and told me she'd found a copy of Straight Up exactly one month after learning that it existed. I very specifically recall thinking that she didn't deserve to own an album like that, that she hadn't sacrificed enough to find it, and probably wouldn't really be able to appreciate it.)

If the Badfinger saga sounds like something ripe for Behind the Music, it was (although, appropriately enough, Badfinger's Behind the Music seemed doomed -- it literally was years behind schedule and was scrapped three or four times before Paul McCartney agreed to appear in it and it was revived). Unfortunately, I didn't have cable when it first aired. It was rarely repeated (Behind the Music had mostly run its course by then) and has never been released on DVD. (And of course, VH-1 rarely shows anything other than dating shows these days, so I thought I'd never get to see it.)

And...
yet...
I still believe in the magic of the internet. So check it out before they take it down.

And in the meantime, here's a little taste (and those of you who know me might recognize that, yes, the opening guitar riff is the ringtone on my phone):


And if you're interested, Dan Matovina's sadly out-of-print book Without You: The Tragic History of Badfinger is pretty great... and taught me something about Badfinger I never knew before: I saw the last concert Tom Evans performed (in Providence, Rhode Island) before he killed himself.