It's A Planet Full of Traffic Lights and Traffic Light Abuse

Histories of insanity intruding on the sane.

It started with a girl. A girl with a really cool old Fiat convertible.

And it ended with my worst New Year's Eve ever.

I dated Fiat Girl briefly in High School after her ex-boyfriend wrecked her car and then dumped her. We'd go out for spicy Thai chicken and talk every night. I always made sure I had really cool music playing in the background before I'd get on the phone.

When New Year's Eve rolled around, she announced that we were going to a party. And I was driving (because her cool Fiat was still in the shop).

So I picked her up and we drove out to a far-off suburb, up a mountain lane, and deep into the woods.

The only person I knew was Fiat Girl. She knew everyone.

She knew the people snorting coke in the living room. She knew the guys playing pool in the basement. She knew the couple having sex in the hot tub. She knew the sexual history of the party's host and the fetishes of everyone on the dance floor. And she knew what each guest was drinking.

By 10:00, Fiat Girl was having a loud drunken argument about Star Trek with a guy sporting a green Mohawk. I walked to the kitchen and realized I was the only person at the party who was anywhere close to sober.

I wandered around the house, looking at framed newspaper clippings of crimes from the 1950s and trying to figure out why I wasn't having any fun and why the enormously high level of ambient stupidity didn't amuse me at all.

I hunted around but Fiat Girl was nowhere to be found. I ate spicy Thai chicken without her. The ball dropped, but I still couldn't find her. I wanted to go, but I couldn't just leave her there.

Then two of the guests lit off firecrackers in the kitchen and the smoke alarm went off. They didn't realize it was wired to a remote alarm system.

Ten minutes later, two firetrucks and a police car showed up. It was 3am and the cop told us all to go home.

But I still couldn't locate Fiat Girl. So I asked everyone as they were leaving. And finally one of the guests admitted that Fiat Girl had left hours earlier with Mohawk Guy.

She called me two days later and said she got her Fiat out of the shop. I didn't bother to put on any cool music. When I asked her about the party, she said it was all my fault and hung up on me.

Mohawk Guy dumped her a few days later and she called me a few times and told me I shouldn't take her actions so seriously. She wanted to get back together. But I saw no reason to celebrate; that party was over... I'd already gone home.

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.

Power Pop From Oz

I'm determined not to let the year end...

Without pointing you to Peter's Power Pop blog.

Just in the past week, Peter posted:

The great Beatles Xmas single that never was.

A Beatles cover (run through a Big Star filter).

A Christmas song done in the style of the Beatles.

An insanely genius Christmas song from the Wellingtons.

A seemingly timeless slice of power pop from a band called Thirsty Merc (and the one F-bomb makes me love the song even more).

And a couple of great songs from a band called Illicit Eve, which contains not one but two gorgeous blondes who look like every gorgeous blonde who ever tortured every hormonal teenage boy in high school:


(I'd be having nightmarish flashbacks about these two right now if the music weren't so good.)

I could babble more, but head over there and learn for yourself about Peter's Marshall Crenshaw fixation, his occasional series on "unexpected power poppers," and his devotion to the Beatles and the Wellingtons (even when it's not Christmas).

What more do you want? A freaking history of power pop in Australia? Well, he's got that too...

The Year-End List

Ah yes, that time of the year.

Many of my favorite music blogs are publishing year-end best-of lists. And while I admire the idea that someone could rank their favorite albums of 2009 (or, in some cases of this decade-without-name) and come up with a coherent top 10 (or, in some blogs, top 17, top 20, or even top 100), I couldn't do it.

Partially, that's because I couldn't think of 10 (let alone 17, 20, or 100) new albums from this year that I'm passionate enough about.

But mostly, as even the most casual readers probably realized, this is not that type of blog.

So... instead... here's a list of the top 8 posts I never quite got around to posting this year. In the true spirit of this blog, this list probably makes almost no sense to anyone but me (but I swear I'll get around to these posts someday and then they'll make a little more sense to you):

8. The Shins rescue me from talk radio
7. There's no such thing as heroes/Just a bunch of ones and zeroes
6. The New Pornographers through the rabbit hole
5. Chris Stamey and Glenn Tilbrook write different versions of the same song
4. Jane mourns Keith Moon
3. The singer's gone but the group carries on
2. I take the "dork bullet" for Don Dixon
1. In which I use Graham Parker for evil, not good

Autotuned Out

I'm Talking to You, 67-Year-Old Rock Stars.

My unsolicited advice to a certain beknighted ex-Beatle?

Here's a list of 10 things you might want to avoid:

10. More plastic surgery. Seriously, dude, your face is looking more and more like Angela Lansbury's every day.

9. The reappearance of your 70s mullet. (C'mon, you're worth a half a billion dollars. Get a haircut that's less than 30 years old.)

8. Sucking up to Simon Cowell on the X-Factor.

7. Mugging for cameras. (Do you even know these days that you're doing it?)

6. Playing the ukulele. Seriously.

5. Rereleasing your albums in "deluxe editions" months after they first appear so your die-hard fans (who waited for Starbucks to open to buy the album in the first place) have to buy it again. Again, you're worth a half a billion dollars -- you don't need to do this.

4. Indulging in endless revisionist history about John Lennon. Yes, yes, you were cool too in the 60s. We get it.

3. Refusing to admit that your vegetarian lobbying stems from being attacked with a ham sandwich thrown by Suzanne Vega's punk boyfriend in the 1970s.

2. Writing and recording a protest song to promote "Meat-Free Monday" in under 5 minutes and then expecting people to take your message seriously.

1. Autotune. As great as it is that the Good Evening New York CD/DVD is the full concert, some of the songs are autotuned half to death. No one expects you to sing perfectly live (especially at age 67)... but it would be nice if you sounded human. (And fuck that "Citi Field" bullshit. It's Shea Stadium.)

Come to think of it, though, I'd rather see a non-autotuned concert for a few hundred people in a record store in Hollywood than an autotuned stadium show shot with 15 High-def cameras.

Paul McCartney Live at Amoeba Music 2007:

Three Christmas videos

Merry Christmas.

It's a low-key Christmas here at Casa Clicks & Pops (as it is in a lot of homes this year). There's no pithy story to go with that -- it is what it is. And things will get better (and that, too, is what it is.)

Meanwhile... it's Christmas Day. And while I'd love to retell A Christmas Carol as a parable of the downfall of the music business, I just don't have the energy right now (although I do like the idea of the "Ghost of MP3s Past").

So... meanwhile...

It's no secret that I don't consider it really to be Christmas without Darlene Love's "Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)."

And also these three songs.

The Kinks' "Father Christmas":


XTC's "Thanks for Christmas" (which I wrote about here last year).


And John Lennon's "Happy Xmas (War is Over)" -- embedding is disabled, so click on the link to listen.

So raise a cup (metaphorical or otherwise) to the blessings of the season. And may your new year be happy, healthy, productive, and safe (and may all your vinyl have just enough clicks & pops that you know it was listened to and well-loved).

Xmas Eve Links

Some cool stuff I found on the Internets...

Wim at I ♥ Icelandic Music posted this gorgeous video from Amiina:


Steve over at the Power Pop blog has a somnambulent M. Ward take on a Buddy Holly classic (with cool stop-motion animation in the video):


And finally, The Vinyl District, a fine source for your musical needs, introduced me to Caravan Palace and their amazing video for the song "Suzy." Is it too late to ask Santa to bring me a dancing robot?


Update: Okay, just one more. Pledge Drive's rewrite of "Bohemian Rhapsody" as a plea from a bad boy to Santa on Christmas Eve: "Christmas Rhapsody" -- lyrics & free download here or watch an animated fan video of the song here.