Thoughts of the French Girl Far Away

I'll Pay Your Way By Hovercraft

It's a cold, rainy, day in Paris.

The French Girl sits drinking coffee and sketching in a notebook. Her iPod plays songs about France in a playlist made by an admirer whose name she can't remember.

As she sketches, she thinks of the world's great museums. But she doesn't want to have her work displayed there. No, the French Girl wants to rob them.

If asked, she'd tell us she'll build an underground bunker beneath a small shack in a tree-lined suburb. She'll house the stolen artworks there and invite her favorite paramours to see the beauty she has hidden.

You see, the French Girl has big dreams.


In an alternate universe, Peter Blegvad would be a huge star playing arenas throughout the known world. Sadly, in our world few people know about him and his records are mostly out of print in the U.S. Needless to say, the French Girl has loaded her iPod with his songs.

She doesn't know about the Figgs, though. She doesn't care that they've toured and recorded with Graham Parker or that their own albums are filled with crunchy, infectious power-pop. In that alternate universe, her tarot-card reader would urge her to go to an all-day festival, where she'd sweat through six mediocre bands until the Figgs came on. She'd love their energy, but turn in indignation and leave immediately when she thought they were mocking her homeland.

Then, she'd go rob another museum.



The French Girl finishes her drink, closes her sketchbook, and puts her pencils away. She runs a hand through her long hair, brushing it out of her face, and leaves the cafe. She rushes off somewhere (because that's what she does).

And you watch her without talking to her (because, sadly, that's what you do). Even in Paris.

Opening Lines

It's All About the First Impression.

A reader emailed me to ask about my favorite opening line for a song.

It depends on my mood. Sometimes I love lines like "I was born in a crossfire hurricane." Sometimes I'm in the mood for Robyn Hitchcock's intricate wordplay.

But, right now, off the top of my head, here's my list of Top 11 Opening Lines I love. (Tomorrow the list would be different and I might even be able to limit it to 10.)

11. The Nerves -- "Hanging on the Telephone"
I'm in the phone booth, it's one o'clock uh huh.
Yes, kids, before cell phones there used to be phone booths. Just ask Superman. (And, yeah, this song existed even before Blondie covered it.) It's the "uh huh" that gets me.

10. Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers "I Need to Know"
Well the talk on the street says you might go solo.
Slick Hollywood posturing and powerful music covering up a broken heart.

9. Badfinger "Day After Day"
I remember finding out about you...
My second-favorite Badfinger song. (And a pretty great George Harrison slide-guitar solo, too.)

8. XTC "Dear Madam Barnum"
I put on a fake smile and start the evening show...
Best romance-as-circus-act metaphor ever.

7. Immaculate Machine "Broken Ship"
We are sailing on a broken ship and only one of us can survive.
Stripped-down instrumentation, simple sparse lyrics, and an emotional vocal that tries desperately to be hopeful despite the pervading sense of doom. (Plus, how can you resist a song that includes the line "cello, play us off"?)

6. Warren Zevon "Werewolves of London"
I saw a werewolf with a Chinese menu in his hand walking down the streets of Soho in the rain.
I know I've had days like that... and I'm pretty sure you have, too.

5. Paul Simon "Kodachrome"
When I think back on all the crap I learned in High School it's a wonder I can think at all...

4. Joe Jackson "Is She Really Going Out with Him?"
Pretty women out walking with gorillas down my street...
Just. Freaking. Perfect.
There isn't a guy alive who hasn't had this thought.

3. Graham Parker "You Can't Be Too Strong"
Did they tear it out with talons of steel?
Haunting song that explores a controversial issue from a point of view that's usually ignored.

2. John Lennon "God"
God is a concept by which we measure our pain...
The "dream is over" song... still beautiful and visceral 40 years later.

1. Billy Bragg "Life with the Lions"
I hate the asshole I become everytime I'm with you.
It's funny because it's true. And I know we've all been there.



So... there's my list. Tell me the ones you think I should've included.

The Waiting

Or, Why I Hate Rochester

She wanted me to come visit her.

So I did. I plopped down two weeks of pay for the plane ticket and went to see her over the three-day weekend.

In the days before cell phones and Skype, we talked twice a week that summer. We wrote actual letters. She proclaimed her love over and over. Said she couldn't live without me.

And I had a bad feeling, but I went. (Link for Gmail subscribers.)


It was a horrible weekend.

She ignored me, was distant, and pretended not to know what I was talking about when I asked her what was wrong.

I kept thinking I shouldn't have come. I should have listened to the bad feeling.

I told her I was going to go back to the airport. Fly standby and go home.

Suddenly, she was all weepy. Crying and kissing me and telling me she couldn't live without me. Begging me to be patient with her.

And things almost seemed normal until I left.

Then she wasn't around when I called. She wouldn't call me back.

And I was stuck in another state doing a stupid summer job I hated, earning next to no money and living in a crappy sublet apartment with almost no furniture, a great stereo, and two crates full of records.

I met a girl I liked. She flirted with me shamelessly, but I didn't do anything. I had a girlfriend. Right?

And so I waited. I wrote her letters. I tried to call. I tried not to pay attention to the sinking feeling.


Two weeks later she finally called me back. When I asked what was wrong, she said "I thought we broke up two weeks ago."

As my world collapsed beneath my feet, I thought exactly three things:

1) It would have been nice for you to f*cking tell me.

2) Tom Petty was wrong. The Waiting wasn't the hardest part. Not by a long shot.

And 3) I am never going back to Rochester.

Seriously, Who Leaves a Diary Underneath a Tree?

Now with 75% less snark!

Over at The Song in My Head Today, Holly described the band Bread as having been spawned like a retrovirus from a particularly sappy song by the Association. (She also proposed a draconian punishment for the members of Bread for having foisted "Make it with You" on the public. And, although the word "craptastic" appears nowhere in her post, I suspect it was in the back of her head.)

Ordinarily, I'd agree with her.

But not today.

Today, I'm remembering all the people who lived in my hall freshmen year in college. Most of us were really into music -- some of it was what you might suspect, but some of us were into really weird and obscure stuff (like my Badfinger obsession and my roommmate's Richard Harris obsession). We had a couple Springsteen fantatics, a dulcimer playing folkie who loved Blondie and the Grateful Dead, a Tom Petty disciple, a girl who loved the Ramones, and several Talking Heads freaks.

And then there was Edie. For reasons none of us understood, she loved Bread. And she'd play the Best of Bread album over and over and over.

Now, understand that none of us really were cool. We were mostly too suburban and tame, but we were at college and we all thought we knew everything. So while we could tolerate James Taylor's Greatest Hits and a fair amount of Fleetwood Mac, almost all of us disdained Bread. It was... um... too whitebread for us (even though most of us would be described as too whitebread for 90% of the non-academic world).

But Edie didn't care. She loved Bread. And so she'd regularly play that damn album and we'd hear this or this or this wafting down the hallway. I distinctly remember being up at 3 in the morning out in the hallway with four or five people discussing just exactly what kind of person would leave a diary underneath a tree anyway. (Was it buried? Did David Gates dig it up before he read it?)

There were a lot of romances on my freshman hall. Most fizzled in a few weeks, but some lasted all through the year and into the next one. Edie started going out with Tim (another guy on our hall) and they seemed like a perfect match. She was pre-med, he was in engineering, they were both smart as hell, and (perhaps most importantly) he liked Bread. Some of us thought that Tim and Edie were dull, but the truth is that they were far less neurotic than 90% of us (and far nicer than 95% of us). Looking back, I wonder if being nice and not being neurotic passes for dull when you're 18 and desperate for adventure.

Edie also gave me one of the nicest gifts I'd ever gotten that Christmas -- a very cool copy of a Rolling Stone book about misheard lyrics (I guess even then I was a music freak). And I always thought well of her -- except for the whole Bread thing.

I lost touch with Tim and Edie after freshman year (we didn't run in the same circles and they were both so loaded down with coursework I'm amazed they had time for anything). But I wondered what happened to them.

Then, last year my friend Eric* was on a tour of major league baseball stadiums and wound up in Minneapolis. Where he ran into Tim and Edie. Who are still together after all these years and living in the Mid-West. I don't know if they still listen to Bread, but the thought of them still being happy together just filled me with joy. Enough to fight off the urge to mock Bread.

For now.



* I thought of embellishing the story and claiming it was me instead of Eric who ran into Tim & Edie. But I knew I would have asked them about Bread almost immediately. Eric, however, is far more polite.

Vague (My New Year's Resolutions)

I've still got 357 days to make these come true.

New Year's Resolutions are generally like novelty records. They're fun for a few listens (maybe they're even brilliant for a few listens), but then I get tired of them and don't ever want to hear or think about them for a very long time. And that's why I usually don't make any New Year's Resolutions.

But there are exceptions to every rule... and this is (to use a phrase I've never really understood) the exception that proves the rule.

So, 8 days ago, I vowed to do the following this year:

1. Be French.
2. Form a band whose name is a bilingual pun.
3. Arrange 80s hits in a hip, lounge-y, bossanova style.
4. Recruit a bunch of young female singers who may not speak English well enough to understand the songs (and weren't alive back when they were hits) and have them sing in a breathy, come-hither fashion that makes the songs all sound sleepy, slinky, and sexy.
5. Overcome the fact that someone already did this.

Gmail subscribers click here. Click here for the original.


Gmail subscribers click here. Click here for the original.


Gmail subscribers click here. Click here for the original.

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.

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.