Kinda Blue

My brain hurt like a warehouse, it had no room to spare

A while back, I read the story on a blog (and I wish I could remember which one so I could link to it) Kinky Paprika's Shhh/Peaceful blog about Trevor Bolder, bassist for David Bowie's Spiders From Mars band.

According to the story, Bolder had his face painted blue for a performance, but accidentally used permanent paint. Reportedly, Bolder had to go to a specialist in Switzerland for an expensive medical procedure to remove the paint. In fact, the procedure was so expensive, Bolder had to sell his car to pay for it. It mostly worked, but not completely. And that's why, to this day Bolder still has traces of blue paint behind his ear.

I love this story.

And as I said then, it should be repeated over and over.

It's weird and exotic -- involving Bowie, glam rock, and the idea that rockers would risk life and limb to paint their faces for performances. It's truly a glimpse into another world.

But more important, it's completely absurd.


The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars is arguably Bowie's masterpiece. The songs are almost all classics (and almost all have been radio staples for more than 35 years). More importantly, the album as a whole tells a somewhat coherent story (although, in best rock fashion, it's vague enough that every listener can project themselves into it).

Bowie would hopskotch from style to style, persona to persona, for years, before slipping into the role of rock elder. But it was the Spiders -- Mick Ronson's mighty guitar playing and arranging (and some say uncredited songwriting), Trevor Bolder's bass playing, and Mick Woodmansey's understated drums (and Be-Rock-Always name) -- that pushed Bowie to his heights he'd never hit again.

Which brings me back to the paint.



The best part of the story is how it builds on the plausible (face painting, getting the type of paint wrong), layers in exotic details (an exclusive private doctor! in Switzerland!) with the hyperbolic (a procedure so expensive he had to sell his car) before delivering the amazing and oddly detailed fact that puts the ribbon on the story (to this day, he still has blue paint behind his ear).

It's a story of rarified air and rock and roll decadence. A story with a moral. A story that's falls apart almost immediately if you look closely.

Skin peels and chafes and regrows. At about the same rate that Bowie changed his persona in the 1970s.

Hell, if you've ever gotten "permanent" marker or paint on yourself, you know this. Even if you can't wash it off, it comes off with the skin in a matter of days, weeks, or months.

It's doubtful the paint would have lasted five weeks, let alone five months or five years. It's still there more than 30 years? Just not possible.

But still, to this day, we've got a great story of rock & roll excess.

And ultimately maybe that's more important than the facts. Isn't rock and roll all about believing these stories we all know can't be true? When the power chords thunder and the downbeat hits, don't we all willingly throw logical thinking out the window because, deep down, we want to live in a world of myths and legends?

Re-Living in Dreamtime

Dream into Motion

Years later, I dream of her.

The dream is surreal, disconnected.

We start in a diner, taking cell phone pictures of a man in an ape suit. We ask him for his autograph, but he has no opposable thumbs, so he can't sign. But when I look away, he steals the croutons from my salad.

I walk through the dream, like walking through a museum of my past. Much of it is frightening and little makes sense. But from time to time, everything clicks into place and there's harmony.

At least until I catch her staring wistfully at the ape.


But when I ask her about it and try to figure out why everything feels so surreal, she just smiles. "Everything is just the way it's supposed to be," she tells me. "Maybe you just need to find another way to look at it."

And I look up and she's gone.

And I wake up, and she's been gone for years.

And that feeling, that believe that everything's the way it's supposed to be, fades into the back of my mind, left behind like the dream. Leaving me wondering if I want it to come around again.

Ace of Bass

In Which I Fearlessly "Play" an Instrument I've Never Even Held Before

There were three of them. They played instruments. And they would jam on Fridays.

Last Friday, one of them wasn't there. So they asked me if I wanted to sit in.

"But I don't play an instrument."

That's fine, they said. Then you can play bass.

So I picked up the electric bass. How hard could this be?

And I plugged it in. The guitar player showed me some notes, which I forgot immediately.

I joked about Stu Sutcliffe, the Beatles' first bassist who couldn't play (so John Lennon turned off his amp), then made sure my amp was on.

I had a good sense of when I needed to play and how long each note should last. But I had no idea what notes to play or where those notes would be even if I knew what they were.

So I tried not to overplay. I followed the drummer. I discovered that strings on the electric bass will vibrate forever when you pluck them.

And. If I turned up my amp, the stage vibrated beneath my feet. A tambourine lying on the stage started to move and shake.

I suddenly knew why rock musicians feel like gods when they're onstage.

I'm sure it sounded horrible to anyone listening (although one of the musicians charitably told me later that I "wasn't as horrible as half the people who claim to know how to play the bass").

But when I was playing, it felt like this:

Three Thoughts on One Song

One Dos Trois

She wrote poetry. She only swore in French. She even wore a beret.

And every guy in the village was desperate to impress her. By swimming out to the floating dock. By picking flowers in the foothills. By trying to buy her presents (which she'd never accept because she always seemed above it all and nothing was ever quite cool enough for her).

But, through affectation or poor memory, she'd never remember any of the guys who talked to her.

And, when they saw her again, they were all too polite to say "were you worried that there was a tiny portion of my heart that you left unbroken?"

One day, she disappeared from the village, leaving only the beret behind on a bench.

Guys gathered in the park, staring at the beret, wondering where she'd gone, and discussing why she'd left the beret behind.

I have no proof, but I think she blended into the crowd, cursing now in English, burning all her poetry, and trying to be a normal girl.

**************************************

I misheard the lyrics. For years.

I thought the song went "Girl don't tell me you're right." Because it was an argument about misunderstanding each other where both people insist they knew what really happened.

And when the guy insists he'll see this girl in the summer and forget her when he gets back to school, we never quite believe him. And we never quite believe the girl wasn't right.

The lyrics actually go "Girl don't tell me you'll write." Which is stupid (although not as stupid as "I met you last summer when I came up to stay with my Gram"). Because that makes it only about a summer romance and the girl not writing. And that's just not all that interesting.

But then again, lyrics never were Brian Wilson's strong suit. He said he wanted to write "teenage symphonies to God" -- and there aren't any words in symphonies (teenage or otherwise).

**************************************

To take attention away from the lyrics, maybe the best thing would be to take the words (or at least the English words) out of the equation.

Maybe if they were sung in French.

By a band from Pamplona, Spain. Led by a female singer.

Who, conspicuously, is not wearing a beret... or forgetting every guy she meets.

Les symphonies d'adolescent à Dieu indeed.

Icelandic, Non-Volcanic

Angry Elves?

A banking scandal threatens to bring down the entire economy.

The people, overextended and too used too easy credit, bought lots of stuff they didn't need. Bankers invented exotic new "instruments," invested poorly, and hoped against hope the house of cards wouldn't fall.

When it did, the government stepped in, at great cost.

Yup, I'm talking about Iceland... where reportedly half the residents believe in elves.

But the elves must have been pissed... and they must have wanted people to pay attention to Iceland. How else to explain the volcano that's grounded most of European air traffic?

I've wracked my brain and come up with the only sure way to calm the elves and get the volcano back under control: the new fun all-in-one-shot video from Hafdis Huld.



I defy you to watch this and not smile... even if you are an angry elf who lost his elf-shirt in the Icesave debacle.

Declare the Pennies on Your Eyes!

Ah-ah, Mr. Wilson. Ah-ah, Mr. Heath

Completely absurd.

Not their real voices.

And yet... oddly appropriate.

It was 40 Years Ago Today

And so it began.

John Lennon wanted to announce in 1969 that the Beatles had broken up. But Paul McCartney knew they were in the middle of negotiating a lucrative distribution deal for Apple Records (and would get much less money if people thought there would never be another new Beatles album) and talked Lennon out of it.

McCartney himself casually announced the breakup exactly 40 years ago today.

As a way of plugging his first solo album.

In the middle of an interview he conducted with himself.

As if to prove he didn't need anyone else, McCartney played every instrument on that first album himself. (Unfortunately, he also wrote every song himself... even though he didn't have an album's worth of good songs.)