There was a period of about three years in the 1990s when nearly every big studio movie released in the U.S. included this tasty little song by Harvey Danger.
Sadly, the band is gone now. They broke up, reformed, and broke up again.
But the song lives on -- and if you've ever had a day job where your boss is so stupid and incompetent that they wouldn't recognize good work if it fell on them like a piano from 5 floors up, it deserves another listen.
Over on the Pleasant Valley Sunday blog, Mister Pleasant posted the rare U.S. single mix of David Bowie's "Rebel Rebel," which I'd never heard before.
Great flange effects, weird phased vocals, odd instruments that wander drunkenly in and out. It's a pretty great and adventurous approach to a very familiar song that makes it really jump out all these years later.
Speaking of David Bowie, I was listening to his great song "Heroes" today.
Really listening. Maybe for the first time. Which is weird since I've heard the song thousands of times on the radio in the past few decades.
I knew it was recorded in Berlin -- part of Bowie's trilogy of Berlin albums he made with Brian Eno. I knew the song had a swirling swath of synths and Robert Fripp weird-ass guitar parts. And I knew it was a lot less of a traditional pop or rock & roll song than a lot of his 70s hits.
But I'd never really listened to the words.
It's the story of two doomed lovers kissing in the shadow of the Berlin Wall. He bravely proclaims that they can be Heroes.
And yet...
The vocals are so filled with yearning and desperation. The singer doesn't believe what he's singing for a minute, but hope to convince himself (and his lover) by the sheer act of singing these words.
Not only does the vocal fit in beautifully to the music, but the desperate tone fits in perfectly with the ironic lyrics. And Bowie must have known this because he put the title in quotes to draw attention to the fact that it was never quite what it seemed.
But even the singer's resolve falters. By the end of the song he declares: "We're nothing, and nothing can help us," adding "Maybe we're lying -- then you better not stay." But as the guitars and Eno's detuned low-frequency synth notes swallow up the couple, the singer ambiguously wants something (maybe anything) just for one day.
Years later, the song would largely lose its irony. The Berlin Wall would come down (and the very idea of what Berlin means artistically would change drastically). Bowie would sing the song unironically at Live Aid (which he says is his favorite version of the song) -- that version leaves me cold, although I think it's cool that the band included Thomas Dolby on keyboards and former Soft Boy Matthew Seligman on bass). Bowie would sing the song at the Concert for New York City following 9/11 -- again without the irony. And despite its failure as a single in the 70s, the song has found a second life through commercial and film licensing (and at thousands of sporting events).
But for me the original version is the one that resonates. We've all had moments of intense longing and desperation. Moments when we speak our desires as loud as we can, knowing the chances for success are practically zero but hoping against hope that the proclamation will carry us through.
On a sunny day in early September anything is possible.
The school year opens with a wave of possibilities. You see old friends, you talk about your summer, you dip your toe into a bunch of classes.
And the girl in the shorts playing Frisbee? She's important, she's part of it.
No one knows who she is, but the future unfolds in front of you and it's clear she'll be part of it.
So you watch for a while. And you imagine your life together stretching out before you -- one long extended wonderful life.
And mentally you laugh at yourself stretching your imagination so far into the future when it's based on nothing.
Then, uncharacteristically bold, you get up and march over there. Determined to talk to her, put a verbal down payment on that future together.
But when you get there, she's gone. And no one knows who she was or where she came from.
All that year you look for her, rushing over whenever anyone's playing Frisbee. But you never see her again.
Until 15 years later, you spot someone who looks just like her, playing Frisbee a thousand miles away. And you're halfway over to her when you realize it's not the girl you saw before. Because the girl you saw that one time is 15 years older.
And so are you. Even if you still feel the same. (Embedding's disabled, so you just have to click for a cool-ass video of long, uninterrupted steadicam shots.)
So you try for a little while. You hide the old albums. You try to go along with whatever's new and trendy.
You hope she notices.
But she won't. And after a few weeks, you notice that you never see her anymore. She's always off somewhere with her new friends. Doing something cool.
Because she's still her. And you're still you.
You wouldn't have liked her in High School. You shouldn't like her in college.
Still, to paraphrase George Santayana (who, I'd like to claim, is Carlos Santana's real father, "those who do not learn from High School are doomed to repeat it all through the rest of their life."
Exactly one month late for Peter O'Toole's 78th birthday
Back to music tomorrow.
But it's late summer and I'm too hot and too tired. So I go flipping through channels on cable and up pops Peter O'Toole.
I've probably seen The Stunt Man a dozen times. It's a great movie about movies (like Inception, only without the cool special effects and dreams-within-dreams-within-etc.).
It's a movie about what we see and what we want to believe.
Every time it's on cable, I'll watch it all the way through to the end. And Peter O'Toole is amazing (he should've beaten out DeNiro to get the Oscar for this).
Number 5, from where the sound of bass reverberates.
Missed Connections
I watched you at Peet's, long hair messy and gorgeous, as you hunted through your purse for crumbled bills.
On my home planet, you'd be worshipped as a goddess. Cities would erect statues to you and poets would compose sonnets about your eyes and elbows. Eventually, you'd be voted too perfect to exist and would be hunted down and killed.
Maybe that's why I moved here.
PS: I had the double-shot with soy milk and you smiled at me as if you were thinking only someone from outer space would order that. And you were right.
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