You -- all jittery and paranoid, on a twitchy, coke-fueled bender that left your narcissism intact.
Me -- Looking for salvation for my past sins, wanting to explain the extenuating circumstances, knowing you'd listen if you could take your mind off yourself for two, maybe two and a half minutes.
You weren't hot enough to keep staring at yourself to the point where you didn't even notice me. Or were you staring at my reflection behind you?
For days now, I've had two songs dueling for attention in my brain. Both songs were big hits. Arguably one of the songs is some kind of classic. But both are ultimately insipid and have unspeakably stupid lyrics. And both feature a ridiculous use of the word "baby" in their lyrics, baby.
You can nearly hear the excess dripping out of the speakers when you listen to "The Long Run" by the Eagles. Nothing about the song seems finished -- the lyrics might have been dashed off in a coke-fueled 4am surge; the music never quite goes anywhere, and the groove isn't really that great. (The bass line, however, is pretty freaking great.) Joe Walsh's guitar playing is nearly great, but just a pale shadow of what he'd done before. And even if the harmonies are pretty, when you're repeating some of the more inane lyrics in rock, it's hard to be cool.
Maybe the problem was that, by 1979, the partying had become so much more important than the music that paid for the partying. But even the partying wasn't much fun and the band called it quits after the tour to promote this record -- although they did produce a live album with Glenn Frey and Don Henley mixing and doing overdubs 3000 miles apart form each other. (The credits for the live album include five different attorneys -- which is both hilarious and sad.) Listen here.
In another corner of my brain from the opposite end of the 70s is Hamilton, Joe Frank & Reynolds. With another song filled with insipid lyrics.
Where the Eagles were largely a self-contained group of musicians, singers, and songwriters, Hamilton, Joe Frank & Reynolds were the last gasp of old-school pop (with music written by outside writers, shaped by producers, and made glossy with strings and horns). The band would have one more (even bigger) halfway through the decade (the far sappier "Falling in Love") -- and even though Reynolds had left the band and been replaced by Alan Dennison, the group retained the unfathomable name "Hamilton, Joe Frank & Reynolds"
And while I never could figure out how big this band was (apparently it's a trio -- Hamilton and Reynolds are the last names of two of the members and Joe Frank is the first and middle name of the other one), the horn part in this song is one of those amazing hooks that is instantly identifiable.
I've always thought a slightly edgier version of this song that kept the amazing horn parts would be a huge hit. Listen here.
It's too late for summer reruns... but I couldn't get this song out of my head, so I'm reaching back into the archives (originally published January 5, 2010):
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.
Not Willow from Buffy, Although We've All Had Those Dreams
In the 1970s, anticipating the cash that would rain down upon them from the not-yet-built oil pipeline, the good citizens of Alaska voted to move their capital city. They wanted a capital city that could be reached by road (unlike Juneau, where you had to fly in or arrive by boat), but didn't want to move the capital to Anchorage, the state's largest city (and home to more than half its residents).
This fueled a lot of land speculation as investors prepared for the wealth that would come when the new capital was built.
But a funny thing happened on the way to that future. Despite planning commissions and architects and schemes of various types, Alaska never moved its capital. So you still have to fly or sail to Juneau (which still is not on the road system).
The investors were stuck with land that quickly plummeted in price when it became clear in the early 80s that not much was going to be built in Willow beyond a few stores and gorgeous houses on lakes.
Today, Willow is probably most famous as being the start of the Iditarod Sled Dog Race. Technically, there's a ceremonial start in Anchorage, but it doesn't count. The real race begins the next day up in Willow, population about 1700. It may never be the state capital, but for one day a year, it's the dog mushing capital of the world.
At some point while Alaskans were contemplating moving their capital, my father was offered a job in Anchorage. He turned it down for a lot of reasons. And I find myself thinking a lot these days about how different life might have been if my family had moved to Alaska from New York.
I posted this song before -- but I have a related announcement coming in a few days, so the time just seemed right to post it again.
In High School, she was a star. No one played better. And no one was smarter.
There were definitely girls who were prettier, but that didn't matter to her.
We were friends briefly at the start of college. She lived across campus in one of the two dorms that was segregated by sex.
Well, kind of. There were four floors -- two male only and two female only.
It certainly wasn't unusual to see guys on the female floors or girls on the male floors -- but I guess it gave some people a sense of propriety. Or modesty. Or something.
Joan had a crisis the first month of school. She discovered that she wasn't that great at the clarinet and was encouraged not to join the band. She felt lost in most of her classes (and realized for the first time in her life that there were people who were smarter than her). And her roommate wasn't necessarily prettier, but was lots more fun and outgoing.
Joan felt lost.
She called me late one night and told me she was going to drop out and go back to Chicago. She said there was a train she could leave in a couple hours that would get her there in a couple days.
I went over to the single-sex (by floor) dorm and talked to her for several hours about all kinds of things. Music. Her dreams. The guy we both knew who had a southern accent so thick we both thought it was a put-on.
After a few hours, she played a little clarinet for me. It sounded pretty good -- but what did I know about the clarinet?
At some point her roommate came home and we all sat around talking about our classes for another hour or so.
Joan never brought up the train that night.
But I stayed there until ten minutes after it was scheduled to leave.
(Side note: yeah, that's Don Dixon with the metronome at about 1:50.)
About a week later, we had lunch together. And I asked if she was still thinking about going home, if she still thought about getting on the train to Chicago.
"I was never going to get on that train," she said. "I just wanted you to come over and talk to me."
"You could've just asked me," I said. "I would have been happy to come over."
She shook her head and told me that girls don't do things like that.
I was floored. Is this really the way girls act when you get out of High School?
We drifted apart after that.
I never again went over there late at night. We stopped having lunch together. And she dropped the one class we had together.
Just before she left for Christmas vacation, she came over to my dorm and gave me a present -- a jazz clarinet cassette.
I carried that cassette around with me for two years, but never even took off the plastic (never mind listening to it).
It was like an artifact from a planet I didn't understand (and wasn't sure I wanted to understand).
Ironically, I'd lose it on a train in my junior year. Maybe someone took it from my knapsack. Maybe it just fell out. It took me a week to realize it was gone.
At which point I looked up at the stars, wondered what had happened to Joan, and hoped that whoever found the cassette would take off the plastic and enjoy it.
Nothing matters but the weekend from a Tuesday point of view...
When I got to college, I bonded over music almost instantly with Sarah, a total Beatles freak who also worshipped the Ramones. No doubt my bizarre collection of punkish vinyl from the 60s (and my Badfinger obsession).
But there were always things she loved that I just didn't get.
And things I loved that were perplexing to her.
One of them was the one-hit wonder The Kings. Amazingly, the band is still going strong after more than 30 years, still playing "This Beat Goes On/Switching to Glide."
Yeah, the lyrics are shallow, the boasting is sophomoric, and the Bob Ezrin production lends a late-70s synthy blandness to the proceedings.
But I never could resist the hook. From the first time I heard the song while driving through the woods in Western Massachusetts in my Mom's car. I pulled over to listen, wondering to myself what the hell band this was.
As I was sitting on the side of the road listening, an Amherst police department crusier pulled up behind me and a rookie cop questioned me about why I had stopped. When I told him, he listened to a snippet of the song and sneered. "That's the Kings," he said. Then a moment later, he added: "I hate this song," walked back to the cruiser, and drove off. I bought the album two days later.
When I went to college, I lugged the record with me (along with albums by Badfinger, the Beatles, Joe Jackson, and the original double-LP vinyl release of Nuggets. When Sarah's little brother Alec came to visit, he made a point of thumbing through all my old records. Mostly he nodded approvingly. Then he pulled out The Kings are Here and taunted me with it. "What the hell is this?" he demanded.
"I love that song," I said.
Alec stared at me, then looked over at Sarah. "I thought he was cool," he said, then shook his head. "I thought he cared about music. I guess not." With that, Alec put the record down on the floor and left the room.
Years later, Alec would join a country rock band that played Skynyrd-like songs with the intensity of the Sex Pistols. They got a record deal and toured all over the world.
Guess he showed me who's cool.
And maybe this song has slipped from the unabashed love column to the guilty pleasure column. Maybe Alec and the cop were right. But when the needle drops onto the vinyl, the chugging T-Rex-ish guitar starts, and the organ kicks in, it's like I'm back on Route 9 again, pulled over on the side of the road, listening carefully and wondering "what the hell is this anyway?"
Update: John Picard, who plays guitar with the Kings under the nom-de-axe of Mister Zero and co-wrote this song, noted in the comments that the video for this song, which Warner Music had taken down (to call them overzealous about this stuff is being kind) is back up. So please click here to enjoy the video (and a very short Dick Clark intro).
And pop over to their website to order a 40-minute documentary about the making of "This Beat Goes On/Switching to Glide" on DVD.
And things I loved that were perplexing to her.
Posts
