Sadly Ecstatic

It's a million degrees in L.A. today.

Guess that's as good a time as ever to dust off old records...


Q: Are you a Mod or a Rocker?
A: I'm a Mocker.

Calm in Your Eyes

Late August, Grasping Onto the Last Vestiges of Summer

And sending out best wishes to everyone on the East Coast.



BTW, I've written about Neil Young and this song once before... check it out.

Whenever You're In Trouble

If the sky that we look upon...

In the early 1970s, Paul McCartney was vilified for recording and releasing a series of wimpy songs (and insanely uneven albums).

During that same period, John Lennon struggled to find his own voice, careening from the stark primal scream of Plastic Ono Band to hopeful hippie anthems ("Happy Xmas"), unashamed rockers ("Instant Karma"), odd anthems ("Imagine"), and sappy mystic anthems ("#9 Dream"). Not to mention Sometime in New York City, about which the less said the better.

When the Beatles broke up, Lennon was freed from the need to compete with Paul McCartney for leadership of the biggest band in history. But he drifted, trying to find his voice (which, he famously tried to disguise in whatever way he could because he didn't like the sound of it).

So tonight, with wispy clouds passing overhead and a cool breeze blowing in off the water, I find myself thinking about a John Lennon song. It's not his best song, not his biggest hit, and not even a song he wrote.

But, somehow, while recording an album of oldies with Phil Spector, Lennon was able to shrug off the need to be the voice of his generation long enough to deliver his most relaxed and confident vocal performance since the Beatles broke up.



RIP Jerry Leiber, who wrote (with Mike Stoller) classic songs like "Kansas City," "Charlie Brown," "Ruby Baby," "Jailhouse Rock," "Searchin," "Love Potion #9," and of course "Stand By Me."

Used A Little Too Much Force

Right outside of Delacroix

There's a bar outside of Boston I went to a few times.

They had a crappy beer selection, floors that hadn't been washed in decades, and three-dollar cheeseburgers that weren't so horrible if you had enough crappy beer.

And they had a jukebox.

Where every single record was by Bob Dylan.

"You wanna hear Hendrix do 'All Along the Watchtower' you go somewhere else," the bartender explained. "You wanna hear the Byrds sing Dylan? You go to Cambridge and go to one of them bars there. You wanna hear the classics -- this is your home."

His dad started the bar in the 50s, and he took over in the early 70s. "First thing I got was the jukebox," he said. "Some of the regulars moved on, but we got new regulars who kept coming back."

The bartender held court some nights at the bar. Entertaining us with stories of his travels, the women he'd met, and the jealous men who'd chased him out of more than a few towns.

One night, the bartender said, Dylan himself showed up. There's a photo of Dylan by the jukebox, he told me. But he never put the photo up.

As the years went by, the regulars got older. The late-night stories grew more infrequent. And the jukebox (still stocked with Dylan) was silent more often than not.

For years, I'd drop into the bar whenever I was in town just to see that nothing had changed (except the price for the cheeseburgers, which started to creep up).

Last time, I was there, the bar was gone. It was an Applebees now.

No jukebox, no stories.

And while there are Applebees all over the place, there's no Dylan in Applebees.

Some Kind of Happiness is Measured Out in Miles

Don't look at me, man. I've already got grandchildren!

The PowerPop blog recently lamented that there haven't been more cover versions of the Beatles' "Hey Bulldog."

Just to remind you, that's the one that goes like this:



So in the interest of not wanting the week to actually start yet, here's a few cover versions.

Ween live in 2006:
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The French band Les Shattels:


Cyndi Lauper (she's still so unusual) at a John Lennon tribute concert in 1990:


Dave Matthews:


Toad the Wet Sprocket (listen to the intro on headphones):


The Crash Kings:


Miles Kane:


And Elvis Costello with the Fab Faux -- embedding's disabled on this one, so you have to click here.

To the Nines

Left my wife and my kids and land, so the story goes...

The future slid in from the mountains like a vaguely threatening fog.

Nothing to see here. Just water particles gathering slowly in the atmosphere.





SUVs, station wagons, compact cars. All packed with the teen ideas of what you'll need in a new life.

All missing the most important thing.




The music then was heavier. Literally. Packed on big heavy discs (and then smaller lighter disks).

Now all virtual. On a hard drive that could crash and vanish in an instant.




The cars slice through the fog, parting curtains of humidity and rainstorms.

Drivers and passengers in the same place -- one only looking forward, one only looking back.



It happens every year around this time... so maybe someday it will be less of a surprise.

Red Hot

You ever wake up from a dream where multiple versions of the same song are dueling for your attention?