1. Okay, so first off... we got a new bed. Our first new mattress since we moved to San Francisco. In 1995.
(a brief pause, as I nostalgically remember my life without kids)
In any case, it was time. The mattress was sagging on the edges, riddled with crevasses within, and no matter how many times we flipped it our feet ended up being 6" higher than our head when we slept. So last weekend, as a kind of mutually-beneficial Father's Day thing, we went bed shopping... and on Tuesday, a brand spankin' new Simmons Beautyrest was delivered to our home. And honestly? It's fucking marvelous. I didn't realize that it was possible for humans to sleep this comfortably.
2. Speaking of Father's Day, this week the guys at DadCentric gave themselves a gift by talking our wives into writing our posts for us. If you'd like to see TheWife's handiwork, clickez-vous. Read 'em all, while you're at it.
3. In other bed-and-family related news, allow me to paraphrase the Thompson Twins: Lice, Lice, Lice... yeah! The scourge of lice has apparently been making its way through my daughters' daycare for several weeks, and yesterday it was our day in the barrel: I got the dreaded "Come get Rabbit; she has lice" phone call. Said phone call was then followed by a joy-filled pickup of one of those drugstore lice death kit packages - replete with the old checkout lady giving Rabbit a dirty look as she rang it through - and then several hours of covering the wee sweet creature's head with multiple coats of medicated shampoo, medicated goo, carefully administered showers, intricate and time-consuming fine-toothed combing adventures, nitpicking (literally! not figuratively!), and subsequent washing of everything in my fucking house that might have conceivably touched her head at any point in the past week or so.
Good times, and yes: TheWife and I are now consumed by constant, compulsive psychosomatic all-over-body-scratching. Urk.
4. One not-entirely unfortunate byproduct of said infestation is the fact that we now have an excuse not to go to New York this weekend for a wedding that - to be honest - we weren't entirely psyched to attend in the first place. Not that we didn't want to see our friends who'll be there, but more because our ability to attend was predicated on another stay with our in-laws... and their giant dog. Probably just as well that we're staying home.
5. Coincidentally, yesterday was also the date of the girls' 4yo pediatrician checkup. Which comes complete with 4 shots at the end. For those of you doing the math: 2 girls x 4 shots = yikes. Rabbit (newly-cleansed of lice) was pretty brave, and cried only a bit at the end. Butterfly? Sweet, sensitive, brilliant Butterfly? With God as my witness: she started LAUGHING when the fourth needle was stuck in her arm.
The girl's a f$#%ing supervillain-in-training.
6. A coupla things worth checking out, should you find yourself with a bit'o'time and curiosity:
Suzanne Finnamore adds some insight to her fantastic novel Split (which you should read) (after you finish her two earlier books) (seriously)
7. Finally, I leave you with a little music from the late and much-lamented Aerogramme. It kills me that I didn't discover these guys until 2 1/2 years after they broke up... why didn't you tell me about them? That's right: I know you knew. I know you were holding out. And I will have my vengeance... in this life, or the next.
They moved silently, at almost imperceptible speed. Slowly, achingly slowly, infinitely patient, they drew closer to the ground as night grew deeper and the darkness grew thicker within the house. Hours passed, and as the air grew chilled and noble gases escaped the weak prison of permeable membrane, they rejected the inexorable pull of heaven and together began their downward spiral, intertwining and colliding, weaving a tangled web of bright color unseen and unseeable in the gathering dark.
Somewhere, far above, great waves of air and torrents of wind cycled and recycled into funnels of kinetic motion, spreading outward and away like ripples fleeing the watery splash of stone.
The house was silent, sleeping, lost to thought and dream but for the endless slice of blade through air. Behind closed doors, children twisted into sibilant curls around plush tokens and invisible animal spirits. Our door, as always, remained open — to greet the cooler airs of night, to welcome weary dreamers, to avail us to those who would drift into our fleeting world of heavy slumber.
They came to the stairs. Eleven of twelve, crawling above and across each other in soundless, infinitesimal stampede, brushing against the wooden steps with a touch lighter than feather, gentler than love. And they began to climb, as if drawn up and into the stairwell by some new form of gravity that lifted them from the warm embrace of wood and into a new world of moving airs and Morphean figures.
(I imagine them: moving at a speed only possible in dreams. A stop-motion flurry of wet earth giving rise to sprout, flower and bloom in the blink of two eyes, as they move from place to place without ever seeming to be in between. They move in a way that does not seem right for this world.)
They rose as if they were tide drawn to shore, up the stairs, around the bannisters, drawn higher, ever higher, until they gathered by the frame of our door. Four feet and a million miles from where my wife lay, sleeping, dreaming, unaware, they gathered. Sliding against one another. Jousting for position.
And then one of them pulled free — slipped from the surly bonds of earth and soared into the heart of the maelstrom.
In an instant, the house was alive with a fury of motion and sound, a terrible pounding of yielding body against unyielding solid, a terrible and vivid drumbeat that echoed through the hallways and stairwell and foyer and filled my sleeping ears like water flooding into chasm and LIKETHAT I shot awake and aware of that sound that pounding that terrible, relentless crash and I knew IknewIknewIknew that it was one of my children, one of my girls, up and confused in the middle of the night, suddenly falling into the darkness and down the stairs and breaking apart in a hundred final and awful and unfixable ways and without even knowing it I began screaming "NO! NO! NO! NO!" as I leapt from the bed and launched myself into the hallway desperate and terrified and my heart exploding from my chest and not even fully cognizant of facing the unfaceable reality of what I was hearing, what it meant, what it...
And found myself standing in my hallway, four-thirty in the morning, ten semi-deflated mylar balloons circling my ankles and calves like sharks circling prey. Their long, colorful ribbons trailing across my feet like tentacles. The eleventh, ensnared in the ceiling fan, pounding a syncopated beat against the plaster.
"Jesus fucking Christ," I said, as my wife stepped from the bed to look at me and what she had presumed was something, someone, coming loudly up the stairs.
I reached over, and turned the fan switch off. Unraveled the tangled ribbon from the fan, then gathered the eleven intruders together. Walked downstairs, where I discovered their missing brother - purple, sheepish - floating alone near our front door. Pulled them all into our dining room, next to the pile of new gifts and bags of crumpled wrapping paper from our daughters' birthday party the previous afternoon. Tied them securely to a chair. And then stood there, for a moment, trying to will my heart back into my chest.
There would be no more sleep, that night.
(The next morning, I brought them into my kitchen. I set the purple one aside, and then took a knife to the rest. I watched impassively as the helium fled their broken skins, and they collapsed into wrinkled husks. Eleven of twelve, one by one.)
5. The Brother Kite: Lay Down Your Burden I'm running out of ways to describe these songs. What can you say about a band like The Brother Kite, or this song in particular? If Brian Wilson created teenage symphonies to God back in the '60s, then maybe Lay Down Your Burden is a modern-day adult's symphony to the heavens: luminous harmonies, soaring melodies, rising/crashing/beatific walls of gorgeous sound that pour over you like some swirling force of nature, elliptical lyrics about loss and acceptance delivered in Patrick Boutwell's impassioned, choirboy voice, the whole thing cycling upward and upward and upward in ever-more dizzyingly ecstatic spirals...
"...every time I hear Salt, I flash back to a time when - for about 2 months -
I listened to virtually nothing but this song, over and over and over
again. Not to get into details (because, primarily, it's not my story
to tell), but someone I know died, and the way I dealt with it was to
get lost in the great soaring waves of yearning and pain and anger and
regret that, to my ears at least, weave their way throughout the fabric
of this song."
Yeah. I think I'll stick with that.
3. Sea Stories: All You Said A heartbreaking piano and cello lullaby from a wonderful, forgotten Australian band of the early 90s. I don't know what more to say about this song without sounding trite and prosaic: it is lovely, and it is sad, and I could not possibly treasure it more.
2. Kitchens of Distinction: Prince Of Mars I loved this song fiercely the first time I heard it, but now I cannot remember why, because now I cannot hear it without thinking of my son. I understand that the song suggests very different circumstances - a loved one, wasting away, losing sense and memory, the growing confusion as the time grows close, the mounting desperation in Patrick Fitzgerald's voice - but I cannot help but think of my own son as he tries to find his place in a world where he is, in some sense, now and forevermore, a beautiful alien.
"What happens when you know the answer/but they're so used to you being wrong," Fitzgerald sings. "Oh, my prince... answer please. I'll get the pencils: we'll draw ourselves a new world." And then Julian Swales plays the most lyrical, emotive two minutes of guitar music ever recorded - this is what it sounds like; raging against the dying of the light - and in those two minutes I find a catharsis that I wish would go on and on forever.
1. American Music Club: Blue And Grey Shirt My wife says this song makes her think of me. And that is why I love her: because she knows me.
"Where's the compassion to make your tired heart sing?"
1. Please click posthaste and enjoyify last Thursday's DadCentric post, in which I reminisced about my first Father's Day. For which, you know, I qualified.
2. I went to see Up yesterday! In a theater! Like real people do! Brought the whole family, in fact! And then, two minutes into the previews, Rabbit jumped on top of me, curled up into a ball, and started screaming in terror! "I want to go I want to go I want to go!!!" So I walked her out into the lobby to calm her down! And 10 minutes later we went back into the theater, but before we could get halfway to our seat she started crying again! Four subsequent attempts were no more successful! So I ended up spending almost two hours sitting in the lobby while my wife, son and other daughter watched the movie! And paying $50 for the privilege! It was fun! In the sense of "the exact opposite of fun!"
3. This was even more superduperfun in light of the fact that I'd been up since 4:30am, for reasons that will be explained in a subsequent post but which are tangentially related to the fact that my daughters' BIG FANTASTIC SUPERDUPERFUN FOURTH BIRTHDAY PARTY SPECTACULAR was on Saturday. It actually went much less nightmarishly than I'd feared, despite the presence of +/- 20 4yo kids, plus a number of unexpected extras ("Do you mind if my 7-year old participates in the party?" "Uh... sure.") and a goddamned Disney Princesssheet cake.
That being said, their actual birthday isn't until next week. Which I think we'll celebrate with a pizza and some popsicles.
4. So... d'you remember that job that I interviewed for a couple of weeks ago? Then interviewed for again more recently? Totalling about 7hrs of interview/grilling? Yeah, well... I didn't exactly get the job. For the fourth time this year, I was told "Everyone was really impressed... your qualifications were... we think you could make a tremendous... blahblahblahBUT we're now rethinking what it is, exactly, we need right now, and so we're going to go in a different direction."
(head exploding)
That being said, they liked me well enough to engage me as a contractor — which may or may not be a test drive to determine whether/not they actually want me for the job I actually interviewed for. In any case, I've worked it out so that I'll finish my current contract gig in mid-July... and start my new (and higher-paying) contract gig the following Monday. I guess this means I'm not (technically) unemployed anymore, although to be honest I still feel a little ambivalent about the whole thing.
(wanders off, muttering and swearing about the new economy...)
5. In case you haven't seen this yet: y'all are familiar with the Real Housewives of New Jersey, right? Horrifying-but-you-can't-tear-your-eyes-away TV at its best, right? Well, our pal Jonniker sent along the following, in which one of the NJ Housewives preps for her wedding... and it's fucking apocalyptic.
6. I'll be finishing my Top 25 of the Last 25 Years later this week. Watch carefully for the surprise appearance of Boyz II Men.
10. The Blue Nile: Downtown Lights If you've never heard this song before, chances are you're going to watch/listen to the first 30 seconds and say, "Dude, WTF? Synth washes and three sad-looking Glaswegians? This makes your Top 10?" To which I answer: yes, and yes, and yes. Because nobody - repeat: nobody - ever did 3am, staring at the reflection of stars in street puddles, lost in melancholy and regret with more sublime beauty than the Blue Nile. Hearing this song for the first time back in 1990 was a legitimately life-changing moment for me, because before that moment I'd never heard music that captured that specific mood with such crystalline precision. From the vocals of Paul Buchanan - a thing of haunted wonder, then and now - to the way the song builds over the course of 6 1/2 minutes (less on the video edit) to such a sustained swell of shimmering, lovely ache and yearn... all these years later, it still makes my chest feel tight with emotion and memory and wonder at the beauty of it all.
9. Ghost of an American Airman: 1955'er In which a young band from Belfast somehow weaves together a love story, the death of James Dean and Dodge McKay's powerhouse voice into a song for the ages. Turn this one up to 11, because when it all kicks into full gear at about the 2:20 mark... damn. That's just two dozens kinds of wonderful right there.
8. Sigur Ros: Glosoli I have nothing to say about this song other than that the release of Takk in September, 2005 coincided with some other events in my life, and I will never be able to hear this song without flashing back to that time and thinking of how I listened to this song then, over and over and over again, and how it reduced me to rubble and inspired me to keep going, all at the same time, and how when I finally saw the video it seemed even more pertinent and appropriate and - for several years - left me weeping almost uncontrollably by the time I reached the end.
7. Hüsker Dü: Celebrated Summer Despite - or really, perhaps because of - its bittersweet undercurrent, this is one of the most joyous songs I know. And when Bob screams, "Is this your celebrated summer?" and then his guitar and Grant Hart's drumming click together into a groove that gets faster and sweeter and move lovely with each passing second and you imagine yourself accelerating right along with it, giddy with new freedom and ready to take flight...
I'm going to be listening to this song for the rest of my life, and feeling this way every time it plays.
6. Snow Patrol: An Olive Grove Facing The Sea Regardless of how you feel about Snow Patrol and their tremendous success, it's hard to deny that they have produced some lovely songs over the years. This song - off one of their earlier albums, long before anyone knew or cared who they were - is several steps beyond lovely. It's beautiful in a transcendent fashion, aching to soar but infinitely heavy with the weight of emotion. "I would do anything... don't want to wake up... don't want to wake up" Gary Lightbody sings, clinging with palpable desperation to a love he feels slipping away with each passing moment. And then the dawn arrives, and it all begins to fade, and somehow even the inevitability of that loss becomes kind of beautiful, too.
15. Ride: Dreams Burn Down There is a common misconception about shoegaze - common, in the very limited sense in which shoegaze is ever actually thought of or discussed - that as a musical genre, it's all about gossamer threads of ethereal something or other drenched in moody echo and blah blah blah. To which I say: meet Ride. One of the original holy trinity of British shoegaze back in the early 90s (alongside My Bloody Valentine and Slowdive), Ride were always a much more noisy and aggressive beast. Dreams Burn Down, from their watershed album Nowhere, illustrates this as well as anything they ever did, from the Moby Dick-style drums that begin the song to the insanely dense wall of guitar, feedback, echo and fury that kicks in just past the two-minute mark.
One thing I feel necessary to make clear: if you listen to this song at anything less than what can legitimately be called "loud," you're going to miss the crux of the experience. The power of this song isn't a matter of nuance; it's a function of sheer sonic impact that demands volume in order to really work. So... turn it up, dudes. Turn it up, and get swept away.
14. Richard Thompson: 1952 Vincent Black Lightning Some of you are probably going to find this obvious, because if you love Richard Thompson and have to choose a single song of his to play for other people... it's gonna be 1952 Vincent Black Lightning. And there's not a thing in the world wrong with that: it's an instantly enchanting fusion of Thompson's incomparable guitar expertise (check the video of this live performance to get a feel for what a feat playing this song must be) with his characteristic melancholy/deadpan vocals and a peerless song-story about a bad boy, the redhead who loves him... and the motorcycle that brings them together. If you can't find room in your life for this song, we have nothing further to talk about.
13. The Magnetic Fields: Born on a Train I first heard this song in 1994, and it's been in my head ever since. The truth is, I could have picked any of a half-dozen equally wonderful songs off of The Charm of the Highway Strip for this list - in fact, up until about five minutes ago I was still flip-flopping between this and Long Vermont Roads - but the point is: there was a time when The Magnetic Fields were weird and fun and absolutely unlike anything else in the world. When listening to them was like being in on a strange and fascinating secret that nobody else knew. When someone like me could lie on a thin futon mattress in a tiny little room in a long-ago first apartment on a summer night, blinking away the sweat, waiting for sleep to come, soaking in the lyrics and lovely melodies buried amidst the tinny synths and faux percussion, wondering if a girl who might someday become something more than just a girl might like listening to it, too.
12. The Sheila Divine: Opportune Moment A lot of people - in particular, indie music snobs who decry any hint of commercialization - are quick to condemn the use of songs they like in advertising or marketing. Personally, I think that's absolute bullshit: it's damned near impossible to make a decent living as a musician, and if someone like The Shins or Tugboat Annie or Mogwai can make a few bucks by licensing their music to McDonald's or Monster.com or Levi's or whatever... more power to 'em. Obviously, there are times when the disconnect between the song in question and the subject matter being advertised reaches absurd levels (see Lust for Life as cruise line theme, minus the lines about liquor, drugs and "I'm just a modern guy/of course I've had it in the ear before;" also, the bland cover of Morrissey's Every Day is Like Sunday to promote the NFL, minus the repeated request to "Come, Armageddon, come..."). But when it's done correctly and appropriately, it can be just as interesting (and even moving) as an actual, full-length video.
About a millions years ago, Opportune Moment was used in an ad for Cambridge Soundworks (a Boston-based speaker/stereo equipment company). The commercial opened with a split screen: two apartments side-by-side, with a wall in the middle. On the one side was a normal guy, just sitting on a couch or something. On the other, a beautiful woman walked into the frame, pushed a button on a stereo, and - as this song started - began to take off her clothes.
The guy hears the music, stands up and walks over to the wall. (Meanwhile, she's taking off more clothes.) Then the shot changes so it focuses exlusively on him, where we see him pull a picture off the wall to reveal a hidden hole beneath. The look of excitement on his face is strong and palpable, and you can't help but think of Porky's as he leans in closer to the wall, bringing his face nearer and nearer to the hole. And then, at the very last second - just as the song explodes into the chorus, with Aaron Perrino howling "It's my liiiiife" - he turns his face so that his ear is pressed against the hole, and a look of absolute wonder and fulfillment spreads over his face as the scene fades away...
11.Talk Talk: I Believe in You You know what? I had trouble - real, honest-to-god trouble - deciding which Talk Talk song I wanted to include here. There was never a question that they were going to make my Top 25... the question was: which version of Talk Talk to include? Everyone knows It's My Life, the Roxy Music-inspired breakthrough that first garnered them international airplay (although, clearly, far more people know it because of/in spite of Gwen Stefani's more recent cover version). Many people still remember fondly the follow-up Life's What You Make It, as lovely and haunting and life-affirming a song as I know. But after that... Talk Talk changed. A lot. They evolved into a vastly different creature, integrating near symphonies-worth of instruments and a wide-open approach to composition in which mistakes were treasured as much as carefully constructed results, alongside Mark Hollis' ever-fragile vocals and fragmented, lovely lyrics, creating music that still - more than 20 years later - defies easy description.
In the end, I chose I Believe In You. Because it is pure and pained and beautiful a piece of music as I've ever heard. And because I wanted to share it with you.
a) Check out this week's post at DadCentric. That's all I have to say about that.
b) When you finish checking out my stuff, check out some of the other posts. The quality of writing at that site is getting ridiculous — see Whit's gorgeously still evocation of midnight and Jason's bittersweet birthday observation for examples. Given which, it's clear that it's only a matter of time before they boot my ass out... so I'd better start using my DadCentric discount card before my account is frozen. That 15% off at Denny's isn't gonna last forever.
c) In spite of all of this DadCentricity, I have to admit that the single most badass thing I saw on the interwebs this week came courtesy of The Velvet Blog, who blew what's left of my mind with this... well, the word "travesty" comes to mind, but I'll let you reach your own conclusions.
d) In case I haven't been clear, YOU'RE ALL TAGGED FOR THE MUSIC MEME. ALL OF YOU. Yes, even you. Especially you.
e) I finally saw Waitress this week, which is every bit as charming and enjoyable as I'd read it was, and which is subsequently every bit as heartbreaking a story as I feared it would be.
f) Tuesday's 4ish hours of interviews seemed to go reasonably well, and I'm supposed to hear back from them early next week. At this point, I've learned to take nothing for granted... but to be honest, I'll be disappointed and a little bit surprised if this doesn't work out. (And yes, I realize that I've just jinxed myself. I suck.)
g) Yes, I finally had my conversation with my Ex-Prez earlier this week... and yes, the conversation sucked donkey ass. Was there any apology for - or even acknowledgement of - the fact that
he completely fucked me over last October? No, of course not. It was, instead, basically a 20-minute attempt to 1. paint himself as the victim in my ex-company's collapse and eventual crash/burn; and 2. network in order to build his new business.
For the record, I kept my cool throughout the conversation, and while my abject indifference to his attempts at sympathy and networking would probably be taken at face value by most people... I'm not sure he's perceptive enough to recognize any of it. Honestly: I'd just as soon kick him in the fucking skull as ever speak to him again.
h) Alright... you know what? There was some other cool-ass web stuff I read this week that needs to be shared: • Mamatulip samples hot sauce. Funny. As. Hell. • Xiobhan shares a special moment with the US Secretary of Education. And Heather Locklear. • The Weirdgirl gets all meta and thinky about social media and marketing. She's wikkid smaht. • Actually, this FADKOG post is from about a month ago... but I still find myself visiting it every couple of days because it's one of the funniest damned things I've ever read. Hell, even the title tags for the photos make me cackle. "Beefy." (cackling)
i) New Caspian coming soon! I'm so excited. And I just can't hide it.
(If you haven't already done so - and really, if that's the case? Shame on you. Shame shame shame. - read and listen to this first.)
20. The Wonder Stuff: Here Comes Everyone For those of you who think that the only music I listen to is the kind that makes you want to wrap your lips around the tailpipe of a bus - and you know who you are - I offer this as counterpoint: a deliriously joyful exercise in fiddle, drum and exuberance, where a bittersweet lyrical undercurrent disappears beneath the frenetic rush of Miles Hunt's guitar strum and passionate, energized chorus. If this doesn't give you the joy, joy, joy, joy down in your heart... I don't know what to tell you.
19. Dambuilders: Shrine For a lot of people, the definition of a great song is something you can imagine coming on the radio when you're out driving and its summertime and the windows are open or the top is down and the sun is blazing and the wind is blowing your hair around and the veryinstant you hear the first notes you reach down and crank up the volume and for the next three minutes you're singing along as loud and proud as you can and its summertime and its magic. Shrine fits that description perfectly for me — 2:57 of pure musical adrenaline in a song about love and the love of rock and roll. (FYI: YouTube doesn't have the video, but if you'd care to watch the Dambuilders acting goofy on a beach, feel free to click here.)
18. A Northern Chorus: Skeleton Keys For years, the alt rock cognoscenti have been wetting themselves over the brilliance of The Arcade Fire... and frankly, I've never gotten it. I mean, they're fine, but there's nothing I've ever heard by them that wasn't reminiscent of something done far better by another Canadian post-rock collective: Hamilton, Ontario's late, lamented A Northern Chorus. Skeleton Keys - taken from their final, brilliant album The Millions Too Many - brings it all together in 3:48 that somehow feels at least twice that long: fascinating if somewhat cryptic lyrics ("Your will is proof that we are not just servants to some unseen god"), eclectic instrumentation, and a slow build towards the kind of sustained, ecstatic crescendo that first bounces your knees, then closes your eyes and then bursts you out into a wide, unrestrained grin as the crashing, soaring music and close harmonies lift you up and away to somewhere else...
Man. I don't know about you, but I could have used another 20 years of music like this.
17. Lullaby for the Working Class: Inherent Song If you know Lullaby for the Working Class, chances are you know it as the precursor to the less obscure/more renowned Cursive... but LftWC were an infinitely more subtle and thoughtful animal, one that blended alt country and sadcore into something obtuse and often fascinating. Inherent Song is, for my money, the best thing they ever did: a prairie symphony with jaw-droppingly imagistic lyrics - "As an old man bangs upon a newspaper dispenser, mimicing a drunken heartbeat..." - which fuse together with intricate, gorgeous instrumentation to produce an experience for which beautiful seems an inadequate description.
16. Afghan Whigs: Debonair Hope this rings a bell for you, because this is about as mainstream as my list is gonna get. I love me some Whigs, oh yes I do. Greg Dulli's song characters were much more than unrepentant assholes: they were toxic and vicious — and sexy as hell, all at the same time. (Seriously, other than Whipping Boy's Fearghal McGee, who at his best was every bit as supremely unnerving and who very nearly made this list with this song, does anyone else even come close?) Debonair is the Whigs at their terrifying best: rhythmically complex, lyrically dark, fiercely catchy, and all of it centered around a ferocious chorus groove where Dulli's promise of "Tonight I'll go to hell/for what I've done to you" lodges itself in your head and refuses. To. Let. Go.
When CroutonBoy (one of my erstwhile comrades-in-DadCentric) threw down the gauntlet with a brand new music meme last week, I was both helplessly fascinated and horrified. Fascinated, in the sense that I'm a music junkie — and any excuse to talk about the topic while boring you silly in the process is always welcome. Horrified, in the sense that the task called for me to choose my Top 25 Songs of the Past 25 Years.
25? That's it? All the tens of thousands of songs that have been recorded and touched my life - for better or worse - since 1984... and I had to boil it down to a mere 25? As you might surmise, this was quite a challenge for me — in fact, it consumed an unconscionably large part of this past weekend, when TheWife was out of town living it up in NYC, my kids were running away like wild horses over the hills (in true Bukowski spirit, mind you) and the world was collapsing around me as a result. But did I care? Did I stop? Did I waver for even a moment? No, gentle reader... my mind was solely on you and your needs, and how mine own quiet efforts to bring you entertainment and edification might enrich your own life, even if only in the most subtle and peripheral manner. Because that's how I am: I give and I give and I give. I offer you love.
Given which: what were the parameters of the meme? None, beyond choosing 25 songs from the last 25 years, and only one song per artist. That's it: CroutonBoy left it purposefully open to interpretation. Which, of course, only served to further frustrate me... do I choose only songs that are available on video (as he did)? Do I choose only songs that had real, in-the-moment significance for me? Do I choose the best representations of my favorite artists, or do I look at each individual song as a sui generis thing: to be viewed only in the light of what I hear coming through my speakers, and how it consistently moves, affects and/or transports me?
Ultimately, that's what I decided to do. I went through the nearly 16,000 songs currently on my iTunes and culled it down to a preliminary list of 65. And then... I started chopping. And it got harder and harder and harder to remove songs. By the time I was down to 45 or so, I felt like I was betraying loved ones by removing them from the list. By the time I reached 30 - and had to select the final 5 candidates for removal - it was just impossible. Which children are your favorites? That's not too far off the level of difficulty this achieved for me. (I don't claim to be rational about music, but you can't question my passion.)
Finally, this morning, following at least five days of effort, I wiped the blood from my eyes and gazed at my final list of 25. Not a song on there that doesn't mean the world to me. The fact that there are at least two dozen other songs that I could just as easily have used doesn't make these any less important or meaningful or great. To me. And I get it (believe me: I get it) — this is all entirely subjective. But that's kind of the point of the exercise... what defines great music to you?
The one things I could not do - and neither could CroutonBoy, apparently - was to create an order to our Top 25. Which is just as well: I think attempting that would have taken me another full week and, quite possibly, driven me irreparably mad. And thus, it is with all this in mind... that I offer you the first fifth of my Top 25 of the Last 25.
*** ADDENDUM ***
Okay. I hate to do this, but Sweetney made me cry a point I couldn't argue with: a list like this that fails to offer a legit countdown to a #1 is a cop-out. As such, I'm going back in and retroactively assigning these first five songs as #s 25-21. Am I copping out again by doing this, and not assigning these songs distinct ratings between 1-25? Maybe... maybe not. If I was starting over again, Richard Buckner and Killing Joke might rise a little higher, but overall I don't feel bad about where these rank.
So... there you go. A list the way a list should be listed. A list you can respect, and live by. A list that will kick Sweetney's and CroutonBoy's lists' asses — as well as those of any otherpoor simpsfoolish enoughto attemptthis errand. (Feel free, btw, to add yourself to the list of the damned tagged.)
25. Adorable: Sunshine Smile Yeah, I know... I just raved about them last month. So what? Adorable created some truly remarkable music during their brief moment in the sun, and this song - probably their best-known - gives you every idea why. I've attached the video rather than a sound file here because... well, because only a handful of these songs have videos, so I might as well give you one when it's available. But really, I think the video itself is kind of counterproductive: it's too easy to focus on the bad haircuts and goofy expressions, body language and direction, and in the process miss the thunder-crash impact of the guitars and drums when the chorus kicks in... the wondrous spiral of sound as the song reaches its climax... the echo and reverb and gorgeous, warm glow that the song as experience creates. Sunshine Smile isn't about the lyrics: it's about getting swept away in the sound. Personally, that's something I seek out. Something I crave. Something I love.
24. Richard Buckner: Lil Wallet Picture There's a great, lonesome ache to Richard Buckner's voice that is awesome to behold, especially when coupled with lyrics as brilliantly fragmented and heartbroken as those in Lil Wallet Picture. At first blush, it's easy to lump this song in with the alt-country/no depression types, but that does it - and Buckner - an immense disservice. Yes, there are certainly strong elements of country music throughout this song (primarily in the instrumentation), but don't let genre-identification habits get in your way of soaking up the haunted tone in his voice as he details the desolate, anguished inner dialogue of a man sent back through the years by a photo to a time and place where love and the infinite hope it suggested were real, tangible and capable of redefining his world... and how it all slipped so easily away. "This stretch of '99," he sings, "It takes so many lives... one of 'em was mine."
23. Killing Joke: You'll Never Get To Me Anger, as John Lydon once sang, is an energy. He was right, of course, and this song exemplifies why. Jaz Coleman is in fine voice and fettle here, raging against a world determined to fuck him over with a spirit of absolute defiance: it's impossible not to hear him rumble through the chorus - "You'll never get to me... survival is my victory" - without imagining both middle fingers raised as high as they will go to the world, to the heavens, to any and all that would stand between him and his dreams. I loved this song fiercely from the first time I heard it, and it took on new meaning and inspirational potentcy after I got laid off last autumn: I listen to this, and I am filled with the spirit of fuck you. And I am left energized, agitated, ready to run through walls and let nothing nothingNOTHING stop me.
I need that, sometimes.
22. Not Drowning, Waving: Albert Namatjira Ah, yes... the old Killing Joke-to-Not Drowning, Waving segue. I'll bet you saw that coming. Damn, I hate being predictable.
That being said... this is easily my favorite song about the heartbreaking life and premature death of an Aboriginal artist that uses his story as a metaphor for the mistreatment of Aboriginals as a whole by the Australian government and culture in the first half of the 20th century (and beyond) as performed by a large, multifaceted and sublimely skilled Australian band and produced by the legendary Hugh Jones with a sheen and passion that allows it to grow from a single voice over simple tones to a howling, swirling wall of sound that envelops and fills you with pain and wonder and white light. Granted, there are plenty to choose from that match that description... but I'd say this one is right up at the top.
21. Slowdive: Waves As part of the holy trinity of early 90s shoegaze - alongside My Bloody Valentine and Ride - Slowdive was, for a time and within certain circles, one of the most influential bands on the planet. Their gorgeous debut album Just for a Day still stands as a high-water mark in the genre, nine songs that fuse the swirling echo and reverb of their shoegaze peers with the darker, more subdued tones and perspective of sadcore to produce music that - when played at the high volumes originally intended - achieve a kind of music transcendence: an experience near-physical as much as aural, where shimmering waves of sound and cathedrals of guitar and understated, closely-harmonized vocals become absolutely transportative... close your eyes, and a song like Waves lifts you up and away to higher, rarer airs where beauty and sadness go hand in hand, and become all that much more beautiful and sad for it.
A Winged Victory for the Sullen: A Winged Victory for the Sullen My 2011 album of the year. Achingly gorgeous neo-classical compositions designed to leave you on the verge of tears. I've been listening to it almost non-stop for months; you should do the same.
Hammock: Longest Year EP There are few things more frustrating than trying to describe the gorgeous, evocative and profoundly atmospheric post-rock music of Hammock without A) resorting to clichés that, while not necessarily inaccurate, do little to accurately describe the listening experience; or B) having the musical vocabulary to adequately describe just what it is about these lengthy, largely wordless compositions that hypnotizes and moves me so profoundly. So I'll just say: imagine a film. No words; just images. Flashing, semi-grainy images of someone from your past — impossibly beautiful, vibrant and full of life. Someone lost to you forever. Imagine that feeling, of love and impossible longing and desperate, hopeless desire to recapture that moment and make it last forever. Now hunt down the title track to this EP, close your eyes, and listen. And you will know: this is the music for that feeling.
Peter Gabriel: New Blood Man, what a disappointment this turned out to be. I've been a fan of Peter Gabriel's for more than 20 years, and while his post-Passion albums have been uneven at best... I was thrilled when I heard that he was re-recording some of his best songs with an orchestra. I grabbed it on the day it was released, tossed it in my trusty CD player, and... um... didn't love it. So I listened to it again. And again. And again. And now, after four full listens, I've concluded: this isn't music I can love. I mean, some of the songs work pretty well (generally the quieter ones — San Jacinto, Mercy Street and Wallflower are fairly lovely), but as a whole the album comes off as more of a compositional exercise than an attempt to create songs of real and lasting beauty. It's a crime, really, because the great strengths of Gabriel's music have always been rooted in his ability to marry thoughtful lyrics to passionate vocals and complex, deeply-emotional music that supports the first two elements. But here? The lyrics and vocals (and PG is, admittedly, still in very fine voice) are subordinated to overly-busy arrangements that rob the music of the very things that make it so extraordinary. It's a disappointing discovery, and to be completely honest the best thing about this album is the fact that it's forced me to go back to the original executions and appreciate, with a freshened perspective, just how wonderful they are.
Low: C'mon A tremendous and much-appreciated return to form for this legendary Duluth, MN slowcore trio, and a welcome reminder of why they are both one of the very best and most interesting bands in the world. From the gorgeous, chilly-yet-warm harmonies of married folk Mimi Parker and Alan Sparhawk to the impeccable sense of atmosphere and dynamics that have always defined their finest work as a heady blend of atmosphere, melancholy and quiet beauty... it's all here. Look: just give a listen to "Especially Me" or "Try To Sleep" and tell me you're not charmed, moved and completely hooked. I defy you.
The Cure: Disintegration (Deluxe Edition) (3CD) Why spring for the 3-CD deluxe edition, even if this is one of the greatest albums ever recorded? Three reasons: 1) Because the original album has been remastered, and now sounds better than ever — the bass is now audible, and the songs now offer a crystalline clarity that bring the aching beauty of Plainsong and Closedown to new levels. 2) The 2nd disc, which offers demos of most of Disintegration's songs, offer a fascinating glimpse into Smith's creative process. 3) The 3rd disc is a live album, and its version of Pictures of You is, simply, astonishing. One note: even better than springing for this? Is having @MrLady do it for you. I highly recommend that approach.
Reading is Fundamental
Daryl Gregory: Raising Stony Mayhall Man, Daryl Gregory is an interesting writer. This is a zombie novel, but it's utterly unlike any other zombie novel I've read (and let's be clear: from The Angels Are The Reapers to World War Z and Breathers, there's a wiiiide range of very good ones out there). Why? Because our title character is a part of the Living Dead community — and he's as rich and fully realized a character as you'll ever come across: an individual loved by his family, first hidden from and then feared by the world, and desperately curious to explore and understand his nature. What, exactly, is he? How is it possible that he was born dead, is and has always been composed of unliving tissue... and yet still grew up?
Gregory couples this greatly realized characterization with a compelling plot that follows Stony from his "childhood" on an Iowa farm to a growing Living Dead underground community to prison and revolution and beyond — and the result is a truly compelling read that blends some fascinating questions with a sense of fun and engagement that never wavers.
This is a worthy follow-up to Gregory's "The Devil's Alphabet," and while neither of these two novels quite matches the dizzying heights he reached with his stunning debut, "Pandemonium," it's still a terrific read that deserves your attention.
Dennis Lehane: Moonlight Mile When an author returns to a series years after abandoning it, it's frequently a journey fraught with peril. All too often, they seem to lose their handle on the characters and unique tone that made their earlier work so fun and successful, and you finish the book kind of wishing they'd never gone down this road. Having said that, I was grateful to discover that Dennis Lehane's return to Patrick Kenzie and Angie Gennaro in "Moonlight Mile" is an energetic and very successful reintroduction of the deeply sardonic (and funny) dialogue and dark & twisty plotting that made his early novels such an incredible pleasure.
It's been more than a decade since Lehane left them behind to move on to "Mystic River" (still one of the best things I've ever read)... and when we rejoin Patrick and Angie, we discover that a decade has passed in their lives, as well. They've grown older (and possibly a little wiser), just another couple in Boston doing their best to make ends meet — when suddenly they find themselves launched into a search for Amanda McCready, a 16yo girl who a dozen years previously was the missing girl at the heart of Lehane's wonderful "Gone Baby Gone" (as well as Ben Affleck's outstanding film adaptation of the same).
What happens from that point forward is nothing if not tremendously satisfying, and while as a novel this may not reach quite the same dizzying heights of some of Lehane's other work... it's an absolute, uncompromising pleasure and a welcome reminder of why we fell in love with his writing and these characters in the first place. Great, great stuff.
Emma Donoghue: Room Yeah. It's every bit as good as you've heard. And every bit as lovely, heartbreaking and tragic, too. The idea is brilliant: Jack is five years old, and has lived his entire life in Room. With his Ma. And with occasional, after-dark visits from Old Nick — who, Jack doesn't realize, is the man who years ago kidnapped and imprisoned a then-19yo girl in Room. As far as Jack is aware, he, Ma and Old Nick are the only real people in the universe. Everything else - what he sees on TV and what little he can view through the tiny skylight at the top of room - is make-believe.
I could say more to describe what happens, but really... there's no way I'm going to give anything away. I'll just say, instead, that Donoghue does an impossibly masterful job of creating an entirely believable 5-year old boy who might have been born and raised in such an environment — and who might react to the things he experiences in the way that Jack ultimately does. Every piece of this story has the ring of absolute truth, and that (more than anything else) is what helps to define it as one of the most haunting things I've read in a long, long time. Highly, highly recommended.
Greg Olear: Fathermucker: A Novel I wanted to like this. I really, really wanted to like this. The concept sounded terrific: a SAHD in an upper-middle class enclave in upstate NY is told, during the course of a playdate, that there is suspicion his wife is having an affair. The idea is pure gold — a setting and a cast of characters impossibly ripe for comedy, plus an opportunity to add some emotional depth via the very troubling idea of a beloved wife (in an imperfect marriage) who may be quietly shattering our protagonist's heart.
Unfortunately... the execution fell far short of my expectations. Let me be clear: Olear can write — he knows how to craft language and put together an interesting story. And he certainly does a credible job of recreating the vast wilderness of SAHM/D life in the 'burbs. But in terms of really delivering on either the comedic or tragic implications of the story... it fails.
Problem 1: it's not funny. At all. And the fact that Olear clearly has the ideas and chops to deliver on a strong comic premise - and yet, consistently, fails to do so - became an ongoing source of frustration for me as I went through the book. I'll put it this way: a full-length comic novel that makes you smile and/or laugh a grand total of once? Is not a very successful comic novel.
Problem 2: it offers multiple opportunities to broaden into really emotionally resonant territory, both as a function of exploring the wife's possible infidelity and in exploring the emotional impact of having a child on the autism spectrum (Asperger's, in this case) on a marriage. And yet, every time it starts moving in that direction... Olear instead veers into a machine-gun spatter of pages-long paragraphs listing people who attended a playdate and how they interact with and/or screw around with each other (or some other, similar tactic). It's as if he's hoping that if he dances realrealrealfast, no one will notice that he's not ready or willing to write with anything approaching real emotion.
All of which leads me to this conclusion: I've read far, far worse books this year... but none that made me feel more frustrated or actively angry for not being better.
(Disclosure: I was sent this book by the very kind people at Fathermucker's publishing house, whose name I can't think of right now. Thanks and sorry — I really wanted to enjoy this a lot more than I did.)
Warren Fahy: Fragment Remember back when Michael Crichton was cranking out blockbuster-movie-plots-disguised-as-novels and every review was pretty much the same? The details varied from book to book, but almost without exception you'd read a review and learn that he'd put together a book with a propulsive plot, a bunch of surprises and thrills, lots of technical and/or scientific detail to show off all the research he did, and little doubt that the characters and dialogue were anything more than paper-thin. Well, Crichton is gone — but with Fragment, Warren Fahy makes a solid attempt to recreate the Crichton model... for better and for worse.
The novel is basically built around the same initial concept as King Kong: a tiny, remote island out in the middle of nowhere in the South Pacific is discovered — and is quickly found to be inhabited by all kinds of fascinating monsters. Boatloads of energetic scenes of people getting shredded by the aforementioned monsters inevitably ensues. Fahy's Crichton-esque take is to cast this island and its bizarre inhabitants as an ultraviolent evolutionary offshoot, where billions of years of isolation have resulted in the creation of all kinds of horrifying and efficiently bloodthirsty inhabitants, including (most memorably) the spiger, which basically looks like a 15-foot long hybrid of a spider and a tiger (it even has orange stripes).
Sounds promising, right? Until you realize that Fahy has failed to back up this premise with things like "believable characters" or "dialogue" or "depth." Which leaves us with a passable beach or airplane read... and not much more.
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