Dylan's "Key West (Philosopher Pirate):" The Last Stop Before Kokomo

Perhaps the best summary I’ve seen for “Key West (Philosopher Pirate)” is that it’s Dylan’s own “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.” That sums it up perfectly for me - when he sings about “Key West… the the enchanted land… the land of light,”  he’s not singing about the literal Key West, exactly, but a magical place where troubles melt like lemondrops, time works differently, you can be friends with memories that are traumatic anywhere else. A land that he heard of once in a pirate radio broadcast. My first thought on hearing it was of Ferlinghetti’s poem about finding the lost locality where he could catch a sunday subway for a “Far Rockaway of the Heart.”

The first night it was streaming, my friends and I tried to outdo each other describing what sort of song it was. Among my frist thoughts was the Papa John Phillips demo of “Kokomo” that Mike Love revised into the Beach Boys hit. One friend initially thought of Warren Zevon, then landed on Mark Knopfler. I agreed until I pictured Lana Del Rey singing it and couldn’t shake the image. Though I doubt highly that Dylan said, or probably thought, anything about Lana Del Rey during the recording, it’s the best comparison I’ve thought of. It’s like one of her more dream-like numbers, evoking a version of Americana unique to the singer.  

I wouldn’t have imagined that a new Bob Dylan album would ever remind me of the latest Lana Del Rey album, but here we are. It’s been a big year for unexpected twists, I suppose. But Dylan’s latest record is a moody, atmospheric album, presenting a unique view of Americann full of pop cultural references that seem both timely and timeless. I’d describe Del Rey’s “Norman Fucking Rockwell” with exactly that same sentence. She presents her version of Americana just as Bob presents his; they aren’t exactly the same, and you have to factor in the debatable extent to which Lana Del Rey is a character Lizzie Grant plays, but still. I’ve made the comparison and I’m sticking to it. 

Though most of the ways “Rough and Rowdy Ways” reminds me of “NFR” are vague and stylistic, one very specific shared trait between the two albums is a name-check of a Beach Boy other than Brian Wilson or Mike Love: in Dylan’s case there’s the Carl Wilson shout-out on “Murder Most Foul,” and in Del Rey’s a mention of Dennis Wilson on one of the album’s strongest tracks, “The Greatest’ (which, like Murder Most Foul, was written before the pandemic but seems even eerier and more timely here in the throes of it).

Her song opens with:

I miss Long Beach, and I miss you baby

I miss dancing with you the most of all.

I miss the bar where the Beach Boys would go

Dennis’s last stop before Kokomo

When the song came out, many of the Beach Boys heads (the real cool heads making real good bread?) objected that this young whippersnapper must not have known that Dennis had died well before “Kokomo” was recorded, but I’d say that A: anyone referring to Dennis by name can be assumed to have passed Beach Boys 101, and B: in this context, Kokomo is more of a reference to a place like Valhalla, not a reference to a song.  It’s a place somewhere over the rainbow.

Of course, maybe “Kokomo” always -was- the Beach Boys’ own “Over the Rainbow.”

Let’s pull up our over-analyzing pants. The bars are closed and there’s no baseball, after all, so we don’t have a lot of better things to do. 

“Kokomo,” the Beach Boys song critics love to hate the most, began life as an early 80s demo by Papa John Phillips, a breezy easy listening tune about a tropical paradise where he used to go to get away from it all. The song wasn’t released at the time (you can find it streaming without any trouble now), but he sent the demo over to the Beach Boys. Mike love revised the lyrics, tweaked the melody, and completely rewrote the chorus.

Phillips’ chorus was:

 “Wasn’t it good / the things we tasted / nothing we did was ever wasted / every moment lingering / like lovers fingers / across the strings of our lives / at least we gave it a try.”  

It’s pretty dreary.

Besides adding in the more radio-friendly “Aruba, Jamaica” chorus, Love’s revisions were mostly swapping out one line about an island paradise for a different line about an island paradise. Most crucially for my purposes here, though, he changed the tense of the song. Phillips’ demo is all in past tense, Love’s is in the future. He’s turned “where we used to go” to “where you want to go.”  His tropical island “off the Florida Keys,” as every radio DJ explained, was a fictional island. A fantasy. It was “off the Florida keys” in the lyrics but existed somewhere over the rainbow.

Perhaps I’m crediting Mike Love with too much mysticism and submeaning here, but, what the hell. He DID hang out with the Maharishi and wrote “All This is That.”  Maybe he imagine Kokomo as his valhalla. 

Which brings us to “Key West (Philosopher Pirate),” which would geographically be right near Kokomo.  Here, in a tune just as breezy as a 60s rock star singing yacht rock in the 80s,  Dylan sings about Key West as the place to be if you’re looking for immortality, the very thing that legend says Ponce De Leon is looking for there. But, while the Beach Boys themselves just described Kokomo is a tropical paradise with cocktails and moonlit nights, Dylan presents “Key West” as a whole lot more. It’s his verison of a tropical paradise - a whole lot weirder than most peoples would probably be. 

When I first heard the song, Dylan appeared in my mind as the sort of old man you meet in seafaring stories now and then: the kind who tell you about a magical land where time works differently, riches are there for the taking, and the all women are cute, available, and totally into you. THough he assures you it’s a real place (“Truman had his white house there!”) this place is not on a map, and if the sailors in the book go looking for the place, they’ll never find it, and they’ll doubt the old man was ever really there. Or maybe he wasn’t even real - he was the voice calling your name when you’re half asleep, the sweet sound that calls the young sailors to come find the Rainbow Connection.  

There are some clues in the lyrics that this is, in fact, Dylan’s “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.” There are a few lines in the song to drive it home - a specific reference to “the land of oz” and vaguer lines like “fly my pretty” and “follow the road.” And, like a land that’s “over the rainwbow,” Key west is described as “on the horizon line,” a place that’ll get further away the closer you get to it.  You reach it by staying to the left and leaning to the right (put your hands on your hips and bend your knees in tight?)  Key West is a land that he heard of once in a lullaby that a pirate radio station was playing. 

I remember moments like that; tuning the dial and finding some strange station that I can could never find again. I still don’t know what the hell station I’d found the first time I heard The Pogues. 

The radio signal he got from Key West was no ordinary radio signal - it was broadcasting the death of President McKinley (an event that happened about twenty years before anyone was getting their news on wireless radio). And not just a news item about McKinley, but the actual sound of McKinley hollering and squalling, the sound of his doctor talking to him. THe radio picks up different things here, and all the women are beautiful. Everyone wears flowers in their hair. And rather than being traumatized by strange events of your past, you can still be friends with them, as in perhaps the most striking verse:

When I was 12 years old, they put me in a suit

forced me to marry a prostitute

she had gold fringes in her wedding dress

That’s my story, but not where it ends

She’s still cute, and we’re still friends

down on the bottom, down in Key West.

What would be traumatic in the real world becomes tolerable here. It’s where you can find the mind you’ve lost.  

But you can follow the pirate radio signal as it gets clearer and clearer, and you won’t get to this version of Key West. It’s always on the horizon line.  Ponce De Leon didn’t really go looking for the Fountain of Youth in when he explored Florida and the Keys; it’s one of those historical myths. I bet he looked for it in THIS version of Key West. 

Now stop me before I start connecting all the things Lana Del Rey says she'll "miss the most of all" to Dorothy and the Scarecrow. 

2020 Music Talk: "Knockin On Heaven's Door, Just Like So Many Times Before"

I first heard of Bob Dylan in a children’s book called Dogs Don’t Tell Jokes by Louis Sachar. In the book, a girl enters a talent show dressed in a brand new leopard skin pillbox hat and tells everyone that Bob Dylan is one of the greatest songwriters who ever lived. I thought I recognized the name, and figured maybe I should look that guy up.  I met Sachar a couple of weeks ago and thanked him for sending me down that rabbit hole. A few years after I read the book, I saw my first Dylan concert. A few months ago, I saw my 50th. 

Now, the early 90s were not the best time to be getting into Dylan. His concerts at the time were, at best, an acquired taste, and the same could be said of his output for the previous fifteen years. I think he wrote a lot of great songs in the 80s and early 90s, but he spent most of those days struggling to find a place in the modern music scene. None of his songs would have broken through to a kid listening to top 40 songs on Q102 Des Moines, and I don’t think they ever played him KLYF, the oldies station. 

But there was one song my friends and I all knew in middle school: “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door.” Of course, we had no idea it was by Bob Dylan - as far as we knew, it was a Guns n Roses song. We were incredulous when a substitute music teacher told us it was by Bob Dylan. (That same year, my friend was shocked when we rented the Bond film Live and Let Die and found out that the GNR track was a Paul McCartney song). 

I’ve seen people say that GNR’s version introduced Dylan to the wrong crowd at the wrong time, which is probably fair, but it’s not GNR’s fault. Their version is really very solid hard rock version (except that, in a show of typical early 90s GNR excess, there’s a phone message skit in the middle, and then a gospel choir shows up very briefly for no particular reason). It’s easy to go overboard on the song, though: it's a song so simple it can be sung a million ways. In fact, Dylan has sung it about million ways himself - sometimes totally rewriting it, and sometimes completely changing the meaning with a single added line. 

The song was originally written for the soundtrack of Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973), in the same sessions that yielded the half-written demo that eventually became “Wagon Wheel.” On the soundtrack album it’s a two minute country song - two simple verses and a simple chorus sung over a few simple chords, an uncomplicated tune in the classic country tradition of songs about dying cowboys. Within a few years of Dylan’s release came Arthour Louis and Eric Clapton’s reggae versions, and pretty soon it became a standard, both on records and at open mic nights in any bar (it's super easy to play, even for beginners)

Dylan himself started playing it on the 1974 tour with The Band, with some rewritten lyrics and extra verses. The next year he appeared at a benefit with Neil Young and played a version completely written as “Knockin on the Dragon’s Door,” then used it as a group showpiece on the 1975 Rolling Thunder Revue tour, in which all the various singers in the band would trade verses, seemingly making them up as they went along. 

It was around 1981 that he made the most significant addition, the one that make the song unexpectedly powerful for me when I saw him play it live in 2001: he added a line to the chorus.

While it normally goes:

Knock knock knock on heaven's door

Knock knock knock on heaven's door

Knock knock knock on heaven's door

Knock knock knock on heaven's door

It now went:

Knock knock knock on heaven's door

Knock knock knock on heaven's door

Knock knock knock on heaven's door

Just like so many times before

 I’m not sure if someone else added that line before Dylan did. For him to adapt other peoples’ covers of his songs into his own performances isn’t uncommon. (Most famously, he’s pretty much played “All Along the Watchtower” as a Hendrix cover since he started performing it, his late 70s arrangement of “I Want You” bore more than a passing resemblance to Springsteen’s version, and the 1994 version, recorded but unused for “Unplugged," sounded a lot like the Sophie B. Hawkins version). But it became common in Dylan's version for twenty years. 

Anyway, “Knockin On Heaven’s Door” is a song about being at death’s door (come to think of it, given the subject matter it’s an odd song to turn into a big group singalong). It’s all about lying there, blood in your eyes, and resigned to your fate.  But by adding in “Just like so many times before” at the end of the chorus, the tone of the song changes completely, and it becomes powerful and uplifting. The singer is still at death’s door, but it’s not the first time he’s been here.  He’s knocked on heaven’s door before. So many times. 

And if he’s here and singing now, it stands to reason that he cheated death in the end every other time. And now he can probably do it again. Hell - he’s got this. It may be a song about death, but now death is something you can still talk your way out of.   

2020 Music Talk: Springsteen's "No Surrender"

(Hi, everybody. I haven't used this website in years; go to adamchicago.com for current stuff. But this week my usual spring travel gigs are postponed or canceled. I'm hoping to launch some virtual tours and other ventures very soon, but for I need an outlet and something to work on, so I'm going to do some more music writing.)

"And Hear Your Sister's Voice Calling Us Home" - Springsteen's "No Surrender" 


When I think about the time when I first got into music, I usually think of the summer of 93, when a slightly older guy made me a tape of Metallica, Megadeth, and Nine Inch Nails songs. That was the year when the only acceptable answer to “what kind of music do you like?” was “Metal, alternative.” You could be into rap, too, and not lose any social status, but “pop” was a totally unacceptable answer. You could still like Billy Joel, though. 

But really I first got into music in 1987, when I got my first clock radio and listened religiously to the Top Ten at 9 on Q102. That was the year of Tiffany, George Michael, Belinda Carlisle. And Def Leppard and the last gasp of what we’d later call “hair metal.” I remember “Tunnel of Love” coming on the radio when it first came out, but I’d arrived a bit too late for Bruce Springsteen. My only exposure to him was the Kids, Inc rendition of “Thunder Road,” sung by Martika (in character as “Gloria”) and leaving out most of the best lyrics.  I liked it, though. I played “Kids Inc Sing the Chart Hits” to death and I liked every song. 

My first concert, in 1990, was Billy Joel. I knew every song he played.  

I suppose I knew the chorus to “Born in the USA” like everyone else who attended a parade, fireworks display, or grocery store in those days, but Bruce had sort of peaked in mainstream popularity a few years before, and by the time I got more serious about music in the early 90s, he was sort of floating around the ether - still selling out stadiums to the faithful, but not huge with teenagers anymore. The E Street Band was on hiatus, and his two early 90s albums didn’t make a dent. I knew and sort of liked “Streets of Philadelphia,” but Bruce was started to be lumped in with acts like Bryan Adams and Rod Stewart. It seemed absurd that less than a decade before there’d been pinups of him in magazines aimed at your average teen. The classic rock station in Des Moines never really played him. Even as I began to get really into Led Zeppelin, Bob Dylan, and the other classic rock greats, I didn’t know “Born to Run” or “Dancin’ In the Dark,”  and certainly not “Rosalita” or “Fourth of July, Asbury Park.”  There was a terrific young adult novel called “Dear Bruce Springsteen” that was written in the form of a teenage boy’s letters to Bruce (by Kevin Major, check it out) that got me more interested, but the only way I could really hear the music, without shelling out 15 bucks for a CD, was watching some of the mid-90s “E Street Reunion” specials on VH1 from around the time Bruce’s “Greatest Hits” came out. I liked “Two Hearts” and “Murder Inc” and especially “This Hard Land.” But I didn’t buy the CD.

When I bought my first car and started being able to haunt thrift stores at will, I took a chance on a cassette of “Born in the USA” at Goodwill. The cassette was sort of warped and half the songs were distorted, so I didn’t play it much, but one song, “No Surrender,” broke through. It’s the kind of rock anthem Bruce can seemingly write in his sleep. 

I finally got into Bruce a few years later, when a friend played me the “Live in New York City” album in 2001, and the next year, while delivering pizza in a prison town, I got deeply into his first couple of albums before working through the rest. I finally got to see the opening night of the 2003 tour, right after “The Rising” had lost for “Best Album.” He come onstage and said “I would like to thank…absolutely…fucking….no one!” before launching into “No Surrender.” 

Bruce’s career took off when Jon Landau reviewed a 1974 club gig and included the line “I saw rock and roll future, and its name is Bruce Springsteen.” The record company latched right onto that one, and used it to make Bruce a star. It’s such a punchy line that it’s easy not to notice that it was taken way out of context: Bruce’s early music was a lot of things, but it wasn’t exactly innovative, musically. And Landau didn’t mean he felt like he was seeing the next superstar.  Landau was 27 that night - old for a rock fan in 1974. Sure, the Beatles and the Beach Boys had grown beyond songs about cars and girls, and even further back Buddy Holly had touched on adult themes with “Peggy Sue Got Married,” but people still thought of rock as music for teenagers, really.  Bruce’s set that night made him feel like rock could still feel fresh, and still grow up with him. 

“No Surrender” is, on the surface, a basic rock and roll anthem. When it was released in 1984, the chorus “No retreat, baby, no surrender” and the most famous line of the song, “We learned more from a three minute record, baby, than we ever learned in school,”  could have easily been the basis for a Twisted Sister number. Maybe even an upper-tier KISS tune. 

The twist is that it’s a song about being old and remembering the feeling of taking on the world, and trying to get that feeling back. It functions just fine as a call to arms, but dig into the lyrics and there are lines like “There’s a war outside still raging, you say it aint ours anymore to win,” and “now young faces grow sad and old, hearts of fire grow cold.” It's trying to get that feeling back and trying to persuade others to want it back, as well. 

Bruce excels at this, hiding meaning in plain sight behind catchy tunes. Most famously, “Born in the USA” is not a patriotic anthem at all, it’s a song about the plight of Vietnam veterans. “Thunder Road” is a great car song, but it’s really a religious song (I mean, it’s a car song that includes the words “Mary,” “vision,” “magic,” “crosses,” “savior,” “redemption,” “heaven,” “promised land,” “wings,” “ghosts,” and “gown.”) On the same album, "Glory Days" does the same sort of thing, but with a more jovial, smirking tone. 

I’m writing this on 3/13/2020. A few days ago I watched the livestream of an 80s themed Purimspiel where they sang "No Retreat, Haman, No Surrender." It feels like ages ago.  Yesterday was 3/12, which felt like 9/11. Broadway went dark, large gatherings were canceled, and we all bunked down for “social distancing” to try to mitigate the spread of COVID-19. All of my travel clients for the next month cancelled and I don’t know how many more might. On the way home from picking up supplies for a more isolated couple of weeks, “No Surrender” came on in my car. These days I usually feel like it’s the sort of song Bruce can write in his sleep; he recorded literally dozens of good pop rock songs for “Born in the USA” that didn’t make the cut - many just as good or better, and many touching on the same basic theme of growing old and trying to hold on to the feeling of being young. 

But as the world around started to crumble, along with all of my usual sources of income, a seemingly random line hit me so hard I had to pull over and sob a bit: “I’m ready to grow young again / and hear your sister’s voice calling us home across the open yards.”   It was the “hear your sister’s voice calling us home” that did it.  

I’ve always thought it was a good line - something about the image it conjurs up. It would have been easy for him to use one of his go-to names in this line - “Hear Maria’s voice calling us home” - but somehow “your sister” makes it all seem so much more real to me. Personally I can’t recall hearing my sister, or anyone’s sister, calling me home across the open yards, but that line, more than any other, makes me feel like I know these guys he’s talking to. Or I don’t KNOW them, but I can picture their whole lives, their childhoods, and those little things that draw you back in time.  

I'm more than a decade older than Landau was when he wrote that review, and at least five years older than Bruce was when he wrote this song about aging. On a day when it seemed like things might never go back to normal, it’s a longing for just one simple thing, one simple feeling, that reminds us of what it felt like to be young and ready to take on the world. We have to feel like that. We made a promise and swore we’d always remember. No retreat, baby, no surrender.

I’m still at my usual uncrowded morning coffee shop, but wishing this guy standing near me would take a few steps further away. Maybe in a few days even this level of interaction will be too risky, too. But what the hell am I going to do? How long will this be the new normal? We’re going to fight this as best we can, standing together (though six feet apart) and hopefully finding something new on the other side - and maybe, in Bruce’s words, in the darkness there’ll be hidden worlds that shine. But right now all I want do is grow young again and hear your sister’s voice calling us home. 

On "Palisades Park" by Counting Crows

Story songs don’t have to tell coherent stories - in fact, perhaps it’s better if they don’t. I can’t really be sure what all goes on in “Hold On” by Tom Waits, or “Changing of the Guards” by Bob Dylan, but maybe that’s why I keep playing them over and over. Maybe with every listen I get more clues to figuring out what exactly is going on, or maybe the story is vague enough that there are a lot of stories in there. Sometimes a mystery you haven’t solved is the most compelling; you don’t usually read a mystery novel again once you know how it ends.

Adam Duritz of Counting Crows can tell coherent stories when he wants to - take “Another Horsedreamer’s Blues,” where you get a pretty good idea of everything that’s going on - but is also a master at vague songs, like the 2008 gem “Cowboys” or the classic “Round Here.” You could write about a hundred short stories based on “Round Here” and get a different story every time, and all of them could be good.

I think Duritz picked this up from Springsteen. It was his rendition of “Thunder Road” in 2000 that led me to start looking deeper into Springsteen, and a couple of years later, when I heard “Fourth of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)” for the first time, I felt like I was hearing the primordial ooze out of which Counting Crows were formed. It’s got pianos, accordions, large bodies of water, a carnival, angels (in the live version) and the expert juxtaposition of Americana imagery and primal emotional concerns that populate so many of the best Counting Crows songs.

Elsewhere on that particular Springsteen album is the epic “New York City Serenade,” which is perhaps the most obvious template for the newest Counting Crows songs, “Palisades Park” (now streaming and available for free download) a multi part song that opens with a piano, pinball machine and trumpet instrumental, turns into a rousing rock song, then turns to an artsier, free-verse coda over its nine minute run-time. You could probably do a whole essay comparing it to “New York City Serenade,” which is built on a similar structure with some similar lyrical themes, but here’s the thing: “Palisades Park” rocks a bit harder. They may only get to the chorus twice in eight minutes, but there’s nothing in “NYC Serenade” that’s quite as rousing to me as when Duritz singing about carrying that spark from Palisades Park down into the cliffs and down into the dark.  

The song tells a story. After several listens I’m not sure sure exactly what that story IS, and the excellent video may or may not help, but it’s something to do with nostalgia, and hanging onto the sparks of things that inspired us once before. Maybe it’s about chasing your dreams (at least the good ones). Or fighting for a version of nostalgia that leaves out all the bad dreams and trying to get your old friends back. There are recurring characters (possibly a transgender theme). I don’t really know. But maybe it’s BECAUSE I don’t exactly know that I’m going to keep coming back to it. Or maybe it's just that the chorus works like gangbusters. It makes me want to carry that spark from Palisades Park and get further than I ever made it before.

I’ve been a Counting Crows fan since 1994. I had a strange, transcendental experience at the age of 14 riding my bike on a gray day with “Sullivan Street” stuck in my head (a friend talks about how "Darkness on the Edge of Town" made him suddenly see what sort of person he wanted to be, and that bike ride and "Sullivan Street" did it for me - suddenly everything was clear). Recovering the Satellites, their next album, was, for me, that record everyone gets at sixteen where every song seems to be about YOU (except for “Mercury,” which was about the girl I took two their concerts in 1997, still two of my favorite concerts ever, even though we spent the whole time fighting). Over the years they’ve taken some lumps, with most of the music world lumping them in with Dave Matthews-type prep rock instead of thinking of them as being more like “if Springsteen were backed by The Band.” Maybe it’s partly a result of only releasing one album of originals in the last twelve years. Either way, I’m glad they’re back, and I can’t wait for the rest of the album, Somewhere Under Wonderland, which is out in September (just a few days after my new book. Just sayin'). If the book is a flop in the stores and I end up in a bad place mentally, at least I'll have a good album to see me through it.

A Joyful Playlist

I tend to go on and on about the "Ragged Glory" playlist that lasted me the whole time I worked on SPARKS, from the first draft to the last copyedits. The songs all have a ragged, soaring, triumphant quality that I wanted in the book. I don't think playlists help much with rough drafts, but they're fun to make and help me a lot on revisions. You play a song with the right vibe and try to build the scene to work like that song is playing in the background.

Today I made a very important decision that I think will change my life: I typed "Slade" into the "Create a Station" field on Pandora. The station this created has me jumping off the wall as I bang my head and sing along to "Somebody to Love," "Cum On Feel the Noise," and "Long Cool Woman in a Black Dress." 

It makes me want to talk about my "joyful" playlist, which I switched to for a couple of scenes in the book during revisions. Songs that sound like the band and singer are so happy they can hardly contain themselves and want you to feel the same way. Here's what's on that:

"Oh Yoko!" by John Lennon. The harmonica solo at the end is pure distilled joy.

"Hold Me Now" by Polyphonic Spree. I'm not sure what they're on about in this song - I'm never sure what these guys are on about. But they sure sound uplifting. It's like an indie "Up With People."

I always wanted to start a band called "Up To Here With People."

"Good Lovin" by the Grateful Dead. Once I was at a show where they played this, and a rainbow appeared in the sky. I told a dead head about it and he said "Yeah, that happens a lot at Dead shows. There's a lot of psychic energy." I'm pretty skeptical about stuff like that, but there's no possible scientific explanation to explain how all those VW micro-busses in the parceling lot are still running.

"We Are Golden" by Mika. Fun! 

"Don't Stop Believin' (Glee version). I never felt like the show lived up to the promise of the pilot. I like it when their music really sounds more or less like something a really good glee club would do (plus guitar and drums). They usually just sound like karaoke versions. But I sure loved that pilot! Did they ever get around to the gag I assumed they were going for where "new directions" sounds like "nude erections?" The "Halo/Walking On Sunshine" mashup is on there, too.

"My Favorite Things" by The Mountain Goats. One of their dozens of "unreleased" numbers. A minute long song about hearing John Coltrane on the radio while dancing with someone you're probably about to sleep with. "you put your arm around me and it felt real fine /and your ankle brushed up against mine /  and resonating in my bones / the precise, crisp, drumming of Mr. Elvin Jones / god damn it! / i love john coltrane!" I swear he actually sings the exclamation point. John Darnielle tends to sing in italics. He does not sing his songs so much as he declares them.

"Oh, Mary Don't You Weep" by Bruce Springsteen an the Seeger Sessions band. The Seeger Sessions band sounded like what old folk music should have always sounded like, but it's a sound that couldn't exist in a world without mixing boards. An 18 piece folk band with a banjo, a tuba, an accordion, and a ragged band of gypsies vibe. I really hope he brings this band back - or makes up for the loss of Clarence by sort of merging the E Street band with some of these guys (which is pretty much what he's already started).

"Janglin" by Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros. These guys (like Polyphonic Spree) sort of seem like a cult. But what a swell cult! One line I just can't get past here is "We want to heal ya / we don't mean to kill ya." Well, good. I wouldn't want to listen to a band that meant to kill me (and wasn't a Norwegian black metal band). 

"Kick Drum Heart" by The Avett Brothers. A bouncy song on an album that is generally not bouncy.

"In The Aeroplane Over the Sea" by Neutral Milk Hotel seems like it fits into every playlist ever. All building up to the line "can't believe / how strange it is to be anything at all" which is sort of what Sparks is all about. I would have written that right in, but Flux is pretty hardcore about not quoting any lyrics. This made writing the scenes where they listen to "God Only Knows" and "This Year" and "It's All right Ma, I'm Only Bleeding" an interesting challenge. This is not a song Debbie would like, though. It took forever for this band to click with me, and Debbie is not into artsy, avant grade-type stuff. Maybe one day she will be. Not yet.

"Such Great Heights" by The Postal Service. This makes me think of my wife.

"Love the One You're With" by Stephen Stills. When I was about 14 I went to see a Shakespeare in the Park thing where they did Midsummer Night's Dream with hippies in place of fairies, and between acts a band played this. One of those songs (like "You may Be Right" by Billy Joel) where, if you pay too much attention, you'll start thinking the singer is acting like a complete douchebag, but they make it fun anyway. 

"What Is Life" by George Harrison. My favorite of his solo songs. "Waiting ON You All" would have worked in any Sparks playlist, too. 

"My Roller Coaster" by Kimya Dawson. One of her happier songs. All the people in this book need to listen to more Kimya Dawson records. We all do, probably. The importance of "Nothing Came Out' by her band, The Moldy Peaches, to SPARKS can not be over-stated. Sounds like a funny song if you've never been "there," but I think it's really their most doggedly serious song.

"Queen of the World" by Ida Maria. I love Ida Maria. This is one of her happier songs, where the depression underneath is more effectively buried. She features very prominently on the playlist for another upcoming book tentatively titled Mad to Live, and "We're All Going to Hell" is on the Satanic YA book playlists (of course).

"Valerie Plame" by the Decemberists. "Engine Driver" turns up in most of my other playlists, but this one delights me more. Something about opening a song with "Valerie Plame / if that really IS your name" makes me smile. 

"What Light" by Wilco. THe "Sing, Sing a Song" of my generation. 

"The Happy Wanderer" by The Polkaholics. These guys are the greatest band in Chicago. They are a guitar-drum-bass combo that sounds like early Green Day, only they play polka. All polka is happy. It is happy music for happy people. "The Beer Barrel Polka" teaches us that something can start in Scranton and go to Number 1. The lead singer, Dandy Don Hedekker, is the name sake of the appliance store in the book I Put a Spell on You.

"Constructive Summer" by The Hold Steady. The Ragged Glory playlist was heavy on these guys. 

Just added today to this list  is "Stuck On F**in' You" by Lady Gaga. Sounds like a Beggar's Banquet outtake. She should do more songs like this. I found myself wishing that whole last record was a big more organic (but in that Jim Steinman and Meatloaf way, if that makes any sense). 

Some other music writings I've done: 

On Green Day

The Gospel of the Mountain Goats

The Hold Steady and the Gaslight Anthem: Two Gangs Fighting In the Same Springsteen Song

On 90s Alternative as Oldies

Where Is Radio Nowhere?

A while ago, a friend of mine who doesn't like Springsteen summed up his objections as follows: "Bruce is like a more polished, professional version of Dylan."


This led me to a theory that in rock and roll, one's critical "cred" is inversely proportional to one's professionalism. And why not? We all like some grit with our rock music, don't we? The theory holds up reasonably well.


If Bruce is a more polished and professional Dylan,
Billy Joel is a more polished and professional Bruce
Elton John is (sometimes) a slightly more polished and professional Billy...


You can do this with a lot of other artists as a starting point, but in all cases the game ends when you get to Neil Diamond.


Dylan sometimes seems to be on another plane of reality - the good moments in his concerts, if you have ears to hear, bring about this ecstatic, "lifted out of myself" level of the sublime. The pleasure of a Bruce concert tends to be more grounded. It's ecstatic all right, but you always know that Bruce is from the planet earth, flesh and blood like the rest of us. That's part of the appeal. He seldom breaks new ground, like Dylan did, so much as do things others had done better.


But there's often more to Bruce's songs than meets the eye - more ways to look at them. Most of them make enough sense right on the surface that we don't need to think of new, hidden meanings in there. But sometimes the context of a song can change its meaning completely. Take, for instance, "Radio Nowhere."


I was tryin' to find my way home 
But all I heard was a drone
Bouncing off a satellite 
Crushin' the last lone American night
This is radio nowhere, is there anybody alive out there?
This is radio nowhere, is there anybody alive out there?


I just want to hear some rhythm
I just want to hear some rhythm


On the surface, this is pretty straight forward: a rock and roll song about driving around wishing there was some decent local radio, but only hearing corporate-owned satellite stations that lack live DJs. It's a fine rock song on that level.


It was the lead song, and single, off of his 2007 album, Magic. Following on the heels of The Rising, Devils and Dust and an acoustic tour (I love the E Street Band, but I tend to like his shows without them even better), early press assured us that Magic was not political in the least. But it was actually more political than the 9/11-themed Rising, on which some of the best songs were actually written before 9/11 ("My City of Ruins" was about Asbury Park before it started to sound like it was about New York) (or New Orleans). "Last to Die" echoes John Kerry's old line about asking someone to be the last to die for a mistake (Vietnam in his case, Iraq in Bruce's). "Long Walk Home" sounded like something he'd do with The Seeger Sessions band (in fact, he premiered it live with that band). "Magic" was all about smoke and mirrors, "Living in the Future" was probably political, though I was never sure what he was on about in that one. And then there's the album's closer, "Devil's Arcade," an epic about a love affair and/or a lost comrade in the middle of a war zone. If Dylan had written that one, we'd say it was one of his masterpieces. 


Like many Bruce songs, it's hard to tell exactly what the song is about. Like "Backstreets," you could get the idea that it's a song about a gay couple, though one or two stray words suggest otherwise. On some readings, the whole song sounds like it's about sex, on others it's all about war. Either way, it builds to a crescendo of chanting "the beat of your heart, the beat of your heart, the beat of your heart..."


Now, imagine how "Radio Nowhere" would sound if it came after "Devil's Arcade."  Now the image in your head isn't Bruce driving in a car listening to the radio - it's a soldier on a raging battlefield, shouting into his walkie-talkie. "this is radio nowhere...is there anybody alive out there?" And when he sings "I just want to hear some rhythm," you don't think of a guitar track, you think of the last song that came before: 'the beat of your heart, the beat of your heart..."


The interpretation works through ought the rest of the song, as well. Think of verse two in terms of a soldier:


I was spinnin' 'round a dead dial
Just another lost number in a file
Dancin' down a dark hole
Just searchin' for a world with some soul


The song continues in much this same vein - looking to make a connection to someone, to hear a thousand guitars, a million voices. Heart beats, gun fire, drum beats, the roar or battle, the wail of guitars all merge together. "Is there anybody alive out there...I just want to hear some rhythm...the beat of your heart, the beat of your heart..."


Now, whether Bruce meant the song to work like this is sort of an open question. He never played it "Radio Nowhere" after "Devil's Arcade" in concert (well, not yet, anyway). At his "Storytellers" a year or so before, while explaining "Devils and Dust" line by line, he cheerfully said, "Now, how much of this was I thinking when I wrote it? None of it. I wrote that down yesterday at my kitchen table. But how much was I feeling? All of it."


Bruce has gained a lot in critical cred in recent years. From what I see poking around on forums, it's entirely acceptable in the punk world to be a huge Springsteen fan these days (ten years ago it would have been a major faux pas in many circles - and on the Springsteen forums, it's a still inviting a flame war to suggest he's done anything good since 1978, but that's just the way of things on forums). People my age tended to lump Bruce in with Rod Stewart, Bryan Adams, and the like. But now he's sort of hit "national treasure" status - an American hero, an artist with balls the size of church bells, and just about the last guy to keep his songs out of car commercials.  He's the guy who was willing to follow The River with the  stark, ridiculously un-commercial Nebraska, who can get political without looking like a jackass. 

Notes on Pop Culture: The Gospel of The Mountain Goats

I'm late to the party on The Mountain Goats. I first heard them in the car on a road trip to a Tom Waits show in Detroit in 2006, and in the years since I've lost count of how many times I've sat in the cafe, listening to the radio, and said "who's this? this sounds good" and found out it was The Mountain Goats. But when I look up a band and see they have over a dozen records already, I get a bit overwhelmed. I don't know where to start. I put off buying a Springsteen album for years because of this.

I finally bought a couple of Mountain Goats records late last year, and I've listened to little else since. John Darnielle (who, for all practical purposes, IS The Mountain Goats) is a fantastic songwriter. He's done enough "on the verge of breaking up while riding in a car" and "ecstatic love while riding in a car" songs that I almost think he has too many, but, like Tom Waits ballads about rural weirdos and Bob Dylan 12-bar blues songs, it's hard to imagine we could ever have enough.

But what interests me most, and gets my fist pumping, is his obsession with salvation through making mistakes and wrecking his life.

On Green Day: An Essay

Ever since the Grammys, when Green Day performed "21 Guns" with the cast of the new rock opera version of "American Idiot," I've seen a lot of people snidely pointing out that Green Day can't be punk anymore if they're going to be on Broadway. I'm amused by this. I thought we went through the whole "Green Day Isn't Really Punk" backlash in 1994.

At the beginning of that year, my only exposure to punk had been back in 1986, when, on a family trip to Minneapolis, we went downtown to an area where, I was told, there would be punks. I had no idea what that meant, being barely 6, but when I saw a guy with a leather jacket and spiked green hair, I knew right away. "There's one!" I shouted. My parents freaked out while the guy smirked; they thought he might be offended and beat us up or make us take drugs. In reality, I probably made his day.

The Hold Steady and Gaslight Anthem: Two Gangs Fighting in the Same Springsteen Song

I sometimes say that every new band I like these days sounds like Springsteen. In no two bands is this more true that The Hold Steady and Gaslight Anthem - except that they don't sound LIKE Bruce, exactly. They just sound like something he'd sing about.

These two bands sound like opposing sides in a gang war in the middle of a Springsteen song. The Hold Steady represent the beatniks - they hang around writing poetry and getting drunk on the moon (in addition to the booze they guzzle in basements). The Gaslight Anthem represent the greasers - they work as mechanics, sing doo-woop on street corners, and, well, guzzle booze in basements. In many ways, the two gangs are the same bunch of guys, but, at least superficially, they have different goals and values. Like the Sharks and the Jets. Their songs are fueled by slightly, but significantly, different romantic ideals.

Reflections on '90s Alternative as Oldies

Today the cafe is blasting the 90s alternative classics station - I suppose that listening to songs that you loved as a kid in an oldies context is sort of a rite of passage. Since I'm not working on anything in particular this morning, I'm taking the time simply to reflect a bit on the music that was so, so important to me when I was a teenager, now that I can sort out which songs from the era are going to be the "oldies" and which I'll never hear again. Just as with any other era, the songs that are hits when they come out and the songs that become "standards" may not be related to each other at all. I rarely hear a song on classic rock radio that I don't know, but if I look at a Top 10 list from any given week in 1968, there'll be maybe one or two songs that I recognize. Many of the standards were never big hits in their day. I'd say that it was all about the Test of Time, but there's probably more to it than that. And one day, I'll figure it out.

Anyway, today the radio is playing...


Alanis - "You Oughta Know"
There are some good lines here ('every time I scratch my nails down someone else's back I hope you feel it' - nice). This is also about the only song I know of that makes the F word sound like a really dirty word, not just filler. Some people say it for shock value (korn, I'm looking at you), some people say it for fun (Ben Folds has more fun with swearing than anyone), and some just say it because they need an extra syllable or two. The way she spits it out here actually sounds dirty. The hurt in this song alone made people complain that she was "too angry" to this day, even though I honestly can't think of another song by her that's particularly angry. (saw her live twice, once in an arena, once in the park).

Hole - songs from Live Through This
Courtney Love did some good work when she was taking credit for songs that Kurt Cobain or Billy Corgan wrote. She's right up there with Wagner in the ol' "you can't let your opinion of the artist influence your opinion of the art" stuff. (never saw them live)

Green Day - "Longview"
I don't think the "they aren't punk anymore' backlash that got so pervasive in the mid 90's was because they were signed to a big label; it was because they suddenly became every prep's favorite band (after Aerosmith). This record layed bare the dirty secret that puberty sucks for everyone - prep, geek, and punk alike. That's why the preps dug it, too. We shouldn't have blamed them. I wasn't surprised when they made a record as good as American Idiot 10 years later - I knew they had it in 'em. Since I wrote this, they've also played "Basket Case," which single-handedly deconstructs the entire adolescent mindset. I remember thinking that that song described my life perfectly in those days, and I think everyone else did, too. (saw them live once, in a lowdown club in '95 on the Insomniac tour. I guess it was technically a "theatre," but it was too crummy to be called anything but a club).

Cake - "I Will Survive"
Still amusing, but no more necessary now than it ever was (saw them at a fesitval once)

K's Choice - "Addict" (or whatever this song is called)
One of the better songs about the old "I can quit whenever I want" myth. I thought their song "I Smoke a Lot" was a more amusing look at addiction, though. (saw them once, opening for Alanis at the arena show). I remember seeing people on a bus singing along to this song.

Oasis - "Live Forever"
This is a fine song, even though they apparently couldn't be bothered to think up an extra verse, leaving them to just repeat one of them at the end. Given the aspirations that are a theme of the song, it was a perfect way for us to be introduced to a band so determined to take over the world (and who came as close as anyone did in those days). Of course, the "buzz bin" clip only showed two seconds of the song, and it was the falsetto line in the chorus, which made me think they were one of those really artsy alternative bands that are hard to listen to. I remember I fell in love with the song listening to it on headphones while waiting for my ride to come on a cold, snow night. (never saw them live).

Bush - "Glycerine."
I didn't like them much then. Still don't. That one record had hit single after hit single, but I haven't heard many of them in years. They haven't stood the test of time very well, I guess. This is probably the only song you're likely to hear on oldies radio. Maybe "Come Down." What else did they do again? I can't even remember. (never saw them live).

Nirvana - "Heart Shaped Box."
I wasn't a big fan of anything of theirs other than Unplugged, which I thought justified the hype all by itself, but listening to them now it seems perfectly clear that they were head and shoulders above most of their contemporaries. And, ten years later, they're still big with the kids - I see Nirvana shirts at just about every school I visit.  (never saw them).

Smashing Pumpkins - "Tonight, Tonight"
I think that even before Mellon Collie came out, there was a sense in the air that this would be the Last Great Alternative record. Funnily enough, they hadn't really played this one on the radio today when I started writing this entry; I just started typing this because wanted to write about it. But it just came on. Either my psychic powers are in full bloom or my brain has figured out the pattern of oldies radio the same way some people can figure out the pattern on Pac Man. I remember that the time I saw the Pumpkins live, Billy Corgan kept apologizing for how badly they were playing that night, but I didn't notice. I think the problem was that, with the video screens and stuff, they were acting like a glam metal band, which is really what they were, but that was not a hip thing to be in the mid 90s.

Beck - "Loser"
I don't remember if we realized how funny this song was when it came out - the pervasiveness of whiny songs made it too easy to mix this in with the rest without realizing that it was satire. Looking back, it's hard to imagine I thought a song that opened with "in the time of chimpanzees, I was a monkey" was supposed to be taken seriously. (never saw him live)

Jewel - You Were Meant For Me -
My image of Jewel is kind of tarnished by the fact that after she became a hit, she wouldn't shut up about how she lived in her van for a while, and apparently started thinking she was an angel sent to remove pain from the world through poetry. And the opening lines of this song ("got maple syrup, everything but you") sounds kind of corny, but the rest of the song really makes that first line work. It's actually a damned good song. Not by any strech the sappy love song people think is - it's a post-breakup song by a girl who sounds like she's about to embark upon a rewarding career as a stalker. It's the little details; making a line about leaving wet towels on the floor sound devasting is tough to do, but she pulls it off here. Outside of the corny intro that turns a lot of people off, there's really just one bad line: "consoled a cup of coffee, but it didn't wanna talk" - what did she expect? Maybe the coffee was busy talking to Neil Diamond's equally unrepsonsive chair from "I Am I Said." This one is sung with the same vulnerability that allowed Jewel to do the only version of Ian and Sylvia's "Someday Soon" I've ever heard that actually captures the foolishness of a teenage narrator.      I'm still not entirely sure whether we were supposed to take that dance album she did seriously. It's one of those albums that I think is probably pretty great as long as you can see the humor behind it (like "Thick as a Brick," "Bat Out of Hell," and "Welcome to the Black Parade.")

Alice in Chains - "Man in the Box"
This is one of those songs that got into my head so thoroughly that hearing it now makes me feel exactly like it's winter 93/94 again. Moreso than others. I don't think it's nearly as wickedly cool now as I did then, but i can see what the appeal was. (never saw them; they didn't play live too much)

Gin Blossoms - "Hey Jealousy"
 I swear to God, the first time I heard this on the radio, I thought it was John Stamos singing. Between the voice and the fact that it sounds, musically and thematically, much more like a classic rock song than anything else that was on the radio at the time, I spent about a week wondering if this was a Jesse and the Rippers song. In more recent years I've gotten WAY more into this song and their other hit, "Found Out About You." Doug Hopkins, the songwriter they fired before recording the album because he was in no shape to be in a touring band, may have been a genius.

Nine Inch Nails - "Last"
I honestly think this may be the first time I've EVER heard this song on the radio - they sure didn't play it on KGGO ten years ago. The only time I ever heard it anywhere other then my own headphones was at a Nine Inch Nails / Ministry laser show at the science center (and I'm not 100% sure they played it there). I remember thinking that the line "this isn't meant to last" sounded like he was saying "this is your mental ass," which might, in fact, be WAY better. It's interesting how some songs that weren't really hits in their day still become standards - "Break On Through" by the Doors was a total flop in 1967, for instance. And "Heaven Beside You" by Alice in Chains seems a lot more popular now than it did back then. (saw NIN live on the tour with David Bowie in 95, same week as I saw my first Dylan concert)

Jars of Clay - "Flood"
One of the bigger "christian rock" crossover hits. I remember hearing a lot of religious kids at school slag these guys off for being "too secular." I keep wanting to say "if you can't swim after forty days, then you've probably been dead for about 39 of them."

Live - "Lightning Crashes"
I feel as though I've softened a bit on my position on "Lightning Crashes" - when it came out, it sounded to me like a blatant, clumsy attempt to say something profound about birth, death, and eyeballs. I still think it would work better as the last two minutes of an ER episode than it does as a song, but now I'm just impressed that they got they managed to work the word "placenta" into a song. That's tough to pull off. It's still not my favorite of their songs, though. I prefer "Selling the Drama," which I first heard on the radio on the way home from a Metallica / Danzig / Suicidal Tendencies concert in 1994 (which was, up to that point, probably the highlight of my life).  I saw them live for the first time in 2000, when they were on tour with Counting Crows (who tend to get lumped in with Dave Matthews as a prep rock band, but were, in my opinion, about the most under-rated band on the planet). Saw them again on tour with Counting Crows in 2007.

Collective Soul - "The World I Know."
Like Live, these guys would have been a terrific rock band if they didn't have to be an alternative band.
See, here's the thing about Collective Soul: what they really are, when you get down to it, is a sing-a-along arena rock band. They just had to sort HIDE that side of themselves, because it really wasn't cool to be one of those in 1995, when music was supposed to be harder to listen to. Fist-pumping, sing-a-longs, guitar solos, etc, were considered lame tropes of "mainstream" songs (as opposed to "alternative" songs, which, of course, was the mainstream at the time). At the time, it was really, really uncool to like Springsteen. Sometimes I wonder what we were thinking in the 90s.

Pearl Jam - "Dissident"
This was probably my favorite of their songs; it sounded great blasting in a video arcade (specifically Laser X, the awesome laser tag place at my mall that occupied the space formerly occupied by Aladdin's Castle). "Daughter" will always give me a warm feeling as it reminds me of being in a van full of people singing along to every word. Most of their songs made very little linear sense, but they managed to convey emotions pretty well - "Yellow Ledbetter" manages to convey sheer ragged glory and full-on emotion with barely an intelligible word in the lyrics, and "Elderly Woman Behind the Counter in a Small Town" is a devastating character sketch. I think that grunge might have fared better if they'd called it "impressionist rock," a lable which probably applies better to Pearl Jam than any other. (never saw them live, they had that thing with ticketmaster that kept them from touring much back then)

Stone Temple Pilots - "Interstate Love Song"
Time has not smiled on STP. In those days, we thought they were a shameless Pearl Jam rip-off - we didn't MIND, but we knew, deep down, that they were hardly innovators. The difference is that now I can listen to Pearl Jam and think "hey, that really was a good song." I don't get that same feeling with STP. Maybe a twinge of nostalgia and an appreciation for a really good riff here and there, but that's about it.

When To Avoid Your Superhero Friends

So I'm getting caught up on what's happening in the comic book world, starting with a stack of recent Spider-Man issues.

Now, I'm not one to complain about absurdity in a comic book. I mean, even to pick these things up, one has to be ready to read about a world in which guys in long underwear have underground lairs and plot to take over the world. Absurd things must be taken in stride. Hell, a good comic writer can even make me take a guy like The Silver Surfer seriously.

But did you ever notice that every time a hero gets a new power or a suit with a new feature, they have to show a scene three pages later where they would have been killed if not for that power? Every single time. If Spidey gets a new suit with some bullet-deflecting capabilities, it's a sure bet he'll be shot at point blank range inside of five pages.

Knowing about this cliche may come in handy some day. If you're ever hanging around a bunch of super heros, and one of them tells you he just got a suit with the power to defeat giant poop monsters, you'll know make tracks for some other state immediately, because you KNOW that one of them must be on its way.

Other things you don't want a superhero to say:

"I just made some adjustments to my costume, including some cool new accessories. I don't know when it'll come in handy, but now I can.....

...determine the source of mysterious, overpowering odors!
...summon a legion of naked insurance salesman instantly!
...figure out how much blood a person has lost in quarts OR litres!
...remember every single verse of the national anthem, and sing it in falsetto!
...provide first aid to bystanders who get really painful snakebites!
...survive even when the poison in the punch kills everyone else present!


Why, yes, I do have too much time on my hands today.

Did The Bangles Foreshadow "Twilight?"

So I was just wandering through the grocery store and singing along with "Eternal Flame" by the Bangles. It's a catchy song; I like the vocals - Susanna Hoffs has a fantastic voice (check out the albums of classic rock covers she did with Matthew Sweet - incredible!). But the lyrics really disturb me nowadays - it's one of those "I just met you, but you solve all my problems and I can never be without you" sort of deals. With lots of creepy touches. You know. Like, say, Twilight. Let's deconstruct it, shall we?

Close your eyes, give me your hand, darling
Do you feel my heart beating
Do you understand
Do you feel the same
Am I only dreaming
Is this burning an eternal flame?

I hope the guy she's singing to DOES feel the same, or this is some pretty serious pressure. Nothing about this song makes me feel like they've been a couple very long. They're one of those new couples that are in love after one date (like Romeo and Juliet, Edward and Bella, Jack and Rose, or, well, to be fair, Alley and Edward in I Kissed a Zombie and I Liked It). Or, anyway, the singer thinks they are. That she has to ask the guy so many times if he feels the same is not a good sign.

What if he closes his eyes, gives her his hand, and says something snotty, like "no, I don't think we're there yet?"

Or, perhaps more likely, "No, I don't feel your heart beating. Do you think maybe I'd have better luck if I put my hand under your left breast instead in your hand?" Seriously, Bangles. Your heart is in your chest, not your palm. Maybe if he was holding your WRIST...

Anyway...

I believe it's meant to be, darling
I watch you when you are sleeping
You belong with me
Do you feel the same
Am I only dreaming
Is this burning an eternal flame?


That's either really sweet or more than a little bit freaky (edit to add: Like when Edward spies on Bella while she sleeps - it's creepy, but some people think it's romantic. This song really does have a "Twilight" vibe, don't you think? Did the Bangles predict the phenomenon?).

Also: does she mean "when you sleep in my bed, I enjoy watching you sleep when you fall asleep before I do," or "I watch you when you are sleeping using some high powered binoculars and a carefully arranged system of mirrors?" There's a fine line between being sweet and being a stalker, and this girl is straddling it.

Say my name...

My favorite line, though I wish she'd added something like "b---h" at the end. There's space for it in the meter!

sun shines through the rain
A whole life so lonely
And then you come and ease the pain
I don't want to lose this feeling

Here we have the singer staking her emotional well-being on a guy she probably hasn't known long, and who she may be stalking. She's leaving herself vulnerable by repeatedly asking "is this burning an eternal flame," practically daring him to say "no, probably not" (edit to add: or say "Yes! Eternal!" and turn her into a vampire). Actually, with her slightly-more-weathered voice that she has now, Hoffs would make an awesome vampire. If that's what the song is going for, she should go for it.

Funnily enough, it's just now that it occured to me that she might be saying "is this burning, the one I feel inside me, an eternal flame, not just lust?" I'd always imagined it as "is this, what we have between us, setting an eternal flame alight?" I'm almost sure it's the former. I suppose my original thoughts came from the fact that the song was a hit when I was a kid. Plenty of songs about sex went right over my head. Certainly she's got the burning within, or she wouldn't be watching him sleep. If they were setting a fire, the line would be "is this lighting an eternal flame."

(edit to add: "Or, perhaps it's "is the burning feeling I've had since you bit me turning me into an immortal, and will therefore be a flame burning eternally inside me?")

Songs That Scared Me As a Kid

SONGS THAT SCARED ME AS A KID

-"The Ghost Of John" - you've probably heard this. "Have you seen the ghost of John / long white bones with the skin all gone." We sang it in first grade music class.

-"The Old Woman All Skin and Bones" Raffi's arrangement of this old folk song about the woman who lives down by the old graveyard ("oooh ooh ooh ooooh") scared me a bit, and scared the crap out of one of my friends. I remember we made up a parody of it called "The Old Woman Who Drank Old Milk" that went on for several verses, each more disgusting than the last. I wish I remembered more than a few verses. Playground Jungle entry

-"Little Lies" by Fleetwood Mac. The organ part was a bit spooky, but Stevie Nicks' backing vocals made me think she was a witch a long time before I knew who she was or heard any such rumors about her.

-"Scarborough Fair" - this was playing on the radio one morning when I woke up at about the age of 9. It spooked me good. Sounded very ghostly to me.

-"some song" - another song that I heard in the middle of the night was some song about a ghost ship. One line, I think rhymed "the captain felt a chill" with "the tomb grew closer still." I might have misheard. I've never found out what song that was, and googling the lyrics doesn't help. People I ask about it tend to suggest "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald." That wasn't it. (update - turns out it was a religious song called I Am the Lighthouse - the line was "the two grew closer still," not "the tomb." Whattaya know?)

-"Karma Chameleon" by Boy George (though I just knew the Kids Inc version) - I misheard some lyrics in this one and thought it was about death (listening to it now, I suppose it's as good a guess as any). It disturbed me in the same way that scene in A Boy Named Charlie Brown where Schoeder plays the second movement of the Pathetique Sonata and the screen is filled with images of gravestones, cathedrals, and Warholesque Popes disturbed me (and if there's a stranger scene in all of mainstream animation, I haven't seen it).

- "The Age of Not Believing" from Bedknobs and Broomsticks - I can't remember, exactly, whether this actually scared me or just depressed me. Maybe a little of both. After all, it's a song about puberty, so it should have done both. Edit to add: a couple of days after this was posted, my mother called me up from a Toys R Us that was blasting the song over the loudspeaker. Why in the world would they play this in a toy store? Isn't it all about being too old for toys?

I can find a lot of songs in my playlist now that would have scared me then if I'd heard them - I can imagine that Long Black Veil would have scared me out of my wits if I'd ever heard it as a kid.

On Green Day: An Essay

Moved to: http://www.adamselzer.com/2010/02/on-green-day-essay.html