Numero Uno: Matthew Sweet – Knowing People
If I recall correctly (and I's perfectly willin' to admit it's more than ten years back in the rearview mirror, so I may not), a friend I'll call Bongo sent a copy of this disc to the former SO of the Expedition Sailor. The former SO did not "get into it" sufficiently, and handed it off to your hero. Not surprising – this particular Matt Sweet album is very, very dark; in fact, one might even call it mordant. The SO, it must be noted, was bipolar – and seldom mordant, even when depressed. The first SO didn't go for dark power pop, especially – hence was not much interested in the Replacements, or many other rich, multilayered musical experiences your hero rolled in like a dog rolls on a dead critter. Perhaps my attraction to mordant power pop had no little to do with the fact that the bipolar former SO of Expedition Sailor was a tad loony, and the significance of the relationship was beginning to be overshadowed mightily by the otherness ... nah. Couldn't be. Anyway, Knowing People was my favorite tune on 'Altered Beast' and expresses a great deal about my state of mind circa 1993-94 without my having to go into painful, excruciating detail.
Numero Dos: 10CC – I'm Not In Love
Quick tale from the mists of time – creepy that I remember this, since it's at least a quarter century old, and I just made excuses about ten years being a long time – anyway ... the first cousin of the Expedition Sailor had broken up with a long-time girlfriend (well, we both were teenagers, I suppose three years is long). He'd gone to sleep slightly buzzed on things he shouldn't legally have had (could have been beer, could have been other contraband substances), with his headphones on and a local rock station playing. Somewhere around the "big boys don't cry" whispers and flange/phase stuff a couple of minutes into this gem, he came straight up out of bed all in a swivet, and didn't connect with reality until he was halfway across his bedroom ,jerked the headphone jack out of his stereo, and realized there wasn't some strange woman lurking in his room, whispering advice to him. It's a funny picture, even if you don't know him, admit it. It is. She screwed, blued and tattooed him, too. She was playin' with both a sixteen-year-old and a forty-year-old community college professor while dating my nineteen-year-old cuz, and she was his age. Everybody in this story but Cuz was psycho. I knew them all, trust me. He was just full of rage and hormones. He grew out of it. I'm sure the rest of them didn't.
Numero Tres: Beatles – I Want To Tell You
Ooh – never noticed there's a quiet little iteration of the lyric in the right headphone right before the main lyric starts – I've heard this freakin' song a million times. I love being old and still finding new stuff even in songs that were recorded fairly simply, on paleolithic recording equipment. I am forced to realize, because of the stereo separation, what a utilitarian bassist Paul McCartney was, at least on this song. Of course, it's entirely possible someone else played it – doubtful, though. Makes (Cheap Trick's) Tom Petersson seem positively (Jaco) Pastorian in comparison, you know? The vocals were the thing the Beatles really did well, and were innovators on, though. This one as well as any from the era, natch.
Numero Quatro: Marillion – Slainte Mhath
"Slainte Mhath" is the Scottish equivalent of "bottoms up," apparently, though actually it means something more along the line of "skol" -- i.e., "to life" or some other hopeful wish for the drinker. This Marillion song is nothing like it. It's Derek Dick's take on the contrast between an author or journalist's (or songwriter's) life and the life of someone he talks to in a bar, a veteran of some sort -- soldier, miner, foundry worker. I guess it's sort of an offhand joke about dilettantism, and the narrator's attempts to glean the pain and difficulty of another type of life for the purpose of enriching (his) writing ... or perhaps just hanging out with the hopeless drunks in the process of making excuses for his sliding off into hopeless dipso tendencies hisownself. This song was the touch-off of a Drambuie fascination of the first SO's that, far as I know, never ended. Kind of an expensive fascination – I was content with Canadian Club, which is quite reasonable and can be mixed with anything. Drambuie, except in a Rusty Nail, tastes rather like cough syrup, to me. I like single malt, don't get me wrong – Drambuie is too sweet, though. Not big on liqueurs. They make my skull throb. I have zero tolerance for that much sugar in that small a dose, I guess.
Numero Cinco: Frank Zappa – Montana
Dental floss tycoon ... yeah. Where's the justice in the world, that Zappa had to die so young? I would have loved to have a crusty old social critic like him around, just about now. Lost him and Bill Hicks within twelve months back in 1993. Sumbitch. Look at all the assholes who managed to live a dozen years longer, that the world would have been better off without. Anyway, as for the song -- Montana is one of the most inoffensive Zappa tunes, which is why you're likely to hear it on oldies stations, if you hear any Zappa at all. Montana, Nanook Rubs It, Dancin' Fool. And Nanook is offensive in length. Dancin' Fool is relatively short, and Montana clocks in under seven minutes – I'm sure there must have been a radio edit of around four minutes, since I've heard it on the radio several times over the years. Of course, Frank didn't care what he said, or about whom he said it, so once Clear Channel hegemonized FM radio, you ceased to hear much of anything of his except Valley Girl. Because, you know – it made fun of Californians, and we all know Californians are hippies, and it's okay to make fun of them, so Clear Channel could justify playing only that and ignoring the remainder of FZ's catalog. Overall, in truth, Zappa was pretty tough on everybody – hippies being only one of a score of favorite targets, well more than half of whom were warmongering conservatives and religious fundamentalists. Frank found them somewhat distasteful, to say the least. But Montana is just absurdism – simply and beautifully inane, Dadaist in its superfluous loquacity. I love the concept of the pygmy pony. There's a little epiphany in 'me and my pygmy pony over by the dental floss bush,' and if you don't get it, well ... sorry. You never will.
Numero Seis: Cake – Comfort Eagle
I love Cake. There's something snarky-cynical about those guys that just blows me away – there's a certain Zappa esthetic involved, though they generally keep it down to short songs, and limits are A-OK with me. Comfort Eagle grasps a certain 'young white guy' attitude (I suppose there may be Hispanics who fit in this demographic), I've dealt with several times, over the years. Young non-AA men with limited futures, "the double-wide shine on the boot-heels of your prime" – of course, these guys who were the subject of this song a decade ago probably are either triple or quadruple parents by now, or else sucking dust in Iraq, trying to stay alive, wondering how many more stop-losses they'll endure before they get to come back to a place they keep telling themselves is home that won't feel like home when they finally get here, and if they'll get their dicks shot off and become inadvertent Hemingway heroes.
Numero Siete: Steve Forbert – Is It Any Wonder
Not the best tune off 'Mission of the Crossroad Palms' – but hey, this was a hell of an album. I can't call anything on it a complete failure, and Is It Any Wonder is a primo example of the singer-songwriter quasi-love-song that was familiar enough for the adult acoustic alternative genre from ten years or so ago. I don't know, it's on the album, I ripped it, but I don't have any particular attachment to it one way or another. It's an okay song off a pretty good album from a really shitty time in my life. I guess it's hard to lose with that. This one could have been a great temptation to a very great mistake at that point in my life, but it wasn't, and I didn't, and I'm happy. Mox nix.
Numer Ocho: Replacements – Answering Machine
Anger management for ‘tweeners. Answering Machine is the ultimate lover’s wasted yawp – a 'why am I doing this from here?' lament from a road musician, shouting into a microphone other than the one on the pay phone, because she ain't there. This one and Can't Hardly Wait probably encapsulate the bottom of the barrel of touring as a musician as well as any songs written about that. 'If you'd like to make a call please hang up and dial again. If you need help, please hang up and then dial your operator.' Try and free a slave of ignorance. Try and teach a whore about romance. I guess at the time, the answering machine was the ultimate defense between doubt and dealing with distance, back in the eighties when it was recorded. Hell, now most people can't stand to not be umbilically attached to their cell phones. This was the dying bleat of a road musician to someone who wasn't answering, for whatever or no reason.
Numero Nueve: Soul Asylum – Somebody To Shove
'Grave Dancer's Union' was pretty much both apex and swan song for Soul Asylum. Kind of a shame, really, because they weren't a half-bad band for carrying on the 'Mats tradition (curious that ITunes threw that one out after Answering Machine, actually, since this one is also a telephone song and nobody, from Dave Pirner to Paul Westerberg, ever seemed to think Soul Asylum's taking up the trash rock torch required any apology or explanation). I think some people misinterpreted this one as misogynistic, but I don't think Pirner intended it that way. It came from hearing 'I want somebody to shove' and failing to hear the rest of the lyrics, I guess. It's the most successful song off this one, if I recall, though I kind of liked Without A Trace, its association with a faithless and disingenuous human notwithstanding.
Numero Diez: Sloan – It's In Your Eyes
Why do I keep getting Sloan songs that aren't my favorites, when I sit down to do these random ten posts? This one isn't bad, mind you -- it's not from the early, shoegazer ripoff era. It's one of Patrick Pentland's songs from 2001's 'Pretty Together,' and it's not bad, per se. It's just a midtempo song that's this far (holds fingers a quarter inch apart) from filler. It has a halfway throwaway guitar solo on it, though the rhythm guitar is nice. Keyboard pads I could do without, but hey – I ain't a musician, so I don't know what I could say I would have liked any better than what they did. Lyrically, I dunno, it's okay. Not sure why – maybe it's just not chugging along and rapidly approaching a train wreck, which is the stuff Pentland writes that I dearly love. I like when he's running headlong at the noise, okay? Jeez, sue me. It's not bad, or I wouldn't have ripped it. It's just one of those songs that's like most of the material on Cheap Trick's 'One On One' besides If You Want My Love and She's Tight. Why does it never give me Losing California or The N.S.?
Later.
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