it's still there and you will see

Today I felt like going hipster. I put on my PBR shirt and flashed the logo like a proper standard, and I decided to listen to the first Clap Your Hands Say Yeah CD on my day’s ventures. I hadn’t listened to it in a while, and I figured today was as good a day as any to revisit an old friend. I don’t understand people who say an album is “so last year” or who refuse to listen to a record months after its release, saying it’s grown old and must make way for new sounds. If an album is great, keep listening to it, keep loving it. Refusing to listen to something that came out last year because it’s old is like refusing to listen to Sticky Fingers because it’s old. You can do it, sure, but can you really live without “Dead Flowers?” Can you? And I guess that by listening to an older Clap Your Hands Say Yeah release I have thereby violated the hipster code and negated everything I set out for today. So be it.

But that’s not what this entry is about. As I set out for my errands today I pulled onto Windsor in the Grandin area, and “Let the Cool Goddess Rust Away” started playing. In microseconds it was two years ago, early August, and I had just left the Botetourt Mill Mountain Coffee and Tea on my way to see Sleater-Kinney in Washington, DC. I listened to this CD on that trip, and this song symbolized everything I felt. “Let the Cool Goddess Rust Away” has always had a sense of adventure to it, a sense of diving into the unknown but accepting anything and everything you find because anything and everything is good. It’s that opening riff. It’s a sense of hope. That trip to years ago was the first time I had driven to Washington, DC, by myself, something I have done twice since then, but the first time was the most exciting. I had just gotten of work at two in the afternoon, raced home for a shower, and then jumped back in the Sunbird to make it in time for the seven o’clock doors. The day was turning to late afternoon, that certain light in August that Faulkner was so keen on, an orange gold that was triple-digit hot that day but seemed so comfortable as I raced up 81 through rush hour traffic and turned east on 66. I’ve made the same trip alone twice more since then, and I’ve flown west solo with a similar feeling of adventure and discovery, but that trip was by far one of my favorite nights. Hearing the rush of the riff today for the first time in a long time sent me back behind the wheel of that Pontiac with a barrel of butterflies unleashed in my gut and a driven urge pumping through my spine. I was flying. I was alive.

It’s funny how a song or a movie can trigger something like that. Just last week I watched the Kill Bill movies again for the first time in years. As I watched Kill Bill, Vol. 1, it was October of 2003 again. My roommate’s sister was in town on a chilly, rainy day, and with nothing better to do we decided to go to the movies. The opening shock of Kiddo shot in the head startled me out of my seat with my popcorn geysering a foot in the air, and as I watched the animated origin of O-Ren Ishii I realized this was by far the coolest movie I have ever seen. That day came at the tail end of a month and a half of all night Gran Turismo 3 binges, cruising around town to the tune of Hot Hot Heat’s Make Up the Breakdown, lamenting the loss of Bacchus Grill but maintaining Tuesday Night Bowling like a religion. I had just graduated college and stood on the edge of my life, happy with a hotel maintenance job and enjoying what time I had before I knew which way to go. All it took was a single gunshot and Nancy Sinatra singing about how her baby shot her down and I was there, adrift in the best year of my life. Memory has a hair trigger. Handle it with care.

The same thing happened again today as I drove with Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, later, as I got onto my exit for 581. I drove beneath the Wonju Street overpass as I trailed a semi truck, and the reverberation of the truck’s engine with the roof of a bridge overhead sent me back to growing up in the DC, Annapolis, Baltimore area of Maryland. As much as I love the country, I’ve always been a city kid. I always will be. Something about the urban setting makes me feel alive. The sights, the sounds, the smells – I like the smell of diesel exhaust. I really do. I wouldn’t want to breathe it for an extended period of time, but I smell it and I’m home. Sidewalk construction is a work of art, walking the detour through a plywood corridor as someone fashions a vacant storefront into something new. Seeing three dozen people in every direction walking in all modes of life – this is the cross-section of past and future. This is the here and now. This is Roanoke, Virginia, under an overpass, and I’m five years old with my mother and brother walking to the Museum of Natural History to see the dinosaurs. All it took was internal combustion and the expulsion of greenhouse gases to take me there.

I’m not sure if there’s an end to this entry. Maybe there never will be. It seems like you travel so far in your life but the distance doesn’t hit you until something reaches out of the abyss and takes you back. All you can do is fasten your seatbelt and enjoy the ride.

you are the perfect fit

I’ve stolen the beginning of this entry from another blog, but lots of bands have a secret weapon. Usually it’s a multi-instrumentalist, someone who jumps from station to station in the course of a show, at one moment playing bass while at another moment playing trumpet. Mick Cook of Belle and Sebastian is a perfect example of this, along with Garth Hudson of the Band. Their efforts go under the radar and are overshadowed by a flashier performer or songwriter. They complete the sound and without them the band would be vastly different. They are essential to the process, essential to creating the music we love.

The other day I drove around with my burned copy of the first four Belle and Sebastian EP’s, and I found myself drawn to the work of Richard Colburn, the drummer. I’d never really listened closely to his part before, but something about it stood out. Nothing about his work is particularly exemplary, but that’s where I found my sudden infatuation. Nothing about it places Colburn with Keith Moon and Janet Weiss as the greatest drummers of all time, but anything more out of him would be too much. Anything more in the context of this sound would throw the entire mix off balance. That’s where I realized how essential Colburn is to the band. He’s the perfect fit. He’s nothing great, but he is the right man for the job. Anyone else and Belle and Sebastian are a different band.

Examples of the perfect fit are everywhere, and they don’t have to be a drummer. It does help, though. Ringo Starr comes to mind immediately. There’s nothing incredible about what he did with the Beatles, but I can’t think of anyone else doing it. If it’s a simple matter of keeping the beat, of holding the sound together, Ringo fit the bill. I really don’t want anyone else to play the part on “Revolution.” The same goes for Charlie Watts of the Rolling Stones. Who else would be able to sit there with that wry grin and keep the beat to “Satisfaction?” Probably anyone else could do it, but nobody else should. Charlie Watts is just the right man for the job. Rick Danko of the Band is a non-drummer who is the perfect fit. While his vocals on “It Makes No Difference” and “Stage Fright” are irreplaceable, his bass work is my focus. Again, he’s no Flea, but he doesn’t have to be. He was everything the Band needed. Anyone else would have clashed. The perfect fit elevates a band. Without him or her, the dynamic just isn’t there.

All great bands have the secret weapon, but the more underappreciated performer is the perfect fit. Image may have something to do with their importance. In the case of Charlie Watts, I just see his grin and immediately I think Rolling Stones. Mick Jagger may have the swagger and the image, but I see Mick Jagger and I think Mick Jagger. I see Charlie Watts and I think Rolling Stones. Richard Colburn has the same presence. He looks like a big kid having the time of his life in a rock and roll band, and I wouldn’t have him any other way. All he has to do is have fun and hit every beat and Belle and Sebastian will stay great. That’s the key component to being the perfect fit. Just have fun and do your job, and do it well, and your music will be great. Let’s appreciate all the perfect fits out there whose time has come for proper accolade.

remembrance of things past

It might seem like overkill or kicking a dead horse for me to talk about a record that came out last year, but this is something I have to do. I’ve talked about Boxer by the National a lot on this blog. I’ve fluctuated between liking it and disliking it, hovering on the fence for some time and then venturing a leg on either side. At the end of last year I was more than halfway on the negative side. I gave Boxer a rest so I could come back to it once more, maybe discover something I hadn’t heard, something I could latch onto and get under my skin. The jury is finally back on Boxer, and they didn’t like it.

I love the first two tracks. I loved “Mistaken For Strangers” when I bought the 7-inch last fall, but when I listened to Boxer again the other day what struck me is what has always struck me about it. I just never put my finger on it until now. The drums are so high in the mix. The one thing that drew me to the National was always the drum work, and now I understand why. It’s the only thing they have going for them, and I think they know it. They force it on you so it’s right in the front of the mix along with the vocals, even competing with the vocals and overpowering them, which is fine by me because the vocals leave something to be desired. He has about a four note range and doesn’t put any feeling into it, but people love it for some reason. Nearly every song on Boxer features an overwhelming drum track, and it’s a drum track that doesn’t vary from song to song. Variation is important when it comes to appreciating music. If I don’t get variation in a sound I lose interest and tune out. The National do not vary. By track seven or eight I found myself where I always found myself, thinking, There’s still four more songs to go on this damn thing. I toughed it out and finished it, and what’s sad is this is a sound I could love. They have the start of something brilliant, but they don’t do enough. It’s like they settled for the template when they could have created a masterpiece. In the end we have an emotional man lazily crooning about whatever is weighing on his mind from song to song (which is nothing new to indie rock) while the drums overpower his weak attempt at storytelling. They have the beginning of something, and given all the hype I guess I expected more. I don’t know. Maybe I expected something good.

Let the horse be kicked. Things need to be said and I hadn’t fully formulated my opinion on this record. Now it’s all there and I’m letting you know about it. The end.

on reading

Depending on your definition of “pile,” there could be anywhere from five to twelve piles of books on my floor. Over the years living in Roanoke I managed to acquire enough books to fill up my single bookshelf, and the highly limited space in my apartment prevents me from buying a second. These refugee books have nowhere to spend their days but piled on my floor. I have adapted quite well, maintaining enough walking room that I can navigate to the important places. On first glance I must come off as a packrat. In actuality I just live in a small apartment.

The common factor linking all of these books (and many of the books on my lone shelf) is that while they number perhaps in the twenties I have read only a handful. Much of this has to do with collecting faster than I can read. The majority of my floor books came into my life on one trip to visit friends who own a bookstore in Winchester. I bought a lot on that trip, but on the way out I was invited into the back of the shop where they kept promotional copies of many of their titles. These promotional copies needed homes. They were free. I took all the ones I found interesting at first glance. I don’t think I’ve read any of them.

Maybe it is a perceived lack of time that keeps me from reading these books, but I that’s an excuse. The real problem is confidence. The other day a friend of mine suggested I start reading something, and so I picked up a title I received for Christmas a long time ago but haven’t gotten around to reading. It was Tailchaser’s Song, by Tad Williams. I’m a cat fan, although I don’t have one (yet), and Tailchaser’s Song is a fantasy epic in the same vein as Lord of the Rings. A brave young feline goes on an adventure to save a friend, and he meets many challenges on the way. I read a little bit of it and it’s quite good. After a while I put it down to eat something, but later that night I ignored it and picked up another book that I had started reading back in March but never finished. On Writing, by Stephen King, is a fantastic book, King’s take and advice on the field of writing. I love King’s voice, and reading this is like having him in the room with you, telling anecdotes, giving his wisdom, cracking jokes with the greatest of ease. I read maybe forty pages and then put it down. That was Saturday and now it’s Tuesday and I haven’t read a word in the interim.

I easily fall into the trap of thinking How come if something like this can get published I can’t get a single word of my work a minute of consideration? I’ve been trying for a year and a half to get an agent and/or publish an excerpt from my first novel, and so far nothing. If you don’t already have your foot in the door it’s impossible to get your foot in the door. At the same time people ask me why I don’t just self-publish. My response is that I don’t exactly have a thousand dollars to drop on self-publishing. I read books and find myself wondering how such mediocre shit can get national attention and I can’t even get ten pages published. I know this is the process any aspiring writer goes through, the seemingly endless cycle of rejection, but I can’t take it. I hate this. Reading only drains my confidence further, so I’ve given up on that, too. The floor books will stay on the floor, mostly unread, bearing absolutely no weight on my conscience because they are untouched and ignored. Tailchaser’s song will go unsung and Stephen King will tell me no more about writing because there really is nothing more he can tell me that I didn’t already know. I will stay unpublished because I don’t have anything anyone wants.

Currently watching: The Incredibles. It’s reassuring to know that someone like Brad Bird can still dream.

to sleep, perchance...

I’ve been mulling over a metaphysical issue. The other day my alarm woke me up, which is nothing unusual. It was the moment before I awoke, before the alarm cut through my sleep, that has me thinking and debating. In that moment before the beeping blared in the early morning I shifted. Something inside me moved, and I felt as though I were slipping deeper into a covering, deeper inside a shelter. I felt like something connected and sleep took that last step towards the depths of consciousness, like deep sleep was finally upon me. It was strange, and then the alarm rang out and I slowly became aware of the infant sun. To feel sleep take hold, to feel deep sleep envelope me like a swan’s wing and know the precise moment in which I am completely at rest – it’s an odd experience and a peculiar memory. Knowing sleep was wrenched from me in that moment when the alarm rang makes the perspective all the more askew.

But what if it wasn’t the onset of deep sleep? What if in that moment I wasn’t slipping away into rest but rather waking up? Maybe the sinking sensation I felt in that moment wasn’t so much a sensation but rather a sublime connection to the moment itself. How do we experience time when we are asleep? No one can say. No one can accurately gauge how we perceive the passage of time when our eyes are closed and we are completely unaware of the waking world. Maybe that moment was a reaction to the ringing of my alarm clock. What is startling and sudden in real time can be an eternity elsewhere, an eased withdrawal to bring us back to life.

Maybe I’m thinking too long and hard about this. It’s probably nothing. But I can wonder.

Currently listening to: Evil Urges, by My Morning Jacket. I don’t like it. I’m giving it another shot, because I was on the fence. What drew me to My Morning Jacket (among other things) was Jim James’s voice. There was something hypnotizing haunting about it. On Evil Urges he starts out sounding like Prince and then sounds like Nashville Skyline Bob Dylan, like he’s putting on a costume. He needs to sing like Jim James. Thinking about it like that makes me wonder if he was pretending when I thought he was singing like Jim James.

run to the hills

The first album that played this morning on iTunes was Madman Across the Water, by Elton John. It’s a solid album, not nearly my favorite Elton John album (Goodbye Yellow Brick Road has that honor secured in perpetuity throughout the universe), but still one that surprises me like an e-mail from an old friend. “Tiny Dancer” and “Levon” are one of the best first and second track combinations in all of music, and I’ve always loved the experienced innocence of “Holiday Inn.”

What got me thinking this morning just as I stepped in the shower was what always gets me thinking whenever I hear Madman Across the Water. Even in high school when I first laid hands on this CD the song “Indian Sunset” has gotten under my skin. It’s a tale of a lone brave leaving his tribe with his wife and child, leaving a dying world to seek a future elsewhere in this great land that was once his. It’s a song about the white man encroaching on the rights and lives of a proud and thriving native people. I’m about as critical as they come. What happened to the indigenous people of the Americas is an atrocity. For the record I think the least we can do is offer an apology. Australia just did it a month ago, issuing an apology to the aboriginal population. It wouldn’t be too hard, and I think it would be a solid gesture in the eyes of the world.

At the same time, sidling up to that bleeding heart stance is my fiercely pro-American self that rears its vicious head at seemingly the most unlikely moments. So it would be a great gesture in the eyes of the world. So “Indian Sunset” raises issues of genocide that we can’t afford to forget. So this violent stain flows in the blood of every American living in the twenty-first century. So what? The whole idea of a foreigner making a work of art about American history has always bothered me. Bernie Taupin and Elton John are British through and through, and here is a piece chastising the United States for its treatment of Native Americans. It’s like they know something we don’t or they have wisdom that we all could benefit from. I have two things to say at times like this, and they have been there from the day I bought this album. First, it’s none of your fucking business. Second, where do you think the white people came from?

I raise my hair like this whenever someone outside of the United States makes a comment about the Civil War or slavery, or in times like this when the issue of Native American genocide comes around. I never forget where I came from and I know this dark chapter of American history will always be there, but what right does this give an outsider to criticize me? The potential for evil exists in the hearts of all human beings. Don’t think you’re immune just because you never pulled the trigger. There are lessons for all of us to learn. Just because you fly the Union Jack instead of the Stars and Stripes and you write music doesn’t make you an expert on international relations. Plenty of your relatives probably took part in the slaughter. Plenty of mine, too. No one is any better than anyone else. We are all guilty.

At the same time, though, I highly admire a musician like Bono when it’s chic for Americans to hate the man. Here is a musician throwing his weight in international affairs, meeting the Pope, brokering peace deals. I think that’s where Bono differs from many others. While he could rest his efforts on his big mouth, he takes the initiative to take action. Here is a man, an artist, who helped get the IRA and the British government at the bargaining table back in the 90’s, and it worked. I’m a complex guy. Go figure. Although I would argue that Bono, being Irish, was not an outsider to the affair and had every right to get involved.

Currently listening to: IV, by Led Zeppelin. I’ve listened to this a thousand times before, but this time is on vinyl, fools! Hell, yeah. “When the Levee Breaks” is going to be a monster. The neighbors better watch out.