the who - who's next - denver, colorado 2000

the who always seemed like a bunch of jokers to me, and i found them to be obnoxious. i was a pink floyd freak, of the roger waters variety, and rock 'n roll, i believed for quite some time, should be serious business. in january of 2000 i arrived in boulder, colorado. i couldn't keep a job and i was having some episodes of mania and some paranoid delusions, and again wound up living in my car. i got fired from one job and went to work for a pyramid sales scheme selling mass-produced fine art prints to businesses, door to door. one of the people i worked with (we worked in teams, sometimes) left a cassette tape of who's next in my car. i never would have bought it myself, up until then. i was familiar with the record, having listened to it a few times in high school and hearing the major hits on classic rock stations. at first i was annoyed, riding around with this co-worker and having to listen to such tired classic rock radio favorites as "baba o'reilly," "behind blue eyes," and "won't get fooled again" over and over. but after he quit, or i quit, or whatever happened, the tape got left in my car, and somehow out of boredom or good faith one day i decided to listen to it again. the tape stayed in the deck for days at a time while i absorbed all of the grandness of the record. it wasn't a cohesive story, like tommy or the wall, but i definitely felt like there was a thematic concept to the album. i listened to it driving around the mountains, homeless and unlicensed, and "going mobile" became my personal theme music. "my wife," while not very relevant to my situation, also seemed like good "on the lam" music. "bargain" and "love ain't for keeping" were to me, two of the most sublime love songs i'd ever heard. and slowly i started to reinterpret "behind blue eyes" to be about my own mental and emotional instability, rather than just some overplayed rock song.
one day i found myself broke and nearly out of gas in littleton. i pulled into the parking lot of a strip mall and began to go door to door, not looking for sales, but for a real job. i got hired at a juice place in that same strip, and worked there, sleeping in the parking lot, until i could get enough money to go somewhere other than colorado. a few weeks earlier my sleeping bag had been stolen, so i just blasted the heater before i went to sleep, and slept under a wool peacoat. some nights it would get too cold for me to sleep all the way through like this and i would wake up and start the car again to get warmed up. usually, who's next was playing, and i would sometimes accidentally drift off to sleep listening to "the song is over" before waking up to shut off the engine.

leonard cohen - best of - bangor, maine 1986

despite my general contempt for compilation albums, i'm including the best of leonard cohen among my favorites for two reasons: the first being that cohen's catalog holds too many great records for me to pick just one (although i might lean towards new skin for the old ceremony.) the second reason is that this record indisputably had a tremendous impact at a pivotal point very early in my life. i still play a lot of leonard cohen, and i try to expose as many other people to him as i can. the songs are romantic, sexy and poetic, and musically interesting--i've used them to try to impress women and other musicians alike. but growing up with this record it had a completely different meaning. my earliest memory of hearing this was riding in our mercury sable station wagon, shortly after my father died. i was probably four or five years old. most of the songs sounded haunting and mournful, the lyrics dealing with things i couldn't understand, except maybe loss. while cohen's lusty sexuality went over my head, i definitely recognized something inherently religious in his words. we grew up catholic--i remember going to church every sunday, staring up at the elaborately painted ceiling at pictures of sheep and angels, wondering why everybody seemed so goddamn sad. even with cohen standing on the cover in a sepia-colored photograph, he reminded me of a catholic priest dressed in black. the record is so fraught with biblical-sounding language that to me it was a completely holy object. i didn't know that he was singing about sex and love affairs in "suzanne" and "hey, that's no way to say goodbye," getting head from janis joplin in "chelsea hotel #2," or what an orgy was in "last year's man." many years later after my own heartaches and triumphs these added a whole new dimension to the record, but as a child they had no bearing on my mind. this song was about jesus, that song was about death, this song was about war, that song was about the bible. and of course "who by fire" was some kind of prayer. my surroundings at the time definitely added to my impression of the album as being dark and depressing. i have memories of being alone in a dark room trying to wrap my head around what it meant to be dead, and of my mother and brother and i all crying for no apparent reasons. and the songs would always come to me as kind of a soundtrack in my mind, and even if they didn't answer my questions they seemed to be a comfort. one line that always stuck with me is from "sisters of mercy," "if your life is a leaf that the seasons tear off and condemn/they will bind you with love that is graceful and green as a stem." another is from "last year's" man, "and when we fell together all our flesh was like a veil/that i had to draw aside to see the serpent eat its tail." but of course my favorite song on the record had to be "so long, marianne." it seemed like a sad song, but it was also one of the more upbeat ones. again, i didn't know what the context was, but cohen was singing "so long, marianne"--he was losing somebody--but then he was reassuring us with "it's time we began to laugh and cry and cry and laugh about it all again."
i still remember riding around in the car with my mother singing along and thinking that this song was somehow about grieving for my father, and to us it was, and that's how i continue to think about it.

dire straits - brothers in arms - bangor, maine 1985

perhaps my earliest musical memory is of hearing dire straits on the radio. brothers in arms was released in 1985, so i would have been four years old. it was probably "walk of life," although it could have been one of the other singles, "money for nothing" or "so far away." being four, i wouldn't have been around for the very grown-up act of going out and buying the record, but it must have been in our house almost immediately. i remember when i was older pulling the record out and staring at the national guitar on the cover. when i was in middle school, i would play it over and over again instead of doing my homework. it had to be listened to the whole way through, of course. the first side, with the singles, was just as important as the second side. the first three bands were just good rock and roll, at least the way i had been brought up to identify it. "your latest trick" and "why worry" are nostalgic eighties ballads that always remind me of sappy movies like "st. elmo's fire" or "desperately seeking susan." the songs on the second side were political commentaries of the conflicts in central america at the time, but i had a whole science fiction story in my mind that fit perfectly with the gritty imagery of struggle ("the man's too strong") and war ("brothers in arms.")

the album version is not embeddable, so here is a live video of "so far away" from wembley arena, 1985.


even if your opinion of dire straits is soured by their 1980s arena rock stigma, you can't deny that mark knopfler is one of rock's greatest guitarists. if you don't believe me, then you need to listen to his 1990 collaboration with chet atkins, neck and neck.

roxy music

ladytron!

radiohead

radiohead is playing two shows each in both montreal and boston--since i'm roughly halfway between i'm deciding which to go to. i can't seem to find tickets for the montreal shows.

i think i like youtube. its neat.

Radiohead - Arpeggi (Live @ Copenhague 2006)

Avalanches

Frontier Psychiatry

damien youth

i have been infatuated with damien youth for about a year now. i don't remember how i first heard of him, but i have yet to meet anybody that knows who he is or has ever heard his music. he 's based in new orleans, which might have something to do with it. the first time i heard him i was sure that the recording was done in the sixties, having a real syd barrett sound to it. he is like an evil-donovan, syd barrety nick drakey david bowiey kinda fella. if anybody gives a shit, you can download some great songs and listen to them. they are so beautiful, they make me want to cut myself.


update 4/6/06:
well as it turns out, the only track available for download in it's entirety is katy called me lucifer, but it's one of my favorites. right click on it and select 'save link as'. if you have a credit card, you can order his cds pretty cheap, and then you can tape them for me!

update 4/11/06:
ok i found some more on this page-- hermaphrodite jesus, lies we tell, the accident, subterraneans.