iRorschach: The Game Show

All In All - My Friend Steve (mp3)

Common People - William Shatner (mp3)

"You sure do love your whiners." -- One of my oldest and most trustworthy friends in the whole world has said this in regards to my musical preferences.

In my previous post, I asked the following question: Do the characters with whom we identify shape who we become, or do we simply identify with whom are destined to be?

Megan G. is slightly overweight -- maybe "big-boned" -- and had hair bordering on black. It wasn't naturally that color. If she didn't dye it, her hair would be what my mother lovingly describes as "chicken-s#!t brown." She streaks it every month or so, mostly pink, but occasionally lavender or blue to mix it up and remind everyone of her originality. She'd like to convince you that her weight and her hair aren't the two most important things to know about her, but in the back of her mind, she kinda fears that they are.

Megan was mostly in the loop in her middle school years but started to fall out of the center of things by high school. Maybe she had some serious acne problems. Possibly she had a bad experience with a boy while out with a group and drinking, possibly experimenting with drugs. Whatever the case, although she held onto her love of that cheesy music she adored in her younger years -- "Forever Your Girl" and "I Saw the Sign" -- by the time she got to high school, her musical tastes got angry and aggressive. Lords of Acid and Limp Bizkit, Rob Zombie and Sevendust, and plenty of Drowning Pool thrown in for good measure.

Her family was middle-class, and only to the degree that I can claim to be 6-feet tall even though I'm only 5'10". Her dad, who left when she was still that happy middle school kid, got Megan an iPod Nano for her 17th birthday. Megan wasn't all that obsessed with music. She enjoyed listening to it, but mostly as an afterthought or to stave off boredom, not because she constantly hungered to experience it.

She hated high school. Hated. It. It was everything that's wrong with this country, wrong with this world, from adults who only show up to get paid to peers who only show up to get laid. Everything about high school boiled down to sex, which only served to constantly remind her that she wasn't all that physically appealing. And being reminded of it only served to start her down the vicious cycle of bitterness and pasty-white pudginess.

Megan got her first tattoo at the end of her second semester at Chatt. State. She got more attention and comments from classmates about that one goddamn tattoo than she'd gotten about anything in, like, her whole life. She had three more by the end of August. But just like any fix, the return on investment went downhill quickly, so that fourth one was her last.

In late October, she traded her Nano at McKay's. She had bought an iPod Touch with the money she'd saved up working 30 hours a week while taking classes at Chattanooga State. The purchase was more of an impulsive, rebellious act than anything. She was sick of seeing others around her buying shit they couldn't afford, and she wanted to know what it felt like.

* * * * *

When my wife told me she wanted an iPod Nano for Christmas last year, I went out and got her a used one at the local Used Pop Culture Valhalla we call McKay's. When I got it home, I discovered it still had the previous owner's collection of 400 some-odd songs.

Of those 400, a quarter of the songs were by three artists: Nine Inch Nails, Marilyn Manson, and Nirvana. Although these pointed to a male owner, I'd bet the farm the previous owner was female. She had 10 Tori Amos songs from two different albums. She also had "Ice, Ice Baby," and a healthy portion of Ace of Base and Paula Abdul.

Of the two males I have ever known who owned more than one Tori Amos album, both were gay, and neither would have been caught dead listening to Marilyn Manson.

With just her iPod Nano -- named "Megan" -- I constructed a rudimentary psychological profile of this former owner. My creation kinda depressed me. So I returned the iPod Nano to McKay's 10 days after Christmas and got my wife a refurbished one, a green beauty exorcised of all previous-owner's musical demons.

But I kept 100 or so of Megan's songs. Can't really explain why. But Marilyn Manson's version of "Tainted Love" and Limp Bizkit's version of "Faith" both should be nominated for "Worst Cover Songs Ever" consideration.

* * * * *

There should be a new game show where 10 people hand over their iPods, and the first 100 songs that play on their SHUFFLE are listed off. Two contestants would face off to try and match up the playlist with the 10-person panel. Each person on the panel would give a 1-minute bio about themselves, including the crucial stats -- age, marital status, hometown, current town, etc. It would be a mix between "What's My Line?" and that Penn Jillette gameshow "Identity."

Then again, I'm not sure I want to know the biography someone would predict for me based on the if someone looked at the first 100 songs that emerged from my SHUFFLE.

"You sure do love your whiners..."

"All in All" by My Friend Steve is the whiniest of all the whiny songs I've ever loved. "Common People" by William Shatner w/Joe Jackson is the most kickass song ever recorded by an over-the-top melodramatic actor slash icon. The former can only be purchased on their used CD, "Hope and Wait." The latter is worth every penny to buy it on iTunes.

Coming down from Robert Plant/Alison Krauss

Led Zeppelin--"Hey Hey What Can I Do" (mp3)

Fortunate enough to get to see the Robert Plant/Alison Krauss show tonight, I offer these highlights (in a night of many, many highlights) in no particular order:

1. The five Zeppelin songs they played: "Black Dog," "Black Country Woman," "Hey Hey What Can I Do," "When The Levee Breaks," and the showstopper, "The Battle of Evermore."

2. Alison singing a solo a capella "Down To the River To Pray," before Plant, Buddy Miller, and another guy joined in.

3. Yes, Buddy Miller was the lead and pedal steel player in the band.

4. How much better the songs on the CD sound live, especially "Fortune Teller," "Rich Woman," and "Let Your Loss Be Your Lesson."

5. The fact that Plant was singing "I got a woman who wants to ball all day" and just a couple of songs later, Krauss was singing the gospel number, "Going up yonder/To live in green pastures."

6. T-Bone Burnett singing "Shut It Tight" from a record probably only I bought in the '80s.

7. Alison Krauss' form-fitting dress.

8. The final song, George Jones' "One Woman Man," with Buddy taking some of the lead lyrics.

9. How much obvious joy musicians with lengthy resumes took in getting to play Led Zeppelin songs with Robert Plant.


"Hey, Hey, What Can I Do" was never on an original Led Zeppelin album, but it did show up on some later compilations and is available at Itunes.

Missed Hits #1

Bash and Pop--"Never Aim To Please" (mp3)

In the wake of the Replacements' demise, Paul Westerberg began a well-received solo career. Missed in the fallout, however, was a sweet little record, Friday Night Is Killing Me, from former 'Mats bass player Tommy Stinson. The opening track, "Never Aim To Please," is a superb rocker in the Stones/Replacements vein, full of power chords and bluster. I love the self-cancelling logic and doomed exuberance of the line: "Wish I'd jumped off your goddam planet/When I thought I could."

Friday Night Is Killing Me is no longer in print, but used copies are available from Amazon.com.

"But I Play One On TV"

Camera One - Josh Joplin Group (mp3)

Bully - Sugarbomb (mp3)

When you were a kid, did you find yourself watching certain movies over and over because you identified so strongly with one of the characters? Writing a post that never made the light of day got me thinking about an indelible movie from my pre-teen years. It was right after we got HBO in '82 or '83, and I watched this movie several dozen times: "My Bodyguard."

Every time "My Bodyguard" came on, I found myself drawn into the TV, even though I never would have said it was particularly beloved. I suspect it's allure was because I identified, even at the ripe age of 11, with the main character. The actor, Chris Makepeace, was also the pathetic outcast Rudy in "Meatballs." I identified with him in that film as well.

When I realized how pathetic it was, that at some point in my past I identified with this goober, I started going through a list of all the teenage movie characters with whom I identified during my pre- and prime adolescent years. It wasn't pretty:

• Chris Makepeace in "Meatballs" and "My Bodyguard"
• Andrew McCarthy in "Heaven Help Us"
• Ralph Macchio in "The Karate Kid"
• Patrick Dempsey in "Can't Buy Me Love"
  
• Ricky Schroeder in "Silver Spoons"
• William Katt in "The Greatest American Hero"
• Corey Haim in "Lucas"
  
• Jason Bateman in "It's Your Move"
  
• Anthony Michael Hall in "Sixteen Candles"
• Anthony Michael Hall in "The Breakfast Club"
• Anthony Michael Hall in... just about everything up to 1985.

It doesn't take Dr. Phil to look at this list and acknowledge I had a depressing and disturbing fascination with wimps, geeks and outcasts. Strangely, I never -- at least not before I watched that damn clip from "My Bodyguard" -- made the connection that I was so drawn to all these pathetic Loveable Losers. (OK OK, part of my obsession with "Silver Spoons" undoubtedly had to do with the fact that Erin Grey was one of the '80s hottest women.)

Although I absolutely adored Ferris Bueller, I never really identified with him. I simply held him in awe. Likewise with pretty much every role John Cusack played. He might have been an outcast, but it always felt like he had more coolness in his pinky toe than I could muster in my entire body. And I sure as hell never identified with anyone in "Dirty Dancing" or "Pretty in Pink."

And thus began a true Chicken vs. Egg debate: Do the characters with whom we identify shape who we become, or do we simply identify with whom are destined to be?

Did kids who grew up to be aggressive type-A jerks watch these same movies, but instead of identifying with the geeky protagonists, they secretly yearn to be Matt Dillon ("My Bodyguard") or Kevin Dillon ("Heaven Help Us") or William Zabka (Johnny from "Karate Kid")? Yes, the Dillons had the market on asshole bullies covered for several years.

Were there others out there who watched Alex P. Keaton and Gordon Gekko with this same glossy-eyed fascination? Did some girls feel their heart strings tug at Winona Ryder's Veronica while future witches found themselves drawn to Shannon Doherty's or Kim Walker's Heathers? Did most girls watch "The Breakfast Club" and find themselves inevitably identifying with either Molly Ringwald or Ally Sheedy, that movie's own version of the classic "Mary Ann v. Ginger" dichotomy?

Are there others who watch all movies and TV shows without making the slightest hint of a personalized connection to anyone?

There are only two encouraging silver linings to my obsessive cloud. First, lots of dudes in Hollywood clearly had these same hangups. So I'm not alone... but I'm not necessarily comforted by the company I'm keeping.

Second, these characters eventually stood up for themselves. They looked deep within themselves, found the strength beyond their doubts, and fought back against the bullies and the naysayers. But that hardly makes the obsession comforting. It's hard to find comfort in what breaks down to a Geek Fetish.

Yet something about these fanciful tales fed my soul. Awwww who am I kidding by using the past tense? These damn things still feed my soul. I still get misty everytime Elisabeth Shue rushes the mat to jump all over Daniel-San, too giddy to care about his wounded leg. I clinch my fist in glee everytime Anthony Michael Hall winds up locking lips with a girl five furlongs out of his league in "Sixteen Candles" or "Weird Science." Snot runs out my nose everytime the student body gives Lucas a standing ovation.

If you think I admit this with pride, you're very wrong. Acknowledging this is only slightly less painful than confessing my young devotion to Blair from "The Facts of Life." (While this isn't as embarrassing as if I'd been in love with Mrs. Edna. Or Nell Carter from "Gimme a Break!", it's nothing to go Tootie-ing my horn over.)

Perhaps our guilty pleasures, not our eyes, are the true windows to our soul.

(If you have any sympathy for my confession, please comment on your own guilty pop identifications to help me feel less... outcast.)

"Camera One" is off the Josh Joplin Group's debut big-label CD, Useful Music. "Bully" is off Sugarbomb's only album of the same name. Both are available on iTunes.

Are You Living In Your Head?

A poem? I know. Sorry. I got to thinking about people sitting in front of computer screens and not even interacting with the people behind those screens and this is what came out. Coincidentally, these songs about solitude and loneliness are living in my head:

New Pornographers--"Adventures In Solitude" (mp3)

Bastard Sons of Johnny Cash--"Beautiful Cage" (mp3)

YOU ARE LIVING IN YOUR HEAD

Are you living in your head?
Are you saying what you wished
You’d said, but only in your head?

Do you look in windows at
Other lives, yellow lamps and
A flickering screen behind a cat?

The car at night streams black,
Traveling through blackness and you
The blank, the central fact.

Wind, scream, white, strum, salt, shine:
Everything’s outside the window;
Nothing stays within the lines

Or lights. No, the road curves.
The sun comes up blindingly
And startles slumbering nerves

Shrilly as a crow’s noisy beak,
Cawing the fearful knowledge
That you will have to speak.

The New Pornographers feature the incredible Neko Case sometimes, but are quite good in their own right. "Adventures in Solitude" comes from their recent release, Challengers. "Beautiful Cage" is from Distance Between, the second release from The Bastard Sons of Johnny Cash. Both CDs are available from Itunes.

Songs I Prolly Misinterpreted #1: Fast Way

The idea behind "Songs I Prolly Misinterpreted" is to offer up songs I love where I've ascribed very personal and significant meaning to the song, even if said interpretation is totally and completely off the mark. My aim with SIPM is to hopefully remind you the reader of the true power of music to usurp all logic and clear thought and dig into our deeper selves.

Or, if not that, then to give you a chuckle.

Fast Way - Letters to Cleo (mp3)

Actual Meaning of Song: A break-up song? Maybe?
My Interpretation, In Summary: Let's f*#k and get on with our lives already.

Why you gotta sit in my easy chair?
What makes you think that I would care?
When I say to you - "What are you gonna do?"

The narrator in this story is a young woman with a history of giving up the pootie with minimal resistance. She might not necessarily sleep with a guy on the first date, but it's definitely happened. And if she hasn't done it by the third date, there ain't gonna be a fourth, 'cuz she clearly doesn't like you. Unfortunately, this lifestyle choice has left her lonely and fearing that love is merely an illusion used to sell Hallmark cards.

She's got a guy over at her place, and she's asking this guy -- a guy she thinks is hot as hell -- why does he have to sit in her "easy chair." The easy chair is a metaphor for her own sluttiness. She's the easy chair. She's actually asking herself the vital internal question, "Why am I going to sleep with this guy so quickly when I actually like him and want him to hang around for a while?" But then she counters that with, "Why should I care? He means nothing to me." This is a standard defense mechanism for someone jaded on relationships.

To him, she directly delivers the line "What are you gonna do?" As in, "Poop or get off the pot, Cowboy!" As in, "Hey Goose, you big stud! Take me to bed or lose me forever!" ("Show me the way home, honey!")

So I got you to at least say please,
that's how I know that you're on your knees.
But I'm thinking too: What am I gonna do?

Now it's the next day. He's gone. She's satisfied that she at least stretched out the flirtation and foreplay long enough to have him begging. And apparently he's quite gifted at giving oral pleasure (you don't think he's on his knees to propose, do ya?).

But now she realizes she's falling for him, that he's already got a hold on her. Crap! What'm I gonna do? Why'd I give up the pootie so damn fast?!?

To not take the fast way
it evens out every time.

She soothes herself a little with this chorus. In the end, why does it matter whether two people f*#k right away or dance around the mulberry bush for a six months before f*#king? Either way, the final result is two people f*#king, right?

This is the classic "You take the high road, I'll take the low road" defense that people who sleep with others shortly after meeting them resort to when realizing they don't really like where their low road leads. It's human nature to, when realizing that your own road is full of potholes, remind yourself that the other roads are in just as much disrepair. So she takes comfort thinking of all those couples who waited and waited to f*#k yet still eventually parted ways. Damned if ya f*#k, damned if ya don't.

God, how I love a boy on the go
and what you've got I just have to know.
'Cause what else is there to say?
"It's such a sunny day"??

This guy, he's proving difficult to get hold of. Very busy. Probably brushing her off. But she's obsessing over him, and she needs to know if there's any chance for something deeper between them. Unfortunately, she's not really sure where or how to start the conversation. This is often tough for a young couple that f*#ked on the first night. They know one another intimately, yet know almost nothing about the each other's life or interests. So she's thinking, is all I can use as a starting point a crappy line like "How's the weather"??

So I got you to at least say please
that's how I know that you're on you knees.
But I'm thinking too: Baby, are we through?

But... But... she had him begging, dammit! She played him quickly, but intensely, and he felt it, too. He just had to. He went down on her, fer Chrissakes! ... But then, why isn't the bastard playing along? Why won't he call me? Is this damn thing over before it started?

To not take the fast way
it evens out every time.

Apparently, yes, it's already over. A full-fledged one-night stand. And if the narrator was being honest with herself -- which she's trying to be in this song -- this is precisely the way she likes it. Better to suffer a very superficial heartbreak over a guy she might have fallen for if the relationship had dragged out over months or years, if she'd held off on sleeping with him. Better that the ecstasy was quick and the heartbreak was quicker.

And with that conclusion firmly in her head, she's off to start the cycle off again, find a man to sleep with, obsess over briefly, and move on before he causes her any real pain. Sure, she loses out on the deeper emotions, but most of those deeper emotions are just awful and painful and miserable. You take the good with the bad. She'll take the fast way.

WHY IT'S PERSONAL: This was one of my Angry Songs in college. Twice I went out with girls that I fell for quickly but who weren't particularly interested in keeping me around. Many other times -- and even worse -- I fell for females who preferred having me as the friend on whose shoulder they would cry after sleeping with other guys on their first date. This song was soothing because it let me believe that, one day, I might be so lucky to find a girl who just wanted to screw my brains out. Yes, hope is a powerful and necessary thing.

This song was one of five on the second side of my favorite college mixtape. I played these five songs repeatedly whenever I needed to wallow in the muck of self-pity. (The other four songs were, in order, "King of Pain" by The Police, "Who's Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses?" by U2, "Rocket Man" remade by Kate Bush, and "Broken Arrow" by Robbie Robertson.)

(If you want the cinematic version of this song, watch Terry Gilliam's "The Fisher King." In it, as Robin Williams is walking the mousy Amanda Plummer back to her apartment, she explains what is going to happen after she invites him up to "have coffee," but after the sex, none of it sounds too great. And he laments, "We just met, made love and broke up all in the space of 30 seconds and I don't remember having the first kiss, which I think is the best part.")

"Fast Way" is from Letters to Cleo's second album, Wholesale Meats & Fish. The band had three albums, but Kay Hanley went on to do the soundtrack for "Josie & The Pussycats" as well as several other solo projects, including the overlooked power pop gem "Cherry Marmalade."

You're Not The Boss Of Me (anymore)

For Jeff.

Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band--"Prove It All Night (live bootleg)" (mp3)

Every time Bruce Springsteen goes on tour, someone will ask me if I'm going to try to get tickets. Every time, I say, "No."

I'll get an incredulous look. People know I like him; why wouldn't I want to go see the greatest live show ever? "Dude," they'll say, "he plays for three hours."

I know. I saw him twice in 1978, and afterwards, I knew that I never needed to see him again.

Some moments are so trapped in time that there is no point in trying to repeat them--in any way, for any reason. My collegiate experience with Bruce Springsteen was like that. Even if I could recreate it, I'm not sure that I would. Bruce was all-night, shout out the lyrics, puke out the window. He could salve the pain of love and raise the glory of salvation. He was the savior and we believed.

Ah, those 1978 concerts--I saw him twice, in Hampton Road, VA and Pittsburgh, PA-- transcendent shows, both of them. From the extended jungle percussion jam at the start of "She's The One" to the doctors carrying Bruce back out on a stretcher to play "Rosalita," the set lists captured the mixture of poetry and frivolity of his early career. The Darkness songs had added weight. He even recaptured "Because The Night" with a searing, extended live version that told the story that Patti Smith's single had not. In Pittsburgh, he sat solo at the piano and fumbled (a little) through "Lost in the Flood," requested by an audience member whose friend had recently died in a motorcycle accident. But at the center of it all was Bruce's guitar, notes bending to capture the pain in the dark new songs.

Of course, I still listen. I was one of the few who likes The Ghost of Tom Joad. For the first three anniversaries of 9/11, my ritual was to sit alone in the kitchen with a six-pack of beer after everyone else was asleep and listen to The Rising with a beatific smile. I like the new CD, too. Good, kind of retro-Jersey, songs. But it sounds muddy to me. Too many instruments and layers, no virtuosity. I mean, Little Steven has got a few chops, but Nils Lofgren, seriously, is one of the great rock guitarists and a distinctive vocalist, but you'd never even know he was in the band, given the stock guitar parts he is expected to play. (For contrast, check out "Moon Tears" by Lofgren's original band, Grin--it's a worthy bookend to Zeppelin's "Communication Breakdown") On Magic, even Bruce rarely, if ever, plays lead.

Somewhere between 1978 and now, Bruce went from being a rocker to becoming an artist, from having a hungry heart to living a vegetarian lifestyle. It may sound sophomoric and pointlessly reckless, but rock and roll was meant to fueled by greasy cheeseburgers and amphetamines, not exquisitely-detailed backstage food contract riders and personal trainers.

I used to get angry at critics who would seek to remind us that rock was never supposed to last this long, but every time I see one of the elder statesmen trying to keep repeating youthful posturing, I think those critics were probably right.

But, in 1978, Bruce was it. This was the tour where he seemed to want to remind everyone that he could actually play that guitar he was holding on the cover of Born To Run. I mean, really play it.

All I have to offer as evidence is one song, "Prove It All Night," taken from a beat-up record with most of the highs and lows worn away, a bootleg of Bruce's 1978 show at the Roxy. It is not a great recording, but maybe somewhere in it you can hear what was then that isn't now--how stripped-down the band played, how much Bruce believes every word he whispers or growls barely on key, how his guitar cuts in like a chainsaw (sounding like no other guitar before or since), how after the solos it all drops off to just his voice and the drums, how every second of that 9-minute version of a 4-minute song seems essential. Hell, the opening piano-guitar sequence is longer than the original song. Before his guitar enters, he announces, almost to himself, "Prove it all night. Prove it all night again."

Nowadays, Bruce is promoted and canonized by adoring upper middle class adults who can afford tickets to his shows after a light supper of sushi and wine. Back then, he was unleashed on unsuspecting audiences who had heard his name on the wind, but didn't know what to expect. Then they saw. And heard. And believed.

"Prove It All Night" comes from a bootleg LP purchased at a record store in Upper Darby, PA in 1978 and recently converted to MP3 using a USB turntable I got for Christmas. The original recorded version is on Darkness on the Edge of Town, available from Itunes.