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While out for a stroll just this afternoon, I was exceptionally saddened to learn that my beloved Rocks In Your Head is leaving its decades-old home on Prince Street in Soho and de-camping to Williamsburg in shitty Brooklyn. While I'm relieved that they'll still be in business, it's otherwise the end of an era and one less reason to ever set foot in Soho.
Apologies to Brooklyn, by the way. You're not really shitty. You're just not Manhattan. And never will be.
I work in an oddly dark environment, comparable to the deep, compressed core of a densely populated rabbit warren. Riddled with narrow passages and oddly placed desks, it can be a real obstacle course even when you're just trying to make it to the coffee machine (a place I visit often) or the men's room. Apart from the odd dash to the other, incongruously better lit side of the floor, I spend most of my day in this place. After a nice, ideally head-clearing walk to work from our home downtown, I enter the imposing Viacom building in the teeming morass that is Times Square, and often don't escape its thick, fortress-like walls until the end of the work day. No one really "takes lunch" at MTVNews. Given the nature of working online, we're playing beat the clock all the time. As such, folks grab lunch to go from "The Lodge" (Viacom's reasonably plush cafeteria which -- tantalizingly -- boasts a lovely, sunlit terrace facing the Square) and scurry back to eat at their desks in the dark confines of the news room. I've begrudgingly adopted this practice myself, often seen hunched over my keyboard frantically typing with one hand and grasping a tunafish sandwich in the other. It's certainly not the most restful way to consume one's lunch, but it's simply the way it is
Since the weather has started to let up, however, I've been seizing the opportunities to actually leave the building for lunch. Forgoing the Lodge, I opt instead for a two dollar hot dog (I know, I know…"eewwwww, how can you eat those?") and some robust lungfulls of the closest approximation of fresh air as can be found in the neighborhood. Being that I find Times Square to be about as restful as a root canal without anesthetic (for more on my ire for Times Square, see this earlier post), I head West down 44th street. While it's only a literal stroll around the block, I find it hugely refreshing and even therapeutic. The mere addition of sunlight and relatively fresh oxygen to my day is a huge relief. By the time I turn the corner onto 8th Avenue -- bordering on what would be the outer circles of Hell's Kitchen, I can even see the lush greenery of Central Park if I squint to the North. Time was when I spent my days off biking around this city's streets. I don't have the time do that as often these days, so I relish every chance I get to simply get out and explore the byways of Manhattan.
Turning back East on 45th street, my thoughts are no longer as jumbled. The two-dozen daily little items of irritating pop cultural ephemera that dance around my head as if hung from a sadistic mobile are more clearly defined and easier to tackle after this brief respite. I re-enter the tower on the `Square to take on the rest of the afternoon, batteries briefly re-charged.
When I leave the building at the end of the work day, I unfortunately don't walk home. As much as I'd like to wind down with a long, relaxing stroll homewards in the cool Spring air of the evening, the urge to get home before little Charlotte goes to bed drives me down into the dank tunnels of the New York City subway, headphones blasting something propulsive like the Ramones or Bad Brains to quicken my step. When I get home, I'm back inside again until the next day.
I had a recent chat with my sister about my inevitable financial exile from Manhattan (with now two little people residing alongside my wife and I at Flaming Pablum headquaters, we are rapidly outgrowing our modestly-sized apartment). In an attempt to ease my concerns about life in the `burbs (she de-camped to Westchester over a decade ago, and we might have to follow suit if Manhattan real estate continues in its inflexible trajectory), Victoria cited the life-affirming sensation of stepping out of the train after a long day's work in the belly of the beast and into the leafy hush and genuine fresh air of the country. Yeah, that sounds nice, and all, but I'm in no rush to leave the big, frantic city --- so long as I'm allowed outside every once in a while.
Log off from you computer right now and go outside!
My contributions to the estimable pages of this venerable periodical have been fewer and further between these days, given the circumstances of my new reality, but I still manage to get a few of my blurbs in. In the "Goings On About Town" listings of this latest issue, I'm responsible for the bits regarding Train (although the draft I originally submitted was far less generous) and Damon & Naomi w/ Michio Kurihara from Ghost. Sadly, that's it for this week, but that doesn't mean the mag is any less worth picking up, so put on your Reeboks and sprint stealthily down to your nearest news stand, or simply click here with the quickness.
See this earlier post for an explanation.
Inspired by a post on a colleague of mine's weblog about visiting his alma mater, I've been listening to an inordinate amount of R.E.M. lately, which is sort've odd, as I've never been an especially massive fan of theirs. Despite his intelligence and encouragingly lefty point of view on virtually all subjects, I find Michael Stipe to be somewhat insufferably pretentious, but as far as I'm concerned, he was never the strongest link in the band's chain anyway (that would be Pete Buck, of course). In any case, reading the account by my friend Ben (a sizable R.E.M. fan himself) of his memories of Syracuse, I started thinking about my own alma mater, Denison University, and it is largely impossible to do so without having certain specific songs start flowing through my head.
Like lots of folks, I'd imagine, I completely associate certain music and specific songs with the time periods and locales wherein I first heard them, and while I'd certainly heard of R.E.M. -- and even bought a single or two of theirs -- prior to my first year at Denison (1985), I didn't really pay too much attention to them until setting foot on that campus. Being that they were, at the time, arguably the preeminent "college rock" band (a term that later morphed into "alternative"), it's oddly fitting that I cannot help but link their music with my own college experience.
I'd picked up the 7" single of "Radio Free Europe" while in still in high school, but never had thought much about them. Some time around 1984, my much cooler step-cousin, John C. (an early supporter of bands like The Cure and U2 when it seemed like the rest of the world was still listening to the J. Geils Band and Foreigner), tried to steer my attention away from bands like Venom and the Circle Jerks by making me listen to tracks off of R.E.M.'s Reckoning, which I probably found a bit too whiney, soppy and lacking in the adrenalized bite I normally enjoyed in my music at the time. John went onto become an art curator in Prague, I believe (I haven't seen the guy in decades).
In any event, by the time I made it to college, I'd made a concerted effort to ditch a lot of the more moronic stuff from my record collection (as mentioned in this earlier post), forgoing albums by idiots like Grim Reaper and Twisted Sister, and delving into a whole new world of music. In my first semester alone, new friends turned me onto records I'd never really heard before by artists like XTC, King Crimson, the Velvet Underground, the Violent Femmes, Game Theory, the Hoodoo Gurus, the Feelies and many more. I remember becoming obsessed with both Funhouse, the second album the Stooges (as needlessly detailed here) and the debut album by The Modern Lovers.
Then, of course, there was R.E.M. At the time, all one had to do was stick one's head out the nearest window to hear their latest album, Fables of the Reconstruction blasting out of someone's window (Little Creatures by the Talking Heads being the other inescapable choice -- an album I've never warmed to). While I didn't mind the single, "Can't Get There from Here" and the album's creepy opening track, "Feeling Gravity's Pull," it wasn't really the type of record I'd rush to the stereo to put on (I was otherwise pre-occupied with the sweetly dissonant Psychocandy by the Jesus & Mary Chain and Love by the Cult). Regular "meetings" (specially designed evening hours exclusively dedicated to the consumption of heroic amounts of beer) in a friend's room across campus, however, shed a whole new light Athens' favorite sons. Marc and Chad (churlishly re-dubbed 'C.h.u.D.' for comedic purposes....well, relatively comedic anyway) were a couple of guys who dormed in a perpetually dank room over in Crawford Hall (where the carpets were always disconcertingly damp and stank of stale beer and bongwater). It was there on some random freezing Ohio night wherein -- over the course of several ill-considered six-packs -- my ears were treated to several high volume airings of Black Sea by XTC (the hiccupy Brit pop band at their clangiest) and, more importantly, Chronic Town, the debut e.p. by R.E.M.
No folksy, middle-of-the-road milksop to be found here; Chronic Town -- a platter I'd never heard at the time -- found the Georgia foursome birthing what would become their signature sound; Peter Buck's chiming Rickenbacker guitars recalling the Byrds and Television in equal parts, but rushed along by Bill Berry's propulsive, jittery drum battery. Thought it lacked the power-chord crunch of my favorite metal bands and the apoplectic slam of the hardcore I'd been championing, here was a band with energy to burn. The five songs, for the most part, blend seamlessly into one another, but there isn't a weak track among them. From the opening staccato chords of "1,000,000" to the jittery jangle-tangle of "Carnival of Sorts (Box Cars)" it's a high energy ride that retains Punk's stealth but refreshingly jettisons the narrow stylistic parameters. Stipe's lyrics, at the time, might have been largely unintelligible, but there was something endearing about it being more about the sound, rather than the message (this would not always be the case with this band). To this day, I haven't the foggiest clue what "Wolves, Lower" or "Stumble" are about, but the frantic guitars in the opening of the former and the buckshot drums in the intro to the latter render all explanations unneccessary.
With all speed, I obtained my own copy of Chronic Town, putting it into swift rotation next to It'll End in Tears by This Mortal Coil (another album that would come to define my fist year of college). Convinced by Chronic Town that R.E.M. were capable of greatness beyond the odd single, I started becoming a bigger fan (later fave tracks include equally high-energy workouts "Windout," "Pretty Persuasion" and "Just a Touch") but as the band gradually distanced themselves from their original sound, so dissipated my enthusiasm. Ironically, the album wherein R.E.M. arguably embraced the power chord and "found rock," Monster, remains possibly my least favorite album (and the last one of theirs I bothered picking up). Once drummer Bill Berry announced his departure, I all but gave up on the band (though, truthfully, "The Great Beyond," the single they donated to the "Man on the Moon" soundtrack, is actually quite a fine thing). Adding insult to injury, Chronic Town didn't even get its own proper release on compact disc, but was simply tacked onto their odds'n'ends album Dead Letter Office (a fine collection in its own right, actually). I'd love to see Chronic Town re-mastered and re-released, appended with tracks that may not have made it to the original finished product. My breath, however, remains unheld.
Until then, Chronic Town will forever transport me back to the leafy quads and youthful promise of Denison University in the mid-80's.
I used to love the rain. Rainy weekends were excuses to stay in bed or waste hours on end on the couch, nursing one's invariable hangover with bad television and an ill-advised pint of ice cream. Walking around in the rain could be fun too, and not just in a self-indulgently melacholy, sombre Nick Drake-y sorta way either. A nice spring rain on a misty day was lovely, and a summer thunderstorm even more so.
With little kids in the house, however, rain is tantamount to a jail sentence. Since Saturday morning, it's been raining cats'n'dogs here in New York City, leaving myself, my wife, my daughter Charlotte and little Oliver all holed up in this apartment, all going slightly "woodsqueer" as my wife calls it (a charming colloquial Britishism for "stir crazy," which might inadvertantly conjure up some disquieting scenes from "Deliverance," for you 70's cinema buffs like me out there). It's not a hard driving rain, but it's damp and cold enough to keep everyone in-doors. I took Charlotte out in it for a bit yesterday (she under the hooded rain cover of her stroller, I in a heroically ill-prepared leather jacket and baseball cap combo, despite the expensive rain slicker I procured from Victorinox last year for just such an occaission). We retreated back inside swiftly after both of us had been chilled to the bone by the unyielding damp.
In the interim, both kids have been trying to outdo each other in the sweepstakes to drive their parents completely mad. Poor Charlotte woke up this morning with a bloody nose that made her crib look like a scene out of "Camp on Blood Island," scaring a decade off of my life in the process (she's fine, by the way), whereas Oliver has been relentlessly refusing to sleep on his back and -- whenever possible -- sees fit to unleash a variety of disarming noises that collectively sound like a panic-stricken warthog frenziedly submerging in quicksand.
I'm not saying it would cure all our petty ills, but a little sunshine would really help out right now.
Despite having logged something somewhat similar about a month back, I am hereby following the example set by my friend, colleague and fellow `blogger, Jonathan.....
1. Finding Urinals Unflushed: That's right, urinals. Is it so much to ask, guys, that when you've finished the doubtlessly exhausting task of draining your inner keg to simply flush? There are few things as unpleasant as approaching a urinal already filled to the brim with the contents of the previous user's bladder, smelling like Hell's own briney microbrewery. Why wouldn't anyone flush? I really don't get it.
2. People who try to board the subway before the exiting passengers have gotten off: Hey Jackass! I know you're in a hurry to get wherever it is you're going, but so is everyone else! And a little patience and consideration on your part will expedite the entire process. Unless of course you enjoy being roughly elbowed, inconvenienced and quiet possibly assaulted by that one straphanger who has simply had enough of your selfish, stupid bullshit.
3. "Drops": Symptomatic of the cultural infestation of insipidly stupid Hip Hop lingo, albums are now no longer released, but, rather, "drop" (i.e. "yo, my new album drops May 3, yo!"), equating the distribution of compact discs to retail outlets with a dangling dollop of dung tenuously hanging from an incontinent cow's posterior.
4. Websites that unsolicitedly play music at you: - Few things are as jarring as clicking onto a site -- be it a band website or someone's MySpace page or wherever --- and being blown out of your chair by a surprise blast of streaming audio. How about a little warning? This is especially annoying and embarassing when you're at the office, for obvious reasons.
5 ."Goes" and/or "goes like" Vs. "Says": Despite being so uptight about these things, this is one I believe I'm also guilty of from time to time. "So, then, Mark goes 'That's not my hot dog," etc. and[or "I was, like, "excuse me…'"
6. Headphones in inappropriate places In the elevator, in the men's room (saw this today), on a bike (asking for trouble) in your car (illegal, I believe). Look, man, few people enjoy music as much as I do -- but there's a time and place for everything, and inside a cramped elevator just ain't one of them….especially if you're nodding your head and singing along like a dick.
7. Needlessly long laces on sneakers: Where is the benefit here? I got so fed up with tying DOUBLE KNOTS in my daughter's little sneakers that I went ahead and bought her a pair of miniature Vans. The hip retro kitsch element is just a side-dish to the freedom from lace-rage and potential face-plant hazard.
Blink and you'll miss'em, but this week in the "Goings On About Town" section, I penned the blurbs regarding upcoming performances by King Missile, God Is My Co-Pilot, Nouvelle Vague, the Black Eyed Peas and The Pussycat Dolls. These last two acts make me re-consider the benefits of having two working ears. Click thyself right here should you want to take a gander for yourself.
I've always loved album cover artwork. I would intently study the covers of my favorite albums while listening to the music (this was before the advent music videos), trying to glean whatever meanings or symbolism they contained. With the rise of the compact disc, I became a vocal member of the outraged throng lamenting the loss of the LP's comparatively sprawling canvas. As the CD itself shuffles into obsolecence, I fear for the dying art of album cover design entirely. Music can now be plucked from the veritable air and the trappings of packaging now seem positively quaint.
There was a board game in my youth called Husker Du (and yes, aging hipster punks, this is the name of the fabled SST band who gave the world Metal Circus, Zen Arcade etc. , blah blah blah... -- by the way, check out the sideburns on "Dad" in that picture). In any case, a copy of the Danish game landed under our Christmas tree some time in the late `70's, and my sister and I became quite obsessed with it. The basic thrust of the game was a series of tiny pictures covered up with plastic discs (they looked like Oreo halves) that appeard two or three times over the course of the board. You'd mix up the selection of pictures (via a wheel on the side of the board -- not at all unlike the wheel that turns the images on the LP sleeve of Led Zeppelin III), and then cover them up with the discs. With each go, one player would remove a disc and then strive to find a corresponding image of the picture elsewhere on the board. If that player was successful, he or she got to keep the discs (and whomever had the most discs at the end was the winner). Obviously, the game basically put your memory to the test (the literal translation of "Husker Du" is "Do You Remember?", I believe -- I dunno, ask Bob Mould). In any case, it was a great game -- even without its later punk rock affiliation.
Fast forward about thirty years (!!!), and I stumble across the the I Love Music discussion boards (discovered after some poor soul made a disparaging remark about Killing Joke that got back to members of the `Joke faithful). I soon found ILM to be a huge amount of fun and a great place to find out about music I'd otherwise not been exposed to. In short order, I started noticing a recurring discussion thread therein dubbed "Cover Connections," where the basic premise was to point out seemingly incongruous similarities in album covers (see, for example, the pairing above -- arty early 80's New Huevos, Wall of Voodoo's oblique debut album matched with uber-successful, new millenial hip hop superstar, Kanye West's sophomore album -- clearly a coinicidence). I quickly became obsessed with Cover Connections theads -- especially on those deathly quiet overnight shifts at the TIME Magazine News Desk when no news was breaking. It basically became a huge game of Husker Du (as you can see by checking out any of the countless variations of Cover Connections by clicking right here). Sadly, after all this time, a lot of the images may now be broken, but you'll get the basic idea.
Since January, I've had to largely step away from the ILM boards due to time constraints with my new reality (new job, new child, etc.), but thought I'd possibly re-visit here on Flaming Pablum, for no real reason other than that I find it amusing.
It's been a bitch of a week, and it's only Wednesday. Largely due to some recent horrible events that matter hugely to the demographic the organization I work for caters to, the atmosphere in the office has had a pronounced edge. I'm also personally a bit on edge, as recent feedback from certain quarters has suggested that I need to step up my efforts and assert myself within the office environment a bit more. On top of that, I'm consuming my weight in coffee with alarming regularity just to combat the fatigue that narturally comes with having an insatiable newborn in the house. I feel like I'm sprinting all the time -- sprinting to stay on top of breaking developments, sprinting to anticipate oncoming curve-balls, sprinting to stay on people's good sides, sprinting home from work to help my wife out with the monkey-wrangling and sprinting back to work to start the process all over. Like I said --- I'm on edge.
I left the office this evening with a furrowed-brow, even despite the kind words of an ever-encouraging colleague who exited the building with me. Emptied into the swarming ant heap of Times Square, I couldn't quite be arsed to call up a specific band or album on my iPod, so I simply selected the "shuffle" mode, hoping for something like the bracingly cathartic blast of "Snap Your Fingers, Snap Your Neck" by Prong or a vitriolic anthem like "Wasted Life" by the Stiff Little Fingers. The first track to come on, however, was none other than "Shout" by Tears for Fears.
Despite my volatile fandom for that which mercilessly rocks, I must confess to having a soft spot for great pop. While Tears for Fears started off as arguably just another haircut-heavy synth pop act (though if you can't recognize the pop genius of the histrionic singles from The Hurting, you and I have nothing to talk about), by the time of their sophomore album, Songs from the Big Chair, the band had morphed into a full-on mainstream pop act, albeit one oddly preoccupied with Dr. Arthur Janov's controvertial primal scream therapy. While I'd never warmed to that album's needlessly fluffy first single, "Everybody Wants to Rule the World," I've always loved "Shout," their piously po-faced follow up single, rife with a layperson's breakdown of Janov's doctrine and Roland Orzabal's (and, really, what sort of name is that for a pop star?) strenuously emoted verse-delivery. I was once abjectly subsumed with humilation after being caught earnestly air-guitaring (well, actually, I was holding a broom stick and using it as a de facto bass, if you must know) to the song in the early 90's while gallery-sitting in what I thought was an empty gallery in Soho, but that's another post for another day. Dingbatty pop fodder or not, "Shout" is a great song, dammit! At the time of "Shout"'s release, the biggest issues on my plate were upping my appalling SAT scores, finding a summer job that didn't involve dish-washing and getting a girl on the other side of the room in French class to look my way. While I was ultimately unsuccessful on all three fronts, "Shout" acted as the perfect angsty tonic to soothe my youthfully tormented mind. Twenty-someodd years later, the circumstances have changed, but the effect is still largely the same.
Though I'd initially been in the mood for some harder, angrier fare, "Shout" completely fit the bill for me this evening, driving me down Broadway with a purposeful stride. By the time the song reached its hoarily windswept crescendo, buoyed by Roland's emphasis-laden guitar solo, my edge had turned to celebratory angst, as I revelled in the obvious truth that yes -- other people have bad days too, even British pop stars from the 80's with silly names and dubious hairstyles. I wasn't alone with my edge; the pressure gets to everyone.
I walked in my front door about fifteen minutes -- and two more airrings of "Shout" --- later to be greeted by the open arms, irrepresible smile and jubilant "hi, Daddy!" of my two year old daughter, effortlessly obliterating all evidence of my teeth-gritting edge in a diminutive supernova of unconditional love; truly a different kind of chatharsis, and one well worth shouting about.
Tomorrow, it starts all over again.
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