Weekly 20

Return Of The 20!!!

Filed under: Weekly 20

1. "Do You Want To Come With?," Stephen Fretwell. I heard Fretwell's CD Magpie for the first time last month, and I've played it at least once a day since. For songwriter lovers, this is a drop-everything-and-get-it proposition. A mannerism like Donovan's, a soul like Dylan's, a voice all his own. It's hypnotic, sad, and truth-telling. From Manchester, England, his songs remind me why we listen so intently to others: To know something about another, and to discover something about ourselves. When he asks Do you want to come with? to a place where the waves crash on the shore, you say why not? -- so long as he leaves you alone once you get there.

2. "Flags Of Freedom," Neil Young. Kevin Spacey's DOA muse has recently only been able to get it up for a biopic on Bobby Darin (?!), and the mocking of Young's heartfelt��"careless-killer-from-the-gut Living With War on the season finale of Saturday Night Live. I'm pretty sure I've quoted this before, but whenever I see someone go out on a limb the way Neil has this time, and hear some snarky cheap-seater dismiss it, I remember what Greil Marcus wrote about Sinead O'Connor, when she ripped up a picture of the pope on SNL: "Don't knock her until you've done something half as brave."

3. "Talent Show," The Replacements. Safe to say, someone covering this jangly ode to the judge-artist circle-jerk is the only thing that could ever get me to watch American Idol. Knock yourself out, but I swear I'd rather sit in a quiet room listening to "the music of silence," as Thomas Merton put it.

And, just in case you need more proof that this country is totally -off its rocker, consider the fact that, at a time when more good music is being made, recorded, and played than at any other time in history, many very smart people and critics are talking about a TV show and virtually ignoring original music that actually says something about these times (and no, I'm not talking about the Dixie Chicks' boring "boldness" that Keith Harris so eloquently unpacks here).

I mean, just imagine if that sea of column inches and talking heads that were devoted to American Idol had been aimed at Living With War? Think we'd be living in a different world? I do.

I know. I know. I should lighten up. But calling American Idol a much-needed "escape" is the kind of lazy thinking and passive listening that, yes, it can't be said enough, got more people to vote for Taylor or Paris or whoever the fuck than the president, and I don't mind saying that that kind of mass mind-lull frightens me.

4. "I Wish I Was," The Twilight Singers. Have you ever had an out-of-body experience, the kind where you're floating above the city and its bridges and waterscapes and smokestacks and silos and the Northern Lights and back doors and classic dimly-lit kitchens and smoky hammocks and the secrets of the universe discovered in the single blink of a pedal steel guitar, watching yourself and your life, and it is both dark and beautiful, so much so that you never want to come down? Well, now you have. Come down, that is.

5. "Monster Ballads," Josh Ritter. A slippery coming-of-age ballad that's equal parts "Done Got Old" (Heartless Bastards), "Please Don't Ask Me To Smile" (You Am I) and "Heavy Metal Boyz" (Gear Daddies), from an Idaho kid who's more popular in Ireland��"a country that knows a little something about shattered-hearts-and-stop-and-smell-the-ashes than little ol' here.

6. "Donald and Lydia," John Prine. On the bus on the way down to Prine's show at the Orpheum earlier this month, I sat next to a couple of musicheads who couldn't have been more than 16 years olds. The girl was schooling the boy in the genius of Prine, and deemed this "the greatest song about love ever written." I was struck by her passion, and by the fact that she didn't call it the "greatest love song ever written" -- the distinction being between love as a wading pool (known and shallow) and love as a swimming hole (wild and scary-deep).

7. "Since You've Been Around," Rosie Thomas. Her show at the Turf a couple months ago still haunts; I look back at what I wrote��"about her being a shaman��"and about it being a special night and I try to figure out why. Then I hear her singing about the rush of connectedness, Elliot and E.T. connectedness, and I remember.

8. "End Of Love," Clem Snide. The first half of this tune is too clever for it's own good, but when he brings it down and sings, "Maybe you should just release the doves, because no one will survive the end of love," it soars, and the message that endures is the one that tells the heart to stop keeping track, let go, no grudges, no agendas, no distrust of thy neighbor, no calibration, no pragmaticism, just love. Which, rumor has it, the world needs more of.

9. "Man Of God," Neil Diamond. From his new one. The next best thing written of late about faith and flesh and how everyone's voice is the voice of their own god this side of Mason Jennings' "Jesus Are You Real?"

10. "Be Here Now," Mason Jennings. The triumph of this sentiment, which Ram Dass first coined back in the '60s, is how it sticks with the listener long after the music ends. That is, the singalong chorus is a meaningful mantra throughout your day, and a tool for bringing yourself back into the moment -- which is what dude sang in "Living In The Moment," and what all those angels in church are hipping everyone to when they sing, "Let there be peace on earth and let it begin with me."

11. "Steady As She Goes," The Raconteurs. Great Joe Jackson riff. Sounds good on the radio. Quintessential brown bohemian bikini summer single.

12. "Poncho and Lefty," Townes Van Zandt. Netflixed the Townes documentary Be Here To Love Me the other night, the best part of which was Guy Clark and Willie Nelson talking about the invulnerabilitty of this strange song, and the vulnerability of its maker, who said, "There's heaven, hell, purgatory, and the blues. The blues is the worst. I'd take purgatory over the blues anyday." Yessir, that's my baby.

13. "Personality Crisis," The New York Dolls. I've pretty much had my fill of old punks talking about the glory days, like so many Deadheads gathered 'round Jerry's entrails. So I was pleasantly surprised by New York Doll, the doc on Dolls' bassist Arthur "Killer" Kane, a sweet survivor if ever there was one. Um, even though he didn't survive.

14. "World Spins Madly On," The Weepies. Went to a man's funeral yesterday. He was hard-headed Irish Catholic beer lover. His kids didn't talk to him, or each other, much. They stood around the casket in front of the altar, in a church packed with other hard-headed Irish Catholic beer lovers who don't talk to each other much because of one grudge or another, looking like they'd never met. People were crying, and once again I didn't. It all just sat in me -- all that pain, regret, muted love, and silence -- like a summer cold waiting to get sneezed out here.

15. "Temperature," Sean Paul. Turn that junk off, son. If all the other kids jumped off a bridge, would you? Yes, girls are beautiful. Do we have to have that talk again? No, not all nightclubs are like that. Turn it back to one of my stations. Better yet, find something by the Archies or something. Maybe the Christian music station. Disney. Smooth jazz.

16. "Turn Into," Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Potential is a bitch, be it love, or life, or calling, and this four-minute warning finds the singer praying she can live up to everything fate has mapped out for her. Or... maybe she just likes singing that killer hook.

17. "Chase The Feeling," Kris Kristofferson. A soft scolding, but a scolding nonetheless, from one hungry soul to another. The difference from the rest of us is that he's learned something along the way; how to tame his demons and recognize what's at stake. Reason #20,000 why we listen to our elders.

18. "That Summer Feeling," Jonathan Richman. Mary Lucia perfectly played "Roadrunner" the other day to her windows-down heat-baked city. Then there's this, the perennial of all summer-song perennials, and as I write, the Memorial Day weekend humidity has lifted, leaving only the fecund green of these prairie towns, and the smell-in-the-air promise of an urban orgy.

19. "Pay Me My Money Down," Bruce Springsteen and the Seeger Sessions Band. From my D.C. boy Dave Pasternak, late yesterday:

GO SEE SPRINGSTEEN AND THE SEEGER SESSIONS BAND!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It's expensive but well worth the price - certainly a much more satisfying show than the Devils and Dust Tour.

Saw 'em last night - wow, what a wonderful show. Eighteen to twenty musicians (depending on whether there were four or six horn players, it varied), all acoustic, making a HUGE joyous racket. Everyone onstage got a couple of moments in the spotlight and the band just kicked a**. It rolled more than it rocked - not to say it didn't have punch because it most certainly did but the whole thing had a real New Orleans feel to it. Bruce looked like he was having a ball. They all looked like they were having a ball. When they were ending 'Pay Me My Money Down', the entire band marched off the stage like a New Orleans brass band except the tuba player and drummer, who both kept playing, with the crowd continuing to sing (the audience was great - they sang much of the night, all in appropriate places!) Bruce finally "had to" come out and fetch them - he herded the tuba player off, then came back for the drummer - as Bruce escorted him off, he kept breaking away and coming back to exhort the crowd to keep singing. It was lots of fun.

They did most of the Seeger Sessions (thankfully skipping 'Shenandoah' and 'Froggie Went a Courtin') They were great - pretty much like they are on the album but the energy level was ramped up a notch or two. He also did 'How Can a Poor Man Stand Such Times and Live?" with three new verses that he wrote specifically about New Orleans - it was up on his web site for awhile, don't know if it's still there - great version. 'When The Saints Go Marching In' was not the way I've ever heard it before - rather than the Dixieland stomp you always hear, it was done like a spiritual - slow and mournful and appropriate to the words. 'Bring Them Home (If You Love Your Uncle Sam)' is a Seeger song that wasn't on the album - it was certainly appropriate for a show in the Washington D.C. area on Memorial Day Weekend.

And what he did to his own songs - wow! 'Johnny 99' was a rolling, New Orleans backbeat version. 'Cadillac Ranch' was all rhythm with the chorus removed and replaced with the chorus of 'Mystery Train' - it sort of reminded me of the stuff Tom Waits has been doing in recent years. 'If I Should Fall Behind' was done as a country waltz. 'Ramrod' was done as a zydeco stomper. But the absolute highlight of the entire evening as far as I was concerned was the really, really long Texas swing version of 'Open All Night' complete with Patti, Soozie and Lisa doing a sorta Andrews Sisters intro - that was fantastic.

20. "Bad Day," Daniel Powter. The most popular song on the radio at the moment. I love it for its bigness and sadness and keepituppityness. They played it at the Dome the other night, and whenever I hear it from here on out I will think of Mark Zupan, the star of Murderball,

who we ran into (apparently he used to live here; he's a Twins fan) and snapped the picture of below. Girl with Mark is my daughter; dude in back is my boy Erik Lundegaard, the film critic who topped his list of favorite movie moments of 2005 with this:

1. Tap tap... Tap tap...
Mark Zupan gives a fellow quadriplegic a reason to live in “Murderball.”

Mark Zupan is one of the highly competitive quadriplegic rugby players competing in the Paralympic Games, in the documentary "Murderball." Besides filming the characters and stories that grow out of the sport of full-contact wheelchair rugby ��" notably American champ Joe Soares defecting to coach the Canadian team ��" filmmakers Henry Alex Rubin and Dana Adam Shapiro also follow Keith Cavill, recently injured in a daredevil motorcycle accident, as he recovers in a hospital and returns home. In his bedroom and newly modified bathroom, the permanence of his condition sinks in, and he sinks into depression. Until, that is, he meets Mark Zupan, the poster-boy for “Murderball” and one tough little S.O.B. (he’s got something about James Cagney’s energy about him). Between international competitions, Zupan gives a talk to interested quadriplegics and brings along a rugby wheelchair ��" designed for action and contact and mayhem. Cavill gets into it. They only have one such wheelchair so he can’t slam into anyone else, but the desire is there; you can tell he’s itching to do it. Instead he merely bumps into another wheelchair. Tap tap. Tap tap. In that moment, as Zupan watches with pride in the background, you see a life being reborn.

Posted by Jim Walsh at May 29, 2006 10:18 PM | Comments (1)

 

The Rosie Thomas Summer Of Love

Filed under: This Week's Wordage , This Week's Wordage

"Jesus Christ."

That's what I said to my friend Dennis, who'd bought me a ticket to see Rosie Thomas at the Turf Club earlier tonight, one song into her set. From the first notes it was apparent that Thomas was something like a descendent of Emily Dickinson whose sparse lyrics and angelic voice said more about love and the world we live in than any late-night beer-soddened blogger could ever hope to.

Continue reading "The Rosie Thomas Summer Of Love"

Posted by Jim Walsh at April 6, 2006 1:53 AM | Comments (2)

 

HOMIES ALONE: THE FIRST (OF HOPEFULLY MANY MORE TO COME) LOCAL MUSIC-ONLY MIXES

Filed under: Weekly 20

1. "Remember New Orleans," Barry Thomas Goldberg. I could have picked half a dozen of the songs from cantankerous roots- rocker Goldberg's latest The Last Guitar, but this one wails with an urgency that suggests it was written in the same moment as Kanye West's infamous blurt. I also heart "Lily Of The Field" and "Post Tart Girl" and "Miss USA," and, hell, suffice to say that the whole thing is good medicine for anyone disappointed by Devils & Dust or anyone who has ever hoped Curtiss A would get his shit together enough to make a record as angry, funny, and rockin' as his rants. Now then, why isn't B.T. Goldberg famous?

2. "History," The New Vintage. Led by esoteric rock-blues-punk vets Grant Johnson and Mike Nicolai, these cats come off as timeless as their moniker suggests ��" especially on this duet, which riff-rocks as hard and as melodically as any of the historians they influence��"drop. Dig the new breed, baby.

3. "Cheaper By The Ton," Missing Numbers. I love it when songs unfurl themselves and play hard to get, rather than throwing themselves at you. This one, from their new one No Anecdote and sung by that great cry-at-your-fear vocalist Jimmy Peterson, is a creeper that sneaks up on you slowly but also immediately, the way those Valet records do. Or John Doe's latest. Great stuff; push repeat.

4. "Altitudes," Wisely. Former Minneapolitan Willy Wisely has always had a knack for a pop hook, but this beautiful one soars so high -- on the wings of a buttery vocal and the ever-seductive civil union between a gentle acoustic guitar and a squalling electric guitar - it should come with a hit of Dramamine. From his new one Parador, which drops March 14.

5. "Stand Up (Let's Get Murdered)," P.O.S. Add it to the Bob Marley ("Get Up, Stand Up") and Public Enemy ("Fight The Power") canon, though an ex-skate punk rapping to his information-overloaded generation somehow carries more weight: it takes more to cut through, and hell if it doesn't.

6. "Unnoticed," Colonial Vipers Attack. Minneapolis turns out so much quality fuzz-pop (I'm thinking all things Susstones and Landing Gear and the whole Otto's Chemical Lounge thing), and these guys are no slouches, either. This is a terrific love-lost-and-found song, on par with the Church or some of the more anthemic early '90s Brits, with a crunchy guitar that pops out of the speakers and into the psyche.

7. "A Song Is More Than Just A Song," Stook. Stook is one Joshua Stuckey, an Indiana native who moved to town two years ago and released his basement-tape debut The Soundtrack To My Minneapolis last month. His bio says he moved here to pursue music, but from the sounds of things ("Deliverance From Your Eyes," "I Keep On Falling In Love With You," "One Blue Teardrop") dude got his heart broken into a million little pieces along the way. This, however, is pure redemption song -- the last one on the record, a buoyant country-shuffle that manages the neat trick of simultaneously celebrating itself and the power of all songs: "There are some of us who know it all too well/And those who laugh at us can all go to hell/'Cos you and me babe, we've known it all along: a song is more than just a song." Here, hear.

8. "Coquette On Horse," Malachi Constant. Difficult to choose just one from their trippy new one Pride (I'm also partial to "the Traditions" and "Telekinesis") but you can't go wrong with this raver, which rises and falls apart with frothing punk-gypsy élan, Television guitar-art, and whispered vocals that feel like the shudder before the shout.

9. "Hell Hath No Fury Like A Woman Scorned," Prince. The night before the Super Bowl on Saturday Night Live, the king of Detroit Rock City out White-Striped the White Stripes with this blues-drenched rocker, turning in a motherfucker of a guitar solo.

10. "Angel," Storyhill. This is a couple years old, but I just heard it the other night when a friend played it for me. The singer -- John Hermanson, the Twin Cities' answer to (name your undiscovered unheralded genius songwriter here) -- comes on like the narrator of Wings Of Desire or Clarence in It's A Wonderful Life, laundry-listing the travails of your life, but in the end tells you that everything's all right since he's here now. The thing is, his magic works. His magic heals. Nothing short of momentarily miraculous.

11. "Listen Joe," Golden Smog. Creepy to tease, but I've been listening to an advance of the Smog's new one, Another Fine Day all week, and this Louris/Tweedy tune is one of my faves. Along with a half-dozen others.

12. "Barb and Brad," House Of Mercy Band. The HOMB's monthly Sunday-night hootenanny at the Turf always feels like a cozy throwback to barn dances and live radio shows. This old-timey fiddle-fueled skipper (lyrical revelation: "ain't the moon shining bright tonight?/we push, we shove, we compromise, we love") from their new one Blesses Curses (or Songs From The Blood Washed Band) is that sweet vibe in a nutshell, and could make a believer out of an atheist.

13. "Seven Hours," Big Ditch Road. One of the best definitions of the blues I've heard is that the blues singer sings first and foremost to himself, with no consideration of audience or product or even the future of the song. He's simply putting it down, because it's all he can do to make sense of the world, to pull himself out of his own darkness. This confessional comes with the alt-country stamp, but take it to the bank; it's pure blues. With no drama or self-pity, singer Darin Wald lays it out there casually, chronicling how his depression landed him in an institution, and how "I was really close" to ending it all. Anyone who's been there will recognize the everydayness ��" definitely not desperation ��" of such a moment, and anyone who's pulled themselves out will hear the giddy-up of the brushes on the snare and be happy that shared beauty can come from such pain.

14. "Do What You Love," Beau Kinstler. In which the singer kicks off his new CD Ocean with a "follow your bliss" mantra that can't be said often enough. Or does he? At first it comes off as a simplistic upper, but then the harmonica solo kicks in and the kid starts questioning his own love-making and life skills, which gives it a wisdom that goes beyond "Don't Worry, Be Happy" territory.

15. "Touch It," Jelloslave. The rave and ambient music rages may have cooled to some degree, but if this hypnotic nine-and-a-half��"minute track off Jelloslave's debut CD is any indication, the back rooms and strobe-light cathedrals are still throbbing. At the core of this sound sculpture is cellists Michelle Kinney and Jaqueline Ferrier-Ultan, whose baroque squalling is layered under Tom Hambleton's tribal beats, found sounds, sonic dialogues, and a sensory rush that catapults the listener into the church of nature. Where's my incense?

16. "Real Light," The Jayhawks and 17. "Renaissance Man," Dylan Hicks. How cool is this music town? Some beautiful bootlegger out there puts together an 18-song compilation of his/her favorite Twin Cities live moments, and drops it in the mail for wretches like me. Thank you, stranger.

18. "Manners," Maps Of Norway. Like the bastard litter of Gang Of Four-Metric, these no-wave casualties create all sorts of tension and release with a bass that sounds like a furnace firing, a keyboard that should come with an asbestos warning, a drum beat that pushes against the frontal lobe with impudence, and an off-kilter singer who sounds like she's mean and means it. Yow.

19. "Where The Sinners Are," Brett Larson. This story-song -- amongst many good ones, from Larson's sophomore CD Blood Of The Faithful -- gives yet more credence to the idea that questions are always more interesting than answers.

20. "Beautiful Song," Dutch Oven. Yes, she was/is. From the just-released, eponymous, limited-edition, long-overdue long-player.

Posted by Jim Walsh at February 20, 2006 1:45 PM | Comments (1)

 

Ride Daddy Ride, Twenty Songs for Lovers, and a Letter from Pat Donnelly in Sin City

Filed under: Weekly 20

This is easy. Never mind the chocolate and lobster and "flirting expert" tips. For all your V-Day needs, go directly to the Electric Fetus and buy this:

I was there the other day, and they still had a couple dozen in the rack, begging to be plucked. Lucky pluckers: Every song's a nasty highlight, from vaudevillians, jump-blues pioneers, and blues bastards, all singing about the pleasures of pleasure. I recognized exactly one cut going in -- "It Ain't The Meat, It's The Motion," by the Swallows, which, as a young motion-loving man I was introduced to by Southside Johnny -- but every one of these 18 tracks is a horny revelation.

My fave at the moment is Bo Carter's "Let Me Roll Your Lemon," an antecedent of Prince's entire early catalog. Or Floyd Dixon's "Baby Let's Go Down To The Woods," the live recording of which sounds like foreplay to an outdoor orgy. Or The Hokum Boys' "I Had To Give Up Gym" (due to, um, exhaustion). Or the set-closer, Jimmy Preston's "Hucklebuck Baby," which extols the joys of a brick house woman and encourages, "ride Jimmy ride." Will do.

What's more, the pulp-y artwork and free-your-ass liner notes from Neil Kales alone could make Katherine Kersten unclench her goody-two-shoes and fuck like my girl Diablo Cody. An excerpt:

"Poets and philosophers have often been a miserablist bunch, queuing up to deride what they saw as the shallow nature of pleasure. On the subject of sex, both Hippocrates and Plato regarded carnal activity as a "squandering of seed" incurring an unnecessary loss of energy. Adolescent wet dreams were regarded as the precursors of insanity, among the other lesser inconveniences of fornication. "Those who are bald... during intercourse the phlegm in their heads is agitated and burns the roots of their hair so that the hair falls out."

"St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas seemed obsessed with bodily purity and sexual disgust, while the poet Dryden translated Lucretius thus: "Just in the raging foam of full desire, when both press on, both murmur, both expire, they gripe, they squeeze, their humid tongues they dart, as each would force their way to other's heart. In vain: 'they only cruise about the coast, for bodies cannot pierce, nor be in bodies lost.'

"Shame about that. Freud discoursed cheerily 'On The Universal Tendency To Debasement In The Sphere Of Love,' while Rousseau believed, equally unappetizingly, 'I really know of nothing more revolting than a terrifying face on fire with the most brutal lust.' Schopenhauer, meanwhile, perhaps foresaw the troubles ahead of Mussolini, Bill Clinton, and doubtless many others: 'Lust is the ultimate goal of almost all human endeavour, exerts an adverse influence on the most important affairs, interrupts the most serious business at any hour and does not hesitate to disrupt the negotiations of statesmen.'

"Our final killjoy testimony comes from Kant: 'Sexual love makes of the loved person an object of appetite. As soon as the other person is possessed and the appetite sated, they are thrown away as one throws away a lemon that is sucked dry.' (A writer of less renown, the singer Bo Carter represented on this album, would surely take issue with this comparison with his relish expressed as 'Let me roll your lemon, oh baby until your good juices come.'

"We are left, realistically, with Thomas Hobbes in the Carteresque corner, rather than the Kant one: 'The appetite which men call lust is a sensual pleasure, but not only that: there is also in it a delight of the mind, for it consisteth of two appetites together, to please and to be pleased.'

"Well said, Thomas, and it is a confident assertion that Fats Noel would have been on your side, too. A little-known jump blues artist sadly without a complete album solely devoted to him, Noel's endearingly rowdy performance on this rocking 1952 opening track makes a mockery of his obscurity."

And so on. On your mark, get set, go to the Fetus. In the meantime, here's this week's mix, for lovers only:

1. "Haunted," Sinead O'Connor and Shane McGowan. Probably the best duet about longing ever recorded. 'Course, that distinction might belong to "Fairy Tale Of New York," which my new friend Dan sang the shit out of in my new friend Christa's pad Saturday night, as I swung dance Dan's wife. We wuz all hopped-up on tequila and love and the moment -- Unlike Jon "never enough about me" Langford, whose History Of Punk Rock Walker performance I bailed on to party with a bunch of strangers. Thank God for spontaneity, showing-not-telling, music, strangers, and Minneapolis Weird. Here's a picture of Chad and Dan, inspired by Cuervo Gold:

2. "Kiss, Kiss, Kiss," Yoko Ono. Her plea for peace at the Olympics was rad, and "Imagine" is a wonderful prayer, but for some reason I prefer the sound of her having multiple orgasms. Can someone please tell me what "Mota!" means in Japanese?

3. "Skin," The Wannadies. Very basic, very delicious, very chewable. A ditty for the cannibal in all of us: "I love your skin/and what's within." Chomp.

4. "Smile," Beau Kinstler. The amber-voiced young man sang this Jayhawks' song at the funeral of Tom and Bill Sullivan's mother last week, and turned an already-magnificent hug into a chin-up love song that embraced the entire church.

5. "I'll Be Your Mirror," The Velvet Underground. Nico as the ultimate muse. Speaking of which, this is the coolest tattoo I've seen in ages, as spotted on the bicep of the coffee shop dish behind the counter at the very groovy Wilde Roast Café over northeast. And the coolest neighborhoodie I've seen in ages is the one with a quote from this cat, as spotted on the chest of the bookaholic dude behind the counter at the very groovy Ron's Market over south. Viva Minneapolis.

6. "Tear You Apart," She Wants Revenge. More anticipation, more flesh-eating, more, more, more.

7. "I Bet You Look Good On The Dance Floor," Artic Monkeys. I ask thee! Who among us hasn't stood across from another human biped in an ordinary day-time moment and wondered what the other guy would like in bed or in the throes of a transcendent dance experience or... oh fuck it, here's Bri.

8. "Bring It On," Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. The sound of one man standing in the place where he doesn't live, but is willing to let whatever happens happen. He rhymes "bring it on!" with "c'mon, c'mon," double-dog daring the love gods to do their worst and bring him the best he's ever had. In other words, the complete antithesis to "you can't always get what you want" and "be careful what you wish for" restraint.

9. "Tell Her This," Del Amitri. The song-equivalent of a boy passing notes to his girl's best friend: "Tell her what was wrong/I sometimes think too much but say nothing at all/Tell her I am ready now to fall."

10. "Broom People," The Mountain Goats. In which the beleaguered shut-in's woes disappear into her arms.

11. "Stay With You," John Legend. As pretty a declaration of love, as, say, "Let's Stay Together."

12. "In The Yard, Behind The Church," Eels. Great make-out spot, dude.

13. "Last Of The V-8's," Slaid Cleaves. I've got a lot of punk and hippie in me, but a big part of me is kissed by the '50s greaser who lights out with his fellow rebel girl, the way they did in...

14. "1955," Jim Roll. You can have your Blackberry this and your IM that, but it says here there is no more romantic connection than two lovers with nothing better to do than sit on the porch and watch the sun go down. Hit-you-over-the-head time: IF YOU DOWNLOAD ONE SONG OFF OF THIS LIST MAKE SURE IT IS THIS ONE. AND IT WOULDN'T HURT TO LEAVE A COMMENT NOW AND THEN. JESUS CHRIST ALREADY.

15. "Love Songs On The Radio," Mojave 3. The slide guitar feels like the curve of a woman. And: I love the idea of thousands of lovers cuddled around the hearth of Mark Wheat Tuesday night for more love songs on the radio.

16. "Sunflower," Tracey Spuehler. So sweet a celebration of one woman's love, you can almost smell the blossoms.

17. "In My Secret Life," Leonard Cohen. It ain't over 'til the froggy man sings, and sometimes not even then.

18. "She's Not Right For You," Macy Gray. Gotta love a woman who's got the ovaries to say it out loud and stake her claim.

19. "Come and Find Me," Josh Ritter. That one about the Northern Lights is thanksgiving for the perfect love; this is the yearning that came before.

20. "(I'd Go The) Whole Wide World," Wreckless Eric. From Erica Jong: "Do you want me to tell you something really subversive? Love is everything it's cracked up to be. That's why people are so cynical about it... It really is worth fighting for, being brave for, risking everything for. And the trouble is, if you don't risk anything, you risk even more."

This week's guest Walsh Filer is Pat Donnelly, the great musichead, KFAI deejay, and freelance sports/feature writer who lit out for Las Vegas last year with his family. Give us the long-distance love, Patrick:

Ever since I traded the friendly, blue-tinted faces of Minnesota for the bright lights and blistering heat of Las Vegas, I've had momentary bouts with homesickness. After all, Minnesota was the only home I'd ever known. It's where I'd done my best work, made my best friends, dug in my roots.

But life's all about change and rolling with the punches, so here I am. And when I get nostalgic for my home state, here's what I listen to. I'll avoid the clichés and more obvious choices (sorry Prince, Dylan, 'Mats, et al), and some of these picks are more personal. But remember, this isn't a Minneapolis Greatest Hits list.

1. "Write My Ticket," Tift Merritt. Anybody who's ever been a transplant and dreamed of returning home would relate to this song. There is no way she could see/How much this cold rain gets to me/How much I've traded/For a picture in my mind.

2. "Thrice All-American," Neko Case. I've never heard a more honest, endearing, warts-and-all tribute to one's home. In this case, Neko sings of her adopted hometown, I found passion for life in Tacoma. Can you pay a place a better compliment?

3. "Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald," Gordon Lightfoot. I think this was the first 45 I ever bought, and I remember being entranced by the haunting lyrics, creepy-mournful guitar and the story I vaguely recalled hearing as a tot. To this day, it continues to inspire awe in the dark majesty of Lake Superior.

4. "Hockey Song," Tragically Hip. You said you didn't give a fuck about hockey/Well I never heard someone say that before. They actually do have a minor-league hockey team out here and it's got a decent following. But nine out of 10 Las Vegans couldn't tell Bobby Orr from Benjamin Orr.

5. "Hornets! Hornets!," The Hold Steady. The whole damn album -- both of them, actually -- could have made this list, but this one stands out for its Edina-inspired title, as well as the number of times I saw skaters and hoodrats hanging out at Nicollet and 66th.

6. "Sky Blue Waters," The Glenrustles. From the opening lines -- Up in the land of Ely/Nobody noticed the sounds/Of the silence that surrounds you/And the leaves all rusted 'round you -- the song drives you on a tom-tom trek through the Land of Lakes.

7. "East Side Boys," Martin Zellar. The dead-end kids of Austin might as well have been hanging out on the sidewalks outside of New Ulm Junior High, mysterious, almost mythical characters you didn't dare cross on your luckiest day. Wonder what they're doing now.

8. "Prom Night at Hater High," The Long Winters. Of course, any time I start looking ahead to my next class reunion, this song slaps me back to a version of reality that is different from what John Hughes movies portray. Now my only ties to that old scene/Are the same mean people in pre-owned jeans/I used to love them all/But they burned me up, Goodbye.

9. "Southern Minnesota," Mason Jennings. Never saw a meteor in the prairie sky, but I do have lasting memories of star-gazing in the inky dark of the countryside, and seeing the Big Dipper over our garage roof from our back door.

10. "Hoover Dam," Sugar. Now that I've actually stood on the edge of the Hoover Dam, I don't know what to think. It's big.

11. "Screen Door," Uncle Tupelo. Sometimes the simple pleasures in life are the best, like sitting around on the porch with your banjo, fiddle and a jug of moonshine. Or, as it was in New Ulm, sitting in the Johnson Park grandstands after a baseball game with a cold Schell's , telling the same stories you've told a thousand times before and laughing just as hard as the first time you heard them.

12. "Percolator," Cajmere. Ever been to a Gopher women's basketball game (best value for your sporting ticket money in town, by far)? This is the song they play right before the anthem, and as the Gophers line up, you can't help but be caught up in the goofy "dancing" of some of the players, just eager to get the butt-kicking under way.

13. "Tilt-A-Whirl," Slobberbone. Remember that time when you took your gal to the amusement park, and she got mangled by a ride because a drunk carnie fell asleep at the wheel? Yeah, me neither, and yet, this still sums up damn near every Brown County Fair of my youth.

14. "Raspberry Beret," The Derailers. You just haven't lived until you've seen four Texans in full western dress playing the twangiest, sweatiest, funkiest version of Mr. Purple's hit at First Ave. I've heard it said that the first time ain't the greatest/Well I'm here to tell you I would not change a stroke. Indeed.

15. "72 (This Highway's Mean)," Drive-By Truckers. Southern Rock Opera is DBT's attempt to show another side of the south -- "the duality of the Southern thing" as they put it -- and for the most part it comes through in spades. But this song transcends the South and takes any small-town kid down a dusty road he knows like the back of his hand. I don't know why they even bothered putting this highway on the map/Anybody who's ever been on it knows exactly where they're at.

16. "My Wasted Friends," Ike Reilly. With a tip of my Twins cap to our gracious host, I'm one of many music lovers turned onto the brash Chicago bard by Mr. Walsh. From the Turf Club to the Entry to the Main Room, Ike's star seems to keep rising. And he's just the kick in the crotch this city needs. Maybe we could sneak him onto the bill with Wayne Newton.

17. "Bleeding Fingers," Lucinda Williams. I thought about including "Minneapolis" from the same album, but this song is purportedly written about Paul Westerberg, and that's all you need to know.

18. "Miss Teen Wordpower," New Pornographers. Not only did they put on the two finest shows I ever saw at First Ave, but this song conjures memories of every bespectacled English major chick I met at the U. God how I miss those days.

19. "Niteclub," Old 97's. Dallas to NYC is roughly the same distance as Vegas to MSP, and the heartache and homesickness in this song is universal.

20. "Sculpture Garden," Semisonic. They kick off their Live at First Ave CD with this song, which takes your brain on a stroll through the heart of Minneapolis, the nexus of Uptown and Downtown, the arts community, the lakes, Parade Stadium, the old Guthrie, the Walker ��" pretty much everything that's great about Minneapolis, in a tidy, three-minute journey.

Posted by Jim Walsh at February 13, 2006 3:17 PM | Comments (0)

 

BROTHER BILL TUOMALA TO THE RESCUE!!

Filed under: Weekly 20

I know I promised an all-local Walsh Files for this week, but I gpt busy doing the Mama Cass thing ("Make your own kind of music, even when nobody else is around") and I will not bore you with the details. I promise to return next week with all the P.O.S. and Baby Grant Johnson and all the rest.

In the meantime, thank goddess for my boy Bill Tuomala,
writer, musichead, hockey nut, and creator of the most excellent 'zine Exiled On Main Street. Go get it brother Bill:

1. "Snowblind," Black Sabbath. There was a great, wet snowfall last Tuesday night and I was trapped driving around south Minneapolis without my Sabbath Vol. 4 album. Oh well, the song isn't about snow anyway.

2. "Surfer Joe and Moe the Sleaze," Neil Young & Crazy Horse. Surfer Joe is a folk hero who first showed up in 1963 on the same slice of vinyl as the Surfaris classic "Wipeout." By the end of the tune it was assumed he was being shipped off to 'Nam. Poor Joe. Ever since, he pops up now and then in songs, for instance in 1990 he showed up in Paul Westerberg's dreams on the 'Mats last album. Here, in 1981 on the great lost Neil album Reactor, he hangs out with a hustler named Moe. They chase women and booze. Alright Joe!

3. "They Called It Rock," Nick Lowe. A hit-and-run description of a one-hit wonder. Played with the kind of desperation that makes you wonder if Lowe feared that one-hitdom would also be his fate.

4. "Tombstone Blues," Bob Dylan. Required listening for noted bullshit artist Pete Townshend, whose music I love. In the latest MOJO, he declared that circa '65: "Dylan's rock 'n' roll was silly rock 'n' roll, he couldn't play rock 'n' roll, he's never been able to play rock 'n' roll." Care to give another listen Pete?

5. "Armenia City in the Sky," Petra Haden. Included on the all-Who-covers CD that came along with the MOJO mag mentioned above. From her all-vocals remake of The Who Sell Out album from last year. She even does the psychedelic guitar noises vocally. Hypnotic in the best way possible.

6. "The Great Airplane Strike," Paul Revere and the Raiders. Fuzz-drenched Dylan imitation complete with Bob-like vocals. Great fun ��" and the opening riff was ripped off by the Dead Kennedys, who weren't nearly as funny or as cool or as punk as the Raiders.

7. "Charlie Freak," Steely Dan. Hats off to eBay, where you can buy quality used vinyl LPs like Pretzel Logic for ninety-nine cents all with the click of a mouse button. Hmmm, tell me more about this iTunes music store …

8. "Hair of the Dog," Nazareth. The Winter Olympics hockey tourney starts next week and I am told that the USA men's hockey team are 10-1 odds to win the gold. Canada is favored at 6-5, the Czechs are at 3-1, the Swedes are at 4-1, and the Russians are at 11-2. Hell, we have the same odds as the Slovaks -- who for some reason are more favored than the Finns (12-1.) Huh? (Note: these odds are for entertainment purposes only.) Here's hoping the USA youth movement featuring the likes of my man Jason Blake -- formerly of the University of North Dakota and Moorhead High -- acts like the pesky SOBs they are capable of being and pull off some upsets.

9. "Take, Take, Take," The White Stripes. The greatest rock 'n' roll band in the world. And any song that leads you to google images of Rita Hayworth is a must-listen. Holy moly...

10. "Lies," The Knickerbockers. James Frey, while being scolded by Oprah, should have just grinned, chuckled, and said: "I'm laughing all the way to the bank, lady."

11. "Pour Me Another," Atmosphere. The other night in Uptown a panhandler asked me for money, saying he wanted to buy a pitcher of beer and wasn't going to lie "like the others and say that I need money for the bus." As we beer drinkers don't have a union (yet), I slapped him a George and wished him luck. I love Minneapolis.

12. "Just Another High," Roxy Music. Is it a conspiracy? That they never tell you that Roxy albums three, four, and five are soul albums and not art- or glam-rock?

13. Theme song from "Cheers." Love those reruns on channel 45. My day job is as an accountant, I love beer. All the (fortunately female, sigh) servers at my favorite watering hole know my name. If I were Catholic, Norm Peterson would be my patron saint. Hell, I'm pretty sure he is anyway.

14. "I Wonder If I Care As Much," The Everly Brothers. A dreamy, trippy, 1968 remake of one of their earliest songs from ten years prior. Gorgeous. They wrote it also -- obviously using a time machine because everybody knows rockers didn't wrote their own songs until the Beatles came along.

15. "Monkey Man," The Rolling Stones. Dedicated to Pat Robertson and believers in "intelligent" design everywhere. When the Book of Genesis puts a man on the moon, let me know.

16. "Breakout," Mitch Ryder & the Detroit Wheels. Speaking of the Stones, whose hare-brained scheme was it to put some Brits on the Super Bowl halftime show when the game is being held in Detroit, one of this country's greatest music cities? I put my TV on mute and played Detroit music on my stereo loud and proud during halftime.

17. "Multitude of Casualties," The Hold Steady. An all-time fave lyric: "At least in dying you don't have to deal with new wave for a second time."

18. "My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys," Waylon Jennings. Latest Netflix obsession: The Wire. Great scene in season two: Detective Jimmy McNulty stays up late working on mischief meant to screw other police while this song plays on the radio. That dude has become part of my vernacular -- i.e. "pull a McNulty."

19. "I Do," The J. Geils Band. First a hit for the Marvelows in 1965 (thanks allmusic.com), later covered by soul revivalists Geils in one of those hand-clapping, doo-wopping performances that produces a grin every time.

20. "Sleeping My Day Away," D:A:D. Some days there is nothing sweeter than waking up at the crack of 4:30 p.m. to catch "Pardon the Interruption" on ESPN.

Posted by Jim Walsh at February 6, 2006 9:22 AM | Comments (0)

 

Dead Batteries and Dirty Looks at the Feist show; Phil and Julia Bither do the daddy-daughter dance at the Walsh Files karaoke party.

Filed under: Weekly 20

Just got back from the pretty amazing Feist show at the Fine Line. We (Jay, Fran, and I) got busted by Leslie Feist for laughing about my dead-battery digital camera (you and Mr. Tequila had to be there) during her magnificently buoyant version of Ron Sexsmith's "Secret Heart," but we were absolutely gobsmacked by her performance. One song in particular slayed.

"Intuition," off of her new forthcoming one. About the ending of a love affair, how both lovers know when its time to pull the plug on something and move on, and "even now, I don't know what's true or false."

What a voice. What a night. Big love goes out to the gang at O'Donovan's Irish Pub, the only bar left open 'til 3:30 on a Sunday night in the city that always sleeps. Yo, my karaoke all-stars: The big Anthony Peeler lookalike dude who gave us a killer "Purple Rain." C.J., the singer from Denver who tore up "Sweet Child O' Mine." Brother-dude who brought every "Hungry Heart" together. The Hard Rock Cafe staff by the fireplace who chatted over my miraculous "Seven Year Ache."

Next week, an all-local Walsh Files. Until then:

1. "2000 Funerals," Graham Parker. It should be FCC rule that those sentimental fucking U.S. Army TV commercials be followed by footage of all the poor minority kids coming home in caskets. Sing it, you angry Brit. Cover it, you sleeping on the job Bruce. Put it at Number One with a bullet, or write something even more timely.

2. "Uppers Aren't Necessary," Rocky Votolato. The whole of this record is terrific; one for all those who hear an actor at the core of Bright Eyes' story-songs.

3. "Wishing All These Old Things Were New," Merle Haggard. Haven't heard his new one, but until then, there's cold comfort in the sound of an old man looking back at the roaring '80s and not trying to hide his yearning for all the cocaine, women, and wildness. "Craggy" doesn't begin to do it justice.

4. "No Other Love," Chuck Prophet. If for no other reason than the every-single-damn-time magic-carpet ride of "mama, I'm flying."

5. "Butterfly," Crazy Town. Like, like, like... driving around Lake Of The Isles with the windows down and the baby-got-bass bumping into everything it hits.

6. "Telescope Eyes," Eisley. Heartbreak lyric of the moment: "I'm just like you so leave me alone."

7. "Don't Look (Back) and It Won't Hurt," Richmond Fontaine. It's what you say to your kids when they're getting a shot or stitches; put the "back" in there and it becomes an adult reminder to not lament the past. Something like this: "That people are unknowing does not mean that they are unknowing like cows or goats. Even ignorant people look for a pathway to reality. But, searching for it, they often misunderstand what they encounter. They pursue names and categories instead of going beyond that name to that which is real." -Digha Nikaya

8. "Love & Communication," Cat Power. I like the title more than the song, but there's moments where her voice and the guitar and words ("Can you memorize the scenes? It'll be different next week") come together at the intersection of Deepest Desires Drive and Simply Sated Street.

9. "I'd Like to Walk Around In Your Mind," Vashti Bunyan. Fine, but you might get really really really lost.

10."I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine," Thea Gilmore. Massive 'n' inexplicable 'n' to say anything more would be

11."My Life Is In Storage," Frank Black. In which the man with the cold-storage heart packs up all his pictures of permanent fixtures and locks it away. For safe-keeping. "Can we have a little fun?," he sings, finally, knowingly, happily, the way only a thawed-out heart can.

12. "Come Back to Camden," Morrissey. You can't go home again, just like you can't go back to a you you're not anymore.

13. "Why Can't I? (iTunes Originals Version)," Liz Phair. Anyone who thinks this song was a studio creation should hear the ache in her voice on this acoustic shot.

14. "On & On," Film School. Great song.

15. "It's Gonna Take an Airplane," Destroyer. Great song.

16. "Six O'Clock News," Kathleen Edwards. Great song.

17. "Fake Tales of San Francisco," Arctic Monkeys. Really, now; you can't have enough cathartic kiss-offs to fake rock stars and trendy corporate fucks.

18. "Socialist," Ernesto. Decadence and political incorrectness never sounded so funky.

19. "Beautiful Wreck of the World," Willie Nile. Until his new one arrives later this month, this pipes-fueled upper is the shit.

20. "On Your Porch (Acoustic)," The Format. Sitting next to the mailbox. Watching the cars go by. Legs touching. Dandelions on the hill across the street. Talking, just talking, and taking in what they both realize is a fleeting moment. Devastating.

This week's guest Walshfilers are none other than massive musicheads Julia and Phil Bither.

Ladies first. Take it away, Jules

1. "Brighter Than Sunshine," Aqualung. I first heard this in the movie A Lot Like Love. Pretty pathetic, I know, but I couldn't help falling in love with this song. It's especially helpful for those days where you just feel like you can't move unless you get a feel-good melody in your soul.

2. "Rebellion (Lies)," The Arcade Fire. I was first attracted to "Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)" like every sane human being should be, but when I decided to expand my horizons I found this great piece of work. Slightly Franz Ferdinand, but extremely original.

3. "It'5," Architecture in Helsinki. Eight people in one band? Somehow AIH made this work beautifully. This song just makes me so happy, plus it's great fun to wake up to.

4. "If She Wants Me," Belle & Sebastian. My dad tried to turn me onto these guys for a while but I refused. It wasn't until I stumbled upon this song on iTunes that I started to appreciate the lyrics:

I wrote a letter on a nothing day
I asked someone "Could you send my letter away?"
"You are too young to put all of your hopes in just one envelope"
I said goodbye to someone that I love
It's not just me, I tell you it's the both of us
And it was hard
Like coming off the pill that you take to stay happy
Someone above has seen me do alright
Someone above is looking with a tender eye
Upon your face, you may think you're alone but you may think again

If I could do just one near perfect thing I'd be happy
They'd write it on my grave, or when they scattered
my ashes
On second thought I'd rather hang around and get down with my best friend
If she wants me

5. "We're All In This Together," Ben Lee. It's Monday. And I'm pushing through the halls trying to find a friendly face.... or my next class. This song shows up on my Ipod and I feel my heart dancing. I begin to notice things. The eyes that linger, the hands that hold, the smiles that echo this illumination. EVERY thing is connected and that's the ONLY thing that matters.

6. "Hunter," Bjork. As much as she scares me, this song happens to be fascinating. Over this pulse-y beat her voice is eerie but somehow extremely powerful.

7."Bowl of Oranges," Bright Eyes...unbeatable. Although this song came out years ago, the tune hasn't aged one bit. The lyrics are incredibly bittersweet, just like the song itself. The lyrics are so skillfully written in fact, that you can't help that the last lines are still echoing in your mind: "But if the world could remain within a frame like a painting on a wall/Then I think we would see the beauty/Then we would stand staring in awe."

8. "In this Life," Chantal Kreviazuk. Although this song is hopeful, something about her raspy voice and truthful words strikes a chord in me. Just the first verse alone can make me tear up.

9. "Title and Registration," Death Cab for Cutie. Ah, Death Cab. What continues to amaze and amuse me is how they are able to turn logical lyrics into a raw, lonely love song.

The glove compartment
isn't accurately named
and everybody knows it.
So I'm proposing
a swift orderly change
Cause behind its door
there's nothing to keep my fingers warm
and all I find are souvenirs from better times
before the gleam of your tail lights
fading east to find yourself a better life

10. "Manchild," Eels. The eels, actually introduced to me by Jim, have totally captivated me from the beginning. I guess all I can say is this song is so beautiful. But I thought my best friend Sarah's reaction was pretty much perfect. After hearing it for the first time, she said, "See, if some guy came to sing outside my window, I'd want him to sing that song. I don't care if it's depressing, it's just so.....pretty."

11. "Here Comes The Summer," The Fiery Furnaces. My dad and I first heard these guys on the Current with the song Candymaker's Knife In My Handbag. Although repetitive, this song is catchy and original.

12. "All We Have Is Now," The Flaming Lips. This song always gives me an eerie epiphany about how SHORT life really is and how little time we have to be who we are.

13. "Le Garage," The Futureheads. The first 30 seconds of this song-it could be early Beach Boys. As the drums and singing kick in, you think you are listening to a modern Clash song. This combo happens to totally pump me up.

14. "Jezebel," Iron & Wine. This song is nothing but relaxing. Sam Bean's voice totally calms me especially on finals week!

15. "Do You Remember?," Jack Johnson. Jack Johnson is definitely one of my most favorite all-around artists. I love the soft voice he uses even while reporting tragedy:

I remember watching
That old tree burn down
I took a picture that
I don't like to look at

16. "The Gravy," Japanther. This song is from Don't Trust Anyone Over 30, one of my favorite Walker performances of all time. I am also addicted to this two-man band who can scream with the best of 'em.

17. "Anyone Else but You," The Moldy Peaches. I love these lyrics. Seriously. I spent an entire hour in Spanish writing all the words. I also LOVE Kimya Dawson's less-than-perfect voice.

18. "Holland, 1945," Neutral Milk Hotel. I know absolutely nothing about this band but this song is just perfect for blasting on a bad bad day.

19. "Potions for Foxes," Rilo Kiley. It was hard to pick which Rilo Kiley song was my favorite. But how can you resist a song with a chorus of " Baby I'm bad news"??

20. "Infiltration," Sam Phillips. Sam Phillips is one of the only artists that I love everything about and every song by. I have fallen in love with these disjointed almost- crying-for-help but still-upbeat lyrics.

21. "Your Ex-Lover Is Dead," Stars. Pretty much my current favorite song. Depending on the day it can make me completely ecstatic or it can make me cry. The voices are amazing. The lyrics are painfully close to home and the music is melancholy but original.

22. "Walking With A Ghost," Tegan & Sara. Besides Kimya Dawson, these girls have some of the most distinctive voices in my music collection. Maybe that's why love this song... or it could be the fact that it's constantly stuck in my head. Hmm.

23. "Just Traveling Through," The Thrills. I'm proud to admit , I'm one of those who didn't discover these guys from the O.C. (excuse my constant gagging). And although I have no idea what half of the Thrills songs are about, I heart them.

Go, brother Phil, go:

1."Cool Water," Laura Veirs. The understated slacker-voiced Seattlean combines soulful shuffle, organ, chimes, a touch of minimalism in her songs about natural phenomenon and odd creatures. The chorus of this one has hung in my head all week, "cool water" on hot day... a great metaphor for all kinds of unfulfilled desires all week.

2. "Enjoy Your Worries," The Books. What a great balancing act between experimental and accessible. They combine banjos and sampled voices, fiddles and electronics and somehow make it seem like the most natural thing in the world.

3. "Memory Song," Meredith Monk. Last week, I was in New York meeting with Meredith Monk (on a new project for the Walker) and we were reminiscing about the first project we worked on together -- The Games, a huge-scaled collaboration with Ping Chong in 1984(!) I was a know-nothing 25-year-old wanna-be curator (working at BAM as a line-producer) and she was under huge pressure to produce a major avant-blockbuster. We leaned on each other. I've been a huge fan, and we've been friends, ever since. When I got back home, I dug into my home back catalogue to listen to her beautiful "Memory Song," a stirring highlight of The Games.

4. "11 More Days," Carl Hancock Rux. Art renaissance man (playwright, actor, spoken word artist, musician) goes deep with poetry, electronic ambiance, urban despair and funk. Popped up the other day on the Ipod shuffle and grabbed me even more than the first time.

5. "You Ain't Going Nowhere," Bob Dylan. This week, a favorite moment was driving and singing this silly yet timeless song loud, out loud, with my 15-year old Julia. Feeling like I could use a few more flights "into the easy chair" these days. When is someone going to finally put out that definitive Basement Tapes box set?

6. "Changes," Seu Jorge. So unlikely but so perfect, this favella-raised, charismatic Rio singer uses his lilting baritone, acoustic guitar and gorgeous Portuguese language to somehow even top the Bowie original. I'd heard him live, but it is thanks to my nephew Mike for passing the Bowie disc along (from Wes Anderson film).

7. "Sinbad El Calipsico," Axel Kreiger. My favorite Argentine pop musician who no one in the States seems to know. Here he seems to be channeling Morricone, my favorite film-composer. Discovered him from some Buenos Aires-based dance-performance artists we brought here a few years back for Out There fest. Their friend Kreiger made for them a fantastic commissioned soundtrack.

8. "You Ought to Be With Me," Al Green. I saw him in Holland at a jazz fest last summer. His gorgeous falsetto still makes my spine tingle and brings me such joy, and Willie Mitchell's production from this era seems sent down by heavenly messenger.

9. "Everybody's Got to Learn Sometime," Beck. Such longing and sadness. Those strings swell and it fills my heart like Brian Wilson does at his best. It was an inspired choice for the Eternal Sunshine soundtrack (where I first heard it).

10. "The Plans that We Made," Jon Langford and Sally Tims. Mekons main man keeps reinventing himself, and here he and long-time songmate Sally squeeze the heartache and tragedy out of this country tune (by Lonesome Bob Chaney) that traverses adultery, murder and retribution (with great punk sense of irony, putting it on a disc to raise money to fight the death penalty).It is one of many highlights of Langford's first (and brilliant) performance piece The Executioner's Last Songs which arrives at the Walker in a week or so.

11. "Not Great Men," Gang of Four. I pulled my vinyl Entertainment! out of my attic record storage area last week to show Jules and her friend how ahead of their time Gof4 was...combining guitars that cut like a razors, staccato funk and quick-stop rhythm changes that sit like paternity papers proving Franz F. (and dozens of others) are their direct offspring. Maybe spreading around some good old Marxist punk can help re-balance the insane direction of our body politic, circa 2006.

12. "Senegal Fast Food," Amadou & Mirium. The brilliant and infectious Mano Chao's production meets the hard working, blind Senegalese couple's fantastic afro-rock head on ...and it's a beautiful marriage.

13. "Heard it Through the Grapevine," Bill Frisell. With patience and indirection, he weaves around the melody then finally deconstructs and embraces it all at the same time.

14. "The Way We Get By," Spoon. I've liked Spoon, but it was my pal Jules and who first played me this song last fall and it ended on my fave list of '05. Still love listening to it.

15. "Close Behind," Calexico. Caught them four nights ago at Joe's Pub in NYC. They were always something of a mystery to me. I assumed they were these older rough-edged, alley-lurking eclectic musicians who worshiped at the feet of Garth Hudson and Levon Helm. Then out come on to the stage these earnest, fresh-faced Arizona young-ish guys. Didn't make their music any less appealing, especially when those accordions and mariachi-horns kicked in. Here they too seem to be on a Morricone binge.

16. "Things Grandchildren Should Know," The Eels. It's like a Truffaut movie - Jim turns Jules who turns her dad onto the eels. "I'm turning out just like my father, though I swore I never would..." strikes a bit too close to home (occasionally anyway). Sometimes I too walk around my neighborhood averting eyes.

17. "Macho Woman," Ornette Coleman. Ornette was the (long overdue) awardee at a 4000-seat banquet of mostly mainstream "arts presenters" I attended in NYC last week. Many of those present didn't seem to know who he was. I took subversive joy in hearing this gentle genius mystify these folks over his 25-minute harmolodic recitation of his life, with lots of oblique pearls of wisdom. My personal living artist hero. The memories of our three-day festival to him at the Walker last year remains one of my moments of all time art ecstasy.

Posted by Jim Walsh at January 30, 2006 1:11 PM | Comments (1)

 

"I REALLY HOPE YER THERE. I HOPE TO GOD YER THERE." - TIM FITE

Filed under: Weekly 20

I ain't into it tonight. Writing about music. Explaining it all. Sunday night notes. Talk to me. Pity the fool.

This week's (1/23) mix:

1. "Spiritual High, Pt. 3," Amanda Vincent, J.F.T. Hood & Moodswings. Mark Morford may be right. There may be a sea change afoot. You can feel it: The town once ruled by garage logic is being pushed by Mischke's mind-time. More people watched Brokeback Mountain than the Alito hearings. Even more people saw Glory Road, about people of different backgrounds getting together and making a statement, and still more saw The New World, about people of different backgrounds falling in love. Youth is about to be served in Torino, because the young and young at heart are fed up with the old. Martin Luther King Jr.'s message of peace and love and equality for all, as heard on this trippy track, was everywhere last week. Hope.

2. "What's Under That Dress?"; "Up Tight Good Woman"; "That's a Man's Way"; "Groove Me" etc., Wilson Pickett. Throw a dart, can't go wrong. Sleep well, soul man.

3. "Faking the Books," Lali Puna. Some of my boy friends like this. I like the "everybody knows this isn't heaven" bit in the same way I like "Too Close To Heaven," but I also find it sort of cold, in the same way I hear Imogen Heap as mostly (only) clever. I'll check back when I'm in a better mood.

4. "What's Mine Is Yours," Sleater-Kinney. How am I supposed to rest my head on your heart when those guitars are telling me to get down on my knees and worship your thighs?

5. "World So Full," Jon Dee Graham. I love this fucking guy. I met him in the Entry basement one night, and you could just tell he'd been through the shit, but hasn't been sucked under. We talked about his song "Waiting For A Sign," and commiserated on how sometimes that's all you're left with - some sign from above that tells you you're on the right path. This is a similar prayer that starts "I get so lost, I get so down, inside out and turned around, that I turn away from the world so full," and concludes, "I know it's hard, I know it's sweet, complicated and incomplete, but I'm still in love with the world so full." Like I said, I love this guy.

6. "Hockey," Jane Siberry. Been taking the kids to the parks for skating lately. Cracked or bruised my ribs again tonight, got half a Vicodin in me. Here's a beautiful ode to the romance of pick-up puck, from a canuck who recalls Sunday afternoons on the frozen river, and using "your rubber boots for goal posts." Her song "Calling All Angels" crumples me into a girly paper man. Here's a photo of the ice rink, before the fall:

7. "Passenger Seat," Death Cab For Cutie. With my feet on the dash, the world doesn't matter.

8. "I Hope Yer There," Tim Fite. Been thinking about how artists cultivate their audience and seek pity. Come feel me tremble, etc. I suppose it's natural, because when you expose yourself - one songwriter friend of mine likened it once to being an over-the-hill stripper - especially in this small town, you risk a lot. Better to just go underground, go away, smart go crazy. Or you can suck it up quit whining and keep trying to connect.

9. "The Great Sound of Letting Go," Moodswings. Deep and tribal and universal and going, going, gone. Oneness, baby.

10. "O Happy Day," Edwin Hawkins Singers. Kicks my sore hockey-fool ass into the sunrise.

11. "Drowning," Langhorne Slim. This man has a bad crush on the lifeguard who takes care of his soul as it floats away on the sea. He is getting his heart broken. His insides are defiled. He is singing, "Truth is a lie and I'm trying lesser every day" and he is wondering if that is a good thing.

12. "Ultimatum," Long Winters. If this be shoe-gazing music, I will stare.

13. "I'll Not Contain You," The Microphones. If you really love someone, you let them go. Free. To the bar. Like a little butterfly. Or a cotton ball on the wind. Or a Q-Tip floating in a puddle. Or a snowflake over an open fire. Or nudists in the IDS. Or gandy dancers in a big conga line looking for the winter carnival medallion.

14. "It's Not Your Day To Shine," Smoosh. Buddhist theory, as sung by 'tweener emo-rockers.

15. "Factory Girls," Flogging Molly. With Lucinda Williams, the lot of whom sing with great empathy for people who actually work for a living.

16. "Colors and the Kids," Cat Power. When we were teenagers, we wanted to be the sky. Must be the colors and the kids that keep me alive, 'cos the music is boring me to death.

17. "Cherry Chapstick," Yo La Tengo. Smack.

18. "Drawing Curtains," Buck 65. A duet. Finally. I feel all the furies of love violently. Flowers in the rain, wild fires in the orchard. Singing through the pain, I beg to feel tortured. Sugar and chaos, everyone else is boring. Let's make dirty babies until the morning. Love sick, how much deeper still can this get? Show me where it hurts and let me kiss it. Je joue en l'envers de l'amour et toit. Je suis le mystere de l'amour pour tois. After the holy mess we make you wash my hair. While the smoke makes pretty designs in the air.

19. Via con Me," Paolo Conte. Chips, chips. Now appearing at a multiplex near you. In a really cool Coke commercial.

20. "The Good Life," Weezer. Always reminds me of this. Enjoy:

When You Wish Upon a Star
By Peter Van Dusartz III

When you wish upon a star... you're most likely setting yourself up for a kick in the gut from disappointment. This is the relentless painful lesson of truth for fatal optimists like me. I have long been accused of being overly optimistic, the condition I used to refer to as "the eternal optimist". But as I get older I have changed my title to "fatal optimist" because as life goes on it seems to me, if I don't find a cure this will eventually kill me.

It is still my initial impulse as a hopeless romantic to believe in dreams come true. But I've been doing my best to resist the temptation, to get steely cold and brush-off those magical "what if"s. My wife has been my teacher and my mentor, guiding me to change my foolish ways. She preaches and embraces the inherent value of cynicism with the mantra "expect the worst and hope for nothing and you may not only avoid heartache, but actually be surprised by a nugget of happy karma once in a while"

I swear, I'm doing my best. That's why when I heard about Weezer going on tour I immediately began a list of nay-says: I just saw them two years ago, I can't afford those tickets, I have to work that night anyway, we just got tickets to Bruce Springsteen's acoustic show for one week later, you can't see every show, let it go.

But I knew the forces of the universe were against me when I learned Weezer was doing a special tour of small venues only, a dozen shows in all of North America before jetting off to tour Europe and maybe then Japan, and one of the few shows was slated at First Avenue in Minneapolis.

Damn.

A dream show. Weezer at First Ave, 1500 people, their first album in four years.
The album and the tour are entitled "Make Believe".

It's hard to explain exactly why I like Weezer so much, but it has something to do with their endless mocking of everything sacred. The hallowed practice of mocking is severely underrated. They are the patron saints of nerds, intellectual geeks turned rock gods, champions of the underdog and skinny social-phobes everywhere. Everything they do seems to be tongue in cheek, self effacing, and hilarious while at the same time using raw, real, emotional lyrics and loud, brash, punk-pop songs that just beg to be cranked.

No. Get over it. Let it go. You'd never get tickets anyway. It took everything I had to refuse to even try. I immediately regretted that. Sure enough, the tickets sold out in less than two minutes. Their face value was $28. Within days they were selling on eBay for $125 apiece, and eventually close to $200. Nerds everywhere were in a frenzy. I was reduced to pathetic attempts to win tickets from the radio station like the rest of them. Let it go.

But like I said, my optimism is terminal. I saw a glimmer of a chance and began to concoct a plan. I have this friend who is "hep". Hep as in "hepcats". Chic. "With it". Keen. Notorious, renowned, cosmic. Cool. I'll call him "Morpheus". He and his hepcat wife own an art gallery and we were invited to a show. Morpheus told me that a certain "Star" was going to be "arranging the music" for the evening. This guy is a big fish in the Minneapolis pond of rock-and-roll, a true insider who knows "all the right people". I'll call him "Willy Wonka".

My sickness is bad. I secretly began to conjure a ploy, knowing if anyone could get me into that show, it was Willy Wonka.

I cranked Weezer in the minivan all the way into the city. We had decided to enlighten the kids and turned this into a night of forced family fun. They love Weezer too, they've been singing those songs for their whole life. I confessed my scam to my wife:

"I'm making it my goal tonight to become best friends with Willy Wonka, so he'll take me to see Weezer". I tried to pass off as if I was mostly joking. She raised an eyebrow and looked at me with a sad smile, as if to say:"Why do I even try?"

I bided my time, Morpheus was gracious and charming as always, and then I made my move, going right for Willy Wonka's heart:

"I made my goal tonight to become your best friend so that you would take me to see Weezer at First Avenue". Willy Wonka smiled, his wife rolled her eyes.

"Oh, when is the show? I really want to see them". I tried to banter politely and told him we had actually met once before at the R.E.M. show at Midway Stadium where a huge thunderstorm burst into torrents just as they were singing "It's the end of the world as we know it". Willy Wonka said:

"Oh yeah, I remember that show, that was awesome". I did my best to small talk, and then he stepped out of my reach with the phrase:

"I'll look around and talk to some people and if I come up with anything I'll look you up".

Let it go. As I drove the minivan out of the city I made a shot at reclaiming my dignity.

"That was one of those social niceties, things people say at cocktail parties to be polite, wasn't it". She smiled at me warmly and said

"Yes honey, that's what it was".

I felt better. I emailed Morpheus thanking him and his wife for the party and mentioned how gracious Willy Wonka was to humor me and not cringe. As the weeks went by I suffered silently about missing the show, entered contests online, speed dialing to the radio stations, imagining Weezer on that stage, but for the most part I was proud of myself. I had mostly grieved it, mostly moved on, it hardly bummed me anymore. I was letting it go.

Until exactly one-hour before the show. My wife called me at work.

"You won't believe this, Willy Wonka just called me and said you're on the guest list at the door".

"SHUT UP."

"I'm completely serious. He said he wasn't sure if it was a "plus one" or not, but you're on the list."

I was standing at my desk, 50 miles away, in another state. I had a scheduled meeting with clients in one hour, exactly the time the doors were to open. My mind raced. There was slim chance I could cancel, and even if I did, I'd have to forfiet the Bruce show next week. I needed to find out if it was a "plus one" or not. I had about 8 phone calls to make, and I immediately knew, I would be at that show.

"SEE?!"

"SEEE??!!"

"I knew it!!!"

What she could see was that I was going to be impossibly hopeless forever.

I quickly realized that "plus one" was big fish hepcat lingo for "and a guest". I called the First Avenue business office and actually got through. I tried to sound nonchalant:

"I'm on the guest list for tonight's show but I'm not sure if it is a "plus one" or not".

"Which list are you on?"

"I'm not sure, Willy Wonka got me on the list".

"Just a minute, OK, yeah it's a plus one".

It's the classic American father and son bonding dream. Dads working late again, but then he gets a phone call, free tickets for tonight, a chance to be a hero, just dad and the kid. Work will have to wait.

"I'll pick you up in 15 minutes, we're on the guest list to see Weezer at First Avenue."

"SHUT UP."

"I'm not kidding, Willy Wonka just called".

"So shines a good deed in a weary world." W.W.

OK, maybe the classic American dream includes a big league ballgame, but this is our big league. While some dads bring their kids to ball practice, I drive my kid to bass lessons at Willie's Guitar. While some dads might try to get an all-star autograph, I recognize John Munson at the x-treme sports skateboarding Expo, introduce my son to him as a budding bass player, and get his autograph on a Fobia bumper sticker which my son puts on the back of his bass. While some dad's idyllic evening is a game of catch in the backyard, we try to translate my guitar chords tab to his bass tab and jam to Weezers song "Say it and so". My son is 15. His bands are Nirvana, Green Day, Weezer, AC-DC, Pink Floyd, Boston, Led Zepplin and Deep Purple. God dammnit I love that kid.

Believe me, this was our big league ballgame. Bringing my son made it a dream come true.

We rocked out to as many tracks as we could on the way, parked in a ramp, and jogged through downtown to First Avenue. He was in awe. I pointed out the tour busses and told him stories of all the bands I had seen there. As we waited in line to get in, we overheard the bouncer tell the four teens in front of us that the tickets they had paid a kings ransom for on eBay were no good. The Oompa Loompa bouncers ushered out the spoiled rich kids (ala Veruca Salt). This magical night was not meant for them.

The teller asked "Which list are you on?"

"Not sure, but Willy Wonka got us on the list."

"Oh, then you're probably on Weezers guest list, yeah, here you are."

My son is also named Peter, and he said "Oh man, my name was sooooo on that list."

I gave him the tour telling him more stories of Semisonic and Soul Asylum and the mayor of Minneapolis stage dive when theFlops played the "Rock the Vote" show. We looked at T-shirts and he pointed out his favorite and then strategized our way around the staircase onto the main floor. He was floating, sparkling an endless grin, giddy. Me too.

The floor was packed as we watched the warm-up. Their music was good, but the bass was played on a sampler by a guy staring at a monitor who looked more self conscious than any kid at my son's Junior High school, and the eager Weezer true believers mostly only tolerated them. Soon the Oompa Loompa stage managers ushered out the techno dweebs (ala Mike Teevee). This magical night was not meant for them.

We were about 20 feet back, stage-left, in front of the bass player as the lights went up, when we were surged off our feet to about 12. It was chest-to-back, swaying out of control, and I did my best to create a pocket in front of me for him to breathe. My son inherited my "late bloomer genes" and is Rivers Coumo style in stature and I actually got scared. I hollered into his ear, "How you doin?" He looked up with the grandest of smiles and hollered back: "I'm doin great!"

Of course he was. It was perfect.

As it turns out, most of the worst of the rib crushing pressure was caused by a group of drunken frat boys determined to force their way through the true Weezer purists to the stage edge. I later found this post from one of the internet geeks on the Weezer website blog scoffing at the brutish band-wagoneers:

"This was my 4th time seeing the band, and they were great. but It also disgusts me how many meat heated jocks show up to the show and pummel their way up front when the green album jams are played. it was funny noticing them just bobbing their head to "Good Life" or "Getchoo", and not knowing the words."

There were no Oompa Loompas to usher them out, but this magical night was not meant for them either.

No, this magical night, at this magical place, was destined for the old man with the big mustache and the young boy with the floppy long hair.

Weezer rocked loud and the crowd rocked a lot louder with a chorus heard above the amps, shouting every word to all of the songs like a just-past-puberty boy's choir. After a few songs the crush loosened enough for the whole floor to pogo, my son included as he held the universal sign of Weezer high above his head with both hands.

Rivers Coumo outdid his enigmatic weirdo self as he carefully and meekly took center stage, shoulders hunched, with a quirky smirk, seeming bemused by the fervor the entire night. I swear he looks like an emaciated Ernie Douglas, rippling with understatement as he blares out his guitar solos with one finger, and smiles while singing his tragic ballads and wry parodies of superstars, dopeheads, and the privileged, mocking them all and his fans, as well as himself, as he feigns praise and sings anthems of pseudo homage. Man that kooky little weirdo cracks me up.

Everything about Weezer cracks me up. From their Spinal Tap-ish =w= logo in old-fashioned marquee lights, a glaring parody of Van Halen's legendary =v= , to the last show I saw when the drummers platform raised high over the crowd in a smoking/flashing final song solo... leaving the drummer stranded until the roadies rescued him with a two story step-ladder, as he slowly crawled down in full view, only to return five minutes later to slowly climb the same ladder for the encore. I had never seen anything so fucking hilarious, especially since the joke seems to have gone unnoticed right over most of the fanatic's heads.

Pay attention Alanis, this anorexic Ernie Douglas Rock God is the guru of irony.

For example, I know what you Republican'ts are whining out there, "How can this guy proffer a field trip to a bar with his son, to hear a punk band sing songs entitled "Hash Pipe" and "We're All On Drugs" as his consummate example of Americana father/son character building?"

Ay, there's the rub. For in that song of drugs lies the sardonic trope, Rivers ruse, that at first appears to glorify but actually ridicules: "When you're out with your friends/In your new Mercedes Benz and you're/On drugs/And you show up late for school cause/You think your really cool when you're/On drugs/And you put on your headphones/And you step into the zone when you're/On drugs/But the world don't care/If you're not there cause you're/On drugs".

In fact, the song actually becomes an anti-drug PSA anthem: "And you twitch in your seat cause/You wanna hit the street when you're/On drugs/And you cause such a fuss cause/There's no one you can trust when you're/On drugs/And the best of your days/Will all vanish into haze when you're/On drugs/And you wish you could quit cause/You're really sick of it but you're/On drugs"

But the beautiful irony finally fully blossoms when he manipulates the stoners themselves into complicity, to proclaim his message for him, by hooking them into chanting the catchy chorus over and over, "We're All On Drugs, We're All On Drugs, We're All On Drugs, We're All On Drugs..."

Brilliant. Maniacal. Too friggin funny. What a blast. Just listen to the song for yourselves, that line is an addicting earworm. C'mon, all the cool kids are doing it.

And the rocking mocking didn't stop there as he went on to lampoon:

the beautiful people in "Beverly Hills" - "Look at all those movie stars/They're all so beautiful and clean/When the housemaids scrub the floors/They get the spaces in between... I wanna live a life/like that/I wanna be just like a king/Take my picture by the pool/Cause I'm the next big thing!",

himself in "The Good Life" - "When I look in the mirror/I can't believe what I see/Tell me, who's that funky dude starin' back at me?/Broken, beaten-down can't even get around/Without an old-man cane I fall and hit the ground/Shivering in the cold, I'm bitter and alone",

and fatal optimists like me in "Island In The Sun" - "On an island in the sun/We'll be playing and having fun/And it makes me feel so fine/I can't control my brain... We'll run away together/We'll spend some time forever/We'll never feel bad anymore".

But I'm not suggesting Rivers is uncaring. At one pause between songs he leaned forward surveying the churning mayhem and muttered, "Gee, it looks kinda scary out there", which of course elicited a jubilant cheer, causing him to chuckle, shrug his little shoulders and reply, "Well I guess you're having fun anyway."

Again with the understatement. It was all fun, and the sound was great, the crowd never stopped singing and bouncing, even to the songs on the album yet to be released. The energy was gleeful and positive, even the air was clean and fresh, and it was all a little surreal. Like a dream.

When the screen finally came down, we pressed our way to the merch table, and I bought the kid that favorite shirt, tossing it to him like Mean Joe Green tossed his jersey in that old Coca-Cola commercial.

We strolled past the autograph seekers waiting by the busses as they tried to avoid the wino beggars. We read the bandnames "Stars" on the wall. I pointed out Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention, he pointed out Green Day. We stopped in Schinders to buy a couple bottles of Coca-Cola and scan the comic book covers. We talked and laughed about the spectacle of it all and listened to more of the songs. When he got out of the car he gave me a hug much too long for his aloof teen age and said: "Thanks dad".

"For some moments in life there are no words." W.W.

The next morning reality snapped back as I watched a live news report, broadcast from outside the front of my son's Junior High school covering the story about two of his classmates. They were being held in police custody for creating and distributing a "Hit List" of names of 12 more of my son's classmates. We talked about it on the way, like we talk about everything every morning on the way to school.

He tells me which kids are the "popular" kids that were on the list. He tells me which kids are the stoners, which kids are the wanna-be stoners, which kids bring drugs to school, and which kids have offered them to him. I know I can't keep it away from him. But I can show him how to get high, how to get away from it all, how to find magic without the drugs and alcohol.

And I know he won't always tell him everything. But I believe in him.

And I obviously can't protect him from the dangers. But I'm optimistic.

So who is this Morpheus? Who is this Ernie Douglas? Who is this Willie Wonka?

"We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams." W.W.

As I watched him walk into his school, the magic of the night before seemed more dreamy than ever, and I was overwhelmed with gratitude. It occurred to me, that when you wish upon a star, if it's the right star, your dreams really will come true.

Willy Wonka: "Don't forget what happened to the man who suddenly got everything he'd ever wished for."

Charlie Bucket: "What happened?"

Willy Wonka: "He lived happily ever after."

Thank you Willy Wonka.

Weezer
First Avenue
Minneapolis Minnesota
May 3rd 2005

Setlist:
Tired Of Sex
In The Garage
Hash Pipe
No One Else
This Is Such A Pity
Buddy Holly
Photograph
Hold Me
Getchoo
Say It Ain't So
We Are All On Drugs
Island In The Sun
My Name Is Jonas
Peace
Beverly Hills
Haunt You Every Day
---
Undone - The Sweater Song
The Good Life

Posted by Jim Walsh at January 23, 2006 1:46 PM | Comments (0)

 

A Letter To Minneapolis; In Memory of Bob Feldman; Jay Walsh Names the 'Mats Tour; and Lou Wright's Top 20

Filed under: Weekly 20

Dear Minneapolis,

The other day a lovely Irish-British woman who married a Minnesota rock-boy said to me, "People from Minneapolis are the biggest music snobs in the world."

And...?

"When I first moved here, the first thing people asked me was, 'What kind of music do you like?'"

And...?

Anyway, I ain't no provincial son. I'm here to say I'm stoked for the we-are-the-world winter Olympics. Especially this year, because of all the hate 'n' war, but mostly because of don't-give-a-fuck-but-kick-ass-anyway characters like Bode Miller and the Donnas and the new "Fall Behind Me" commercial starring the U.S. Olympic Snowboarding team, which shows the world how hard American chicks rock. Seriously, if you were in some female-hating hovel of the Middle East and saw how much fun American women have with electric guitars and snow, you'd go a little nuts, too.

Speaking of rocking hard, I don't pretend to know much about Likehell. They're one of those local bands who didn't fit the brand-new-young-legend-in-the-making profile we've (I've) fostered and been led to believe and buy and whose name always only reminded me of something my friend Bill wrote a few years ago after getting home from the bar: "Like hell I'll ever go see Likehell again."

Bill would flip over Likehell. I saw their mockumentary the other night with my friend Mary Beth, because neither one of us wanted to watch anything sad or too serious, because it had been a sad and serious day, and it reminded me of the end of Steppenwolf, when Mozart says to the sad-sack protagonist Harry, who has spent his life gnashing about the meaning of life:

" 'Enough of pathos and death-dealing. It is time to come to your senses. You are to live and to learn to laugh. You are to learn to listen to the cursed radio music of life and to reverence the spirit behind it and to laugh at its distortions. So there you are. More will not be asked of you.'"

"Gently from behind clenched teeth I asked: 'And if I do not submit? And if I deny your right, Mozart, to interfere with the Steppenwolf, and to meddle in its destiny?'

"'Then,' said Mozart calmly, 'I should invite you to smoke another of my charming cigarettes.'"

Anyway, I missed it when it screened at Sound Unseen two years ago, but it's out on DVD now and all that will be asked of you is that you do everything you can to see it. (It ain't on Netflix. Yet.) I might have been high, but I laughed harder at this thing (subtitle: "The Unbelievably True and Amazingly Accurate Story Behind Rock's Most Legendary Supergroup") than anything I've seen in a long time, including The Office. It reminded me of a great Ween show, in that it's a wicked parody of rock's self-mythology in particular, artistic navel-gazing in general, and the Behind The Music-ization of everything. Plus, it mocks the shit out of stuff like these self-conscious twerps.

But don't believe me. Ask Brian Oake; he narrates it. Or go here and buy it and tell everyone you know to do the same. Somebody who knows somebody at HBO should get it on the air. Make these smart-asses so infamous they can tour to ironists and rockists the world over and get rich. Here's my Rotten Tomatoes quote:

"Likehell: The Movie is the funniest rock movie since This Is Spinal Tap or Metallica: Some Kind Of Monster, not to mention the only film in the history of filmdom to feature cameos from Lori Barbero, Tommy Stinson, Slash, and Jim Marshall. Warning: You will see something of yourself in it. It will not be pretty, but it will be pretty hilarious."

This week's (1/ 06) mix, dedicated to the warm memory of Bob Feldman.

1. "100 Miles," Abra Moore.
2. "Ain't Life A Brook," Ferron.
3. "Change Your Mind," Neil Young.
4. "Greatest Mystery," Terry Walsh and 2 A.M.
5. "No Time To Cry," Iris DeMent.
6. "No Place For You," Paul Westerberg
7. "For Those Whose Work Is Invisible," Suzzy and Maggie Roche
8. "Asking Too Much," Ani DiFranco
9. "The One," Oh Susanna
10. "Song Of Bernadette," Leonard Cohen
11. "Not Dark Yet," Bob Dylan
12. "Drunken Angel," Lucinda Williams
13. "The Tide," Lucy Kaplansky
14. "River Road," Jimmy LaFave (thank you, Jackson Buck)
15. "Hard Times In Babylon" Eliza Gilkyson (thank you, Ellen Stanley)
16. "Here In The Going, Going, Gone," Greg Brown
17. "The Roving Gambler," Spider John Koerner
18. "Burning Down The Hard Rock Café," Farm Accident
19. "Wash My Eyes," Leandra Peak
20. "That's What Makes A Legend," John Gorka

OK, so in anticipation of when the Replacements get back together and hit the road later this year, my brilliant brother Jay has some suggestions for the tour name:

WE STILL FUCKING STINK

FOUR BOTTLES, WILL TRAVEL

WE HAVE MORTGAGES NOW

YOU'RE NOTHING BUT A CUSTOMER.

COLOR ME DEPRESSED

WE NEED A GODDAMN JOB

FORTY SIX BLUE

WORSE THAN EVER

THROWING APPLES AT GORILLAS

GETTING IT WRONG THE SECOND TIME

WE'RE HERE FOR YOUR GRANDAUGHTERS

MONEY TRUMPS HATE, SWEETHEART

PAUL APOLOGIZED

REHAB MADE ME SADDER

PETER'S WET DREAM

SEND THE GOO GOO DOLLS BACK DOWN TO TRIPLE A.

BASTARDS OF OLD

YOU BOUGHT A HEADACHE

PAULIE'S GONNA DIE

WHITER AND LAZIER

GARY LOST HIS BONER

BOB'S LAST WISH.

HEY, THERE'S STILL A BOB ON GUITAR

Yep, it's a Walsh Brothers production. It's gonna be subtitled the "Hayday 2006" tour, they're gonna dress up like the Hee-Haw clowns, and, well, it's about damn time this came true:

St. Paul Pioneer Press (MN) December 14, 2001 Section: Express Edition: City Page: E1 Column:POP MUSIC

HERE'S HOW TO FULFILL A BIG 'MAT ATTACK
JIM WALSH
Pop Music Critic

The New Year's fantasy news story goes something like this:

ST. PAUL (AP, Jan. 1, 2002) The Replacements are back.

The Minneapolis-based band, whose legendary live shows and records defined a generation in the '80s and provided building blocks to the college and alternative-rock movements of the '90s, have decided to reform after a 12-year hiatus.

The news came just weeks after the dedication of a park bench to the memory of late Replacements guitarist Bob Stinson. The ceremony, which took place Dec. 15 at St. Paul's Turf Club, featured performances from several local bands and a toast to the bench, which sits in a garden at Lake of the Isles in Minneapolis.

"The bench is real nice," Replacements singer/guitarist Paul Westerberg told Kurt Loder of "MTV News." "I walked over there the other night, sat on it, and asked, 'What would Bob do?' The answer: Get his band back up onstage as a bunch of old (expletives) and flop."

News of the reformation spread quickly within ecstatic Replacements circles. Asked to comment, New York-based critic Ira Robbins said, "I guess I'll just reiterate what I wrote in 'The Trouser Press Record Guide': 'For a time the (Replacements were the) world's best rock 'n' roll band -- proof that those who missed the '60s could still build something great on the crass and hollow corpse of '70s music."'

Music historians have long championed the Replacements as a band that wasn't for everybody. But with a new trend toward rawness and feeling over all else, and bands such as the Strokes, the Hives, the Midnight Evils, Wilco, Marah, the Now Explosion, Slobberbone and Ed Tinley and His Hired Guns gaining a new audience, the time might be right for a full-fledged Replacements revival.

"It's about time," said Tom Cook, a.k.a. "Drummer Guy," the musician/talk-radio host who has often lobbied the band to reform on his weekly KFAN-AM show, "Rock Talk With Drummer Guy." "Those songs deserve to be out there, being played in front of large gatherings of people, now more than ever."

Said singer/songwriter Ryan Adams, "I am a complete fraud -- especially compared to those guys, whom I obviously love. But I couldn't carry their guitar straps."

After a tumultuous 11 years together, the Replacements (often referred to by fans as "the 'Mats") finally split up in 1990. Since then, all four band members have put out solo albums and all but drummer Chris Mars have played live. (Bassist Tommy Stinson lives in Los Angeles and plays with the on-again-off-again Guns 'N' Roses.) The foundation for the reunion was laid when Westerberg ran into Mars recently at a Minneapolis bookstore near the home of Replacements guitarist Bob "Slim" Dunlap.

"We started talking about old times, George Harrison, Joey Ramone, Ground Zero (a Minneapolis punk band) and what a crappy year it had been," said Mars, a Minnesota Twins season-ticket holder.

"The next thing you know, we're in Slim's basement, playing 'When It Began,' 'Bastards of Young,' 'Kids Don't Follow' and 'Darlin' One'," said Westerberg, who lives within walking distance of Dunlap and Mars. "Then we remembered that Tommy was in town, visiting his mom and daughter. We called him up, he came over, we gave him (expletive) about Axl and Slash, and did 'Sixteen Blue.' From there, it was like riding a trike."

Westerberg has written and recorded more than 25 new songs for a solo record, including "Let the Bad Times Roll," which should see the light of day this year. He said he was considering putting together a touring band when the fated meeting with Mars took place. After two days of rehearsals ("or male-bonding-goofing-off-therapy," cracked Mars), Westerberg called his old friend and former 'Mats road manager Bill Sullivan, owner of the 400 Bar in Minneapolis.

"He goes, 'Can I bring my band down?' " said Sullivan. "I said, 'Sure,' but he hung up before I could ask what band. He shows up a couple hours later, and it's the 'Mats. They played for 90 minutes. Old songs. New songs. Paul songs. Chris songs. Slim songs. Tommy songs. A Shania Twain song. It was a Monday night. Ten people were here."

The next night, the word was out. A line of amped-up 'Mats fans snaked its way down Cedar Avenue to the Metrodome, so the band high-tailed it across the river and set up at the Turf. By the time they finished a two-hour set that included "I Will Dare," "I.O.U.," "Nowhere Man" and "Put a Little Love in It (According to John)," the club was a madhouse.

Another ardent Replacements reunion advocate has been Minnesota Daily critic Brianna Riplinger, who recently wrote in her syndicated column, "Riplinger's Riffs," "I'm 20 years old, and I never got to see them live. To me and a lot of my friends, the Replacements have this mystery that no other band does. I don't care that they're not wild or drunk or crazy. I just want to hear the songs."

As it stands, the band plans to do a short six-city club tour to gauge interest and "see how it feels," said Westerberg. If all goes well, a full tour could happen later this year. Opening acts have yet to be named, but interested parties are already throwing their hats in the ring.

"Back in the day we used to open for the Replacements and vice versa," said the former singer for a local band who asked not to be identified. "I like to think they had some of their best shows when we opened for them. We were all competitive little (expletives) back then.

"We'd inspire each other. We'd go after each other. We'd play what was for us a great set, then they'd come out like prizefighters, level the room and make laughingstocks out of us. They were always up for a challenge."

Pop music critic Jim Walsh can be reached at jwalsh@pioneerpress.com or (651) 228-5553.

-- What: The Bob Stinson Birthday and Bench Celebration with Slim Dunlap, Rank Strangers, Bleeding Hearts, Kruddler, the Mammy Nuns, Jake Wisti, the Beatifics, Vena Cava, Mike Suade, Lotus Eaters, Andy Crowley, Chris Dorn and B.O.B.
-- When: 8 p.m. Saturday
-- Where: Turf Club, 1601 University Ave., St. Paul
-- Tickets: $5
-- Call: (651) 647-0486

That's all I got. Have a great day, Minneapolis and Minneapolis-lovers, wherever you are. I'm glad you're alive. Stay safe. Safe home, etc.

Love,
Jim

P.S. Speaking of the future, here's this week's guest Walshfiler. Sixteen-year-old St. Paul native Lou Wright, now living, reading, studying, listening, playing music, and chasing girls in Los Angeles:

1. We Belong Together - Rickie Lee Jones from Pirates Perfectly evokes youth and Los Angeles and youth in Los Angeles. The youth that needs desperately to believe that it is always right and that nothing ever crumbles and fades simply to keep existing. The Los Angeles that is just barely saved from tumbling into the Pacific by an older, balding version of the same belief.

2. Stay Up Late - Talking Heads from Little Creatures Lester Bangs once said that David Byrne has "mental institution eyes", but that his are the eyes of a calm, collected, brilliant psychopath, and not the flailing maniac eyes that stare out of album covers produced by his contemporaries (cf. Television's Adventure, Richard Hell and the Voidoids' Blank Generation.) The calm psychopath somehow got a hold of his sister's baby, and is making it entertain him all night long. The Matterhorn of uncomfortable claustrophobia + ineffable catchiness.

3. Annual - Water Bears from Water Bears Water Bears are a local folk band from the western Los Angeles area. I had the ridiculous good luck to perform with them at a recent arts festival. They are downright amazing, and everyone who hears them agrees on this. They also are a happy reminder of how much Neutral Milk Hotel and their ilk have quietly changed the collective countercultural consciousness in the past couple of years. Was a time, a time called the mid-90's, when this kind of freak-folk would have been frowned upon outside of college towns and hackey-sack circles. But now, with the Decembrists, Devendra Banhart, and handfuls of other androgynous, symbolist folkies populating the airwaves, any teenager with a guitar thinks he's Jeff Mangum. Thing is, Zak Marmalefsky of Water Bears quite possibly is.

4. How A Resurrection Really Feels - The Hold Steady from Separation Sunday I kind of feel bad citing this song, because one has to listen to Separation Sunday all the way through to get the Jim Steinman catharsis of it in toto, let alone to catch all the references to earlier songs. But even if you don't do that, or if you simply can't stand 45 minutes or so of Craig Finn's voice, which I admit is an acquired taste, the song can stand alone better than any other on the album. And with a punch line like "Hallelujah was a sexy mess / and she looked strung out but experienced / so we all got kind of curious," Finn's strange brew of Catholicism, drugs, youth, and frantic poetry - not to mention one of the best releases of 2005 ��" gets it's tragic, triumphant exclamation point.

5. To Hell With Poverty - Gang of Four from Return the Gift Gang of Four is sorely needed these days. There are a few exceptions, but as of late danceable music has lost almost every ounce of snark that it once had. We have the dormant !!!, Radio 4, Death from Above 1979, The Killers, and a host of other dance-rock bands producing the living daylights out of otherwise well-done songs, and there is no one to turn to for a Gang of Four-style feedback-meets-dance-floor aesthetic. I beg of you, modern dance-rock bands, sell your bongos. Buy guitars. Grow some balls. Okay, now that I'm done being negative, listening to this song, crammed into the backseat of a tiny, tiny car with all of nothing in your pocket is where it's at.

6. Cruiser's Creek - The Fall from The Nation's Saving Grace One of the best songs on the Fall's The Nation's Saving Grace, the first album featuring keyboardist / vocalist Brix E. Smith. "What really went on there / we only have this excerpt..." sneered through a megaphone gives way to catchy guitars and reports of a "party going down around here." This is the kind of music that "angular" guitar riffs are made for, not that cheap, nihilistic frequency that Olympia, WA emitted for a while.

7. Easy Winners - The Max Roach Double Quartet from Easy Winners It's ragtime! String quartet ragtime! Orchestrated by one of the best jazz drummer-slash-bandleaders in history! Sound the alarm! The alarm that goes "AWWWWWWWW-RIGHT!"

8. Ten Little Kids - The Jayhawks from Tomorrow the Green Grass I'm not exactly sure what this song is about. My best guess is this; Gary Louris is looking back at the time in his life when sex was first brought to his attention, and commenting on how insignificant those facts of life seems in retrospect, as well as on the innocence of the young'ns on the side of the road who are yet untouched by 'carnal knowledge'. The sentiment is common, this yearning for innocence, but the structure of the song and the sheer playfulness of the lyrics manage to skirt cliché, and to turn a potentially trite song into a hooky paean to childhood.

9. Gravity's Angel - Laurie Anderson from Mister Heartbreak "You can dance. You can make me laugh. You've got x-ray eyes." Though the times don't coincide, I always wished that this song was about Lou Reed, because it would've been perfect. Those dreams dashed by the pesky constrictions of time and space, one is left with Anderson's peculiar blend of well-timed synthesizer, magical falsetto, and slightly unhealthy worshipfulness tempered by equally unhealthy vindictiveness. The song is also one of her most human moments, a far cry from the seemingly unfeeling, sardonic, bionic woman whose voice graced Big Science.

10. Television - Robyn Hitchcock from Spooked It is Robyn Hitchcock's playfulness that continually saves him from being an artsy, self-important morass of ex-punk melancholy. In "Television", Hitchcock flexes his wit, having the audacity to make "bing a bong a bing" the chorus to a song about maladjustment, misanthrophy, and lonliness. But within that wit is deep emotion and complex poetry, most notably in a confession of love and dependence to the television; "my kid will look like you, I swear."

11. Sweethearts - Camper Van Beethoven from Key Lime Pie The imagery in this song is so undeniably amazing. If every Camper Van Beethoven song was this complex, this well thought out, and this catchy, we would never have had to go through the unexplainable horror that is Coldplay's popularity; the collective music-buying public would have been too enthralled with Dave Lowery's expert songwriting. Speaking about a bombing mission over China, he describes how "the flowers bloom where you have placed them, and the lady smiles, just like mom." There is nowhere to go from there. It's too perfect.

12. Czar - Frank Black from s/t "Time. If he could travel time. He would've been on time." Frank Black is a big, angry, ridiculous baby in person, but on record he is a triumphantly absurdist post-punk crooner. I mean, what more do you want from an ex-Pixie? There's theremins. There's death. There's ridiculous lyrics. There's you wishing you could be this cool when you were unabashedly silly and morbid.

13. Typical Me - Kano from Home Sweet Home So you don't like indie rap. You don't like grime or ragga or any rapper that doesn't come with a billion star producers, a pointless chorus, miles of gun-talk and bling, and an eponymous, disgusting breed of purple cognac or energy drink. I can understand why you, American hip-hop listener, might have a hard time swallowing The Streets, Dizzee Rascal, or Wiley, the choppy, cerebral headliners for the British grime movement. But if your not dancing by the time the first chorus to Kano's "Typical Me" hits, you might want to check your pulse.

14. Something About England - The Clash from Sandinista! Exposing the skeletons in the closet of tranquil, polite British society is a road well tread by the likes of The Waterboys, Billy Bragg, and The Sex Pistols. However, none of those groups - wonderful and brilliant as they may be, and all of them are - come close to the eloquence with which Joe Strummer illustrates English nationalistic uppitiness. Opening with a choral "they say the immigrants steal the hubcaps / of respected English gentlemen / they say it would be wine and roses / if England were for Englishmen again...", the song goes on to describe horrors committed upon the English people by their own government, specifically the snubbing of returning veterans while "the world was busy rebuilding itself" after WWII. Great songwriting, and, more importantly, great organ hook.

15. House - The Psychedelic Furs from Book of Days So many people have heard the Psychedelic Furs, loved the Psychedelic Furs, and have no idea who the Psychedelic Furs are. (For their information, they're a New Wave band with a saxophone, and, despite what everyone in the world will tell you, they beat The Cure up and down the street.) It seems there are two schools of thought on the Furs; either they are that band with that song from the Molly Ringwald movie, or they are awesome and underappreciated geniuses. I belong to the latter, and it was comforting to hear the largely forgotten Book of Days being played in a bookstore today. On that illustrious and soupy album, the best song, a hymn of Anglican social decline, crashes down with the words "this day is not my life", and proceeds to assault the listener with Richard Butler's vindictive, slithery vocals, a driving beat, and what sounds like 6 different jingly-jangly guitars. Like nirvana from a can of rotten peaches.

16. Bakersfield - Vic Chesnutt from Little For a long time, the only song I really listened to on Chesnutt's Little was "Danny Carlisle", his heartbreaking, nostalgic song concerning childhood and dreams. One day, however, I forgot to start it over again, and I was deposited in the next song, "Bakersfield". It's a more forward-looking song, which I believe reflects well on Chesnutt, a song in which he faces old age and the looming prospect of death with fortitude and poetry, outlining a pilgrimage to the deadest location in America, Bakersfield, CA. He presents one of the more nuanced approaches to death, saying that it's "strategy, not protocol / that brings me here", that he's come to the point where the long, slow slide into oblivion is a matter of choice, not necessity.

17. Girl Named Captain - Robert Pollard from Not In My Airforce Robert Pollard's songwriting career, the major part of which ended in 2005 with Guided By Voices' last show, has been anything but consistent. It is hard to come by a GBV album that once can listen to all the way through, and the same goes for his solo albums, whereas the other mind behind GBV's The Who-obsessed post-punk, Tobin Sprout, has actually made some solid, listenable pieces such as Moonflower Plastic. But this song, the imagery is just so vivid and the philosophy is so direct, succinctness and bare-bones insight being rare for a man who writes songs about Chinese restaurant owners and "giggling faggots." The subject of the song has one of the best lines in human drama; "I'm not in your dreams / get out of mine."

18. Halloween - Halloween, Alaska from s/t Cloudy, moody synthesizers give way to an atmosphere of small-town calm and nostalgia. The vocal track floats over a listless heartbeat, and cool air streams in through a window you wish you could escape through. Sit back, relax, let Halloween, Alaska give you their unique view of being stationary while everything moves much, much too fast. "Someone told me / you came home last Halloween / but it couldn't be you / you had a mask I haven't seen."

19. Fried My Little Brains - The Kills from Keep On Your Mean Side To understand the Kills, I really think you have to see them live, careening into each other, twitching and flailing and kissing and working out every inch of nervous energy in the room. But short of that, there's "Fried My Little Brains", a song about (guess what!?) drugs, but, more importantly, a juke-joint masterpiece of dirty guitars and intangible snark.

20. The Impression That I Get - The Mighty Mighty Bosstones from Live at the Middle East Remember the late 90's ska revival? Remember this song on the radio? Yeah, me too. That was cool.

Posted by Jim Walsh at January 16, 2006 2:13 PM | Comments (0)

 

Universe Speaks, Random Mixer Writes

Filed under: Weekly 20

God bless my Artist Of The Year for his "honest to Christ, honest to Christ" performance last week, and God bless Mary Lucia for having me on to talk MUSIC a few days ago.

It's Sunday night and I'm gonna let the iPod godz shuffle and verily I say unto you that for this week's mix (1/9/06) I will write about whatever comes up, sorta like automatic writing or messages from the grave (luvs, I now feel comfortable enough with you to confess that my 8th grade science project at Annunciation was "Communication With The Dead"; I got a 'B' and some weird looks), only not like that at all. Here goes nothing. Play, shuffle…

1. "Magia," Pilar Montenegro. What a wretched song. What can I tell you? After my basketball squad, the Pearl Carrots, got throttled by McCrae 40-12, and after post-game tacos on Saturday, I bought a bitchin' shirt from El Primo on Lake Street. Black, all polyester, with an embroidered Our Lady Of Guadalupe stitched on the breast and back. The woman at the counter spoke no English, and my Spanish is rusty, but I'm pretty sure she said, "With this you are officially the most handsome bad-ass gringo in town." Caliente!

2. "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down," The Band. First time I heard this was at the free stage at the State Fair in about 1974. My pal Rick Schreiber and I decided we were going to bring only five dollars to the Fair, and do all the free stuff. Big mistake. We never got to the Midway, but we ate our bag lunches and sat through a cover band that introduced us to The Band. Priceless, brother.

3. "If Not Here," Michelle Shocked. A stunner. One soul baring all to another, about trying to walk the line, and resting in peace on earth in a lover's arms: "If not here, then where?"

4. "Stupid Girl," The Rolling Stones. Nick Hornby was recently asked, "Let It Bleed or Sticky Fingers?" Dude should have answered, "Aftermath."

5. "Kill Your Television," Ned's Atomic Dustbin. Good idea, crap song. Delete. I'd rather listen to something my old pal Jim Peterson sent me ��" Little Steven or "Miami" Steve talking about the legacy of "Howl."

6. "Crowded In The Wings," The Jayhawks. Beautiful tune; it always takes me back to 35W in Texas years ago, driving 100 miles an hour all by my happy lonesome self down to SXSW. Makes me think about Terri Sutton and Dave Paulson and campfires and Summit and the old City Pages offices and this ratty motel I stayed in in Oklahoma City and I'm pretty sure I'm going back this year, because Neil Young's gonna be there.

7. "Art Lover," The Kinks. Nabokov and Humbert Humbert had nothing on Ray Davies, the dirty bastard.

8. "I Met A Girl," Wheat. So full of wanderlust and reverence for femme-mystery and romantic love, I never get sick of it, or the T-shirt, or when it's on the radio, coming out of that Yeah Yeah Yeah's "they don't love you like I love you" deal.

9. "I Try," Macy Gray. Never gets old. Always rips me up. "I try to keep my cool," she says, but instead here she is, singing like the caged bird who just met her match. Ang Lee or Jane Smiley reference here.

10. "Jesus On The Radio," Guster. Goddamn January. It starts out with all that new-firing energy, and at some point, like last night, you get reminded that you're stuck with yourself. Same old me, different day. Why bother? Why bleed or feed or try to do anything? Why not just go away, close up shop…

11. "Wonderland," Eliza Gilkyson. "Take off your old coat, take off your dark cloud, shake off your reservations, come play with me/I don't need promises or happily-ever-after maybes/I just want your sweet kisses/Hey, don't you know what this is, baby?" Yes! Yes! Yes! "This is wonderland!" Thank you, baby; I needed that. Oh, and nothing says Minnesota winter like my friend Craig on a frozen lake near Cass Lake. With the families. Sub-zero. Looking at the stars. Drinking chilled Jagermeister And me with my new camera. Cheers:

12. "Urban Guerilla," The Suburbs. From Big Hits Of Mid-America, Vol. II. Words to live by: "Fuck that poetry, you gotta fight for it."

13. "Caravan," Nick Heyward. From From Sunday To Monday, a blast of Brit boy-pop. Dunno if Itunes or Wippit has it, but it's worth gobbling up, especially for this top-down sunny-side upper, which goes ever-so nicely with R.E.M.'s "Catapult." "She still loves to play the Jam," always reminds me of Jeaneen.

14. "When You're Old and Lonely," The Magnetic Fields. "When you're old and lonely, you'll wish you'd married me." That's just the beginning, and what follows is the dark side of the Yeats poem that goes like this.

15. "El Ciclon," La Sonora Dinamita. From Colombia, with love.

16. "Will Your Lawyer Talk To God?," Kitty Wells. Hell hath no fury like a fire-and-brimstone-and-litigious woman scorned.

17. "Mozart: Porgi amor (from Le Nozze di Figaro)," Maria Callas. I could be a good atheist. But when I see a winter, spring, fall, or summer vista or hear the sound of a voice that makes me rethink and refeel everything vis-à-vis "simple" beauty, I feel obliged to thank some one/thing for it, so I thank whatever my version of God is at the moment.

18. "Tell Me What You Want Me To Do," Charles Wright & The Watts 103rd Street Rhythm Band. Thank you, God.

19. "Milkshake," Kelis. Took the kids bowling the other night. First ball, fell flat on my face. Foot foul. Got up, glasses hanging off my nose, limping, to guffaws all around, including plenty of wildly entertained strangers. During the second game, when she got bored, my daughter's seven-year-old friend Sophia sang this to my seven-year-old daughter, complete with the "Warm it up, the boys are waiting" bit. Where's my shotgun?

20. "Freedom," Amanda Ghost & The Armchair Resistance. Almost as good as her "Idol" and "Filthy Mind." House music as release.

Posted by Jim Walsh at January 9, 2006 9:48 AM | Comments (0)

 

Happy new year, you beautiful people. This week's (1/2/06) mix:

Filed under: Weekly 20

1. "Would You Be My Friend?," Paul Kelly. Start the new year right by sending this ode to complicated friendship out to a complicated old friend.

2. "Hello January," Fishing For Comets. Itunes as used record store. Click-clack of the keyboard as the click-click of CD browsing. Hmm. Who are these guys? From Dallas. Cool acoustic guitar. Simple, sad, sweet singer. Anti-folk and ��"country that makes the coldest month of the year sound like something to be looked forward to. Sold!

2. "Don't Mistake Kindness For Weakness," Albert Collins. Tony Pucci got me drunk on vodka tonic and Schell's Snow Storm on New Year's Eve. Then I went to bed and had the. Weirdest. Dream. Ever.

I am not making this up:

I went to the White House and visited the president. He was in his robe. Laura was there, doing laundry. We sat on a tattered couch, he told me to forget about the column I came to write, talked to me about a biography of a nun he was reading, and he politely suggested I write about the commonalities we all have.

Then he lay down on me, shaman eyes rolling back in his head, and pressed his heart chakra into mine. As I left, I watched him greet people at the White House gate with that practiced tough-guy smirk, but I knew better, because I'd seen his peace-seeking inner and outer vision for '06. Blanche, you may be right: I have totally lost my mind.

3. "Fountains Of Wayne Hotline," Robbie Fulks. The smartest, funniest piece of aural rock criticism since The Mr. T Experience's "I Wrote A Book About Rock 'n' Roll" or anything by Belles Of Skin City, whom I have yet to hear, but who plenty of smart people say are great, so in them I trust.

4. "You Must Have That True Religion" and "Keep On Pushing," Mavis Staples.

5. From the new Joe Henry-produced I Believe To My Soul; here's hoping she graces us with both when she storms the Dakota this week.

6. "Can't Stop Thinking About It," The Dirtbombs. "Men are idiots; they all want what they can't have," says my neighbor Mary Beth. "Women are the same way," says me. "Shut up, you're both right," burp the Dirtbombs.

7. "Dying For More," The Wannadies. Music? Video? Nah. The secret groove of the iPod revolution is in audio books. I've spent the last couple nights listening to Thomas Mann's A Death In Venice--as precise a depiction of the human condition as has ever been put to parchment. At one point, Mann describes longing as "a lack of information," which sums it up nicely:

When I long, it's for something immeasurable, and so I pick up a book or the phone or the guitar or the headphones and start looking. Sometimes I look out the window and see snow cakes on the trees, and I'm sated until the next pang for simple beauty sails by. Speaking of which, here's a freaky photo I took the other snowy night, while walking the hound:

8. "He Was A Friend Of Mine," Willie Nelson. The old folk standard, recorded by Dylan and recast in 1963 by the Byrds as an elegy for J.F.K., is now the postscript to Brokeback Mountain as a love untold song. When I saw it the other night, much of the audience was sobbing at the song and the closing credits, not because they were trying to figure out which character they related to most��"the lover who wanted to risk everything to be together, the lover who was too afraid to make the leap, or the destroyed spouse��"but because they saw something of themselves in all three.

9. "Beast," The King Of France. From Rilke: "Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answers."

10. "Behind These Hazel Eyes," Kelly Clarkson, and "Hazel Eyes," The Darkness. Turns out 2005 was the year of the unforgettable hazel eyes, as painted by big chords and choruses.

10. "Temptation Eyes," "Sooner Or Later," and "Where Were You When I Needed You?," The Grass Roots. Lesseee, I got 'em around here somewhere... ohwhatthefuckdl. Drinking and downloading, go!

11. "Designs On You," Old 97's. From their new live one. When Rhett Miller croaks, "You can go ahead and get married, and this will be our secret thing, I won't tell anybody except at the nightclub where I sing," his voice sounds much wearier than when he recorded it nearly ten years ago, and his electric guitar sounds like a marble rolling across the floor. Only thing missing is the background sound of a jealous husband and a barroom brawl.

12. "Old Times Sake," Kathleen Edwards. Recorded from under a tent/fort of too-clean sheets.

13. "Like A Rolling Stone," Bob Dylan. Best music book of last year was Greil Marcus's Like A Rolling Stone: Bob Dylan at the Crossroads, which was nothing if not a labor of love, driven by one fan's passion to delve into the context, minutia, and heart of a single song that changed the/his world. In terms of can't-put-down rock reads of 2005, overshadowed only by Dylan's own Chronicles.

14. "A Change Is Gonna Come," Sam Cooke. Peter Guralnick once told me he thought rock critics should only write about music they like. At the time, I was writing for a daily newspaper, which necessitated I review things like Garth Brooks and Yanni, but even though I appreciate thoughtful rips and all sorts of criticism, I understood what he meant. Now more than ever, because there's so much good music out there and because Guralnick's latest The Triumph Of Sam Cooke is testament to his own credo.

15. "I Owe You," Zolof The Rock & Roll Destroyer. Despite my best efforts, these guys and gals do not yet rule the world, so I am now forced to take you by the hand and do the comparison shuffle (think Moldy Peaches meets Tulip Sweet meets Green Day meets early Queen with a bright red emo-cherry on top), and quote my favorite lyric heading into the new year: "It's not gonna be OK, but it's OK (it's OK)."

16. "Hey Ya!," Outkast. Is King Kong racist?, goes the headline. It's just a movie!, go the anti-intellectuals. Yawn. More interesting to me is the idea that it's a commentary on archaic knee-jerks, that it could easily viewed as purposefully meta-racist (see: the Amos 'n' Andy sign prominently featured in the background of the New York Cityscape), and that the voodoo savages on Skull Island are drawn so over-the-top wild so as to set up the milquetoast blackface-on-Broadway dancers at the end.

Knowingly or not, that dance was an homage to Outkast's much-criticized performance of this pow-wow hip-hop hit on the Grammys a couple years ago, which plenty of unimaginative minds similarly deemed "racist," a word which, whenever it's wielded, always strikes me as the great takes-one-to-know-one broad stroke of the arrogant/ignorant art-hating name-caller.

17. "Story Of An Artist," Daniel Johnston. Another headline recently dismissed Steven Spielberg as "Uneven Steven," which reminded me of a terrific essay I read years ago, in which the writer took to task a letter-to-the-editor for using the word "uneven" in describing a work of art. Do we really want "even" art? Not me, not never; that's why I love this ode to anybody who tries to make art in the face of all the evenness that society throws our way. M. Ward's version is cool, too.

18. "Bathtime In Clerkenwell," The Real Tuesday Weld. Wiggle wiggle wiggle. Hup, hup * + * + * + * + *

19. "Purify Me," India Aire. Slinkiest slow dance of last year, heard only by a couple of people, because it got lost on one of those dime-a-dozen soundtracks.

20. "MLK," U2. Written for the fallen civil rights leader, but on a snowy night, curled up with the headphones on, it's nothing short of a let-it-be lullaby from him to me, me to you.

Posted by Jim Walsh at January 2, 2006 11:25 AM | Comments (1)

 

On Musical Mentors, Giving Thanks, and the Dynamic Duet of Jon Hunt and Diablo Cody

Filed under: Weekly 20

Morning, luvs. It's a few days from 2006, and I'm drinking my first cup of coffee and counting my blessings after a year of loss, longing, and tons of bright spots that I make damn sure I don't forget. At the moment I'm listening to Uncle Tupelo's "Give Back The Key To My Heart" and trying to giving thanks for all sorts of things. I love writing about music; this blog has been one of the best things to happen to me this year. I hope you're digging it.

Among other things, it's helped me discover new music, which, as always, means I've discovered new portals to myself and the world, even though I admit I sometimes have to take a break from all the from-the-heart stories, all the big-picture philosophy, summaries, sermons, sadness, glee. In those times, I need to burrow in for complete quiet, away from all that to-the-boneness.

So why keep doing it? Why keep listening, and so intently, and writing about it? Simple. It's like email, or phone calls to people who've either stayed in or fallen out of your life; to share and share alike and to stay connected -- not just to my peeps, but to strangers, lovers, haters, and auld acquaintances unforgotten. Master of the obvious here, maybe, but I'm gonna have another cup and get all eulogy on you and talk about what I came here to talk about: musical mentors.

My older brother Jay, of course, was the classic mentor. His bedroom was filled with great records, and while he was working or going to the bars, I was locked in his bedroom, listening to vinyl on headphones. I'd be hard-pressed to name a better New Year's Eve than the one I spent all by my 15-year-old self in that bedroom, listening and writing in my journal until four in the morning.

My younger sister Molly has some of the greatest old-school taste you'll ever want to hear, and my younger brother Terry and his heart-of-gold passion for songwriters, bands, and the communal life that happens with live music has been equally instructive; he and his band are a jukebox that brings comfort and joy to anyone lucky enough to stumble on the party.

Yes, my fellow saps and aural-fixated suckers, I'm feeling grateful today. Mentors, teachers, there's too many name. They've come in the form of critics, fans, record store gurus, writers, deejays, musicians, bloggers, films, books, and fellow mix-makers, all of whose words, opinions, and love can enter me with the drop of a note, and put me at their side. Rodney Bingenheimer pretty much nailed it for me when he said he listens to music because "it makes me happy." I would add that "it teaches me" and "it makes me realize that whatever I'm going through, no matter how archaic or seemingly rare, there's a song for it, which proves I'm alive and not alone."

I'm sure some make fun of me behind my back for writing stuff like that, because we here in the persnickety prairie don't cotton too well to all that fooking Irish-ass bald-faced sentiment. I don't blame you, I guess; I'm guilty of some of the same suspicions about myself, because I've been trying to get a handle on it, The Big It, publicly for so many years, and it can drive a guy a little nuts. I also understand why passion or enthusiasm can get dismissed as shtick or self-parody, but I don't care. The shit still moves me like nothing else.

Lately I've been enjoying talking, casually, to old-timers about their memories of the Minneapolis underground. We've all reached an age where we appreciate what happened, and so we've been trading stories -- almost coincidentally; unplanned, unabashed and unembarrassed -- about different characters, stores, practice spaces, gigs, clubs, and the secret histories of the beginnings of what we now call the Twin Cities scene, most of which has never been written down. (Hmmm... I wonder what a new song recorded by these guys might sound like?)

Maybe it's because Karl Mueller died this year. Maybe it's because the Musicapolis exhibit sparked a brief window of nostalgia for an era that was fiercely anti-nostalgic, but nonetheless continues to reverberate. All I know is I'm not taking much for granted these days. Here's a great piece from the L.A. Weekly from a few years ago that I saved; it still sings today.

All of which is to say I'm determined to continue counting my blessings -- which I suppose has been a theme in my writing since the start; it would be a relief if I could finally quit writing about it and just do it, whether it be my luck to find myself coaching a bunch of great kids in basketball, or that I get to write for a living, or the fact that I have all sorts of love in my life, or the fact that people are listening to, discussing, and making music more than ever, which can only be good for this fucked-up world.

Now everyone go get T. Rex's "Life's A Gas" and Macy Gray's "When I See You" right now or this is what will happen.

Weirdly, so many of my musical mentors these days are (much) younger than me, because, for the most part, they're the ones who have kept listening. Then again, there's people like my friend Susan, who's around my age and who said her book club recently morphed into a music club for a night, in which they each brought a couple tracks to play for each other. This is what they came up with:

Linda

"Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered," Cole Porter. "In Love Again," Stacey Kent. "Everytime We Say Goodbye," Silje Nergaard; "Everytime we say good bye, I die a little..."

Jo

"Ramblin' On My Mind," Robert Johnson

Kimberly

"Here Comes The Sun," Richie Havens.
April

"Gorecki Symphony III," London Symphony. "Cvaldo," Bjork.

Peggy

"Se ilden lyse," Sissel Kyrkjebø. "The song is from 1994 and is a love song between people and with the Norwegian land. It is also cleverly disguised as an invitation to the Olympic Games. A lot can be read into the lyrics and the English translation does not do the song justice."

Ann

"The Rising," Bruce Springsteen, and "My Baby Loves a Bunch of Authors," Moxy Fruvous.

Maelene

"Duvemala Hage" and "Min Lust Till Dej," from the musical "Kristina Fran Duvemala." "The music is by Benny Andersson and the words are by Bjorn Ulvaeus (both of ABBA fame)."

Marianne

"Imagine," John Lennon, "Shelter From the Storm," Bob Dylan, "Gettin' Ready," the Temptations.

Susan

"The Wheel," Rosanne Cash, "Somewhere Over The Rainbow," Israel Kamakawiwo'ole, "Extraordinary," Liz Phair.

* * *

So, yes. I'm thankful for them, and others. Conrad may have said it best in accepting his Minnesota Music Hall Of Fame award at the Minnesota Music Awards this year, something about how lucky he feels to work at a place and live in a town where people actually go out and pay money to hear live music.

Count me in. I'm particularly grateful for ravenous musicheads Jon Hunt and Diablo Cody (above), this week's guest Walshfilers. They're a husband-wife team, and what follows is a beautiful duet. Take it away, lovebirds:

1. "Chinese Rocks," Richard Hell. When I tire of baroque flourishes, synth bleeps, ABBA samples and other affectations of modern rock, I cue up this nostalgic palate cleanser. Ugly guitars, Hell's adenoidal whine, and straightforward lyrics about selling your "best things" for heroin are as comforting to ex-punks as mac n' cheese. "Boy the way the the Voidoids played…songs that made the Hit Parade…those were the days!" (DC)

2. "Hazel Eyes," The Darkness. I'm sorry, the Darkness are great. No -- no, you misheard, I didn't say "the worst band in the history of mankind," believe it or not, I said they're great. And I'm not even saying that "ironically" or "sarcastically" -- I understand that there's a layer of joke, and above that a layer of earnestness, and above that another layer of joke, and then possibly topped off with a nice whipped topping of "we mean it, man," but I don't care. There's a way of looking at their music where its just the coolest, most fist-pumping-est hard rock that anyone's done since grunge supposedly did away with this style of metal. "Hazel
Eyes" is the ponciest tubthumper all year, and if the chorus to this song fails to move you, you need to put away the Arcade Fire records, dig up a couple old Van Halen records, and rediscover why it is you listen to rock music again. (JBH)

3. "Jesus was a Crossmaker," Judee Sill. The obscure, now-deceased Sill sounds eerily like Liz Phair to these ears. Her tomboy twang and excellent songcraft are addictive. (DC)

4. "The Blues are Still Blue," Belle and Sebastian. In which the Scottish wimpsters find their inner glam-rockers. Over a shuffle lick that would do Slade proud, Stuart Murdoch spins a sardonic tale of reuniting with his woman, and how, when he does, he's likely still gonna be pretty damn depressed, all told. Far from sounding dour, however, he sounds pretty damn sexy -- and yes, that's possibly the first time the word "sexy" has been used in conjunction with Belle and Sebastian who are usually the ultimate Record Shop Guy band, but this time they muster it. He purrs the damn song, and the rest of the band manages to buoy him up with some gorgeous confectionary harmonies. Even people who hate B&S have liked this when I've played it for 'em. PS: yep, its off their as-yet-unreleased album, but its out there. You know what I mean. (JBH)

5. "Dance Dance," Fallout Boy. A few zillion iTunes customers can't be
wrong. Fallout Boy are never quite as awesome as I want them to be, but this song nudges greatness. (DC)

6. "Something in 4/4 Time," Daryl Hall. This one is just plain batshit crazy. A friend of mine in England sent this to me -- this is off his "Sacred Songs" LP, which was produced by Robert Fripp. Yes, THAT Robert Fripp, King Crimson guitar wizard, and yes, it absolutely sounds like it. Forget everything you think you know about Daryl Hall, except the bits about how freaking great his voice sounds even on the most dire '80s song you can think of -- this is one of the strangest
songs you'll hear thisyear. It veers between sounding like prime-era Billy Joel to sounding likea very Berlin-ish Bowie to sounding like, well, King Crimson, especially on the cryptic, modal guitar break. It's pop, but its the kind of angular pop that would evolve into New Wave in just a few years' time. The entire album is just this odd, an avant garde blast from a guy whose career could have gone entirely differently. (JBH)

7. "First-Time Mother's Joy," Mercury Rev. I don't normally listen to music this aggressively gentle (oxymoron?) but Mercury Rev is like a cup of warm Ovaltine after an afternoon astride the toboggan. (DC)

8. "The Lamb Ran Away With The Crown," Judee Sill. Discovering Judee this year was absolutely a revelation. She combines pretty much all my musical genres of interest: country, folk, chamber pop, sunshine pop -- and does so with a sort of emotional weight that eludes even some of her most accomplished contemporaries. "Lamb" is Judee to the max -- a lilting melody, an incredibly dark and surreal lyric that hints at deep, unresolved demons, baroque instrumental breaks, a delicious arrangement and a gorgeous stacked harmony choir at the end. This is one of those mystifying records that makes you wonder what's so god-damn wrong with the world that kept this from being a massive worldwide hit. In an alternate universe, she has Joni Mitchell's career. (JBH)

9. "White Houses," Vanessa Carlton. This breathless single from Carlton's flop Harmonium is staler than a McDonald's crouton. I think it was released like, a year ago. And yet, I suspect the rich man's Michelle Branch didn't get a fair shake the first time out. In this climate of antiseptic Lohan-pop, Carlton plays con brio. Not only does this song have the energy and panache of an early Billy Joel hit, the lyrics were honest enough to get censored by MTV. (Carlton wasn't allowed to say "blood" in reference to losing her virginity.) (DC)

10. "Chicago," Sufjan Stevens. I feel like the last guy on earth to discover Sufjan. It's like there was this really great party and I arrived only after all the beer had been drunk and half the crowd had passed out. Nevertheless, this song knocked me for a loop the first time I heard it. I was kind of idly flipping through the record in someone else's iTunes queue at work, and working while I was going, and then BAM! Like a bolt out of the blue, straight to the heart. I'm pretty sure there were a few tears welling up. I remember going back and listening again, to make sure I was really hearing what I was hearing, and then again, and then again. I remember smiling broadly and emailing everybody I knew to tell them how they needed to buy this right away. And even still the part where he talks about crying in the van with his friend for freedom hits me like
a ton of emotional bricks. (JBH)

11. "All I Want for Christmas is You," Mariah Carey. In the year of the Mariah comeback, who can resist this evergreen? Y'all can laugh, but M.C. is so convincingly ebullient on this track that few can resist it. (DC)

12. "Blue Monk," Thelonious Monk and John Coltrane. This is from that newly discovered "at Carnegie Hall" concert, and wow, what a stunner. For non-jazz-fans, its like this: imagine that the very best Beatles record of all time, better than White Album, better than Sgt. Pepper, has been sitting in a vault in the basement of Abbey Road with a label on it that says "record." A staggering, magnificent album, and this song boasts possibly the greatest Coltrane solo of all time. I'm sure somebody would like to beat me up for saying that, but there it is. (JBH)

13. "Jingle Bells," Esquivel. More random zoots and dweets than you can shake a candy cane at. Refreshingly un-Christmasy! (DC)

14. "The Four Horsemen," Aphrodite's Child. The best thing about running an "obscure 60s music" website is that people constantly send me some of the most absolutely insane music ever made, knowing full well that I'm going to freak out over it. Aphrodite's Child were a Greek psych/prog band from the early 70s, featuring as their main member one Vangelis, later the author of the stirring and much-parodied "Chariots of Fire" music. This ain't no new wave, though. Its a freaky-to-the-core concept album about the book of Revelations featuring appropriately apocalyptic and powerful music. Track it down. Its literally like nothing you've heard. (JBH)

15. "Out Tonight," Rent Original Broadway Soundtrack. I haven't heard the new movie version sung by Rosario Dawson, but the old-skool 1996 recording always prompts me to strike ridiculous feline poses and meow like a tabby in heat. Too bad I don't live "in a city of neon and chrome." More like Freon and snow. Or something. (DC)

16. "I Found Love," the Free Design. A meaningful find for me this year was the Free Design, a band so impossibly good I can still hardly believe they exist. My wife finds them horrifyingly twee, but there's something about the delicate sweetness of their music that tugs that one particular heartstring reserved for Stuff I Used To Love As A Child. "I Found Love" is so fully the great lost song of the 60s. Lilting and sweet, every bit as delicious as those first few moments of being in love, or the way a smile looks on a child, or the way dandelion fluff blows in the wind, and no, I am not kidding. If you haven't treated yourself to the Free Design yet, do yourself a favor. (JBH)

17. "Luxurious," Gwen Stefani. This unabashed "Big Poppa" biter scrolls through my head at maddeningly frequent intervals. Best lyric: Old-fashioned girl Gwen includes "growing old with hubby" on a list of her most-coveted luxuries. Hey, who sneaked family values into my empty ode to materialism? (DC)

18. "What A Wonderful Man," My Morning Jacket. I spent so long hating My Morning Jacket for being second-rate Neil Young rip-off artists that I failed to notice them morphing into the blasted Flaming Lips. The entire "Z" record, produced magnificently by John Leckie, is a killer psych-pop slab, but this song is just a stone blast. Fun, loud, dumb and absolutely melodic. Who the hell knew they had it in 'em? (JBH)

19. "Beat of My Heart," Hilary Duff. Ignore the fact that the melody is comically simple and the lyrics are unbelievably repetitive. This song is really quite brilliant in its crudeness. Take a shot of apple Pucker every time Hil says "beat" and you'll be bound for the ICU in no time! (DC)

Posted by Jim Walsh at December 26, 2005 9:58 AM | Comments (0)

 

This week's (12/19) playlist:

Filed under: Weekly 20

1. "Sometimes I Feel Like A Motherless Child," Louie Armstrong. Some days more than others.

2. "Western Skyline," Richmond Fontaine. There was blood, and glass... but that's not where the story ends.

3. "Orphan Girl," Gillian Welch. Shh, baby. Listen. A whisper-twang from a motherless/fatherless/siblingless heroine who reminds all would-be lost holiday souls, YOU ARE NOT ALONE.

4. "The One," Oh Susanna. Depending on when it hits you, this is either a declaration of buried love, a melancholy melodrama on the miracle of unlived lives (i.e., the female Brokeback Mountain), or a fixed-stare prayer that concludes, "I won't let go of your beating breast till the world decides that it's time I rest/And through the night of deepest black, I will walk beside the one who brings the light."

5. "The Christmas Song," The Raveonettes. Seems like everyone I know wants to quit their job, start something new, find that perfect oasis where they're understood and given the freedom to explore their organic gifts, their hidden talents, their true genius, and are provided with a canvas on which to bestow their pearls of wisdom without having their fragile spirit and ideas crushed at every turn. Then there's this, and all those wanderlusty bells, and all the pagan-ritual lights on the trees and houses, and all that beautiful mistletoe and snow, and that's all she wrote.

6. "p.s.," Film School. A lazy-taut organ, a lolling snare, a Velvets riff, and a poet's out that insists, "Don't confuse me with my confessions."

7. "Hippy Hippy Shake," The Beatles. Tough to pick one highlight from First Avenue's 35th anniversary bash--Craig Finn riffing on John Berryman ("Washington Avenue Bridge," anyone?) and cameoing with the Doomtreers and Jessy Green; the Mofos and Rifle Sport holding court in the Entry with old-school impudence; the dude (I could have been having a senior moment, but was that Wilbur from Wilma and the Wilburs?) running around getting all sorts of characters to sign his autograph jacket, hundreds of cellphone-photogs and digital shooters capturing the moments. But this one, by Curtiss A was nothing short of transcendent, as was his soft sha-la-la-la reading of "Baby, It's You" a few minutes later. Here's a photo of Bill Batson, Cindy Lawson, and Randy Weiss, courtesy of Jay Smiley.

8. "It's Alright Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)," Bob Dylan. If I hadn't gotten lost at dusk in Southern Minnesota ("2-18, it's a lonely road," indeed), I wouldn't have born witness to the snow drifting across the highway, the wind howling and the slowly spinning futuristic windmills out the window, or heard Mary Lucia outro this guitar-fried blues epic "about" pretty much everything that matters these days and yesterday with a genuinely gobsmacked and so right-on, "That is so good, it's SICK." Like the bumpersticker says: All who wander aren't lost. Or sick.

9. "Pheromone," Prince. Take a whiff, from Diane Ackerman's A Natural History Of The Senses: "Pheromones are the pack animals of desire (from Greek, pherein, to carry, and horman, excite). Animals, like us, not only have distinctive odors, they also have powerfully effective pheromones, which trigger other animals into ovulation and courtship, or establish hierarchies of influence and power.

"Sometimes messages can't be merely immediate, they need to last over time, and yet be a constant signal, like a lighthouse guiding animals through the breakwaters of their uncertainty. Most smells will glow for a while, where a wink may vanish before it's seen, a flexed muscle imply too many things, a voice startle or threaten. For an animal who is prey, the odor of its hunter will warn it; for the hunter, the odor of its prey will lure it."

10. "Castanets," Alejandro Escovedo and "Wonderful Ass," Prince. Happy holidays.

11. "At The Department Of Lost Songs," Jens Lekman. Not even his own irrepressible cute-cleverness can sabotage the wonder that lies at the heart of this small little song about small little songs.

12. "Soul Meets Body," Death Cab For Cutie. Before there was this, there was this:

Song
By Alan Ginsberg

The weight of the world
is love.
Under the burden
of solitude,
under the burden
of dissatisfaction

the weight,
the weight we carry
is love.

Who can deny?
In dreams
it touches
the body,
in thought
constructs
a miracle,
in imagination
anguishes
till born
in human--

looks out of the heart
burning with purity-
for the burden of life
is love,
but we carry the weight
wearily,
and so must rest
in the arms of love
at last,
must rest in the arms
of love.

No rest
without love,
no sleep
without dreams
of love--
be mad or chill
obsessed with angels
or machines,
the final wish
is love
--cannot be bitter,
cannot deny,
cannot withhold
if denied:

the weight is too heavy

--must give
for no return
as thought
is given
in solitude
in all the excellence
of its excess.

The warm bodies
shine together
in the darkness,
the hand moves
to the center
of the flesh,
the skin trembles
in happiness
and the soul comes
joyful to the eye--

yes, yes,
that's what
I wanted,
I always wanted,
I always wanted,
to return
to the body
where I was born.

13. "All That I Had," Paul Westerberg. A coda of sorts to "Things," but this time he shucks off worldly possessions and old acquaintances, like the peaceful boat-working wiseman at the end of Siddhartha, and finds himself feeling strangely fine. Good for him.

14. "Hey You," Tommy Stinson. Speaking of wise 'mats.

15. "Conceived," Beth Orton. Can I can keep your dream alive? Can I keep it with mine? Do you still hold me at night? These are her questions. Answers: yes, yes, yes; lilting voice; hopeful mandolin (harp?); after-life melody.

16. "Where Have All The Average People Gone?," Roger Miller. A whistling man, making his way down the road, wondering if/where he fits in, and if there are any sane souls left in the world. A 35-year-old song that shuffles in nicely with any blank you care to fill in today.

17. "Comfortable," James McMurtry. My big sister Minnow keeps telling me I should read The Comfort Trap, but I'm getting bored with my own restlessness, and I'd rather listen to this, a ballad that nicely balances the agony and ecstasy of the cage, back-to-back with Tom Waits' "What's He Building In There?" and Steve Earle's "The Week Of Living Dangerously," or the Walsh Brothers' "(I'm A Walking Talking) Cautionary Tale."

18. "Christmas Present," The Rocket Summer. A crazy-gifted young man plays his acoustic guitar outside his beloved's window, hoping she'll unwrap him before morning. Best Christmas song of the year; then again, I could be totally wrong.

19. "Mary The Blessed," Dirty Martini. Hard to resist anything this wistful/playful, or anything that rhymes "Claire de Lune" with "shoot the moon."

20. "Virgin de Guadalupe," Niobe; "Hymn To Mary," Beth Nielsen Chapman; "Mother Of God," Patty Griffin; "I Summon You," Spoon; "Mary," Lou Barlow; "Mary, Queen of Arkansas," Bruce Springsteen; "Requiem," Eliza Gilkyson; "Our Lady Of Arturo," Ike Reilly; "God Save The Queen," Sex Pistols.

For Mexicans and Mexican-Americans, the biggest religious holiday of the year--bigger than Christmas, even--is The Feast Of Our Lady Of Guadalupe. As Catholic legend has it, the Virgin Mary appeared to the peasant Juan Diego several times in December, 1531 on the outskirts of Mexico City. Over the centuries, the apparitions have inspired all sorts of artworks and churches, and, most recently, a new shrine in La Crosse, Wisconsin, which is scheduled for completion in 2007.

I went to take a look last week. For the time being, the site now boasts a working church, a gift shop (custom-made Guadalupe Christmas tree ornaments: $40), an impressive votive-candle chapel where you can light a candle for one week for $10), and a restaurant (catering available), but no Guadalupe artifacts, shrouds, pieces of flesh, or other such relics that give a shrine its sizzle.

Yeah, it's difficult to believe many pilgrims would make the trip to such an ordinary place of worship, but business should pick up after word gets out that Our Lady appeared to me in the woods behind the church on December 9, 2005. She was wearing a black cashmere sweater, black tights, a black and white plaid skirt, black boots, and a white veil on her head. She was smoking a cigarette, looking out at the fresh snow-dappled horizon, and thumbing through Donald Miller's Searching For God Knows What and Rob Brezsny's Pronoia Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings.

I was surprised, because I'd always half-thought that visions like the one Diego and Bernadette and I had were the product of vivid imaginations hungry for a sign, any sign, of grace in this God-forsaken world.

We didn't talk long. She said she liked my new Celtic cross medal. I told her it keeps me close to her and helps keep the vampires away. She asked if I'd stopped in at the La Crosse lager brewery off Hwy 61, and said Mary Magdalene sometimes appears to people there ("I love that girl, she was nothing but good for my boy; have you heard Ryan Adams's 'Hallelujah?'").

She asked me why I came, and I told her I can relate to the Brendan Benson song that starts, "Well I don't know what I'm looking for/But I know that I just wanna look some more/And I won't be satisfied/'Till there's nothing left that I haven't tried/For some people it's an easy choice/ But for me there's a devil and an angel's voice."

I told her the church is beautiful (I took pictures), and that I'm a sucker for stained-glass and candles and statues, but that I felt closer to her, you, me, god, what-have-you up in the woods (I took pictures), away from all the other pilgrims, digging the snow, trees, and birds (I took pictures). I told her it's like Neil Young said in this month's Esquire:

"When I was six, I really didn't know what God was. But I did know about Sunday school. I was reading a lot about God, but I was bored. I couldn't wait to get out of Sunday school. God was secondary to the whole thing. But as time went by, I got more and more angry, to the point where I didn't like religion. Hate is such a strong word. But I just kept getting angrier and angrier… until finally I wasn't angry anymore. I was just peaceful, because I thought: This is not fruitful for me. I rejected the whole thing and found peace in paganism. Jesus didn't go to church. I went way back before Jesus. Back to the forest, to the wheat fields, to the river, to the ocean. I go where the wind is. That's my church."

She quoted the mystics and Diablo Cody, who recently concluded, "If God can be found at a themed hotel in Sin City, I guess God can be found anywhere," and gave me this parting "same ol' same ol'" message to pass on to anyone who happens to happen upon it here:

"Peace. Unconditional love. Look out for each other. Don't hurt each other. Listen to your heart. Merry Christmas."

Posted by Jim Walsh at December 19, 2005 10:52 AM | Comments (1)

 

Henry Heyer-Walsh's top twenty must-have songs of the week

Filed under: Weekly 20

This is the best thing I read this weekend. Harold Pinter's acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize. To my mind, it should have been plastered on the front page of every newspaper in the country the day after he gave it, but the country does not live in my mind. It's a long, wise rant on Americans' head-in-the-sand addiction to comfort and what it has gotten us and the world into, but that's too easy. Here's an excerpt:

"A writer's life is a highly vulnerable, almost naked activity. We don't have to weep about that. The writer makes his choice and is stuck with it. But it is true to say that you are open to all the winds, some of them icy indeed. You are out on your own, out on a limb. You find no shelter, no protection--unless you lie--in which case of course you have constructed your own protection and, it could be argued, become a politician."

This is the most beautiful thing I saw this weekend.

This is the song I've had on my mind since Saturday: "Richard Pryor Addresses A Tearful Nation," Joe Henry.

This week's (12/12) playlist and comments comes courtesy of ten-year-old Henry Heyer-Walsh. Take it away, Bud:

1. "Jingle Bells (Single Mix)," Crazy Frog. This song makes me happy because it's a lot a happier version of "Jingle Bells."

2. "Jesus Walks," Kanye West. I've always liked and it's with cool riffs and it's just a cool song.

3. "Lonely," Akon. My sister gets all sad when she hears this song, she cries because it sounds like a poor little mouse praying for its life and I think it's like that too (poor mousie).

4. "Chocolate," Snow Patrol. This song makes me happy because it's not like a poor little mousie praying for it's life

5. "Wicked And Weird," Buck 65. My dad turned me on to this song, he has a lot of songs by Buck.

6. "Turn It Up," Perfect. This song just sounds PERFECT.

7. "Helena," My Chemical Romance. This song has a great music video, not that that matters but I like this song.

8. "I'm Sprung," T-Pain. This song almost goes slow but on www.miniclip.com it's a song they are advertising for a cell phone ring tone.

9. "Tubular Bells (Theme from "The Exorcist")," Mike Oldfield. This song most people will remember from "The Exorcist" theme. I like it because it has beautiful sounding bells.

10. "Life Less Ordinary," Carbon Leaf. I heard this song too much on cities 97 and I needed to know what this song is.

11. "What About Everything?" Carbon Leaf. I have no idea how I got in touch with this song. I think I like it because Zero (my dog) likes it.

12. "Laffy Taffy," D4L. This was also a ring tone from www.miniclip.com that was being advertised.

13. "Warning," Green Day. For this song, I'm just gonna say, "I'm attached to Green Day!"

14. "Basket Case," Green Day. The same thing goes for this song "I HEART GREEN DAY!!!!!!"

15. "When I Come Around," Green Day. My dad and two of my friends went to the concert and we heard this song. The concert was good because I got to go with my dad and Sam and Billy and we had a party and we filled up on Dew before we went. When Green Day came on stage it blew my eardrums. I couldn't hear myself because the crowd was so loud. I forgot what he said about Mr. Prez but he said "you can call me A** hole."

16. "No News Is Good News," New Found Glory. I like how the singer kinda yells.

17. "Singing in My Sleep," Semisonic. I know Dan Wilson. He's a good friend of my daddy's. This song actually puts me to sleep (I think it tries to taunt me!)

18. "Blue Orchid," The White Stripes. When I first heard this song I went crazy for some reason.

19. "Starfish and Coffee," Prince. The song makes me hungry

20. "Another One Rides the Bus," "Weird Al" Yankovic. This song really freaks me out man!!!!!!!!!!!! No wonder they called him "weird."

I have no idea why I want to do this but if you would like to find some fun on the Internet here are some websites you should visit. If you are a parent reading it tell your child! Please.

1. Miniclip
2. JibJab
3. Homestar Runner
4. ArcadeTown
5. Game Arcade
6. Pogo
7. Daily Show
8. Super Arcade
9. Postopia

Check those out!

Posted by Jim Walsh at December 12, 2005 9:42 AM | Comments (0)

 

Jim Walsh's weekly (Monday) mix of 20 (or so) must-have (or get 'em whenever you get time) tunes. And yes, I really do make these mixes and listen to 'em as I write. This week's mix (12/06):

Filed under: Weekly 20

1. "City Lights," "Hundred Dollar Bill," "Rocketship," etc., Dylan Hicks. Here begins the campaign to draft this ace songwriter-slash-writer up on stage to sing a couple of his much-missed tunes at First Avenue's 35th anniversary party next week. If you agree, tell him yourself at dhicks@citypages.com. A guy can dream, can't he?

2. "Sad and Beautiful World," Sparklehorse. Just got back from walking the dogs. The city is dark and quiet, under the first blanket of snow. The creek, lakes, and river are starting to ice up. Helped out at a funeral today. Coffee, cakes, wraps, penne pasta, coats, scarves. An old friend sent a crate of mandarin oranges from an organic farm in California. The sticker on the box reads "Protect From Freezing," but doesn't say how.

3. "Dignity and Shame," Crooked Fingers. I read somewhere that when you're in your teens, change is like putting on a new pair of jeans; as you get older, change is like turning a big ship. This is the sound of the creak of the vast vessel, cutting through the waves.

4. "Change," Tracy Chapman. A song about turning points that turns into a turning point itself. For the listener to be in its presence and ignore its lessons, is to not even hear the fucking song, not even be of the same species as her, and to thine own true self be untrue.

5. "I Will Keep The Bad Things From You," The Damnwells. I will sleep above the covers, I will love you like no other," sings the knight in shining armor just before the fall, then he turns his notebook page-so quietly/clearly you can almost hear the studio couch and beer at his side-to a new chapter.

6. "Paradise With You," Hot Club Of Cowtown. Best durn love song I've heard in a coon's age, from the soundtrack to Four Dead Batteries.

7. "This Time Isn't One Of Those," Vigilantes Of Love. The Beatitudes (acoustic version).

8. "I Envy The Wind," Lucinda Williams. Not to mention all those lucky-ass snowflakes.

9. "Northwest Airlines," Wesley Willis. What happens to all those mechanics holding signs on the side of the freeway that read, "You're Next" when the temperature goes below zero?

10. "Hung Up," Madonna. Like Brianna said, if you can't dance to this-even on the inside, even just a little bit-you're fucking dead.

11. "You and Me," Her Space Holiday. The fetal-going chump-guy gets the worst of it in this break-up tune, but maybe that's just me: It's hard to hear him over the voice-over in my head, from Rob in High Fidelity: "What came first, the music or the misery? People worry about kids playing with guns, or watching violent videos, that some sort of culture of violence will take them over. Nobody worries about kids listening to thousands, literally thousands of songs about heartbreak, rejection, pain, misery and loss. Did I listen to pop music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to pop music?"

12. "You Make My Heart Beat Too Fast," Buddy and Julie Miller. Keefish guitar riff + plainspoken lust + Julie moaning "c'mon baby, take me to school" = a blurry beacon that shines with the same promise as the White Stripes' "We Are Gonna Be Friends."

13. "Blank Husband Epidemic," Of Montreal. Unhappy aunts and uncles! Unsuccessful men! Restless-hearted women! A ditty! A happy ending!

14. "Living In The Moment," Mason Jennings; "Moment In The Sun," Clem Snide; "Moment," Zolof The Rock 'n' Roll Destroyer; "Be Here Now," Oasis. Eighty-six-year-old poet and City Lights bookstore founder Lawrence Ferlinghetti in the New York Times magazine: "In the 60's, there was a famous slogan, 'Be Here Now,' which in fact was a best-selling book by Ram Dass. Today, with the cell phones, the fax, the Internet, the whole schmear--the slogan you have today is 'Be Somewhere Else Now.'"

15. "Throw Down Your Arms," Sinead O'Connor. The high-priestess, clad in priest frock and crucifix around her neck, speaking for all the First Avenue sinners and good souls fighting to be better, stronger, purer: "If we can't be good, we'll be careful and do the best we can."

16. "In Case We Die," Amy Nelson. A carpe diem waltz that makes the most of the end-of-the-affair moment, recasts the romantic melodrama with smart-ass humor, but never can say goodbye.

17. "Guitar Strings and Foolish Things," Cash Brothers. Nostalgia as Band-aid.

18. "Apply Some Pressure," Maximo Park. What happens when you lose everything? You start over again.

19. "I Gotta Run," Everybody Else. For the full story, don't listen to the little boy-bluster that says, "I don't miss you," "I don't want to see you," and "I'm done." Listen to the guitar gently weeping, and the sing-songy break when he pep-talks himself into his new way of being, "He don't love you like I do, but I can't chase you anymore today."

20. "For Everyman," Jackson Browne. Those much-hyped "noise cancelling" headphones suck. I know; I tried 'em, and I could still hear the Bose store clerks hawking home entertainment systems. Call me crazy, but for $300 you should get a head-hermitage that takes you away with as much hush as this ode to outsiderdom/self-spirituality, from Jackson's new live one.

This week's guest Walshfilers:

Gary Louris: "Everybody's Happy Nowadays," The Buzzcocks. "Philosophical punk rock, but mainly just 'cos. It was that or 'Nothing Compares to U' by Sinead or 'Get Back In the Line' by the Kinks or 'The Kiss' by Judee Sill. Screw it. I think I will pick 'Astronomy Domine' by Pink Floyd, because I love Syd. Syd and Skip Spence should have ruled the world, let's face it."

Marc Perlman: "Let It Be," Gladys Knight & the Pips. "You may find yourself someday a prefabricated American Idol runner-up or last year's Nashville sensation. You may find even find yourself Rod Stewart. In other words, you may find yourself irrelevant. You never could or no longer can write your own songs. That's OK. But for god's sake, don't make anyone else's worse. In other words, leave the Beatles, Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Kris Kristofferson, etc. alone; stick with the Diane Warren and David Foster.

"Because you're too talentless and not fun enough to do covers like Hookers and Blow; or you're too talentless, uninnovative and soulless to interpret the great songs, like Joe Cocker used to (and with due credit to Denny Cordell, Leon Russell, The Grease Band and Jimmy Page). Don't, because you can't. Please.

"Because it takes more than talent. Cocker's defining of Traffic's "Feeling Alright" and The Lovin' Spoonful's "Darling Be Home Soon" was nothing compared to the sheer gall it took to completely hijack "With A Little Help From My Friends," "The Letter," and "Just Like A Woman".

"The art of interpreting classic songs is dead. It died with Cocker, Motown, Gamble and Huff. The soul singers. One of whom, a young lady with a voice that could rival Mavis Staples, along with her older brother and a couple cousins, took Paul McCartney's most emotionally recorded ballads and made it unlistenable. I don't mean unlistenable like how the Counting Crows made "Big Yellow Taxi" unlistenable for all time. I mean as great as The Beatles' version of "Let It Be" is, as much as I listen to The Beatles almost daily, I find myself skipping over theirs in favor of Gladys Knight and The Pips' version. Sacrilegious, yes, but hear what she does that today's "song interpreters" don't, the way she finds the thing that makes the song more than the songwriter: That "other" that ties our emotions to McCartney's and hers and everyone's.

"You can talk about how the Motown and Gamble and Huff/Philadelphia production style was more on top of the beat, more gospel; or about emotion was brought out in the arrangements and instrumentation--all of which is true. But what it boils down to is guts. Guts to take a song and make it yours. That's what she did with "Let It Be". Not for posterity, the way Cocker did with "With A Little Help From My Friends." But for that moment, when she was singing it, when the mic went to tape, it was all hers."

Posted by Jim Walsh at December 5, 2005 9:12 AM | Comments (0)

 

Jim Walsh's weekly (Monday) mix of 20 (or so) must-have (or get 'em whenever you get time) tunes. And yes, I really do make these mixes and listen to 'em as I write. This week's mix (11/28):

Filed under: Weekly 20

1. The Hypstrz Live at the Longhorn: The Complete Recordings, The Hypstrz. I spent the day after Thanksgiving at the Mall Of America, interviewing shoppers about Black Friday. From an easy chair at Starbucks, I watched an alternative rock band, a reggae band, and a hip-hop crew decorate the red-carpeted stage. At Hot Topic, I bought some Green Day, Guns 'n' Roses, and Ramones gifts, browsed the trashy rock chick wear, and listened to one of the store's regulars go on about how the store hasn't "sold out" yet by stocking Avril Lavigne CDs or T-shirts. I finally collapsed in a leather chair in the Bose store, and did my best to avoid eye contact with the wheezing Don Henley DVD that was trying to sell me flat-screen high-def slow-death.

It all got me thinking about what the definition of "rock 'n' roll" is in 2005, and if it even matters anymore. As the chlorine of Underwater World found its way to my critical faculties, I decided that maybe "rock 'n' roll" is in the eye of the beholder, and that it has finally coagulated into one big happy slop of rebellion and spirit and half-off with your next purchase.

Then I went home, took a nap, and went to the Turf Club.

Where there were people smoking, getting dizzy from the nicotine, and drunk on the beer and whiskey. Where there were many of the old-school '60s- and otherwise-influenced punk/rock bands representing, including Whole Lotta Loves, Man-Sized Action, Funseekers, Conquerors, Good Joe, and TVBC.

Where there were youngsters with enough sense to catch 'em while they can, and oldsters flashing back on the golden years and comparing notes on all the cool new shit they've heard on the Current, Radio K, and KFAI. Where there was former City Pages music scribe Dan Heilman, rocking like there was no today or tomorrow. Where there was Eric Eskola, with a newspaper spread out in front of him, waiting for the band to come on, reading about the new Lenny Kaye Nuggets release for kids. Where there was local rock historian Todd Mahon, taking it all in for future reference.

And there were the Hypstrz. The Batson brothers, sons of the great Minneapolis Tribune columnist Larry Batson; Johnny Haga, drummer and guiding spirit of so many bands over the years, and Randy WEISS, the nimble-fingered bass wizard who one onlooker knowingly characterized as "not human." They soared through their set with more rock forgotten than most of us have in our holsters combined��""Action Woman," "6654321," "Can't Explain," "I Can See For Miles," "Don't Look Back," "Let's Talk About Girls," "Batman," "The Ballad Of The Green Berets," "You're Gonna Miss Me," and so on and so on and so much more. I bought two T-shirts on the way out, the kind you can't get at Hot Topics, and when they blitzed "My Generation," it was recast as not an anthem of youth, but as a secret code to everyone in the room, and a warning to all who would co-opt rock's true heart: Don't try and dig what we all say.

2. "This Is To Mother You," "Black Boys On Mopeds," "Thank You For Hearing Me," "Dancing Lessons," "Throw Down Your Arms," "Hold Back The Night," "Marcus Garvey," "Nothing Compares 2 U," "Vampire," "Haunted," "Make Me A Channel Of Your Peace," "He Prayed," etc. etc. Sinead O'Connor. As far as I can recall, she hasn't sung here since Riverfest in the early '90s, and as far as I'm concerned the news that she's going to be in my town tonight is cause for celebration, the kind reserved for heads of state and Big & Rich.

But that's not happening, probably due to some flotsam backlash from her pope-rip on Saturday Night Live, which, it turns out, is an entirely reasonable reaction in these Catholic-homophobic times. Or maybe it's because she's considered a relic of the '80s, or maybe it's because she's an angry woman-child constantly trying find inner peace; never a pretty sight.

I could go on. Or, I could go on about how I think she's probably the most heart-rending singer of my generation, or talk about how she got it right when she told the Irish Times that she's attracted to journalists because, "Singers and journalists are a lot alike; we're both a little bonkers." Or I could just bask in that voice, which almost always does it's healing thing, in whatever genuflection-worthy incarnation it finds itself in, like with Sly and Robbie tonight.

3. "Thank You Friends," Big Star. Driving around on Thanksgiving Day, post-feast and -family fun, Mark Wheat perfectly played this, my favorite prayer to friends gone but not forgotten.

4. "Catalina," Bellwether. Prettiest damn song on this mix.

5. "Our Time," Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Two lovers come out of the closet and gird their loins for "the year to be hated"; the rest of us shamelessly rubberneck.

6. "Going Home," The Rolling Stones. Anyone who thinks these cats are defined by their current corporate caricature should hear the grit and grime of Aftermath (1966) and this 12-minute radio-unfriendly blues work-up, which finds the singer unspooling and experimenting with his harp, diaphragm, and word-scraps.

7. "The Littlest Birds," The Be Good Tanyas. "The littlest birds sing the prettiest songs." Chirps to live by. Here's a chirping bird��"raw, passionate, heart-on-screen--for all ages.

8. "Outdoor Type," The Lemonheads. Heard this one in my head at the dog park by the river the other day, as he and his pals romped in the Narnia-like winter woods.

9. "You Tell Me," Thea Gilmore. If you're like me, you hear Mary Lucia play this and you want to call her up and say, "You feel like that, too? Wanna go get a beer and cry in it together?" But you don't, because, after all, it's just song, and talking about it would cheapen it; the way talking to singers about singing can sometimes feel silly. So you just listen to stuff like this and understand that when Thea talks about poetry being "self-defense," she's singing for everyone who makes songs and poems their own as a way of dealing. Plus, you can do the dishes to it.

10. "Addicted," Saw Doctors. A Celtic-folk version of the Gun Club's "She's Like Heroin To Me."

11. "Mucky Fingers," Oasis. Best rock song I've heard in ages. Listen to that piano ramp-up after he sings "walk on." (Hey, Bri, when are you gonna get me that file of Liam and Noel brawling in the studio?) Hearing it over and over the past few days made me want to read something I wrote about Oasis's Minneapolis debut, which in fact was not greeted by "a line snaking its way down Hennepin," but attended by about 300 people:

St. Paul Pioneer Press (MN) October 14, 1994 Section: Express Edition: Metro Final Page: 4C Memo:WHO: Oasis with special guests King Can WHEN: 9:30 tonight WHERE: Uptown Bar, 3018 Hennepin Ave. Mpls. TICKETS: $3 CALL: 823-5704

OASIS OFFERS A BREATH OF FRESH AIR IN STAGE STYLE
Jim Walsh, Pop Music Critic

In the mate-eat-mate world of British music journalism, the weekly rock rags New Musical Express and Melody Maker vie for readers the way American tabloid sharks vie for fresh O.J. juice: be first or be last; find a darling-du-jour, hype 'em far beyond any reasonable or realistic expectations, then shoot 'em down the following week.

Not exactly a formula that ensures measured coverage, but every once in awhile those zany Brits get it right. And in a big way, almost by mistake, they've gotten Oasis right.

The one-year-old Manchester quintet (singer Liam Gallagher, guitarist Noel Gallagher, guitarist Paul Arthurs, bassist Paul McGulgan, drummer Tony McCarroll) has appeared on the cover of both NME and Melody Maker, and in short order has become a fixture in the week-to-week gossip/gig guides. And for good reason: The group's debut album "Definitely Maybe" is one of the year's most delicious rock records - a tossed salad of dirty white boys T. Rex, the Stones, the Stone Roses, Bowie, the Pistols, the Who, the Soft Boys.

And, of course, the Beatles. "Definitely Maybe" is flecked with Fab Four references - both lyrical and musical, and at a recent live gig, Liam introduced John Lennon's "I Am The Walrus" by saying, "This is a song by the best band in the world." But unlike so many pop groups who claim the Beatles as an influence, there is nothing sugary or conventional about Oasis; their sound is as raw as it is melodic, irresistible as it is derivative, but steeped firmly in the present.

And like their influences, Oasis take their mission seriously. Interviews are invariably filled with brash, bold statements that claim superiority over most of their contemporaries, and that insist that their overnight success hasn't taken them by surprise. And by all reports, their live thing (regularly and curiously described as "debauchery") isn't exactly a pull-out-all-the-stops physical rock SHOW. Instead, the band is rumored to stand, cockily, stone still on stage, eschewing between-song patter in favor of a streamlined attack that spits out ragged ballads and glam-rockers such as "Rock 'n' Roll Star," "Live Forever," "Cigarettes & Alcohol," "Supersonic," and "Married With Children."

In the classic sense of the word (and "classic" is a good word to apply to Oasis), Oasis feels like an old-fashioned singles band, the likes of which hasn't eminated from merry old England since the Jam. Yikes. The mere invocation of the name of that hallowed Britband begs a question: can Oasis make it in America? Plenty of Anglo acts - from the Smiths, to Blur, Suede, Ride, and countless other recipients of the NME-Melody Maker baptism - have been sensations in the U.K., but barely dented the larger American consciousness, not to mention charts.

Never mind that, as you read this, there's probably a line of true believers snaking its way down Hennepin Avenue in front of the Uptown Bar for the Oasis gig tonight. And never mind the fact that in July, Noel played guitar with Crazy Horse at a gig in London, cementing his band's credit in Yank heaven. The fact is, guitar rock xenophobia is alive and well and living in modern rock fans, more and more of whom subscribe to the adage "Buy American."

But if Oasis is any indication, I for one am ready for the umpteenth British invasion to storm America. Because when Liam sings, in his best Johnny Rotten-cum-Marc Bolan squawk, "You're not down with who I am/Look at you now/You're all in my hands/Tonight I'm a rock 'n' roll star," he's not boasting. He's telling it like it is, how it will be, and echoing a sentiment his hero Lennon once demanded of his world: Gimme some truth.

Copyright (c) 1994 St. Paul Pioneer Press

12. "Bad News (Don't Bother Me)," The Sugarhill Gang. Thank you for reading the Star Tribune. Thank you for reading the Star Tribune. Thank you for reading the Star Tribune. Thank you for reading the Star.

13. "Gloria," Patti Smith. Thank you for writing this, Will Hermes, but it wasn't just New York kids who fell hard for Ms. Smith. I remember driving around Lake Harriet in 1975 with some of Catholic high school buddies, and cranking the opening line, "Jesus died for someone's sins, but not mine," which garnered a nervous laugh and an "OK, buddy," from the youngest in the back seat.

Thirty years later, it sounds as dangerous as she sounds wise: "Rock 'n' roll is our cultural voice. I saw it evolve in my lifetime��"I'm gonna be 59 in December��"and it was revolutionary, in every way. It gave young people an outlet to channel all this new energy. I mean, look at what's happening in Paris right now. Part of me wishes I could just go into the streets and say, y'know, 'What the fuck? Here-here's a Marshall; here's a Strat.' That's the beauty of rock 'n' roll. It's a voice."

14. "White City," Erin McKeown. I suppose it's easy to take the Current for granted, but there was a time in this town when the radio dial was a pre-programmed pit that could've been straight out of Anywheresville. I heard Thorn play this the day after Thanksgiving as I headed to the mall, and then the dog park. The first snow was fresh on the streets, the city was beautiful, and who-the-fuck-is Erin McKeown was going on about it all.

15. "Free Your Mind and Your Ass Will Follow," Parliament-Funkadelic. Here's a cool piece on P-Funk that talks about the meaning of this battle cry; here's what Clinton told me about it a few years ago...

St. Paul Pioneer Press (MN)

December 14, 1993
Section: Express
Edition: Metro Final
Page: 8B

UNCLE JAM (STILL) WANTS YOU!//AFTER FIVE DECADES OF FIGHTING FOR OUR FREEDOM TO FUNK, PRESIDENT GEORGE CLINTON BRINGS HIS MESSAGE TO A NEW GENERATION.
Jim Walsh, Staff Writer

The first time he said it, George Clinton didn't even remember what he said. It was 1967, and his band, the Parliaments, were performing at a club in Boston called the Sugar Shack. The Parliaments came well before Clinton's trailblazing Parliament-Funkadelic collectives of the '70s; a doo-wop outfit that eschewed the genre's matching sweaters and three-piece suits of the day and opted instead for helmets, fencing masks and robes that were more in line with the era's burgeoning psychedelic movement.

The first time he said it, George Clinton was tripping on acid. The Parliaments were experimenting with a raw melange of slow, dirty blues and embryonic funk. That night at the Sugar Shack, the band was laying down an especially nasty groove that was bathed in moody minor chords and bumped along by their leader's cosmic comic-book ad-libbing and hallucinogenic-inspired beat poetry.

The first time he said it, George Clinton might well have lost it forever to the moment, were it not for an "artsy-fartsy college friend who talked to me about Nietzsche and Ayn Rand and all that stuff." The kid had made a habit of sitting in the audience at Parliaments' gigs and meticulously scribbling down verbatim passages from Clinton's improvs. After the Parliaments ended their set at the Sugar Shack, he presented Clinton with a scrap of paper. It read: "Free your mind and your ass will follow."

"To me, it was nonsensical and pseudo-philosophical, and I cracked up every time I heard myself say something like that," Clinton says by phone from his 178-acre Michigan homestead, where he lives with his wife of three years and two of his grandchildren. "Years later, I realized things flow through you that you don't even have to know what you're talking about.

"But I was like everybody else: I learned later that it does mean something. I mean, I write lyrics all the time, and I knew it had a flow to it, but it's deeper than I even thought it was. Because now, everybody thinks that was genius to be able to do a record like that. When he came up to me and said, 'This is what you said,' I believed him, because he was knowledgeable. So whatever, if he said it meant something, I thought, 'I'm gonna keep it.' "

Good thing he did. Since that fateful night, "Free Your Mind and Your Ass Will Follow" (which turned up on the seminal 1970 Funkadelic album of the same name) has become a cry of liberation in the '80s and '90s: En Vogue's cleaned-up (antiseptic?) reprise of it was a chart-topping smash last year, the Clinton-Red Hot Chili Peppers performance of it was a highlight of last year's Grammy Awards show, and it is currently invoked by rock critics and headline writers all over the world, at the clip of (and this is a modest estimate) 20 times per week.

16. "Old College Try," Mountain Goats. As durable a declaration of romantic love as it gets.

17. "The Zamboni Song," Gear Daddies. As fate would have it, two glossy publications saw fit to pay tribute to the Zamboni and the Dads who love them this week. Here's a little more ice-time from Martin Zellar...

St. Paul Pioneer Press (MN)

September 29, 2000
Section: EXPRESS
Edition: CITY
Page: 1E
Column:POP MUSIC

THE ICEMAN BUMMETH: ZELLAR'S 'ZAMBONI' IS JUST TOO DARN HOT
Jim Walsh, Staff Writer

At approximately 7:40 p.m. today at the Xcel Energy Center, as 18,000 hockey-starved Minnesotans bask in the afterglow of the first period of the first NHL game to feature a Minnesota team in seven years, another bit of history will be made.

Out of the p.a. speakers will come the sound of an acoustic guitar, a giddy-up drum beat and a shy country-rock shuffle. Beer glasses will be raised. Backsides will wiggle. Mouths will open, and the sing-along will begin.
"Well, I went down to the local arena, asked to see the manager man," sings a plaintive dreamer. "He came from his office and said, 'Son, can I help you? I looked at him and said, 'Yes, you can. Hey, I wanna drive the Zamboni. I wanna drive the Zamboni. Yes, I do."'

The song is "Zamboni," and the voice of the kid-dreamer is Martin Zellar who, as lead singer for the Gear Daddies, wrote the song in 1984 in about 15 minutes in the bedroom of his apartment in Uptown Minneapolis. It is included as a hidden track on the Gear Daddies' 1990 album "Billy's Live Bait," and, in terms of airplay, has become Zellar's most popular song. And most lucrative.

"It's made me a lot of money. A ton," says Zellar from his home in Austin, Texas, where he has lived for the past two years with his wife, Carolyn, and their two sons. "It's nuts, and it still is. I played hockey, and I sat on the bench a lot, so I did a lot of watching of the ice being cleaned."

That experience - of watching a local guy named Smokey (who is immortalized in the song) driving the Zamboni at Riverside Arena in Zellar's hometown of Austin, Minn. - has translated into something of a phenomenon, on a par with such arena rock-jock anthems as "We Are the Champions" and "Y.M.C.A."

"Zamboni" is now in regular rotation at every NHL and minor-league arena in the United States and Canada. It has been played at the NHL All-Star Game, has appeared in such films as "The Mighty Ducks" and "Mystery, Alaska" and in countless radio and television spots. Then there's the Zamboni Brothers, a novelty act that performs hockey songs exclusively, who have recorded it and adopted it as their theme song.

Ironically enough, Zellar has had a love-hate relationship with "Zamboni." The song was a staple of Gear Daddies shows in the '80s and early '90s, but when the band split up, Zellar stopped playing it because he wanted to distance himself from the Gear Daddies. But his fans had other ideas.

"I didn't play it for a long time," he says. "I thought it would go away, and the exact opposite happened. By not playing it, it became a big deal. It became bigger than it should have, and then I had to explain 400 times a night why I wasn't doing it.

"And the older I got, the harder it was for me to remember why I wasn't doing it. I never had a problem with the song, other than I had a real fear that it was defining me. It's not that I don't like the song, it's just that for too many people, it defined me. It's in no way representative of what I do, or what I've written overall, and I just got huffy about it, like, 'I don't want to be the 'Zamboni man."'

Much of Zellar's fear stemmed from the fact that he thought of "Zamboni" as a novelty song, though it can easily be heard as more than that. On one level, it is about the universal pull of dreams. And for any kid who grew up in Minnesota watching one Zamboni or another clean a rink, the song is a tribute to that magical, mystical machine that glides over the ice and metaphorically smooths over life's rough edges.

"I loved, and still do love, watching the Zamboni," says Zellar. "There's something Zenlike about it. This rough surface, very systematically, goes from that scratched white to this gleaming sheet, strip by strip. There's a real beauty to it."

Two years ago, Zellar broke his "Zamboni" silence and started performing it again in his regular set. While he's "thrilled" at the idea of it being played at the Xcel Energy Center, he says he's not willing to sing it at a Wild game anytime soon. To him, it's still too much of a novelty song.

"I play it because you can't fight it," he says. "You know, Chuck Berry, who was one of the greatest rock 'n' roll songwriters of all time, his only top 10 hit was 'My Dingaling.' Novelty songs just catch on. And now that I know about the money in sports novelty songs, I'm gonna start working on one called 'I Wanna Be an Infield-Groomer'."

Copyright (c) 2000 St. Paul Pioneer Press

18. "That's So You," The Rocket Summer; 19. "Last Time," Ike Reilly; and 20. "Beautiful Day," U2. Don't let it get away-or, as Craig Wright put it in this terrific email essay:

TURKEY HEAVEN
By Craig Wright

It's that time again, people. Time to think about dying.

First, a couple magnificently mournful new songs by a friend came my way in an email. Then, I got an early morning phone call announcing that my brother-in-law was being rushed to the hospital after having had either a heart attack or a stroke. Third, I am haunted continually by concerns about my every ache and pain, and today is no different. Maybe even worse.

It is as if the whole world is saying to me:

We are going down. We are all going down together.

I look around. The world is silent and still, but, as Wallace Stevens wrote, "The stillness is all in the key, all of it is, the stillness is all in the key of that desolate sound."

Life as the Titanic, minus the lifeboats. Life as Flight 11. Life as, well... Death.

And yet, amidst all this credible bad news, we have before us the incredible unfailing reality of the pardoned turkeys.

This past Thanksgiving's Eve, President Bush (the American president) ceremonially "pardoned" two turkeys named, chillingly, Marshmallow and Yam. Instead of being murdered and eaten, they were featured in a parade and will now spend the rest of their lives at Disneyland with many other pardoned turkeys in a sort of Turkey Heaven.

What does this mean?

If I remember correctly, over 200 million turkeys were cooked this past Thanksgiving Day. The average American consumed 21 pounds of turkey in 2004. And America is only, need I remind you, half of the world. Do you know what that means? Do you know how many turkeys are being slaughtered, if I may be permitted to coin a term, "annuglobally?"

A lot. It's, like, a LOT.

It sucks to be a turkey on Earth.

So, to those who love a good cry, the fate of the average turkey seems like yet another fitting metaphor for the human predicament. Turkeys are systematically bred into existence, i.e., forced to live. They spend their lives making very few choices, if any, the conditions of their existence being so completely controlled by powers vaster and much more organized than they. And, though they are unaware of it, their time to die is rigorously appointed and certain.

Well, mostly certain.

Because for any given turkey, there is always a chance that he or she could be one of the two pardoned turkeys. There is always the chance that just as all a turkey's friends in the world are being force-marched up the grated ramp toward the assembly line where they will all be hung upside down and throat-slit with an electrified blade, there is always the slim, slim chance that he or she will be grabbed from the side, rushed like a football to a waiting car, driven to a large white house with a wide green lawn, cooed at, chased, kidded around with, photographed, treated like a god by dozens of babbling adorers, paraded before millions more, and finally deposited in a large, open-air facility full of happy strangers with similar stories.

There is always that chance.

And since there truly is always that chance, I'm forced to admit that I have a choice today in this world of limited choices. Faced with mournful songs of mortality, bad news from far away, and highly localized medical paranoia, I can choose to understand my life and the lives of those around me as "regular turkey lives" or "pardoned turkey lives." And while the odds seem after a casual glance to be weighed massively against the "pardoned turkey" model, all it takes is a second look to turn that beat around.

Look at it this way.

We all made it safely through nine months as zygotes and then embryos in our mother's wombs, the most dangerous place we've ever lived if you measure danger by mortality rates. We made it through the birth canal with little if any trouble. We all survived childhood and adolescence with minor scrapes. And while some lives have already ended in drunken car crashes, cancer wards, cave-ins, or on the battlefields of the world (the American world), we are still here.

We are getting emails. We are looking forward to the holiday season. We are being carried along a colorful, clangorous, culture-wide corridor, mostly by forces beyond our control. We are being smiled at, cooed at, photographed, babbled at, metaphorized, fed, stroked, and, let's be honest, loved.

We are all pardoned turkeys.

Here we are in Turkey Heaven, surrounded by survivors with similar stories. "They grabbed me at dawn on a Wednesday," says one old codger. "I thought I was a goner, for sure." Another one just spreads the love: "Hey! Beautiful day, huh? BEAUTIFUL day."

And he's right. The food is great and there's plenty of it. The weather is mostly terrific. Times are good. Screw that, times are GREAT.

Every day's a freakin' fabulous day in Turkey Heaven.

I know, I know, the end is coming, even in this Turkey Heaven. I'm no dummy. Some turkeys slow down. They stay in bed a little longer. They spend more time remembering other turkeys, old friends long gone, and less time chatting it up out on the green. Some go crazy. Some get sick all at once, fall over, and soon they're hustled away by handlers.

But to where? Even a turkey has to ask: "To where? Where are you taking my friends?
Hey! I thought we got away with this. I thought that was the deal. I thought this was Turkey Heaven! Where are you taking my friends? Where are you taking ME?"

Where are you taking me?

As the poet Gary Snyder reminds us, with not just useful but necessary optimism, "When making an axe handle, the model is close at hand."

Good morning, dear friends.

XO

CW

Posted by Jim Walsh at November 28, 2005 9:35 AM | Comments (1)