music prep

This is akin to folding a towel long-wise across the window sill, turning on the heat, closing the kitchen door and finding my slippers: preparation for getting warm. This is a music prep.

A friend asked me, an embarrassingly long time ago, to write an album review. I said OF COURSE. And then I didn't. As follows habit, I have some lovely excuses. They are as black-eyed and house-fire burned as the saddest skinned-alive orphans you've ever seen, but they remain excuses.

I did write a rough draft. It lies buried where all rough drafts should rot. So my self-assignment this weekend is to write the album review and post it here. But tonight is reserved for the music of my youth to prep me for such a task.

1. "Waiting Room" - Fugazi



I found Fugazi through the Public Library and not, importantly, through the CD collection at the Public Library, but between a copy of Bach's "The Well-Tempered Clavier" and some book about Bob Dylan. I don't remember what this book-containing-Fugazi was called. Something full of riot and noise and the present day rebellion, by which we mean the late 80s early 90s in the dark beast belly of underground punk. This book was full of interviews and essays in true punk form: short paragraphs and damnations.

And that was a beginning.

The only Fugazi CD the entire library system had available was The Argument and I borrowed it about a million times each year for two years until I finally bought my own copy. I worked my way through their other albums. A friend gave me a burned copy of Repeater when I was 16. But The Argument will always be special while "Waiting Room" (from 13 Songs) will always be my favorite song.

I kind of love that they yell at their fans to stop moshing and that Ian MacKaye looks like some generic sloucher who wears his t-shirts until they turn into ropes and is probably a truly annoying individual to have a private conversation with. Music purists, you know.

2. "Lake of Fire" - Nirvana

"by Nirvana": only partially true. The song is by the Meat Puppets, but I think Ben and CJ are the only people who care. I say, Nirvana can, and should, have it. Like how Hendrix can have "All Along the Watchtower." Even Bob Dylan said so.



In a dream, Kurt Cobain and I took care of a kitten. We named it...I forget what we named it. This was a long time ago and I'm already getting the feeling that I made it all up to impress someone. I was heartbroken when I found out Kurt Cobain was dead and had been long before I even knew he existed.

Nirvana was the reason I killed my wrist, picking out power chords with newly-nimble fingers on the acoustic guitar my dad once bought at a pawn shop for $20. I listened to the whole of In Utero first, fell upon Nevermind next and discovered Bleach while sitting at the back of my parents' 18 passenger van on a long ride home from somewhere up the highway.

3. "Small Crime" Damien Rice

Damien Rice is an Irish jerk. He uses people like Egyptians used slaves: glue for the pyramids. I don't like Damien Rice. I go so far as to say I hate Damien Rice and I hope a wandering cat strangles him. But this song stopped me dead in my Damien Rice-hating tracks one morning. I was driving home from Oregon City. It was night. I had my mom's car and 9 Crimes was the only CD in sight. So I put it in thinking that at least the loathing would keep me awake. I love this song and I don't care who knows it. Anyway, Lisa Hannigan + pianos make the song what it is.

Note before we begin: Listen to the song first. DON'T WATCH THE VIDEO UNTIL AFTER YOU'VE ALREADY LISTENED TO THE SONG. You will never be able to take anything seriously ever again if you do this out of sequence.



Oh Damien Rice music video, could you get any more slow motion and absurd? Floating balloon severed singing head?!?!

"Doooo dee doooo, hmmm. Trash. Nope. Nothing. Again. Sigh."

From the gutter: "smallll criiiiimmmme"

"La! A severed head! My ex-lover's severed head. Did I cheat on her? Wait. Did she cheat on me? Wait. A BALLOON?"

Severed head ex lover singing balloon face drifts musically and soulfully down a sort of ghetto alley. Ghetto alleys + music videos = magic realism straight from the guts of the human experience. Ghetto alleys are a signal: This music can now speak to us. Apparently.

"Wait...come back!!!! Oh, poop. The balloon doesn't want me. I guess I'll go dejectedly kick around trash in slow motion."

But what's this? The severed balloon head is FOLLOWING him.

Now they can be adorable hipsters together forever! Wheeeeeeeeeeeee.

Oh no! Nasty Irish Catholic school children with sling shots (who has sling shots anymore?)

Cut to slow motion Damien Rice blue-eyed despair (eyes widen slightly)

POP!!!!!!!!!

Mournful down-looking. Balloon head has turned into pottery and lies in broken ceramic disarray.

Damien Rice angry face (eyes widen slightly)(downcast)(mouth.can.not.close)

From the gutter: "smaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaalllllll criiiiimmmmmme"

The end.

People need to stop ripping off "The Red Balloon" which is awesome and adorable. Stop it right now, everyone. It only works when you're a darling French schoolboy wearing what appear to be regulation sweatpants and you lead a sad, lonely life and try to keep your red balloon from dating other balloons because the red balloon is all you have.

4. "Lucky" - Radiohead

OK Computer kept me from disaster. Between the ages of 14 (when I bought the album on a whim, knowing absolutely nothing about Radiohead, not even "Creep") and 17, I had only to put this in the CD player and hear the opening chords of "Airbag" to calm down from whatever angsty teenage rage I'd worked myself up to.



There are many associations to go along with "Lucky". The strongest one recently is Tiffany.

I literally cannot speak in the mornings, nor do I want to. I like my mornings quiet and gradual and early. Tiffany woke up (at least when I lived with her for two years) to music. Sometimes she even woke up talking. This was the song she'd use to rouse me from my sacred morning muteness and "Lucky" was also her anthem for a term. Not a day could pass, but I would hear it blasting through the bedroom door or drifting through the floorboards to the living room. We played "Lucky" and that Age of Aquarius song over and over and over and over and over and over.

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I could go on, but that's enough for tonight.