At the end of the day, I went to Trader Joe’s and bought two bags worth of groceries. The cashier adeptly divided the items into the bags and kept picking them both up and then redistributing to even things out. This struck me as considerate but unusual. To make conversation, because I find it awkward to stand and watch people doing things for me, I said, “thanks, because I’m a Libra so I like things balanced, ha ha.” He answered, without any humor, “I’m a Libra, too, but I don’t care about that stuff.” Then I had to say, “well, actually, me either.” What I didn’t add was, “I was just making conversation, could you work with me here?”

Then, as I walked away with my two bags of similar weight, this song came on the store’s sound system. I kid you not:

Conclusions:
1. This is a terrible, terrible video.
2. I do not believe in astrology but I totally believe that God is a DJ.

By the way, if you are imagining that I left the store while the song was playing, you would be INCORRECT. Naturally, I spent the time answering some work emails.

There is something weird about seeing a show at a winery/restaurant. It just isn’t very…. rock & roll. Everyone’s sitting down at tables. There’s no pushing to the front of the crowd or dancing. It’s all… adults. I mean, well yes, it would be all adults anyway. How many 23 year olds want to see a twenty year old album played in its entirety? Someone called out the first night, “you got me through college, Matthew!” Despite not seeing him, I am pretty, pretty, pretty sure that person did not graduate in this century. (Matthew’s response: “Happy to be of service! I couldn’t even get myself through college.”) But still.

In the beginning, I wondered if this was a better way to see a show, sitting down with friends and sipping beverages brought to one’s table. But in the end, despite how much I hate standing for hours and trying to see over the heads of many tall people, I don’t think so. You just want to move, you know? You can’t feel music the same way sitting down, crammed up against a table, sorry.

This is not to say I did not enjoy both shows, because they were glorious. But I think I will have a new appreciation for looking at the back of some guy’s head and breathing in the fumes of sketchy substances next time I’m at Irving Plaza. Rock & roll, man!

I was thinking about the Police this week because I have become a DJ of sorts. Believe it or not, I have never DJ’d in my life, but nowadays I choose background music for my 4th graders as they do independent work. It keeps them more focused, somehow. But it’s hard to choose the right music even though I got the idea from their homeroom teacher who plays things like John Coltrane and the Eagles as they write essays. When I heard the Coltrane I got the impression that it should be instrumental but that was hard. I chose an album which I love by my friend’s band which is called Forma and is old-school synth and wonderful. Check them out! But it didn’t help the kids focus for some reason. Maybe because it isn’t background music.

Then when I heard the Eagles, I was a little bewildered. The first song on the CD was “Life in the Fast Lane” which has some risque lyrics for nine year olds. But I think the volume was too low for them to hear plus some of them actually recognized it which I guess is good.

So the next class I played The Beatles, specifically Magical Mystery Tour because it was the first thing I saw of theirs in my Amazon Cloud Player that wasn’t Let It Be. One of the kids actually asked me, “do you have that ‘hold your hand’ song?” Ha! But I don’t. I am not so much an early Beatles fan. I do have Help. Maybe I should upload it. In the meantime, I have been thinking of the Police. That’s classic and energizing yet not too crazy. Maybe I’ll put together my own “greatest hits for fourth grade” mix. Hey, it worked for me.

Title comes from the last song on Ghost in the Machine and could really apply to any of my students.
The Police – Darkness

Well, I didn’t go to Baltimore. I was incredibly sad to have to cancel my tickets but the sickness I’ve had that just won’t go away ramped up and right now I feel a bit of a wreck. Certainly in no shape to walk around all day. You should hear me hack up a lung!

But enough of that. Something else happened that put me in the mood to write about this record, so at least as far as this blog is concerned, it’s all OK. I don’t really remember how this happened but something inspired me – inspired is so positive, that’s probably the wrong word – to start searching for the positions I’d applied for last spring and see who had actually gotten those jobs. I already know one of them. I ran into him at a professional get-together and at first I couldn’t quite get over the fact that he’d gotten the job, because he wasn’t even in the section of my program for people who want to do what I do. I kept stammering out things like, “oh, I applied for that job” and “I met the people from that school at the job fair,” [he: me too! - duh]. But then I blurted out something really honest that is almost too flattering for me to ever utter. I said, “I’m glad if I didn’t get the job, someone I like did.” He looked so happy at that, so surprised in a good way, that I immediately knew it had been the right thing to say, even if I’d said it without meaning to do so.

But some of the people who got those jobs were people I wasn’t as happy about. Not because I didn’t like them but because they made me wonder. They were people less experienced than me or who had gone through a one year program and not a two year. For some of these places, I hadn’t even gotten a call-back or I had gotten a first interview and not a second. I somehow forgot all the things I tell other people when they don’t get the job (sometimes you have no idea what they are looking for… it’s not personal… they may just want the guy who said X or knew Y and the job you are meant for will go to you and not someone who seemed more right than you). I forgot all that. I forgot that I got a job no one would have thought I’d get. A job that I’m still shocked I have. All I remembered was this feeling, the one that is summarized by this song sung in this way.

For me, this song, the demo version of Matthew Sweet’s Divine Intervention, is the sound of uncertainty and doubt. I’m pretty safe now but when I first heard this song, everything he sings was true for me. I didn’t know where I would live or what I would do. It was 1992 and I had finished college a semester early. I was bumming around, taking a couple of classes, working at the record store, and trying to plan but failing. College, you may remember, had destroyed most of my self-esteem and faith in my own abilities. The Queen of England ended 1992 by saying it had been her “annus horribilis” and all I could think was, “me too, sister, me too.” By the middle of the year I’d completely isolated myself by moving to a neighborhood where I knew not a soul and staying home most of the time I wasn’t working. I had no car and couldn’t get many places. Later, I broke up with the guy I thought I’d marry and subsequently was diagnosed with a lifelong chronic illness. And this was all above and beyond not knowing what the hell I wanted to do with my life. Uncertainty and doubt were my middle names.

You may remember from such posts as the last one on this blog that I said I didn’t like Girlfriend at first. I didn’t. I loved the song for sure. When you have just gotten back together with the person who you have spent the previous two years crying over, this is the song you really, really want your radio station to be playing the hell out of. Luckily, I happened to live in the range of the greatest radio station of that time period, WHFS, and they obliged.

But I didn’t get into the rest of the record right away. Back at Matthew Sweet’s record company, they were excited that this record was becoming a hit. The first two, on other labels, had gone nowhere. It took a long time, months, for this one to become successful, which is why I hadn’t even heard this song until Spring 1992. They understood that most record stores had already finished playing the Girlfriend CD and so they sent out another one with a twist. It was mostly made up of acoustic versions, demos, and live versions of the songs on Girlfriend. It was called Goodfriend and that’s the one I fell in love with. How could you be in a position of uncertainty and not feel that first track I posted above?

And then the actual record…. I still consider it a blanket, a balm. It begins with that first track, Divine Intervention. Matthew isn’t religious and so he means it in a sarcastic way, I suppose. But for me, it is about faith. That feeling of doubt will always be with us. The “counting on divine intervention” part is the way we get through that: by knowing it will get better somehow. The song asks, “does he love us?” Don’t you wonder sometimes? But I always end up thinking, “yes,” despite the fact that I’m usually listening to it when I’d be least inclined to answer that way. It’s a bit like the Kaddish. At your moment of highest doubt is when you are forced to praise God. It’s hard. But I have to, I really have to. I don’t know what else to do if I don’t. If you don’t believe in God, I think it still stands for hope for better times. The turning point of the song is the gentle singing of “here comes the sunshine,” but it’s only superficially like the Beatles’ version because it ends in a cynical “here it comes.” Because it’s hard to believe those platitudes sometimes, isn’t it? The song then plays out… or does it? It ends but comes back and that was my favorite part, because it represented the knowledge that hope is always there, even when you think it’s dying away. You think the song is over but it isn’t.

Here’s the track from the record. In case you need a blanket.

This album is all about that, really. It’s about breaking up and falling in love, because it was written over a long period of time and in that period, Matthew Sweet got divorced and then met and fell in love with the woman he’s still married to now. So it really hits the lowest of lows and the highest of highs. When we used to play the CD in the record store, we’d debate which was the most depressing song, because there were lots of candidates. I used to argue that it was “Thought I Knew You,” the song described on Goodfriend as one of “bitterness and betrayal,” because I felt the fact that it took him years to figure it out was horrifying. But I was usually outvoted. I’ll put them both up and you can decide.
1. My choice
2. The other record store people’s choice

But then you go to a song like this, which is so giddy with the hope of love winning that the record label president requested Matthew sing it at his wedding.

I think this record that shows in the midst of despair, of doubt, of hopelessness, that there is still the possibility of future joy and happiness is the greatest one ever written. You may think I say it changed my life because it helped me through the toughest time of my life (until my Mom died, that is). But that isn’t the whole truth. I became an evangelist for this album. Whenever anyone came in the store I’d push it and tell them they could bring it back if they didn’t like it. No one ever did. I would buy copies to gift to friends, especially if they were going through breakups.

Eventually I did decide what I wanted to do and where I wanted to live. I moved back to New York and went to grad school. But I soon realized I had made the wrong decision. In the kind of madness possessed only by 22 year olds, I decided I wouldn’t rest until I worked at Matthew Sweet’s record label, convincing the masses to buy Girlfriend. I still worked at the record store and the label’s distributor used to send a rep to our store to put up posters and talk up the records. It was through him that I met Matthew the first time, at a showcase at Wetlands, which no longer exists except in my heart. He also gave me the name of someone at the label to contact. I did and offered to work for them for free (oh to be young and live in an apartment paid for by your parents while you finish school). He interviewed me and then said, “but there’s no position. Keep calling!” They always tell you that to get your shot you have to be in the right place at the right time. So I was there all the time. I called from my school’s bank of phone booths every week to see if there was anything available. Nada. And then one day there was.

So I dropped out and the rest is history. When students from my alma mater would write and ask me how to get into the music industry, I didn’t know what to tell them. I got in because of Girlfriend. If you want to ask how I could leave that, it’s because there was no one I cared about enough to make it meaningful. There was no Girlfriend. When I was growing up, I was the Girl Who Loved Music. When we had to do a report on a hobby, mine was on music. When we built toy boats to race in the community youth group, mine had a big music note on the sail. When I went to Yale’s summer program and took Psych 101, I did my experiment on people’s perceptions of song lyrics. It feels strange to have grown older and not be that girl anymore. But one thing hasn’t changed: when I need hope, when I need a blanket, I use music.

You may also ask what it was like working with one’s idol. The answer: complicated but ultimately the greatest thing that can ever happen to a person. I’ll never forget it.

Title comes from Day For Night, which I felt was written about my decision to break off my relationship with College Boyfriend. I never understand how Matthew knows these things.

Because of this, the first notes of so many albums will hit me in a “ah, so it’s this one!” kind of way. George Michael’s Faith is one of those records. Oh no, 45 minutes of George Michael! The Love & Rockets record, Earth Sun Moon, which I know so well that I always assumed I owned it but later realized it was lodged in my memory due to daily instore play. John Mellencamp’s Lonesome Jubilee – that was my manager’s favorite record. REM’s Document. Robert Plant’s Now and Zen. Achtung Baby. Even Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me, and I tell you that if you could get a double album of Alternative/New Wave on the system, you had special skills.

But Whitesnake, oh Whitesnake. “A black cat moooans when he’s burning with the FEVER!” Good times.

Later this week, maybe next, I’ll be writing, as promised, about my favorite album of all time, the one that changed my life, literally. And I first heard it as an instore play… I was the one who opened it because I’d heard the song on the radio and liked it. But somehow I didn’t like the rest and I threw it in the defectives bin, which is where the “open stuff that gets sent back” went. From small beginnings… The record came out 20 years ago this Saturday. Where I first heard it is Baltimore and that’s where I’ll be (completely coincidentally, but it worked out well). This singer just released an album with a song called Baltimore on it. Serendipity. That’s not the name of the artist. But good band name.

Anyway, I meant to have that post be up Saturday, or Friday since my blog has not a single Saturday post, but I decided to wait to write it till I got home. Here are the first notes. When they’d come on the instore play, I knew someone was trying to butter up the boss (I was an assistant manager by then). It always worked.

First notes:
Whitesnake

Faith

Earth Sun Moon

Lonesome Jubilee

Document

Now and Zen

Achtung Baby

Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me

Consider this example. I am not really a fan of Duncan Sheik. I do not enjoy his smooth, smooth voice, his easy-listening aesthetic, or his habit of saying “ya” for “you.” Call me picky. But I was intrigued by his new record, a collection of covers of 80′s synth classics, completely divorced from the original synths and just a concentration on the pop songs within. They are all acoustic, sans drums, and filled with unusual instrument choices. Some of them I could take or leave but there are two in particular I really love.

This is a version of The Cure’s Kyoto Song, a song that I not only love but which The Cure themselves reinvent often in concert. I love to hear new takes on it and this one is gorgeous.

Everyone knows that Talk Talk’s Life’s What You Make It is one of my favorite songs of all time. This one keeps the sweep and the drama while still adding a new flavor. If only he knew how to pronounce the word “you.” But it’s a small quibble here.

Shana tova, a sweet and amazing new year, and here’s to the remake of ourselves which keeps our essence while still adding layers of goodness.

Title comes from Kyoto Song.
Buy Duncan Sheik’s Cover 80′s on Amazon

I have long wanted to write about this woman’s blog because I can’t figure out what to make of it and the way I sometimes do that is to write about those kinds of things here. If it was merely a cooking blog, I doubt I’d subscribe. I mean, I do have lots of baking blogs on my feed reader and maybe a couple of food ones, as well, but the recipes on this one, I think, wouldn’t be enough to draw me. Each post, though, begins with some photos of her past and description of some wonderful time with the band in Ibiza or modeling for a fancee fashion house or being painted by a famous artist. And I wonder why she does that. Is it because the past was so much better than the present for her? If I had been a stunning model married to a glamorous rockstar and was now cooking for a living, I too would miss the past. But somehow I don’t think so. I think she is savvy. I think she knows people like me (and there were a lot then and a surprising number who still exist today) want to hear tidbits about what it was like to live that life and see pictures of it. Sometimes she repeats the pictures but I don’t mind. Sometimes there are pictures of their child who is now an adult, but I don’t think that’s a calculated gesture.

I thought about her as I made the salmon and I wondered if it would be better or worse to start out living a fabulous life and then end up as someone living an ordinary one. And I wondered if I were her if I would make my blog a repository of old memories. Every time I read her posts, I think, “I can’t believe you’re showing another picture from 25 years ago!” while simultaneously devouring it and knowing I wouldn’t be reading if she hadn’t. And so, maybe, it’s really me who shouldn’t be wallowing in the past. Too bad it’s so addictive.

By the way, she still looks great, and much more naturally beautiful than she was then. He has not aged as well.

Title comes from a song by a band I saw on that vacation in New Orleans.
Echo & The Bunnymen – Back of Love

Unrelatedly, I did just want to tell this story. When I was a freshman in high school, someone in my high school had a party and I wanted to go but felt like I didn’t have the right thing to wear. So on the night of, I told my mother that I changed my mind and wouldn’t go. She told me that when she was in high school, the same thing had happened, she didn’t go, and the next day everyone told her how great it was. She still remembered and wished she had gone. So I went. And had a great time. I remember very well dancing to this song. RIP Nick Ashford.
Ashford and Simpson – Solid

The other big thing is a concert this weekend by APB, a band I quote often here but I doubt many have heard of. The thing is, this will be only my second concert by them ever and the first was so great, I don’t think it could be topped. This is because my friends got together and got me the ticket as a birthday present sometime in the mid-80′s and we all went together. It was in Stamford, CT, I think (or Greenwich maybe) and the White Whale drove us in her parents’ fancee car. The club was so tiny that the band hung out in the crowd after the show ended and the DJ part started. That was nifty.

The shame of growing up is that you’re no longer totally surrounded by people who want to see the same shows you do. But this is OK! Now we have the Internet and I am looking forward to meeting some of my Twitter friends there. If you live in the NYC area and like APB, I will be the one wearing the “Kiss Me I’m Jewball” t-shirt. I didn’t make up that joke, by the way, one of my commenters did, but I’m old and forgetful now.

By the way, there is apparently some new band with this name, which, having sat next to the legal department at a major label for ten years, I believe isn’t allowed. Hm. Anyhoo, if you like catchy punk-funk, you can check out the real thing on iTunes (it’s not available on Amazon, my preferred service) here.

APB – Summer Love

Dad: Do you want headphones to watch the movie?
Me: No thanks, I’m going to go to sleep.
Dad: That’s why you watch the movie!

Nowadays I totally get that because somehow over the past ten years, I also started to go to bed to TV. And recently, TV on my iPad. It’s just easier to load things on that and stick it on my nightstand. The trouble is that lately I’ve been re-watching NewsRadio on Netflix and it literally makes me shake with laughter. This, my friends, is not conducive to falling asleep. Also, unlike Law & Order where I can follow along without actually looking at the screen, a lot of NewsRadio is physical comedy and facial expressions. Staring at a bright screen? Also not so relaxing.

So here’s how my evenings now go:
1. Tell myself I am going straight to sleep and that I should put on the news or Law & Order.
2. Watch NewsRadio anyway.
3. Swear I will just watch one more episode.
4. Feel super awake and put on a spoken word podcast to help me fall asleep.

This is not to say that NPR or This American Life are dull, but in that time honored “someone with a soothing voice telling you a story” way, they work for me. Except when they are utterly, utterly fascinating, in which case I will stay awake the whole hour of TAL with my mouth actually open. And not in that “I’m asleep and drooling” way. Sometimes, I fall asleep to the podcast and wake up in the middle of the night to a different podcast because my iPad sets them up as a playlist. This is weird and disconcerting, like the other night when I went to bed to a Planet Money story about how much it costs to have a hit song (a lot, trust me) and woke up in the middle of a TAL episode where a woman who did not seem to be anyone famous was writing a song with Phil Collins (?!). This was because Deas wrote on my Facebook wall in the middle of the night and that interrupted the podcast with a loud “dinggggggg!” That’s the cost of being in constant touch with people, including people with different circadian rhythms than you. Weirdly, this doesn’t bother me, whereas if my neighbor gets up in the middle of the night and bangs around in the room directly next to my bedroom, I lay awake fuming. Go figure.

But this was so interesting to me that I had to listen to the complete podcast the next night (only a third or so is devoted to this segment). The story is of this writer for public radio who has a bad break-up (is there any other kind?) and enjoys break-up songs so much, she is compelled to write one. Naturally, she goes to Phil Collins whose song, Against All Odds, has deeply affected her. Contrary to what I would have believed based on its schmaltziness, it turns out the song has stemmed from personal experience (his wife leaving him) and they have a great, seemingly honest, chat. The funny part to me is, break-up songs are so great because they express your feelings for you so that you can both figure things out (“oh, that was the issue!”) and feel like you are not the only person on the planet to ever have experienced this. Writing your own, to me, seems to defeat all this.

But no matter, it’s a great story, and if you are at all the kind of person who thinks a song is fabulous but aren’t sure why, the mechanics of songwriting aspect of the story is fascinating. What phrasing is best and how you develop that… just amazing. And strangely enough, the segue for me was from the Planet Money podcast, which was about the most generic and unemotional style of songwriting (producer brings beats to writer and the song is written in 12 minutes… and the singer comes in completely after the fact) to this completely artistic and meaningful way of writing. By the way, I thought the song turned out great.

In conclusion, yadda yadda yadda, I’m really tired today.

Referenced:
Planet Money podcast: Manufacturing The Song Of The Summer
This American Life podcast: Break-Up
NewsRadio on Hulu

Title comes from a Phil Hartman line on NewsRadio.

I had a hard time considering my favorite break-up song, and it doesn’t at all fall into the podcast’s rules for what makes a good one (I’m not even sure it really is about a break-up) but I think it’s this. Feel free to chime in with yours.
The Cure – Homesick

Can’t you just feel her deep excitement at the music which has emanated from this 4.7″ disc? When I read this, I knew I had to submit legal currency over an electronic network in exchange for this good and/or service. Once the sound waves affect my aural networks, I am sure the neurons in my brain will fire substances which will cause my mouth to turn in an upward angle. After I receive it from the helpful gentlemen, I will be sure to use my pointing device to select the affirmative reply to the final question which has been posed.

In case you were wondering, although I just know it will be obvious to you, this review is of John Waite’s Greatest Hits. A better question was why I was reading this review at 2am, or indeed, any time, but that is a story of many web pages through which I clicked my pointing device and of little interest to the average reader of this linear-oriented textual journal.

Thank you for reading.
B. Jball

I kid! There are several songs by John Waite that I like. This is one.
John Waite – Change