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Wednesday, March 14, 2007
THE LAST DAY OF OUR ACQUAINTANCE
Sinead O'Connor
I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got
Chrysalis : 1990
[Buy It]
GO WHERE YOU WANNA GO
The Mamas and the Papas
If You Can Believe Your Eyes and Ears
Dunhill : 1966
[Buy It]
A NEW ENGLAND
Billy Bragg
Life's a Riot with Spy Vs. Spy
Charisma : 1983
[Buy It]
On the day after a Valentine's Day made glorious by your great song suggestions and a steady chocolate IV, my divorce came through. A lone piece of paper in a thin, yellow, self-addressed stamped envelope arrived in my mailbox. Seeing my own handwriting and the stamps I had, (sadly, defiantly, resignedly? which was I that day) applied only a couple months before, was very odd. As a literary magazine editor, the "SASE" as we call it, is an instrument of a not-so-different form of heartbreak and rejection (your story/poem isn't good enough so we're returning it; you failed at marriage so we're returning you).
I thought this moment would bring elation. I had even talked of a big "divorce party," where everyone I know, including my ex, would celebrate. We're still friends, after all, and this is what we both want. Most people I've heard of go through agonizingly long battles involving lawyers, financial dispute, and in some cases, custody. We had none of that. The only property (and our version of a child) we shared was a 1993 Nissan Sentra, which, due to my relocating to the impossible-to-park-in East Village and his to LA, I let him have without a fight. But all that ease did not in fact lend itself to joy or party planning. Some relief yes, particularly that I had beaten the arcane, labyrinthine New York state court system, whose representatives told me again and again, "Get a lawyer. You'll never get it right on your own." Trumping the thrill of conquest, though, was the agonizing first moment of accepting my new adjective: "divorced." Who ever expects to bear that word? It's the thing that happens to other people, most certainly not to thirty-three-year-old me. It's horribly sad, and, even if it's for the best, is another way that life has failed to resemble anything I thought it would.
Last week, at the eye doctor, I was filling out a new patient form. There it was: "Marital status: married, single, divorced, widowed." I stared at those little boxes for a very long time. Why must they know? How is this relevant to my contact lens prescription? I contemplated just checking off "single," not a lie, but felt that truth was in order and checked the dreaded d-word. Just when I thought the agony was over, the next section: "emergency contact"! My God. Who would it be now? And who makes up these questions? I'll tell you who: a cabal of self-satisfied married people. I know because I'm a former member. I'm supposed to keep my mouth shut about the whole thing, but if you're nice, someday I'll teach you the secret handshake.Labels: classic, joanna, pop
posted by Joanna
LINK |
Tuesday, October 31, 2006
SEASON OF THE WITCH
Donovan
Sunshine Superman
Epic : 1966
[Buy it]
CARE OF CELL 44
MAYBE AFTER HE'S GONE
BRIEF CANDLES
TIME OF THE SEASON
The Zombies
Odessey and Oracle
Date Records : 1967
[Buy it]
It was raining so hard the other night that I ducked into the bar 2A to wait/drink it out. My umbrella had bitten the dust somewhere on Houston, and there was no chance of hailing a taxi. I hadn't been there in ages...possibly since the late nineties when I dated the bartender (Donovan!), the last in a short string of boyfriends much prettier than I. Sadly, he wasn't there.
"Who is this?" I asked the schlumpy guy to my left, of the amazing late-British-invasion-but-who-I-assumed-was-a-new-ripoff-version. I didn't fail to notice that he was sitting with a disproportionately hot and young blonde chick.
"The Selbys," he mumbled.
"Who?"
He said the same thing again. I shrugged. Then he said, "You know, 'She's Not There.'"
"The Zombies!" I yelled, of course just as there was a break in the song. Blondie looked up. It's hard to be cool.
"Yeah, this was their Sgt. Pepper's, but they never really got their due." Or replace "their due" with "the attention they deserved," or, "No one gave a shit."
Then it happened. Drunk or not, I fell madly in love, not with Mr. Guy, but with the music. God, what heaven that is, even thirty years late, to hear that angelic voice and feel that he's just singing to me.
"Are you in a band?" I asked the guy, after the song ended.
"Yes."
"What are you called?"
"Fountains of Wayne."
I knew I should have heard of them, but I couldn't figure out if it just sounded similar to a well-known band, or if it in fact was one. "What do you sound like?" I asked.
"Like the stuff you hear on the radio."
Sheesh. What does that mean? I listen to talk radio. This was going nowhere, but at least it explained the hot blonde.
I got the Zombies record the next day, Odessey and Oracle, which, I'm embarrassed to say, I didn't even noticed was misspelled (see, you didn't notice it either! It should be "Odyssey"). Later I'd find out it was because the cover artist spelled it wrong and it was too late to have him fix it.
The music initially sounds so sweet that I started an email to a guy I'd been seeing on a day he wasn't feeling well, "Morning to you, I hope you're feeling better baby," until I realized that that song is from a boy to his girl in jail. And then I almost sent a song to my friend Emily called "A Rose for Emily," and then realized that it's about a spinster who never finds love. And, of course, Emily is my gorgeous but single and sometimes very lonely friend.
The word "Candles," in "Brief Candles," is possibly the best struck word in a chorus I have ever heard.
Some think that they were forced to disband because of how stupid listeners are. I think it's because they failed to really show us their genius until this record (they broke up even before it was released). When, randomly, because a radio station in the US played it over and over again and "The Time of the Season" became huge, they had been broken up for a year and refused to get back together.
Happy Halloween! Okay, this post has nothing to do with the holiday. Except that witches and zombies are scary!Labels: classic, joanna
posted by Joanna
LINK |
Friday, December 16, 2005
TRYING TO GET TO YOU
Elvis Presley
1968 'Comeback Special'
Available on Tiger Man
RCA : 1998
[Buy It]
HOMEWARD BOUND (live)
Simon and Garfunkel
Simon and Garfunkel's Greatest Hits
Columbia : 1972
[Buy It]
HOME IN YOUR HEART
Solomon Burke
Atlantic #2180 : 1963
Available on Home in Your Heart: The Best of Solomon Burke
[Buy It]
I've been away for a while, not sure if any of you noticed. But I've been out here on my own, Moist-less, not having the greatest fall. Music has felt very, very far away. I've peeked into the MW empire now and then to see what you all have been up to, but for the most part have felt a bit alienated, to be honest. Boys, boys, boys. Music, music, music. Alex says I'm "truant," Brian's busy getting wounded down south, James thinks everything's great (just to give you a small picture of the MW innards.)
At Alex's birthday party the other night a friend kissed me on the mouth. I'm a married woman, and it was just a "hello" kiss, but it took me somewhere I don't usually go. Shortly thereafter, Alex and I were speaking to a book packager friend of ours about Moistworks. (He had never heard of it. My god! But said, "Sounds like my dream blog.") (Is this a blog? I still can't accept that word). And, in a fever of (drunken) excitement (throughout which Alex didn't fail to mention what a poseur I am for even talking about this thing I've "abandoned"), I pitched the packager guy a "Moistworks book." Then, about three seconds later (during which he looked remarkably intrigued), said, "No, never mind, there's no book." And he was like, "Wait a second," and I was like, "No, fuck off, there's no book."
So, all that to say, I guess I'm back. Songs about being back. Can you return if no one noticed you were gone?Labels: classic, folk, joanna, rock
posted by Joanna
LINK |
Wednesday, September 14, 2005
XANADU
I'M ALIVE
Olivia Newton John and E.L.O.
Xanadu soundtrack
MCA : 1980
[Buy It]
TELEPHONE LINE
E.L.O.
A New World Record
Jet : 1976
[Buy It]
As I'm sure you all know because you've been following this case very carefully (since there hasn't been much else in the news lately): Olivia Newton John's boyfriend Patrick McDermott has been mysteriously missing for about nine weeks. He was on an overnight fishing trip off the coast of San Pedro. Some think he fell off the boat, though a witness saw him de-boating, alive. And that's not the only fishy thing. His ex-wife (not ONJ) was the one to report him missing--but a full two weeks after he disappeared. It seems as though Olivia herself didn't notice his absence. They've been together for nine years, but maybe they just don't talk much. And she's been photographed at tree-plantings and shit, smiling away, not looking at all worried. Foul play has not been ruled out, not that I'm casting any suspicious glances toward lovely Olivia, whose amazing movie Xanadu taught me some mean roller skating moves all the while educating me about Greek muses and gods.
I'll be carefully monitoring the McDermott situation and will be sure to keep you posted.Labels: classic, joanna, pop
posted by Joanna
LINK |
Thursday, August 04, 2005
VEGETABLE MAN
Pink Floyd
Unreleased Single : 1969
PORPOISE SONG
The Monkees
Head Soundtrack
Columbia : 1968
[Buy It]
DARK GLOBE
Syd Barrett
The Madcap Laughs
Harvest : 1970
[Buy It]
The first time I heard Pink Floyd, or at least the first time I knew it was them, I was at the Ground Round with my family. It was back when they played old movies while you ate, talkies mostly, and they brought baskets of peanuts and popcorn to the table. The best part was that you could throw the peanut shells on the floor. Not "could." You HAD to. It was part of the whole thing. A peanut shell mandate. This took me some getting used to. I was a dirty kid, wore my red turtleneck with stains on it four days a week. But I didn't throw stuff around. I was learning the difference between dirt and disarray. These peanuts were both things all at once, and it was disorienting and exciting.
And then this one night amid the forced mess, there were these kids singing. I had never heard children in stereo, unless you count Sesame Street. But this wasn't that, this wasn't church. This was dark and terrifying and bad. Kids weren't supposed to say this stuff. "They just got some kids to sing on the record," my older brother Jeff said, when I asked who they were. "It's from that Pink Floyd movie." I nodded. I was nine, he was twelve. It was cool to talk to Jeff about music. I didn't want to screw it up with more questions.
It may have been a week or a month or even a year later that I watched The Wall. "Who's Pink Floyd?" I asked my brother later. "He's that guy in the movie," he said, "It's about him." That was all he said, but what it meant to me was that The Wall was a documentary about a musician Pink Floyd. A dead rat and some other hard things in childhood forced him down a very dark road. I had never seen madness before. I squinted and squirmed and rewound, watched him shave off his eyebrows over and over again. Set up the toy airplanes. I watched the family room door, knowing my mother wouldn't like this, though I wasn't sure why. I loved this boy, this man, wanted to hug him even when he became a Nazi. He was having a hard time.
Imagine my surprise when Bob Geldof showed up on MTV a couple years later hosting Live Aid. "I thought that guy was Pink Floyd," I said to my brother, who howled and howled, stopping long enough to sputter something about "I Don't Like Mondays."
And then it completely unraveled. Of course it wasn't real. How could I have been so stupid? A lot of things began to fall apart and make sense and fall apart again. I had already learned the truth about Sergeant Pepper's and Tommy and the Monkees, but this was different. This was the beginning of the part of my childhood where doubt and reason and hope would have to fight it out. Not only was there no one named Pink, not only was The Wall not a documentary, but this Geldof guy wasn't even in the band.
This trauma erased Pink Floyd from my consciousness for a while. In high school I heard REM cover "Dark Globe" on a flexidisc insert in Sassy magazine. I promptly sought out The Madcap Laughs. This wasn't easy back then. There was definitely no asking Jeff, and I'd be laughed out of town if I asked the guy at Newbury Comics about something from Sassy.
But I found it. My long-awaited reunion with my first lunatic. All I had were the cover art and the record. I'm sure there were books and articles, but I didn't read them back then. I just wasn't that concerned with anything but the songs and who I believed Syd to be. A sweet soul too fragile for this world, who lived on a mushroom with some elves. I loved him. I had no interest in elves, didn't believe in them at all, but I knew that Syd did. So I loved them, too, for keeping him company.
In the late nineties I tried to track down some of his writing or artwork for the literary magazine I edit. In one of my first extensive internet searches ever, probably using Hotbot with Netscape, I found out what we all know: he went crazy, probably from the acid. Lived with his mother until her death, at which time he burned all of his art books and journals, along with a tree and a fence. He had rabbits and cats but forgot to feed them. He was beautiful and young and full of everything and then he went away to be fat and away, maybe crazy, maybe just over it.
My private love affair with Syd, blown wide open by the fucking internet. It used to be that you found stuff out because you looked hard or asked around and people told you things. It's still people telling you things, but now it's written down and you have to deal with the fact that things you like are also liked by a ton of people with freaky fan sites. In this case mostly people who also love Pink Floyd, which isn't something I can support.Labels: classic, joanna, memoir
posted by Joanna
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