There were a lot of contenders for this last spot but in the end, I’m giving it to Pearl Jam.
I debated picking one of the shoegaze bands I was really into in the early 90s, or maybe some Madchester band. Then there was my beloved Poi, nothing like any of those. For a while I had In Rainbows by Radiohead but I felt that was too big of a chronological gap.
I love how raw Eddie Vedder is on this album. A friend gave me his copy of Ten on cassette and I would listen to it on my Walkman. I had a lot of pent up anger and I would listen to this while out walking or while using the rowing machine.
Also, Eddie Vedder was smoking hot. That hair, those eyes, his arms, sigh. But the music was also hot, simmering at a low boil. This album was my gateway to the harder stuff, which to be clear, is still not that hard but let’s remember where we started here.
I only learned of Snocaps existence a few days ago when one of my Music League friends sent a text with a heads up about tickets going on sale for their show(s) in New York in December. I like the Crutchfield sisters’ projects but I got busy at work and totally forgot to get in the pre-sale queue. It seems like it sold out right away.
The Music League has been on an extended hiatus which has been both a blessing and a bummer. As evidenced by knowing nothing about Snocaps, I have been kind of out of the loop when it comes to hearing new music. Most of the weekly themes were broad enough that I could usually find something to fit but there were always weeks when it was something like, a song released within the last two months. However, that’s also how I usually learned about new bands.
Sometimes I will also hear of bands from the pictures posted by concert photographers I follow. Did it look like they put on a great show? Was the audience locked in? Chances are it’s worth checking them out. Back in the day I would sometimes just go to a show because it was cheap and I knew the venue booked bands I generally liked. I do get updates from all of the venues I go to regularly but now that everything is a significant distance away, I’m not as adventurous as I was in my 20s.
Anyway, it’s probably too late for you to snag tickets for any of the short run of shows Snocaps announced but hey, here’s some new music for you!
I am about half way through Patrick Stewart’s memoir. As someone who first became aware of him through watching reruns of Star Trek: The Next Generation, I am learning a lot about his early life. I am also learning about life in Yorkshire in the mid-20th century and am really pleased to see his humble roots make him a proud union supporter and hater of Margaret Thatcher and the havoc she wrought on unions and the arts. That reminded me of the Gang of Four, hailing from Leeds, very near Patrick Stewart’s hometown.
Back when I was watching those reruns in the early 90s, it felt like a real guilty pleasure. Once I found out Patrick Stewart had already had a successful career as a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company, I felt a little less guilty about it. I’d had an interview for a job at the Folger Shakespeare Library and was imagining being able to meet all of these famous actors when they would come through DC for some reason. The job wasn’t going to pay me enough though so I didn’t end up living that dream. In truth there probably would have been very few of those kind of chance encounters.
But I was smitten. I got the CD of his one-man performance of A Christmas Carol, which gave me a whole new appreciation for the book. Then my real moment of glory, for Christmas one year my Brooklyn sister and her husband took me to see him play Prospero in The Tempest on Broadway. We were so close, the second row I think, and he was fabulous.
When I think about it, I really have not seen much of his work. I think I will probably start chipping away at that once I finish the book.
This evening I got an email from my mother because she’d seen an article in the daily paper about the 30th anniversary of the record store where I was the first full-time employee. Talk about feeling old. I realize I now have a child who is 18 and technically an adult, and those record store days definitely feel like another lifetime, but 30 years is a long time.
I can’t remember what album I must have bought there when they opened but I remember talking with my younger sister before we headed down there on the opening day and deciding that I had to buy something just to encourage them to stay open. And to hopefully put myself in their good graces so I could improve my chances of a landing a job there.
I scanned through the Slicing Up Eyeballs list of the Top 100 Albums of 1989 to jog my memory. I don’t think the fIREHOSE album fROMOHIO was the one I bought that day but I am sure I bought it there in 1989. There are some records on that list which I would have thought were even older than they are. Probably it has to do with whether I associate the album with college and the first half of that year, or just general life, which would be anything mid-June and after. Also MTV still played videos and I had no way of watching them when I was away at college but once I graduated and was back at home, I would stay up and watch 120 Minutes pretty religiously.
The chorus of this song has Ed singing “what the eighties mean to me.” I’m not sure what they mean to me, or if I could even summarize it, but we’re closing in on the end of this anniversary year for many things. I’ll have to give this some thought.
I thought I had written about my resistance playlist before but I can’t find it so I must not have. During the months between the election and the inauguration I tried to keep myself from descending into desperation by working on a playlist to bolster my stamina for the fights ahead. I hadn’t listened to it for quite a long time but today, I couldn’t take listening to NPR on my way to work to hear about how Vlad Jr. was committing treason in Helsinki so I plugged in the phone and fired it up. I’ve just made one substitution and should probably go back and tinker with it since it reflects the state of things before we were in it up to our eyeballs, but it did the trick on my commute. I’m sharing it with you all in this still in-progress format in case you too could use a little shot in the arm. Here you go.*
There’s a lot of talk from some GOP members about how stunned they are about Twitler kissing Putin’s ass and throwing the US intelligence agencies, plus the country as a whole, under the bus. Really? REALLY?! NOW you’re surprised? NOW you’re shocked? NOW it’s dawning on you that you’ve been backing a fascist traitor? NOW? Listen, this has been obvious for years. I was looking back through my entries to try and find that mention of this playlist and I have been talking about this since a year before the election, at least. Maybe longer. What did they think would happen when he said he would have a private meeting with no other Americans in the room? I mean, Jesus Christ, you can’t possibly be that naive.
Talk without action to back it up is cheap. How many of those Senators expressing horror at this shit show are still going to happily approve Kavanaugh’s appointment to the Supreme Court? Unless they take a fucking stand and defect from the GOP, and do it now, I don’t see how they are not equally complicit. Well, I think they are complicit anyway, some actually so much so that they were alluded to in the indictment of 12 Russians last Friday. I just can’t comprehend the mental gymnastics necessary for them to live with themselves. What a bunch of fucking cowards. If/when the shit hits the fan they’ll be falling all over themselves to say they couldn’t have known. Bullshit. “…Senator, look you’ve done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?” Crickets.
I’ve also seen a number of people wondering why we aren’t all out in the streets. One reply I saw was pointing out that we don’t have job protections and without jobs, we don’t have health insurance. If there is a large enough outpouring so people can’t be penalized, it could work, but everyone is afraid to take that first step or waiting for the trigger. So we settle for planned marches and weekend protests. It makes us feel good for a few hours, the pictures are impressive, but it doesn’t move the needle.
Then I came to think about something my cousin had said that time I went to Germany and we visited Dresden. They used to gather in the evenings at a particular church (which had been left in ruins after the war) and shake their keys. Thousands of people all standing together and making noise. They did it on Monday nights. The wall fell within a matter of weeks. We could do that. All over the country, pick a spot, turn out. Let’s go.
* Sorry if you don’t have Spotify. I will try to make a YouTube version if I get a chance.
Not for the first time I have discovered myself in a video at a Poi show. I like to think I’m a good dancer. The video evidence suggests that may not be true. It doesn’t stop me from dancing, in fact I’m one of the people usually leading the charge. They’ve even created a new ticket category at the venue where Poi has been playing the last few years just for dancing. Only for their show. I checked the whole calendar and none of the other concerts had a dancing/standing ticket. I am pretty sure I have played a role in that.
Just got home from seeing Slowdive and I’m too tired to write anything, really. I had to be up at 5:30 this morning to drive my daughter to her school for a trip and the chill vibe plus bright lights in my face, along with the lack of sleep, made me want to just close my eyes.
Soccer Mommy opened the show. They felt like a cross between Colleen Green and Real Estate.
One of the radio stations that I listen to has a regular feature where they pair up a beer and a song, Brews and Grooves. Sometimes I miss it because I’m already too far out of range by the time it comes on but I was running late this morning and managed to hear it before I got too far away. The dj was talking about how the beer was a nice crossover from the lighter summer beers to the heavier fall beers and it just so happened that I already had some in my fridge at home; Harpoon’s Flannel Friday. To accompany this end of summer/beginning of fall beer, and flannel, he picked a 90s band and a song about summer being gone.
I have to give the dj credit on this one. I usually agree with his assessment of the beers (though my own preferences are a little narrower than his) but now and then I feel like the song choice is not quite as strong a match as it could be. But today and yesterday were unseasonably warm and I was even walking around outside both days in a sleeveless shirt, in November in New England, with the leaves crunching under your feet. Plus, Flannel, 90s. So, yeah. Buffalo Tom’s Summer and Harpoon’s Flannel Friday. I put it to the test this evening and I fully endorse this match.
When the song was over, the dj came back on the air and was talking about how a friend of his from Texas or someplace like that had never heard of Buffalo Tom. He said he hadn’t thought they were just a New England thing, he thought they were more well known across the country, but maybe not. I feel like my opinion is disqualified in this situation because even if I was living in DC when I saw Buffalo Tom, I came from New England.
Anyway, just to round out this nice little flashback Friday vibe, I got out my stub from that Buffalo Tom show at the old 9:30 Club and snapped this picture. Cheers!
From before Twitler took office, I have felt that he would get us all killed. Today we dropped a massive bomb on Afghanistan, apparently, and are making threats to North Korea. So it seemed like maybe I should not keep holding on to my memorial service playlist but that the time is right to share it. After all, if we’re going to have World War III, I may as well make sure this is out there.
However, the caveat is not all of these songs are available online in the versions that I would actually like to use and it varies between Spotify and YouTube which ones had to be substituted. For that reason, I’m running down the list below. I also can’t help the visuals on some of these videos, which is why I prefer an audio only experience for this, but life could be short so I’m over it. YouTube above, Spotify below.
The Great Beyond
1. Angelika Suspended – Poi Dog Pondering (Spotify has the preferred version)
2. Just Breathe – Pearl Jam
3. If You Want to Sing Out, Sing Out – Cat Stevens (here the YouTube is worth it for the Harold and Maude clips since that’s key to its selection)
4. Belong – R.E.M.
5. Weird Fishes/Arpeggi – Radiohead (Spotify for the studio version, though I like the Scotch Mist version fine, it’s not the “right” one)
6. Treefingers – Radiohead (optional – serves as a transition but could also be cut or used as music while people are milling about before things get started)
7. Blood of Eden – Peter Gabriel (YouTube is the correct version from Until the End of the World)
8. Calling All Angels – Jane Siberry with k.d.lang
9. Heaven – Talking Heads
10. Wendell Gee – R.E.M.
11. Untitled – R.E.M.
12. This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody) – Talking Heads
While there are a lot of songs that you might think I would have on a playlist for my memorial service, this is meant to be something you can actually play for assembled grieving friends and family and not bum people out too much. It shouldn’t make people feel worse. At the same time, sometimes it’s good to cry and let it out. The idea is that this should be in place of any hymns or prayers since I am not religious, though there are some songs that gesture toward that, after all I have a number of church-going family members, including my aunt the nun.
In the days to come I’ll take each one as a separate post with more details but for now I’ll let it speak for itself.
My radio alarm clock went off this morning and, as if by fate, the first few notes of Orange Crush came blaring out. I hadn’t really thought about it before but, man, so appropriate.
But this song amazes me. It came out 30 years ago and yet is every bit as relevant as it was in 1987. In some ways we have come so far since then and I take solace in that. In other ways though, we still have a Congress that propagates confusion, we have never had a less qualified person as president, and cabinet nominees who are eager to destroy the agencies they want to oversee.
I know it sounds melodramatic but I really do feel like we are being occupied. These people are not what this country has been about, they are not representative of the majority of my fellow citizens. I hope against hope that this is the last dying gasp of an old, feeble power structure that we can lay to rest if we are awake and active enough.
I have a feeling that I’m going to be listening to this album a lot in the coming months. The whole thing, but especially the first (Page) side, is great for bolstering your courage to fight the good fight. We are on the right side of history and I will be there to protest and witness. I will do what I can to protect what we have and hold accountable those who would strip away our rights. I am raising my children to be vigilant and to demand truth.
This album and I are 30 years older but the passion and the vision are still the same. Back then it was with the first flush of understanding myself as a political being, now it’s with the sobering resolve to stand up for decency, justice, and equality, no matter the consequences.
Noisy Cats 