But sweetness follows.

Today, in a nutshell:

• Thump! The thickest hipster scene I've yet encountered. Imagine taking a time machine and setting it directly for 2014. I mean, it's got everything: handlebar mustaches, toques, artisanal kombucha (whatever that means), local microbrews and wine, suspenders, lattes done with artistic foam flourishes, plenty of journals and laptops, comfy faux-leather couches, a cast iron fireplace, and neo-rustic furniture including metal chairs and roughhewn wood communal tables. The baristas are encouraged to emulate the sartorial excellence of the Lumineers or Mumford and Sons (I KNOW, it pains me too*), and openly admit that they will judge you for drinking herbal tea...or at least so sez the wall art behind them. But a super cool place to go and pretend that you're in Oregon (if you're not actually in the Bend location). Also: a super awful place to go if you are allergic to any of the aforementioned accoutrements. (Mr. Man would go anaphylactic in 0.3 seconds.)
• Vinyl! Enjoying the turntable, so I made a few other purchases today. Continued my Beatles love with Help!, took a left turn into country with Gram Parson's Grievous Angel, and in the never-imagined-I'd-ever-do-this department, plunked down six greenbacks for a used original print of Tammy Wynette's greatest hits, dating back to 1969. Still sounds fine. All I can say is maybe it was inspiration from...well, refer back to my last post.
• Clothes! Just the typical getting the new to replace the old...but trying to buy the quality shit that'll last. Now that I'm at a size I'm happy with, I can justify getting stuff I won't grow out of in a year or two. So goes the vision. Oh, and speaking of size...
• Neck rolls! Weird to say this, but when I roll my head back in a chair, it's kinda comforting to feel the back of my neck bulk up and provide a bit of a cushion for my head. Just thought of that this afternoon...and again just now. Not to mention: on the right man, this can be, hands down, the sexiest body part ever. No joke.

*Of course, as soon as I mock the Lumineers for their threads, I have to look up their video for a quick reminder of exactly how they look. And oh SNAP but ya caught me. T-shirts and suspenders everywhere. And...uh...what is it that I'm wearing now? Oops. So I must admit that yes, I myself may have taken my sartorial cues from the Lumineers unintentionally. But can I defend suspenders real quick here? For a guy who does not care for regular hiking-up of pants - particularly since I already have a proportionally long torso and short legs - suspenders are awesome. Besides, they look classy and masculine. Unless you wear them with shorts, in which case go stand next to Brigitta like we rehearsed, Kurt. So I'm taking every opportunity to wear them nowadays...and at some point, hope to figure out some way to fit them into business wear.

So. Enough for now. I have a Moscow mule or three waiting for me at the local leather bar.

VINYL ROCKS!

Okay...whether it's better than CD...I'll leave that up to the more vociferous and engaged in that debate.

Got a turntable lately. Fun stuff. It's great to sit down at the end of the day and devote all my time and energy to listening to records. Yep...how long has it been since you've heard that word? Albums, yes. But records? That's different. Haven't realistically considered owning records since the 1980s. Yipes. I'm so retro. And so hipster.

Except, well, not.

I don't have any Mumford and Sons. Or whatever y'all hipsters listen to. Not sure I'd know...y'all love your obscure bands, right? In fact, I'll go the opposite way. First two records bought: Rubber Soul and Revolver. About as un-hip as you can get. And about as awesome as you can get. I've owned Rubber Soul in the past, so no musical revelations there. But I've only owned a smattering of songs from Revolver, so songs like "For No One," "Got To Get You Into My Life" and "Taxman," are completely new to me. It's cool to hear them, mostly, for the first time. The individual songs are excellent, but to hear them all together, strung out in the sequence the Beatles wanted, just brings everything to a more awesome level.

Mr. Man brought out his long-lost (and slightly warped) copy of Thriller, and people, I'm a happy kid. Again, if you want to hear the majority of the album, just turn on your local '80s station and wait a few hours for at least one of the songs to appear. But stuff like "Baby Be Mine" and "The Lady In My Life," (which is actually kinda drecky) are great to return to.

I know, I can get all this on CD, rip it to my iPod, and listen at my leisure, whenever I want. So whither the turntable? I guess it's a desire to make listening to music more of an event, more deliberate. It takes time and adds anticipation to pull a record out of its cover, then out of its sleeve, and put it onto a turntable. Then you turn it on, see the stylus move to the edge of the record, drop down oh-so-gently, then hear the pop and some static that announces the imminent experience of some great music about to hit you in t-minus-5 seconds. And you feel compelled to sit down and listen to the thing in its entirety. It's not so easy to skip songs in a fraction of a second, or to return to that cool bit you just heard. Not impossible, but it's a bit of an effort, and kind of annoying to do so. And you know? I like it that way. I have enough distractions and multitasking going on nowadays. I like the idea of sitting down and devoting my energy purely to listening to music. Some music demands that kind of attention. So I'm going about building my collection accordingly.

I got Kind of Blue and A Love Supreme last night, too. The former I've heard a million times...and will never get tired of it. The latter I listened to for the first time last night. Fucking brilliant. I'm usually not a fan of jazz (makes me think of old nasty-smelling smoky clubs, plaid suits, and urbane '70s pastiches like "The Rockford Files" and "Kojak"), but this was pretty awesome. I nearly felt compelled to make a Manhattan and sip it to make the experience complete, but John Coltrane's spiritual liner notes (remember those, kids?) and the feeling he and his band put into the music even made me hesitate to indulge.

So there's my excitement over the past week or so. Next on the list: Random Access Memories. Maybe some vintage Elton John. More classic jazz. Who knows?

Okay. You know bad is bad when...

• This is the first night in over 10 years that I've had two mai tais in one night. (Peruse the New York Bartender's Guide for the liver-crushing recipe. Or just look here.) Somehow (and fifty pounds later), I can handle them. But just barely.
• I had to improvise with blue curacao with one of them. So the drink turned out to be the color of fungified cement. Yum.
• I tell Quinn that she is SO hopelessly a fashion don't while she's wearing a kerchief with her matchy-match two-piece bikini while she's poolside with her friends. The only members of the Fashion Club.
• Yep. It's a olive drab and kelly green PLAID. Even I wouldn't be caught dead wearing such clashing patterns in the local man's man gay bar, even under low lights, even with drunk guys who wouldn't know better. Did I say gay men? Yeah. Not all of them are fashion mavens, but some of them wear fabulous scarves with their impeccable leather coats.
• Oh, and yeah...Quinn is a fucking CARTOON.
• I'm spewing advice to said cartoon.
• This cartoon, despite catering to college-age kids, stopped being relevant around, oh, 1997.
• Not a mathematician, but let's do the math here. SEVENTEEN YEARS AGO? Oh God...
• God, I'm old.
• I'm trying to persuade myself that my predecessors of decades and decades past regressed into their younger years to...well, for one night, to numb themselves into forgetting an annoying day. Despite the lack of said cartoons.
• La la LA la la...

I should stop now. Before I embarrass myself beyond the hope of recovery.

It's apparently the year of 25 year anniversaries. Three days and twenty-five years ago began one of the most difficult days of my life. In just over a month and a half will commence the 25th anniversary of the most amazing day of my life.

Okay. I really should stop right now. Mark the time. And note the beverages consumed. Also note that it has been over ten years.

God, I'm pathetic right about now. Don't expect this post to last more than a week.

Okay. One more thing. GOD, right now I wish I knew who my birth parents were. Maybe one day.

No, I should never, ever write erotica or porn. But that won't stop me.

The DJ told me he was turned on to industrial by a Swiss guy who recommended Skinny Puppy, Ministry, NIN, and KMFDM. He turned to leave as he told me he was spinning in ten. We'd met years ago, and he was wild, big, with an unhinged look to his eyes. I told him to spin something hot, hard, loud, and above all, sinister. He slammed his thick lips onto mine and I reached around to grab his ass. A shower of needles went off everywhere. Goddamn.

Then I said, "Make my ears bleed. Make them feel like they've been violated."

"I don't know what it is, but you gotta do it."

Ten and a half years ago, I graduated naturopathic school. Great job, congratulations, here's your diploma, now get back to work and study your ass off for boards. Five weeks later, I had successfully filled in approximately 900 little circles on papers that would determine whether or not I would be eligible to get a license to practice or not. A few weeks after that, I found out that, yes, I had passed my board exams. Thrilled, to say the least.

But now what? You have your diploma, you now have your license, you have the title...what are you gonna do with it? And suddenly I became fearful for the future. I could complete medical school...but what of it? My bluff was called, and I blinked. Big time.

As it happened, Mr. Man and I had moved from Puddletown to the Chicago area after I completed my board exams. I'd unwittingly landed in the backyard of a chiropractic school that offered an accelerated program for health care pros like myself. It looked interesting. I visited the school on one of their "be a student for a day" programs. The day of the program was gray, rainy, cold, and dismal. The closer I got to the school, the drearier it seemed to get...used car lots, potholed roads, and nothing inviting. The entire day felt wrong. I felt magnetically repelled from the school, as if some huge force were trying to push me away. I came home and told Mr. Man that I couldn't see myself making that drive and going to school there at all.

But apparently I couldn't see myself using my degree right off, either. Despite what so much of my body, mind, and psyche was telling me (and there was no mistaking how wrong I felt about it), I decided to avoid the future, and retreated back into school.

And ten years ago today, on the first day of school, began the worst and most painful year of my life. I drove to school, singing a song that echoed my uncertainty but hope that this was perhaps the best path forward. Then I felt that hope collapse like the industrial dissonance and clamor at the end of the song, just as I pulled into the school parking lot for this first day of school. 2004 was a year that drove me to drink (but only on weekends), that contributed to some major adrenal fatigue (that I overcame years later, though not without effort), and that I would gladly erase from my life if given the option. I learned how cruel some instructors and fellow students can be. I learned how awful it feels to be devoting all your time and energy to a program you don't really believe in, yet one that will be significantly determining your identity, income, reputation, and mindset for the rest of your life. I learned how painful it can be to push forward when it seems that everyone has you in their crosshairs, to eliminate, to ridicule, or to shun. I learned the constant static that you feel when you had a vision for your life, but you chose a path that runs counter to it in many ways. And ever since, I've been trying to push the negative aspects of 2004 out of my brain and take what good I could from it. I've been mostly successful at winnowing the bad from the good, and I am definitely excellent at what I do, but my expertise came at a tremendous psychic and physical cost.

And 2005 wasn't much better.

 



 

 

So here's to having no year worse than 2004, and having every year being exponentially better and more fulfilling somehow. Because I've put in my time in hell...and it's time to turn my back on it. (Despite the fact that, yes, I did just commemorate it very unsubtly.)

The Music of 1989

A glimpse into the music-obsessed world of mine. I, riddled with ADHD (not diagnosed, not really ADHD...just sayin') read music reviews obsessively. Like tiny packets of dopamine to my system, these wastes of time and energy are. But I just can't stay away.

Since 1989 was far and away the most pivotal year of my young life (best and nearly worst, for a variety of reasons), I decided to look at the top 100 pop songs of that year. Yeesh...what a wasteland. Put thusly: if Milli Vanilli 1) has a firm hold on this list, and 2) I actually find MV's contributions among the better songs in this list, you know something is wrong. No wonder I soon found my way out of the mainstream.

So here's a fun little exercise: commentary on various of the top 100 alternative albums (back when the term actually meant something, you spoiled little upstarts!) in 1989, as proposed by the biased-but-still-awesome blog Slicing Up Eyeballs.

The Cure - Disintegration: Meh...didn't grab me so much, but you can't deny it's an awesome album. Maybe I'm not as goth as I'd like to pretend. I did get it years later, figuring it'd be a great breakup album to have as my relationship with Mr. Man was seriously on the skids. Fortunately, we stayed together, and I got to keep Disintegration. Huzzah all around.

Pixies - Doolittle: Discovered this a few years after the fact. And again, for some reason, the album as a whole didn't grab me, but individual songs stuck in my cerebral sulci, and to this day, they're on reliable rotation. Nirvana, and by extension virtually all of 1990s rock would've been DOA without this one. "La La Love You" has to be one of the coolest surf-punk songs ever committed to tape. (Bonus: "Debaser" inspired the referenced blog's title.)

Nine Inch Nails - Pretty Hate Machine: Good GOD, but this informed my high school experience. M. Reznor fuckin' FELT my pain, man! And the music felt so edgy and skittish. It was my entry point into industrial, for which I am forever grateful.

The Stone Roses: How the fuck did I miss this one? Only got it last year, and my conclusion: damn, I missed out on a whole lot of something back in the day. I'd have worn this one the fuck OUT. As it is, it's consigned to an occasional song on my "top rated" list. It deserves better. Mea culpa. (When I got a drum set around 15, a friend offered to teach me some tricks. Quote: "I'll have you playing the Stone Roses in no time." Would've been nice. Instead, I was stuck playing R.E.M., which wasn't exactly drummer heaven.)

Beastie Boys - Paul's Boutique: I'm seeing a miserable trend here. I'm consistently decades late to the party. But hella fun, right? "Looking Down the Barrel of a Gun" is pretty frightening, though...belongs in some warped Tarantino vehicle.

B-52's - Cosmic Thing: Phoenician rebirth, y'all. Fun, for the most part, aside from a few throwaways. I blast "Dry County" during the first real scorcher of the summer, and it feels like home. I've also sung "Love Shack" at the weddings for my brother and my sister. *hangs head in embarrassment*

The Replacements - Don't Tell a Soul: Uh, no. I meant to order "Pleased to Meet Me," but I got this drearfest instead. (This was back in the day of music clubs, kids, where you could actually buy EIGHT CDs for the price of one!) Professional, so it sounds good, but the Replacements should be anything but professional. Keepers: "I'll Be You," "Achin' to Be."

Bob Mould - Workbook: Yet another "just got this last year." I suck. Anyhow...the production here is clean and bright as a sanitized chrome kitchen. Some awfully beautiful songs here, too. And a bit of noodling that sounds...well, cool mountain stream comes to mind ("Sunspots"). Wait...all this from one of the big names in corrosive and angst-ridden punk? Yes. A major left turn from the noise that was Hüsker Dü, but a really awesome left turn.

10,000 Maniacs - Blind Man's Zoo: My entry point into this band. (Bragging rights: met them backstage at the Tonight Show during my 15 minutes of fame in 1989.) Loved 'em at the time, but this one is now about my least favorite of their albums; I can't remember when I last gave this one a spin. Someone once said that it's easy to listen to 10,000 Maniacs while you're doing household chores. I'd concur. Not exactly the most ringing endorsement.

Indigo Girls: This one hit me but HARD. While enjoying a beautiful mountain summer, I stumbled upon this album, courtesy of my sister, and "Closer to Fine" became one of my anthems that summer (I think it must have been 1990). Clean, green, sweet harmonies and simple guitar melodies throughout ensured this would be one of my favorite albums throughout high school. Heck, I even performed "Closer to Fine" with a friend during our spring concert my senior year.

Simon & Garfunkel's Greatest Hits

Some albums you just don't need to own, because...well, everyone out there seems to own it, and you can just listen to their copy. At least, that was how the logic went circa 1990, when CDs and tapes were all the rage. In this case, my sister, who left a fair bit of her music collection behind when she went to college, was my unknowing benefactor whenever I snuck to her room and borrowed her copy of Simon & Garfunkel's Greatest Hits.

My music collection back in 1990 left a fair bit of testosterone to be desired, and this album certainly didn't contribute to the cause. What it did do, though, was to allow me to work on my voice on some of the most poignant and beautiful songs from the 1960s. Anoretic ol' me couldn't rumble down low quite yet, and for some reason, I idealized a high tenor, so I did what I could to nurture said tenor. (It certainly came in handy a year later when I began my choral career.) And I tried to ape Simon and Garfunkel's straight, unobtrusive, simply declarative singing. Any high notes sounded effortless, and that was my goal...regardless of how much my neck muscles and jugular veins would pop out, I would make those high Fs perfect, and not in falsetto, either!

I still point to Art Garfunkel's "For Emily, Wherever I May Find Her" as a crystalline example of how tender and touching singing can be. (I don't care that Paul Simon wrote the song...Art owns that damned thing.) The imagery is beautiful, and virtually every phrase is an impressionistic reverie ("I heard cathedral bells/Tripping down the alleyways"; "What a dream I had, dressed in organdy, clothed in crinoline of smoky burgundy"; "We walked on frosted fields of juniper and lamplight"). Say what you will about Simon's precious poesy elsewhere...here, he gets it perfect. The delicate and pointillistic accompaniment is gorgeous and perfectly suits the mood.

I also jibed with "I Am A Rock," Simon's declaration of emotional independence from all around him. Friends and lovers be damned, he was going it alone...and as an alienated teenager who found little of emotional sustenance to be had around me, so would I. Again, his fascination with poetry came to the forefront, where he intentionally contradicted John Donne's famous poem "No Man Is An Island."

Such was my resonance with this album and its melancholy that by mid-high school, I could sing anything on it, with memorized lyrics and the correct key, at a moment's notice. But as I grew older, so did this album, and we began to part ways during the latter years of high school. By mid-college, I had little use of it. The only reason I returned to it now was based on the 50th anniversary of JFK's death. I had mistakenly thought that "Mrs. Robinson" was the #1 song at the time of his death (actually, it was some song about a flying nun or something), when actually it was around RFK's death. Either way, I had remembered reading about how the lyrics seemed to echo America's sentiment at the time. ("Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio? A nation turns its lonely eyes to you.") So I decided to revisit the album...and on the recommendation of many others, ended up getting its more expansive and sonically-updated relative, The Best of Simon and Garfunkel. It's nice to have more songs here, particularly from Bookends, an album I never had. But much like people sometimes complained about the sterility of CD sound vs. the warmth of vinyl, I feel like something has been lost in the upgrade somehow, and I miss the familiarity of the original audio. Oh well. It still is good to have these guys back again.

"What's that I smell?" "Burning nun, darling. Cheers."

Random comments about last night:

• When a new gayby (young, either newly-out or new to the scene gay man) says he has not seen The Sound of Music after 21 years on this plane, what do you do? Of course. You devirginize him. With said movie. And lots of friends. And lots of drinks and nibbly things.
• Don't be too bummed if he decides he really won't go out of his way to see the movie again, despite allowing as how he liked it.
• The St. Germain gin and tonic is utterly delightful. I wish I had begun drinking it about six months ago. It makes the perfect summer drink. (Don't belabor it. One gin and tonic, a half shot of St. Germain.)
• Forgive me, for I have sinned. Of all the gawdawful, socially, politically, environmentally, and hygienically repugnant things I could have done last night, this takes the cake: ordering Papa John's.
• Superman: Man of Steel - (Spoilers, natch.) Not a bad movie. I appreciated the story behind why General Zod was so hell-bent on taking over Earth. Not that it particularly made me like him, but it certainly made me understand his impulses better; I could almost sympathize with him. (Compare it with Superman II, where Zod just plain wanted to rule the planet and subject its peons to cruel dictatorship because...well, you know...just because.) But GOD...how many buildings did those two lovers need to throw each other into? And in the end, all it took was a good old-fashioned neck-wrench to send Zod hurtling into the void? What a disappointment.
• Combine the gin and tonics, the pizza, and the hyperkinesis of MOS, and you have yourself one soon-to-be-sick puppy on your hands. Cold sweat, that sudden sense of impending doom if you don't do something NOW...you know the feeling. And so:
• Enter my favorite herb of all time: gentian. Insanely bitter - and insanely awesome. I keep a tincture of it on hand at all times. It has often made the difference between puking my guts out and feeling miserable for hours afterward and feeling clean, cool, and calm. Three squirts of this in a cup of water, sipped over a few minutes, and here was the progression. Five minutes after starting: something is happening. Ten minutes after that: I'm definitely on the mend. Not sweating, stomach is moving, and this noxious brick in my stomach feels like it's dissolving. Within a half hour: completely out of the woods. Not just that, but I feel like I could SOAR, I'm feeling so great. I normally don't have quite that dramatic a response to gentian, but I was in a world of hurt last night.
• Want an aural approximation of this progression? Listen. Start at about 7:30 (just before feeling sick), and go until the vocals kick in at about 13:40. Thank God for prime Floyd.

Hallelujah - Jeff Buckley

Leonard Cohen penned this old chestnut back in the '80s, and indulged his nascent love for synthesizers while recording it. The results were moving but still jarring, particularly for people who had always known Cohen as a folkie, and this rendition sounds hopelessly dated now. But, y'know...if Dylan can go electric successfully, why can't Cohen? (Listen to I'm Your Man for what can happen when he gets synthesizers fully right.)

Since that time, gobs of singers have recognized what a stunning piece of work "Hallelujah" is, and have tried their hand at it. Rufus Wainwright and k.d. lang are among the fellow Canadians who have successfully turned it out. I actually heard a country singer attempt it yesterday on our office Muzak, with abysmal results. But honestly, no one - NO ONE - has even come close to Jeff Buckley's crystalline, heartbreaking rendition.

Buckley's voice is a nearly otherworldly instrument...some have even said that his voice sometimes does what no human voice should be able to do. He can sound angelic, soaring above the world like the most pristine of boy's choir voices, then scream like a banshee hellbent on destruction for what feels like minutes on end. Buckley is also not afraid to sound like an possessed fool in the service of a wild old blues song.

But he understands the quiet, serious reverence "Hallelujah" can take, and with spare spidery guitar behind him, he begins nearly in a whisper, commanding attention and wringing out every last bit of emotion from the song as beautifully as possible. The way he adds the slightest of melismas to the chorus is chill-inducing, and damns the likes of Christina Aguilera to musical hell. On the entrance to the bridge, he sings the last "hallelujah" as if he's pushing a paper boat with the slightest of nudges out onto a vast lake, with nothing but that solitary guitar and its sad but sure direction between vast spaces of silence.

And then that ending...oh, my God, that ending. Buckley intones the chorus over and over again, growing ever quieter all the time, drawing you in once again. Then suddenly HALLELUJAH...his voice unexpectedly pierces the cathedralesque quietude like a jagged dagger, and hearts are shattered, tears erupt by the riverful, and worlds fall into despair. But as if to heal the pain, he gently sings hallelujah two last times...once that seems to flow for eternity, offering ethereal balm for all the world's suffering, then again to affirm that perfect healing. And although tears may not dry up, and sadness may continue, the last hallelujah closes the song as completely and gracefully as a pastor closing a Bible.

As far as moving, heartwrenching music goes, Jeff Buckley's "Hallelujah" is right up there with Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings and Henryk Gorecki's Symphony of Sorrowful Songs. It's a perfect confluence of one of the century's most brilliant lyricists and songwriters, and a young man with a staggeringly talented voice. Take ten uninterrupted minutes out of your life and listen to it.

 

Like A Prayer - Madonna

No, really. This happens to be one insanely awesome album, the best she's ever done. It doesn't contain what I consider her undisputable highs ("Holiday" and "Vogue"), but it's her most consistent. It lands right at the end of her coy boy toy phase, just before she began to indulge in hardcore Erotica and Sex. That confluence alone would make Like A Prayer an especially fascinating chapter in Madonna's chameleonic career. But she went another step and practically made a concept album out of it, with at least half of the songs dealing with Family, whether literal or figurative. To belabor the point: mother ("Promise to Try"), father ("Oh Father"), sisters and brothers ("Keep It Together"), children ("Dear Jessie"), lovers ("Love Song", "Cherish"), spouses ("Till Death Do Us Part")...you get it.

What Madonna does here, also more than with any other album, is bare her soul. Much has been made of her intense love and longing for her mother, who died when Madonna was five, and whom Madonna has emulated and idolized. You hear her feelings spilled out on the gorgeous and deathly serious "Promise to Try," full of swelling strings and deep piano. Her pain also bleeds through on "Oh Father," during which she invokes not just the pain her father inflicted on her, but the symbolic Father of her church as well. But arguably, her deepest pain comes during the frenetic "Till Death Do Us Part." Remove the lyrics, and you have what could almost pass for a happy pop song. But at the time, Madonna was going through tremendous relationship anguish with her then-husband Sean Penn, and the couple divorced shortly before Like A Prayer was released. If the rumors on the tabloids didn't spell out her troubles clearly enough, her lyrics sure did: After listening to "The bruises, they will fade away/You hit so hard with the words you say," it was hard not to feel guilty over reducing Sean and Madonna to a celebrity couple for our consumption and amusement.

On the lighter side, "Dear Jessie" is a sweet and whimsical pop confection sung to a little girl, all "pink elephants and lemonade...candy kisses and a sunny day." Who knew Madonna could be so endearing, guileless, and motherlike? There's no other song in Madonna's canon like it, and it's utterly delightful. And in the midst of so many relationships on the album gone wrong, "Cherish" celebrates a deep and fulfilling relationship gone right...beyond infatuation and even beyond romance into joyous hopes for a lifetime of solid love with her perfect man. (I must pause here: that video. WHEW...that video. Those perfectly muscled and gorgeous mermen. *sigh*) And if there is any song that still keeps one foot firmly planted in the '80s, it's "Keep It Together." With a funky bassline and awesome syncopation, the song could fit seamlessly in True Blue from three years before. But instead of yelling "where's the party?" or naively gushing that "love makes the world go round," she profoundly asserts: "Brothers and sisters...they hold the key to your heart and your soul...don't forget that your family is gold." So much for the lighthearted hedonism of her youth...she's beginning to grow up.

The best and most convincing message on Like a Prayer comes in the form of self-affirmation and women's empowerment with "Express Yourself." The version here is pretty lighthearted and celebratory, full of synthesized brass and hoots. You know Madonna has some hard-won wisdom when she sings "You deserve the best in life, so if the time isn't right, then move on! Second-best is never enough...you'll do much better, baby, on your own!" Pop seldom has such profound lyrics, so hearing this song on FM radio was a revelation. (The version on The Immaculate Collection is a good deal rawer and funkier, but both versions are equally effective and enjoyable.)

The two songs that bookend the album are also nearly mirror images of each other. I'd argue that the title song is actually one of the weaker songs here. Bouncing between hushed gospel choruses and the bold sounds Madonna is known for does not make for a convincing song. Having said that, check out that edgy video. And duh...we all know what she meant when she sang "I'm down on my knees/I wanna take you there." (Again, I have to point out the version on The Immaculate Collection, which is a vast improvement on the original; its insistent crescendo suits the mood perfectly.) But then you play the song backward, add in some wild guitar strangling and botched tongue-in-cheek Catholic prayers ("Who art all good/Like I knew you would/And deserving of all my love"), and you have the hilarious "Act of Contrition." It would be unfair to disclose how the song ends. Just listen to it.

Hell, just listen to the whole album. And buy it. Yes, it's kind of a relic from the '80s, but it's also damn near impeccable. I'm not the biggest Madonna fan - in fact, I find it hard to muster up much enthusiasm for the majority of her music - but this album really has to be heard.

The best years of your life (or something...) (part 4)

What I'd tell myself back in 12th grade - the last of the series. (Part 1, part 2, and part 3 all here.)

-- College applications! Fun! But please, please, make sure to protect that application from Brown with your life. And if it gets kinda shredded in your backpack (and yes, it will), don't hesitate to call and ask for a second application. I doubt they'll hold it against you. It'd be a great school to go to, right? Your (up to now) first choice? Yeah. Go after it.

-- (added months later) Will you please promise me that you'll apply to at least one more college in the Northeast? Middlebury is pretty awesome. Bowdoin, Colby, and Amherst are, too. Besides, it's fucking gorgeous up there. You'll quite possibly love it more than...oh...oops. Better not say. Let's just say that you have a chance to alter your future right now...and quite possibly for the better.

-- Oh, God. I'm sorry about the Silver Skating Dame. She still is every bit as awesome as you know she is. But yeah, as great as she was, there's just that one little aspect of your life that got in the way. I will say it looked like (just between you and me), you were looking for an excuse to call the relationship off. Call it inspiration from James Dean and Route 66. Whatever. I know you can't be there for her the way she would really like.

-- FINALLY you're not doing speech. Good for you. It's not like you had enough on your plate before. Enjoy sleeping in on Saturdays, finally. (Oh, and same goes for not doing swim team.)

-- So Deep Springs called your bluff. Really, though, you did come across that well on paper. That essay on Woody Guthrie? Brilliant. Whoda thunk? Anyhow, get ready for one of the best...uh...four-day periods of your life. Seriously. I'd love to relive that trip over and over again.

-- Prednisone is EVIL. Don't do it like you did last year. Really. It will have some effects this time that will render All State Choir no fun at all. Cutting your vocal range in half is the least of it.

-- I know this will fall on deaf ears. But really, you shouldn't call your neighbors to see if you got the letter from Deep Springs. Trust me on this. Sit on it over the weekend. (and then...)

-- Man, I'm sorry about Deep Springs. I know how much you had your heart set on it. And yes, falling from that place to the land of Malt-O-Meal is quite a drop. Take it easy on yourself.

-- I know you're extremely anti-censorship. Me too. And I know you need to yell out the frustration you feel. But keep in mind that there's a fine line between expressing yourself and adding gasoline to the fire. You don't want to get so hung up on being so angry and all that it consumes you. In a nutshell: don't let your struggle become your identity. Then again...

-- Your anger. There's a great way to channel it. Hit the goddamned gym. Hit the free weights. None of this circuit crap. Chow down on some ginger while you're at it to boost your appetite. And don't worry about the big football jocks there who may be mocking you. You know where they started? Where you are right now. The good guys will respect you for working out. The assholes (and there are many fewer of them than the good guys) can just fuck off. So start off easy, and build up from there. And by "start off easy," I mean start off absurdly, insanely easy. But be consistent, and you'll see some awesome results.

-- The Metallica album? Get it. Just do. Good shit to listen to while you're lifting weights.

-- I just want to plant a seed here, amidst all the - honestly - misinformation and prejudice you're telling yourself, and absorbing from your dad. What I'm saying is coming from a struggling self-employed businessman, too...so keep that in mind. "Business" really, truly, honestly is not a four-letter word. Neither are "responsibility" or "professionalism." And here's why. The majority of businesses out there started as dreams and ambitions and hopes. Lofty and worthy ones, often. And ideally, they remain so. Business is the nuts-and-bolts work of making that dream a reality. Responsibility is a commitment to making that dream a reality. And professionalism is the outward manifestation of making that dream a reality. If people call you professional, they're acknowledging your commitment. It's honestly a compliment. Those words do not comprise a straitjacket. And conversely, you do not need to wear a suit and tie, or even business casual to be professional.

-- So now that you're back on good terms with the Silver Skating Dame, be cool to her. You know how awesome she is. You do know why she's following you to college, right? It's not because she thought that the Lutheran land of cows, colleges and contentment was her ideal place. (You KNOW that she couldn't have picked a worse fit if she'd tried.) So hang out with her every once in a while, let her know you still care. She'll appreciate it more than you know.

Springtime in the Rockies! Ain't nobody got time for that.

Oh boy. The posts across the country from my friends about spring are just givin' me a case of the facepalms. Yes, it is spring. Has been now, too, for about...oh...less than a week now. At least from a calendar standpoint. And because it is now the season of bunnies and daffodils and crocuses and robins and finches and new beginnings, said friends are assuming that spring also means, with little variation, warmer weather. And less/no snow. These are friends that, I must hasten to add, live in such temperate locales as New Hampshire and Wisconsin and Colorado. And when we get snow...OMG what's happening it can't be happening here it's SPRING not winter that dadgum groundhog lied to us all!!!

Please. Snow in spring - even large storms - are as common as Easter. Every year we get 'em. March is the snowiest month on average in Denver...and this year has proven this statistic right - the storm from two days ago gave us 10 inches of glop, a week or two after another 8" storm. I've seen big snowstorms hit Denver as late as late April. Snow can hit us in May. There's even been a trace of snow measured in June here before. And I'm certain that the aforementioned locales have similar weather patterns. So hesh, you. Bitching about snow after March 20th makes as much sense as bitching about summerlike weather after September 20th.

Besides, I'm no fan of shoveling snow (did I REALLY have to forget taking down the snowblower AGAIN this winter?), but at least at this time of year, it's nice to have light at 7:00 while you're shoveling.

And apropos of nothing, here's your dose of late '70s yacht rock. Some songs you forget about for years. Then you hear 'em, and either they promote involuntary reverse peristalsis, or they just hit you all kinds of right. This one's the latter for me. (With apologies for that damned ad before it.)

Love devastation!

Suicide Blonde - INXS: I never really had a huge, huge draw when this song came out originally. It is definitely one of INXS's best and most visceral songs, and the video is appropriately sexy. But when you're just 20, turn onto the main drag just after sunset in Satellite Beach, Florida during your spring break, driving a fabulous white convertible BMW, this song comes on the radio, and every light in sight suddenly turns green in front of you, it just hits you in the gut: you are SO in the right place at the right time, and you own the goddamned world. Flooring it never felt so liberating.

This Used To Be My Playground - Madonna: You know what's really sad? Knowing just how gracelessly Madonner is aging nowadays, pandering to the kids and forcing them to worship her in the least attractive way possible. (Seriously: I think M.I.A.'s flipping off the cameras during the Super Bowl concert was meant in every way toward Madonna...and to steal her thunder, too.) But doubly sad is listening to this lush and poignant bit of adult contemporary, and hearing what she could have been capable of, had she just accepted that people get older, and life moves on. And considering what a soulless wasteland adult contemporary music can be, that's high praise. (More high praise: this is the best of her late '80s-early '90s ballads, including the stunning "Spanish Eyes" and "Take a Bow.") Then again, maybe she took the lyrics too much to heart: "Say goodbye to yesterday/Those are words I'll never say." Compare this to the shite she's putting out there now. It's embarrassing. Still partying like she's 29, I guess. Sigh.

iTunes v. 11: MUST DIE. Dramatically simplified player, my ass. I know the desire to stuff every last medium into what was once a strict music player, to make a product all things to all people. I'm over it. This is enough, seriously, to make me seriously consider giving up my iPods (yes, plural) and just stick to my Android goods. Steve Jobs, we hardly knew ye.

El Alem Allah - Amr Diab: If this guy - pretty easy on the eyes, BTW - had any stateside exposure back in 2000, he would have seriously ruled the pop charts for a bit. As it is, Egypt got the spoils. And traditionalists in defense of Islamic culture screamed bloody murder because ZOMG WESTERN INFLUENCE MUST DIE!!! But hey...it's a breezy, bouncy, and insanely catchy pop tune in the vein of Ricky Martin. Besides, melding Arabic and Western music seems to be working for this guy - he's been the top Egyptian pop star for nearly 30 years. I found this one about three years ago, and it's been in heavy rotation in the car ever since.

He says the sun came out last night. He says it sang to him.

Whenever you talk about something that transcends the limits of our five most well-known senses, people tend to get creeped out unless you are given the proper context or enough advance warning. Or, if you're lucky, they are already on board, and willing to hear you out. Which, my legions of followers, you may consider my "enough advance warning."

In high school, during my speech and debate years, I would dread meets. Waking up at gawdawful hours on Saturday mornings to take a bus ride sometimes a town or two down the road, sometimes nearly two hours away. I'd then either give three speeches or debate three times (topic: Established: that the United States should significantly expand space exploration beyond the earth's mesosphere) over the course of the next eight hours, then take said bus back. And in the process, stress would be running high, and health would be running down.

So on Friday nights, while tucked into bed with the lights turned out, I began kind of "reaching out" to the next day, to see how it would go. And almost always, I would get a really good idea of how the next day would go. If I felt smoothness, like a canoe gliding over a glass-calm lake, then I knew the next day would be a success, in whatever way. It always meant I'd do well in my meet, but would usually mean I was in good spirits during the day, too. If it felt turbulent, then things would not go well.

For some reason, I tried it a few nights ago, and it was pretty dead-on. The next day felt somewhat turbulent, and true to form, yesterday was a fairly jagged day. The afternoon got better, but the morning was definitely not fun at all. Inspired by this, I decided to do the same last night. What I felt was utter chaos and madness, the likes of which I've never felt before, and I almost doubted myself. Felt again a few minutes later, and it was still the same. And...yup. Unfortunately, today has been AWFUL. Type of day that gives you Facebook remorse. You know how you just want to yell your troubles out to the world, and FB seems like such a perfect place to do it? Yeah, I've made that mistake before a few times, and made an utter fool out of myself. But where do you yell it out? On a semi-public blog, where people could find out who you are if they really tried? That skirts the line, too. Let's just say that a fight is a really crappy way to start a day, particularly if the one you're yelling at really didn't deserve it, but you needed to get out some massive frustration somehow. Add on a frightening phone call from work and a broken commitment from a friend (trivial though it was), and I've been playing "How to Disappear Completely" over and over in my head today.

So yeah, this quasi-ESP thing, sensing the near-future in the vaguest of ways is a bit creepy but pretty cool. But it does beg the question: if I can sense it, can I change it somehow if a bad day is coming on?

What is this that stands before me?

My God...have you heard what the kids are listening to these days?

Along with my fancy new wheels (which totally rock despite the MAIN HOLY COMPUTER DYING ON ME only one week in), I got the requisite free trial to Sirius. They really have everything on there, don't they? I've been bopping along to the '80s, enjoying the new wave station, occasionally indulging my classical jones, and very occasionally dipping into the Studio 54 station (which...the more I listen to it, the gladder I am I decided not to pursue being a Studio 54-ish DJ a few years ago). But I also discovered Ozzy's Boneyard, and fell in love. Mr. Man doesn't understand the appeal, but when I need to get my anger on, that station is golden. Besides, who ever heard of a touchy-feely natural doctor yelling along to Black Sabbath on the way to work? (One of many stereotypes I tend to smash.)

But WOW. I turned on Liquid Metal recently, conveniently skipping over the hair metal station, and my mind was blown. That shit is HEAVY - a tidal wave of mud, with distorted low rumblings and howlings that pass for vocals, lightning-fast drumming, and guitars that will pummel you into submission - if they don't pulverize your eardrums first. Makes Ozzy's Boneyard sound quaint in comparison. In particular, I heard a band called Suicide Silence. Yeah. That band'll scare off all but the most diehard aggro adrenaline junkies. But they weren't the first I'd heard to indulge in pure noise. That honor goes to a band with a name so crude and obscene, I'll just abbreviate it - as most people do - as A.C. Some of my favorite, uh..."songs" from them: "Flower Shop Guy," "Stayin' Alive (Oi! Version)," and "I'm Still Standing." (They do their fair share of covers, but compress them into blocks of sludge, usually with a healthy slab of humor to leaven the proceedings.) Thanks go to my college roommate for introducing me to them back in the land of pastor's kids and good Lu-the-ran folk.

Back to my "they really have everything on there" statement: on second thought, maybe not. I'd LOVE to see an industrial station on there. Some of the bands I'd entertain:

• Skinny Puppy
• NIN
• KMFDM
• Einsturzende Neubauten
• Cabaret Voltaire
• Pailhead
• Ministry (Twitch through Psalm 69)
• Throbbing Gristle
• Front 242
• Combichrist
• Rammstein
• VNV Nation

Come back if you want, kids...I may have added others since I first wrote these down. And yeah, the genre may be a bit too narrow to merit a station all its own, but it would be fun to try it.

In not-so-related news, doing shrugs with 185 lbs hanging off your shoulders is tough. Holy crap, but my traps are killing me today. Or they would be if I didn't indulge in ginger and turmeric in my morning smoothies. I'm convinced of it. As it is, it's just a dull ache.

Nirvana - In Utero

I'm thinking it's because my first year of college sucked fecal cheeseballs. I mostly had a great high school career and succeeded in large part because I had a very well-defined schedule at all times. Once I hit college, that framework vaporized, and I realized how little discipline and ambition I had on my own, and what had only supposedly been my antisocial tendencies suddenly came out loud and clear. I was, by my reckoning, supposed to land at the front door of college, and continue soaring. Instead, I freefell and crashed. Homesick, withdrawn, lonely, and feeling utterly out of place in the land of cows, colleges, and Midwestern Lutheran contentment, I felt like someone could say "boo" to me, and I'd fall apart in a million shards of broken glass.

 

Not one month after I began my freefall, Nirvana provided part of my soundtrack. No trainjumper, I, I was not a big fan of Nevermind. "Smells Like Teen Spirit" was okay, but there was something about it that just didn't hit me the way it was hitting everyone around me, and the same went for the rest of the album. But since I was beginning my college DJ gig, I had to cater to the whims of college radio, and that required me to embrace Nirvana. As it turned out, In Utero was a pretty damned great album. As broken up as I was becoming, I at least knew someone who was suffering along with me, unafraid to put anger, anguish, self-destruction, brutality, defiance, and depression in such cathartic music. It provided a perverse foil to the good, wholesome Lutheran girls and boys around me, and I delighted in it.

The pop shit here didn't really grab me. You can take your "Heart Shaped Box" and your "All Apologies." Hell, even take "Rape Me." (And yeah, that's all "pop" in the harshest sense of the word.) The songs I really resonated with were the really soul-baring ones that went along with the most abrasive noise that Nirvana could come up with (with one exception). To wit:

Frances Farmer Will Have Her Revenge On Seattle - Uh, okay Kurt. I'll indulge your loopy song title. Just howl "I miss the comfort in being sad" a half dozen or so times, so I know we're on the same wavelength, and all will be forgiven.

Milk It - This is kinda the musical equivalent of what was becoming my life mantra at the time: that which does not kill you warps you for life. I've never heard a 4/4 time signature be played so obliquely and unrecognizably. And Kurt slurs so badly here you can barely make out "I own my own pet virus/I get to pet and name her" before screaming out "DOLL! STEEEEAAAAK!" as loudly and derisively as he could. Whatever that all means.

Tourette's - Place this one up there with Sonic Youth's "Nic Fit" off of their nifty Dirty. You got a simple four-chord progression, drums that bludgeon you at breakneck speed, and some totally unintelligible yelling. What more do you need for a one-man mosh pit in an cinder block and glass shard room?

Radio Friendly Unit Shifter - God DAMN. THIS is, I'd argue, Nirvana's pinnacle. All the rage that Nirvana had to offer, spurting in all directions, suddenly became laser-focused, despite the deranged feedback undulating through the whole song. Kurt didn't scream out the lyrics for once; he dead-panned them in a truly frightening way, made all the scarier because they were just that side of inscrutable. Except for the chorus, a simple "what is wrong with me" repeated over and over again that echoed what I thought every day. And as loud as the rest of the song is, the ending is a seismic speedball that grows uncontrollably and threatens to demolish anything in its path.

Dumb - Here's the exception. Soul-baring, but lounge-intimate and quiet. I really, really got this one. For someone who prided himself so much on his brains, and for someone who had so successfully cultivated a close circle of friends in high school, I sure felt stupid and out of place my first year at college. So of course I was gonna identify when Kurt murmured "I'm not like them, but I can pretend." And like willful Chinese water torture to my psyche, I absorbed every iota of meaning when he droned "I think I'm dumb" over and over and over. It was self fulfilling destruction. At least for that first year.

(Nice bit of trivia I just saw, courtesy of our good friends over at Wikipedia: In Utero was recorded in Cannon Falls, Minnesota...just fifteen miles from my first home away from home. Somehow so apropos.)

The Wrong Child?

Yeah, yeah, poor poor pitiful Pearl. Put a sock into it. Don't read if you don't want. I'ma spew pity party chunks all over this here screed.

Still convinced that as a youngster, I was dealing with a mild form of autism...perhaps Asperger's or even a bit milder. Reading The Autism Revolution kinda clued me into that. I was reading it on the recommendation of a patient of mine. But it makes me wonder why in the world I was not taken in for evaluation. Strange mood swings that seemingly came out of nowhere, self-absorption, some rather significant aversion to social situations, occasional absence spells (mild seizures?) that drove my parents nuts, a few fainting spells, evidence of "stimming" (repetitive actions that serve to release neural excitement), and some idiot savant-ish qualities (absent-mindedness right alongside academic excellence). Lots of these have persisted to the present day: the stimming (on a daily basis, no less, whenever I get happy or overexcited), absence/mind drifting, some moderate antisocial tendencies, more self-absorption, and perhaps worst of all, those mild seizures eventually developed into full-blown grand mal seizures. First one was probably around 10, the next about 5 years later (while snowboarding! Thank GOD I was on terra firm and not on the chairlift!), and another five scattered between then and 2005...including two in one day. So yeah, I'm not all neurologically sound. In one rare instance of acknowledgment of conventional medicine, I have to say I'm grateful for my antiseizure meds...even if it means that my liver is very unhappy with me all the time. (Chronically elevated liver enzymes = slow destruction of the liver. Perhaps I should be on some milk thistle or other liver regenerative therapy.)

Of course, getting into a fight with Mr. Man didn't help matters last night. Compound the two, and you've got yourself one seriously insecure kid inside a grown man's body. You get to wondering...if I have this much of an issue with being social, and am this screwed up, am I really the right kind of person to be in a relationship? Don't get me wrong: Mr. Man is all kinds of awesome. He's just so social, and I come in on the opposite end of the spectrum. Can't help but feel insignificant in such a situation. And I have dreams and ambitions, but I feel like they've been lost in the shuffle of being in a relationship with someone else. I look back on the only 6 months of my adult life where I was living on my own, and I really, really flourished. It's occasionally tempting to chuck it all, especially when I look at my interests vs. his, and there is very little overlap.

God. Just want to crawl back into bed. Particularly since I slept like shit last night...tossed and turned, finally fell asleep around 2, and woke up at 7. (I'm not one of these people who can thrive on 5 or fewer hours of sleep a night.) Hmm...maybe I will. After a good full lunch.

The broad monster clouds the novice.

More rando. You know you were hungry for it.

There is no Muppet Movie soundtrack anymore. Sad trombone. Or at least, it's out of print, so you can find it...um...on vinyl. I'm not dissing on vinyl. The point is: who, besides the committed audiophiles and accomplished DJs of our time, has a turntable?
This album was absolutely formative to me. I'd listen to it for hours on end, though I turned my nose up at the instrumental version of "Never Before, Never Again" (and for that matter, the sung version warn't all that much better). But I'd listen to "Movin' Right Along" over and over again, even though there was a crack in the record. It would skip about 6 seconds in, and the entire song was over in about 30 seconds. Always made me laugh uncontrollably. And then there was the heartbreaking "I'm Going To Go Back There Someday." This one deserves a retroactive Grammy or Oscar for Best Song of 1979. (It just barely beats out "Rainbow Connection.") This, coupled with learning how to ski at Buttermilk all those years ago, made for some of my best childhood memories.
Whatever can we do to persuade the powers that be that the world is not complete without this soundtrack?

StormdTheCastle. I thought I was concerned about my appearance? Nothing even close. This one is mildly amusing, to be sure...a guy who's extremely into himself, his workouts, and how he looks. I mean, who would document a 63/100 inch gain in calf circumference? How would you even do that? He does admit he has body dysmorphic disorder, so he's conscious of it. And speaking of BDD...

Noodles and Beef. All kinds of adorable, amirite? His happy happy joy joy appearance and attitude does grate, but at least for awhile, you can't help but be amused. Besides...muscles. And a great smile. Yeah, I'm shallow. I own it. (As for the BDD, he admits to it, too. I'm not projecting.)

The Power of No. I have had multiple sources tell me over the past few years that I am profoundly negative. And part of me protests: "I'm really not that negative! I just have a certain view of how my life should be, and I do not want extraneous bullshit to affect that view!" If you have a small "yes" inside of you, you sometimes need to protect it with a wall of no's. (God, that sounds nauseatingly "self-help lite.")
I thought this little phrase would be a good title for a book. Until I saw that there are at least three other books with that same title. The one subtitled "How to Keep Blowhards and Bozos at Bay" seems amusing; I may have to pick it up.

Music to mindlessly destroy yourself by.

Or: Perfect songs for lifting up heavy things and putting them back down again repeatedly, grunting all the while.

Far Behind - Social Distortion: Mike Ness has one of the most perfect punk voices ever. Raw, muscular, sounding like a buzzsaw welded with testosterone and titanium...it cuts through you and doesn't give a shit. This brilliant fuck-off from SD's greatest hits plays nearly like a pop song, so conventional is its construction. But that's not a bad thing. Sonically, it's an awesome force of nature, jumping out of the speakers to grab you and smash you to the ground.

New Day Rising - Hüsker Dü: I defy you not to feel pummeled by this song...and that's just during the first five seconds of martial drums at warp speed, before the metallic guitars roar over you like a sonic wave. Punk as punk gets. Lyrics? We don't need no goddamn lyrics! Just howl the title over and over again. Primal.

Meantime - Helmet: Yeah, the whole album. I bow to the great Michael Azerrad, who encapsulated it thusly: "A marvel of precisely channeled aggression, Meantime could be the soundtrack to the mind of an NFL linebacker." Damn straight. Also, back in the day of grunge, depression, and Seattle, these guys provided a kick-ass retort to kids considering casting off this mortal coil: "Die young is far too boring these days."

Long Snake Moan/Meet Ze Monsta - PJ Harvey: These behemoths off of To Bring You My Love (WAAY recommended, by the way) will pulverize you. PJ simply gives a knowing "mm-hmm" at the beginning of Long Snake Moan just before a wall of guitar smashes you and doesn't let up until the bitter end. The banshee wails don't hurt, either. Then on Meet Ze Monsta, a mechanical goose-stomp provides the force behind some of the most muscular, forced singing you'll ever hear. You gotta hear these.

Master of Puppets - Metallica: Obvious, true. But there's a reason it's obvious: it fucking rocks. Can't believe I lived over 30 years of my life before hearing this one.

Thieves - Ministry: God bless Wax Trax for bringing us this immortal piece of derangement. Here, Ministry nursed its last vestiges of industrial before it fell fully into the sludge of metal below. Distorted yelling, exhortations to "kill, kill, kill," and a rhythm section that, at its best, provided the beat to deranged goose-stepping Nazi soldiers on speed.

Dinner at Eight - Rufus Wainwright

Rufus Wainwright is an acquired taste. His voice is nasal and anoretic (especially on his debut, where I don't recommend starting), and his musical tastes run pretty skew to popular music. Classical, opera, folk, and Tin Pan Alley are the founts from which his inspiration springs, and he has a slightly aloof, wry, and condescending way about him. His compositions (funny how that word came to mind before "songs") can be dry and subtle, often bereft of hooks, and only reward you after multiple listenings or upon being placed in an appropriate context. Or they can be sweepingly melodramatic, full of romantic and impressionistic flourishes that go down as easy as a bowl of the richest chocolate mousse - and leaving you feeling about as queasy afterward. Oh, and add in the fact that he is a gay man; this colors his writing considerably. (Can you imagine a straight songwriter name-dropping Bea Arthur? Or writing a song from the point of view of a young woman reminiscing about her first high school crush on a man?) Needless to say, he hasn't been gracing the top of the pop charts.

What he has done is make some of the most gorgeous, intelligent, moving music of the new century; even an authority as high as Elton John has branded him "the greatest songwriter on the planet. " Choosing my favorite Rufus song is no easy task. There's an awful lot of gold, particularly from Poses and the two Want albums. But "Dinner at Eight" (from Want One) stands above the rest. This love song to his father ironically resonates with anger and bitterness throughout, and exemplifies the brutally personal turned universal.

Rufus's family (father Loudon III, sister Martha, deceased mother Kate McGarrigle, aunt Anna McGarrigle) is an immensely talented group of folk musicians. In fact, when Loudon first happened on the scene in the early 1970s, he was branded with that dreaded "new Bob Dylan" title that no one could live up to. Despite that, Loudon - and the rest of the family, really - is no stranger to critical acclaim, even if they haven't achieved widespread popularity.

They are also just as flawed as humans can be and they air out their familial trials, tribulations, and secrets in their music with a willingness that makes the listener sometimes feel exploitative. (See Loudon's tribute to his then breast-feeding son, "Rufus is a Tit Man." See also Martha's paean to her dad, "B.M.F.A." It stands for "bloody mother fu..." uh, yeah, you got it.) "Dinner at Eight" fits right in here...and although I don't know the Wainwright/McGarrigle canon like I suspect I should, I bet this song sits near the top of the heap of these expositions.

From a musical standpoint, "Dinner at Eight" does away with the typical opulence, and begins with a quiet, stately piano arpeggio that belies the drama directly ahead. "No matter how strong," Rufus warns his dad, "I'm gonna take you down with one little stone. I'm gonna break you down and see what you're worth...what you're really worth to me." As an orchestra quietly builds behind him, he recalls an argument between he and his dad one night; it's easy to imagine it might have been a battle of egos between the well-established father and the rising star son.

But just as soon as it seems Rufus turns away from the argument, dismissing his part in it, he suddenly stops and stands his ground. "Why is it so...that I've always been the one who must go? That I've always been the one told to flee? When in fact you were the one...in the drifting white snow who left me?" Bitter accusations were seldom so poetically put. Cue a weeping harp mimicking the snow falling, and you now have Rufus's mom, Kate, weeping herself, out of the anguish of knowing such a strained relationship existed between two men she loved so much.

Suddenly, the music swells, and with it, Rufus's righteous anger. "So put up your fists, and I'll put up mine. No running away from the scene of the crime." It's the moment of reckoning for his father. Reconciliation and peace, or a lifetime filled with resentment and anger. Either way, it's his dad's choice. "God's chosen a place somewhere near the end of the world, somewhere near the end of our lives. But till then, Daddy, don't be surprised if I want to see the tears in your eyes." Rufus is asking for an apology, an admission of guilt, for the hard facade to break down just once. "Then I'll know...you loved me." Just that much. But you get the sense that Rufus doubts it, as he repeats the beginning of the song, re-establishing his defiant stance against his father.

"Dinner at Eight," for all its beauty, is achingly uncomfortable, and Rufus does his best to heighten the tension. The music ebbs and flows with emotion, with little regard to a regular beat, and creeps to a near-standstill, tellingly, as he sings "in the drifting white snow, you left me." A slow, painful death trumps a quick one any day, and Rufus is going to make damned well and sure his dad knows how much it hurt feeling abandoned.

So, yeah. Wrenches your heart out, this song does. But in the most beautiful manner. Well worth a listen.