Isolation

I'm sitting at my desk listening to Sponge's excellent cover of John Lennon's "Isolation." Every once in a while, I steal a sip of Bushmills from the rocks glass to my right. I lean back and let the flavor melt into my palette as I think about Mike Starr and what his death means to me.

For those of you who don't know, which I'm sure is disproportionately larger than those who do, Mike Starr was the founding bassist for 90's stalwarts Alice in Chains. His body was found in his Salt Lake City home. He was 44.

No cause of death has been released yet, but for those who followed his chronic difficulties with substance abuse, it will most likely be a short line from point A to point B.

Its been the better part of a decade and a half since Starr was a member of Alice in Chains. Still, this has to come as a blow to fans who cut their fanatical eyeteeth on Dirt. The sad and slow death of singer Layne Staley would have been well documented had he done anything other than heroin. Instead, he dropped out and shot up, never to be seen ever again until his body was found after one last eightball.

Admittedly, I was never a fan of Alice in Chains. Which is not meant to put them down. Out of all the Seattle bands, their music seemed friendliest to lost metalheads adrift in a sea of alternative music. Even Soundgarden, probably their closest kin in terms of metal cross-over, seemed cerebral next to the inherent primality of their work.

And I suppose its that primal element to their work that makes them a hard listen for me. In a lot of ways, their music reminds me of losses in my own life that bear no resemblence save a similar shaped darkness.

A toast to absent friends, then.

Dynamite Steps as performed by the Twilight Singers

Never known for his subtlety, Twilight auteur Greg Dulli served notice on the world earlier this year when “On the Corner” started to circulate the net in advance of his new album. “All rise with me,” he crooned in his proto-punk soul tenor, “all take your place.” His message, it seemed, was clear: the Greg Dulli gospel tabernacle and choir is back in session.

Of course, most of the gospel in Dulli's work is confined to his music. Few artists have enjoyed the balance between the sacred and profane quite like he has. 2000's Twilight as Performed by the Twilight Singers was powered by a quiet and introspective resignation unseen up to that point. 2003's Blackberry Belle was the sound of him blacking out the windows before 2005's Powder Burns shot them out. What does that make Dynamite Steps? Is it a reconstruction effort? A rejuvenation? A rebirth?

Well, if Powder Burns saw Dulli starting to stir after the blackout, then Dynamite Steps finds our protagonist in a contemplative mood after a decade spent on and off the rails. Hushed codas abound here, as if confession, not conflagration, reign supreme. Dulli indulges both the angel and the devil on his shoulders. “Baby, I've come to take you under,” he sings in the opener “Last Night in Town.” Just a few lines later though, he implores, “Love, take me now.” Like most of the album that follows, the song yields longing and regret in equal measures.

Like the best of Dulli's catalog, the album is best when he's forced to turn his gaze upon himself. “Get Lucky,” with its austere piano and vocal opening, shows Dulli coming to terms with himself. The band swells into a lush arrangement as he sings “I get lucky sometimes.” Its the sound of a man shocked by the revelations of his own confession and its easily the standout moment of standout moments.

Musically, it must be said that the Twilight Singers tower. The band, as a studio entity, has long been an excuse for Dulli to make records with whoever catches his fancy. Old faces Mark Lanegan and Ani DiFranco appear to help out vocally. But more than that, its revealing (although less than surprising) that his main choice of conspirators is his touring band. They've been at this gig long enough to deliver their trademark smoky soul groove with panache and precision. They are their own genre of music: a smoky, soul infused guitar band built around the moral ambiguity of noir cinema as much as the freedom of punk rock.

In fact, the manner in which this disc seems to musically touch upon all aspects of the Twilight's recording career almost makes it the best of retrospectives- bracingly familiar and yet thrillingly new. All the hallmarks of previous albums are here: the electro-folk of Twilight, the dark majesty of Blackberry Belle, and the revelatory grandeur of Powder Burns.

It would appear that we all get lucky sometimes.

The First Fair Warning of 2011

Albums by bands you probably got sick of if you spent too much time hanging around with, driving with, drinking with, corresponding with, and/or simply acknowledging me:

This is Happening by LCD Soundsystem. Easily my favorite record of the year.

Heaven is Whenever by the Hold Steady. I wasn't sure at first but it really grew on me.

Lustre by perenially underrated Ed Harcourt. Probably my second favorite album of the year. Guaranteed to cause the least amount of disruption in my household.

Trans-Continental Shuffle by Gogol Bordello. This album is a more romantic and sexier beast than prior albums. It didn't quite fit into my emotionally nihilistic gypsy-punk worldview. This year, however, it's a really nice listen.

Head First by Goldfrapp. Returning to their more club oriented sound, they made the best Abba/Olivia Newton John record in decades.

Albums you should be prepared to get sick of hearing me talk about this year:

100 Lovers by Devotchka. Beautiful, gorgeous, lush. But I still wish they'd play "Transliterator" live.

Dynamite Steps by the Twilight Singers. Because a new Greg Dulli album is always to be celebrated.

Collapse Into Nothing by R.E.M. Which upon hearing, I will either declare the album a return to form or pine for the days in which everybody hurt.

Angles by the Strokes. See R.E.M. Add booze.

The King of Limbs by Radiohead. See R.E.M. See the Strokes. Add confusion.

Consider yourselves warned.


*But seriously, I'll have a review posted of the new Twilights record this Tuesday in honor of Mardi Gras.

statisticalities

Wisdom imparted to us by Run-D.M.C.: it's like that and that's the way it is.

The way it's been for me is fairly busy as Ty and I wrapped up our initial manuscript and revisions for the novel. It's fairly busy as I determine what the next big project is. It's fairly busy as I try to maintain a dayjob, a personal life and write.

All that being said, it's a goal to see more new material up here on a regular basis. More live show reviews, some old reviews that were never posted and should have been, record write ups, and hopefully a chat with a friend or two.

These are all things I've been wanting to do more and more lately. But then I went and looked at stats for this site over the last year. The internet is a funny thing. You think you're spitballing in silence but...
some of you just keep coming back.

Huh.

Well, thanks in any and all ways.

And now I leave you with StapleSaurusRex.

This is Not a Love Song- Split Singles, the Spirit of '91 & Rock and Roll String Theory

Stories come from a strange place. They start out as simple ideas or emotions that, for whatever reason, resonate a little louder than the world surrounding them. And when you key in on that, they go from simple ideas and emotions to vast conspiracies in the heart, the head, the spirit. To say that the relation between the original idea and the finished project is tenuous, at best, is often a kind understatement.

To that end, I should say that this is about a story I wrote in collusion with the often imitated but never matched Tyler Kent. We titled it “This is Not a Love Song.” We're big fans of it. But how could we not be? Besides penning it, it's about our favorite things: beer, girls and the Clash. In short, it's about friendship.

But that's not where the story started for me. The story started for me with the phantom whispers of October 1991.

Nirvana's “Smells Like Teen Spirit” debuted on MTV's 120 Minutes and was placed into regular daytime rotation not long after. The unmistakeable death that hair metal suffered was almost instantaneous and I remember it well. The heshers on my bus couldn't talk about anything else.

“...and then the audience climbs out of the bleachers and starts moshing with the band. They start throwing stuff around. Everything is destroyed. It was wicked rad.”

True story. I swear.

By the end of the year, Nirvana was selling 300,000 copies a week.

Released around the same time, August 1991 to be more precise, Pearl Jam's Ten didn't see the immediate success of their cross town rival. But by the second half of 1992, it was just as pervasive. Later, lead singer Eddie Vedder was splashed across the cover of Time magazine for an article he didn't take part and the band made their first appearance on Saturday Night Live. My preppie neighbor's excitement was more than palpable.

This defined the rift between Nirvana fans and Pearl Jam fans. And make no mistake. There was a rift and it was huge, maaaan.

Ten was short on the anarchic glee that made Nevermind so enjoyable for so many. It's stories were dark and somber, short on irony but stacked in melodrama. It's influences were unabashedly classic rock even when tempered by Vedder's punk rock ethos. It was criticized by many, including Kurt Cobain, as a corporate shilled placebo for the alternative nation. Nonetheless, it's success, both commercially and culturally, was rivaled only by Nevermind.

It could be argued that these two albums and the bands they represented were symbolic of the dynamic tension between the collective id and ego of American teens at the time. In retrospect, it's reminiscent of the same way that the Sex Pistols and the Clash had represented the malcontent youth of England a decade and a half before. Nirvana held court as the movement's nihilist jester while Pearl Jam stole from the rock and roll canon to make something of their own.

The instant celebrity thrust upon Pearl Jam formed them into a fierce and fighting combat ready unit. If there was ever a more confrontational sophomore effort from a band than Vs., I haven't heard it. Railing against the world at large, the album wasn't so much a shot across society's boughs as a declaration of war upon the world at large. This galvanizing effect never really happened for Nirvana, though.

Instead, Cobain satirized his celebrity status (and the “grunge” movement as a whole) with the venomously titled “I Hate Myself and Want to Die.” Contributed to the Beavis and Butthead Experience, the song was, at one point, slated to be the title track to their followup album In Utero. Fearful that the faithful masses would miss the irony of it all, they removed the song and it's title from the album. Sadly, by April 1994, the song title didn't seem so ironic.

On the surface, Cobain's suicide seemed an inevitable indictment of the turbulence of the times. The ensuing overdoses of Hole's Kristen Pfaff and Blind Melon's Shannon Hoon only confirmed this. Pearl Jam was already under siege from the demands of their own career and would soon withdraw. They'd re-evaluate and re-imagine their career trajectory with no less than Neil Young acting as their consigliere. The spirit of '91 had given way to something much darker: a rock and roll machine that ate its young.

The larger implications, both personal and public, were lost on teenage me. I didn't realize until a few months ago how commonplace all of this seemed to us as kids. My parents would gnash their teeth and wring their hands as they wept about the “darkness of the old days and how it was all happening again.” They had their Hendrix, their Joplin, their Morrison. We had Kurt. It seemed a given to us, in that day and age, that death was just a part of the gig. Looking back now, it makes me sad to think of how cynical and desensitized that seems.

In the space of less than four years, it felt like a whole decade had come and gone. We spent the rest of the nineties huffing the vapors of those first few years as we chased the dragon from grunge to alternative to brit-pop to electronica. Still, it has to be said: what a magnificent dragon it was.

In 1993, it wasn't uncommon to see Living Colour, 10,000 Maniacs, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Soul Asylum, Bjork, and yes, even the Spin Doctors marketed in the same section of the record store. This was the epic greatness that was Alternative music- even if the label seemed like an oxymoron or an anachronism. To me, it's hard to imagine a period in music freer from the constraints of style or form.

And yet, it's harder to imagine a larger disappointment than Cobain's death. In that single moment, the direction of Alternative rock changed forever. As a fan of music, its hard not to engage in Rock and Roll String Theory. The what ifs and coulda, shoulda, woulda's will forever commandeer late night last call pub conversations and stoner talk.

My own personal Rock and Roll String Theory revolves around closing the gap between Nirvana fans and Pearl Jam fans. In my alternate reality, Nirvana and Pearl Jam reached out to one another at the height of the public frenzy. They hunker down in Bad Animals studio and produce a split single.

Yes, Virginia, they solve their differences with a piece of vinyl. Nirvana does two songs on side A with Pearl Jam doing two songs on side B. (In my alternate reality, I play the shit out of side B.) But larger than the idea of the collector's item they create, I'm fascinated with the idea that two titanic singular voices come together to produce a piece of art that says, “Fuckit. We are music. Turn us up.” And the kids do. Much to their parents' displeasure.

And now you see how a simple idea, like a split single that never happened (and probably never could), spins out into a thousand plus words that you've just slogged through.

I wrote a novel. The title is This is Not a Love Song. I wrote it with Tyler Kent because, like that split single that I always wanted, I wanted a novel out there with two distinct voices and like a sucker, he agreed. I wrote it with Tyler Kent because it's about friendship and loyalty and the sanctity of youth and a rockin' soundtrack to boot. Its about the music we love, the girls we don't want to love and the friends that hold us steady in between.

Maybe it is a love song after all.

We Wanted our Rock Stars Dead

I've been revising the novel at a clip of about 10-12 pages a day. Until I got to a chapter we excised in favor of a much shorter, much more vitriolic rant. That's taken me about three days just to get my head around what actually needed to be said. I understand a lot better now as seeing the screed on screen, it makes me uncomfortable... for whatever reasons.

"We demanded our rock stars dead. And with a needle in one hand and a shotgun in the other, they obliged us so we applauded. We played from our fucking hearts. So keep your pain and keep your emotions. We've seen it all and we see through you like the cheap plastic you are."

And yes, this is what happens when you mix equal parts Bill Hicks, Joe Strummer and Jameson 12 year together.

Confirmation of Everything I've Ever Known

Adding space as an adjective really does just make it... y'know, MORE.


Somebody needs to finish his book already.

For the Pseudo Ivy League Punters in the Audience

As Pete Townshend once said, "Sit down or stand up but shut up. It's a fucking rock and roll concert, not a tea party!"

So yes, my self important pretentious co-audience members who complained about everything before and during the Hold Steady's set tonight, shut up. Your sophisticated tweed jacket did nothing to cover up the personal failings of your shitty attitude.

But know this: I screamed a lot louder, jumped around a lot harder and sang way more often just to piss you off. And that, for me, made an already enjoyable evening that much sweeter. Because it's rock and roll, man, not book club.

more thoughts on where stories come from

Recently, I was forced to sit down and watch The Professional. Ultimately, while I found it to be an entirely enjoyable movie experience, I kept coming back to one thought: How is this going to effect this young woman's life ten years down the road?

I mean, can you imagine?

Trained to be an assassin and legally dead, what kind of night does that make for her college boyfriend when she has a few too many to drink and unloads her secret history on him? What happens if she's forced into a corner and has to resort to "old behavior?"

This is the big question I've turned over in my head in the months since I watched this movie. Tonight, I sat down to watch The Crow and felt the same familiar tug at the front of my brain. One of your best friends returns from the dead to avenge himself and his love. You're there to witness it all. It's got to have an effect decades down the road, right?

But seriously, screw that Crow: City of Angels crap. I slept through it once already when it came out.

things that i think about

Undoubtedly, I haven't had much time to work on music this year. I sincerely hope this changes soon as I've a few projects to finish, a few projects to start.

I was on a quick run yesterday listening to the new Tricky album (Mixed Race) when I could finally articulate what I want out of my next stage piece:

"I want it to sound like Aaron Copeland hanging out with Frank Lloyd Wright in some shitty underground dance club in downtown Chicago and they're doing death drugs."

I hope I never forget that.