Frenchette / Connie Champagne

In the big bin of used CDs one spine reads Connie Champagne, red on blue, and I pry it out. In a daze I buy it, whatever it costs, I don’t care. It is her, from the Frolic Room, from that house she rented up on Camrose, where we watched TV in her bed. We did it some because that came naturally but there wasn’t any chemistry for it. Like old married people we just phased it out and went along, dinners, movies, the constant stories. She moved in for a while, then out again to a sublet. I let her stay alone night after night though, she had so few friends.

Nobody Told me / John Lennon

In George’s room I plug my guitar in, finding the chords by ear, his walkman tuned to FM radio. I hear the amp around the headphones.

There’s a place for us in movies, you just gotta lay around

It is fall. I have missed my big chance but I am convinced there will be many more. Or at least some more. But maybe one’s all you get. Some people know when they’re 20, most of us don’t.

So Danco Amor / Joao Gilbert

It is May of 1995 and Tom is just my age now, but he seems paternal, bordering on crotchety at times. But still always ready to laugh. We come in from dinner and wine, tired from the hill street that leads to our house and I choose the record from a box beside the stereo. Stan Getz/Joao Gilberto. Instantly it is 1965 and the girls are stewardesses we’ve picked up after our flight. We’re globetrotting bachelors with a layover in Rome and nothing could be funnier.

Dear John / Aimee mann

He didn’t respond, Alex didn’t. Not much range, and such similar beats and tempos. And I thought, you old fuck. Get your head out of your ass and give her a few minutes. For christ sakes, don’t tell me there’s no range. Her stories sing rings around your dusty screenplays. You old fuck. Just listen up, with something besides those old ears of yours.

Something in my Eye / Ed Harcourt

We swatted a fly and fed it to her, flipping it off the point of a skewer. She was clinging to her transparent web with a patient grip, riding out the slight bounces it took in the breeze. Our mouths dropped open as she slipped down the silk ladder to where the fly stuck, faster than a blink, then faster still back to the center with the fly gooey in her legs. And she spun it like a corn cob, bundling it. Then drinking, drinking, on tiptoes, light, ready.

I’ll Get You/ Beatles

One of my dirty little secrets songs: I don’t really know it. I couldn’t pick up the black book of Beatles and just strum this one. Because I don’t know it! It’s great, and I could have carried it with me for so many years, but it’s never been in my head.

No Phone / Cake

Spring 2005, and even last fall, a year ago. Driving to Echo Horizon, j’s cd of choice for a few weeks.
Clean and sharp and percussive and you can’t stop listening.

Pretty Girls/ Joe Jackson

In 1985 Heidi and I went to New oRleans and spent a few days with Virginie and Hubert. It was July. I don’t remember how long we were there. We went swimming one day. We went out to Houma and rode in the motorboat with Annie on the swamp tour. The bayou tour. Virginie translated this for Hubert:

"Dieu, si tu m’ecoute..."

as we drove in the Skylark listening to Look Sharp. IT was six years old then, seemed ancient.

Heidi sat next to me as we drove home. “How often do you go to the bathroom?” she asked. She was scared something was wrong with her. I just looked straight ahead and drove, up 55 back to Memphis. I’d be gone in a few months.

HWC / Liz Phair

IS she betraying women by talking like this? Does it make women mad because it’s something they’d nbever say, or does she make them mad because it’s what they’d like to say but can’t. Either way, I think women don’t like Liz Phair. Jennifer doesn’t anyway.

New frontier/ Donald Fagan

Confess your passion, your secret fear/ Prepare to meet the challenge of the new frontier

I wrote a letter this morning to Fred Shoemaker and his wife Jo Hardy asking them to participate, to assist, in an Extraordinary Golf workshop.
My horoscope today said the only thing keeping me from getting what I want is… the OTHER THINGS I want. Pick one and go after it.

Turn / Travis

I drive jackson to the Frist school morning, in the open top Jeep, him strapped in the front seat. The teachers look questioningly at me, but I tell them there’s no air bag and it’s the only car I’ve got so fuck off. (I don’t say that last part). We pull in and he’s singing “I am the Walrus”. The Man Who is one of the CDs that’s in rotation that fall. 2000. Jesus God.

In MY Place / Coldplay

Lush sound. They should have stopped there, not gone on to make this terrible X&Y I’ve been trying to listen to nowadays.

The Judgement / Elvis Costello

My iPod is Scaring Me.
On shuffle play, we’re talking 2500 songs, as you know, Solomon Burke came up, “None of us are Free (sic – None of us IS free, but that’s a different essay). Also on that album is a song written by Elvis Costello – this one, the Judgement. Now, right after Solomon Burke, up comes Elvis’ original version, from the Delivery Man.
I have thought in the past that maybe shuffle gets stuck in a little segment of the hard drive, so the random effect is not too wide ranging. But this is not a limitation of randomness coincidence. This is an actual intellectual thread.

Edgar Bergen / Joe Henry

I just make the beds, then I need to go lie down… /
I just sweep the yards and wait for the whole world to change

Madonna has a sister, and that sister is married, just like anyone else, just like normal women who aren’t Madonna’s siblings, married to Joe Henry. Joe Henry’s kids have Auntie Madonna, who I picture prancing around in sexy bustiers, fellating Evian bottles, arriving late for birthday parties. Does she babysit? Or is she a lazy aunt, arms crossed, siting on the couch, waiting for someone to bring her a bowl of chips and guacamole, because why should she have to get up? She’s fucking Madonna, for God’s sake.

Put me on Top / Aimee Mann

Hey, I hear Tom Petty. That’s okay. WE all like somebody so much they creep into everything we say and the way we say it.
Jennifer came in with tears in her eyes and said, “okay, that’s a really good song,” and that made me cry, too. “you need a band that’s really good to play with you.” I put “Smile” in her headphones for her as she closed her eyes on the bed, Sunday afternoon.

The Hurting / tears for fears

Memphis, 1983, this time of year, and I scramble to capture all I’d missed about Harlaxton. I park my Fiat in George’s gravel drive and stand in my room, guitar slung over my shoulders, learning all the songs that had infected me from the summer before and the spring in England.

Is it an horrific dream?

...just seemed deep, not a ridiculous thing nobody would ever say.
Roland and Kurt stood in their three quarter length black coats, hair everywhere, skimming along the edges of a pond in Hyde Park.

Landed / Ben Folds

I clicked past this one yesterday because I’m pretty sure I hate it. I heard it a while back. There are some awful songs on this “Songs for Silverman”. Who is this person Silverman? He demands very little, if these songs are for him. His expectations must be very low. He is easily pleased. He must be a big fan. Who else is so forgiving. There’s the song for his daughter, too, which, as you know my impulse is to forgive him for. But I really can’t.

Trouble with Dreams / eels

You don’t need a thing from me but there’s so much I need from you.

Jesus Etc / wilco

Played on the system here in the 18th street, then it was the first song that came up on shuffle play. SO I listened extra good. Simple, clear, makes you lean in to hear more.

Old Shoes and Picture postcards/ Tom Waits

2-18
Jackson has a new golf club, a driver, and he is controlled by the thought of playing. I got up to talk to Jennifer, and she’s taking him to Penmar so he can swing into the net.

Rejoice / U2

2-15
That voxy Edge delay guitar that sounds like 1984. No chords, just echoing arpeggios spread across both ears. They say Bono just stands there in the control room with a SM52 and sings his guts out then calls it a day.

Bled white / elliot smith

2-06
Ok now it’s getting fairly predictible. These songs playing as I drive up California to Lincoln, up to the freeway. Or down Venice all the way to Crenshaw. I worked in lessons form Fran Banish right before work, or else at the end of the day. That was how the guitar got left in the trunk.

I played in that atrium/entry foyer on quai malaquais. It would be dark, but early, while Jennifer and Sidney made dinner or while jackson was getting his bath. I was in the glass and could hear echoes off the cobblestones.

I'm not fucked/ not quite bled white

Waltz #2 / elliot Smith

2-00
Another case of suspicious randomness of shuffle. Sometimes it’s too lazy to look around the whole disk.

I’m never going to know you now/but I’m going to love you anyhow.

I was starting to write songs and I had splurged on the Strat. Back and forth to Paramount, where I kept the strat in my office for all the dead time. I guess we were supposed to be thinking of stories. But it was hours on end, day after day. Sometimes I closed the door and took out the strat. We had internet service so I read email and shopped for a used car.

You’ll have Time/William Shatner

1-54

You’ll have time to think/ why did I waste it? / Why didn’t I taste it?

I have to get it together, and I’m talking about money for a house, and college and for Jennifer and I. I need a chunk of money, the chunk that will come from selling a pilot. Two pilots.

Alameda/ Elliot Smith

1-51
Sidney’s car smells deeply of leather and I drive it to Paramount for Men Women and Dogs. It is summer and blistering. June, July, August 2001. A college education ago. High school ago. Jennifer said she thought if I wrote songs they would sound like Elliot Smith. I left my guitar in the trunk too long and the bridge snapped off.

All of Your Days will be Blessed / Ed Harcourt

I sit at that piano on the mornings when nobody’s home and Ana’s not banging around with the vacuum cleaner, breaking dishes in the kitchen. When something surprises me, when I like something and it’s not something I planned to play, when my hands just fall in the right place AND I can repeat it and take it someplace else, then I record it on the cassette I keep behind the music stand.

Baby Stick Around / Joe Jackson

I just grab a tape, any tape, out of Virginie’s desk and plug it into my walkman and I’m off down Bl. Exelmans, in my big box print Naf Naf shirt and my jeans jacket. This is the summer of 1984. I am out looking for dinner, scuffing along in my french franc loafers. I know Night and Day, but this is just taking me someplace else altogether. Look Sharp.

The Waiting / Tom Petty

The tape I take to Harlaxton has all the songs I played that fall for my radio show, the top 40 stuff. Hurts so Good, Jack and Diane. In a letter to Sue I tell her it’s like that song: We’ll be together, but for now the waiting is the hardest part. WE speak in pop songs, their clichés are always ok.

Strangers / Portishead

3-10
He’s so small that he wears this zip up fleece jacket that came on a little stuffed Curious George doll. His little shirts are puppets on my hand.
WE walk in Luxembourg gardens on day that fall and I think the phrase, “The tiniest shirts I’ve ever seen” that goes to Lloyd Cole’s “the stupidest girl I’ve ever seen.”

Pont des Arts / St Germain

In another trip to the pont des arts Clare’s friend Micki has her hip against the rail, a beret cupping her twist of black hair. It is pure coincidence. But she’s an LA chick so we might as well be running into her in the Beverly Center. Her hostel costs ninety franc. (“Franc”, singular) Micki is Demi’s assistant and Clare is Bruce’s. And here we all are on the Pont des Arts.
We are Parisian enough now that we could say without explanation, Meet me on the pont des Arts. In fact, explanation would be read as an insult.
That cold day I ended up with ten or fifteen FRANC in my guitar case. after playing Unhappy Song, when my fingers were red and stiff, I packed up the guitar and took jackson’s hand, hoping he’d just forget about the car.
The trees on the quai are fingers, claws, black, scratching the blue slate sky.

Woman / John Lennon

I was in bed looking over my toes at the clock radio. It was the kind with numbers that spun on a reel like a rolodex, white on black. the finest degree of rotation of the dial clicked one number at a time. And you couldn’t go backwards. This allowed you to set your clock fast. And if you got it too far ahead and you were lazy, it would stay way fast. This could only be cured by unplugging it for the amount of time you wanted to make up.

All the Young Dudes / dAVID bOWIE

David Cosgrove has that album with the red headed Bowie made up to look like a woman or an alien, or both. Upstairs in their house the mouse traps click one after another. Rob has built his robot. Rich is on the phone with girls.

CAPTAIN JACK / Billy Joel

And I don’t really know if Les knew he was saving us. We fell into Virginie and Hubert’s arms, jackson a small eyed warm baby in gray pyjamas, draped over my shoulder. It was cold and the sky was falling but we were safe. The door opened off quai malaquais into that stone entry and out bags and boxes slid off in a pile and I wanted to kiss the paves. I looked at the suitcases lining the tunnel entry and knew I’d remember that picture the day we moved out, and that it would go fast.

The Child is Gone / Fiona Apple

I really honestly at the time had no idea that going to Paris was such a defeat. Or a retreat. But it was going bad. Not a thing left. The far right column on my Quicken growing more and more slender, the fat cushion of zeroes oozing and leaking, five places, now just four places.

Black Sails in the Sunset/ Elvis Costello

I missed Elvis Costell and now I’m circling back, like I can tie up every loose end in my life. I drive up PCH to Las Flores most days, dropping jackson then on up to Cross Creek mall to Deitrich’s.

Souvenir / Neil Finn

The apartment is yellow, tall walls and high plaster ceilings and it will be home now that we’ve left Superba behind. Ad I put the last of the last in boxes and put the boxes in the Jeep and midnight has come and gone, music still plays from the little black player. It’s down to dust balls and small wads of paper. I’ve been through every cupboard a drawer. The rooms are full of echoes, everything else swept out.

Via Chicago / Wilco

Exploring Wilco at first, five years back, I skipped forward to Jeff Tweedy singing

I dreamed about killing you again last night and it felt all right…

And I didn’t like that. But it teaches you to put down those words that come to you uncensored and apply logic only later, if at all. And then put that to music and see if means something to you, or anybody else.

…tears don’t fall they shine down your shoulders

Clash City Rockers/ The Clash

The music I was scared of. I never bought CombaT Rock or London Calling. I played catch up a decade later with “The Story Of…” but never really listened to it all that much. It wasn’t just sneering like Joe Jackson, it was violent sneering. People got beat up. It wasn’t comfortable music for me because it was more emotional. Joe Jackson was more cerebral. The only emotion was regret. The Clash’s emotion is anger

Wise Up / Aimee Mann

2-12
She did something I liked in a interview: she says she’s never seen most of the movies everybody’s supposed to have seen, and she barely remembers the ones she has seen. And I always think I have to protect myself from appearing numb by never admitting such a thing. Even though that’s me.

Silver Lining / David Gray

2-05
I spent day after day writing the French Sisters movie in the French Market Café, in that corner inside under the window, refilling my coffee all afternoon, till the busboys started flipping the chairs up. After the French Sisters money dried up, I started living off quarterly checks from Rob and kept going to the French Market, now writing Potsticker.

We were born with our eyes wide open…

I saw the proof for Rob’s new book yesterday, and about the author says that he “cowrote Just a Shot Away, in pre-production with a France-based company.” It’s a brilliant jab at Michelle and Carole.

IGY (What a Wonderful World" / Donald Fagan

It’s December right and I get the room to myself when Dennis goes home for his girlfriend. And this week he just doesn’t come back, Tuesday, Wednesday, still he’s home.
I do the KWPB morning show with Liz Thompson and some nights the late show with Jim Hulme. And the office is full of all the free records they send just because it’s a radio station.
Till I finally make up my mind to learn design and study overseas
Nobody knows if they’re missing. They don’t even know what we have. It’s stuff we’re never going to play anyhow.
My desk is in the corner opposite the bunk beds. Dennis put up the Loni Anderson poster and I apologize for it to my cooler friends. By the time Margaret Bailey comes back there with me after the Lambda Chi party Dennis is out and the year is over and in three weeks I’ll be on a plane to England.

Pick up the Change / Wilco

I wan to go look at the guitars down at Marina music. I don’t even play the strat and I’ve started saying, Oh that’s ok because it’ll be valuable in great condition and maybe the kids will think it’s cool. And besides everybody needs a strat. But I want a telecaster, wanted one ever since I loved that blue one around Chrissy Hynde’s neck on Learning to Crawl.

And I love her / Beatles

2-49
I mean, we’d sit around Donahue and Machin’s room and I’d open the black book and I kept saying, This is like my bible, man. But I didn’t even know the songs that weren’t on the red or the blue albums, or Abbey Road or Sgt Pepper. We’d play them, Tanner on his guitar and Donahue mimicking the Harrison leads and we’d sing em.

My City was Gone / Pretenders

2-44
Just the specific stuff. Chrissy Hynde’s telecaster is blue and blurred and I go through the album cover, reading over the sleeve and liner notes. I am collecting all the records that came out when I was at Harlaxton that are now flooding radio in the US. It makes me desperately sad because even though I had started hating it while I was there, I miss Harlaxton and I lie in bed with tears in my ears and It’s all nameless regret because I wanted more and didn’t get it.

Summer Breeze (remix) / seals n croft

Summer in Rock Port in the stiff cold back seat of mambo’s air conditioned olds 98, we drive to Big Lake with Randy and Brad and aunt Nin. I only figured out just now that Nin was baby talk for Gwen, Gwendolyn. And we called Uncle Willis uncle Fudd, but I think the grownups started that.

On a Plain/Nirvana

We were at that party at Andre’s after work, or instead of work, and it was Nat, the kid from the line, who said This is different. Check it out. They were playing Teen Spirit. I felt adjacent to everybody, not actually involved. I was too old; I was only 28 but I was too old. And I was married. This was different.

Let Somebody Love me/Solomon Burke

I said yeah, I knew who that was, because I’m full of shit and I wondered just exactly how obvious it was that I didn’t. Joe Henry said he produced Solomon Burke’s record, and they paid Solomon with a bag of cash. He was just an old man driving around Van Nuys. But who had he been? Oh, I nodded my head. But I haven’t heard of anybody. And while we’re at it, I haven’t seen any movies. And I haven’t seen anything that’s on television either. I’ve never knowingly listened to Cream or Buffalo Springfield. Or the Grateful Dead, with a slight exception, only very recently.

What can I say/yo la tengo

2-25
In Coralville our couch is blue, with cinderblock book shelves beside it on the wall.

I just don’t know you/what can I say?

Let it Bleed/Rolling Stones

2-21
The acoustic guitar in the right ear and the and the drums over in the left ear, Jagger standing in the middle with the piano and the bass. Richards’ slide guitar slinks into the middle as they jam it out to the end.
I should be writing those specs if I ever want to make anything out of myself.

Speedboat / lloyd cole

Jackson is only three months old back there in his car seat, Jennifer wilted over him, gray eyed all the time because she can’t look away. We drive long days, sneaking into hotel rooms late.

I was working then on my great unfinished novel/please let me introduce myself, my name is Ronald.

The jeep cost $9500 from Christian von Bentheim and it was a folly to buy, but it was about the style for me, that was important. It was something I thought Rob would deem cool.
It was much more my style to get sand kicked in my eyes

In the morning of the magicians/ Flaming Lips

Sue has a wall of posters on the wall at the foot of her bed. It’s a cold November afternoon. We’re in college now so why not spend the afternoon in her room? We couldn’t have done it in the summer. But shouldn’t we leave the door open, just for her mother’s sanity? And why give her dad something to look crooked at me for? You think this is what we’re going to do from now on, but that was the only day. After that it was back to Ole Miss and then it all fell apart, because. I don’t want to be that kid, stiff and nervous on her bed, waiting for the adults to come in and break it up, always wondering how much longer can we get away with this. The big poster in the middle is the Flaming O’s. She’s in yellow.

Believe I’ve Found / Soundtrack of our lives

2-04

There goes my childhood/there goes all I thought was true

Glasgow, in my red shirt, hungry in the room by the train station, I walk out for chinese take out. circling back with the plastic bag twisted on my wrist they come out from nowhere in jeans jackets and leather with shaved heads and greasy heads and gap toothed growls. There is a version of person who sweeps it all up in his arms and talks and laughs or jokes and buys the beers, the confident, fearless version of me that wasn’t there.

Birdhouse in your soul / They Might be Giants

1-56
I have rented a white van and I pick Jennifer up in it, tan and beautiful, smiling a dimple, her hair light, short and kinked. This is the biggest chance she’s ever taken, probably, and the biggest chance I’ve ever taken, probably. We’ll use the van to move my stuff to Steve Weinstein’s apartment and Jennifer’s stuff to Wendy’d place on Purdue. There is a fountain at Santa Monica and Wilshire, and waiting for the light to change it gargles.

Surprise Ice / Kings of Convenience

Jennifer stops the car in front of the house some days, home from her moments away alone, waiting before she has to come back in. Finishing the song she’s listening to. I don’t know what she really likes, which looks wrong to read and sounds wrong to say because it’s not specific.

Dreams / Fleetwood Mac

In Jeff’s living room Billy Don asks something and Jack Perry says something and it’s about the song and about other stuff. It’s summer. And then at Cadle’s house, ogling Stevie Nicks on the album cover, the back cover. When the raven what? When the rainbow what? IT sounds like 1977, it sounds like summer; I'm not driving yet. We just sit around each other’s houses and wait for someone to give us a ride somewhere. And we all have Rumours. On 8 track, or a record. Every song, listen to it in the headphones I got for christmas instead of my own stereo. How about your own pair of headphones, mom said. It’s not the same.

Imaginary Love / Rufus Wainwright

12-14
Just like wilco, rufus came from Rob’s house that spring when we were back from Paris and there was nowhere to go it seemed like. At Rob's table while he was at work I wrote the French Sisters thing with Rufus on perperual loop, his cello voice. Listen to him breathe, and I see him in my mind, standing straight and still at a microphone, there’s not much of him but it all comes out like from a cannon, right from under his ribs.

Outtasite / Wilco

12-12

I know you don’t love me/ but you still been thinking of me

Rob had this BMW 745I that was like driving a room of your house, quiet and soft and the dashboard was orange at night. I was borrowing it and he had Summerteeth in.

Shanghai / Ed Harcourt

12-08
I can hear a guy like Ed Harcourt and think why bother; he’s about 25 and he’s so in possession of his piano and his guitar and his voice and his feelings. But it’s not easy, right Ed? I know you must sweat and get headaches and your hands must cramp and you must find yourself up late in the garage wondering if this is worth anything or just a waste of time. I read that you went to Sweden to record your record and walked to the studio across the snow, and that was your job and you were probably cold and not so sure all the time.

Skyway / The Replacements

12-06
In Memphis Maurice and I went to a bar on Highland I used to like and ordered oysters and I was mute, dumb as he told me about the civil war and

Best Man’s Fall / Trash Can Sinatras

It is time to clean out the office so I drag everything into the other room and do just that. New paint is up and the I open the windows to let out the fumes. The internet is new and it offers the words to tunes and the way to play if you can’t figure it out. And the wood floor and the plaster walls hum with me in the perfect center of the floor, my fingers finding Best Man's Fall, the song I have taken so many times off the tape that it can’t last much longer. And there’s a new guy in town, Nic Harcourt, at KCRW, and the next morning over our granola and our strawberries, with our baby just learning to sit in his high chair, Nic plays Best Man’s Fall and I call the station: Nic, what made you play that? I ask him. And he says he has his reasons.
Which I can accept. Why are you staying up so late, Jennifer asks, just playing your guitar, that same old song, over and over?

You came into my life like a brick through a window/ and I cracked a smile

Down to London / Joe Jackson

I was painting all that summer, 1989, and if I had a shift at night I’d stand there in my boxers all day and dread the phone ringing because it would be Clare wanting to chat. I could hear the cigarette exhales as she told me about her day. I just want to play the music and finish the painting. The spare room smells like linseed. I have nails in the wall, and I use binder clips to hold up the canvas. The main painting is Icarus, soaring over the labrynth, his greenish wings reaching as the sun broils in the upper right hand corner. No one ever said much about it but I think it’s great. I go see Joe Jackson at the Wiltern and he plays right through Blaze of Glory, beginning to end. On Nineteen Forever he comes out in costume, Elvis, which at the time is pretty damn funny.

I feel so good / Richard Thompson

2-42
Jackson put this in the Saab’s CD player just as Richard was getting into his car next to us, headed home with jack, and I thought it was innocent and sweet but also I thought Richard would hear it and think I was a creepy stalker. I wondered if Jackson would ask about the

half naked woman/ with her tongue down my throat

But if he got it, he wasn’t interested. Because after all, what could be worse?

Gloria / U2

Flavia was from Spain, but her english was good enough that we didn’t need French. Flavia loved kir and she peed while I watched, her brown hair sweeping across her thighs as she sat there. We drank from little juice glasses. Virginie was gone for August and Flavia and I were the only people left In Paris that night. I could afford the taxi since the dollar was the comet of currencies. We stood on the pont des arts with ice cream, which I could also afford, looking down at the summer river. In the apartment I pulled out the flea market guitar and played Party Girl. She crooked her finger at me, angled back on the pillow.

A girl called trampoline/ if you know what I mean.

She’s Happy / Gear Daddies

I think Jeremy was beating Dana up a little. They lived across from the laundromat that served beer and it was good that they had each other because in college, at that age, that kind of loyalty isn’t the worst thing in the world. But he got into Jaegermiester and cheap beer and he went days and days with out leaving the apartment, how was he going to pass film school like that? Dana worked at night with us at the Iowa House.

Achin to Be / The Replacememts

In a carol at William Jewel I figured out I couldn’t listen to pop music and study. I could tune to classical and that was all right. It was the lyrics, which were always too insistent, and I guess the snare, which won’t shut up in pop music. Right now I don’t have to pay attention to anything so the snare and Paul Westerberg singing can’t really mess anything up or keep me from getting an A like they could then.

Central Reservation / Beth Orton

She’s how I wish I sounded, too. Robin the music engineer who was in love with Julia Fordham put Beth Orton on a list for me. The list had Liz Phair and Heatmiser and Grant Lee Buffalo too, which shows no one’s right all the time. I think if there was a fight between Liz Phair and Beth Orton, Liz Phair would take her. If there was a guy they both liked, Liz Phair would get him because she would be in the guy’s face more and make him want her more and/or beat up Beth Orton.

Beautiful Child / Rufus Wainwright

You let one person stop you and that’s all it takes. You let one person say a little of you is too much and that’s all it takes. What a difference an insult makes.
I stood in that jardin for hours, memorizing what I’d say. And when it got cold I knew where to find the best café. And at least I was there. And if you were so smart why was I where you wanted to be and you weren’t? Hrrrumph. Harrumph.
I know this guy who’ll stand in your way if you let him, every day, even if you won’t he’ll try. He’ll stand right there till one of you die.

Luxembourg / Elvis Costello

2-09
Jackson found Trust in the seat of my car and put the disk in, reading the jewel box and memorizing the track numbers then going to work on the lyrics. By the end of that summer you knew ever song on Trust, even the bonus tracks. You asked on cue, what time is it, dad? Twenty five to twelve.

I’m Not Down / The Clash

Harry wanted to play more Clash, or any Clash at all. And then he left the band, since his wife just had a baby, he said, but was it maybe more about our set list? All you had to do was bring it in, Harry. All you had to do was bring it in. We wanted to do what you wanted, because we all looked up to you. You stood at the side and kept it all together. And sometimes you brought your acoustic like you wanted to bring it out and play. And one night you snag Wonderwall and blew us all away. Harry wanted to play more Clash and then he left the band.

Far Away Eyes / Rolling Stones

12-34
Me an Kris would drive around in his car listening to Some Girls because with Jeff it was always just the Beatles or Elton John, Maybe, or something odd like Johnny Horton ro The Stadler Brothers. With Maurice and Marvin it was likely to be The Fantasticks, or West Side Story. But with Kris I could get into the Cars or Police or Rolling Stones. He just rolled in the seat getting into Just What I needed. It was always raining, always March that wouldn’t turn into summer, with the snow frozen in ledges over the gutters, brown snow, caving in as you tromped on it, and Kris could drive a year before me.

And the next week I got a prayer/ for the girl/
well you know what kind of eyes she got.

Something to Talk About / badly Drawn Boy

The music here smushed together, too, under him singing. I try to make everything stand out more.
I sit in the parking lot or in that café in Malibu waiting for Jackson’s kindergarten to let out.

Ooh, something to talk about.

The guitar solo with the phaser. Or the flanger or whatever it is. And a clarinet under all that.
You’ve got to let me in or let me out. I would sit there in the car sometimes and watch them circle, waiting for a place. Deitrich’s coffee, with the high ceiling.

Paris La Nuit / The Moderns

City, the tables lit with candles for night, and that girl Amy turning a pirouette across the empty room, those days of me wondering how I’d ever get here. I was thinking I was in fact a writer so I pulled out the James Joyce and wrote exactly one short story that was a rambling joke and sounded like Kurt Vonnegut on a very bad or very lazy day, with some jokes and some sentiment. And some memories, I put them in Oslo, in that hotel Debbie and I found as it got dark and everyone else was saying ‘Complet.’

Slow Down / The Beatles

12-24
I never had these old albums when I was carrying around the black book everywhere I went. The songs I knew were the 62-66 ones and the 67-70. I never went deep into the catalog. I hadn’t heard For No One till Machin played it at Harlaxton. Though I remember so well

“Hide your hand in sand little girl”

from dancing around Thompson’s living room when I was no older than Alice is now. But I was never curious enough to learn about it. But listen to John Lennon, his voice like it’s about to tear.

Your Bruise / Death Cab for Cutie

12-19
This is hard. This could take forever, first of all, because to get through 2379 songs at maybe 3 and a half minutes each, well, I’d have to do the math but that’s going to take more than just his afternoon. I could pause the ipod so that it picks up in the same place when I pick it up again (when I need a break) but eventually the battery goes and I’d have to start all over. I guess I could FF>> when I come to a song I’ve already done. This group sounds like what I’d like to sound like. You can see it being recorded in a guy’s basement, but you can also see them playing a festival, you can see it translating to live. Poetry that won’t rhyme to music.

It’s just that simple / Wilco

12-17
This is what the shuffle does—weird little coincidences, moving from Uncle Tupelo to Wilco, for example. I think it has some kind of intelligent system for choosing. Because it seems not only not random, but designed. But anything not random, purely random, would by definition seem planned. Wouldn’t it?

Watch Me Fall / Uncle Tupelo

12-14
Dana makes us this mix tape. It’s 1990 and we’re in Coralville. Every song has Fall in the title. WE were weird to them. WE were married.

Gather round, you all/come around and see/
those who stand tall/why don’t you please watch me fall

99 Luftballoons / Nena

12-06
I am on the side of Lake Leman, the French for Lake Geneva. This on the same walkman, the stainless steel one. I tell them, the French kids, what she’s saying – from German to English, then from English to French.

Je pense a toi/ je le laisse voler. Je le lache.

This is what we’ve waited for, this is it boys, this is war.

1984, so it seems possible that we might not in fact make it through that summer. We might not ever be 22, much less 30. I might never make it here. There’s Francoise, and Sandrine and Isabelle

I think of you and let it go

Rose Rouge, St. Germain

This is like Koop, the best of what people have started doing with music. I had a t-shirt that says Jazz is too good for Americans, from London, a shop under the street in Kensington, where I got the black leather jacket. Wearing that t-shirt under that black jacket was the coolest way to be. I think I still had the shirt into the modern era, when I met Jennifer, when I traveled. The jacket is on a hanger in the garage, with mold in the pockets. Torn sippers. Maybe the kids will want it. Alice will, anyway. And I can tell them an old girlfriend bought it for me and it gives you special powers. You can fly anywhere and be with anybody when you own it. That’s how I found their mom. And when you give it that person you love to wear, they’ll stand in a cotton field at sunset and you’ll take their picture and you’ll never forget it. And she might even wear your hat, your gray fedora that you don’t know where you got but you eventually leave behind in a public restroom in the Iowa Student Union. She stands there in profile with the cotton all blurry behind her and the sides of her face golden orange as the sun goes into the October ground.
‘I want you to get together.’

I don’t really love you anymore, Magnetic fields

11-57
Steven somebody, and he reminds me of Cole Porter. Merritt. I imagine a guy living in NYC, he’s gay, he’s in an apartment in Chelsea.

‘Just a bad comedian/your new boyfriend’s better than.’

The music is mashed together under his voice.

In a heartbeat, Koop

11-52
Jennifer and I got a night away in June, I think it was, and stayed at Maison 140, all black in the halls and the room was tangerine. We took our time getting ready to go out, we had tickets for John Prine. I put this on the ibook while were dressing and later, when we got home from Trader Vic’s. WE sat among the USC crowd. It was graduation. So maybe May. This kind of music we didn’t have before. The ambient music they play in the background in places you lie to go. A little bass and a simple drum groove and a shaker and a voice you like to hear, slowed way down, and the songs last forever.

Your Racist Friend, They might be giants

11-48
1988, in the kitchen at City I told John Story I made enough on residuals that I didn’t have to work all the time, explaining the gap in my employment history. Kelly G has told me to check out these guys from SF who play weird instruments on stage. Go see them at Lingerie, she tells me, but I don’t. Then KROQ plays don’t let’s start and I get into it. I wear that green striped smock, tight at the neck, and wish it was now.

La Vie, L’Amour, Edith Piaf

1147 I keep this in my iPod so I’ll think of Paris, though I didn’t listen to Edith Piaf so much as Elvis Costello and Neil Finn. But I think of the black and white Cartier- Bresson photos and the Doisneau.

Werewolves of London, Warren Zevon

11-43 My room in Albany. I don’t have the album, so I have to wait for it on the radio.

Little old lady got mutilated late last night.

I am trying to learn to play in those days, and am doing a slow job of figuring it out myself. In band we have a big amp and Ed Poff loans his strat. I can’t make it sound like rock and roll. And I use his Gibson bass with the felt pick. I walk into study hall and say we have electronic music, and Curt Dills hates me.

Talent Show, Replacements

Sometime s I feel like an idiot at the Unurban but I want to do it because I’m afraid to do it and I don’t yet have the absolute courage. When I first got the guitar I said I had to go to the promenade to play. In Paris I stand on the pont des arts with jackson, it’s cold, really cold, probably November and the river has gone from green to gray. I play lloyd cole songs and jackson struts around in his zipped up fleece. They toss a few coins in my box. He wants a little metal car, and I tell him we’ll get one with the money but I know we won’t get enough. We use it to but hot chocolate.

Drowning Man, U2, WAR

Eleven thirty six a.m. The first thing I think of is Paris, followed quickly by George’s living room. When there’s nobody home but me I listen in my walkman. The big baby grand in the corner and the light through the plate glass. Shadows and small crystal balls I photographed. I say photographed instead of took a picture of.

If I could I’d cross the sky for your love

...makes me think of Winnie. I like the music right in the middle of my head, from this perfect little box in stainless steel.

Take my hand.

Virginie told me U2 waved the Irish flag at concerts and I don’t know why.