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.