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.