01 Grace Lightman – Halloween is Over
Because Halloween really is over 02 Inspiral Carpets – This is How It Feels
Lonely and nostalgic 03 Robyn Hitchcock – Raining Twilight Coast
“Just one thing, baby, you forgot my heart”. Glasgow in May 04 Soccer Mommy – Switzerland
“i trace and memorize your curves and lines until my fingers start to bleed
we could go some place alone
don’t you see
we could go somewhere it snows
just you and me
we could go to switzerland
never come back home again “ 05 Calypso Valois – Amoureuse 06 Luwten – Double for Me…You don’t want to need but need to know what you want/You think that if you need too much you’ll end up with none…
“What you said is not what you meant
You haven’t quite figured it out yet” 07 Lykke Li – Love Me Like I’m Not Made of Stone
Sweden 08 Nap Eyes – Alaskan Shake
Nova Scotia 09 Moonface, Siinai – The Nightclub Artiste
Pretty prolific Canadian from delightful British Columbia 10 Elvis Perkins – While You Were Sleeping 11 Niobe – Hawaii Duet 12 Summer Aviation – Thrust
Old friends 13 Nana – Gato é Crime, Denuncie
meow… meow… 14 DRINKS – Hermits on Holiday
For beloved grumpy would-be hermits and mugwumps 15 The Amazing – Perfect Day for Shrimp
Why, Swedish, of course… 16 Black Marble – Iron Lung 17 Vashti Bunyan – If I Were
A name-dropping opportunity 18 Lily & Madeleine – Devil We Know…Come the memories, come the shivering cold, let the rain fall…
Better the liar you know… 19 Fats Domino – Every Night About This Time
RIP – 2017 20 Al-Masrieen – Asef Gedan
Egypt. Cheers to Aurélien and Cat 21 Moon Palace – Shapeshifter
Is a person a liar or just a shapeshifter? …Seattle 22 Sylvia Striplin – You Can’t Turn Me Away 23 The Third Bardo – I’m Five Years Ahead of My Time 24 Clap Your Hands Say Yeah – The Pilot…A tough-love motherfucker, who was born a clown…
“What could I say? What was I after?
I forgot, but you figured it out for me again with your radio silence” 25 Sevdaliza – The Language of Limbo
Iranian-Dutch 26 Over the Rhine – Faithfully Dangerous
Memories of the 1990s. “I wonder which part of this will leave a scar”. Ohio. 27 LCD Soundsystem – Emotional Haircut
Glasgow in May? 28 Anchorsong – Butterflies 29 David Cassidy – I Think I Love You
RIP – 2017 30 Cults – Right Words 31 An Luu – Pourquoi tu me fous plus des coups? 32 Christopher Owens – Heroine (Got Nothing on You) 33 St Vincent – Sugarboy 34 Sébastien Tellier – Drunk on the Radio 35 Luwten – Indifference
Netherlands 36 Maggie Rogers – Alaska (acoustic)
“And I walked off you
And I walked off an old me” 37 Kyu Sakamoto – Sukiyaki
The old days: Japan 38 Laibach – Drzava
Slovenia 39 Otis Redding – That’s How Strong My Love Is
You can’t not love Otis 40 Eivør – Salt
Much love to very music-loving colleague, Eva
“langt burtur úr landi
hómi eg gráan av minnum
lati aldurnar taka meg
føli djúphavið darra
havið er í mær
er saltið í tárunum” 41 Tropic of Cancer – The Dull Age 42 Helado Negro – Lengua Larga
Ecuador-USA
“Abre tu boca que quiero conocer
Adentro
Y hay un gran vacío
Conocido” 43 Sound of Ceres – Gemini Scenic
For twins of all kinds: birthday twins, astrological twins, lost twins 44 Patio Furniture – Please, Please, Please Let me get what I want
A song for the hardy, sturdy patio furniture 45 Neşe Alkan – Kaçma Güzel
Turkiye 46 Acetone – Shaker 47 Aimee Mann – Knock It Off…You had your chances but now they’re gone…
“Seattle finally couldn’t hold her” 48 Summer Aviation – Angle of Attack
Old friends, lovely sounds 49 Coparck – A Dog and Pony Show
Netherlands
Martina! Here’s to, if not the end of dog and pony shows, at least new and exciting ones 50 Shura – Nothing’s Real
“I’m a dead girl walking
I need medicine” 51 Salma Agha – Barish Men Main Khari 52 Natalia Lafourcade – No Más Llorar
Mexico
“No más llorar
Sé que ya lo nuestro no tiene remedio
Pero no más llorar” 53 Anna Burch – Tea-Soaked Letter
Detroit
“I forgot to fake
The way that I was feeling
I guess it’s too late
Now all my cards are showing” 54 Malena Zavala – Should I Try (acoustic)
Argentina 55 Mdou Moctar – Iblis Amghar
Tuareg/Niger 56 Softer Still – 1993
England, of course 57 Ages and Ages – How It Feels
Portland, Oregon 58 Jaws of Love – Love Me Like I’m Gone
Thanks, with love, to Andreas 59 Heartless Bastards – Marathon
Cincinnati (why are people always surprised that Ohio has not only a bunch of cities but a ton of bands?). Not my kind of marathon, but okay… 60 Marta Kubišová – Cesta
Requisite Czech. Love to Martina, dearest Anne and Mr MI 61 P.P. Arnold – Medicated Goo
Good goo of random gum and love and life 62 Hatchie – Sure
Australia 63 Mattiel – Not Today
“Everything’s okay – but maybe not today” 64 Cinnamon Tapes – Cinnamon Sea
São Paulo. 65 France Gall – Les sucettes
RIP – 2018 66 Xenoula – Tororoi
South Africa/Wales 67 Essaie Pas – Futur Parlé
Montréal, bien sûr 68 Jonathan Bree, Clara Viñals – Say You Love Me Too
Thanks to Tom 69 Julia Holter – Don’t Make Me Over
The simplicity of this song makes me overly emotional
“Don’t make me over
Now that I can’t make it without you” 70 Angel Olsen – Fly On Your Wall
“I found a feeling inside
Or should I say it found me
I turned into someone I
Never imagined I’d be”
So, even though we are a full month out from Halloween, I have been extraordinarily organized and have finished putting together my Halloween CD mix for this year quite early. The mailings have begun going out in the post.
And, as I have written in the note that accompanies the CD, the time has come at last – this will be the last of my random gum CD mixes. At least of the physical, postal-mail variety. As technology has rendered the CD a useless would-be Frisbee, I am looking for another solution for sharing music (other than Spotify playlists at least). I may still send cards/greetings by post because I’m still old-fashioned like that. But continuing this effort is fruitless. It has been a roller coaster of randomness these 13 years that I’ve been making and sending these mixes. And to reflect an end as random as this gum has always been, I’ve chosen fittingly strange and random music.
Although I have not expressed these sentiments in the letter I included with the CD, I do feel like I am shedding a skin – or some kind of layer(s) – again – as though I am preparing for something else. I don’t know what it is. But I have largely left behind my TV addiction, my baking addiction, and now this (and most of my postal letter writing in general). I don’t know why these things no longer interest me the way they used to, except to say that my disconnection from feeling and indeed, often, from actually living, has dissipated. The end of the embargo against living, I suppose, means that new things and new people occupy my time and, more importantly, my heart.
01 Aliza Gabbai – “Mimigdal Shalom”
Israeli pop from the 1960s. Too cute 02 Rola Saad – “Min Bein Alkoul”
Because Lebanon 03 DIANA – “What You Get”…Echo comes back to your lonely room/Said my head, my heart, I can’t take it anymore…
Stuck so much in 2017 on the concept of place – real, imagined; in the world or in the mind 04 Savoy Motel – “Souvenir Shop Rock”
Nashville is for dancing 05 Tindersticks – “My Sister”…Here I am, this is me/I am yours and everything about me,/everything you see,/If only you look hard enough/I never could…
Had this spun up but was unsure til I talked to a Norwegian in the mountains who was listening to Tindersticks. “Our life was a pillow fight…” 06 Trio Esperança – “Filme Triste”
Yummy 50s-60s Brazilian pop. Can you see where we’re going here? 07 Dean & Britta – “Night Nurse”…I am the night nurse, I am the most/I am the visitor, you are the host… 08 Blouse – “1000 Years”…I move the furniture around/And trick you into lying down…
“I would never hurt you/Or disappear/I’ll love you for a thousand years” 09 Jillian & the Giants – “Mr Airplane”…I don’t even mind…
Up in the air. “Here we go again, sure was nice for a little while/That rosy pink glow/turns red hot when you go/Too high into the other side” 10 Aquaserge – “Virage sud”
Vive la France 11 Connie Kim – “Lý Luận Tình Yêu”
Vietnam. The 70s. What more can one say? 12 Snail Mail – “Thinning”…I don’t think there’s anything wrong… 13 The Horrors – “Sea Within a Sea”…So you might say/The path we share is one of danger/And of fear/Until the end…
For J, the sea within my sea – a sea of constant gentle waves interrupted with the occasional giant waves 14 Lindstrøm – “I Feel Space”
For me, it’s Norway meets Chicago 15 Melike Demirağ – “Hasret”
Türkiye! 16 Meshell Ndegeocello, Sinéad O’Connor – “Don’t Take All Night”
For the love of all that is good in the world 17 Weyes Blood – “Names of Stars”
Places like beauty, simplicity and the cosmos 18 U.N.P.O.C. – “Beautiful to Me”…From time to time I think I must be going blind…
The dear, green place that is Glasgow 19 Evinha – “Vou Seguindo”
Year 2000! Goin’ to Rio! (Naomi)… and our ears take us back to some other time (SD: “I’ll get a job some other time!”) 20 Palace Winter – “Soft Machine”
Not frequent that I get to include Denmark (especially with a dose of Australia). “Acting so obscene/Well by all means/Now that you and I are free/And I’m off my knees” 21 Kristin Hersh – “Nerve Endings”…We’re idiotic optimistics/Rubbing salt into my wrists/Till I feel almost nothing…
So far from soft-eject beige 22 Damien Jurado – “QACHINA”
Seattle. “I lost my mind, so I stepped out for a time/Went for a walk on a long road to unwind” 23 Khruangbin – “Ma Be Ham Nemiresim”
Texas, if you can believe it 24 Destroyer – “Hey, Snow White”…When the company goes public, you’ve got to learn to love what you own…
Oh, Canada… 25 Solar Bears – “Cosmic Runner”
Ireland 26 First Hate – “The One”…You treated me so carelessly/You kept imagining the one…
Copenhagen… another Danish set… so much like the 80s 27 Lea Porcelain – “Out Is In”
My sort of cities (Berlin/London) 28 Moon Duo – “Cold Fear”
Portland 29 Monomono – “Tire Loma Da Nigbehin”
Nigeria… and memories of Billy, Travis and me in happening Årjäng 30 Luna – “Chinatown”
Winter 2017 31 Suburban Lawns – “Flavor Crystals”
Sounds sort of fresh but is almost as old as I am; everything old is new again 32 The Breeders – “Fortunately Gone”…I wait for you in heaven/On this perfect string of love…
It’s so good those days are gone. The past, too, is a place. Both distant and near 33 Richard & Linda Thompson – “I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight” 34 Mary Timony – “Return to Pirates”
Lost in the particular Mary Timony sound. “I cannot love you more/Said the doctor to the whore/I wanna be in the garden of love/Led by a lamb and a little white dove/I know you can/But I don’t think I can/Swim in your river/And sleep on your sand” 35 Miss Universum – “Fertilize”…I need a man, I need him quick/I need his sperm, I need his dick/I do not need to be seduced/I just need to be reproduced…
When I first heard this, I didn’t really expect it to be Swedish. 36 Hand Habits – “All the While”
“Bring me to the deepest pit/You can push me right off the edge/And when I show up in your dreams/You got away with it” 37 Eefje de Visser – “Ongeveer”
Dutched up. Almost convinced Dutch could be pretty… 38 Mark Eitzel – “The Last Ten Years”…Spent the last ten years/Trying to waste half an hour… 39 Aimee Mann – “Labrador”
“Daisy, you/shouldn’t do the things you do/but you’re just so incapable of changing/you lie so well/I could never even tell/what were facts in your artful rearranging” 40 Joel Alme – “The Way We Used to Beg”
Göteborg. “You were a cold hard stone/But how does it feel to be alone” 41 Teleman – “Glory Hallelujah”…However do you haunt me… 42 San Mei – “Until You Feel Good”
Thank you to Travis 43 Mallu Magalhães – “Culpa do Amor”
Gone back to Brazil, yet again 44 Mazzy Star – “Blue Flower”
Kitchen singalongs and traumatic high-school-era memories 45 Wooden Shjips – “Everybody Knows” …The longing for home/We’re only alone… 46 Aamina Camaari – “Rag waa Nacab iyo Nasteexo”
Bet you couldn’t have guessed I’d take us to Somalia? 47 Blonde Redhead – “Where Your Mind Wants to Go”…If it’s not me or you, then why?… 48 Jane Weaver – “The Architect”
Be the architect of your spaces and places 49 The Bombay Royale – “I Love You Love You”
Melbourne 50 Yma Sumac – “Karibe Taki” 51 Feist – “I Wish I Didn’t Miss You”…I was so disappointed I didn’t know what to do… 52 Young Marble Giants – “Brand – New – Life”
Cymru am byth 53 Eerie Wanda – “I Am Over Here”…And I found you and we make/Sweetest memories/Now I’m here and you are overseas…
We are the world: Dutch band, Dutch-Croatian singer 54 Hater – “Cry Later”
Malmö 55 Richard Hawley – “Tonight the Streets are Ours” 56 Tennis – “Night Vision”
Can’t listen to Tennis without thinking of Esteban 57 Guided by Voices – “Game of Pricks”
“Prick with fork” – love to my mom and to Naomi 58 The Novacs – “Found”
Airdrie! (The Scottish one, not the weird, middle-of-nowhere Airdrie in the Edmonton-Calgary, Alberta corridor) 59 Haifa Wehbe – “Albi Habb”
もう少し Lebanon 60 The Kills – “Monkey 23” 61 Big Thief – “Shark Smile”…she said woo/baby take me…
“She held us, gunning out 90 miles down the road of a dead end dream
she looked over with her part smile, caught up in the twinkle it could take awhile” 62 Linda McCartney – “I Got Up”
Getting up is also a place, a real place 63 Haley Bonar – “Kismet Kill”
“I was impossible when I was beautiful and now/Cartoon deaths just don’t seem so funny” 64 Blouse – “Trust Me”
Famous last words: “Trust me, I’m the one who loves you” 65 Globelamp – “Washington Moon”…I want a California sun/And a Washington moon… 66 Jessica Pratt – “Bushel Hyde”…Words mean more that they did before/In that other place… 67 Robyn Hitchcock – “Sayonara Judge”
October in Oslo 68 Linda Perhacs – “Chimacum Rain”
Lichen. Lichen. Lichen. Oh, dear T’Pow 69 Amália Rodrigues – “Abril”
I love Amália Rodrigues and was surprised to see that that particular tune was one of the least-ever listened to on Spotify. I decided to remedy that all on my own 70 Life Without Buildings – “Sorrow”…Difficult people slip away…
Glesga Glesga Glesga (Glasgow for those not in-the-know) 71 J&L Defer – “Hard Fiction Road”
For SD: Refer to theme song of Canadian children’s show “The Littlest Hobo” at this time. How’s that for random? Even though this is a band from Winterthur, Switzerland, y’know? 72 Wand – “Melted Rope”
“Desire, I barely thinking/In the dark/And life, life is what you wanted/It’s what you are” 73 Koncz Zsuzsa – “Keresem a szót”
Hungarian. And had to choose… for the name Zsuzsa. Just for Martina. 74 She-Devils – “I Wanna Touch You”…can you read my mind?…
Montréal 75 Kikagaku Moyo (幾何学模様)- “Kogarashi”
Tokyo 76 The Limiñanas feat Peter Hook – “Garden of Love”
To France and beyond 77 Yasmine Hamdan – “Samar – Oriental Skeee Remix”
No escape from Lebanon 78 Cold Beat – “62 Moons”…It’s cold but I don’t mind/I’m accustomed to ice…
The Bay Area… 79 Kerem Güney – “Sicak Bir Sevda”
Istanbul grooves 80 Alvvays – “In Undertow”…You made a mistake you’d like to erase and I understand “What’s left for you and me?”…
On, on Toronto – pulled in and pulled under 81 The Magnetic Fields – “Strange Powers”
Song is so New York, so Las Vegas, so outer space 82 Cults – “Go Outside”…I think I want to live my life and you’re just in my way… 83 ShitKid – “Sugar Town”
Sweden remakes 84 Santo & Johnny – “Pineapple Princess”
Aloha from this arctic hula doll 85 Sam Cohen – “Kepler 62”
“Strange neighbors as you know/They come and go/They live in a world without you” 86 Imarhan – “Assossamagh”
Algeria/Tuareg 87 Whyte Horses – “The Snowfalls”
Manchester 88 Rana Alagöz – “Vah Bacim Vah Mehmedim”
That’s nobody’s business but the Turks… 89 EL VY – “Paul is Alive”…Nobody stays above/Out in the waves of love… 90 Carla dal Forno – “What You Gonna Do Now?”
Aussie. Transcends 91 Sanisah Huri – “Joget Malam Berinai”
Singapore/Malaysia. I said I’d show you the world, baby. I just didn’t say it’d be through your ears 92 Monument Valley – “Dear John Letters” 93 Lea Porcelain – “The Love” 94 Grizzly Bear – “Mourning Sound”…Let love age/And watch it burn out and die…
“I stare at the face/Looking through my eyes/I move at a pace/That I cannot survive” 95 Marjan – “Kee Seda Kard Mano”
Iran 96 Heavens to Betsy – “Axemen”
Like being in a high school gym pep rally (as in the song) or first miserable year of uni 97 Mia Doi Todd – “Pancho and Lefty”
A pretty version of best-songwriter-ever (and now-near-ubiquitous) Townes van Zandt tune 98 Pridjevi – “Ako Je”
Hrvatska 99 Widowspeak – “When I Tried”…I was more alive when I tried… 100 The Proper Ornaments – “Cremated (Blown Away)”
London. “I would like to be cremated and blown away…” 101 Věra Příkazská, Plzeňský lidový soubor, Lidová chodská, Zdenek Blaha – “Ó radost má”
Czech check. Love to Martina, Anne 102 Cigarettes after Sex – “Nothing’s Gonna Hurt You Baby”
“Whispered something in your ear/It was a perverted thing to say/But I said it anyway/Made you smile and look away”. Lovely but also sounds like it belongs in an 80s John Hughes romance 103 Adia Victoria – “Mortimer’s Blues”…Heaven help me how it hurts…
Back to Nashville 104 Patti Smith – “My Madrigal”…You pledged me your heart/Till death do us part…
“We waltzed beneath motionless skies/All heaven’s glory turned in your eyes”
Three or four classrooms full of children, all around 9 or 10 years of age, were put together to take a historically oriented field trip to downtown Seattle. This was the mid-1980s, when it seemed that the homeless population had, if not reached a peak, penetrated the Pioneer Square area of Seattle… and the (paranoid) consciousness of suburbanite schoolteachers and parents. Enough visibility and paranoia that the homeless presence warranted ‘warnings’, apparently. I don’t know if these warnings were issued because 100+ unruly children are hard enough to control under the best of circumstances, so the adults thought they would ‘scare’ us into submission, or if the teachers and school really believed that the homeless population was a grave threat to us (“us” the children or all of us as a society).
We were told not just to not interact with “them”, but not even to look at “them”. “Ignore them, as if they don’t exist.” All I do know is that the message they branded on our young, malleable brains was: “You don’t need to care about these throwaway people.”
This still comes to mind and bothers me now, 30+ years later.
In between the more grueling books I’m juggling, I make room spontaneously for “spot choices” – something that I am reminded of in the spur of the moment, something I would not necessarily seek out eagerly (Teeth: The Story of Beauty, Inequality and the Struggle for Oral Health in America, anyone?) but which might be interesting in some way. This is, as I have mentioned before, how I come to read most contemporary autobiographical memoirs. They share some background information about admired (or not) musicians or celebrities, but don’t usually set my brain ablaze. Sure, from the thoughtful writing of Carrie Brownstein and Kim Gordon, both seemingly effortlessly cool public figures, I glimpsed that seemingly universal truth that no matter how cool, aloof, nonchalant and in control we seem on the surface, there’s an insecure, wants-to-be-liked person underneath.
Even the memoirs of “regular” people (which, of course, all of these books underline: we all are regular people), such as the pleasant-enough Shrillby Lindy West and the charmingly self-deprecating All Over the Place by effusively expressive Geraldine DeRuiter (and I am dead serious here: if you don’t already read Geraldine’s Everywhereist blog, do. Also follow her on Twitter; one of my favorite Twitter feeds), forge this kind of ‘we’re all in the soup’ of humanity by sharing their everyday experiences. (Or maybe now that I look at this as a pattern, I read all of these because there is the Seattle connection to all of them but Kim Gordon.)
That said, these kinds of books are rarely ever deeply challenging, will be fast and easy to read. They may make us smile, laugh, nod in agreement and approval or even get angry or feel sympathy for the writer. These are very human books. It was in this way, in one of these palate cleansing frames of mind, that I came to read Duff McKagan’s How to Be a Man.
I don’t know how Duff McKagan ever ended up being someone on my radar, bookwise or otherwise. Somehow since junior high school in the Seattle area, he, despite my not being the Guns ‘n’ Roses ‘type’ (whatever that is), stuck out (probably being a local boy and all helped that visibility). Later, I think I was impressed by the fact that he went back to college after the heyday of GnR and worked on finding his sobriety and ways to maintain it. At another point in my life, I would not have picked up this book; in fact even if I had, I don’t think I would have taken anything away from it. But this time, having had the experiences of the last decade, I approached it differently.
But this is what I will say about it: Despite the fact that it struck me as slightly disorganized (some parts more organized than others), slightly random (although some parts were considerably slicker than others, which made me think the editing was choppy), neither of these things made the book bad. It in fact inspired the feeling and sense of sitting and listening to the guy reel off stories and opinions about his life and his experiences. Maybe that was what he was going for – the relatable (well, in tone, perhaps, not in all the activities – although let’s be clear, as Duff most certainly is – all Seattleites DO live with the ticking-clock on summer, and the damn deck/lawn/painting/housework can only be done in rain-soaked Seattle in that limited window) and conversational.
The book was entertaining and perfectly served the need I had at this exact moment:
*It flowed quickly, even if, as I stated, the editing didn’t make the content flow all the time.
*I liked the random lists of stuff, particularly the diverse variety of recommended albums and books. I would probably add more must-hear albums/artists (today I am overly influenced by the songwriting genius of Neil Finn/Crowded House and the longevity and wild creativity of Robyn Hitchcock). I would also add many books, but who wouldn’t? There are too many books in the world to be able to do justice to a must-read list, which McKagan himself acknowledges, describing his propensity for populating his personal library both in digital and paper formats:
“But a bookstore is the ultimate way to immerse yourself in what’s new. You can browse, and you can ask around, something you can’t do as well in the cocoon of e-commerce. It can be the littlest hint or clue that sends people looking for a book and thrusts their life briefly in new directions. It can be gossip you hear in line for an espresso or a movie you see on espionage. The direction of your reading can very well influence your life for a while.” –How to Be a Man
Clearly he gets what most passionate readers get:
“This is every reader’s catch-22: the more you read, the more you realize you haven’t read; the more you yearn to read more, the more you understand that you have, in fact, read nothing. There is no way to finish, and perhaps that shouldn’t be the goal. The novelist Umberto Eco famously kept what the writer Nassim Taleb called an “anti-library,” a vast collection of books he had not read, believing that one’s personal trove should contain as much of what you don’t know as possible.” –My Life with Bob, Pamela Paul
*On addiction and sobriety, he didn’t have anything new to say that I haven’t heard or read from recovering addicts or specialists in this field. But it’s nevertheless key to see some of the resounding themes: resentment and regret; again, some of this same lack of self-esteem and assurance that the other memoirists listed above have expressed, e.g. learning to like and trust oneself; that, as cliche as it sounds, it’s a one-day-at-a-time process. And sometimes the things that pull you through are unexpected and maybe even the smallest things that then go on to have ripple effects. In his case it was his ‘latching onto’ Jim Rome’s radio show, and when he appeared on the show as a guest, this prompted other listeners to take steps to regain control of their own lives. This too could sound cliche, but the kinship of addicts, and the power of these small sparks to inspire, is the same kind of things I have seen in trying to understand and connect with recovering alcoholics in my own life:
“This life is crazy. It’s the little things that can be absolute game changers.” –How to Be a Man
*Seahawks, Seattle sports and the constant, indefatigable cheering for the (hometown) underdog. Need I say more?
*Seattle. Yes, Seattle. (Do I sound all homesick? I swear I’m not! I left so long ago for a reason!) That place that suddenly became visible in the 1990s, from which its veil was slightly lifted with the mania that surrounded Twin Peaks during its first go-around (even though this was not technically Seattle, you’d still have to go to Seattle to get to the real-world equivalent of Twin Peaks). It is hard to believe now that Seattle was ever this unheard-of place that McKagan describes.
But true story: in junior high, I had a pen pal in California (this was 1989) who phoned me once and asked not only what time it was in Seattle (says more about his ignorance of time zones and geography than Seattle’s invisibility). He seemed surprised to learn that I had ever heard of Depeche Mode and even that I had a phone. If I recall, it was the same year that Time magazine covered the insular nature of Washington state and its ire at “rich Californians” showing up to scoop up all the land. Hmm. (I did go back to see if I could find that issue of Time, and it was, as a side note, interesting to see the cover stories – Donald Trump on the cover in Jan 1989, taunting readers that we would all be “green with envy” about his wealth – or a headline: “The New USSR?” – or Kevin Costner, just releasing Field of Dreams, or Pete Rose, just being tossed for life from baseball. Oh, hilariously, there was a cover featuring the Rolling Stones, including a headline about “aging rockers”… and we thought they were aged then?)
Back to the point. Seattle was on no one’s radar. Not in any appreciable way, at least. Not until Nirvana came along:
“I used to brag to anyone who would listen that these guys were from “my town” and that soon the rest of the world would realize that people didn’t live in tepees in Seattle!” –How to Be a Man
While McKagan framed the singular Seattle “way” within the lens of sports (and a bit in music), it is on the whole accurate about the city’s attitude and evolution.
It is a place of some stoicism, insularity and a bit of an outsider’s “fuck ’em” attitude. Claire Dederer posits in her own sort of memoir, Love & Trouble:
“Seattle is not a big city for crying. Seattle, in fact, is famously emotionally stoppered. There are many theories as to why this is the case; some say it’s because of our dominant genetic and cultural heritages: Norwegian and Japanese. Whatever the reason, Seattle is a place where you are not supposed to emote. You are supposed to endure. In Seattle, where rain and traffic are two snakes twining, choking the body of the city, forbearance is an art. We don’t cry, we just put on more Gore-Tex or maybe use the driving time of our commute to listen to a self-improvement book on tape. Though “driving” is a strong word for what happens when you get into a car in Seattle. And yet suddenly there were these crying hot spots.”
“When you visit other cities, get asked about Seattle. The people you meet want to move there. No one used to move to Seattle except aeronautical engineers and, like, rabid fishing enthusiasts. No one used to know where Seattle even was. They thought maybe it was in Oregon.”
And this obscurity from which Seattle was lifted has made it a too-hot, too-desirable place, in which most mere mortals cannot afford to live.
So… bottom line, I don’t know if I would recommend that anyone read McKagan’s book. I will, though, be giving a copy to one person who will be able to relate, and I think in that way it will help him. And perhaps that is the most one can hope for: reaching one person, especially when they need to hear your particular message, one day at a time.
“So now you start to recognize
That every single path you see
Leads to a tear in your eye
So wave goodbye, wave goodbye”
–Chris Cornell, “Wave Goodbye”
The other day virtually everyone I ever knew in Seattle (okay, not everyone, but an awful lot of people) went to see U2 play their now 30-year-old album The Joshua Tree in its entirety. Pearl Jam’s Eddie Vedder joined them on stage. I joked with my mom that Eddie Vedder is now the Tom Skerritt of music. See, Tom Skerritt constantly shows up everywhere – in film, in TV shows, in the fucking Pacific Northwest Ballet. He turns up in the big budget stuff, in tiny, no-budget indies, in large, memorable roles and in the tiniest roles ever. I mean, the guy appears in MASH (the film), Top Gun, Steel Magnolias, Picket Fences, Cheers, Huff and a whole compendium of other things. There were moments when I thought I was safe from Skerritt, and then, as if just to taunt me, he’d appear – for example, the little-known film, Smoke Signals, an adaptation of Sherman Alexie’s short story “This is What it Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona” from his book The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven. Or for example when he turns up in the film Singles for just a few minutes of screen time as the mayor of Seattle.
I could carry on almost endlessly listing off Tom Skerritt sightings, but my point: Eddie Vedder turns up on other musicians’ stages (frequently in Seattle but often in cities all over the world) so often that he rivals Skerritt’s ubiquity – only in the music realm.
It’s strange, then, today to think that Eddie Vedder is kind of … the last man standing of grunge-era frontmen. News broke today that Chris Cornell of Soundgarden had died at age 52 after playing a triumphant show in Detroit. Never quite “of” the grunge ‘movement’ (if you could really call it that), never quite getting his due as a songwriter (this has immediately changed upon posthumous evaluation). I’m guilty of underestimating the guy – I never cared a whole lot for the Soundgarden sound but have only, in Cornell’s death, taken a look at the songs and lyrics. I did not recognize the beauty or power of his talent (either the writing or the voice) fully until seen in another context (i.e., both in death and in hearing him in stripped-down versions of songs from other genres and sounds).
Of his own work, I honestly had no idea that Cornell’s writing was often so dark (even if that is not all it was). But I was certainly not alone in this errant and incomplete appraisal; masked by various labels and categorizations (“He was a cock-rocker in an era when everyone was supposed to be too depressed or doped up to fuck”, ‘grunge’ being but one of them, it’s almost as though many people just didn’t listen to what was beneath the sound. (One of the many articles on Cornell today cites, as an example, Johnny Cash’s cover of Soundgarden’s “Rusty Cage” as an unlikely avenue through which people started to see Cornell’s writing genius.)
What can you say about something like this? It’s a sad ending for someone who entertained, who evaded easy categorization, who defied labels and continued to reinvent and moreover brought solace and beauty to the lives of so many people. This is the best that can be said for most of us.
02 Victoria Williams – Poetry…Be sweet, be free, every day is poetry…
Introduced by William, who put this on a cassette mix 20+ years ago; I lost my copy of the CD & this was kind of a bitch to find because it exists seemingly nowhere (or very few places) digitally. Needed again as every day for me is poetry.
03 The Spencer Davis Group – Waltz for Lumumba
Finally read a book on Congo I’d been trying to get to for years. The chaos. Thoughts of Zaki ❤️.
04 His Clancyness – Pale Fear…sometimes I feel like a failure…
05 Tashaki Miyaki – Girls on T.V.…I’ll be the girl you made up in your head…
“I didn’t hear a word you said/But I love Kurt Cobain” Huh? Mention 1 of Kurt Cobain…
07 Television – 1880 or So
It’s always in the 80s – the French Revolution; Congo, Dunlop & his rubber tires; Tiananmen Square. SD❤️
08 Vorderhaus – Catacombs…Have I the right to want you/Have I the right to love you?…
Listening loud on repeat ❤️: “Have I the right to want you, to say I love when I don’t see you?” Danke, ML
09 Lijadu Sisters – Life’s Gone Down Low…but it’s not too late for you and me if we hurry…
Can you resist Nigerian identical twin sisters doing tunes like this?
10 King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard – Billabong Valley…Outlaws on the run/Faster than a stolen gun…
Prolific Melbourne band – can only think of Jane❤️ when Melbourne comes up
11 Kate Tempest – Perfect Coffee…We’re Sisyphus pushing his boulder/the kids are all right but the kids’ll get older…
Only thanks to MP that I gave this a fair shake. Glad I did, eventually. Took a while.
12 The Breeders – No Aloha…Motherhood means mental freeze…
And goodbye, aloha, (no) thank you.
13 Broken Social Scene – Handjobs for the Holidays…It kinda takes the joy away, we don’t come at all…
“We’ve got eyes that leave us in places we don’t see”
14 Lovers – Igloos for Ojos
“Your breath is a voice, wet purring/A kiss on the mouth’s like an elegy/when you slide down next to me and say, ‘By morning this will just feel like a dream’/Your eyes are some cold home”
15 Jealous of the Birds – Tonight I Feel Like Kafka…And it scares me to think that nobody/Looks at me that way…
How did I end up with two songs that mention Kurt Cobain so prominently?
16 Amanda Bergman – Questions…I can find in my way baby knowing that this will be over too…
Still an Andreas ❤️recommendation that pays off again and again
20 Omni – Wire…I’m nameless on hour twenty-four…
“You don’t get tired/As far as I can see/I’ve lost my sense of time & debut/I don’t require more than you could be”
21 Cherry Glazerr – Nurse Ratched…You’re so cold master, where do I begin?…
Thanks MP
22 Jaakko Eino Kalevi – Macho…Elle en a marre des machos/des machos ringards/des machos clichés/des macho men…
One from Helsinki’s favorite tram driver.
25 Yasmine Hamdan – La Ba’den
Can’t resist a bit of Yasmine
26 Fabienne DelSol – I’m Gonna Haunt You…So softly I remind you/Of the ways you let me down…
27 Malcolm Middleton – Ballad of Fuck All…Oh I’m locked inside/Trapped inside this body/I can’t get out, and there’s not enough room/I’m glued to the back of this bone mask…
“Oh won’t you come for me/Comfort me in the night/I’m so tired of feeling sick and tired/Dying at life’s door all the time”. More Scotland. Who would I be without that particular overdose?
28 Scott Hirsch – Loss of Forgetfulness
Modern music with sounds from another time (sneaking suspicion that this is why Spotify started recommending Gram Parsons to me suddenly)…
29 Alexandra Savior – Shades…I’m always happy to be leaving/could be the company I’m keeping…
“Shouldn’t have come back/shouldn’t have switched it on at all/didn’t mean to hold you so close/but you know how it goes”
30 Fairuz – Salimleh Alayh
No words to say about the incomparable Fairuz
31 Mark Kozelek – Float On…and we’ll all float on okay…
“I backed my car into cop car the other day…” Somehow vaguely reminded me of the “African Arm taxi driver” story from ❤️Martina and Anthony❤️
32 Wire – Outdoor Miner…No blind spots in the leopard’s eyes/Can only help to jeopardize/The lives of lambs, the shepherd cries…
33 Chris Spedding – Video Life
“Meet myself on the action replay/Hope I get there right on time”
34 Angel Olsen – Woman…With no promise of the future/Am I not allowed/To think kindly of a stranger/Who reflects the sound/Of my heartache/As it’s beating/My life to the ground…
“You can leave now if you want to/I’ll still be around/This parade is almost over/And I’m still your clown”
36 Lambchop – When You Were Mine
A Prince cover; still seems strange that he’s dead
37 She Drew the Gun – Since You Were Not Mine…and to my lips too cold to speak/of a love just out of reach…
“Time refused to pass/though sand filled up the glass/each grain became the last/suggestion of our past”
38 The Yearning – When I Lost You
“But the world doesn’t know how I feel now you/Are out of my life, now you’re gone”
40 Dougie Poole – Less Young but as Dumb…Could you see that I haven’t learned a thing?…
“Cause I can see you now/Though I’m not sure I can handle the sight/The arms of a stranger, the light in your eyes/That’s making me wonder if I’m on your mind/See?/I’m less young but as dumb as the day that you left me”
41 Ulrika Spacek – There’s a Little Passing Cloud in You
42 Ruby Haunt – Crave
This song explains it all. It’s March, and I depart the station, heartbroken. “Listen to the girl, who waits by your side, in a simple world, no need to ask why, nothing’s gonna change, the people pass by, you feel no pain, as she starts to cry. Craving, craving some comfort. You can’t explain, the things on your mind, you’re on your way, you won’t rewind. It’s over with, no need to lie, you’re just a myth, but you know it’s fine. Craving, craving some comfort.”
45 The Besnard Lakes – Albatross…Oh you showed me so much/Those days are now long gone…
“And I have to admit/Things got weird for a bit/And I scream for you/There goes my man…”
46 Lisa O’Neill – England Has My Man…England’s so lucky/I’m not sure they know/I’m feeling bold with ideas of us…
“Now I am calmer than ever before/He opened the grand can of beautiful worms/I waive my fears and I face the chance/No one got near when we first danced”
47 Dean Blunt – 100…But we keep it going on/Feelings coming on/But the bullshit got too long, yeah…
48 Soft Hair – Lying Has to Stop…Our lives they never seem to coincide/But if it’s all right with you/I try to focus on another life…
For Jane❤️, with her infectious laugh and tantalizingly soft hair
52 Beverly – Bulldozer…Cat is a machine pushing the rocks around/Bulldozer sleeping, dreaming up buildings…
For Annette❤️, loving human bulldozer, and her little Norm❤️ and his obsession with earth-moving machines
53 Ten Fé – Twist Your Arm
“And I give you love unconditionally/I give you love, what do you give me/I give you love, so I don’t understand/Why I gotta twist your arm/To hold your hand”
56 Wild Nothing – To Know You…This is the circle that we live in/These are the people that we’ve been…
“So you gave a quiet light/My one chance at order/I won’t toss your way aside/For any corner of the world”
58 Twin Peaks – I Don’t Wanna Miss You
“I could talk a girl right out of her clothes/I could talk myself into kissing your ghost/but you’re always on my mind”
59 Swim Mountain – Yesterday…Nothing could make us last this long/I wouldn’t have done it for anyone/Leaning forward to hear you say/ ‘I only wanted you yesterday.’…
“You said I live in my head/Never listen to the things you said/’Cause in love there’s always one/One who suffers and one who’s done”
60 Bill Patton – Alchemy…History tells us you don’t want to be native/but you don’t want to leave home either…
Seattle ❤. “If I make it to the fountain of youth/I will come home ridiculous and bearing syphilis/Travelling back in time has never been my strong suit/It’s just taken up all my time”
61 Ibrahim Maalouf – Will Soon Be a Woman (live at Babylon Istanbul)
The sound, movement, moment of the crowd carries you away
62 Ted Hawkins – The Lost Ones…We are the lost ones/seeking help from you…
63 Shallou – Motion Picture Soundtrack…I will see you in the next life…
“Stop sending letters/Letters always get burned/It’s not like the movies/They fed us on little white lies” (Radiohead)
65 Molly Burch – Try…Wouldn’t it be so nice if we felt the same/I wish you would try…
66 Frida Hyvönen – Amors förkastliga pilar
“Om jag mot förmodan blir kär igen/då ska jag inte agera/Bara andas väldigt lugnt/å låta det passera”. Tack så mycket, Andreas ❤️
67 The Dø – A Mess Like This…Are you a curse?/From bad to worse/Our affair/Helpless as I’m/Trying to react/You were the worst idea I ever had…
“Sometimes I wonder how I landed in a mess like this…”. Always thanking Bruno for the intro to The Dø
68 Allison Crutchfield – Mile Away…Self-congratulatory mess/Yeah, you keep sleeping good at night/’Cause you’re inherently right…
“You’re acquaintances on a loaded train/You were spared rejection and it’s a dangerous thing/So you wake up confident every single day/You retire your own decency, you exonerate/And you’re blaring ‘Nebraska’ while she tortures you from a mile away, mile away”
69 Brigid Mae Power – Sometimes…Sometimes I just want to collapse into you, you/But I don’t know if you want me to/Or, if I should?…
“Shouldn’t I be okay out here on my own?/Living in my little home? No needs from others, doing it all by myself”. God, this makes me ridiculously sad.
70 Jesca Hoop – Memories Are Now…I fell for that light, shame on you/You’ve got this idea, I can be fooled/Again with the light shame on me…
There is only now. “If you’re not here to help/Go find some other life to ruin”
71 Elvis Costello – Radio Silence…he’ll tell you anything you want to hear…
“Libraries filled up with failed ideas/There’s nothing more for me there/I trust in tender ink and gentle airs”
What is more random than a Glasgow car scrapyard fire that burned for 17 hours and knocked out power for loads of people? Lots of things; I am feeling random now.
When I think of the dynamics of Glasgow, and the deep, protective, abiding love I feel for it, I am (as usual) pulled in two directions. In one direction, I want to defend all the naysayers who talk shit about this fine city, citing its reputation as ‘murder capital of Europe‘ and the ‘Glasgow smile’ and ‘love’ of knives. But at the same time, in the complete opposite direction, I want to protect it from hordes of people suddenly turning up. I felt the same way about Seattle – preferring to proffer eyewitness testimony supporting its reputation as a dreary, rain-soaked place 362 days a year (not true, but in true Washingtonian fashion, I always wanted to keep everyone else out; western Washington’s beauty and charms were, seemingly, a well-kept secret. Past tense). I tend to like the more livable, industrial cities: Glasgow over Edinburgh (which is, according to some, “England #2”), Gothenburg over Stockholm (see the hard-G pattern there?). It’s not that Edinburgh and Stockholm are not the loveliest of places, but in some way, they feel to me like they lack a soul.
This week there was a big fire at a scrapyard in Govan (in Glasgow). See images. Even though I post these pictures of “Glasgow on fire” (haha), well, the city certainly is not.
An acquaintance recently turned 30 and fretted mildly about it. A mutual acquaintance and I chimed in immediately to reassure her that the thirties are by far the best decade. You finally know who you are – usually none of the anxiety and trying too hard to please others and finding your footing that shade your twenties. The mutual acquaintance and I are both on the threshold of 41. Neither of us felt one way or the other about turning 40, but somehow we’re both dreading 41 because it’s a nothing age.
I concocted a dream birthday party for 40 – maybe, despite not being a party person, I would invite everyone from all spheres of my life (Seattle, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, work, non-work, the past, the present) to one big event (in Seattle, in Iceland?). But the big trick would be to get 1. some bands I love that are still small enough to be able to do something like a big party (thinking here about stuff like The Wedding Present/Cinerama and Seattle band Tomten, for example), 2.the ubiquitous everywhere-man Tom Skerritt to choose his favorite poem and attend the party to recite it (haha – I know – crazy), and 3. a place big enough to accommodate all these dreams. And of course enough people agreeing to attend. It would be less a 40-year-old birthday for me and more a gathering of people who made the 40 years memorable, for better or worse.
In the end, I did nothing. Not a single celebratory thing. But now that I see 41 on the horizon, I wonder if I should aim for some big thing sometime this decade.
E-commerce opportunities have revolutionized modern life. We don’t have to go anywhere or actively search for anything, going from store to store seeking out the one needed, elusive item. And rarities? Forget it. You can find it online with a little bit of attentive searching. The time-consuming hunt, the trying to find something out-of-print or a song with just a lyric like we did in the old days – it’s nothing now. And maybe we lose that sense of accomplishment and the appreciation of having something simply because of the work we had to do to get it. (The same principles were at work in my early refusal to get email – I wanted my paper-and-pen penfriend world to remain the same… rare, personal and full of anticipation.)
And while online shopping has certainly made my life richer (as stupid as that sounds), I recognize that the in-person, “instant gratification” retail shopping experience also is not going away. People want to feel, see, taste, touch, hear everything and experience something tactile, particularly in trying on clothes and the like, but at the same time, online shopping means you’re no longer limited to what you can find in a local shop or the mall or something. And that’s why I love it – I hate shopping in person.
How are some of the biggest e-commerce giants tapping into massive troves of data on shoppers’ habits and preferences to tailor and curate in-store shopping experiences and in turn, at the same time, drive shoppers back to the e-commerce platform?
Amazon.com’s new flagship store experiment is a case study in doing exactly this. When I read the Vox article about this store I was as perplexed as the writer initially had been. Why would the entity that pretty much singlehandedly made e-commerce a thing move back to brick-and-mortar? I never in a million years imagined that I would see this dubious store for myself, and yet the very same day as I read the article, I ended up at University Village in Seattle and went in the store. Nothing impressive, nothing that would make me want to go back. And I don’t need in-person employees to offer to help me, only to tell me, “Well, you can buy that online… on Amazon.” DUH! It seems like a really expensive experience to create that can only benefit a limited number of people, if it really “benefits” anyone at all.
I recently watched Aziz Ansari’s Netflix sitcom Master of None, and he lamented the horror of going online to try to replace a beloved pair of shoes only to find that they were out of stock – so he had to (insert exasperated tone here) actually go out to find and buy them in person. “Who has time for that?”
