Personal:
Home
Blog
Archives
CD Projects
FAQ
Last.FM
Radio SFT
Creative:
The
Truth
Audio Biography
Contact:
Mail
Roll Call:
Weasel
Trust But Verify
Astral Base
Cartoon Colin
Remmev
Pampered Queer
Fluid Pudding
Daddy, Poppa & Me
Extrasuperfantastic
Geek Press
Boing Boing
Goldenfiddle
Wilco Base
Be My Demon
Podcasts:
The TWIT Network
The Fredcast
The Spokesmen
|
|
Posts for the date of Friday, January 10, 2003
|
posted by Gary O'Brien at 9:29 AM |
permalink |
(0) comments
A new edition of the Audio Biography. If you’re bored to tears at this point, tough nuts. We still have about 500 CDs to go. Calm down.
When I started this, I thought how much fun it would be. I’d go over my life CD by CD and remember what each disc meant to me, etc. There’s only one problem. I’m getting impatient. There’s stuff in the “B” section I want to hear, but I have to make it through “A”. Worse, I’m dying to get to certain “T” discs, but I know that won’t happen until about this time next year. Sigh.
I am looking forward to the “B” section. We’ll probably have two weeks of just Beach Boys and Beatles discs. That will be fun. Very fun. Though it will remind me that I still haven’t picked up the White Album on CD.
No more diversions. Let us get into the disks. We still have a few more days of Tori.
Tori Amos: God [CD-SINGLE]
I have to be honest. I don’t remember who picked this up, my wife or me. This disc was from a period between 1998 and 2000 where we listened to Tori almost non-stop. Me at my desk at work, she at hers. Or both of us at home.
This particular single contains some rather odd bits. The one that stands out the most is “Home on the Range.” What drove Tori to record this is beyond me. The song showcases her piano playing very well. However, Tori fools you. This is the Cherokee version of the song, which talks about how Jackson cuts deals and Cherokee women are left to die on the Trail of Tears. It’s a bittersweet song about a horrid pox on our national history that is, quite sadly, often ignored. Tori does her best to capture some of that horror, but it doesn’t quite work. An original melody may have worked better.
The other two songs aren’t all that exciting. Normally Tori Amos singles contain some real hidden gems. This one isn’t the case. The other two songs sound like a piano bar act. Short on wisdom, long on piano crescendos. For obvious reasons, my wife and I didn’t listen to this one much.
I looked at the cover quite a bit, though. Tori looks great. Almost like a slightly demonic Nancy Travis.
Tori Amos: Boys for Pele
Again, this one is technically my wife’s CD. But I’ve listened to it many times. And, I’m sad to say; I’ve never connected with it. There are plenty of plaintive wails, minor chords and bitter platitudes. I can hear the strokes of brilliance in the lyrics, and I enjoy the interesting instrumentals, but emotionally Tori goes straight past me and straight for my wife. I think this is a women’s CD. To me, the lyrics are an interesting, abstract, emotional tableau. To my wife it is the bible for any woman who has been marginalized, victimized, or any other –ized. It’s the musical version of Virginia Woolf’s “A Room of One’s Own.”
My testosterone-addled brain can’t hear this. I hear the music, I hear the lyrics and I enjoy the songs. But it doesn’t deal with an alienation I can understand. I’m not a woman and, even with surgery, I doubt I would ever feel the deep emotions of this disc. At times they are truly painful. But they don’t match up with my own emotions and experiences because, when I hear “Blood Roses” I think of red roses and try to ignore the true meaning of the lyrics. Women think of a dark day when something precious was taken from them. They are vile, painful images and I have a hard time accepting them. They are the David Lynch film of the musical world. And I love David Lynch. But Tori goes places that scare me in this CD. It’s too dark, even for me.
Does this make me a misogynist? Should I force myself to accept these examples of the types of debasement that many women are forced to endure? Do I have to confront some sort of Madonna/Whore complex that I have? Or do I find it so painful because when Tori is singing about having something stolen from her, it’s not her face I picture.
Maybe the pain that connects so well with women is a pain I have to ignore because I’m afraid of the women I love experiencing it? Or maybe I’m just a man. And some of these emotions just aren’t for me.
Tori Amos: Goddess
This one has no Amazon link because it is . . . a dreaded bootleg. One of our first in my collection (though many won’t be mentioned because they are Elvis Costello CDs, which I won’t be cataloguing . . . .too many).
I bought this disc for my wife as we were planning our wedding. I was at a local record shop whose selection moves between urbane and mundane. I came across this CD and felt I had to pick it up because I knew she’d love it. And she did. It contains a slew of on-air radio appearances in support of Boys for Pele. Most notably, however, is a bastardization of “Cornflake Girl” from Under the Pink, entitled “Gary’s Girl” (“I’m gonna be Gary’s girl . . .”). Clearly we had to figure out how to play this at the wedding. I mean, clearly, she WAS Gary’s Girl. Right?
Well, no. We never did play it at the wedding. That was silly.
This disc contains one true gem. Tori sings one of my favorite Bruce Springsteen songs, “Thunder Road.” I’ve always connected with that song. It’s a plea to hit the open road and forsake everything. However, when Tori sings it, it feels more like Mary’s song.
She sings it like this:
The screen door slams
Mary's dress waves
Like a vision she dances across the porch
As the radio plays
Roy Orbison singing for the lonely
Hey that's me and I want you only
Don't turn me home again
I just can't face myself alone again
Don't run back inside
darling you know just what I'm here for
So you're scared and you're thinking
That maybe we ain't that young anymore
Show a little faith, there's magic in the night
You ain't a beauty, but hey you're alright
Oh and boy that's alright with me
Oh oh come take my hand
Riding out tonight to case the Promised Land
Oh oh Thunder Road, oh Thunder Road
oh Thunder Road
Lying out there like a killer in the sun
Hey I know it's late we can make it if we run
Oh Thunder Road, sit tight take hold
Thunder Road
Show a little faith, there's magic in the night
You ain't a beauty, but hey you're alright
Oh and that's alright with me
As she sings it, Mary is settling as much as the boy is. They both need escape and they are going out there together. It’s not exactly love, but it has an air of hope around it. That somewhere out there, there’s something better. That the open road holds an appeal that home doesn’t.
And don’t all we all feel that way sometimes?
|
|
|
Posts for the date of Thursday, January 09, 2003
|
posted by Gary O'Brien at 4:10 PM |
permalink |
(0) comments
Having regained the feeling in my face, I feel that I am able once again to post something here. Yes, I have recently returned from the medieval torture that they refer to as “dentistry.” And, because of this and my workload, I’ve chosen not to do an audio biography today.
I had a cavity. A tiny little hole in my tooth. Or so I was told. I trusted the dentist, who tells me all sorts of things I am unable to confirm or deny. You see I do not have any knowledge of dentistry that I didn’t learn from watching television. And, in those cases, the dentists were usually some sort of torturer bent on causing you pain that you never imagined.
Today’s experience wasn’t painful, unless you count some steely pricks from a needle filled with Novocain. (I can see it now . . . Thousands of google searches for “Steely Pricks”.) However, my face has been numb since ten this morning. Lovely. And when my face came down from its inert, rubbery high I was blessed with a bizarre burning sensation that only Lazarus and John Wayne Bobbitt must know. The sudden rush of feeling back into a body part. In this case, my face.
Because of this numbness I spent my usually enjoyable lunchtime with only half a tongue. The left side of my mouth was able to enjoy lunch. The right side was indifferent, like a mafia wife going through the motions to please her man. Add to that the unbridled fear that I was actually devouring the inside of my mouth and thinking I was enjoying the tangy goodness that is honey barbeque pretzels, and you have to sum total of a total washout. It was like there was a party in my mouth and everybody forgot to come.
I consider myself a reasonably intelligent human being. And, yet, I cannot for the life of me figure out why anyone would want to become a dentist. I can think of a thousand things more interesting than staring down people’s throats every day. Plus, you can be lucky and set up your practice in an affluent neighborhood where people buy Crest Whitening Strips. Or, you can set up your practice in an area that serves crack whores (seven teeth total). I just can’t imagine spending my days pondering gum disease and infected abscesses. It’s just not in my nature. (Though, to be honest, I would prefer that to being a podiatrist. I fear other people’s feet. I can’t explain why. Call it an anti-fetish.)
You sit in the chair with so little feeling in your mouth that, for all you know, the dentist could be installing a satellite dish in your head. And you’re happy to do it because you don’t want to be the guy that the news crews come to when something happens in your neighborhood. You, with your rotten, blackened teeth explaining, “I ain’t even got to sleep when that thar power transformiter blowed up. First things I thought of was my El Camino. That’s what I use to collect all them aluminums cans so’s I can get the ‘cyclin money from them.”
You open wide. Something your mother never taught you to do. (She didn’t? Mine did. “Son,” she said, “never open your mouth for a stranger. I don’t care how much money they promise you, no good can come of it.”) You’re staring into a blinding light while a bemasked human being inserts power tools in your mouth.
Granted, these are tiny power tools. Brilliant inventions of pseudo-nanotechnology that probably couldn’t hurt you. Much. But, still. Once they start grinding on your teeth, you begin to wonder if the dentist backed a backhoe into your mouth.
The sickening, high-pitched sound is horrible. And your jaw begins to cramp because the dentist is holding your mouth open, putting his foot on your chest and bracing himself for impact.
I wonder what dentists do when they go home? I suppose they do the same stuff we do, but I often wonder if they have studies, paneled with faux walnut and filled with plaster teeth and models of Mr. Yuck Mouth.
I suppose I’m lucky now. My dentist is a very pleasant, albeit financially reckless and bitter, woman who seems to enjoy her job and the conversations with her shrill assistant with a cartoon voice. In the past, my dentist was a chain-smoker. And this was back in the days before they used gloves. He’d go in au-natural and I’d walk out with Winston breath.
Still, it’s not a pleasant experience. Now she wants to take out my wisdom teeth. She won’t knock me out. She promises. “I’ll give you a valium drip. You’ll be awake, but you won’t remember anything.”
Yay! Just like college.
|
|
|
Posts for the date of Wednesday, January 08, 2003
|
posted by Gary O'Brien at 9:20 AM |
permalink |
(0) comments
Audio Biography, Installment 2
Sorry for the break. I didn’t mean to do it. However, I’ve been swamped with other “stuff”. I’ve been forgetful as well. In fact, the other day I had a brilliant idea for a blog about war, fundamentalism, extremism and democracy. It was amazingly brilliant. I forgot what I was going to say. Damn.
Anyway, the next few blogs will be dedicated to Tori Amos. Let’s get going.
Tori Amos: Little Earthquakes --Tori’s first album (officially) and my first exposure to her. The first time I heard this album was in the tape deck of my old Corolla, with my girlfriend and a friend. We listened to “Silent All These Years” and analyzed its deeper meaning for quite some time. We talked about what it meant, where the emotions came from and who could share those feelings. Did we ever feel that way? Were these primarily feelings of feminine loss and alienation? Or was it possible for men to share these feelings. We didn’t get very far.
But my friend took these words to heart. They really meant something to her and, I suspect, gave voice to some of her darker demons that needed to be exercised. Sadly, she didn’t listen very closely because she tried another, more permanent way to voice and exercise those demons. She didn’t succeed, thankfully. But it was a scary moment that made me realize that sometimes the pain you see on the surface of your friends is only the tip of the iceberg. That sometimes asking “How are you?” isn’t nearly enough.
Tori’s voice is pained, angry and distant on this disc. She really delves into her darker, more frightening emotions on this disc. Though she’s put out some wonderful material since “Little Earthquakes”, she has never again reached this level of raw, painful emotion.
Tori Amos: Crucify [EP]--An offshoot from “Little Earthquakes”, this EP contains a remix of Crucify (a wonderfully angry song disguised by some beautiful melodies and piano work) as well as some Tori covers of some wonderful songs.
I bought this for my, then, soon to be wife. She loves Tori Amos, most likely because she too feels Tori gives voice to her darker feelings. I knew about this EP because someone I once knew had it. So, I bought it for my lovely wife because I knew she’d love it. I can’t remember if it was for a birthday, Valentine’s Day, Christmas or for no reason at all. But I did.
My selfish reasons for picking it up were simple. I wanted to hear Tori’s take on the Led Zeppelin song “Thank You.” The Zeppelin version is gorgeous. It’s one of the most beautiful love songs I’ve heard written by neo-hippies. From the moment Robert Plant sings, “If the sun refused to shine I would still be loving you” the song just tells a wonderful story of love, devotion and heart-felt platitudes. When Tori sings it, however, it’s almost sad. She sings it as a woman who truly loves the subject of the song, but doesn’t know if she has the confidence to let him/her know. She sings it soulfully, but with a reservation. Almost as if every “I love you” has a question mark because of her fear that the person hearing it will reject her emotions. It’s a tough listen, but well worth it.
From what I understand, this gift was the first time that my, then, soon to be wife knew that I understood who she was. It was a simple gift that was perfect for her. And you know what? It’s the little, no meaning gifts that actually mean more. There’s no reason to buy them other than you see it and think, “She NEEDS this!” More often than not, your impulse is true. But, more so, she will be impressed that you were thinking about her for no other reason than because you love her.
Tori Amos: Under the Pink--This may seem difficult to believe but . . . this was the only CD that was a duplicate when my wife and I combined our collections. Granted, mine numbered in the hundreds, hers in the tens. However, it’s hard to believe that two people who could sit and talk about obscure books we loved in our childhood could only have one CD that was the same. Go figure. Shortly afterward, however, our Tori collection grew by leaps and bounds. And well it should.
This is Tori’s most listenable album. It has “Cornflake Girl” and “God.” I bought it at about the time my mother died. I remember sitting in the parking lot of the gas station my friend worked at, blasting “God” and feeling that same way. I remember thinking, when she sang, “God sometimes you just don't come through” that she was right. If there was a God, he wasn’t listening. If he were, my mom would still be around. After all, wasn’t the world a better place with her in it? Hell yes. I’ve learned since then not to misdirect my anger. Call these forces what you will, God, Nature, Aliens, you have no control. You can be angry, but not to the point where you don’t listen anymore. It’s silly.
I was also particularly touched, probably for the same reasons, by this passage from “Pretty Good Year”, in fact I still am:
Tears on the sleeve of a man
don't want to be a boy today
heard the eternal footman
bought himself a bike to race
and Greg he writes letters and burns his CDs
they say you were something in those formative years
hold onto nothing as fast as you can
well still pretty good year
Pretty well summed up my mindset then. With my mother gone, my anchor, how was I to go on? How could I move on? How could I accomplish anything? She was the one, after all, that continually pushed me out of the nest saying, “You CAN fly! You just have to try.”
I still love this CD, but rarely listen to it these days. Those are emotions I don’t like to visit. Tori voiced my feelings at the time, but I’ve learned a better way of dealing with things. It comes from Kurt Vonnegut:
“We have to continually be jumping off cliffs and developing our wings on the way down.”
Same thing my mother would have said, only different.
|
|
posted by Gary O'Brien at 8:50 AM |
permalink |
(0) comments
I’ll be brief today, as I have some stuff that I need to get done. Time is of the essence this week because of a variety of appointments I must keep. Yowza.
Yesterday Matilda fell on the playground. She has one hell of a shiner. It was puffy last night, but this morning it was it was nearly swollen shut and purple. She thinks it looks tough. Though, she was a little wary about heading off to school this morning out of embarrassment. So, I taught her the O’Brien deflection. When you don’t want to say what happened, you deflect.
“Dude, what happened to your eye?”
”Well, I was in the middle of a grind trying to convert into a Japan Air and a Madonna, but I ended up doing a face plant.”
OR
“You want to know? You REALLY want to know?”
OR
“Ninja training.”
Sure, she could be honest. Sure, I could teach her that being honest is the best policy . . . but, it’s more fun to mess with people. Yay!
I realized at the bus stop this morning that the other parents could, quite possibly, think that I did that to her. That she didn’t make her bed properly and I clocked her one to show her who’s boss.
Anyone who knows me should know that this isn’t possible. I wouldn’t harm a hair on the heads of my kids. I cry when I crab at them in the mornings. I would never lay a finger on these kids.
And yet, in our society, no one knows. You can never be sure. Neighbors don’t know who you are anymore. Neighbors don’t know if they can trust you. They don’t know what’s going on behind your doors. We live in a world of electronic social hermits.
But things like this pain me. Kids in pain pain me. For example, yesterday a little girl came running out of her door to go to the bus. She slipped on a patch of snow and turned around to see her mom. To get a little bit of comfort from her mom’s sympathetic look. But she had already closed the door. Mom didn’t see. And the look on that little girl’s face was heart breaking.
Simply heartbreaking.
|
|
|
|
|
