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Posts for the date of Friday, January 24, 2003
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posted by Gary O'Brien at 9:04 AM |
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Ah hell. I sit here bleary-eyed, over-stressed and worried about the projects I’m working on. I’ve gotten my latest schedules and they don’t look good. One project is way over budget and I’m trying to hammer it back into place without being verbally eviscerated by those responsible for the budget hemorrhage.
And then Kinko’s lost one of my projects for about three days. I got to know Tom at Kinko’s intimately. He saw the rage and panic in my eyes and knew . . . he knew that if he didn’t locate this project fast he’d be wearing his ass as a hat.
It’s been found. All is happy in lala land. Except me, that is. I should be happy about a million things, but I’m not. For some reason even the resolutions are irritating me.
I walk through the day with good cheer. “Hey Chuck! What’s up Bob?” (If you knew my working space, you’d know that no one named Chuck or Bob work with me. In fact, no one works with me. I’m home. Alone. Though I still have conversations with Chuck and Bob.) But it’s all a feint. It’s a lie. Deep inside I’m a bubbling miasma of stress and bitterness. Mostly bitterness, though I don’t know why.
Perhaps it’s because I want to do real writing but lack the topics. In reality, I’m aware that my audio biography is a form of mental masturbation. It’s here for my pleasure and the odds of anyone else enjoying it are slim. I haven’t really added anything else to this website for a long time. I have no story ideas, no essay ideas, no movie ideas. I don’t even have an idea that would fill a fortune cookie. Wait, maybe I do:
”Don’t ask me, damn it. I’m a friggin’ cookie. Seek professional help.”
There. That works.
Secretly I think I miss a certain era of my past. An era that lasted barely over a year, but it was a blast. A simple blast. It was when I was at the defunct dot com and worked off of a folding table. After a few months I was moved from sharing a table with my compadre Chad to each of us having our very own. We shared a room with two other editors, Jim and Todd. They were music editors. Chad and I were movies. The four of us planned the majority of the website on a weekly basis.
And we had fun. When we’d get mad we’d throw things and laugh at each other. We’d make fun of one another. And for no reason whatsoever, someone would suddenly scream out, “I AM THE LAW.” And we’d all laugh. Ha ha.
Now I’m alone. When I get mad I yell to the cat. She flips me of and leaves the room. I yell out “I am the law” and no one responds. All of my correspondence is done through email. Human contact is nearly at a minimum. Not that it’s bad. I generally don’t like people much. Oh well.
Maybe I’ll put in a complaint about myself to my supervisor. “He’s just too negative. But he makes good coffee.”
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Posts for the date of Wednesday, January 22, 2003
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posted by Gary O'Brien at 4:37 PM |
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An extended installment of Audio Biography. We get into the "B"s today. Yay! There's another post from earlier today below. Don't miss it.
Tori Amos: From the Choirgirl Hotel
This disc had me from the moment Tori sings, “She’s addicted to nicotine patches.” I’ve always loved that image. Such an odd thing to have a particular hankering for, and yet not outside the bounds of reality.
For me this represented a return to the Tori Amos I truly enjoyed. Odd arrangements, vitriolic and poetic lyrics, anger, passion and strange sexual images that shouldn’t be sexual and yet . . . are.
This was probably the first real Tori Amos CD my wife and I purchased together. No doubt she got into it more than I did. I don’t deny that. I’m sure its innate feminine rage touched her in ways I wouldn’t understand.
And yet, songs like “Black-Dove (January)”, “Raspberry Swirl”, “Jackie’s Strength” and “Playboy Mommy” were particularly potent songs for me. “Black-Dove (January)” is one of those songs that paints an odd picture that sticks in my mind. Standing at the edge of the woods—or is it the edge of the galaxy?
This particular disc doesn’t hold any special memories for me, outside of laying on the couch with my intended, listening to “Raspberry Swirl” swirl around my surround sound system while we planned our wedding.
Tori Amos: Music: Jackie's Strength
Yet another CD Single. I’m not sure why I bought this one. Most likely it was purchased for the pure amusement of my wife. A pursuit I find endlessly enjoyable. Or, perhaps it was the alluring image of Tori Amos in a wedding dress splayed out on the back seat of a circa 1965 sedan. What can I say? I’m a sucker for retro-psycho-sexual-imagery. Maybe. I don’t know.
This song has always intrigued me. I have no idea what it’s really about. However, I always picture a young Jackie Kennedy on the day her husband was assassinated. Jackie was always the poster girl for American women in the sixties. A combination beauty, motherhood, poise and smoldering sexuality. Maybe I have a thing for pillbox hats?
For some reason I feel like this song is an ode to a woman who watched her husband die next to her. It represents so many human fears that it’s too juicy to pass up. But, for all I know the song is actually about a woman who can open pickle jars with her pinkies.
Tori Amos: Music: To Venus & Back
If I’ve listened to this CD once, it’s more than I remember. By this time I think I was pretty Toried out. It’s not that I didn’t enjoy her music any longer. That’s not true. But I probably had moved on musically, in my mind. If I recall, this came out about the same time as my obsession with Brian Wilson began.
There’s only one thing I recall about this disc. It’s that it was purchased in the Tower Records at Disney’s West Side in Walt Disney World on our honeymoon. My wife bought this. I bought a CD of live performances from SNL (it had Elvis Costello’s infamous Radio, Radio performance). We didn’t have a CD player with us. So the fact that we bought discs on this trip is pretty odd. Though, I suppose, I’ll always remember those two discs.
Anderson Bruford Wakeman Howe
One of the problems with revisiting your musical past is that you sometimes find some clunkers. Discs that you wish you had never purchased, or that you wouldn’t admit to owning.
I fully expected to have that reaction to this disc. It’s from the beginnings of my prog rock days in High School. I bought this, originally, on cassette when it came out in 1989. I was but a tadpole in the primordial ooze of music. I was investigating musical styles. And I found progressive rock. I’m not ashamed to admit that I still enjoy prog rock. Classic Yes is a wonder to behold in its complexity. Certain bands like Marillion have been able to continue playing prog rock by warping the definition over the years. I shudder at the thought of my hair.
But this disc. Well . . . it’s over-produced, over-wrought, over-performed and over-written. And yet I still enjoy it. There’s a closing piano figure that Rick Wakeman plays on “Brother of Mine” that still stuns me. The man has to have extra fingers.
I strongly remember laying on my bed, a few years after getting the cassette with my newly purchased CD version, forlorn over my stinging love of a girl named Andrea something. She was to be my true love. I wanted to show her that I was much cooler than this supposed love of her life named Geronimo (I’m not kidding, though he was certainly no leader). I’d listen to “The Meeting” and “Let’s Pretend” in the dark for hours. Why? Because I was a pathetic loser, that’s why.
To this day I still despise the song “Teakbois”. I hate that song with a passion.
ABWH: Evening of Yes Music Plus
The story for this one is pretty much the same as above. Except my memories of it are far better than this one. These two discs contain some of the most soulless versions of some great Yes songs that I’ve ever heard. I’m amazed that I spent hours listening to this.
Well, no, not really. I thought I was cool. Sad as it was. I really did. Sigh.
Apples in Stereo: Her Wallpaper Reverie [EP]
If anything, this band has one of the greatest names in the history of music. I have no idea what it means, nor do I care. This was my second disc purchase for this band and, sadly, I’ve fallen way behind in my purchasing habits of Apples in Stereo. I should be flogged.
Technically, this is a “concept EP”. The premise is a woman looking at the pattern of her wallpaper and going off into lala land. It’s a beautiful idea, if you’re into those psuedo-esoteric ideas from the sixties. I am. The Apples blend a dreamy Beatle-esque sound with a frantic, melodic, frightened Brian Wilson sensibility. It’s wonderful music. Wonderful.
I used to listen to the track “Benefits of Lying (With Your Friend)” on the way to work at StreamSearch. I’d listen to it, over and over and over. I don’t think it tells you anything about me that I listened to that song too much. Unless you count my obsessive nature. Or the fact that I dig the groovy guitar.
I also love “Strawberry Fire”. It’s an obvious ode to the Beatles in the “Strawberry Fields” era. It’s a song that makes me wish I was a groovy guy with my own psychedelic pad, man. Way out.
Apples in Stereo: The Discovery of a World Inside the Moone
As I sit here listening to the opening track of this CD, young Matilda is proving why this is a great disc. She’s prancing around, singing “You’re such a pretty, pretty, pretty little girl . . .” That’s the exact reason why you should listen to Apples in Stereo. They’re fun. Great pop music in the truest sense of the word.
This CD purchase can be blamed purely on a guy named Jeff. He and wife were living in Nashville. I imagine he was terribly bored, because he kept making us some killer CDs (which I’ll actually discuss later). These CDs became my lifeline into music. I had hit a dead-end. I didn’t like anything and was considering giving up and just listening to conservative talk radio. Then the CDs began pouring in.
The second of this series opened with the Apples song “Go”. And . . . I was hooked. It’s one of the few discs that I can listen to over and over and over and over. Just great songs with great hooks.
One of my enduring memories of my wife will include the song “Stream Running Over.” It contains a little clapping bit that she can’t resist. As soon as it comes on, she transforms from mild-mannered middle-class mom to psychotic, synchronized dancing backup singer. It’s an amusing transformation.
In fact, we should have walked down the aisle to this song. Or, should I say grooooved.
Another highlight for me was “The Bird You Can’t See”. It’s a funky little tune that I used to play while I wrote descriptions for media on a website. Horridly repetitive work. But, as I was the only writer left on the sinking ship, it was my job to keep up the appearances of a full staff. The website, which used to take hundreds of people to run, became my personal etch-a-sketch. This song was featured prominently, as were other songs by Apples in Stereo. As I recall, I referred to this song as a Brian Wilson song with a Funkadelic back beat.
Steven Spielberg Presents Animaniacs: 16 Original Songs From The Hit TV Series
Hey! Don’t mock me. I can hear your derisive laughter from here. Of COURSE I own the soundtrack to the Animaniacs! Who the hell wouldn’t?
This show had some of the most brilliant writers on the Earth and they deserver your praise. For example, can you beat a song that contains all the countries of the world? How about all the state capitals? Or a song that likens our place in the universe to “the size of Mickey Rooney”?
Before you mock, you should take a listen. This is some funny, funny stuff. And should be listened to. Although, it helps if you have a kid around. That makes it easier to explain. I, of course, didn’t have a kid around at the time. I just liked it.
Sing along with me (to the tune of the Mexican Hat Dance):
United States, Canada, Mexico, Panama, Haiti, Jamaica, Peru; Republic
Dominican, Cuba, Carribean, Greenland, El Salvador too
Puerto Rico, Columbia, Venezuela, Honduras, Guyana, and still; Guatemala, Bolivia, then Argentina, and Ecuador, Chile, Brazil
Costa Rica, Belize, Nicaragua, Bermuda, Bahamas, Tobago, San Juan;
Paraguay, Uraguay, Suriname*, and French Guiana, Barbados, and Guam
Norway, and Sweden, and Iceland, and Finland, and Germany now one piece
Switzerland, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Italy, Turkey, and Greece
Poland, Romania, Scotland, Albania, Ireland, Russia, Oman; Bulgaria, Saudi Arabia, Hungary, Cyprus, Iraq, and Iran
There's Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Jordan, both Yemens, Kuwait, and Bahrain, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Belgium, and Portugal, France, England, Denmark, and Spain
India, Pakistan, Burma, Afghanistan, Thailand, Nepal, and Bhutan; Kampuchea, Malasia, then Bangladesh, Asia, and China, Korea, Japan
Mongolia, Laos, and Tibet, Indonesia, the Philippine Islands, Taiwan; Sri Lanka, New Guinea, Sumatra, New Zealand, then Borneo, and Vietnam
Tunisia, Morocco, Uganda, Angola, Zimbabwe, Djibouti, Botswana; Mozambique, Zambia, Swaziland, Gambia, Guinea, Algeria, Ghana
Burundi, Lesotho, and Malawi, Togo, The Spanish Sahara is gone; Niger,
Nigeria, Chad, and Liberia, Egypt, Benin, and Gabon
Tanzania, Somalia, Kenya, and Mali, Sierra Leone, and Algier; Dahomey,
Namibia, Senegal, Libya, Cameroon, Congo, Zaire
Ethiopia, Guinea-Bissau, Madagascar, Rwanda, Mahore, and Cayman; Hong Kong, Abu Dhabi, Qatar, Yugoslavia, Crete, Mauritania, then Transylviania, Monaco, Liechtenstein, Malta, and Palestine, Fiji, Australia, Sudan!
See if you can spot the countries that no longer exist!
Arc Angels: Arc Angels
In 1992 I was still stinging from the loss of Stevie Ray Vaughan. I was in college, trying to find myself. I didn’t succeed, but I did manage to find some debt. Stevie Ray was one of the remaining heroes from my Guitar God days. His music, his guitar playing still rang true with me and the fact that he died in a helicopter crash was devastating, even a year or two later. (The day the news of his death came out, I received phone calls from a variety of friends expressing their condolences. That was weird.)
Arc Angels were a reincarnation, of sorts, for Stevie Ray’s former rhythm section Double Trouble. They teamed up with Doyle Bramhall II and Charlie Sexton and formed a pretty mediocre rock unit.
However, I remember listening to the song “See What Tomorrow Brings” and when they got to the point where they sang, “The day they put away Stevie Ray” I swear I got tears in my eyes. Not because the song contained any real emotion for me. But after they sing that, a guitar solo that sound hauntingly like Stevie Ray plays. It’s distant, almost as if coming to you on a wind, from just over the hill. That if you walked to the crest of that hill, Stevie Ray would be beating the hell out of his ragged guitar, notes screaming with the ecstasy of musical death.
But, it would have been a Robert Johnson moment. Stevie was gone. I would never be a guitar god myself and one of my heroes was gone. And this CD just seemed to solidify that fact. It was almost too sad to consider.
Auteurs: Now I'm a Cowboy
To be honest, there’s no remarkable story for this CD. My wife gave it to me for my 27th (I think) birthday based on songs from one of Jeff’s CD. It’s an enjoyable disc. But, outside of the song “Underground Movies”, which is on the CD that Jeff made us, nothing has ever struck me as special about it. Oh, I enjoy it, but I wouldn’t deem it important enough to be considered a part of the “Soundtrack of My Life.” That being said, the song from Jeff’s CD does hold some significance for me. But I’ll discuss that when I get to Jeff’s CD.
Chet Baker: Chet Baker in Tokyo [LIVE]
If I were to insist that everyone own certain CDs, this would be one of them. Chet Baker could play the trumpet in such a way that you would get tears in your eyes. Each note and the smooth transition between them, is a heartbreaking story mirrored by Chet’s own tragic story. (Chet was one of the “cool” jazz players in the late fifties, early sixties. He blew it all on heroin. He became one hell of a junkie. He had all his teeth knocked out by a dealer. He recorded albums for drug money. He cleaned up his act, started playing again with the phrasing of a world-weary, beaten man. Then he died by falling out of a window in Amsterdam. Why a movie hasn’t been made . . . I don’t know.)
My brother introduced me to Chet Baker in college. I listened to the CD he lent me over and over. I was entranced by the way Chet could play the trumpet and his breathy, sad voice. He sounded like a man who had seen too much, drank too much and nearly died too often.
I originally picked up this CD as an addendum to my Elvis Costello collection. I thought I was out of my Jazz phase. But, once I put this disc in I knew I was wrong. Hard, lonely nights would come and I would light some candles, put out the lights and just lay on the floor, letting Chet’s misery envelope me. I wallowed in his pain. I cried his tears. I would float in the darkness on a wave of endless, mournful melodies.
Even sitting here now, listening to his rendition of the Jobim tune “Portrait in Black and White”, I’m stunned at his phrasing. And the sadness of this music, the sudden burst of anger and passion. It’s stark. It’s musical madness. It’s lush and gorgeous.
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posted by Gary O'Brien at 9:17 AM |
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I’m back! Sorry about the absence. The server that runs my website committed ritualistic suicide last week. My friend John then put in a heroic weekend training its replacement. That we are here in the first place is all credited to John and he deserves a round of applause for providing me with superior hosting services. Therefore, go to the audio biography and buy one of those CDs from the links provided. John’s company will get a small commission and then I won’t feel like such a freeloader.
I don’t have a lot to say. I started on my CPAP last night. Which, of course, means that I now look like the elephant man while I sleep. Wonderful. However, I do have to admit that I slept really, really well. I don’t feel like crap this morning. I don’t have a headache and I’m not seeing flaming demons trying to douse my head in nacho cheese and devour my soul while taking me to the depths of hell. (Okay, that only happened once and it’s possible that it was the coffee causing a hallucination, not my lack of rest.) Matilda tried out the machine before bed last night. She thought it was pretty cool (it is, actually . . . I just feel like an idiot). Gertrude, however, is terrified of the thing that her father has become.
“It’s just your daddy, Gertrude,” her mother cooed.
“Yes, but he is more machine than man now, mother. His soul has become dark and twisted from his adherence to the dark side. And now we must destroy this specter of evil that was once my father. Be quick, mother. Hand me the wooden stake and I shall drive it through his heart and rid ourselves of this evil.”
At least that’s what it sounded like. She may have said “Ha ooooh.” We’re still waiting on the UN translation.
I was recently questioned as to whether or not I had any strong feelings regarding our government’s current actions and if I was going to come out against the war. The answer is yes and no. I do have strong feelings about what is occurring in the world. I will not, however talk about them with you or anyone, except those very, very close to me.
Oh, sure, I could probably populate months and months of this blog filled with vitriolic rants about war, poverty, and all –isms on the face of the Earth. I really, really could. But what would it serve? There are thousands upon thousands of people across the globe who are writing about war, poverty and all –isms on the face of the Earth.
So, I will sum myself up right now. I am neither liberal nor conservative, Republican nor Democrat, Communist, Socialist, Fascist or Populist. I belong to no church, mosque, temple or place of worship. I am neither a hawk nor a dove. I do not subscribe to any one school of thought. I do not see either black or white. I get angry, but I do not misdirect my anger. I believe in dissent as well as faith in leadership. I believe in ecology and environmentalism, but also support capitalism. I believe in finding truth. I believe in science, discovery and curiosity. I do not believe in repression, regression or possession. I do not believe in sovereignty. I am not a joiner.
My deepest held belief is in the sanctity and beauty of the family, both immediate and extended. I believe that it should be the center of anyone’s life. I believe that the family should be a workable, supportive unit that seeks to raise and support human beings.
I believe in the overall goodness of humanity, despite what we may see. I believe that with a little work humanity can overcome its problems.
However, all these beliefs and disbeliefs should be tempered. Because I also believe that as a person grows, evolves and changes that their beliefs can change. Knowledge is the most important commodity on the planet and should be sought from birth to death. The more knowledge we can amass, the more growth we can expect. I believe that a person should challenge their beliefs on a daily basis and continue to grow. Rather than saying “Because it is so,” one should say, “But why is it so?”
But most of all I believe the worst thing that has happened in the last two decades is the hijacking of Saturday morning television by adults. Because every child (and inner-child) should greet the weekend with six straight hours of animated bliss bolstered by sugarcoated confections that are part of this nutritious breakfast.
And from that belief I will never back down.
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