Guess What’s Parading Along Center Street!?

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I’m not one of the five million hippies that claim they went to Woodstock in 1969, nor did I assault anyone in line for the porta-John at Woodstock 1999. These giant music festivals first take shape in the mind of a shaggy idealist who knows we all love good music and that we can’t stop ourselves from a massive group hug if we can just get together and chill. There’s another shaggy pessimist out there too who knows we’re dumber together as a mob. So many “free spirits” out in the open together will probably get messy. Woodstock, Lollapalooza, and now Coachella formed annual Dream Team(tm), Perfect Storm(tm), or Shameless Promotion(c) events with unbelievable line-ups. Since I’m not immune to the schocking and astounding announcements every Spring, I boggle at the surprise appearances and reunions. I keep this deep foundation of impossible fantasy shows like My Bloody valentine, Love and Rockets, Cat Power, and “unicorns parading along Center Street.” Imagine how bonkers I get when I see that My Bloody Valentine will be blowing out amps at Coachella in a few weeks, and Love and Rockets will be reminding kids they used to be Bauhaus to the clueless mall-goth kids at Lollapalooza in Chicago this August. Unicorns close behind? Continue reading →

“Putting Out the Fire”

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I am into my own imagined form of holistic medical treatment when it comes to headaches. I was on a flight to Maryland last month for work, and for some reason (not even a hangover this time) as soon as the plane went airborne the back of my right eye-ball started throbbing with a piercing jab to my inner cranium. From the wisdom of the David Bowie song, when it comes to a skull-splitting headache you can fight pain with torturous, driving pain itself. As I press firmly with the dagger points of my fingertips to my temples I can drill directly to the source of the pain, a congested nerve center, and cruelly torment my tormentor with a blinding surge of blood-curdling agony. After pressing, digging, and gouging that one single focus of anguish for a beat past despair I begin to feel the thudding pulse of the veins in my wretched skull opening wide to relieve my afflicted mind. Continue reading →

U2 Alert!

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Minding my own business dashing in and out of a mega-retail, I accidentally noticed a giant, bold, black and white “U2” propped up along the record aisles. I must have missed the big news about a new U2 album, but it was no time before I was in line at the cashier with a copy of “No Line on the Horizon“. Just like seeing a queen of diamonds card in “The Manchurian Candidate” I’m subconsciously triggered to buy U2 records. Remember my last story about the weird places I ended up after being “activated”? Not so bad this time, I actually remember walking back to my car, ripping through the plastic, and loading the CD in my stereo. I’ve been playing it a few times to figure it out and it is growing on me. You know it’s hard though to introduce something new to the context of very deep memories. U2 records have been a part of my life to the roots of my identity, and this is their twelfth, almost thirty years from their first. It’s a stretch to accept new books in the bible. Continue reading →

So I Like Goldfrapp

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I should be ashamed. Goldfrapp is a silly name and Alison is a known nutjob among extroverted train wrecks. I can relate pretty well, so that explains why I really enjoy singing along to “fascist, baby, utopia” from “Felt Mountain”. That is a weird album among trippy electronic records from the turn-of-the-millenium. She’s credited as the multi-talented instrumentalist whistler and warbler, accompanied by rusty furnace motor and accordion with peanut butter jammed keys. Since we’ve agreed to abandon rational production concepts this is actually really catchy and I compulsively play this on my upstairs neighbor thumping stereo all the time. I’m ashamed after seeing “Hard Candy” with Ellen Page (the title teenager in “Juno”) who lured a nice, decent predator into thinking she liked Goldfrapp too, then strapped him down, iced his oysters to numb the pain of impending orchiectomy, and crushed him with the truth that she HATED Goldfrapp. Continue reading →

Divergent Evolution

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I recently came in contact with a good old, long lost friend. It’s not like he fell off of the face of the earth; he hadn’t moved an inch from the house where I last saw him over a decade ago. Apparently I’m the one that disappeared from the planet, but things fell in place again, and the all-seeing Facebook tracked me down. This friend of mine from way back in high school is literally the definition of my early musical identity since he nudged me to all the “mod” 80’s bands, but really set me down the road with an obsession for Cocteau Twins and the like. We diverged a bit after high school and I continued the evolution on my own. Imagine the sociology experiment of seeing how the two of us developed our musical tastes after wandering on our own so long. Continue reading →