Yikes.

Two times in a row I’m going to end one of these with an ask to watch a Youtube video. I’m sorry. I promise I won’t make it a habit.

Half Japanese was one of those bands that put a smile on my face. Low fi. Fun. Catchy songs. Two brothers in Maryland that didn’t let any obstacles (talent, equipment, expected return on investment) stand in their way of releasing records. They wrote songs about monster movies and recorded them with the enthusiasm of kids having a sleepover.

I think most documentaries on bands are poorly made and a waste of time. However, the documentary on Half Japanese, The Band That Would Be King, is essential viewing. Not just for the footage of the band playing a show at a nursing home. It also has a monologue by David Fair about the difference between bands that can play well who are trying to sound wacky and bands that sound wacky naturally even though they are playing as best as they can. It resonated with me when I first saw the movie and I’ve thought of it often since. It was the first thing I thought of when I learned David Fair passed away.

There have been a lot of deaths lately and many of those have deservedly gotten a lot of press. Half Japanese was never a household name and David’s death won’t get the attention I think it deserves. I can’t recommend the band’s music enough. If you don’t have time to take a deep dive at least give the documentary a view. And if you can’t do that, indulge me and put aside a few minutes for this clip I’ve cued up. It’s pretty great.

“We’re coming from a different direction”

Then I saw Chungking Express. There isn’t another movie that utilizes a song more than this movie does with “California Dreamin’”. If you’ve seen the movie, you need no explanation. If you haven't seen the movie, don’t go to Youtube and watch clips. Do yourself a favor and watch the movie.

Now, when I heard the “California Dreamin’”, instead of ignoring it, I’d vaguely picture scenes from the Chungking Express. Over time the images started to fade, scenes were mixed up and merged into one. Eventually it became less of a visual memory and more of a feeling.

Watching Chungking Express didn’t make me a fan of The Mamas and the Papas. I didn’t buy their records. Never even hit play on “California Dreamin’”. However, the song was stuck in the dusty attic of my brain. It would creep out unprompted and unexpected. I’d be doing some chores or walking down the street and I heard the song. When I was alone I might even sing a few lines aloud.

I sing a lot when I’m alone. There is this trope in movies and TV of people singing in the shower, which is something I never do. But in any other room in the house, if no one is around and I’m not listening to music, I’ll sing. Often changing the words around to be about pets or other nonsense topics. I sing Every cave has something to hide that’s why I go spelunking to the tune of “Everybody’s Got Something to Hide Except for Me and My Monkey” by The Beatles. I’ll sing We are the kitties/meow meow meow to Krafterwork’s “We Are The Robots”. Actually, cat themed songs are quite common, especially “Who Let the Kitties Out?”

Once I became a father, I spent significantly less time alone. However, when you are with your kid you kind of act like you do when you are alone. Especially when they are really young. When they get a little older they start asking questions. Like yesterday, when I sang

All the leaves are brown/And the sky is gray/I’ve been for a walk/

On a winter’s day/California dreamin’/On such a winter’s day.

My daughter asked me what the song was about. I tried to explain that when people think of California they think that it is always warm there. So if they are somewhere cold they might think they would be happier if they were in California. I had never thought about the lyrics before and I made my best guess on the spot.

I asked if she wanted to hear the song. She got excited. She hopped in my lap and I opened up my computer. I went to YouTube and typed in “California Dreamin’ + kids” to see if there was a children’s version. I was expecting some kids pop version which I assumed she would enjoy more than a 60-year-old song by a bunch of hippies.

And that’s when I saw it.

The thumbnail was dozens of girls in school uniforms in some big auditorium. The description of the video was in Spanish. I immediately clicked on it.

Watching the video I felt like the song was tailored made for me. I prefer hearing English in an accent. I like how pop songs are written but usually don’t like how they are recorded. Versions performed by amateurs often outshine the versions made by professionals.

The video was fantastic. The girls simultaneously looked confident and nervous. They seemed to be having fun, yet also didn’t want to mess up. One girl forgot to sing for a moment and laughed when she realized her mistake. I was already in awe when it was time for the flute solo. All the girls hummed it.

The video had been uploaded ten years ago. All these girls are young women now. Is this song stuck in any of their heads? Do they end up humming the flute solo when they are doing chores? Do they even remember making this video?

Ten years. The video has been sitting there for longer than my daughter has been alive. Sitting there waiting for us to find it.

I never put hyperlinks into the text of Jam of the Week. Partly because I don’t want to interrupt the narrative and partly because I figured you could find any song I was writing about if you wanted. But, I am going to link the song here, because I really want you to watch it. If you are anything like my daughter, you’ll want to watch it again and again.

CALIFORNIA DREAMIN’. Concierto del Coro Lestonnac

If you are in the Seattle area, this event is not to be missed!

I will be reading a few things all of which have not been published. One is a fictional story that incorporates photographs I’ve taken.

Also reading…

Rachel Scheer (comics)

Amy Camber (comics)

Meg Luthin (creative nonfiction and poetry)

Vi Tranchemontagne (poetry)

So, come on down to the Couth Buzzard 8310 (Greenwood Ave N)

Saturday, March 28th at 7:00PM

What used to be a medium driven by public radio nerds has turned into a glutenous mess. There is too little originality and too many ad breaks. I can’t help but draw parallels between what happened to podcasts and what happened to some genres of punk. Angry white guys adopted Hardcore as a platform to espouse their strict, narrow world view, with a little victimization thrown in for fun. Emo was sprayed with Windex, diluted and turned into a safe, formulaic method to make money.

But I still subscribe. Despite mostly sycophantic interviewers, there are lesser known or forgotten people from punk’s history who rarely, if ever, get to tell so much of their story.

Recently, I was listening to an interview with Jamie Stillman, who before being a successful guitar pedal manufacturer, was an integral part of the punk scene in Kent, Ohio. Things were exciting down there at the end of the 20th Century. Jamie’s label, Donut Friends Records, seemed to have a new record every month. The coolest touring bands were playing shows Jamie booked at the local pizza parlor. He did all of this while playing guitar in Party of Helicopters, and drums in Harriet the Spy.

Stillman was being interviewed to promote the re-release of Unfuckwithable, a record by Harriet the Spy that originally came out in 1997. He was going track by track, offering up anecdotes about each song. When he got to the seventh song, “When the Shit Hits the Commodore 64,” he couldn’t help but start laughing out loud.

Dot Com is for motherfuckers / HTTP ain’t shit to me / If I can’t touch it I don’t want it

You get the idea. The song was making fun of the internet and the people that used it. Not social media, not smart phones, not scrolling. The internet itself. In 2026 it seems ridiculous to mock something so engrained in our daily lives, but in 1997 I was on their side. I thought the internet was stupid too. It seems pointless now to give examples, but I didn’t like how convenience was valued over quality, people were too concerned with the end product rather than the process that got there, and the assumption that just because something is new it is better. Besides all that, I was also annoyed that some of my friends were spending their nights at home on their computers instead of hanging out with me.

Back then it was easy for me to not go online. I didn’t have a computer, I didn’t play video games, and the shit jobs I was working didn’t involve much tech. Then, after a few years, my friends bugged me enough that I registered an email address. I rarely checked it. Once or twice a week, I’d hang up the apron at the coffee shop I was working at and walk over to the downtown branch of the Cleveland Public Library (a wonderful building to visit if you have the chance). I’d run up the stairs to the computer lab. While ignoring the guys watching porn on either side of me, I’d log into my Yahoo account. When the messages seemed important, I printed them out and kept them in a box with all the letters and postcards I got in the mail. The rest of my lunch break was spent sitting in the back room of the coffee shop, sitting on a milk crate, reading the newspaper. The news seemed bleak so I always ended with the comics. I’m not sure why since they didn’t put me in a better mood. When I read Family Circus, Hagar the Horrible, or Beetle Bailey I never laughed and was often confused at why anyone would think it was funny. Somedays I’d bring the paper home and read the comics out loud to my roommates. There was always an uncomfortable silence tainted with confusion. I’d ask them to explain how the strip was supposed to be funny. It was an impossible task.

Twenty five years later, I’m still reading the newspaper. Now, I read it in the morning while sitting at my kitchen table. My daughter sits next to me coloring, drawing, or manipulating Play-Doh. I can’t remember a day in the past year without a newspaper article about AI. Stories about how it is going to make us more productive. Or destroy our lives. Workers worried about AI stealing their jobs. Artists worried about AI stealing our souls. Politicians screaming for laws to be passed to protect us. Techbros saying it’s too late, the genie is out of the bottle. It all seems familiar.

There are big debates about AI which I’m not really interested in being a part of. I think all of it is stupid. Once again we are sacrificing convenience over quality. Interested in the result over the process. Equating something new as something better. But I assume, even for people that are against it, it will trickle into daily life slowly. A compromise here, a convenience there. The internet changed the world by making it more convenient while also making it more lame. That’s what I assume AI will do.

As for my world, I’ve only changed a little. Now, after I read the bleak news and not laugh at the comics, I do the crossword puzzle. It was sitting there the whole time. I just needed to build up the confidence to do it. I’m pretty good at it. When I do get stuck, I don’t look up answers. For me, like most things, the process of doing the puzzle is the fun part. Not the finished result. Seeing a puzzle with every box filled in wouldn’t evoke any joy if I knew it was only because I looked up what was a four letter word for “Room off an ambulatory.”

The other change is reading the comics. I used to read them to my roommates and we’d mockingly laugh at how unfunny they were. Now, my daughter wants me to read them to her. She never gets why they are supposed to be funny and asks me to explain them. I realize this might be my breaking point. That’s how I’m going to end up using AI for the first time. I’ll open up ChatGPT and type in “Please explain today’s Garfield so a five year old will understand why it’s funny.”

There was one particular time that stuck with me. I was going to be working an open to close shift on a Saturday by myself. I didn’t mind doing one of those every once and a while. I always wanted the store to do well, but on those days I go all out for big sales. This way, later on, when the owner took the store data for the month and made it into a graph I’d point to the highest peak and with false modesty that boarded on sarcasm say, “Who worked that day?”

This particular Saturday I’d done everything I could do to make the store more inviting. The door was propped wide open. There were crates of dollar records outside on the sidewalk to lure people into browsing. Upbeat music was playing to match the sunny day. I never went for a hard sell, but would rather make an environment that made people want to spend money. The store being profitable was always a priority, but today I would fight for every cent.

I was almost done with my third cup of coffee and was about to move onto my first beer, when a couple came into the store. The woman went straight for the A section. The guy stood just behind her looking over her shoulder. He was experiencing the enjoyment vicariously, without any real sense of the reasons why. He seemed happy to see her happy. It didn’t last. By the time she was rooting through C, he was doing a lap around the store looking at the walls like a tourist realizing a museum wasn’t worth it despite admission being free.

By the time she was in the F section, he was flipping through the movie soundtracks, presumably looking for something familiar. That’s when she shrieked “OhMyGodICan’tBelieveTheyHaveThis!!!”

In her hands was a copy of Buckingham Nicks, the only album released by the duo of Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham before they both joined Fleetwood Mac. After its release in 1973, the record had gone out of print. In the drama and cocaine filled story of Fleetwood Mac, if it is brought up at all it is merely a footnote. Not being a fan of Fleetwood Mac I can’t comment on the quality of the songs. As someone who buys and sells used records, I was aware of its rarity and desirability. When a nice clean copy came in we would pay well for it and charge fairly.

But it wasn’t cheap. To the less informed we were criminally overcharging. That didn’t deter this woman’s excitement. When her boyfriend came over to see what had gotten her attention, she explained the record to him. The way she did it lacked the unnecessary hyperbole often spewed by music fanatics. As an amateur writer I appreciated her succinctness in explaining what the record was and how much it meant to her. She came straight to the counter, eager to make the purchase.

This woman was already checking all the boxes on how to be a good customer (came in quietly, knowledgeable without being annoying, excited without the melodrama) and then she did the best possible thing a customer can do. She wanted to buy an expensive record and didn’t haggle on the price.

My goal for the day was to have big sales, but some people deserve a little something extra. I told the woman I was giving her a discount. She smiled and asked why. I told her it made me happy when a record found the perfect home. I punctuated my statement by cracking open a can of beer and returning the smile.

It’s been over a decade since I sold her that record. I no longer work at a record store, but I still shop at them. Recently, I saw that Buckingham Nicks had been repressed. I thought about that woman. I wonder if she still had her copy of the record. Did she play it endlessly? Or was it reserved for special occasions? I imagine her saving it for dinner parties. I can picture her making her guests cocktails and regaling her with the story of the record and how she got it. “The guy even gave me a discount.”

I understand that out of print records getting repressed is an overall positive thing. It is good for people who actually want to buy these records to be able to get them at affordable prices. But it does stomp out some of the romance of the story. A record that used to have some legendary status to it loses some of the mystique. Like when you have a movie that means a lot to you and the actors all get together in character to film a commercial for the Super Bowl. You can try and ignore it, but you can never unsee it.

As I looked at the stack of the Buckingham Nicks records and read off the different versions available--baby blue, pink, yellow, violet, and (I assuming for purists) black, a small wave of sadness hit me. Copies of this record were once a person’s white whale. Something to cherish and brag about. Something to get excited about. A good story. Now, it’s just a readily available, criminally overpriced product sitting in every store in town. What once was an owl, is now, not even a rainbow, but a rainbow sticker.

For the third time in five years, my wife, daughter and I went to the Olympic Peninsula for Thanksgiving. It felt good that our new family was creating our own traditions.

When we got to town we noticed a little Christmas village. I’m normally not a fan of Christmas stuff, but there was an ice skating rink. There was no way I was going ice skating, but my daughter found it exciting and I found her excitement exciting.

My daughter ice skated twice before which meant she had already done it more times than me. I know very few things, but I know what is fun for me. People are always trying to get me to do things I don’t want to do. I’m sure ice skating could be fun, but any thrill I might get would be overshadowed by images of me twisting my ankle, fracturing my skull, or hyperextending my knee. I was confident that any scene that started with me putting on skates would end with blood on the ice.

My daughter is a little sad that I don’t want to go ice skating. She likes the family to stay together, especially when she is trying new things. It’s a bit of a tightrope walk explaining why I don’t want to skate without passing my own fears onto her.

She accepts that skating is a her and mom activity and I head over to the snack bar. It has a quaint appearance. Cash only. Everything on the menu from popcorn to hot chocolate was $2.00. I wondered if this pricing system is to help the teens ring up totals and make change, or if it is to be cute. Either way I ordered a cup of coffee and was pleasantly surprised with the taste. Not all coffees are going to be equal and as long as I get what I pay for I’m happy. I’d rather pay $2.00 for a cup that tastes like it is worth $3.00 than pay $6.00 for a coffee that should be $4.00.

With a coffee in my hand I go back to the rink and watch the two most important people in my life go round and round in circles. After they passed, while waiting for them to come around again, I watched the other skaters. It was mostly teens of all types. Nerds. Cool kids with concert tees of bands unknown to me. Kids who look like they could be extras on Breaking Bad. The only thing that they all had in common was how much fun they were having. There was no irony about it. Just hanging with friends and being on the ice with each other.

The music playing was a steady stream of classic rock tunes. The same set of songs that were ubiquitous on the radio when I was a teen. Songs that somehow have become standards that get played over and over again. Songs that I would never play for myself and find a bit annoying when I have to sit through them. Songs that were recorded before I was even born and were so awful kids had to invent punk to counter them.

I don’t know what the skaters thought of the music choice. But, for that time and that place, I really couldn’t think of a better soundtrack.

.

The neighborhood had everything that one could want or need. Or at least everything I needed at the time. If I’m being honest, for large stretches of time I didn’t even need the whole neighborhood. Just a few blocks.

I drank enough coffee at that time to be a regular at three different coffee stands. One was known for their high quality pour. Another offered a reasonably priced twenty ounce cup when I needed something big. The third was the cheapest and, while tolerable, you get what you pay for.

There was a liquor store where the old guy that ran it remembered my spirit of choice. He was always ready to suggest something better when I had a bit more money and was never judgmental when I had to go cheaper. I’d often bump into him on the street. He used the opportunity to talk to me about his hobbies which included hoarding safes, buying iPods at pawn shops to get the music off of them, and collecting guns.

Walk around enough on those few blocks and you’d see just about everyone. You’d see the woman that worked at the video rental place in line for coffee. Your barista would be drinking at your favorite bar. Your bartender would be eating at the Tragic Dragon, a Chinese food place that wasn’t good but whose defenders justified it with a “they have such big portions.”

If those portions weren’t big enough you could go to El Aparador and load up at their all you can eat buffet. I wasn’t a fan but I did like walking all the way to the back of the restaurant to drink margaritas at the bar. People rarely sat back there so no matter what was going on in the restaurant you felt like you had a bit of privacy.

For those who didn’t need to overindulge on food there was Commedia Pizza that offered cheap slices. It seemed like everyone in the neighborhood had worked there at some point. Maybe I should have applied there when I moved to town. Instead, I applied and got a job at Vertiefung, the record store next door to the pizza shop.

To say it was a “record store” was a bit of a stretch. This was long before Vinyl is Back!!! headlines polluted publications. Vertiefung stocked CDs, video games, and DVDs, including a porn section in the back. There was a small amount of vinyl, but more space was devoted to the porn DVDs. Which was understandable, they brought in more money. I suspected that the store’s owner found records annoying. Or at least she found it annoying when I added LPs when we ordered from our distributors. The UPS driver would wheel in large boxes. She’d tear them open, anxious to check the invoice and make sure we got everything we ordered. Sometimes among the shiny shrink wrapped DVDs and CDs was a 12 inch by 12 inch cardboard box protecting the records I ordered. She’d pull it out looking at it like the cardboard box itself had passed gas. She’d look at me and although knowing the answer would ask “Is this yours?” My “Yes” always came off with a tone like I myself had just passed gas.

I didn’t just collect records. I had stacks of tapes and CDs too. I even had some burned CDs. Mostly mixes people had made me. I never had a computer so I never burned any CDs for myself. As part of my training at Vertiefung, I was shown how to operate the store’s computer’s CD/DVD burner. While some workplaces provide snacks or coffee our store had a bottomless spindle of blank discs. This wasn’t a perk of the job, but rather a calculated measure to prevent employee theft.

The ability to burn discs was also a bit of currency with other businesses on the block. I could trade a burned copy of Arular by M.I.A for a smoothie or get a haircut in exchange for a burned copy of Kanye West’s Late Registration. Once I had a long conversation about Hitchcock movies with a guy who was a cook at a nearby restaurant. A few weeks later a used copy of Rebecca came into the store. It was out of print and fetched quite a lot of money. I burned a copy, put it in an envelope and dropped it off at his restaurant. When dining at the restaurant surprise desserts were often delivered at the end of my meal.

The hookup wasn’t a one for one exchange. You burned someone a disc and if the conditions were right when you saw them at their job they hooked you up. Nothing could be expected and you never spoke openly about it.

One place that I never tried to exchange discs with was BC Books, the neighborhood bookstore. It’s not that the people at the bookstore didn’t listen to CDs or watch movies. The store and its employees seemed a bit more sophisticated. BC Books seemed to be the opposite of Vertiefung. They were clean and organized, while Vertiefung resembled a junk pile. The employees of the bookstore seemed to like their boss, while the record store employees worked under a haze of fear and repulsion.

Even people who didn’t come in could tell the difference by walking by the stores. Outside of Vertiefung were cardtables filled with VHS covers bleached by the sun. Outside of BC books was a sandwich board. Each day one of the employees would write a first line from a famous book. “I first saw Hundreds Hall when I was ten years old.” “It was a dark and stormy night.” “All this happened, more or less.” “They shoot the white girl first.” “Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.”

If you knew it you could come in and get 20% off the books you bought. This was an era before most people had mobile devices connected to the internet. Walking by and knowing the answer was gratifying in a way that is hard to describe. The rush of remembering was better than any monetary discount. Not knowing it created a sense of wonder. It was also a bit of poetry injected into your daily walk around the neighborhood.

One of the employees picking out those first lines was Kate. Kate was a bit older than me both in years and maturity. While I had waited until my late 20s to go to college, Kate was already years into her career. She only worked at the bookstore part time, mostly because she always worked at bookstores. She loved bookstores and books and even looked like a character out of a book. Tall, skinny, bespectacled, well dressed, vaguely Edwarian. We chatted when I was in her bookstore and she was in my record store and soon we were closer to colleagues despite not actually working together. We knew each other’s schedules and would pop in even if we didn’t need to shop. When we did need to shop I got the discount even if I did know the first line that day and Katee miraculously only picked items from our dollar bin.

Like many work friendships, eventually ours transferred outside of work life. Coffees, dinners, seeing bands play shows. Once we went to a movie and while waiting for the trailers to start I pointed out a woman sitting by herself. “That’s one of my favorite customers.” Kate gave me a look and said “I was just about to tell you that’s one of my favorite customers.” We laughed. I secretly hoped that later on the woman told a friend “I went to the movies and saw the woman from the bookstore and the record store guy together.”

One day Kate stormed into Vertiefung and started furiously browsing the CDs. “Ugh, I’m bored with all the CDs we have at the bookstore. Do you have any suggestions?” My eyes lit up. The chance to curate the soundtrack to a bookstore. It was a dream come true.

I like lots of different types of music. I want to hear the sweet melodies of It’s Love by The Softies just as much as I want to feel the rush from the abrasive noise of Landed’s Everything's Happening. I can enjoy the absurdist avant garde satire of Men’s Recovery Project’s “Smoking that Magic Rock (Zionist remix)” or the sincerity of Poems, Prayers & Promises by John Denver. There are times when I just want to share the silence. Everything has its time and everything has its place. Every moment has the perfect soundtrack. Often I’m in situations where the experience is almost ruined by music that just doesn’t fit. I didn't ask Kate if I could make some mix CDs for the store, I just told her I was going to do it. I didn’t ask or expect anything in return.

People think that working in a record store is sitting around listening to music. It is certainly not. You have to deal with needy customers who often don’t know what they want, new stock being delivered that has to go out, and the endless and sometimes arduous chore of people trying to sell you their collections. There was never a time when there was nothing to do. Still, I ignored all the tasks that were expected of me and started assembling my three volume “Music to Browse Books To” series. When the mixes were completed I delivered them to Kate and waited. I needed to know what she thought of them. I had made plenty of mix tapes and CDs for people before, but for some reason I was more concerned about these. Maybe because I hadn’t made them for a person but for a type of person. The type of person browsing an independent bookstore.

Kate told me she liked them, but, as with most compliments people give me, I don’t trust it and assume they are just being nice. It wasn’t good enough for me to hear it, I had to see it. I started slipping into the bookstore when I knew Kate was working in hopes she was playing one of the mixes. I’d pull books off the shelf only to use as a ruse to peer at the people actually looking for books. It never worked out and I abandoned that plan. Not because it was creepy, I could deal with that. I stopped because I realized that if I did my job right then they would not react at all. The whole point of the mix was for people to be entertained without being distracted so they could find just the right book.

One day I popped into the bookstore and Red was at the counter. Red was a veteran bookstore worker who could count their time in the book business in decades rather than years. Red also looked like they would be more comfortable working as a mechanic than as a bookseller. Blue collar clothes and granny framed glasses. Without looking up from the stack of books they were pricing, Red said “Kate's in back.”

I had developed enough of a relationship that I had unspoken permission to ignore “Staff Only” signs on the doors of the bookstore. When I pushed through the door I found Kate standing at a desk tearing the covers off of a stack of magazines. The covers went into an envelope that was sent to the distributor so the bookstore could be credited for unsold magazines. People think that working at a bookstore is just sitting around reading. It is certainly not.

“Why aren't my CDs playing?!?” I griped sarcastically as I barged in.

Without making eye contact, Kate retorted, “I’ve already listened to them today!” and headed through the door back to the front of the store. I quickly followed her to the front counter. When you’re at work, even if you are talking to a friend, it feels more comfortable behind the counter.

Once she was in her safe zone Kate said, “You know the woman who works here with the glasses?”

I frowned a little bit before shifting my eyes at Red and back to Kate. “Doesn’t everyone who works here wear glasses?” I said.

“Ugh, yeah but the big glasses, her name is Abby.”

With the comic timing of a vaudeville act Red interjected, “Rhymes with crabby.”

Kate rolled her eyes. I couldn’t tell if it was because she had heard the joke too often or if she was mad at Red for letting an outsider overhear an inside joke. She continued, “Well, she has always been really snobby to me for no reason.”

“No reason at all?”

“Does insecurity count as a reason?”

“I think it is an explanation, not a reason.”

“Anyway, those CDs have given me some credibility with her. She still hates me, but maybe she loves me too. I don’t know, but she wants to make me some CDs too.”

“That’s nice.”

“Well, I think it is her way of competing with your CDs.”

“Ah, I see. Bookstore girl makes better mixes than record store boy.”

“Exactly.”

It was then I realized who the real audience for my CDs was, the staff of the bookstore. Even if you love your job, being in the same place everyday can be monotonous. The tunes need to be good. If my mixes inspired another music nerd to try and outdo them they must have done their job.

If you are wondering what was exactly on those CDs. Don’t ask me. I haven't the foggiest memory of what I put on them. The location of the CDs is also a mystery. The bookstore closed a few years after I made the mixes. It happened unexpectedly with a short time between when they announced they were closing and the door’s being locked for the last time. Big shelves were sold. Unsold books returned. There was an auction for the more important items like an autographed pair of David Sedaris underwear and the sign that had all the first line quotes.

I have a little fantasy that someone bought a box of miscellaneous items and my CDs were in there. Maybe my mixes were bundled up with other CDs, the stereo, and some speaker wire rolled up neatly. It took a while for this anonymous person to get around to listening to the CDRs labeled in Sharpie with bad handwriting. But when they finally did they found they liked them. After all, any songs that would be good for browsing in a bookstore would be even better as a soundtrack for reading. In my extended daydream the person that bought them is sitting in a comfortable chair, wearing an old cardigan, drinking a mug of tea, listening to my curated songs while getting lost in a book.

One of those tenants was an actor at the American Negro Theatre. She gave Harry a pair of tickets for a play she was in as a tip. He had seen movies, but never live theatre. When he went, he knew it was something special when, just before it began, the audience went quiet. The play was about Black servicemen returning home from war and trying to create new lives in Harlem. He was mesmerized. He saw that in the theater actors had power over the audience. He felt like he had entered a new universe and he didn’t want to leave it. Harry wanted to be an actor.

Harry wanted to be an actor but he was shy and knew nothing about acting. At first he just hung around the theatre. Nobody seemed to mind. Everyone liked Harry. Soon they started giving him reasons to be there. Moving some scenery. Painting some sets. He didn’t mind that he wasn’t getting paid because he was hanging out with actors and directors. It was exciting. He had never acted before but he had looks and charisma. That was enough for a director to give him a small part in a play. He did well enough that he was given a slightly bigger part in another production. Harry knew that if he really wanted to be an actor, a good one, he would need experience and an understanding of the craft. He needed to study it. He heard about a class for actors at the New School over in Greenwich Village. His GI Bill would pay for it.

It was exciting hanging out with experienced directors and aspiring actors. He made friends with some of the other students and moved out of Harlem to Greenwich Village. He made lots of friends. Everyone liked Harry. There was one guy, Sidney Poitier, with whom Harry felt a real connection. Poitier was born in Miami and raised in the Bahamas before returning to the US as a teen. Harry was born in New York and went back and forth between Jamaica and the States. Although he was 20 years old, Harry felt Poitier was the first true friend he made in his life. They also shared a love of acting and being broke. They would buy a single ticket to a play. One guy would go in and watch the first half. At intermission he would explain what happened to the second guy who would then go and watch the rest of the play. Afterwards he’d fill in the first guy on how it ended. Another classmate he made friends with was Marlon Brando. Harry loved Brando’s sense of humor and loyalty. Harry would often take Brando to jazz clubs like the Royal Roost.

Bebop was a hip new form of jazz in the late 1940s and the Royal Roost was the place to see it. Lester Young, Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis and Max Roach. All the big names were playing there. But what made the Royal Roost special wasn’t just who was playing, it was who was watching and listening to the music. Like most places, you could go to the Royal Roost and sit at a table or the bar and listen to the band. Long before punks pushed for all ages shows, the owner of the Royal Roost wanted to not only accommodate, but encourage audiences of all ages to come hear the music. They built a bleacher section, separate from the bar and tables. Anyone, as long as they paid the 99¢ cover, could sit there for as long as they wanted. So many people came, and sat for so long, the owner installed a soda fountain. Unlike other clubs, the staff wasn’t pushy about making people order drinks. That’s why broke actors like Harry could sit at the bar, nurse a single beer, and watch the bands. He got to know the staff and the musicians. Everyone liked Harry.

Harry wanted to act, and although he was charismatic, handsome, and had learned a lot about acting, he was also Black. There weren't many roles for Black men in New York City at the time. His friend Brando, who was white, landed a role in A Streetcar Named Desire. His other friend, Poitier, who was Black, was having trouble finding roles and was working in the garment district. Harry was working there too. It wasn’t that there were zero roles for Black men, it's just that they were rare and hard to get for an unestablished actor.

Harry didn’t want to be a singer, he wanted to be an actor, but sometimes a role called for the actor to sing. Some of the guys from the Royal Roost saw Harry sing during a production of Of Mice and Men. They knew he could act, but they didn’t know he could sing. Afterwards they told him he was good. Really good. A plan was hatched. At the Royal Room, when the band took breaks Harry could entertain the crowd with songs. The musicians thought this was a good idea. Monte Kay, who booked the Royal Roost, thought it was a good idea. The only one who didn’t think it was a good idea was Harry. Harry wanted to be an actor. But he had a newborn child and getting paid $70 a week to sing was better than getting paid to work in the garment district.

Charlie Parker volunteered his pianist, Al Haig, to accompany Harry while he sang. Haig and Harry worked up a set of pop and jazz standards plus one original. Harry wrote “Recognition” about the struggles of Black veterans returning home from war. The night of the show he was in the back, quite nervous, waiting for the band to finish up their set. When they did Haig and Harry went out. Before Harry had a chance to sing a note he was given a big surprise by the guys at the club. Tommy Potter started in on bass, Max Roach sat behind the drumset, and Charlie Parker joined in on saxophone. For his debut show, Harry was backed up by four of the premier jazz musicians of the day. The musicians at the Royal Roost liked Harry. Everyone liked Harry. They wanted this to be a success. Later in the set Miles Davis joined in. Harry would later say he did it reluctantly, Davis didn’t want to miss out on anything.

That week Kay saw that the audience liked Harry, even when it was just him and Haig on piano. Everyone liked Harry. His week-long engagement was extended to over 20. His shows went out over the radio. Recording sessions were set up. Singles were released. He hit the road playing in Chicago and Philadelphia. When he returned to New York he was making $350 a week at the Cafe Society.

Then he went to Florida. Jim Crow South. In the fall of 1950 Harry was booked for a two week stretch at a club in Miami. The audience was white. Only white. After he provided the entertainment for the evening he was escorted to a cheap hotel in the Black part of town. He was told not to talk to the audience before or after his performance. He definitely was not to fraternize with the women who came to see him sing. Everyone liked Harry, but women really liked Harry. He quit and went back to New York.

When he arrived home he officially ended his singing career. Harry was inspired to be an actor because of the passion he saw on stage. The potential that an actor could inspire the audience. He found no passion in the music he was making. He couldn’t sing mushy love songs anymore. The lyrics didn’t mean anything. He stopped trying to be a singer and focused on being an actor. He eventually had success. He was cast in a movie. Acted on Broadway. He won a Tony for that. But then he realized, maybe he did want to be a singer.

Jazz wasn’t the only exciting music scene in New York. Harry discovered the folk scene that was going on and it revitalized his interest in musical performances. Josh White, Odetta, Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie. Their lyrics meant something. They weren’t just singers, they were activists. Racial and social injustice had always bothered Harry. A major moment in his life was when his mother, unable to find work, told him through tears “Don’t ever let injustice go by unchallenged.” Decades later Harry would say that moment was a deep part of his DNA. In the folk scene Harry saw people that didn’t sing sappy love songs. They mixed politics and music. They inspired their audience.

Harry still wanted to be an actor, but now he also wanted to be a folk singer. He knew that if he really wanted to be a folk singer, a good one, he would need experience and an understanding of the craft. He needed to study it. He made trips to Washington, D.C. and studied the folk and blues housed at the Library of Congress. He discovered music that had such meaning and power. He worked up a set with guitarist Millard Thomas. He had his debut at the Village Vanguard. Instead of the jazz and pop standards he once performed, his set would include folks songs, (“Oh Shenandoah”), traditional African American ballads (“John Henry”), songs sung by men on chain gangs, and the Jewish celebration song “Hava Nagila.” He also included the calypso song “Matilda.” He experienced calypso music first hand during his youth living in Jamaica. It had a profound effect on him.

Harry’s new set was a hit. Everyone liked Harry. For three months he performed at the Village Vanguard before audiences grew too large and he moved to the Blue Angel. Soon, he was booking nightclubs and hotels across the country, even performing in Las Vegas during the Rat Pack era. He liked performing in Vegas. He would come onto the stage serious and focused. He’d sing a couple of chain gang songs. Let the tension build. Then flash a big smile to the audience and break into an upbeat number. Harry knew how to work a crowd.

The jazz and pop singles he made in the 1940s were minor hits but he never felt enthusiasm making them. If an artist isn’t excited to make a recording how can the audience be expected to be excited when they listened to it? He was excited to make records now. His first sold well. His second went to number one where it stayed until Elvis’ debut knocked it out. But for his third he wanted to do something special. He presented his label, RCA, with the set of songs he wanted to sing. They were all calypso songs. He even wanted to title the album simply Calypso.

Even though Harry had delivered two hit records, the people at RCA gave him resistance. American artists had recorded calypso songs since the 1930s. The Andrew Sisters, who’s “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy” was the de facto theme song of WWII, even had a hit when they recorded Lord Invaders "Rum and Coca-Cola" in 1944. But doing a whole album of calypso songs? Would the American record buying public be that interested? Harry was on a roll. It was a risk., But Harry was determined. He went straight to the head of the RCA record company, George Merritt, and made his case. Merritt liked Harry. Everyone liked Harry. More importantly, Merritt believed in Harry. Harry could record whatever songs he wanted.

One song Harry wanted to record was a version of a song that dockworkers sang while they loaded bananas. They worked at night when it was cooler. Their shift is done and they want their bananas counted so they can get paid and go home. It had been recorded several times. Sometimes a “The Banana Boat Song” other times as “Day Dah Light”. His version would be called “Day-O.” Harry saw it as a rebellious song. A song about pain and anguish felt by underpaid men who simply want an honest count.

Harry was booked for a series of shows at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. When he wasn’t performing he was up in his hotel room with Lord Burgess working on an arrangement for “Day-O.” Burgess was born in Brooklyn to Barbadian immigrants. He studied music from the Caribbean and became what Harry referred to as a walkling library of songs from the islands. The song begins with Harry’s voice in the distance. “Day-O…day-O…Daylight come and me wan' go home.” The song’s instrumentation is sparse. Harry’s voice echoes through a vast space. It moves. It resonates with the listener.

When Calypso came out in 1956 it was huge. It sold a million copies in a year. The first album to do that. But people weren’t just buying Calypso the album, the American public was embracing a calypso phenonium. Calypso was the number one album for 30 weeks, until a new Elvis record knocked it out of the top spot. This back and forth between Harry and Elvis, it was a symbolic unofficial battle happening between calypso and rock ‘n’ roll. Sitting there in the 21st Century it might be hard to imagine but a lot of people thought rock ‘n’ roll was a passing fad. It wasn’t going to last. Guitar groups were on their way out. But the calypso fad, maybe that would be a little bigger and last a little longer. Record artists of every genre released calypso singles. Gary “US” Bonds released an LP Twist Up Calypso. Dizzy Gillespie, one of the guys from the Royal Roost, released an LP of calypso called Jambo Caribe. And Hollywood? Hollywood loved the calypso craze. Movies came out like Island in the Sun, Calypso Joe, Calypso Heat Wave, and Bop Girl Goes Calypso. John S. Wilson, the music critic for the New York Times wrote “…Elvis Presley and rock ‘n’ roll are giving way before the onslaughts of Harry Belafonte and Calypso.”

With success brings backlash. While a lot of people liked Harry, he did face criticism. Some people in Jamaica thought he was a fake. He had issues with some people for singing folk and blues songs as well. The folk scene thrived on authenticity. Foreshadowing punk, folk musicians and audiences demanded genuineness to the music and the movement, not the money. Harry wasn’t from the South. He didn’t play an instrument. He wasn’t born in Jamaica. His father was white. He was an actor. He had been a pop singer. If Harry wasn’t authentic, he had no right to sing those songs. It didn’t bother Harry that much. He didn’t have time for their criticism when there were bigger issues in the world.

Seeing a play had made Harry want to be an actor. Seeing folk musicians made Harry want to be a folk musician. In 1956, just as the calypso craze was about to explode, he saw another performance that was going to change his life. Harry had received a phone call from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. It was a personal invite to a fundraising rally in Harlem. King was a nationally known figure because of his involvement in the Montgomery bus boycott, but seeing him in person, that was something else. Harry was impressed with his sense of calm in front of the crowd. Harry saw a man with a mission and one he was determined to complete. He felt King was inspired and daunted by the burden he had taken on. That night he told King he would help in any way he could. But King helped him too. Harry was angry when he met King. He felt that anger had protected him. King saw Harry’s anger and understood it and knew its value. He showed Harry how to redirect it and make it productive.

I could end with the story of the friendship between these two men. How Harry raised the money that bailed King out of a Birmingham jail. Or how when Harry was asked to guest host The Tonight Show he insisted King be one of the guests. But I’m not going to tell those stories. There are many great stories about Harry Bellafante. He led a long life and an interesting life. There is the story about how the first time the public heard Bob Dylan on a record was his harmonica on Harry's recording of “Midnight Special.” Dylan would later perform at the March on Washington, which Harry helped organize. Or there is the story about how Harry, along with other Black celebrities, funded a program to sponsor Kenyan students who wanted to study in the US. One of the beneficiaries was Barack Obama Sr. Or how, even after he was famous, and sold millions of records, a landlord in New York City wouldn’t rent to him. So he bought the building and rented out the places to his friends of all races.

Let’s leave those stories aside and I will write about another one. A story I just love so much. For this story I want you to imagine it as a movie. A movie that stars Harry Belfonte and Sidney Poitier playing themselves. Let’s say the theme song is by Quincy Jones.

It’s 1964 and Harry has just thrown a fundraiser with Marlon Brando, Frank Sinatra, and Joan Baez. The cause was the Mississippi Freedom Summer’s voter registration drive. This really happened and I think it is a good place to start the movie because it shows the different worlds Harry travels in: actor, entertainer, folk singer, activist. It also starts the movie on a happy note.

Then tragedy strikes. Three of the volunteers involved in the voter drive disappear. James Chaney, a Black man from Mississippi and two white men from New York, Andrew Goodman and Micheal Schwerner. A few days later the FBI pulled their bodies from the river. Chaney and Schwerner had been shot dead. Goodman was burned alive. Instead of discoursing the activists, they are only more determined. Their original plan of working two week shifts was scrapped. No one was going home. If they were going to stay they needed money. The night the bodies were found the activists called Harry to ask for more money. All he needed to know was how much. They need $50,000. And they needed it in three days. Now, the money wasn’t a problem. Harry had money. More importantly, he knew how to get people to donate money. Everyone liked Harry. The problem was how to get the money from New York to Mississippi. No bank would work with the activists. Harry would have to deliver the money in person.

I want to interject that this is all true, but I also want to remind you that you are supposed to imagine this as a movie. Is there anything that drives the plot of money better than a bag of money? Back to the story…

If Harry is going to fly to the South, Jim Crow South, he isn’t going alone. When you have a job like this to do, a mission of this importance, you have little choice besides calling your oldest friend. Enter Sidney Poitier. At this point Poitier has long since stopped working in the garment district. He’s acting on stage and screen and has been both commercially and critically a success. He is the first Black man to win an Academy Award. Harry figures maybe they would kill one Black celebrity, but killing two? Maybe that was too much.

There they were, two stars of stage, screen, and record in a single engine plane flying from New York to Greenwood, Mississippi with a bag of money. They landed, and stepped off the plane. With no hesitation, the pilot made a U-turn and took off.

Waiting for them at the airfield was a car and its driver Willie Blue. Blue was a driver for many of the people involved in Freedom Summer. Especially New Yorkers who didn’t know how to drive. He had a license, was a good driver, and knew Mississippi well. He had been an activist since Emmett Till was lynched. He was only a year older than Till. Blue had listened to reports of the murder and the trial on the radio. He never could forget the sheriff saying in court that no white man would go to jail for killing a Black man. Except he didn’t say “a Black man.”

As soon as the plane was gone Blue hurried the men, and that bag, into his car. Just then, on the other side of the airfield some lights turned on. A pair of lights. Headlights. Then another pair. Then another pair. Willie Blue knew Mississippi well. He informed the two men from New York that they were looking at the Klu Klux Klan. Maybe not exactly the same men, but the same men that shot James Chaney and Micheal Schwerner and burned Andrew Goodman alive. Willie Blue drove straight for the lights and at the last second veered away.

Now, in a movie, you’d expect that during the car chase scene the protagonists would drive as fast as they possibly could. But this wasn’t a movie. This was real life. Willie Blue knew Mississippi well. He knew that if he was speeding there was a good chance they’d be pulled over. If that happened that bag of money would disappear. As for the three people in the car? James Chaney and Micheal Schwerner had just been shot and Andrew Goodman had been burned alive. But Willie Blue knew what he was doing. He outmaneuvered the Klan, hooked up with a convoy of activists and made it to the meeting point, a dance hall.

When they walked in they were met with an applause louder than anything Harry had heard before. The room was filled with hundreds of activists, men and women, both Black and white, who were willing to risk their lives to register as many Black voters as possible. Harry got the crowd to quiet down. Harry knew how to work a crowd. When it was silent he sang “Day-O, me say Day-O” and then he improvised “Freedom, freedom, freedom come and it won’t be long.” While the crowd applauded he dumped not fifty, but $70,000 in small bills out of his bag.

Roll credits.

The Osees are a band I spend a lot of time listening to. With almost thirty studio albums and more than a half dozen live records there is much to shift through.

Besides the amount of releases, they pivot to different styles. Garage rock, kraut rock, psychedelia, folk music, punk freak folk, heavy metal, progressive rock, synth pop, etc.

I wanted to make some playlists of their stuff but wasn’t excited by any of the ideas I had on how to group them. After some false starts and head scratching I came up with a system.

I went to a website with user generated information about where bands play live shows and what songs they played at them. A band’s life of touring turned into searchable data. The site is not completely reliable, but it was a place to start.

I went to the first year there was data for and sorted by most played songs. I took that list and shortened the playlist until it was around 44 minutes. This is the usual length of a vinyl LP, one side to a 90 minutes mixtape, and what I think is a good length of a playlist.

I moved onto the next year and repeated the process ignoring any songs already used. A few years didn’t yield enough new songs or almost all the new songs were from one record so I combined some years.

Here are the results

2009

2010

2011

2012

2014

2016/2017

2018/2019

2020

2021

2022-2024

If you don’t use Spotify get a hold of me. When I get back to the States I’ll make you a cassette box set. Complete with track listings and liner notes.

The house I grew up in was not adventurous when it came to food. I experienced few things outside the typical midwestern blue collar dinners. Mostly baked chicken, baked potatoes, and canned corn alternated with spaghetti and meatballs. Food trends came and went that I was oblivious to. My only knowledge of sushi, Indian dishes, and Mediterranean food came from TV. In the movie The Great Outdoors, a character played by Dan Aykroyd tells a character played by John Candy that they are having a goat cheese pizza for dinner. I laughed for days at the joke. I had never had goat cheese, but I had also never heard of goat cheese, so it must be made up right?

We did have Asian food, but La Choy’s Chicken Chow Mein in a can. The first time I had Asian food that didn’t come out of a can was as a teenager when I landed a job as a dishwasher at a hip Thai restaurant. Three quarters through my shift I was handed a steaming bowl of food and shuffled to sit on a milk crate in the corner of the kitchen. My mind and taste buds were blown.

There were fruits and vegetables I never encountered until I was in my 20s and even 30s. That’s why I can pinpoint when I had my first avocado.

When you meet Raphi the first thing you’ll notice is his hair. It’s a huge, unruly ball going in every direction. But once you get to know Raphi his defining characteristic is his laugh. He can barely get through a story without laughing every few sentences. He laughs like a two pack a day smoker coughs. And he has plenty of reasons to laugh. He is a kind, good natured person who always finds himself in odd situations. When he was a roadie for a band he was stuck in a van with a their opening act, a geriatric folk singer addicted to frappuccinos. He played a heated game of tennis with the heir of the Settlers of Catan fortune. And he was the reluctant sparring partner for a boxer just released from prison. Catching up with Raphi is like sitting across from a screenwriter pitching wacky slapstick comedies to a movie producer.

It was summer time. I was visiting New York City and made sure to meet up with Raphi. He had moved there after he finished college. His apartment was cramped with too many roommates. Raphi was telling me about them, but I was barely paying attention. Partly because it was so hot. I was also distracted by the massive stereo that was as much a fixture of the kitchen as the coffee maker or refrigerator. It had a CD player that could hold 100 CDs. It was a marvel to me that you could have access to 100 albums at your fingertips. With the touch of a few buttons, it would spin around, pull a CD, and start playing. Above it was a large dry erase board with slots numbered 1 to 100 that listed every CD in the player. If someone switched out a CD they simply had to rub out the old listing and write in the new title. As Raphi made me breakfast I looked over his roommates handwriting and tried to figure out their taste and humor based on the 100 CDs they collectively chose. Before I came to any conclusions my breakfast was ready.

We had a seat and Raphi served me my first avocado toast. Holy shit was it good. This was decades before “avocado toast” would be used as shorthand for millennials spending their money carelessly. It was also before the 2007-2008 financial crisis so no one was concerned about stuff like that. Raphi was ahead of the trend.

A few years later I was headed down the West Coast on a road trip. A much needed distraction. It was an election year and the news was getting to me. Nothing helps me take a break from the news like traveling. In 2008 my news diet was pretty hefty. In the morning I would watch Democracy Now on my desktop computer while drinking coffee. During the day, NPR would be on in the background at the office I worked at. At night I would try and catch an episode of the Daily Show. I didn’t have cable but you could stream it online. A road trip was a great way to take a break from all of that. I felt refreshed when I arrived in a pickup truck in front of Raphi’s new place. He had traded Brooklyn for Berkeley and I was stopping by for a few nights for some stories and laughter.

Raphi was no longer in a crowded apartment. He now shared a modest house with his girlfriend. Gone, too, was the 100 CD changer. In its place was a record player in the living room and a shelf of vinyl. On the floor, in front of the stereo was a small stack of LPs. Usually this is the stuff that has most recently been listened to. I had barely asked Raphi how he was doing before I darted over to flip through the pile. I started to notice a lot of Bob Dylan records. But they were the shit ones. The ones you only see in the dollar bins.

At this point I’d know Raphi for around a decade. We’d been friends, pen pals, and bandmates. I’d been to his parents’ house for dinner, gone to the movies with him on Christmas, and driven his car when our band played an out of town show. We’d traded jokes, recommended music to each other, and been there for each other during romantic breakups. He knew that it came from a place of peace and love when I asked, “What the fuck is with these Dylan records?!?”

Now, while I will argue that my question wasn’t rude, it was coming from a position of ignorance. I had never listened to these records. I was going off what other people had said and wrote about them. I never went through a Dylan phase. Growing up there were some Greatest Hits tapes my older sister bought. I remember being weirdly obsessed with "Rainy Day Women #12 & 35" because I thought the horns were so weird. You know sometimes when you are a kid, you are presented with something that doesn't make sense to you. The immediate reaction is to disregard it as stupid. But you can’t stop thinking about it. You want to hear it again and again. You go from laughing at it to trying to figure it out. The experience makes you realize you love it.

Sometime in late highschool or just after graduation I got some Dylan CDs. Most of them were later borrowed by a roommate and never returned. A little later I got Time Out Of Mind, maybe a year or two after it came out, so 1999ish. There was a lot of hype surrounding that album and some of the narrative was that Dylan was back after a creative slump in the 1980s. There was often a dig at him that “He went Christian for a few records” with the implication these were the worst of his discography. As a teen I absorbed that opinion. Being only a casual Dylan fan I never did a deep dive into that era to discover if it was true or not. I wasn’t going to buy the records to find out. I couldn’t borrow them because I never saw them on anyone else’s shelf.

Raphi’s response to my question was of course to laugh. In a self-deprecating shrug he said “What?!? So I’m into 1980s Dylan. Even the Christian stuff. What about it?” We both laughed and started talking about other things.

Often, collectors will find a pet niche genre or artist they find beauty in that others don’t. Raphi’s thing was going to be 1980s Dylan. I could see myself telling an amusing anecdote at a party. “No…no…I have a friend who loves 1980s Dylan. Especially the Christian stuff.” It would be like that time I saw a flyer for a metal band looking for a singer who preferred post Ronnie James Dio Black Sabbath.

Boyo was I wrong. A decade later and all the cool kids come in the record store looking for 1980s Dylan. Hundreds of episodes of podcasts are dedicated to discussing and defending 1980s period Bob Dylan. If any subculture is going to survive, the new members need to have some contrarian opinions. The older folks are going to ease up on their previous biases by saying they are reassessing things. Being only a casual fan of Dylan, I stay out of it. This is by no means the only Dylan controversy I’m avoiding.

If people are going to be debating over a movie, I prefer to find out about the controversy after I've seen it. Otherwise I feel like I’m joining a team. I don’t like joining teams. One of the many reasons I collect records instead of watching sports. There is a new movie out now about Bob Dylan. I know few details about the film, but I do know there are some Dylan fans upset by who was chosen to play their idol. Along with that, it seems like the movie being made is controversial itself. Non-Dylan fans are wondering why the movie exists at all. I saw a comic written by a woman wondering if there will ever be a time when men don’t talk to her about Dylan. As a casual fan of Dylan and an avoider of pop culture I’m staying out of both of these.

It does make me think of Raphi. I sent him a message and asked him to make me a Bob Dylan playlist. The only criteria is that it be no longer than 90 minutes, which is the length of a mixtape. In my imagination he does this sitting in his living room, now in Oakland with his wife and kids, eating avocado toast, playing his Bob Dylan records, and making notes on which songs to include. But that’s the past. He’s probably onto the next thing and it will take me years to catch up.

Of all the adjustments of spending a year abroad, one of the biggest to my daily life was not having access to my record player and shelves and shelves of vinyl to choose from. Having a wardrobe that is about two and a half loads of laundry is frustrating but manageable. The library is a bit slow to fill my holds, but I’m a bit slow in returning them, so we are even. Then there is the situation of no records to play. I’ve never lived in a place without a record player.

Spotify was already on my phone. Being a parent, it is almost essential to be able to play the same set of songs and stories for your kid every time they are requested. Preferably without commercials. This mostly takes place in the car. Back in Seattle, almost every Sunday I would do a big shopping trip for the week. It was important to me to bring my daughter. Partly, it gave my wife the house to herself for a while. Also, I wanted my kid to experience shopping. We’d talk about what we were buying and why. It was good to have her wait in lines and to do things that were not centered around her being stimulated. It was also fun. As part of the weekly ritual we’d negotiate a deal. “Elmo songs” in the car in return for good behavior in the store. It worked better than you’d expect.

Some people might not see this as an acceptable excuse to use an app that makes zillions of dollars with little in royalties or respect paid to the artist who makes the music. An app owned by someone who takes those zillions and invests in companies trying to build new and worse weapons of war. It’s one of the 21st Century compromises I’ve allowed myself. Everyone has some. Some have more. We come to terms with what we find acceptable while being taken aback by what other people are allowing for themself.

I’m starting a new project with another person. In the early planning stages we discussed the direction we want to go in, how to split up the costs, and creative control. I felt it was just as important to have the conversation about social media. It was crucial to me to decide which apps we would use to spread the word and stay connected with our audience. I know which ones I enjoy, which ones I’m reluctantly still addicted to, and which ones I’m dead against. Before we went any further we needed to come to an agreement on which ones we were willing to use. It reminded me of that middle period of the pandemic. When people started to socialize together again. “I’m okay going there and fine with you doing that. If you want to do that you need to wear a mask.” Those conversations were reminiscent of the talk with a new sexual partner. “I’m okay going there and fine with you doing that. If you want to do that you need to wear a condom.” Everyone knows what they are comfortable with, but is a little worried about voicing them for fear of seeming too prudish or too irresponsible. With apps and social media, we want a certain amount of convenience or attention or connection without the guilt of providing content or money to billionaires whose goals are counter to our wellbeing. The our being us as individuals, a society, and a species.

The original purpose of downloading Spotify might have been to play music for my daughter, but once it's there on my phone it found ways to creep into other aspects of my life. Playlists for a cross-country road trip being the first. Now here I am, away from my records and needing to listen to something. Although supposedly more convenient, it is actually more difficult for me. I prefer flipping through my records when trying to decide what to listen to. People more into tech than I have told me that Spotify has a good interface. But it doesn’t work with how my brain is wired. Having an unlimited choice of what to listen to causes my mind to go blank. I’d rather have a limited amount of options. It’s like being really hungry and getting a menu with every dish at every restaurant in the city and being expected to pick what you want to eat. The more limited the menu the easier the decision.

I try to explore new things but find I often drift back to playing the same albums on Spotify that I own on vinyl. Certain things are simply the best soundtracks for writing, playing cards, or post-dinner reading. But there have been a few artists who I’ve taken a deeper dive into, especially their later work. Brian Eno is one of them. My tastes tend to change with the weather. Autumn is good for Neil Young. Early winter sounds like Godspeed You! Black Emperor. Then for the bleak slog that comes after the New Year there is Brian Eno.

While I have several records of his from the 1970s, I don’t own much of his output from the subsequent decades. Eno’s instrumental ambient music is relaxing and stimulating at the same time. My evening walk home from work is just over a half hour. When I get home some Eno is just what I need while I warm up with a cuppa tea and make dinner.

I don’t really care if my kid likes the same music as I do. I’ll play stuff that will entertain her, which for now is a lot of music made for kids. I’ll throw on some of my Twist records for us to dance to but for the most part she can choose her daily soundtrack. The other day while we were doing an art project together I put on Reflection by Brian Eno. A few minutes into the hour-long instrumental song she asked, “Dada what is this?” I said it was music. The response was, “Ohhh. I thought it was a quiet fire alarm.”

Like many great songs, the origin of “Fairytale of New York” has a few different versions depending on who's telling the story. For this story, I’m staying out of it and will only use the bits I like. Whether or not they are the right bits is up to you. What I do know for sure is when I first heard the song.

My older sister had gone on a trip to New York. I was ten or so but still understood this was a big deal. Growing up in rural Ohio was about as far removed from New York City as you could get. It’s where TV shows and movies took place, so going there must be important. Although I couldn’t articulate the reason why at the time, I knew New York City was someplace special and going there for the first time was an important milestone in life.

As soon as she returned she ran out to a record store. She came back with a cassette of If I Should Fall from Grace with God by The Pogues. She was excited to play it for us. After she pulled it out of its cellophane she placed the cassette in the player and told us it was what everyone was listening to in all the bars she went to in New York. That sounded so cool to me. All these cool New Yorkers in all these cool bars. When she hit play the music that came out of the speakers confused and amazed me.

The Pogues were a wild group of musicians that combined the instruments and sound of Irish traditional music with the spirit and excitement of punk. They played their upbeat songs with an infectious excitement that could kick off a party. Their sad songs were the great soundtrack you needed to drink alone. The album opens up with the title track and it is an explosion of music. The singer, Shawn McGownen, passionately wails about death and politics. It’s what hundreds of years of Irish music and a decade of punk were both leading toward. Which was funny for me because I hadn’t even discovered punk yet.

I had grown up in a house full of Irish music. Summers were spent driving around to festivals so my older siblings could compete in Irish step dancing competitions. My brother played the flute and tin whistle. My step father played the fiddle. Both of them appear on the three-part Irish Music from Cleveland series released by Folkways Records, the largest documenter of music from around the world. If my early childhood had any sort of consistent soundtrack, it was traditional Irish music. That in no way prepared me for this tape by The Pogues.

Founding member Spider Stacy, who besides playing tin whistle in the band, would bang a pub tray against his head for percussion, later said the only amazing thing about The Pogues’ idea to combine Irish folk and punk was that no one had thought of it before. Playing punk-influenced Irish-rebellion songs in early 1980s London wasn’t just a novel idea, it was potentially dangerous. When The Pogues played their first gig the Irish Republican Army was in the middle of a bombing campaign in England. Broadcasting your Irish pride from stage was inviting trouble. During their first live show some British soldiers in the audience pelted the band with fish and chips.

The band kept playing, mixing traditional songs with original material. The live shows were legendary. The band got tighter. The band’s popularity continued to grow with each show and every record. Their songwriting also improved with each record having more original material. But one song eluded them. No matter how they tried, they couldn’t get a recording of the song they were happy with.

Banjo player Jem Finer came up with the melody and the original concept for the song--a sailor in New York looking across the Atlantic reminiscing about his home in County Clare, on Ireland's West Coast. Finer’s wife Marcia told him it wasn’t a good idea and said it should be about a couple having a conversation at Christmas. He toyed around with that and had them down on their luck at the holiday. He felt he wasn’t making progress with the song and gave it to Shane.

Shane decided to properly write a Christmas song he had to get in the spirit. He made a snack of sherry and nuts and pretended it was the Christmas season. He took the down-on-their-luck couple at Christmas and moved them to New York. MacGowan had been obsessed with the city, exploring it through books, films, and songs. He knew he was going in the right direction but he wasn’t happy with it. The breakthrough came during a tour of Scandinavia. MacGowan had pneumonia in both lungs and during bouts of delirium saw the story of the song play out and wrote the majority of the lyrics. The tale of a couple Irish immigrants quarreling at Christmas time in 1940s New York was mostly written in Malmö, Sweden.

The first attempt at recording the song came in January 1986. The lyrics of the female part would be sung by the bassist of The Pogues, Cait O’Riordan. She’d already sang lead vocals on several songs for The Pogues including “I'm a Man You Don't Meet Every Day.” They had made a few records with new wave superstar Elvis Costello and, although the relationship had started to strain, he was still in the producer role. For the title of the song Costello suggested calling it "Christmas Eve in the Drunk Tank." The band balked at titling a song after the first line of the lyrics. In the studio at the time, when he wasn’t playing the banjo, Jem Finer was reading J. P. Donleavy’s A Fairy Tale of New York. Shane’s own father had been a big fan of Donleavy and his books had always been around the house. Besides being a catchy title, Shane thought it would be a nice nod to his father.

But it wasn’t happening. The band knew the song had potential but it wasn’t quite there. The band put the song on the shelf. They’d figure it out later.

That spring the members of The Pogues added their names to the list of countless Irish that crossed the Atlantic for America. They weren’t immigrating for a better life, they were bringing their music to a group of rabid fans desperate to see the band play live. Their first show was in New York City.

The tour was a big success. The crowds loved them and the band loved America. MacGowen loved New York. Now that he had actually seen the city, he revisited A Fairytale to finally polish off the lyrics.

The band was soaring. It seemed like nothing could stop them. That’s usually when things go bad in a story. But not this story. Things didn’t go too bad, but they did get a little rocky. Their record label had some problems that were boring and complicated and not worth explaining here. The relationship The Pogues had with Costello finally fell apart. Conversely, bassist O'Riordan’s relationship with Costello was never better. She chose her love over the band and left. No record label, no producer, no female vocalist for that song they knew could be great.

Then everything came together. The band had the tune down with confidence. MacGowen completed the lyrics. Steve Lillywhite, a big time record producer, was interested in recording them even though he didn’t understand how to mix the Irish instruments. Lillywhite’s greatest contribution to “Fairytale…” might be that he was married to Kirsty MacColl, apop singer with several hits to her name. Lillywhite recorded her parts, presented it to the band. They thought it was perfect.

I didn’t know any of this as I listened to my sister’s tape. All I knew is I loved the song.

I wasn’t the only one. “Fairytale of New York” was released in late November 1987 and it was huge in Ireland and the United Kingdom. It wasn’t a one time hit. Year after year, people wanted to hear it at Christmas. It never made a comeback because it never went away. Years passed, then decades. It never went away. Eventually it became one of those songs people claimed they were sick of hearing. They never said they didn’t like it, they just had heard it enough. Most couldn’t imagine a December without it.

The debate over whether “Fairytale of New York” is overplayed isn’t the first or biggest debate that has plagued the song. From the day of its release it was surrounded by controversy about some of the words used by the couple to insult each other. Conservatives offended by this and progressives by that.

I’d rather not get into the debate, but it’d feel like a cop out not to. I’m going to skip all the back and forth about word origins, and character voices, and censorship arguments, because all that is abstract and sometimes people are only making their points to grandstand. All I can offer is my own feelings and experiences.

There are few things I enjoy more than having a few pals over the house, playing records, and having some drinks. Mugs of coffee, cans of beer, or cocktails in a fantastic set of tumblers I got as a wedding gift. The drinks are secondary to the company or the music.

When I put the needle down and the song begins, the only better reaction to “I love this song” is “What is this?!?” While “Fairytale of New York” is ingrained in Christmas culture in Ireland and the UK, it’s not as ubiquitous in the United States. Even though it’s one of my favorite songs, I’d hesitate to play for someone without explanation before or after. And that’s just the way it is. A song I love has something that makes me feel uncomfortable.

As for the band, they’ve defended the writing of the song, but have never cared when radio stations edit words or when bands covering the song alter the lyrics. Shane said “If people don't understand that I was trying to accurately portray the character as authentically as possible, then I am absolutely fine with them bleeping the word, but I don't want to get into an argument.” While The Pogues didn’t want to argue with people that wanted to censor the song, they weren’t afraid of a fight and knew what side they were on. When an ultra rightwing conservative said that the the BBC playing an edited version of “Fairytale…” was an example of woke culture and a reason to defund the BBC, MacGowan promptly told them to “fuck off you little herrenvolk shite”.

Christmas used to be easy for me. I hated it and didn’t celebrate it. Done. Having a kid made that a little more complicated. The only religious traditions we have in the house are Jewish ones, but Christmas is beyond religion. Especially living in Ireland. We can’t ignore it so we have to figure out a way to make it work for us. Take the bits we like, and talk about what we don’t. One of the bits we took was her singing with her schoolmates at her class’ “Winter Show.” Which is a nice way to say Christmas Show. Besides the cuteness of the event, what struck me most was the Muslim family seemed to be having the most fun. Their kid was in one of the most festive Christmas jumpers. They had a balance of keeping their faith while still enjoying the holiday. It didn’t make me rethink or regret my decades of being an anti-Chirstmas Scrooge, it just made me accept that those years are over. Christmas can be complicated. Is Santa real? Is Jesus real? It seems fitting that the greatest Christmas song is complicated, too.

I’m glad we didn’t have a name. 

It started out when a group of us taking a creative writing class in high school wanted more time. The class period always seemed to end too soon. We wanted more time to read our own stuff and listen to others read their stuff and talk about it. Someone suggested we meet outside of class. I had recently transferred from a school in rural Ohio to the suburbs. This felt big. It seemed like what cool kids did in movies. Nothing like this would have happened in my hometown. I felt lucky to be invited.  

Everyone brought something to read. It wasn’t a requirement. There were no requirements, time limits, or rules. Something else I liked. Maybe that would have changed if we went on longer as a group. For the few months we met, no formal order was needed. Picking a time to meet was easy. Most of us had few social engagements. Someone would volunteer their bedroom. I never did. My room felt unimpressive. Partly due to my lack of personality and party due to my mom’s rule against hanging anything on the walls.

I always showed up right on time, but it seemed like a few people had been hanging there for a while. Like, even in this group of misfits there was a V.I.P. section and a pre-meeting to discuss some good gossip before the rest of us arrived. Or maybe some people were a little early and I was paranoid. After everyone read their new work and there were calls for encores, the conversation drifted to the normal topics teens discussed in suburban bedrooms in the mid 1990s. Often it was movies. We once had a lengthy discussion and quote marathon of the opening scene to Reservoir Dogs. How long did it go on before someone suggested we just watch it. Then there was the day people discussed the movie Slacker. 

If you haven't seen Slacker, it's a series of vignettes throughout one day in the city of Austin, Texas. There is no one main character. The camera follows one person to a scene and leaves with another. The characters are mostly pseudo-intellectuals, true weirdos, and honest to god eccentrics all engaged in awkward conversations. The dialogue is hilarious. Some film historians credit it with the birth of the independent film movement of the 1990s. Unfortunately for me, sitting in that room, I was hearing about the movie for the first time. I had no idea what anyone was talking about.       

Everything was fine. I was going to make it through this. I was going to play it cool. No need to let anyone know I didn’t know what they were talking about. All I had to do was avoid eye contact without making it obvious I was avoiding eye contact. I wasn’t going to nod my head or laugh at anything like I knew what they meant. Wait it out. Soon enough the topic of conversation will change. Time passed. The topic didn’t change. It went deeper.

Everyone was laughing about a scene in Slacker that revolves around Madonna’s pap smear. I knew who Madonna was but had no idea what a pap smear was. Did someone say something about a pubic hair? Does a pap smear have something to do with the vagina? If there was a topic I knew less about than Slacker it was the vagina. At this point I was so nervous I was probably openly sweating. Did anyone notice? Would I be forced to speak? I was waiting for the moment when the laughter would suddenly stop and someone would look directly at me and say “Danny, can you please enlighten us with your opinions on Slacker, knowledge of pap smears, and experience with vaginas?”

My luck held out. Someone’s older sibling showed up to take them home. The disruption of the ecosystem reminded everyone of the time. We all packed up and left. During those last two years of high school, my walks home were usually a slog at the end. My mom’s house was in a cul de sac at the corner of an already sprawling grid of residential streets. No matter which direction I was coming from, the last several minutes passed by a rows of identical houses. I could never resist looking in the windows to see what people were watching on their incredibly large television sets. Usually it was local news or game shows. 

On this particular walk I imagined a scenario where someone was watching Slacker. I don’t know how I would know it was Slacker. You don’t let details like this slow down your imagination when you are a teenager walking home alone. Somehow I would know it was Slacker and I would sneak up to the window. The television would be loud enough that I could hear it from outside. The scene with Madonna’s pap smear would come on and the mystery would be solved. I would know why it was so funny and learn what a pap smear was. Just then the owner of the house would see me and I would have to run away while they came out on their lawn, yelling with a fist in the air. Although I knew this wasn’t happening I started to run anyway, blending fantasy and reality in a way I knew I was too old for. 

Soon enough I was able to borrow a copy of Slacker. Jake had a copy of it on VHS. Jake didn’t go to my high school. We worked together at a movie theater. We became friends after I bought a copy of his fanzine from him in the breakroom.  

Finally, in the basement of my mom’s house I was able to see what everyone was talking about. The movie lived up to the buildup. It didn’t look or feel like other movies I’ve seen. It’s funny. The situations are hilarious. The dialogue is incredibly fun to quote with someone that knows it. Which weren't many people. Which made it all the more special.   

After getting most of my entertainment through mainstream media, I had only started to discover that there was an underground world of music, comic books, and movies that the general population had no clue about. Quoting Slacker or other cult movies to your bud was more than just a way to remind ourselves of a funny movie. It was also a way to say “Look at those assholes. Ordinary people. I hate them.” 

Besides consuming non-mainstream media, we went to poorly attended shows, sometimes not even knowing what the bands even sounded like. You’d see a flier with a cool picture and a bunch of weird band names. On the bottom of the flier was directions on how to get to the place. It might be at a record store or a warehouse or someone’s living room. For Jake and myself, one of our trusted venues was Speak In Tongues, a D.I.Y. space that hosted eclectic music located in the Ohio City neighborhood in Cleveland. We’d ride our bikes through the suburbs and most of the West Side of Cleveland to get there.        

I can’t remember who else played on the bill with Starfish. I’m pretty sure we were unfamiliar with the whole lineup. We just wanted to see a show. Whoever else played that night probably paled in comparison to Starfish. Their set was fast, aggressive, melodic power pop. We danced. We went wild. However, we were a little distracted while they played. Was the drummer one of the people from Slacker? Was he in the pap smear scene? Starfish was from Austin, the same place Slacker was filmed. It was plausible. We had to know. 

When the moment looked right we went up to the drummer and introduced ourselves to him. His name was Scott. We had the usual chit chat. “Great show.” “How's the tour?” Then Jake threw out “Soooo… are you in Slacker?” The guy made an “Awe shucks” kind of face and said “yes”. We pestered him with questions and he told us about filming the movie and life in Austin. Towards the end of the conversation he said “Every once and a while someone asks me if I’m the guy in Slacker. No one has ever come up to me and asked ‘Are you the guy in Starfish’?” Although I was glad he said it, that bummed me out a little bit. His band has excited and entertained us. Did we dampen the mood by bringing up the movie? Jake would later rectify this. The day after he saw their tour van parked and left a note under the windshield that read “WE LOVE STARFISH.”  

That night had a significant effect on me. It was a real lesson about fame and fandom and how the intentions of your actions might be different than the results of your action. This is especially true of the underground. In the mainstream the roles of a famous person and ordinary people are clearly defined. But if the underground is actually different, the mainstream fans shouldn’t just expect the creators to act differently, they should act differently. 

There are people whose work I’m down right obsessed with. I’ve strived to make sure I never annoyed or creeped or imposed. People are living their lives and just because I’m a fan doesn’t mean I have ownership over them. Like in any conversation or interaction with someone I weigh whether it is a good idea to say what I’m about to say. Have they heard it before? Are they sick of hearing it? Is now really the time to ask for an autograph, selfie, moment of their time? Truth be told, I’ve never asked for an autograph or a selfie. I have written letters. Sometimes they write back and there is their autograph at the bottom of the page. 

I bought a Starfish CD that night. I don’t remember if it was because they only had CDs or because Jake and I rode bikes to the show and I didn’t want to transport a vinyl record home. I rarely sold any of my physical media, especially music. I was too much of a packrat and an archivist to do that. Eventually, I sold some stuff now and again. When I would, CDs were easier to part with than the rest. The ones I held onto were my friend’s bands, CDs with significant artwork, or detailed liner notes, and ones that had a really good memory tied to it. That Starfish CD lasted longer than most.  

Ken always seemed older than the six years that separated us. In part it was because his band, The Unknown, already had put out several tapes and records by the time I was even aware of the local punk bands. Or maybe it was because he was one of my only friends whose place wasn’t a dump. 

His apartment was clean and the furniture wasn’t from a garbage pile. The electricity was never shut off and there weren't twice as many roommates as bedrooms. His place was punker than most places, too! On his shelf were records I’d only seen in stores as expensive CD reissues. I’d pull one out and a piece of paper would fall out. The setlist from when he saw the band play to only a handful of people. It was also the headquarters of Jiffy Pop Records, the record label he ran. I’d come by and there would be a pile of letters on his table. Some filled with orders, others submitting demo tapes.  

Besides all of that, he had a computer and an internet connection. A rarity at the time. That was the reason I was there. I had gone to a big show over the weekend and word on the street was there were pictures of it on a website. 

The show was the second day of a summer festival and smack in the middle was a set from Astrid Oto. While some bands are musical supergroups, this band could be considered a fanzine supergroup. Cindy from Doris Zine was singing and Aaron from Cometbus fame was playing drums. Right before their set they mingled through the crowd handing out little books with the lyrics to their songs. They told people this way the audience could sing along while the band played. With the speed and intensity that kicked off when the band started playing, I have no idea how anyone could have kept up. I put the lyric book into my back pocket and climbed onto an already crowded stage to dance and jump off. 

Ken was scrolling through the pictures and there were shots of sweaty bands and sweaty audiences on the screen. Some moments I remembered and some must have happened when I was outside. Either when some of us went around the corner and drank some forty ounces or when my girlfriend and I saw the sprinklers on a nearby lawn go off and we ran through them to cool off. 

Ken kept scrolling and I saw a shot of Astrid Oto. There was Cindy, decked out in a cowboy hat and plaid skirt, yelling into a microphone. Next to her was Beckett and someone was pushing him off stage, wait…I yelled for Ken to stop. There I was on the screen. As far as I knew this was the first time a photo of me was on the internet. It reminded me of when I was a kid and would go to the mall. Sometimes an electronics store would put a video camera out on a tripod. It would be hooked up to a television a few feet away. People walking by would see themselves on the screen. Often they would stop. Take a few steps back, wave to themselves. They’d move slowly watching their movements in real time.  It was a novel experience. The first time many people saw themselves not as reflection, but on a screen. 

It was weird to see a photo of myself on a computer monitor knowing anyone in the world could look at it. I turned to Ken and asked, “Can you print this out for me?” He quickly let out the exasperated moan of a person dealing with a perceived luddite “Ugh… Why?” I told him if it wasn’t on paper it didn’t really exist for me. 

He tapped some buttons and his printer slowly spit it out for me. The bright color photo on screen came out in beautiful black and white, perfectly pixelated. When I went home I found a spot on the ever growing collage that was my bedroom wall and stapled it up. When I moved photo was filed in one of my many cardboard boxes among flyers, setlists, old mail, film negatives, and other ephemera that I lovingly refer to as my archives. 

I’m not sure when the website came down. I don’t know who had put it up and if it was purposely abandoned, or the person stopped paying for it. I do know that I never lost the paper Ken printed out for me. I also kept the lyric book and demo tape I bought from Astrid Oto. Every once and a while I check to see if the photo has once again popped up on the internet. No combination of key words can locate it. But I’m not really interested in the original color version. I prefer this black and white one. Every time I look at it I hear the band, feel the sweat from the audience, and want to sing along.   

There she was, alone, singing a capella on one of the most famous stages in New York City. This was the second time that night that Sinéad O’Conner performed on Saturday Night Live. During the first song she was backed by an orchestra playing “Success Has Made a Failure of Our Home”. It was her new single. When the song was over, someone hit the APPLAUSE sign, the crowd cheered, and the show went to commercial. Daniel Glass was relieved. He was an executive from Sinéad’s record label. He was sitting with a few people who made big decisions about playlists at alternative radio stations. They were as impressed as he was and assured him this song would be in heavy rotation by Monday. But that was the first song.

Now, Sinéad, sans band, was standing next to a table of candles singing “War.” It wasn’t on her new record. She had never even recorded it. It was a protest song by Bob Marley with some of the lyrics altered by Sinéad to address child abuse. At the end of the performance she held up a picture of Pope John Paul II, stared into the camera, and the eyes of everyone watching, and tore it to pieces before saying “Fight the real enemy.”

No one hit the APPLAUSE sign. Sinéad stood there for a moment basking in the stunned silence, blew out the candles, and walked off stage. Cut to commercial.     

What did they expect would happen? She was Sinéad O’Conner. She always said she was a protest singer not a pop star. While the music industry was pushing mall friendly teen idols like Debbie Gibson and Tiffany, Sinéad shaved her head. She refused to let a venue in New Jersey play the National Anthem before her concert. When hip hop acts protested the Grammys because even though there would finally be a Best Rap category, the award would be given off-screen, Sinéad painted the Public Enemy logo on her head to show solidarity while she performed at the ceremony. Two years later she won a Grammy but had already written an open letter notifying them wouldn’t be attending the ceremony because the record industry promotes “false and materialistic values rather than rewarding artistic merit.”1

This wasn’t even the first time she caused controversy with SNL. She had been booked on the show two years earlier and canceled when she learned that the host would be Andrew Dice Clay. After hearing some of his “jokes” she said “It would be nonsensical of ‘Saturday Night Live’ to expect a woman to perform songs about a woman’s experience after a monologue by Andrew Dice Clay.”2

Tearing up the photo was Sinéad’s way of protesting the Catholic Church's complicity in the widespread abuse of children. In the aftermath no one wanted to talk about child abuse, they only wanted to slam her. Over 4,400 people called NBC to complain. Saturday Night Live announced she was banned for life. The Washington Times referred to her as “the face of pure evil.” The National Ethnic Coalition of Organizations, hired a steamroller to crush 200 copies of her tapes, CDs, and vinyl records. Frank Sinatra called her “one stupid broad.” Bernard Francis Law, a cardinal in the Catholic Church, called the act a "gesture of hate" and "neo-anti-Catholicism.” Ten years later the Boston Globe would run an expose detailing how Cardinal Law spent decades hiding child abuse committed by priests and allowed it to continue. After the story came out, Francis Law retired and hid out in Rome until he died a decade later.3

A week after her performance, Joe Pesci hosted Saturday Night Live. The actor had made a name for himself mostly playing short tempered, foul mouth criminals. He spent the majority of his monologue talking about how upset he was with Sinéad. He held up the photo she tore apart which had been put back together with tape. The audience applauded. He made a joke about her being bald. The crowd laughed. He implied that if he would have been there when she tore the picture up he would have physically assaulted her. The crowd cheered.4

Joe Pesci was concerned about what had happened to the photo but never asked where it came from. If he had, he would have learned it was taken in 1979 when Pope John Paul II visited Ireland. Since then, the photo hung on the bedroom wall of Sinéad’s mother. Her mother, who was an abusive drug addict, died when Sinéad was 18 years old. Sinéad took the photo off of her mother's bedroom wall and kept it, waiting for the right moment to destroy it.   

She didn’t rip it up when she started shaving her head. She still had it when she recorded her debut album, The Lion and the Cobra, while pregnant with her first child. That record was released to rave reviews and sales in the millions and she still had the photo. She didn’t rip it up when the single from that album, "Mandinka", was a college radio hit in the United States or when she made her American television debut on David Letterman’s show. She was nominated for a Grammy and still didn’t destroy the photo. She hadn’t destroyed it by the time her second album, I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got, was released in 1990 and sold even more millions than her debut. On that second album, she sang "Nothing Compares 2 U", an obscure song Price had written with a side project, The Family. 

When "Nothing Compares 2 U" became an enormous international hit, she still had the photograph. When she read an article about families being silenced after trying to lodge complaints against the church for sexual abuse she knew it was the time to destroy the photo. To anyone else, it might have been just a photo, but for her it was a symbol of both the Church and her mother. Now she would make it a symbol of the Church and its abuses. 

On October 3rd, 1992, on stage at SNL, the physical photo was destroyed and out of her life. Something she had been carrying around for seven years now lay on the floor in pieces. She left them there. And after she left the stage, someone collected the pieces, taped them together, and gave them to Joe Pesci to use as a prop in his monologue. 

Saturday Night Live had banned her for life, but the show wasn’t done with her yet. 

Later that season, Madonna was the musical guest on Saturday Night Live. She was promoting her album Erotica as well as a coffee table book with explicit photos of the singer simply titled Sex. The album was selling well, but it wasn’t selling as well as she expected it would. For the first time ever, she’d released an album that didn’t go to number one on the charts. It peaked at number two, unable to dethrone Garth Brooks. Maybe a few more headlines would move some extra units. Whatever her reasoning, after performing the song “Bad Girl” she took out a photo of Joey Buttaffco, tore it up, and said “Fight the real enemy.” Buttaffco was an auto mechanic who, after his teenage girlfriend tried to murder his wife, became a star of the tabloids and recurring subject of jokes on late night talk shows.   

Who knows why Madonna decided to spoof Sinéad’s protest. Madonna had said “I think there’s a better way to present her ideas rather than ripping up an image that means a lot to other people.” This is a bit of a head scratcher considering that when Madonna made a video for “Like a Prayer” she used some Catholic imagery “that means a lot to other people” in a way the Church found distasteful. They targeted her with a campaign of boycotts. With similar run-ins with the Catholic Church, Sinéad and Madonna seemed like obvious allies. But maybe it wasn’t the act of ripping up a photo of the head of an organization that protected child abusers that upset Madonna. Maybe it was who did the ripping.  

Madonna was never a fan of Sinéad O’Conner. She mocked her hairstyle saying Sinéad looked like “she had a run-in with a lawnmower”. Madonna also said she was “as sexy as a venetian blind.” I’m not claiming to know what went through Madonna’s head, but just maybe after building a career with an image that was so intertwined with sex appeal, seeing the rise of a female artist not using her sexuality, and rejecting notions how a woman should look and dress, rubbed her the wrong way. Maybe she was jealous, or maybe just confused. No matter the reason, it affected Sinéad. And not just because her feelings were hurt. She said “Madonna is probably the hugest role model for women in America…There’s a woman who people look up to as being a woman who campaigns for women’s rights…Now there’s the woman that America looks up to as being a campaigner for women, slagging off another woman for not being sexy.”5

But all that stuff is just background for the story I wanted to tell. That story takes place a few days after Sinéad tore up the picture. Right in the middle of the outrage and media coverage, Sinéad’s next public performance was part of an all star tribute to Bob Dylan at Madison Square Garden. The concert was a celebration of Bob Dylan’s 30th anniversary in the music business. When Neil Young got on stage to perform “All Along the Watchtower,” he simply called it “Bobfest.” 

Halfway through the show a man in black jeans, a black t-shirt, and a black vest walked across the stage. It was country artist Kris Kristofferson. When he reached the microphone he said “Alright, I gotta tell you, I’m real proud to introduce this next artist whose name has become synonymous with courage and integrity…ladies and gentlemen, Sinéad O’Conner…” 

Sinéad walks across the stage to the microphone followed by several musicians. There’s cheers, there’s boos. The boos get louder. The cheers get louder. Sinéad stares into the crowd. The back and forth between the boos and cheers continues. It’s almost as though it’s no longer about her. The crowd have split themselves into two factions. Neither want to give up. “We’re the boos, we can be louder.” “We’re the cheers, we can last longer.” She gives a quick “thank you”. The boos and the cheers continue. Are the boos winning? She looks out into the audience. One of the musicians tries to start the song but it’s no use. It’s too loud. Someone in charge tells Kris this is a disaster and he needs to get her off stage. He crosses the stage once more. When he reaches her he leans in and says “Don’t let the bastards get you down.” She replies “I’m not down.” He walks away. 

The boos don’t stop. Neither do the cheers. The piano player hits the opening notes of Bob Dylans “I Believe in You” before Sinéad waves him to stop. She won’t be playing that song. She asks for her microphone to be turned up, and starts singing her version of “War”. There she was, alone, singing a capella on one of the most famous stages in New York City. When she’s done, Kris is waiting for her at the side of the stage. They embrace. She breaks down in tears.6

Viewed from the mainstream, Sinéad O’Conner’s story goes that she was a platinum selling artist who derailed her career by taking the protests a little too far. In the later years of her life she wrote “I feel that having a No. 1 record derailed my career and my tearing the photo put me back on the right track.”

In reruns, the SNL episode with Sinéad O’Conner substitutes the picture tearing performance with a rehearsal she had done the same day. The audience gets the song without the protest. The Joe Pesci episode when he holds the taped up picture and fantasizes about hitting her and the episode when Madonna paradies her are shown unedited. In SNL’s official cannon it’s okay to see the aftermath and the parody, but not the protest. 

These days when I walk around Galway, Ireland I see prints of Sinéad on walls, held up with wheat paste. When I see them and think of her, I often think of what was going through her head when she was standing there, being booed from the darkness. The intensity of the situation. The rush of emotions. How many people wouldn’t be able to open their mouth let alone sing. She stood up and did it. It’s the quintessential Sinéad moment. 

But there’s this other moment I like to think of. Maybe one of the reasons Sinéad was able to stand up in that moment is that she knew the faces of her opponents better than they thought she did. For years, when there would be an organized protest against her, she would put on a wig and a hat and go and watch. Whether people were steamrolling her albums, or standing in front of her concerts with signs, off to the side Sinéad would be watching, trying to figure these people out. Once, her disguise wasn’t as good as she thought it was. The scene is hilarious. A news crew approaches her and tries to get her to admit she is in fact Sinéad O’Conner. She denies everything in a horrible American accent and says she doesn’t know what they are talking about. She claims she is from Saratoga. 

That’s the Sinéad I like to think about. Her sitting in the summer sun, laughing at these people who are so angry a young woman is speaking her mind.

I knew the story of the Velvet Underground before I explored their music. As a young teen I found a used copy of “From Velvets to the Voidoids: A PrePunk History for a Post Punk World”1 when I spent a summer in Boston. I devoured the book and spent years trying to borrow and buy the records mentioned in the text. Some of the bands lived up to the stories in the book better than others. However, trying to rank the music seems like a waste of one’s time. It’s all personal tastes and what phase you are at in your life. Sometimes I imagine myself at 20, 30, and 40 all sitting around a table discussing music. Sure, we’d agree on some big picture ideas, but for some finer points things might get ugly. 

Putting the music aside, one band whose story is unrivaled is the Velvet Underground. I won’t waste your time trying to sum up their career here because either you know it or can easily find it and I doubt I can add much to the gallons of ink that has been spilled about them over the decades. But if you have the time, let me ramble on about something that is usually a footnote if it is even mentioned at all. 

I don't hate The Rock n Roll Hall of Fame. What I hate is that people make the assumption that I care about The Rock n Roll Hall of Fame. Who’s been inducted, who’s been snubbed, who will be eligible soon. Those are all meaningless to me as I listen to the music I love. So, to be clear, I don’t care that the Velvet Underground are in The Rock Hall except that their induction was a catalyst for them to write the song “Last Night I Said Goodbye to My Friend.”   

While I don’t hate the Rock Hall, many of the performances that accompany the induction ceremony are insufferable. People way past their prime trying too hard. A young flavor of the month sitting in with a band with too many lawsuits to have a complete line up. Pairings that make no sense except “Hey, we’re all famous.” 

Every induction ceremony ends with an All Star Jam2 which amounts to a stage full of ego maniacs singing out of tune and waiting for their turn to play a guitar solo. If a performance is great, someone with no prior knowledge of who the players are should be able to enjoy it. I’d make a bet that if you submitted audio from most Rock Hall performances to apply for a busking gig at your local farmer’s market you’d get a quick rejection.  

Yet, there was one band who did something special with their performance. A band brought the same spirit to their induction ceremony that arguably got them into the Rock Hall. 

When the Velvet Underground was inducted to the Rock Hall, instead of filling the stage with big names and doing a medley of their hits, they debuted a brand new song. A song written about and dedicated to Sterling Morrison, a founding member who died less than a year earlier. For a band that took risks, wrote songs about the darker side, and crafted incredibly catchy melodies, this song provided a perfect ending to their career.

Sterling Morrison had been a founding member of the Velvet Underground and the last original member to quit. After he left the band he moved to Texas, got a PhD in medieval literature, and was captain of a tugboat. On August 30, 1995 Morrison died of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. It was one day after his 53rd birthday. 

Four months later, John Cale, Lou Reed, and Maureen Tucker were on stage at The Waldorf Astoria in New York City. Reed introduced the song as “This is a song that the three of us wrote for our friend Sterling Morrison. And it’s called ‘Last Night I Said Goodbye to My Friend’.” I found a video of the performance on youtube and I just love it. Each member sings and they have their own unique phrasing to the lyrics. They make mistakes. They are somber while also enjoying the moment and each other. The song is incredibly catchy. After I listen to it, I usually sing it to myself the next day. 

The part that usually gets me is when Tucker sings Always miss you, and that's the truth/we've been friends so long and I love you. Morrison and Tucker had been friends since she was 11 years old. When she restarted her music career all the Velvets would play on her albums, but it was Morrison who went on tour with her. The older I get the more I realize the importance of old friends. 

Can’t there be a few more good songs about friendship? Don’t we have enough romantic love songs and break up songs? Can we get a few more about friends? Don’t get me wrong, I’m a big fan of being in love. I’ve been lucky enough to have been in love a couple times. I’m in love right now. I just think we’ve got enough songs for the soundtrack.

There is this brag that fans always seem too impressed with, “This musician played every instrument on the album.” Which, okay, great. If music is good then music is good. It doesn’t seem more interesting to me if one person made it. What I find more interesting is those dramas that happen between people writing and playing music together. The clashing of egos, the quiet ones keeping the peace, the chemistry of a group of people making art together. What made the Velvet Underground so great was that they were a group of individuals all contributing to the band. The whole was greater than the sum of its parts. Watching them perform “Last Night I Said Goodbye to My Friend” as equals is such a fitting end to the saga. A sad song that makes me happy.   

While digging through my archives I came across an old issue of a fanzine I did in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Compilations were once an instrumental source for punks to discover new bands. The LP ones were great, but I have a soft spot for the scrappy cassette comps. Cheaply dubbed cassettes with xeroxed covers. There are some cases, which, years later, some of these tapes have the only audio proof that a band existed. I put out a few and this was my first.

I threw an abridged version up for free on Bandcamp.

Here are some brief notes about each of the bands…   

1. Kamandi - “Better Off Dead”

Kamandi were a pop punk band who took songwriting seriously while never taking themselves too seriously. The songs were fun and catchy, the lyrics insightful, and in between song banter at their shows was top notch. The singer, Jake Kelly, handled the band's artwork and ensured the band not only had the best flyers in town, but also the snazziest setlist. There were two Jays in the band, one on guitar and one on drums. Kevin Jawarski played guitar on these songs before switching to bass. Original bassist Brian Gerheimn got really into train hopping and went out west. “Better off Dead” is from a recording session that was never released. 

2. Big New Plaid - “Burn Victim”

Big New Plaid was the first band I was friends with that had a vinyl record. Even better, I took the photo on the back cover. I still think it would have made a better front cover, but alas, no one listens to the roadie. “Burn Victim” is from a cassette of songs the band recorded on a four track in singer/guitarist Stephe Kuchna’s basement. Nick Kelly is on guitar, Dave Harbarger is on bass, and Mike Molnar is drumming. A quick footnote, of everyone on this compilation, Mike was the first to make it onto national tv when the rockabilly band he played guitar in was on the Late Show with Conan O’Brian.  

3. Snarkout Boys - “Fishin’ Pond”

When Kamandi broke up, it yielded two new bands. The Snarkout Boys were led by former Kamandi vocalist Jake, now on guitar and vocals. Matt Kuchna was on drums and eventually, once Big New Plaid broke up, Stephe Kuchna joined on bass. They had incredible ambitions and recorded their debut 7” in an afternoon before playing their first show in the evening. This song is from their last show. 

4. Cripple Kid - “E Chord”

The rest of Kamandi, Jay, Kev, and Jay, formed Cripple Kid. They quickly released a 7” and later was an early musical release on the Microcosm Records it turned into the print publishing giant it is now. 

5. The Unknown - “Puzzles”

The Unknown were the elder statesman of the scene having put out their first tape in 1993. This song is from a set of demos the band recorded in their practice space before recording Still Unknown. Ken was the driving force of the band who kept it going through multiple line ups. His day job was as a professional photographer and spend countless hours taking pictures at shows. Check out his photo book Escaped to the Future and you can see a photo of me from the night I set myself on fire (a story for another time). 

6. dumas - “States” 

dumas eventually became The Dumas Band which never recorded. This is a four track recording with Matt Kuchna playing all the instruments. Matt was also responsible for the artwork for this comp. I can’t remember if I asked him to draw something or if it was something he made that was laying around the house.  

7. blue…max - “# five”

An amazing power trio. Bobby, Mike, and Brian. Bobby was one of those whirlwind people forming, and joining bands left and right. He would play in Cripple Kid, and The Dumas Band, as well as The Divine Invasion. He even put a microphone in my hand and made me sing for his band Junking Theory. 

8. Nine Shocks Terror - “Screw This Town” 

Certainly one of the biggest bands to come out of Cleveland. I’ve read a lot of stuff about how chaotic and intense these shows were and having been up front for many of them I can say it is all true. Of the three major scars on my body one came from a medical emergency, one from clumsiness, and one from a Nine Shocks Terror show. This is from their LP Zen And The Art Of Beating Your Ass which was recorded by their original lineup. Eventually, once Cripple Kid broke up, Kevin Jaworski would play guitar.  

9. The Mormons “Bring ‘em Young” 

This song is from the Mormon’s 7” which was pulled from a live set they did on WCSB. There were only two mics in the room. One from the ceiling and one for the singer. I was there too as their roadie. It was exciting watching a bunch of teens going wild in a small room, cramped with equipment, playing music that was blasting out live over the radio waves. 

10. Memory Man “Godzilla/…/Ex-Girlfriend” 

Memory Man wasn’t really a band. It was a few improvised sessions named after a delay pedal used at both. This song features Jake Kelly improvising on vocals and guitar, I remember playing cardboard box, and I can’t recall who is on the drum machine and sound effects. The other session was an all out assault of mayhem that took place in an old bank vault with amazing echo. Sadly a copy of that never made it to my archives.  

11. Bill Murrry - “Headache”

Where does one start to describe Bill Murrry. Let’s just say being at one of their shows felt more like a cult gathering.

Why was I even going to this show? Did I think I was going to have fun or was it merely a way of proving I wasn’t getting old? Was it a genuine desire for live music or out of some sort of punk rock obligation? 

This wasn’t the first time I went to a show after the start of the pandemic. The first one was a bunch of indie rock bands playing a park a few blocks from my house. The convenience and safety of it all was a driving force, but it was good to bump into old friends after spending over a year sitting on my porch and crossing the street to avoid strangers on my long walks. It was a nice ease into socializing after so much isolation.    

This wasn’t the second time I went to a show after the start of the pandemic. That was hardcore show at an all ages venue. Although I didn’t join in, it was heartwarming to see a mosh pit in action. Especially since everyone kept their mask on while dancing and falling down.

This was the third show I was going to after the start of the pandemic. Since I had to purchase a ticket in advance, instead of paying cash at the door, I guess it was more of a concert. Shellac was playing at the Neptune in Seattle’s University District. As I was looking for parking, I had some last minute why-bothers. 

Besides the changes most people went through during Covid, I had gotten married months before the pandemic began and conceived a child a few weeks before lockdowns started. Going to live shows had always been a big part of my life. It was easy when that stopped since I was preoccupied with taking care of my pregnant wife and, after that, my newborn baby. But the vaccine arrived, months went by, shows started up again, and I still wasn’t participating in them. I realized I had become an old punk when a friend was booking a show and asked me to recommend some opening acts. The old me would have been able to rattle off half a dozen newer local bands. Now, I was drawing a blank. The local scene was what interested me the most in punk. I always tried to host shows, put out comps, conduct interviews, write zines, show up, and, most importantly, stay to the end of those weeknight shows. If I found that shows didn’t excite me anymore I would have to switch gears once again and admit that I had gone from old punk to ex-punk. 

At almost every show I go to I look around at the audience and think, somewhere in this crowd is a person who is at their first show. And someone is probably at their last show (even if they don’t know it yet). Would seeing Shellac at the Neptune be my last show? Even if it was, my wife Rachel was happy I was getting out of the house. Before the pandemic she thought I was an extrovert. Maybe it was because I went out almost every night. Then lockdown hit and I seamlessly transitioned into staying home. Years went by, vaccines were discovered, and I still was fine with not going out at night. Raising my daughter provided me with endless joy, but my wife thought I should have a little fun that didn’t involve my family. 

I told her I bought a ticket to see Shellac and said I felt a little cliche since I represented the stereotypical Shellac fan. Straight white dude who hoarded records with a little gray in the beard scruff.  I was even going to the show after I closed up at the record store I worked at. At least I didn’t collect guitar gear.        

“The floor show would be incredible”

My mood didn’t improve as I walked up to The Neptune. I wasn’t over the fact they had replaced their white marquee with black plastic letters for a giant, obscenely bright digital screen. They’d gone from something classic to pure light pollution.  

I finally felt better when I was actually among the crowd. Despite my assumptions, the crowd was quite diverse. Young and old. Women, people of color, cute couples, lonely silver pony tails, queer kids. It had been so long since I had been in a crowd and now I was surrounded by people that I presumably could have a fun conversation with if I tried. I didn’t. Covid was at stage when I was comfortable not wearing a mask, but I wasn’t going to invade a stranger’s space. Seeing people was enough. Rachel texted me to ask how it was going. I texted back “Show hasn’t started. There’s actually a lot of young women here.”

The next day, when I had to send Rachel a more mundane text, I reread the last message I had sent. I realized that it might seem strange for a husband to text his wife that he was happy there were young women at the event he was attending alone. She knew what I meant.            

“If there's a heaven, I hope they're having fun”

Once the band hit their first note, all my fears about not having a good time were washed away. I was lost in the music. When I’m seeing a band whose music I’m really familiar with, my brain is simultaneously in the moment and thinking about various times and places when I’ve listened to the songs being played. Since Shellac always plays songs from their whole catalog, and since I’ve listened to Shellac records for two thirds of my life, there were a lot of memories swirling in my head.    

If you are a fan of Shellac, their shows are really fun. They play familiar songs in an unfamiliar way. All the songs on the records you know are played with differences, sometimes slight, sometimes major. This ensures that each show is unique. Beyond that, whenever a member has to tune their instrument, Bob, the bass player, solicits questions from the audience. This provides an opportunity for the band to show off their humor, quick wit, and storytelling skills. It was during one of these impromptu Q&As that some kid yelled out for “A Minute”, one of my favorite Shellac songs. Todd, the drummer, pointed one of his drum sticks at him and mouthed “I got you.” Maybe the band was going to play the song next anyways, who knows, they usually don’t write a set list, but Todd started tapping out the beat and the band eased into the song. I was reminded of this time I was listening to that song at the record store I work at. Now, this story only makes sense if you know how “A Minute” ends, so if you are unfamiliar stop reading and go and have a listen. Anyway, I was working at this record store, listening to “A Minute” and it got to the part when it goes “dund dund, dund dund” over and over. A customer, who looked like a real square, said “I think your record is skipping.” I paused for a moment and said “I disagree” and just then the beat changed and there is that cymbal crash, the song ends, and the next one begins. Reminiscing about that moment I realized that I wasn’t a stereotypical Shellac fan because I was an old white guy. I was a stereotypical Shellac fan because I was a snarky know it all. That’s the real bond we share.  

Another reason Shellac shows are really fun for fans is that they always play songs that have not been released yet. That night they launched into a song that, to me, felt like the soundtrack to an old science fiction movie where robots start falling apart. At least that was the filmstrip playing in my head. The only lyrics I could make out were when Steve, the guitarist, was screaming about hell. The song was great. It ended. The band said goodnight. Show’s over. No merch sales due to social distancing. I was energized and wanted to go to another show immediately. Instead, I drove home, walked up to a bar, and had a beer while playing some pinball.      

“Cause if there’s a hell, I'm gonna know everyone”

My friends and I have this game. It’s a little morbid but it's fun. You look up the last song on the last album an artist or band released. You gotta make sure it’s the last record. With how many acts reunite it's best to pick a band where a crucial member has died. More often than not, once you hit play, it will be an awkward experience. "I Will Take You Home" by The Grateful Dead, "Pass Away" by Chuck Berry, “It's Easy for You” by Elvis Presley. Not the best notes to end a career on.

Shellac had announced that it was releasing a new record and previewed the artwork but no songs. Not wanting to rely on the music industry hype machine, they never sent out review copies. They put their records into the world and if people wanted to buy them, they bought them. I was in the process of purging my belongings, and for only the second time in my life shrinking my record collection. I was moving to Ireland for a year or maybe more. All the records I kept were going into storage. Since I was actively trying to reduce the amount of records I had I made a personal mental commitment to not purchase any more records. Of course, that didn’t apply to the new Shellac record. Non-record collectors sometimes ask what my favorite record is or what is the most expensive record I own. I can’t answer those questions. I always tell them that I don’t see myself as owning individual records. I see this giant organic blob that contracts and expands over time. Each record on the shelf is connected to the ones on either side. When I think about my Shellac record I end up thinking about records by The Shangri-Las and the ones by Shoes This High and all the other SH bands. They all live together in the blob. I was happy once I realized that the last record to join the blob before it was boxed up and put into storage was a new Shellac record. 

A few weeks before the record was due to come out, Shellac fans, and the entire punk subculture, were dealt a shock. Steve, Shellac’s guitar player, unexpectedly died of a heart attack. There were plenty of tributes and news articles. Of all of them, I was happy that the Irish Times, the newspaper of my future home, summed it up best with their headline, “Steve Albini taught thousands of musicians that ethics and politics are embedded in business and art.”   

His friends, family, and fans mourned publicly and privately. Radio shows were dedicated to his work, both as a musician and a recording engineer. His fanzine articles were republished. People scanned old photos and shared them online. All while this was happening I couldn’t help but think about the Last Song on the Last Album game. This would be the first time I would play it with a record that was just getting released. Not only that, it would be for one of my favorite bands. Would the song be a stinker? An inside joke? Some artistic statement that worked well in concept but didn’t translate in practice? I’d have to wait with the rest of the world for the record to be released to find out. I wouldn’t, however, have to wait as long as most people.   

“I don’t fear hell”

No one is getting rich working at a record store, but there are some perks. One of which is when the new Shellac record, To All Trains, showed up from the distributor I took my copy home right away, a few days before it was available to the public. I looked at the track listing and saw the last song was “I  Don’t Fear Hell.” It was a little chilling to see such an ominous title for the Last Song on the Last Album. 

I waited until I was home alone so I could blast it in peace. When “I Don’t Fear Hell” finally started I immediately realized it was the same song they had closed their concert with when I last saw them. That made me happy. I liked that my last memory of seeing them live is the same tune that concluded their recorded output. It’s a banger of a song. Hypnotic. Snarky. Abrupt. Not something you’d play at a funeral but maybe afterwards. During the hang when the older folks and the younger folks are gone, and it’s down to those who knew you best, even if they haven’t seen you in a while. Everyone is  drinking a little more than they usually do and swapping stories about the craziest things you did. Everyone is laughing. That’s when you play this song.

*

Beckett was living in Texas, was broke, and did what any sensible person in that situation would do. He donated his body to science. Specifically, some big pharma company gave him some experimental drugs, he answered their questions, and after a few months they gave him a big check. Beckett being Beckett, he cashed the check and went to a record store. He was about to go home to Cleveland for Christmas and so, while shopping for himself, he picked up some extra records to give as presents. My gift was Alien ID by Kicking Giant. I had heard the album before, but it’s not until you own an album that you can really fall in love with it.  

The best records tell a story in two chapters. Side A and Side B. The songs that start and end each side are critical choices. The song that ends the record is almost as important as the one that begins it. What mood does the band want to end on? How does the band want to say goodbye to the listener? Alien ID ends with “She’s Real”, a cinematic journey in which Tae Won Yu and Joanna Bronstein duet about broken hearts, hot nights, and endless walks. The song boasts a cast of characters who ooze a timeless coolness. At times in my life when things weren't working out and I was a bit lonely, listening to this song made me wish I led a more interesting life.  

I love going for a walk. Especially late at night. I’d routinely pass up a ride home from a show, take a nonsensical route home after work, or just sneak out of the house to get some fresh air. The only drawback from this hobby is most people tell me I walk too fast. “She’s Real” is the ultimate song to hum in your head while walking around alone. Especially in the summer. Even if I don’t hum it in my head it plays on repeat in my subconscious jukebox.   

**

Some winter in the late ‘90s, I needed a break from the cold winds of Cleveland. I bought a Greyhound ticket and wrote two letters. One to a band in the Southwest who I’d become friends with despite not having met in person. The other was to a penpal I met in California on a previous trip. I told both of them when I would be arriving and hinted that it’d be really nice if I could crash at their place. 

I was living at a punk house called the Litterbox. Like most punk houses it was full of contradictions. One of which was even though sometimes it felt like there were too many people living there, it was quite big. It was easy to not see anyone for a while and lose track of people’s comings and goings. The night before I left I bumped into Walt and reminded him I was leaving in the morning. He decided to spend the night making me a mixtape for the road. The Litterbox was the first place we had access to two turntables and a mixer. For people who took making a mixtape as seriously as we did, this was a big leap. Now when we made mixtapes we could transition to the next song before the previous one ended and overlap them like a radio station. 

The climax to “She’s Real” is when the song falls apart to noisy guitar feedback before Rachel Carns starts thudding on her the drums and the band launches into an indie rock tribute to Phil & Ronnie Spector and the ‘60’s girl groups. Tae plays blistering guitar solos, Rachel beats a rhythm that makes you want to dance and go crazy, and Joanna melts your heart with a chorus of “Be My Baby” all while a tambourine shakes in the distance. 

Having some fun experimenting with the two turntables, Walt segued from the feedback to a different Kicking Giant song. A short, simple, mellow number titled “Funny Face” that was on a B-side of one of their 7”s. When it ended, the familiar “bum, bum, bum, bum” drums came in with the rest of “She’s Real”. I only brought a few tapes with me on the Greyhound trip and listened to that mix most of all. When I got home it was in heavy rotation. Eventually the two song mashup that Walt made became the de facto official version for me. To this day, when I listen to “She’s Real”, part of me can hear “Funny Face” in my head. At some point I lost the mixtape, so if you find it let me know.  

***     

Kicking Giant had broken up before I even discovered them. It never occurred to me that I would ever see them live. Even once I moved to their old stomping grounds in the Pacific Northwest. Then, one day, with little fanfare, they announced a reunion show. It wasn’t at some big venue or expensive festival. Just a regular show at a bar in Olympia, WA with Old Time Relijun and a touring band from France. My first instinct was to plan to get down the show by myself. I was worried if I made plans with other people somehow it would get derailed. At the last minute someone would change their mind or a car wouldn’t start. Better to figure out the logistics and fly solo. But in the end, I put aside my loner tendencies and invited friends. Most of them wanted to go. We needed two cars! 

The car ride down I was looking out the window thinking about how much I loved “She’s Real” and how many times I danced around to the song while no one was looking. I wanted to see them play it so badly. But I also prepared myself for it not to happen. I view the bands I liked as artists and not entertainers. I wanted to see them play the songs that excited them, not the songs they felt obligated to play to their audience. I wanted a performance, not a transaction. But, it would be really fun to get to dance to “She’s Real” with a group of people and not just alone in my room. 

The band launched into their set and were so alive. Tae’s guitar playing and Rachel’s drumming were a whirlwind of sound. All the little subtle moments from the records were played perfectly. I jumped around, sang along, and was lost in the music. After a while, when it seemed like the set was coming to a close, there was some movement from the side of the stage. Three women in ‘60s style dresses walked on stage. They each were holding tambourines. For years I heard “She’s Real” on CDs, records, and mixtapes. Both tapes people made for me and tapes I made for other people. But, I’d never heard it performed live. I can’t think of time in my life when I was more prepared for a band to play a song.

Today is Record Store Day (RSD). An annual event when bands and labels release special or limited edition vinyl that is exclusively sold by independent record stores. Some people get excited for it, others complain about it, both sides end up spending money during it. I won’t go into my opinion of RSD and will just acknowledge that it’s going to happen. So I suggest, like with all holidays, ignore the stuff you don’t like and make your own traditions.

One of mine is to make and give away a free mini zine. This year I asked people to answer the question: What is the record that doesn't exist that you wished existed?

I received submissions from musicians, baristas, comedians, DJs, and, of course, record store clerks. My story involves two very ‘90s activities: mail ordering records and prank phone calls. If you are in Seattle you should stop by Spin Cycle Records in Capitol Hill and grab one for free. It might be my last RSD behind the counter. If you are elsewhere you can order one by sending me $2.00 via Venmo (@fannyfoonan) or PayPal (noonandaniel711@gmail.com)

I’ll be back next week with another Jam.