Baroque Pop and Me

This morning, Uncle Jeff, the DJ on KGNU's Morning Sound Alternative show, is playing Baroque Pop, a favorite genre from my childhood and into the present. His show is placing songs I didn't appreciate before in context with all these other favorite sounds (like the Rolling Stones on Flowers/Ruby Tuesday/Those Satanic Majesties; The Beatles on Sgt. Pepper) that I loved so very much then and still do. A backing track version of Ruby Tuesday by Studio Sound Group is revelatory -- I used to listen to that song so closely that this version feels like something I was listening for, despite my great love for Mick Jagger.

I have a deep love for disco and funk and even some R&B, but I think my love for these genres may have originated with these gender-bending Baroque Poppers and Psychedelians, all the Prog-Rockers and Glam-Rockers I grew up with and listened to. Uncle Jeff talked about wanting to be one of those guys, the glamorous fops in their Carnaby Street fashions (remember Mary Quant?) with the red velvet jackets and the big floppy hats -- I did too.

That's one of the multitudinous reasons I have to write fiction, and why I remind myself to weave this kind of richness into my work wherever I can. I also listen to music, and have been trying my hand at lyrics lately, too. I said to myself, "Self, if I were to write a song for OK Go, how would it go?" That's not too high a bar. It sure is fun to explore, and to make things come out the way I want in the end in songs and stories.

So go listen to some music or do something that turns your imagination loose and wild! And I hope you'll come back and share with me what makes you tick creatively.

In case Miley Cyrus needs a little extra songwriting help

This is pretty terrible, most likely, but I gave myself the writing assignment to write a Hannah-Montana worthy song lyric:

Let's Go, Baby

I'll be a rock star
Gonna go far
You said you loved me so
Said you would never know
Said you just had to go
Here I am on the hill
Standing so still and
Waiting for you to
Catch up
Catch on
Catch on to it

(refrain)
Let's go, baby,
Up where we belong
Down into our groove
To make a new sound now
To make a new sound now, yeah

Yeah, yeah, yeah yeah, yeah!

Say you don't know
Say it can't show
It's just your clingy fears,
trying to bring you tears
Throw 'em out on their ears
Here I am on the hill
Standing so still and
Waiting for you to
Catch up
Catch on
Catch on to it

Let's go, baby,
Up where we belong
Down into our groove
To make a new sound now
To make a new sound now, yeah

I'm a rock star
Gonna go far
Now you are so far away
You were all I dreamed one day
Now I'm here to stay

So let's go, baby,
Up where we belong
Down into our groove
To make a new sound now
To make a new sound now, yeah

Yeah, yeah, yeah yeah, yeah!


Ok, time to boil jars for jam. Whatta life.

It's not what they say; it's what you do.

Coming into my own.

What does that little cliche mean to me?

Being this age I'm starting to see how little it matters what anyone thinks -- it's all what you do. I know it sounds teenagerishly obvious, but so what? There it is.

So how do I make my time here matter most?

I seriously think I just have to make myself sit down and crank out the first completed draft of my novel in two weeks (I am not kidding!), working crazy hours and letting myself just get immersed in it. I am going to need rolls of wide butcher paper for mapping the storyline, just to keep myself straight with all the details, but I think doing that will help it work. (This reminds me of Matthue and Brett's creativity workshop revelations about how I see and hear and mentally map things out, which I have ever since found marvelously helpful.)

I had some notion yesterday that I was going to sit down and write for ten hours, but other things kept beckoning and I kept not sitting down to write that at all until I had no more time left. So I thought, where do I get the idea I am going to sit down and write ten chapters? I'm good for an hour or three at once usually, but that's about it. It's hard work, in the way that visiting a museum is hard work. It's a lot to take in at the museum, and a lot to process as a writer, and sometimes I don't even want to go there. But I am always glad when I do, and I would love to just plunge all the way into that story and finish it.

In a recent writing group discussion about why we write, I said in part to reach out to people,to say it's okay to be you. Another person in the group was surprised. She felt it was always just about getting in touch with the event or person or emotion of the scene, the memory.

I do these projects that have been calling out to me: Making movies. Writing my book. Writing songs. A libretto? I am so ignorant of all this! I have several great projects in the immediate future: I have to recut my gomez movie so it's waaaay shorter (i.e., under ten minutes). I have another good idea for a short film I could do over the next few days if everyone is around. (Note to me: It would be great if the chickens would come back from Ft. Collins. Maybe my neighbor would bring them back for this reason if I asked nicely. And gave her a nice bottle of wine.)

Hmm, a young, searching person in the lead in the musical -- Zac Efron wondering if he's gay. What? Musical?! I still can't believe I'm saying this out loud.

There it is.

Feeling it and singing it -- at the same time?!

Today's dance class revelation: I truly don't know if I could be a rock star. They sing it every time as if they mean it, because they do, I realized. (There's that sincerity dictum I learned about from Daniel Levitin, the author of This Is Your Brain on Music -- that people who make great actors and rock stars understand something about being able to tap into sincere wellsprings of feeling to do what they do, and people can usually instantly recognize when they're faking it).

Today I felt all my emotions when we danced to the Michael Franti song about bringing our children home, pleading to stop their sacrifice in the name of war and commerce. I danced my greatest yearnings and deepest entreaties, in the spirit of a Quaker, with me plain, naked of soul, nothing interposed between me and that which I begged for mercy. I even had to go out of the hall and cry for a minute after that song, which is unusual. But after a minute I drank some water and went on with the dance.

That's the part of being a rock star that would be hard: feeling it and keeping it all moving forward when singing a song like "Time To Go Home" ("Don't take our boys away, no, don't take our girls away.... It's time to go home") or the end of Bonnie Raitt's "Louise" ("Well, everybody thought it kind of sad / When they found Louise in her room / They'd always put her down below their kind / Still some cried when she died this afternoon / Louise rode home on the mail train / Somewhere to the south I heard 'em say"). How do you feel it without succumbing to it?

Catch me up

Well, at last I'm catching up on breath, sleep, family and cat time, food. And able to reflect a little from here.

I loved what people have been saying on the Gomez board about all of us -- regardless of who traveled to Chicago for the rock band's one-off-in-the-U.S. reprise of their first album -- never having to explain this Thing, this Love of Gomez, within this community. That was cool enough to experience last week; even more astounding was reality warp of suddenly being in the midst of a social occasion with the band in question. How many people ever get that chance?

More than one who has was in our midst have had that chance. ocean was a great example. (I loved meeting him and the fabulous Kim, whom I will share a plate with any time. Thanks to them, I had an amazingly fun trip to Chicago. I only hope in retrospect I didn't ask too much of their time!) Anyway, ocean has hung out with the Grateful Dead (and never found them all that gracious, truth to tell), with Robert Plant (his personal rock god), and with many others. He saw the Who with Keith Moon (I was just a couple of years too late); he saw seven of the fourteen shows Little Feat recorded for their live Waiting for Columbus album, can you believe?! (And which I had not been aware was made from so many shows.) Incidentally, ocean's trodden much of the same ground I have locally, too, having lived in my hometown, although he apparently interacted with a separate bunch of people along the way. He remembered some of the bands-about-town I do, like Tommy Bolin and Candy Givens of Zephyr, but not the awesome fusion powerhouse Fly and the Zippers or Dusty Drapes and the Dusters, who my mother was dancing to when she went out after she and my father split up. But enough about me -- what fine and fun people to hang with. I felt I'd known them for years.

And everyone was like that. centrechick, whose first-ever concert by anyone was Gomez, October 2, 2008, at the Vic Theater in Chicago, had been saying something about how one of the band members had more interesting content in his little finger than she did in her whole self, but I completely pooh-poohed that (on film, no less). She's awesome, and what's more, she's starting to Get It that she's not only just fine the way she is but maybe a lot more. I found myself as starstruck meeting jman and mrs. jman as I was meeting the band, especially after someone said to me, "I've heard she would fly to New York to buy a pair of shoes." And later I realized why I called jman "Jason" when I first met him: online I think of him and jasondent (who could not be in Chicago with us) as "the two Jasons," for some inexplicable reason. (Keep reading for more goofy misunderstandings.)

Cutest couple: guest & mr. guest. The way she looks at that man reminded me of how I feel about my sweetie. Dancing with mr. and mrs. rocknroll and Kat and guest for a while was amazing, and then it was fantastic going wild with ocean up front and center, and SweetErina and Barb up front too and squirrel and Drew and Stella and musicsaves (whom I may not have met) and rabidog and Bri and Kat and Fenn and the gracious and lovely mytvc15 and her significant other and I'm sure I'm forgetting lots more all around me. I kept looking around with amazement and gratitude at the crowd, just as I used to do at Dead shows. And it's easy to look back and say it in hindsight, but it was not possible for me not to see myself there. I feel I'm just as proud of making that experience a reality as centrechick said she was, in the cab with me and her friend Mitsuko on the way home. She'd just called her mother to let her know she was fine and on her way back to her hotel. Then she said to us, "Just so you know, at home, I don't even go to the movies by myself. So this is big for me!" Like Shannon, our new front-row kindred spirit, centrechick picked the right time to make things happen. She and lots of us talked with a bunch of the guys in the band. Olly was awesome. He's such a gentleman. I instantly regretted turning on my camera but I honestly didn't know what to do with myself and all the questions I'd had for them ("Where did the song 'Rie's Wagon' come from?" "Are you going to keep making records and touring together?") had long flown from my brain in the vibrating hum of the moment.

It was fun sharing our baby pictures, though. I do so love Ian, and have since before a phone interview in which he told a very simpatica me how he "loves the 'ladies' in West Hollywood," where he had just moved with his new wife. Back then I confessed his songs had me believing he was a gay junkie, and he laughed and said nothing. Later he'd said, "Sure, to some extent I do put on a persona onstage." (Does he remember that interview, or has he done too many -- and was he still drunk on the brandy Alexanders from the night before?) Look, there are faghags, and there are Ian-hags. Guess which I am. I'm sorry but the guy is freakin' cute. And he also has a very cute little one whose name in the din of the bar Mrs. ocean and I both misheard hilariously ("Was that m-u-e-l-l-e-r?" and me at dinner with Brains the next night: "Oh, his name is the Hawaiian word for chicken wire? Interesting!") Tom I love for his mind and wit. But I couldn't really think straight enough to have a good chat with him or Olly, or even approach Ben, with whom I may have the most in common out of all of them. Blackie and I had a pleasant jaw about racial segregation in Detroit and other places.

But I couldn't sustain anything that night: it was a little too loud, and the air was filled with too much pressure or some other ineffable substance that resulted from our all being thrown together in close quarters. I probably affected the mix by turning on the camera. I felt like the folks from the board had been warned I would be filming, and if anyone wasn't up for it, they'd let me know. In that time, that never happened, except for a feeble wave of a hand from one woman who continued talking with Tom when I swung my lens around toward them. All evening she kept saying no pictures (which made me suspicious -- does she have something to hide?) and later I heard she said "I never post there; I hate the board," but I don't think she really minded having Tom's attention while I was filming. I noticed, though, that I finally filmed the whole neon word when I panned around her while she talked with Tom: ASS. I could not help laughing when I realized what I'd done. All night most of my pictures and videos had only included the "SS" -- the word rose from the floor toward the ceiling, in enormous capital letters. But I had picked that moment to finally work it all into the frame.

Another hilarious moment culminated in my apology to mr. mytvc15 for not realizing who he was in the gang. I got dizzy and sat down. He was just the most welcoming and warm person; I thought he was the owner of the bar. He was being all chummy and was clearly a local, and when I got woozy he was one of the couple of people who asked if I was all right. I needed a Coke, and I asked him for one. He was so funny. "A Coca-Cola?" he asked, drawing out the long vowels. "A Pepsi-Cola? A diet cola?" "A cola-cola," I said. "No diet. Just cola." I needed the sugar. I'd just had a weird experience. I started eating appetizers and was enjoying one of the little roll-up baked bready tubes with pears and cheese and bacon inside, but then had a bite of the bruschetta and thought I was going to die. It's like it sapped my strength -- something about too much sharp vinegar. It was weird. I'd succumbed to my dizzy spell right after that.

"What is your name?" I asked him, and he said, "John. To you: John-John." And John-John-to-me as I think of him now was so attentive. I admiringly watched him dance through the room, mingling and smiling and chatting and making sure everyone was having a good time, and still not knowing he was part of our group I leaned over and said to Kim, "I want his job!" "What?" Kim said. It was hard to hear in there. ocean just laughed. "He's clearly in the hospitality industry," I said, full of admiration, like a groupie. "Well, yeah; he's a chef," Kim explained. "He is?" And then it all came out that he was mytvc15's husband and therefore one of the hosts. I felt sooooo silly, and not for the first time that evening. "I still want your job," I told him later, once I'd found out what it really was.

I told guest the next night that I had been so gullible that day. But it wasn't just that day -- it was all weekend. I believed everything I heard. (Me, asking about the three-song soundcheck we'd missed when Kim and I went for a walk before the pre-show free gig at Yak-zies, across from Wrigley Park: "What did they play?" Fenn: "They played 'Dude (Looks Like a Lady)." Me: "Really!")

Unspoken perhaps were all the questions that lurked in our minds about whether any of the band knew us by our board names/personas. I got a nametag but never found the marker, so never had a name all night. It's become a repeating motif: Gomez still don't know who I am, darn it!

But that's the nature of inspiration, right? That's why I went: to see what I could make of this, to see what parts are about Gomez and what parts are about me. To see who I am next to all of this. To go be me with some new people with whom I had something important in common for a few incredible hours of my life that I will never forget.

It was so intense meeting each person and seeing who they are "for real." I don't even believe it's still fair to say that face-to-face is the more real representation of the self. I think some of us are our truest selves online. But it was great fun to get this whole new layer of information about who we really were in person compared to all those online personas.

And I loved that I came right up against my own quirks: my gullibility, my glomming-onness, my social awkwardness (that I refuse to believe is a call for medication), my manias (I couldn't find things; kept wanting to change things that were perfectly fine). My desire to document everything, to set it down before I move on, to make sure there's a relic to savor later.

Something about the entire experience reminds me of getting back to my kidness, too: what I thought was important when I was little and still had some of that boundless optimism about the world and my place in it. I saw some before pictures of someone like that recently and I wonder what happened, and how I can make sure I never lose that sense of possibility. I love, as I've said here before, volunteering at my daughter's school so I can see the kids, so I can be another person who really tries to see them for who they are. They love that so: they sparkle so much when you do it, really peer in there and wave to them right where they are. That bright optimism is something I don't feel every day. But I did feel it when I decided to go to Chicago to unite with all these kindred spirits. And it absolutely was great fun to peer in and wave and hug and shake hands (and even a boob -- oops, sorry, rabidog! But I am quite sure you were the best possible person whose boob I could have squeezed upon meeting in person for the first time!). It was a delight to see who was who and how each person seemed to react to this amazing situation.

Again, it's more anecdotal evidence for that community-size notion that posits a community of 200 or fewer people is ideal and gives its participants a chance to have unique roles, to know each other better, and to reduce hierarchical distortions of relationships. I think we have that here: a community of around that size that was represented by a subset of folks who gathered in Chicago on October 2 to celebrate the 10-year anniversary of a band's first recording. Now that's a club I am truly a part of. It was wonderful to spend a whole weekend without having to explain it.

I am a little skeptical anything like this will ever happen again in my life, but I loved, loved, loved being a part of it and will never forget it, nor regret taking the opportunity to hang out with my favorite band and their friends for a few incredible hours.

Free to run

I just thought of trying to write a Gomez song, everyone on the message board who wants to play coming up with verses. We could each write a verse and then pass it to the next person. Fun.

I have to sleep on this -- I can't just come up with one off the cuff.

Hearing the beat

Everything clicked today for this outing: My friend asked if I wanted to take the bus down and I did. The space stayed free in our schedules, amazingly. And as we walked through the plaza between the Denver Art Museum and the Public Library we heard the beating of drums. "I hear my tribe calling," said my friend, and our steps toward the music quickened.

And so I spent my day with my friend and my tribe at the Westword Music Showcase. It was a day packed with music and music-loving folks of all stripes and sizes and styles in a few interesting venues in Denver's "Golden Triangle," just south of the Denver Art Museum. We all gathered to hear and declare our collective support for our local music scene, and we were rewarded with an astounding variety of decent music. We saw many, many hipsters, many, many big sunglasses, many, many tattoos. I was inexplicably pleased every time I saw the guy in the charmingly shaped glasses and the "FAG" t-shirt. I noticed that I seem to be evidence of a generation gap in that I skipped over the tattoo in my own quest for individuality. My friend asked one of the venue staff about the rest of his tattoo, and he peeled back the arm of his green t-shirt to reveal a big Jesus on the cross, stigmata and all. There wasn't much to say but to thank him for showing us and move onto the next act.

Highlights: DJ Ivy on the rooftop at Bar Standard. Loved that vibe, but it was soooo hot up there! And we didn't even want to think about the outdoor stage by the time we got that heated up. Downstairs at Bar Standard we heard a couple of young and earnest indie rockstar-wannabes. The lead singer of Astra Moveo got off the stage and did his thing in the crowd, despite the audience being more bemused than engaged, yet I found it pretty endearing in the end. I liked Hello Kavita (whom I picked out to hear based solely on their charming name)-- they had songs that were nicely emotive and had interesting changes that they seemed to enjoy playing together. The crowd seemed to be into them, too.

We saw Hello Kavita at Sutra, which we dubbed "the dark place." An affected solitary vocalist (Matthew Orloff?) was uttering phrases full of emotion and meaning to a packed room the first time we dropped in, but it was all too dark for us and we were too hungry, so we scooted next door to Andrews on Lincoln (no, there's no apostrophe) and thanks to the woman who sold us earplugs were able to enjoy the very loud sounds of Vices I Admire, followed by The Epilogues, who were pretty good, and also loud, while consuming chicken teriyaki skewers, hot off the grill. That and a couple of refreshing beverages made everything better.

The biggest surprise of the evening was at Dazzle, where we heard Tito del Barrio Malaga, a Latin-Moroccan fusion jazz quintet headed by a very eastern-sounding singer. Great melodies, rhythms, vocals, drums, arrangements. Their music put a shine on everything: them, the club, the waitresses, the enthused audience, even the guy begging for money next to us.

We slipped into DC-10 next door, where a Bed Supperclub-white decor and intriguing guitar sounds awaited us; turned out UmConscious was doing their soundcheck. We hung around in the air conditioning for a few minutes and once they got started decided to move along down the road and check out the Drive By Truckers, now that the sun was about down.

I collected a few more bits of free schwag along the way, but the music wasn't grabbing us and we decided we were ready to head back. Nice, too; I was happy to be home by 10:45, after all my bus connections home worked out fine. And like my friend said, "It's good to be exposed."

In all, we caught some of the following sets: George Inai (featuring my hardest-working musician friend Eric Moon, also of local combo gogoLab, on a small stringed instrument and an accordion), Jessica Sonner, DJ Ivy, DJ Soup, UmConscious, Hello Kavita, comic Adam Cayton-Holland and the funny and less raunchy guy who was on just before him, The Widowers, Cat-A-Tac, Chain Gang of 1974, Drive By Truckers, and Tito del Barrio Malaga.

We never made it to a couple of the clubs: La Rumba (where I once attended some professional development workshop years ago) and 1114 Broadway. We didn't hear many, many bands, including the intriguingly named Spools of Dark Thread, nor Meniskus, nor the punk band Lyin' Bitch and the Restraining Orders (that one was a real name, but we never really wanted to go there). I would still like to hear The Hot IQs, The Swayback, and Born in the Flood, but it wasn't to be today. I was so disappointed when I learned that not all the bands listed as up for awards in this thing were actually playing: specifically, I had really wanted to hear what Breezy Porticos sound like. I guess I'll just have to go to their MySpace page or listen to the CD at my local CD shop (does anyone even do that anymore?).

That's all I would do differently next time: Do more research on the bands ahead of time. Oh yeah, and offer to Dave Herrera to redo Westword's lame printed and web schedules. Good show!

My favorite Elbow

I posted some of this show report on the Gomez boards about last night's show at the Bluebird Theater, in Denver:

I only caught the tail end of Air Traffic's set (because of an ugly and in retrospect easy-to-avoid detour about two miles from the theater), but they sounded like they knew what they were doing up there. The crowd was enthusiastic, which I am always excited to see. I love when people open up to the opener.

I played with my camera and made some little movies. I'll have to figure out the easiest way to get them onto youtube, because some of them might be pretty good. I'll have to stitch them into a little montage. It will be short on the music but fun.

Mostly I danced and let the band's sounds wow me. I ended up parking myself right up at the foot of the stage and like I do at gomez shows felt like the perfect audience. I love the sonic textures they make, even if the sound was pretty sucky right up at the front. I loved being able to see the drummer because he is so much of what makes Elbow's stuff not just meander down some moody alleyway -- instead it goes somewhere. And he was having a blast, and so I was having a blast, and the rest of us were, too.

Only a couple of minutes were disrupted by obliviously chatting drinkers who had wandered down to the front. But I think Guy Garvey's glares at them while he was singing (how could he not notice the chatterboxes when everyone else down there was hanging on his every word?) and mine might have given them the clue to hie themselves back to the bar because it got nice and quiet again after that.

Such a good show -- I don't keep setlists but they played lots of the new album, which is great and I will run right out and get (because I forgot last night). And they played a few other faves of mine. "Leaders of the Free World" sounded arm-pumpingly good but that song always leaves me a little cold even though I share every last sentiment in it. Everything else they do gets me, though. Guy's a poet of sound and words and we're lucky they come six thousand miles to play for us.

Guy does seem like a nice guy, too. He gets down in the crowd and doesn't seem to mind as many cameras and cellphones in his face as friendly faces. Likes his drinks, for sure. (After he begged for drinks, asking all the while whether it was terrible to beg his audience members for drinks, someone sent up a couple of shots, in classy plastic cups, yum, and he was like a kid at christmas. "What's this?")

Before he started one song, Guy introduced it as "a song about buildings and solitude," after which he added wryly, "Aren't they all?" and started playing (as if to drive home his point) a completely different song from the one I thought was coming next.

In a quiet moment between songs a fellow in the audience chose to fill the space with an outsized yell, and Guy said, "I've noticed there are always one or two, um, bears, or one-man football crowds, in every audience." He paused a few beats and then said, "But we welcome everyone, people, bears, one-man football crowds, everyone," to which he got some nice bear yells in response. It seemed such a way to respond, with a yes instead of a no.

Everything culminated in the last song, "Grace Under Pressure," which as it always does called up the phrase "joyful noise" in my mind. The drums in that song just drive me wild, and I was digging the drumming while Guy went around shaking the hands of about everyone on the floor in front of him. But he looked over at me a couple of times, and then at the end, he walked right over to me and picked up my hand and kissed it. I couldn't help myself -- I took his hand and kissed it back. I'm still smiling.

p.s. This totally reminds me of the t-shirt I wore last night. The guitar-player kitten might even be the same one that's on my shirt, now that I look closely.

Oeuvre or oeuf?

I made a playlist last year and called it Keep the Faith.

Just today it occurred to me that this work I'm doing, this eking out of this fun story about FDA operatives and big pharma, is a prayer of sorts. I keep inching everything along and saying to myself, "Keep the Faith." This year's mantra.

1. A Moment to Myself Macy Gray
2. Ain’t Goin’ to Goa A3
3. Deeper Well Emmylou Harris
4. Gham Ka Khazana Tera Bhi Hai Mera Bhi Lata Mangeskar & Jagjit Singh
5. Giant Heartbeat Split Enz
6. Keep the Faith Poi Dog Pondering
7. Let’s See Action Pete Townshend
8. Missing Beck
9. Mitwa A. R. Rahman
10. Over the Rainbow/What a Wonderful World Melvin Amina
11. Sunday Sia
12. Thank U Alanis Morrissette
13. Truth Neil Finn
With love and hope
June, 2007

If I sat down to write a Gomez song, what would it sound like?

When I first heard Gomez play their song "Sweet Virginia" live, I was absolutely convinced that they had set out to write a Neil Finn (of Split Enz and Crowded House fame; also an accomplished solo artist) song.

I'm listening to The Redwalls (I'm stuck on them and Spoon, who tore me from my Cat Power jag), and they have lots of songs that sound like other people: John Lennon and the rest of the Beatles, David Bowie, Mott the Hoople. And they rock. (You'd dig 'em, Diablo.) It's great -- rather than being derivative, it seems like in aping the original, the young whippersnappers pay homage, extend, and reveal the influence of the original artist.

Chaos theory

I barely know the Mars Volta's songs (although from this it seems like I would if I heard them), but I was struck by a lot of the things Omar Rodriguez Lopez says in this interview in The Onion's a.v. club section. Particularly the parts about being in a certain state of mind when you create something: "It's what it's like when you're a drug addict. You have these crazy realities happening in your head, where once you sober up and become a different person, you look back and go, 'What the fuck was I thinking?'" Which made me think about something Heath Ledger said: “I feel like nearly everyone knows how to play a junkie by now."

Just for the joy of it

I'm listening to Gomez' "Devil Will Ride" and it is, in one of those tiny cosmic bursts of synchronicity, amplifying and reinforcing the thought I came down the stairs holding in my head and heart to post, which was this:

Music was my big clue leading to something about life that I needed to know. Music revealed that all the world comprised more than what I knew best, a difficult, scary world full of deceptions and entanglements. Music said, hold on, there's also the joy of it: it really is about bouncing around together and unabashedly wanting everybody and everything all at once. I still believe in my heart of hearts that we can solve world peace with music, one note at a time, something no other medium (not religion, nor politics) can claim. A "singing revolution" took place in Estonia when the people took up a song to represent their nationhood, refusing to yield this nugget of their identity to the political dealings of bigger and badder nations (Turkey, Russia) warring for that tiny yet hugely symbolic isthmus of a country. People who loved to sing their song defused a moment that could have turned tragic and stood up for themselves as Estonians.

There's something about singing a song out loud -- and meaning it -- that pulls us to the proverbial campfire to reflect on our experiences in a way that nothing else does today. Some people think TV is an equivalent form of entertainment and diversion, but take those friends to a live show once a year and remind them of the electricity we can share when we decide to spend an evening in one room together, without all the retakes and flattering angles and commercial breaks.

I am still convinced that people know this better first-hand in other countries. I'm always talking about going other places and hearing adult men sing out loud in public. Here they think that will turn them into sissies or something and they're afraid to sing. But go to Europe and the people just sing, everywhere I go.

So I listen, and play. It's all I can do, all I can really believe in.

Sweet music of summer

An unabashed summer pleasure, this song.

Writing about music, part 277: My favorite arrow

So why keep going on about my favorite band, about their music and how it affects my world, if, as I say, I'm really "over them" now?

Because there's something there, I'm convinced.

I just read a couple of early Ian Rankin thrillers that recently arrived at our public library. They get straight to the heart of this sort of disillusioned, late-40s career cop. His world is a kind of emotional desert: he's pared his life down to his work as a cop, not leaving much room for more. The action and perspective stays tightly focused on him and his thoughts. But in Rankin's more recent books, his detective, John Rebus, finds great solace in music. In fact, I've felt Rankin's become something of a publicity engine for the contemporary Scottish alternative music industry; he calls out other groups too occasionally -- I'm just waiting for his first Gomez mention).

And I think Rankin has created a richer character with his interest in music. So I keep writing about it, trying to capture something about performance, identity, feeling, expression, energy -- all those things music makes me feel and think about. I share some of the experience Rankin invents for Rebus: how that music can pull us through, like time itself or a plot device, getting us from one point to another.

And I love the ride when I listen to Gomez. I love the way they grasp hold of a song again and again -- how they made up the songs to include the reminders to keep paying attention, every time you sing a new verse or change tempo or add a new texture.

Conversations with Gomez

Ooh, it's coming together! There's a documentary about the Gomez message board a brewin', to which I am very much looking forward to contributin'. (And not just because of the production credits for one and all! Woohoo!) The question I started turning over before I started writing was, just what was it about Gomez that got me, anyway?

I was keen on the song I first heard, their first FM radio "hit" that I was aware of, "Revolutionary Kind." My Dad and I both noticed it while we were having one of our idyllic summer drives, this time around the nooks and crannies of Chatham, on Cape Cod, listening to WMVY, the Martha's Vineyard station (where you'll hear more Carly Simon and James Taylor than you hear on most other FM adult alternative stations).

Then when I heard a guest DJ set by my previous Favorite Musician, Neil Finn (of Split Enz, Crowded House, and an illustrious solo career), during which he spun a tune by Gomez on Nick Harcourt's show, Morning Becomes Eclectic in Santa Monica, it was all over.

I saw they were coming to town, bought us some tickets, and brought home the Liquid Skin CD.

"Who are these guys?" my sweetie asked, incredulous.

"Just some English guys," I said. "I don't know much about them."

But we went to the show, and bought the next album, In Our Gun, quickly followed by the first one, Bring it On, and Abandoned Shopping Trolley Hotline and the Machismo EP, and then I was really gone, heels over head. For about the next six or so years.

Coincidentally, during this phase, I happened to become a mother. Turns out being a parent is quite the identity-challenging experience in many ways. Looking back over all the objects of my deepest musical affections, I believe the imaginary creative alliances (dalliances?) I have enjoyed with my Important Bands (The Rolling Stones long ago, The Who in my teen years, Crowded House and Michael Penn in the '90s and Gomez in the oughts) have all been incredibly fruitful, if one-sided, affairs that have gotten me through many an emotional swamp and sandpit.

I don't use the language of love lightly; I do fall in love when I fall in love wiht music. I go gaga. I drove my Ma around the foothills near my house on a recent visit and made her listen to the voice and tone of Elbow's singer, Guy Garvey, whose voice just grabs me there. On the days when Gomez would come to town, I couldn't think or talk about much else on the days they were around. My daughter came to recognize their tour bus.

But after my one big venture (literally a peak experience for me: going to Brighton to interview them at the end of 2003 during a trip to London with my Ma), I never really let the band know who I was, except by posting on the message board occasionally (formerly Step Inside and now an official board tied to the band's official website instead of one maintained solely by fans). All my feeble attempts to join post-show meetups fell through every time.

Yet I persisted in thinking they knew me when I hopped around in sync with Tom at their frenzied noisefests at the Fox. I thought they might recognize me dancing to them and to Ozomatli when they taped an etown show at the Boulder Theater.

But this past Halloween, I had a deflating little experience with one of the members of the band and saw what the true order of the universe really was.

I was sad then, and I feel the same sadness writing this now. It still feels like a love lost, a fantasy that reality could not support a moment longer.

Yet true to the same optimistic, pioneer spirit that sent my parents to San Francisco in 1966 (we often heard "Go West, young man!" exclaimed with a twinkle and a tongue in cheek back then), I decided to Make Something of It. For this all unfolded on the very eve of the month-long Nanowrimo competition, during which I planned to start writing a 50,000-word novel. "If I don't make some of my own noise, no one will ever know who I am," I told myself, and slunk home after Gomez' set to nurse my bruised ego for the night.

The next morning, I wrote out the scene that had put me in my place the night before at the auditorium in Denver, and I felt much better. I proceeded to write 50,000 words during that month, and have since started the second draft. Gomez may not figure as strongly in this version of the story, but they helped me start it off and that's another thing for which I am grateful.

But I'll always be most in their debt, I feel, for inspiring me by just going out and doing the thing they wanted to hear being done, regardless of not having all their ducks in a row. They have said they were fairly ignorant about guitar and music in general when they got started, but they went after something they liked nonetheless and showed that the results can be pretty cool, if a bit uneven in hindsight (sorry, fellow fans, but the ending of "Tijuana Lady" still makes me laugh).

On KFOG, a San Francisco radio station, the news guy, "Scoop" Nisker, always says, "Remember, if you don't like the news, go out and make some of your own," and I feel I have received the same creative carte blanche from Gomez. There's an artistic conversation I'm eager to become a part of, and now I know it's my turn to put myself out there. They showed me that you can just go ahead and do that, and doing so can start a thousand conversations (many of these on the message boards, a topic for another post; specifically, I think it's interesting how people on the board have a sort of collective agreement to stand in for the band for one another. That's my theory and I made it up myself).

Gomez started a conversation with me and it's not over yet. They have helped me remember that no matter how my roles may evolve throughout my life, being and expressing myself is worthwhile. Every day, they inspire me to put my ideas out there, to make something I want to see in the world, and to start my own conversations as best I can. For that (and for spending nearly three hours with me in 2003 so I could write a teensy little story for a local paper -- Rolling Stone didn't bite on my query), I will forever thank them.

Ian Rankin's Scottish Cop Novels

Okay, I admit to having become completely addicted of late to Ian Rankin's John Rebus series of mystery novels. He's a maverick cop based in Edinburgh who works on instinct and is fueled by booze. I am trying to figure out why I haven't been able to stop reading them and have come up with a couple of answers.

First, Rankin is clearly as interested in music as I am, and works song titles and lyrics into his character's consciousness throughout. Many of the references are lost on me, but I'm often inspired to go check out some band he refers to.

Second, his books are well constructed and rich in detail about Scotland's places and peculiarities. I always delight in deconstructing the jargon (only a few bits have eluded me so far but a good example in the novel I'm reading so far is "paraffin budgies" for helicopters) and recognizing all the little Britishisms. They have quite the penchant for abbreviations and sometimes cutesy phrases (recce for reconnoiter, drinkies, walkies, and so forth). He explains Scottish terms for weather and national characteristics (how fat and sugar are the heart of the Scottish diet, and if you add alcohol you have the heart and soul, he says). The regional jargon and the twists and turns of the stories keep my mind sharp, and I enjoy them the same way others enjoy crossword puzzles.

Third, I thought I was just a bit of an Anglophile, having visited London a couple of times, but it turns out I have something of a feel for Britain as a whole. I've been told I have Scotch-Irish roots, so it figures, I suppose, that the atmosphere Rankin describes feels somehow familiar. Despite being a resident of the Western United States for my entire life, I've always felt so at home in Europe, in the Netherlands, Spain, Italy, and France. Germany felt too familiar, and I was not comfortable in Portugal, but I'm sure the latter discomfort was the combination of the language barrier (no, Portuguese is nothing like Spanish, the closest I ever got to a second language) and its being the first European country I ever visited (I was trying way too hard to blend in, which I no longer worry about but still get asked for directions in the native languages). I hope to see more of Britain, despite much of its reputation, not disputed in Rankin's books, as a fairly grim and dreary place.