McCartney or the Age of "Dad-Rock"

It was recently brought to my attention that a friend of mine once termed my taste in music as “dad-rock,” a term that would horrify anyone, let alone a great appreciator of music such as myself. At first, I felt a pang of anger, then a sense of quiet, while I wondered if it were true or not. After a few moments I decided that this friend of mine might just be correct.

As I thought back, I tried to figure out how I had come to this point.  In elementary school (5^th and 6^th grades specifically) I listened to Puff Daddy, Ma$e, Wu-Tang Klan, Notorious B.I.G., the required Oasis, The Wallflowers and assorted 90’s one-hit wonders like Deep Blue Something. Then, in junior high, I listened to scattered tracks and singles (Stone Temple Pilots “Down”? Me First and the Gimme Gimmes?) and slowly focused on jam band music.  In high school, my jam bias continued as I went to see Phish, String Cheese Incident, Yonder Mountain String Band, and Phil Lesh and Friends in concert. While this happened, I was slowly beginning to unravel the stories, themes and eras of Rock History.  Tenth grade brought heavy study of Led Zeppelin, Lou Reed, the Velvet Underground and the Beatles. That last one ultimately leading me into my first truly psychedelic summer between 10^th and 11^th grades as I religiously watched the Beatles Anthology on our old Laserdisc player in my bedroom. The following year was when I started making greater strides as I discovered that I loved Wilco, the Super Furry Animals, the Flaming Lips, Supergrass, the Stooges, as well as honing a truly deep love of the Rolling Stones that extended beyond the singles or a Hot Rocks CD. This year also brought the huge influence of the Strokes, the White Stripes and the Hives (I loved the Stooges and the Stones so obviously this made sense). I can recall one landmark haul back from the record store during this time: Plastic Ono Band, Beggar’s Banquet, Raw Power, The Kinks are the Village Green Preservation Society, Something Else, and Veni Vidi Vicious.

My senior year brought even deeper research into the rock canon (though I was still no Lane Kim). I picked up the first two Big Star albums, Pet Sounds, All Things Must Pass, Mutations. I was known to blast Their Satanic Majesties Request as I rolled into my high school parking lot as well as telling people all about this “new Dylan,” someone called Connor Oberst (goo!) who called himself Bright Eyes. I burned copies of Lifted or the Story is in the Soil for my friends and left countless CDs scratched and laying around the floor and back part of my 1992 Chevy Blazer.  All of this was being done while still listening to a heavy dose of Phish’s epic 1993 tour and plenty of Grateful Dead bootlegs.

I floated through that summer on 17 year old romance and sexual fumbling along with a lot of listens to the Dead’s Blues for Allah out by my pool at twilight.  I also listened to the Beatles Anthology 3, which was some kind of soothing accompaniment for my friends Chris and Dan after long, tiring days working in my dad’s warehouse.  When I finally got to college, after supplying an initial psychedelic experience for my dorm, I decided that I was going to enter my “1968 phase.” That meant, no more psychedelia, nothing but booze and the basics of life.  Well, I still indulged in the Zombies’ Odessy and Oracle, but picked up the first two Gram Parsons albums, Notorious Byrd Brothers, Sweetheart of the Rodeo, and listened to a lot of Big Star as well as Friends, Wild Honey, Sunflower and Surf’s Up by the Beach Boys.

The next fall, I came to school in full fledged country mode, carrying a bag full of Merle Haggard and Hank Williams records, the first two Flying Burrito Brothers albums, White Light and No Other by Gene Clark, Dylan’s Nashville Skyline, the Band’s first three albums, The Basement Tapes and Rainy Day Music and Country Town Hall by the Jayhawks. Hell, I was also giving Dylan’s Desire plenty of spins and that has the most visionary, William Blake, country song of all time on it in “Isis.” I had country radio shows in both semesters of my sophomore year and also in my junior year, completely reveling in the back woods sensibility that much of upstate New York could offer.

And so I continued on in this manner. Country music slowly turned into roots rock music and all of a sudden I was expounding on why the J. Geils Band were better than Bruce Springsteen or why Todd Rundgren was as influential as any songwriter ever or that perhaps Paul McCartney had the best solo career out of any of the Beatles. Then, as I said, friends starting terming my music taste as “dad-rock.” What this stems from is a feeling or imagery that warm, rootsy music has always conjured up in me. I have successfully tied this feeling to one specific image:

The first night of my freshman year at college, one acquaintance of mine from high school, who was a sophomore, offered to take me around for the night. I’d known him distantly enough in high school to know he was funny, nice and had enough alternative interests that I might feel comfortable hanging out with him without any intermediary friend. So, on a still, warm, September night, I walked over to his dorm room where he introduced me to his suite mates who were playing beer pong in a dorm room that was much more intricately and creatively setup than mine, which told me that they must also be sophomores or juniors. After drinking a beer or two and maybe a shot of Jagermeister, my high school acquaintance said, “Let’s go to this girl’s room.”

We walked to another one of the flat, brick dorms on the campus and climbed the stairs to the third floor. My acquaintance turned into a suite and we walked in an open room where this girl lived. The room smelled immediately of a girl.  It was a mix of from some very sweet perfume, herbal shampoo and fresh air from the still open window—you could hear crickets. The girl was tall and athletic looking. She had tan skin and freckles around her nose and on her cheekbones, though not on her cheeks. Her face was framed by straw-colored hair that suggested the end of her first college summer where she had perhaps had a summer fling with some guy at some idyllic beach town where her family summered. She was pretty and I immediately thought I was better than the fictional guy I assumed she had slept with on summer evenings.  She seemed to be getting ready to go out.

“Fixing yourself up, you skank,” my acquaintance said. I realized he was teasing but still didn’t like it.

“Did you even get laid this summer?” She shot back.

“Too much.”

The girl laughed.

“This is Matt,” my acquaintance said. “He’s a freshman. He went to my high school.”

“Hi,” she said, clearly not interested in my presence. “Sit down. Do you want rum?”

“Sure,” I said. She gave me the rum and I drank it.

She and my acquaintance continued to talk and I tried to keep up, but there was no way a freshman like myself could follow the banter of two college friends who had just reunited after summer vacation. Also, my attention was completely drawn to the room itself. It was a narrow, single dorm room, but the girl had lofted her bed into the window seat and placed a couch along the wall where the bed had been. Across from the couch was a desk with her laptop and also a stereo perched close to the foot of the bed. White Christmas lights where strung around the top of room and instead of using the fluorescent overhead light, she had globed Asian lamps of different sizes hanging from the ceiling and opportune spaces on the walls.  There were red and gold tapestries stretched across the ceiling and over the space for her closet. Then I realized there was music playing. At that time, I had never listened to Carole King, but in my memory the music was Carole King or something that sounded similar.  That 70’s recording sound: soft and immediately upfront, a piano playing chords that would be corny, if they weren’t so poignant; and shuffling drums whose round sound seem almost impossible when heard on good speakers. There was something about that room, which at the time seemed extraordinary, and being in the presence of an older college girl during my first semester in college that stuck with me. It was as if the whole scene turned to sepia, or if translated to art or a photo, would be captured in that color.

That idea of sepia still remains in a vision I try to bring into the world—I feel as though one could make their entire life feel and look like the worn, cardboard cover of a great 1970’s vinyl.  A friend of mine once called me “The King of Sunday,” by which he meant that I always organized Sunday barbeques and dinners where we listened to records all the way through and drank beer or something else and slowly all the color of the room turned to something sepia, or felt that way.

What this all leads me to is a sort of small, but important epiphany I had a month or so ago while riding the subway and listening to Paul McCartney’s first solo album, McCartney.  McCartney is in many ways the archetypal “dad-rock” album, because it is ostensibly an album about being a father and a husband and not necessarily part of the biggest rock band of all time. Many of the songs are half-songs or the melodies just seem to appear and then just as quickly disappear, such as “The Lovely Linda,” “Junk” or even “Momma Miss America,” which basically defines “lo-fi” and lays some fundamental groundwork for Pavement.  The album basically breezes by.  The hits are there, such as “Teddy Boy,” “That Would Be Something,”  “Every Night,” and “Maybe I’m Amazed,” but before you know it the album is over. You are not left moved or blown away, but you feel something strange, some warmth—a feeling that things are in their right place.

As I was riding the subway, I realized that McCartney is the prototypical Sunday album. You put the album on while you are mopping the floor or sweeping. You put it on loud while you are cooking breakfast and the sound of eggs and bacon frying in the pan threatens to drown out the music. Then, you leave it playing softly after you’ve finished eating and you’re leaning back on your couch, listening to a friend talk about the problems in her relationship as you rip off small crumbs from a toasted piece of good, thick bread. Or, while the beer bottles are lined on the coffee table and the sun has completely set out your back windows, and the light from the lamp in your den glints off the brown glass and things seem hazy and opaque; when the smell of cooked steak still lingers in the air and along the painted walls and you sit firmly with your friends, knowing that work is out there tomorrow and there’s nothing that’s going to stop it except your desire to get as close as you can to what you want—you leave the album playing.  You run through “Singalong Junk” and its pretty and delicate and effortlessly melodic and then you reach “Maybe I’m Amazed.” You’ve heard it so many times on the radio and know how sappy and syrupy it is, but Paul let’s his voice roar, squeak and falsetto, while the piano rumbles along and he does his best Ringo impersonation to propel the song along. It’s extremely predictable, just like any Sunday, but sometimes that’s exactly what matters—that’s where the memory sticks.

So, I’ve made my way through rock history. I’ve chased down sepia visions and continue to attempt to emulate the faded and loved cardboard of an old vinyl in my everyday life.  I listen to overproduced or perfectly produced 1970’s roots rock or Paul McCartney albums and drink a beer with the full understanding of why the act of drinking a beer is so great—the full appreciation of the action of the beer and not even the beer itself.  And I keep my apartment neat and even take pride in beating out a dusty rug.  I’m past the 1968 of my life now and into something else. I listen to dad rock, but I’m not a dad.  If all those things are bad, then too bad I like it.

They Really Got Lost

As I was assembling the next episode of Puddles of My Podcast (which features Cyrus Lubin as my guest and will go up tomorrow evening) and I listened to the theme song, "Must've Got Lost" by J. Geils Band, I couldn't help but comment on the  night of Lost, which was last night. Four and a half hours. That's right ladies and gentleman (Puddlers or not) Lost did it once again last night by making itself the extreme spectacle on TV. After watching the two hour special, which did an insane job of exhibiting how wild the show was over the past six years and really pumped you up for the final epsidoe, I sat, drank a tall beer and watched the end of Lost unfurl over two and a half hours.

I got hooked on Lost while I was looking for work in the summer of 2006, and I tried to follow it closely since then.  I could never become a fanatic, but I appreciated it as a saga and a sprawling fantasy story.  The plot twists were so ridiculous and absurd that you had to laugh and just enjoy it. However, it wasn't until last night that I really understood why I liked the show.  There was one hungover weekend when I returned to my collge after graduating when I noticed friends of mine had the Lost card game. I proceeded to open the game up, take out the cards and explain who each character was to my friend who hadn't seen the show. I explained Sawyer, Michael, Locke, Walt, Kate, Claire, Shannon, Sayid, Hurley and the rest with a sarcasm and goofiness that made light of the show.  However, as I watched the show end and watched each character that was ever on the show be paraded out for the predictable and somewhat disappointing ending, I realized that I had always liked Lost just for the characters.  Much of the reviews of the final episodes have covered this (you can read Alan Sepinwall's great review here) and it may seem a bit obvious, but it had never occurred to me before.  Below my smirking mockery of all of the characters and the absurdity of the show itself, was a real appreciation and attachment to the characters.  That damn Desmond  and the stupid Daniel Farraday had their hooks in.  And what the Lost finale did, in all of its hokiness, was do right by each of the characters.  There were tremendously moving moments and they almost touched on a Joycean idea in the sideways world (encountering yourself in different roles and different paths) before it was revealed that it was Purgatory.

In the end, all of the theories about what Purgatory is, what the the Purgatory of each character is, how relgion actually does fit into the whole thing, whose story the show actually was, and why the hell they didn't explain all of the crazy stuff won't matter - we just cared about those characters, those Ben Linuses and John Lockes. And I find it funny that after my Beatles post from Friday about not wanting a story to end, I find myself feeling that same familiar sensation at the end of Lost - as ridiculous and stupid as the whole thing was.

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In other blog news, the band Forest City, which features Nick Mencia (leading podcast downloads at 31) will be releasing their album on this blog. We will be releasing tracks right up here, so stayed tuned for the details and the timeline as for a week or so, this blog will be devoted to Forest City.

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Finally, here is the next installment of From Here to the Last Mound of Dirt. We continue on with Part II, Section 3. Remember that you can read the entire manuscript as it is posted on its own From Here to the Last Mound of Dirt Section.

Stay with me, Puddlers.




Jack waved the match out.  They were close to the crowd now.  Jack stopped and stuck his shovel into the grass.  Ed did the same.  Jack sucked in on his cigarette and dropped his hand to his side.  The crowd for the funeral was a good size.  He’d seen large funerals and samll two-person burials of urns.  There were women in hats and dresses.  The suits of the men were neat – there were no misplaced colors, no blues or purples where there should simply be blacks.

Jack focused on the girl with the crimson hair.  She was prettier than she’d seemed from further away.  Her hair was hanging down over her shoulders.  It was sheen and it shone white and then red.  Jack was tempted to think of blood, but instead his mind brought him to the harbor at dusk.  The Pepsi machine and the white paint of the harbor house. The sky was pink-red like worn fingertips and the waves moved in diamond shapes against the sailboats and pylons. An off white mutt with lab in it trotted on the small sand beach, it’s chain collar rattling.  The salt came strongly to his nose and the water was red-brown – a liquid brick.  He watched it all turn to purple and then black. His heart felt light then, as the plovers picked at snails, as it did now, even while he was hot, itchy and his ears filled with wax.

The woman with the brown hair stopped speaking and moved over to the crowd of mourners.  The girl with auburn hair watched her move.  Jack wondered what she saw when she saw something move.  Did she see the color brown? The skin of the woman? Most likely, she saw the woman as a relative – as someone in relation to her family and her life and the meaning and color she contained sprung out of that. Jack Simmons felt the heat of his cigarette between his fingers.  He brought it to his mouth, inhaled and threw it onto the grass.  Slowly, the spring of turf undertoe.

Ed Verlaine threw his cigarette down and stomped it with the toe of his boot.  He exhaled the smoke of his last drag and nodded his head toward the crowd.

“This one was a mother, right?”

Jack raised his right eyebrow and nodded.

Ed nodded.  He tilted his head back and looked at the blue sky.  There were puffs of white clouds passing slowly.  “Fuck,” he said. “Smoking on a hot day like this makes me want to quit.  What’s the point, you know? I mean, look at the grass at this place, they always keep it in such great shape.  We should be running, you know?”

Jack smiled at him. “You’re right.”

Ed stuck his hands into his pockets and stepped up next to Jack.  “Who do you think the kids were? I’ve seen you checking out that redhead.  You think she was a daughter?”

“Maybe,” Jack nodded.  “I think so.”

Ed looked at the side of Jack’s face. “You don’t have a wife do you, Jack?”

The girl with auburn hair kept her gaze straightforward toward the casket.  The sun made her hair turn bright red, then deep brown like syrup.  An edge of light changed the whole complexion of the color.  Jack tried to see her eyes so that he could know exactly what she saw.  She stood straight with her right arm bent and her hand and fingers slightly behind her back.  He wanted that to be enough.

“No,” he said. “No, I don’t.”

Ed nodded and Jack stayed fixed on the redhead.  He had never tried to directly ask Jack a question about himself like that.  If he was going to work at this job in the heat and the cold, he might as well know something about his partner – his co-worker.  What else was there to do while they watched women, children and husbands cry? They had to talk about the lives they were living, the amount of beer they could drink, the times they got laid, a story or two about their mothers, maybe even the funerals they had been to before for their grandparents or friends.  Ed felt himself getting angry at Jack.  Why was he stuck here with this guy who would barely speak, but who seemed to have a lot to say if he would open his mouth?  Ed could see the way he studied the redhead; he knew he wasn’t just thinking about how good she could fuck.  There was something Jack was getting from the scene in front of them and Ed could not follow what it was.  He saw the legs of a girl in tights, the sun shining and ice dripping off of pine trees in slow fat drops onto pavement.  He felt short of breath, his brow became flushed and he could touch the sweat around his neck.  The mourners by the casket and their sharp clothes, especially the redhead and her dark green dress, seemed to be imposing themselves on him, while the green of the grass and the blue of the sky further off behind it reminded him, once again of some feeling or some memory that he should know or remember immediately and be able to call out to.  However, he could not.  Ed Verlaine dug his shovel into the dirt and listened to the crunch of grass roots.  He shook another cigarette out of his pocket and cradled it in the “V” of his  middle and index fingers.

“Smoke?” Ed asked.

Jack shook his head.

Ed cradled the cigarette and slid it back into his pocket outside of the cellophane of the pack.
A man with a nice haircut walked up in front of the casket.  The priest shook the man’s hand  as he approached.  The man turned to the mourners.  His hair was parted evenly on the right side of his head.  Ed thought that he looked like a World War II soldier.  It seemed to him that the man was looking at the red head as well.  The man adjusted his legs and feet.  He tilted his head up away from the red head and up to the sky, taking one hand out of his pocket to rub his nose.  Ed cradled the worn wooden end of his shovel. 

“My mother,” the man began. “was a good woman. All of you here knew her and so you all must have known that.”  Ed clicked his tongue.  This man was a son.  The red head could be his sister.  If they were, they surely didn’t look it.  Ed wondered which one had the red hair: the father or the dead mother?

“But to simply call her a good woman would be too easy – something too maudlin or out of a movie.  What does that even mean? Certainly, my sister, Maggie wouldn’t let me get away with that.”

The red head shifted and the crowd murmered.  She was the sister.

“Anyway.  She was a good woman.  She was smart and she taught all of us-well she taught me to live with a sense of pride and a sense of duty.  Not to say that I was as noble as that, but mom knew how important life was…even the mundane tasks we have to do, which are often the right things to do.  She was never above anything and I feel like she taught much of that to me, to me and to my brothers and sisters.

“I will miss her cooking. I know that.  Although I have been away from it for a long time now since I’ve moved to Washington which, was another great thing about mom – the way she welcomed Eve into our family.  You sort of always want it to end up that your wife and your mom get along, and for me it happened without any fighting or anything.”

The man frowned and his mouth rose in a half-grin.  He looked over to the crowd somewhere.  Ed couldn’t see who he was looking toward and craned his neck slightly.  The man put both of his hands in his pockets.

“She’s gone though now and,” the man paused.  He was choking up. “She will never see my grandkids and they won’t get to call her grandma.  But it’s OK because she lived her life with beauty and grace and that is what I believe she is going to return to.  And, mom, I love you.  Dad, I love  you.”

The man walked away from the casket and over to the crowd.  There was always an instinct to get emotional when hearing someone speak about their dead loved one, especially a parent.  Ed Verlaine found himself crying at one burial where a young girl had died and her older brother went up to speak. “She won’t be there to talk to,” he had said.  The boy was about fourteen or fifteen.  The whole thing just made Ed cry.  He’d thought about his own little sister who was still in college and the fight he’d gotten into with her about her boyfriend who he didn’t like – the one with the red car and the Italian sounding first name.  He couldn’t imagine his life without his sister, though. Without her there, he  would have no ally, no one to share in the fact that he was the child of his parents; no one who knew his parents like him.  No matter if they spoke or didn’t speak, fought or didn’t fight – that was there.  The fact that they shared the same last name and the same parents and even the same room at one point.  Ed pushed down on the rounded shovel end.  The head crushed more sod and dirt.

The Hounds of Love

This is a post about Kate Bush's album, Hounds of Love.  Before we get to the piece itself, just one note of interest:

- Last Friday I put up a piece about Cobble Hill. As part of that day, I also wrote a review of the restaurant Prime Meats, which you can now see at Brooklyn Exposed.  There should be more articles of mine appearing on the website in the coming weeks and months.

That's it.  Now, on to the main event.


The Hounds of Love

Women are slowly infiltrating my life.  That might sound completely arrogant – and there is no way to truly write or utter that sentence without seeming completely arrogant – however, I am going to try to explain. 

This is supposed to be an article/post/piece about Kate Bush and her album Hounds of Love from 1985. As I was preparing notes on the album, I realized that I didn’t know exactly what the album was about as a whole and I didn’t want to end up just giving a rundown of the album track by track. Then, I began thinking about the last music piece that I posted on the blog, which mentioned how different women singers have effected me as well as chronicle how much time I had put into listening to Joanna Newsom’s Have One on Me and She & Him’s Volume 2.  As I rehashed those feelings, I began to laugh thinking about all the Gilmore Girl nonsense that is occurring on the blog and in my world as of late – and when I say nonsense, I mean that in the sense that Gilmore Girls is vitally important and completely frivolous all at the same time and will develop into one of the top ten cult shows of all time.  When the laughter faded – as it always inevitably will, annoyingly so – it was already Mother’s Day weekend and I was heading home in order to treat my mother to a $50.00 gift certificate to Marlow & Sons and a day out touring the Long Island wineries; that bill would be footed by my father.

At the beginning of Anna Karenina, Tolstoy wrote, “All happy families resemble one another, but each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” This holds true for men as well – and I know no truly happy man (I imagine this is true for women too, but I am a man (ok boyish still) and for the sake of this piece I am sticking to only one sex, since I lack the omniscient control of Tolstoy). There is a certain quality in men that causes them to romanticize the aloof, the wandering nature of the world, the vague notion that perhaps if they squinted their eyes hard enough they could see themselves in an image where they had no mother or father, where they were simply formed as they are – all their supreme faults and grandnesses standing in full and total completeness.  However, no matter how hard we chase down these Don Draper delusions, this is simply not true, no matter how orphaned you may be in reality or desire.

That is where the Hounds of Love come in.  One morning this past weekend, while I was walking my dog along the beach past the now abandoned home of one of my best friends, I looked at the swaying green trees that stand in the distance above the dunes.  The winds were incredibly strong and they pushed the leaves back and forth, the water rippled and my dog ran ahead dipping his head into streams of straw, wet sand trailing down his hind legs as he trotted.  I kept my eyes on the trees and thought of the opening lines of “Hounds of Love.” Kate Bush sampled a spoken word piece that says, paired to an out of time beat, “its in the trees, look out its coming!” The song then launches full tilt into its pounding-pop melody and doesn’t let up until nearly three minutes later. The sampled voice is full of some kind of terror and awe for what it sees coming through the trees (on a funny side note, these song could be used as a clip show for the old-school Smoke Monster from Lost – you know, when he used to rattle the trees before he appeared). One of the reasons why I aborted writing completely about Hounds of Love is that idea of something coming through the trees, because as I watched the trees being pushed by the wind on the that morning I couldn’t figure out what exactly it was that was coming for me through those trees.

What Kate Bush moans in the song is, “Now hounds of love are haunting/I’ve always been a coward/And I don’t know what’s good for me.” That is a sentiment that any listener can relate to.  Who has not felt the inclination at any time of day to recount those haunting feelings of past loves creeping along the backside of your arm or over your shoulders? Who has not felt that insecurity and weakness? Who in fact knows what’s good for them? Even on that morning that may have been what I was lamenting. However, as much as I felt the pulling on my heart of the different moments of love that have inhabited my past - standing on the point at Montauk watching the boats set out and holding the girl you love; sitting on a bench on the docks while the Irish band plays on shore in the heat of the afternoon; laying in bed in the early morning of a rainy spring day just south of Lake George; standing in the street against a car kissing and trying to understand what the summer means; that first kiss in the darkness of the room – that thing coming after me felt like more than that.  It felt like more, because the images that came to mind, were not those initial instances, but more vague and disparate sensations that were not completely tied to an image. There were sensations of a sunny fall afternoon, freshly showered after practice and sauntering back down to the back playing fields at the high school, feeling sun on skin and smelling the coolness in the air, anxious and relaxed at the same time, a few flowers draped high in the brush over that far fence.

Someone may read this and suggest that all that I am trying to say is that the Hounds of Love are merely those fleeting memories of youth or a past in general. And maybe that is true, because a certain “aesthetic” I have been developing in the non-sports content on this blog does relate to the notion of a past, of being lost on the path of life, “Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita/mi ritrovai per una selva oscuraché/la diritta via era smarrita,” as Dante once wrote. Even in the light-hearted nature of my podcasts, the song at the beginning “Musta Got Lost” by J. Geils Band, even though it is a song about a stupid guy who lost out on love, strikes truer in my own context of walking along through this world and thinking that at some point I must have gotten lost – that we all have gotten lost.  Lost from what, I don’t know – nor do I lament that fact, I just am meant to point it out.  A recent song I have been in love with is “Where Am I Now(When I Need Me)?” by the underrated guitarist Jesse “Ed” Davis. In that song, Davis, laments, “there’s a face in the mirror/seems familiar, like a sketch there I once drew.” Its an easy image of looking in the mirror and not recognizing one’s own face, but the way Davis delivers the line, in such a nonchalant and baffled manner makes it seem poignant.  The singer is a good time guy with no real cares, who happens to stumble into not recognizing himself. Our good friend Thomas Wolfe also once wrote the very simple and melodramatic, “O, Lost!”

So the Hounds of Love are present at every turn, they come through the trees and remind us of a past that is no longer present.  Everyone is haunted by their past in one way or another, so what is the big deal of Kate Bush singing about it this sensation in her own manner? The big deal lies in the conviction with which Bush sings the song as well as the imagery that she uses.  There is a section of the song where the singer encounters the body of a fox.  The singer sings, “I found a fox/caught by dogs/he let me take him in my hands/His little heart/It beats so fast/and I’m ashamed of running away.” This image carries over to the singer reflecting upon her own weaknesses: “From nothing real/I just can’t deal with this/But I’m still afraid to be here/Among your hounds of love/And feel your arms surround me./I’ve always been a coward/And never know what’s good for me.”  These are poignant lines that seem to come straight for any individual’s self-flagellation at their weaknesses. This singer has chosen to run away from love, from her past and the Hounds of Love have been unleashed upon her to bring her back in one way or another, whether physically or mentally.  The selling point comes with the imagery of the wounded fox.  There is a moment of connection between the singer and the fox’s little beating heart.  This struck me as relevant as I walked along the beach watching my dog trot along the rocks and shells and chase birds down by the water in an attempt to corral them in.  My dog is incapable of hurting another animal no matter how feral he may sometimes appear to strangers.  He is perhaps the most benevolent creature I have ever encountered. In some way, we are all at one point that benevolent with our hearts beating so fast. What the singer connects to, is that sense of vulnerability we all feel in tremendous doses. Her heart is beating so fast in her frantic escape from and attempt to understand these Hounds of Love.

The other standout track, for me, on this album is the song “And Dream of Sheep,” which is a haunting lullaby that I have mentioned elsewhere on this blog.  The refrain of this song is, “Let me be weak/Let me sleep/And dream of sheep.” The song brings to mind an image of youth, of a darkened room in the English countryside where there is only a dim nightlight on – perhaps with the silhouette of a carousel or stars projected onto the walls. And Bush’s singer moans, “Oh, I'll wake up/To any sound of engines/Ev'ry gull a seeking craft/I can't keep my eyes open/Wish I had my radio/I tune in to some friendly voices/Talking 'bout stupid things/I can't be left to my imagination.” This leads into the singer then requesting once again that she be able to sleep.  This song not only has a beautiful melody, but it strikes me as the moment when one does recollect their past.  Once you are left to your imagination, that is when the mind will obviously wander, and the mind will wander back to that past, before the moment of escape, before those Hounds of Love have been set out.  That time when you are allowed to be weak, allowed to sleep and dream of sheep, that vulnerable time that we think of when we have to hoist ourselves out of bed to face the day and our lives – that dangerous allure of something that may not have ever been.  For we envy the vulnerability of the fox because it is allowed to be vulnerable, but we are not. And when we feel that vulnerability, when we connect to it, we have to run away from it, which we are always ashamed to do.  There is no rest; there is no merit in wanting to sleep.

This whole idea ends back with the Gilmore Girls, and that is not a strange thing to say. In the Gilmore Girls podcast that went up on the blog earlier this week, Erik Lilleby and I mentioned how there is something soothing about the show, something comforting. This feeling can be tied to what another friend of mine said at dinner one night when he was reflecting on reading Crime and Punishment for the first time, which is that he said, “I wish I had never read Crime and Punishment so I could read it for the first time again.”  That is what the Hounds of Love are.  It is that desire to experience something for the first time again that chases us down to the end of the earth.  When I walked with my dog along the beach and saw those trees swaying against the backdrop of the openness of the Long Island, it wasn’t the pull of the loves I had lost that I felt along the back of my arms and up my neck, it was that freshness of the Saturday walking to the playing fields behind my old high school, my heart then beat just like the fox that Kate Bush’s singer held in her hands. That Saturday feeling, that freshness, the smells and the colors stands out as some first time experience in my mind and we can never gain that back.  The bright colors, the sharp dialogue, the very contained feeling of the characters and the plots of the Gilmore Girls reminds us of something fresh and neat that we don’t quite want, but feel the need to embrace anyway.  It reminds us of the beginning of something and the beginning of something is what we always run back towards, because we always find ourselves running away from that something once the beginning is over. We find ourselves lost, looking to remember how we got to a certain point and the only way to find where we are is to look to the beginning. But that isn’t always the answer.  What the answer is, I don’t know.  I just have the sensations from this past Saturday, walking with my dog along the water, passing the abandoned house of a friend of mine, and taking joy in seeing my dog run and jump at birds.  And perhaps those sensations are all that matter, perhaps those will keep the Hounds of Love at bay.

 In any event, the album Hounds of Love is fantastic, the music is experimental and phenomenal, big and 80’s sounding and tremendously catchy. And that’s all that really matters - even if those Hounds of Love will chase you down no matter where you go, just like some TV show with a Carole King song that plays at the beginning.

Sketchy

After a beautiful and fun weekend filled with some rooftop party action that included cornholing, strokin', clam chowder, mint juleps/jewlers, J. Geils Band, rye whiskey, homemade sourdough bread, late night caprese salad, late night Grand Morelo's, late night Gilmore Girls, and early morning Faces listening, its time to get down to business.

Now, I have mentioned, from time to time, some comedy sketches that I and my creative crew have been working on in the past few months.  We are still getting our footage and honing in on the scripts, but I wanted to release some still from two of the nearly completed sketches that will be a part of our first episode entitled, "Food."  The pictures you are about to see are from the sketches known as "The Plan/Toast" and "Sandwich," respectively.  I can guarantee that you will enjoy this episode once it is finished.  Comic genius all around.

Speaking of episodes, tomorrow, Episode 9 of PUDDLES OF MY PODCAST will be going up on the blog for you to stream or download. This is a very informative look at the New York technology scene with Andrew Hage, so I recommend listening immediately. Very timely stuff.  I have a few more episodes lined up for this week and next that I think show a variety of content and I am sure that you will all enjoy them.  In case you were wondering, Episode 6 with Nick Mencia currently trails Episode 1 with Erik Lilleby for most downloads.  The current score is 23-20, advantage Lilleby.

Later this week, I'll do some basketball ranting as well as put up the next part of From Here to the Last Mound of Dirt. Next week you can look forward to a new music review as well as a rundown of some links and other assorted B.S. that you should check out.

Just stick with me, I'll take you there.


The Plan/Toast:

Sandwich: