This Guy Keeps Saying He Was The Drummer In Letters to Cleo. I really do love Letters to Cleo.

My shyer cat now likes to crawl on me and sleep when I’m on my couch typing on my laptop. It’s been a six year long battle of constantly-being-nice to get to this point.

I am going to film a small part for the new Electric Company on Wednesday. Cool, right?

Tomorrow night I meet with a co-op board to try and get approval to give someone my life savings in exchange for an apartment. I am excited! The process has been hilariously long.

My improv group The Stepfathers won an improv competition two Fridays ago which means we will get 10 grand to make a movie. I propose this script.

As part of the “feud” between Chris Gethard and I on The Chris Gethard show, he took my girlfriend out on a perfect date to prove he’d be a better boyfriend. Though Tabitha did not break up with me, I must admit i AM planning a good date for her so I’m not shown up, even in a bit sense.

Harvey Pekar dead! An actual loss for Cleveland Ohio.

That’s what you miss on greatest hits collections or mixtapes or best-of lists. The strange not-as-good filler tracks. But they are the ones that really give the album its life! Sure “Don’t Let’s Start” and “She’s An Angel” are the gems of that album, but is it really They MIght Be Giants without “Number Three” and its ridiculous baritone saxophone bass line?

Other mediums too, right? The dragging point, the pauses, the downtimes make the uptimes so much better. Shit, now I have to think of examples. The long slow build for the first third of The Exorcist. The long pauses and waits during 2001: A Space Odyssey. Um. The crappy parts of Woody Allen’s “Without Feathers.” Shoot, am I out already? How about the long kvetching in between fight scenes in mid-80s X-Men comics? The first five episodes of season two of The Wire?

I don’t know. I had a point. I like that album.

Hello!

• I want a better profile pic for my twitter. What should I do?
• In the book version of Let The Right One In, the vampire Eli describes once meeting an older vampire and asking why there weren’t more of them? The older vampire answers, and then points at Eli’s chest and coyly suggests something I do not understand. Explain that.
• Is it harder and harder to feel like one knows the current music scene, or is it just something all aging hipsters like myself feel?
• Is it okay if I describe myself as an aging hipster?
• I have eight unspoken for ISBNs and I’m going to use them to publish books by me and my friends. No question here, but if you have suggestions for books I’d like to hear.
• Could it be that the reason the dBs never got any bigger was the lead vocals were never really that powerful, despite the great song writing and arranging?
• You know that very sweet video some teenager made which is just footage of a girl sheepishly walking around a 7-11? And you know how lots of people crapped their pants over it? Am I a dick for thinking that that video is good MOSTLY because it had the good sense to put a good song underneath the footage and that we SHOULD be complimenting the music?
• Anyone know a simpler way to record a podcast than how I’m doing it? I do this: shotgun mikes into a mixer through RCA cables into the “line in” input of a Mac Book Pro into Garage Band. Export as .aiff, edit with Final Cut Pro, export as .aif and use iTunes to change to an mp3. Phew!
• How does Ricky J do anything that he does? Especially the History of Cup and Balls?
• Will we all live to see America be as wonderful as it could be? Or at least to experience hoverboards? How about food pills? Food pills! Food pills!
• Will someone ever dig up a piece of paper that resolves once and for all: who Shakespeare was addressing his sonnets to, what happened to Amelia Earheart, or what Kurt Cobain’s next album would have sounded like?
• What is the scariest short story I could read?
• Will I ever successfully do a Scottish accent on stage? What if I do not wish to put any work or concentration into this task?
• Will I ever live in another city?
• I know I’d prefer invisibility to flying, but how about phasing vs. turning to steel? Emotionally they are similar.
• Will I see Marvel Comics make an original roster of superheros that eclipses the Kirby pantheon? Not that I have anything against the Kirby pantheon, but forty years is a long time to base a company on re-runs.
• Farting, body odor or nose hairs? Which is worse and why?
• That’s it!

When my friend Dave bought all of the Beatles on CD I told him that was ridiculous. Sitting there in his room, he told me to pick any one. I picked ‘Help!’ We sampled each track. First thing that surprised me was how may were already familiar — even the ones whose titles I did not recognize (like “The Night Before” and “You’re Going to Lose That Girl.”).

But it was “I’ve Just Seen A Face” that floored me.

Download audio file (seen_a_face.mp3)

I was stunned at how pretty and simple and good it was. “This isn’t one of their big ones?” I asked. I borrowed the CD and listened to it that night and the next. “It’s Only Love” started to stick with me. I started to wonder — just how many great Beatles were buried on these old albums?

For the next few weeks I kept borrowing the early Beatles albums from Dave, repeatedly shocked at how many great songs were buried in between the titles that I already knew. “There’s A Place”, “Not A Second Time”, “No Reply”, “I’ve Don’t Want To Spoil The Party” — I knew this band was the biggest thing ever, but I had no idea they were actually good. Then I got the later albums. I drove around Danbury, CT at night in my family’s station wagon, with a cassette player in the front seat playing these songs. I can remember exactly where I was when “You Never Gave Me Your Money” came on for the first time — the corner of Old Ridgebury Road and Shadow Lake.

How many people over how many years have gone through their own discovery of these albums? It’s strange to have what feels like a personal connection with such an enormously famous and public entity like The Beatles, isn’t it? It’s like saying your favorite food is sandwiches, and you know how stupid that sounds, so you feel compelled to spend a long time explaining to everyone how you really do love sandwiches and you’re not just saying that — you REALLY GET why sandwiches are so great and simple and elegant.

Everyone likes the Beatles. But I appreciate people who have spent time in their life really falling heads over heels for them. When I was 19 my bedroom looked it was decorated by a 13 year old girl from 1964 — Beatles stuff everywhere. I drove to Strawberry Fields on John Lennon’s birthday at least twice. I bought shitty Paul McCartney singles like “Hope of Deliverance” just to pretend it was a new Beatles song. I bought a book of the logs from Abbey Road studio recording sessions. I saw “Backbeat” in the theaters. I once made a mix tape picking the best songs from John and Paul and George’s first solo albums and pretended it was the next Beatles album they would have made. I went to the Museum of Television and Radio and watched the episode of Nightline that ran the night John Lennon was shot. I knew a girl who told me she once baked cookies that spelled out John Lennon’s name and she would not let anyone else eat them, and I understand that.

I got my first CD player in 1990. These were the first CDs I purchased: Armed Forces by Elvis Costello, They Might Be Giants by They Might Be Giants, and Revolver by The Beatles. I made those choices carefully so I’d be proud to document them 19 years later, and I am.

I get Beatles Rock Band on Monday!

My favorite lesser-known Beatles songs (if there is such a thing) from each album:
Please Please Me – “There’s A Place”
Download audio file (place.mp3)

With The Beatles – “Not A Second Time”
Download audio file (not_second_time.mp3)

Hard Day’s Night – “I’ll Be Back”
Download audio file (be_back.mp3)

Beatles For Sale – “I Don’t Want To Spoil The Party”
Download audio file (spoil_the_party.mp3)

Help! – “I’ve Just Seen A Face”
Download audio file (seen_a_face.mp3)

Rubber Soul – “I’m Looking Through You”
Download audio file (through.mp3)

Revolver – “And Your Bird Can Sing”
Download audio file (bird_sing.mp3)

Sgt. Peppers – “Good Morning Good Morning”
Download audio file (morning.mp3)

Magical Mystery Tour – “Your Mother Should Know”
Download audio file (mother_know.mp3)

Yellow Submarine – “Hey Bulldog”
Download audio file (bulldog.mp3)

White Album – “Cry Baby Cry”
Download audio file (cry_baby.mp3)

Let It Be – “I’ve Got A Feeling”
Download audio file (feeling.mp3)

Abbey Road – “She Came In Through The Bathroom Window”
Download audio file (bathroom.mp3)

Past Masters 1 – “I’ll Get You”
Download audio file (get_you.mp3)

Past Masters 2 – “Rain”
Download audio file (rain.mp3)

This post written thanks to a generous request from DC Pierson.

morning glory’s up there on most british music charts solely because of its cultural significance and its meaning. Definitely Maybe’s a much better album and that and the stone roses would be me favourite albums. British rock music has always been better in me books, whilst American rock music is a poppier, little shithead shadow of British genius. The Who, Oasis, Stone Roses, Small Faces, T Rex, The Jam, The Clash, Sex Pistols, Rolling Stones, Beatles, Pink Floyd, Blur, Ocean Colour Scene, The Smiths, David Bowie, The Jimi Hendrix Experience(yes they were british and remember jimi was a one hit wonder in the us who said he wanted to be buried in london), The Kinks, yardbirds, damned, fall, buzzcocks, joy division, charlatans, primal scream, happy mondays, the specials, madness, cream, kasabian, pulp, slade, the verve, the cure, the beat, steel pulse, selecter, bad manners. radiohead are shit, extremely overrated garbage whos main audience are middle class left of wing artistic tossers who seem to own the media, and these blogs, who’ve never created anything of any cultural significance in the manner morning glory did for 1990s britain, defining an era, which is what you yanks will never get about the album. the byrds, iggy pop, stooges, ramones, grateful dead, bobby dylan, jefferson airplane, 13th floor elevators, pixies, chili peppers, strokes. despite this sprinkling of west coast psychedelia and proto punk with abit of alternative i cant stand american music, just a lame shadow of british. you may have invented rock and roll, but bands like the who, yardbirds, small faces evolved out of mod rnb a reaction against rock n roll, so no they wouldve come about without the primitive version of rock sepos invented. rolling stones were originally a blues band, and most of their first few albums were blues covers(which ill give to you, was influenced by black american blues players) and the beatles out of beat music. You claim to have invented punk, but punk evolved out of the garage scene that bands like the who invented. n u later desecrated with hardcore and tweeny pop punk. british music reigns supreme.

Funny. He even typed out “me” instead of “my.” Is that a joke?

Red Shoes, by Elvis Costello and the Attractions on Top of the Pops, 1977. Probably my favorite of all his songs if I had to pick one. The music is happy and soaring, the lyrics are bitter and self-impressed without being too complicated. Me likes! The first line “I used to be disgusted, now I try to be amused” is an almost-too-on-the-nose description of the philosophy of everyone that I know!

Here’s a fast punky live version from 1978, and then a solo version he did two years ago in Albany.

YouTube had it on my personalized front page and I am now sharing it with you people.

1) My friend Greg Lancaster could reproduce with impressive accuracy Michael Jackson’s dance from the Motown 25th Anniversary show where he did the moonwalk the first time. We had all been about 12 when that special was on and I for one didn’t give a crap about it. Bloom County made fun of Michael Jackson and so therefore so did I. But I guess Greg had been spellbound. In the fall of 1988, during our freshman year at UConn, at a party with people who would become my best friends in the world though at that time they were mere acquaintances, Greg at one point started to do that dance routine. I think it was as a joke at first but quickly became a non-ironic impressive display of a really hard thing. It was a weird but joyful party and the start of four years in which being happy was more important than being cool. The room was going nuts and everyone cheered when he got to the moonwalk. In my mind I made a mental note “A lot of people really like Michael Jackson.”

2) In 1996 my then-girlfriend, who was not a particular music junkie at all, sang with jarring precision Billie Jean. She knew all the background gasps and ooohs and aahs. She was normally a very cool cat, maybe even shy — but at any rate a mellow California girl not given to outbursts of loudly expressed silliness. But we were driving a rickety car from Santa Monica, California to NYC and the stereo flat-out died. Hours later we tried singing songs out loud. She suggested Billie Jean and rocked it out. I made a second mental note “People really remember Michael Jackson.”

3) Yesterday at the UCBT offices as we were hearing the news, my brother Kevin burst in with an amazed expression — like a guy coming into a horror movie to report that the zombies had toppled the statue of the mayor. He had left to go home about five minutes before. “EVERYONE is talking about Michael Jackson outside. I walked by a guy and I just heard him say into his cell phone ‘LaToya’” Even LaToya is on people’s minds. Then I heard that news of Mr. Jackson’s death would be above the fold on the New York Times — a placement normally reserved for heads of state or the results of tragic murders. I thought again “Yep, people really liked Michael Jackson.”

For what it’s worth, there’s no combination of human beings gathered in a group who aren’t glad to hear “Don’t Stop Till You Get Enough.” Here’s the demo version of “Don’t Stop” that Michael recorded with his brothers. It was released on a special version of Off The Wall. an album so good it makes the whole decade of the 70s seem better. This demo is GOOD (doesn’t get going until about :50).

Download audio file (dontstop.mp3)