1998- IN THE AEROPLANE OVER THE SEA

In the days when entire cd collections couldn't fit in the palm of your hand, you had to be careful about choosing the right handful of cds to take on a trip. A flight to another city to train for a new job meant a lot of time alone in a hotel. I wanted a cd to be more like a novel. Something I could really sink my teeth into. Something I could start on the plane and really get into by the time I had to head back.

I had just accepted a job. A big job. Not in a criminal sense, but a job where college was finally going to pay off. I'd go from having a supervisor time my potty breaks to a boss who would phone me once a week to see how things were going. Laptop. Company car. Four state territory. Life was looking up.

Then I got seated in first class. Nice. I'd yet to meet these people that offered me a crucial step in career advancement. I'd charmed the HR person with my cover letter, and gotten through a couple phone interviews. Now I had to fly to Atlanta for training. A couple questions went through my head. Most notably, how did they know I'm not some really freaky looking dude? After all, I was in sales. Image is supposed to be everything. Well, and an ability to schmooze.

First class was great though. I almost didn't want to put my headphones on because I was afraid they'd offer me something and I wouldn't be able to accept it. But I also had a really intriguing album in my bag.

I'd stopped by the Fetus before my trip. I knew exactly what I wanted from a review I read in City Pages. When the guy at the Fetus couldn't find it I was a little surprised. Right before I left another worker overheard him and found a box.

In The Aeroplane Over The Sea by Neutral Milk Hotel. It doesn't exactly roll of the tongue. But I had it in my bag. All I had to do was pull out my Sony Discman, slap on my headphones, and keep an eye on the flight attendant while I slipped what was to become one of my favorite albums of all time into my cd player.

But there were other issues to attend too. The seat next to me was open, which meant I could either remain in my aisle seat, or I could move next to the window and look out at the night sky.

Then there was the issue of beverages. Wine sounded good to me, but I would have to decide which red I'd want to go with. I thought I'd make sure that whatever I selected went well with my dinner, but I knew there'd be a few more cocktails before that happened. I'd like to say I picked out a fine Pinot Noir, but I think I was all about the box wine back then.

Somewhere around 35,000 feet I finally played the album. From the first track I was smitten. "When you were young you were the king of carrot flowers." I had no idea what that meant, but by the time Mom was stabbing Dad with the fork as he threw the garbage on the floor and the narrator was busy hanging out with his girl and discovering what each others bodies were for, I knew I was hearing something profoundly unique.

Then the song cycle explodes. Jeff Mangum screams "I love you Jesus Christ", only this time religion in music doesn't bother me. It seems so sincere it makes me blush.

Death is part of life in some endless cycle. Anne Frank. World War II. Birth. Mutation. Sex. Reincarnation.

It's all too much. I know from this first listen that it'll take me weeks beyond my stay in Atlanta to find all the treasures in this album. Years even. But I knew that a rock record was moving me in ways in which very few did after the 500th or so purchase.

"I'll take the Seafood Primavera."

"And another glass of wine...Merlot. Thanks."

The Hold Steady- Boys And Girls In America

Enough with this bar band shit. Seriously. This band sounds nothing like the type of band you’re likely to encounter if you hit just about any bar in any city. If bar bands sounded like this Top 40 radio would be a beautiful thing, American Idol wouldn’t exist, and we may have even spared ourselves from W (sorry I can’t even type his name anymore without feeling sick).

Can you imagine what it would look like? Every small town would be a ripe scene waiting to explode. It’d be like having a 1959 Liverpool, 1967 San Francisco, 1977 London and 1989 Seattle everyday in every small town. “Good to see you’re back in a bar band, baby.” Yeah, maybe at the type of joint you’d find in Minneapolis in 1984.

The Replacements, Husker Du, and the Minneapolis scene of the early 1980’s feature prominently in the Hold Steady’s approach. Like Westerberg, Craig Finn wouldn’t be in a band if he had nothing to say. Fortunately for us, he’s got plenty to say, but he’s abandoned the unfocused jazz approach the got him so many comparisons to early pre-Born To Run Springsteen albums.

Boys And Girls In America is all about economy. Lead Singer/Lecturer Craig Finn sounds like he’s part of the band instead of competing with them. Gone are the long narratives found on 2004’s Almost Killed Me and especially last years concept heavy Separation Sunday, and in their place are concise rock songs. Most feature pronounced piano and restrained guitar. Some of which Craig Finn even manages to sing on.

The album kicks off with “Stuck Between Stations” and tells an interesting story about the poet John Berryman, Minneapolis and drinking. “He was drunk and exhausted but he was critically acclaimed and respected/He loved the golden gophers but he hated all the drawn out winters”. Alcohol gets the best of him (“he likes the warm feeling but he’s tired of all the dehydration”) before he leaps to his death and drowns in the Mississippi river. Hard lesson. You have to wonder if there isn’t a little band commentary in there.

The album’s other highlights include “Chips Ahoy”, “Massive Nights” and the very Cheap Trickish “Southtown Girls”. Boys And Girls In America’s greatest strengths come with its biggest detours. “Citrus” is a lovely ode to romance and inebriation, and oftentimes the romance of inebriation. Religion creeps its way in as well “I feel Jesus in the tenderness of honest nervous lovers/I feel Judas in the pistols and the pagers that come with all the powders.”

The real highlight is “First Night”. The song is where Craig Finn’s storytelling comes full circle as he resurrects Holly from Separation Sunday. Piano driven with layers of strings and guitars underneath, this song is The Hold Steady as probably nobody could have imagined them just a few years earlier. Indeed, if bar bands sounded like this, it would only be a matter of time before this song would penetrate a prom or two somewhere along the way.

Boys And Girls In America does have a few missteps, most notably “Same Kooks”. Guitarist Tad Kubler is wonderfully restrained on most of the album, but when he lets loose here the song can’t really support it. Elsewhere “You Can Make Him Like You” seems a little pedestrian, and “Chillout Tent” suffers a bit from the guest appearances even if the subject matter and song itself are pretty strong.

But none of that really matters. What really counts here is how brilliant the storytelling and lyrics are on the bulk of the record. Nobody comes close to Craig Finn at his most focused. And there’s plenty of focus here, lyrically and musically. Oh, and it rocks. If only all bar bands were this way.

1997- OK COMPUTER

You look so tired, unhappy

I was dating a flight attendant. Or, a flight attendant wanna-be, anyway. She certainly looked the part. Tall, blonde, well endowed. She was a friend of my roommate’s friend, and we hit it off when the two of them came to visit.

She was living in Chicago while she was in training, and we’d get together at Red Lobsters and TGI Fridays out in the suburbs when I’d come to visit. Our visits were brief, and I’d have to have her back by 1:00 on Sunday afternoons. There would be hell to pay if she was late.

I’d heard the Flight Attendant School horror stories. Makeup that wasn’t put on right, an imperfect walk down the aisle, leaning too close to the “passengers” on the mock jet while serving them drinks, a.k.a. being too fat. These were all reasons for disqualification. And if you were too fat and you showed up late, well, then forget about it.

She wasn’t fat, but she was miserable. She thought she would love taking off and landing all day long and serving drinks, but the pressure was enormous and she was beginning to have her doubts. With almost nothing in common, it was probably the job dissatisfaction that kept us together.

A job that slowly kills you

I worked in the technical service department of a medical products company. Whenever my phone rang I had to diagnose what was wrong with the blood glucose meters that nurses in hospitals across the country were using. There wasn’t a lot of detective work involved. It would come as a complete shock if the call was anything other than the meter showing an “error 1” or an “error 4”. The answer was always the same. We’d send a new meter out, and include a postage label for them to send the old one back.

So I was on autopilot most of the time. For a while the internet saved my brain from turning to mush. Then they blocked it. Which was kind of cool for a while. It gave me a far more engaging challenge. I’d have to find ways to get outside their “intranet”. Once I got to yahoo, I was usually home free. Eventually they caught on and tightened things up further.

Before going to work I started to do a quick surf of my favorite sights, copying and pasting articles I thought might interest me later in the day and then sending them to my work email address. Usually by mid-morning I had exhausted these resources and needed more. Joe came to the rescue.

I’d send him emails with subject lines like “a job that slowly kills you” and describe the torturous environment I spent 8 hours of my day at in which to pay the rent. Whether it was getting too much information about the sex life of my overweight bearing coworker or getting crap from the scientists who worked there for not being scientific like them and earning a better paycheck, Joe was a sympathetic ear.

Bruises that won’t heal

To every “a job that slowly kills you” email I’d send, Joe had a “bruises that won’t heal” response. He had taken a job through a temp service, but the owner of the company sat down with Joe on day one to chat. That had a brief talk where Joe told him that we was “pretty into vinyl” and the guy got excited thinking that Joe knew a thing or two about vinyl siding. Telling Bossman that he had a vintage copy of Ray Charles’ Modern Sounds In Country And Western Music was not the way to ingratiate himself.

Still, Bossman told Joe he didn’t like working with temp services, and that he wanted Joe to be his employee. But Bossman made it clear that he had to pay off the temp service to free Joe of the contract, and he threw the dollar amount in Joe’s face every time he didn’t like what he did, claiming that Joe would owe him that money if he quit or got let go. He told Joe he was grooming him to be a professional and maybe “run the company some day”. He used this excuse to remind Joe to tuck in his shirt like a real man. Or in one case, zip up his zipper.

When Bossman would leave to attend to his other businesses, Joe would do the only thing he could think of to preserve his sanity. He surfed the internet, and often times he’d cut and paste articles he thought might interest me and send them. Music reviews, interviews, political stories, News Of The Weird. Anything was better than my “error 1, error 4” existence.

Phew, for a minute there I lost myself

Joe had a habit of putting the word “the” in front of bands. Wilco became “The Wilco”. Radiohead, “The Radiohead”. It was probably the “The-ing” of Radiohead that kept me from going to see them play at the State Theater with Joe soon after Ok Computer came out. Going to see The Radiohead just didn’t sound all that appealing. That, and the CD had yet to penetrate my every thought and become my soundtrack for a year or two.

My infatuation with Ok Computer began on a Sunday afternoon after the flight attendant girlfriend left to go back to Chicago. Joe was out of town. I sat in my music room where I’d recently demoed some songs and listened to my dubbed copy of Ok Computer over and over again with the afternoon sun shining in on me and a nice breeze blowing through the room. Joe had bought Ok Computer, but I’d made sure to make a copy before he left. With a little alone time to really listen to it, everything clicked. It would be one of the my most played albums. It spoke to me in every sense of the cliche.

Still, I regret not going to that show. I’ve been able to catch some of my favorite bands within a few weeks of getting into them, but this would not be the case with Radiohead. I’d have to wait until the summer of 2001. But when I finally did see them in Chicago’s Grant Park after pretty much giving up on large outdoor shows, it was incredible. Probably the best show on that kind of scale that I’d seen in my life.

1996- BEING THERE

Joe was usually up first. He'd put on a cup of coffee and start playing video games. It was always pretty quiet too. The stereo speakers were routed back to my room where you could switch the sound to play in my bedroom, the living room, or both. So he usually waited until I was up to put any music on.

One time I scared the hell out of him and his cat by turning up my stereo and playing "Hey" by The Pixies. Not the whole song, but just the part where Black Francis shouts "HEY" with no music accompanying him. Joe was like "what the hell". I waited a little while, laughing my ass off, and did it again before he noticed it was me. I felt bad later when he mentioned the scratch marks from his cat.

Joe was pretty good at making coffee. He knew just how to ground the beans and add just the right amount of water to make a pretty mean cup. Cleaning up wasn't as easy for him. Powdered cheese and butter on the counter meant mac and cheese. Red stains on the counter and an open pasta box on the edge of the stove meant spaghetti night. I assisted in the coffee making process by putting the coffee beans and grinder away and wiping the coffee grinds off the counter when I got up an hour or so later.

Joe and I were both really into music, and those late morning weekend hours were crucial times to play records. Plenty of thought would go into what to play. Tom Waits was common. So was The Velvet Underground. We'd sit and drink coffee and chat about how bad our hangovers were or whether or not we were going to go record shopping that day, and if Joe hadn't already made some foul smelling corned beef and hash, we'd talk about getting breakfast.

I was friends with a girl who worked at The Electric Fetus, and she'd given me a promo double vinyl copy of the new Wilco record. I'd seen Wilco open for Pavement the previous year and didn't really notice anything that unique or exciting about them. Most of my time was spent behind the noise barrier at First Avenue talking with friends. Since then "Passenger Side" and "Box Full Of Letters" were getting quite a bit of radio play on REV 105 though, and I'd warmed up to them a little bit. But mostly I was just really intrigued by the Being There album cover.

Featuring a close up shot of someone fretting a chord on the neck of a guitar, it looked vaguely country, and it was a double album. I was always a sucker for the double album.

I think Joe suggested it. He'd probably picked up the record and had the same thoughts. One cold fall morning after Joe cooked up his corned beef and hash and I whipped up an omelet, we put it on.

It began with a slow rumble before quieting down to a strummed guitar. "When you're back in your old neighborhood, cigarettes taste so good, but you're so misunderstood. So misunderstood". I understood the sentiment perfectly. Later Jeff Tweedy mentions a party "we all ought to go to" if you still love rock and roll. If you STILL love rock and roll.

This wasn't a concept album, or worse yet, a "rock opera", but it did have a theme running through it. Unlike AM, which was largely written on the road, and came quickly following the breakup of Uncle Tupelo, Being There was the record where the band's breakup and the bigger questions about living a life on the road in pursuit of rock and roll came into focus. Married with a kid, and a broken up band, Being There is the search for answers to big questions: Does rock and roll mean anything after you get to a certain age? Is it a youthful pursuit? Do family obligations and growing up replace it?

With "Red Eyed And Blue" he's distracted. Drugs, alcohol, recording, missing his girl back home, fatigue. "When we came here today, we all felt something true, but now I'm red eyed and blue."

Later on "Sunken Treasure" he's "maimed by rock and roll", got his "name from rock and roll", and is ultimately "saved by rock and roll."

We sat paralyzed by the record. When we had to switch sides or move to the second disc, it was done swiftly with anticipation. At the end of every side, we wandered how they could maintain what we had just heard.

Somewhere around side three Joe announced that was ready to make the switch from coffee to beer. It was a weekend ritual for him that usually began around noon. Sitting in his rocking chair, stroking his cat and drinking an Old Milwaukee, he nodded his head as the last note of the last song rang out. "Wow." Then I joined him in a beer and we started to talk about it.

A month or so later, Wilco came to town. This time they weren't opening for Pavement though. And I doubt anybody was standing behind the noise barricade talking. It was a cold October night. Jeff Tweedy came out in his pajamas, and the band fed off each other as if their survival depended on it, which they were to eventually find out it did.

Maybe Wilco felt like they really had something to prove by playing multiple versions of "Passenger Side" or The Replacements' "Color Me Impressed". Jay Farrar was probably on his mind as well with the vicious way he sang "Somebody Else's Song". But it was a night where everything worked. A night when you felt like you were part of something bigger. Nobody forgets shows like that.

The band also formed a special bond with Minneapolis. Over the next few years they played First Avenue multiple times, and almost always in October or November. With colder weather came Wilco.

Being There taugh us that rock and roll could mean something. And it was something you didn't outgrow, and it could remain fresh no matter how many shows you'd seen. Which I guess is kind of the point of the album. With Being There, Jeff Tweedy and Wilco gave us a new band to follow, and made us believers again.

1995- ALIEN LANES

April 8, 1995, Saturday morning. I wake up and put on a CMJ music compilation cd with two tracks from a band I'm starting to hear a lot about. The first song I instantly like. It's a 2 minute pop gem called "Motoraway" off their new album, Alien Lanes. The second song is far less likeable, but intriguing just the same. And it set a standard of expectations I’d come to expect from Guided By Voices. For every album of new material there's always a side project or additional ep released within months. In this case it was a boxset of their first four albums and a fifth disc of rarities. True to a lot of their output, the song from the main release was killer. The other, not so bad.

I end up meeting my friend Laura for breakfast. I had the veggie tex mex omelet and it's delicious. The perfect amount of eggs, salsa, sour cream and cheese. The coffee was glorious too. So good in fact, that I decide to get a cup to go so I can sip it as we peruse the aisles of a used book store. I look around for a Martin Amis book a friend recommended, but I can't find it. Besides I'm distracted. "Motoraway" is stuck in my head, and while flipping through City Pages at breakfast I learn that Guided By Voices are playing at the Uptown that night. I want to get to a record store.

I manage to convince Laura to head to Cheapo with me, even though she knows this is likely to be a painfully long experience of watching me endlessly debate which records to get. I tell her it'll be different this time. That I know just what I want. Besides, I think Morrissey has a new album she might be interested in. This does it. She's game.

And there it is. I recognize the art work form the CMJ magazine. It looks great at full size though. I'm especially intrigued by the band photo on the back. They look unified, like they could be living together. Sacrificing a life of women and children for the pursuit of rock and roll.

I loved the title. And 30 some songs. Then a boxset to devour when I was done, as well as a little record called Bee Thousand. Wow. I always loved it when I got into a band that had a whole back catalog to discover. The problem is, as you get more and more into music, the slew of rock and roll bands with a deep catalog you haven’t already pined gets smaller and smaller. Guided By Voices were fertile ground.

Laura and I sit on her front steps and drink the remains of our coffee. "This band is playing tonight," I say as I check out the album artwork, "if I really like this album, I'm going to go see them."

Back at my apartment I'm pleased that my roommate is gone. This is not unusual though. He went out all the time, and I often had the huge plush couch, vintage lamps, funky tables and 50's kitsch all to myself. The only time he was really around was when Star Trek–The Next Generation was on. He watched that intently and then usually went out. It was great having a gay roommate.

Disarm the settlers
The new drunk drivers
Have hoisted the flag
We are with you in your anger
Proud brothers
Do not fret, the bus will get you there yet
To carry us to the lake
The club is open
Yeah, The club is open
Hey, the club is open
A-come on, come on, the club is open
C'mon, c'mon, the club is open
C'mon, c'mon, c'mon, the club is open...

Oh, dear God. Let me in the club. Let me in. Let me in. Let me in. What is this? Some long lost Kinks or Who album from the 60’s? How many vocalists are there? Why does it sound so lo-fi? What’s in the water in Dayton, Ohio?

One song after another I’m bombarded by fragments that blend into a whole and perfect little pop tunes that lack any trace of studio wankery and endless noodling. The average song length is about a minute and a half. And it’s fucking perfect.

Nothing was going to stop me from seeing that show. I made a few calls and tried to recruit some friends to go, with no luck. No problem, I had just heard one of the best rock albums I’d heard in ages. I’d jump over the bouncer if I had to. Or sneak in through the kitchen door. Whatever it took.

But Guided By Voices just weren’t that big then. I got there halfway through the opening band and had no problem getting in. Positioning myself in front of the stage, about 5 rows back, I awaited for my future rock gods to emerge.

The singer introduced his props right away. Budweiser in one hand, cigarette in the other. A cooler of refreshments never far from reach. Animated and full of facial tics, and microphone jabs and twirls, this was like seeing Roger Daltrey and the Who back when they were just The Who. Lean and mean, but without all the opera. One of Guided By Voices bootlegs was called The Who Went Home and Cried. I was beginning to understand why.

“You’re all good kids….you kids wanna hear another one?” It’s not everyday a singer talks of teaching fourth graders and affectionately calls you kids. Not just kids, but “good kids”.

It was all part of the mystique, but it wasn’t crafted by the marketing department of their record label. A bunch of 30-somethings from a small town had been playing rock and roll in their basements and issuing home recordings for years. Now they’d quit their full time jobs to embrace rock and roll. No pretty boy haircuts and designer clothes. This was real rock with real stories behind it. Shoe gazer rock died upon impact.

I knew it that night. I’d see this band every single time they came to any city I happened to be living in. Over the next several years I saw them countless times, often on the same tour. They’d bombard you with the new material (“you’ll be screaming for this shit later this year”) and then get to the classics. Guided By Voices shows became an event. Rock and roll had rarely been this consistently good, and this much fun.

Unlike some other Guided By Voices records, the songs from Alien Lanes don’t sound as good when they’re taken out of context from the record. It’s those little 45 second fragments and weird interludes that make the record. I’m not sure I want to hear “A Salty Salute” without “Evil Speakers” following it. Or “Motorway” separated from “Auditorium”.

It’s hard to imagine rock and roll without Guided By Voices. They lived out the fantasy that many of us hold on to long after our early 20’s pass us by. Through endless writing and recording, they eventually stepped out of the basement and gave us all something to believe in. It’s usually “I Am A Scientist” from Bee Thousand that gets the most applause when done live:

I am a lost soul
I shoot myself with rock & roll
The hole I dig is bottomless
But nothing else can set me free

Robert Pollard speaks the truth. And he’s probably sitting at his kitchen table, or maybe his rock and roll toilet somewhere scrawling the next rock and roll epic for his “good kids”. More likely, he finished one before breakfast and is at work on the followup. We wouldn’t want it any other way from Uncle Bob.

1994- CROOKED RAIN, CROOKED RAIN

Pavement could have been huge. They made mistakes. They were either too eclectic (Wowee Zowee) or they went too soft and got a little boring (Brighten The Corners). But on 1994's Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain, they made about as perfect of a rock and roll album as you could find.

I always meant to pick up Slanted and Enchanted. The Spins and Rolling Stones were calling it one of the best indie albums, but I never got around to picking it up. I don't even know if I heard a note. But the buzz had been created. My ears were wide open when their second record started to get some airplay.

Not that I can remember hearing it on the radio, although Rev 105 was around then, so it was a distinct possibility. I do remember seeing "Cut Your Hair" on MTV and thinking it was about the coolest song I'd ever heard.

What I wasn't prepared for was what a cohesive whole the album was. From "Silence Kit" to "Filmore Jive', this was a complete album. Full of weird interludes and detours, the album featured some of the best pop songs you'd ever want to hear. But unlike Slanted and Enchanted, this wasn't four track first take kind of stuff. This album sounded good. Like they meant it. "Gold Sounds" and "Range Life", with the Smashing Pumpkins and Stone Temple Pilots jabs were perfect slices of pop nirvana.

And of course we couldn't forget Nirvana. It was sort of an all consuming thing in 1994. Kurt Cobain was dead. A lot of us identified with him. He seemed to have everything any of us would ever want (except Courtney Love), and now he was dead. Yeah, those were some heavy times.

But Pavement had none of that heaviness, and I think that's what made them so attractive. Malkmus was the ultimate slacker. He didn't give a shit about talking about childhood abandonment issues or eating fish because they don't have any feelings. No, he sang silly little songs about range rovin' with the cinema stars and hoping that his girl wouldn't go and get her hair chopped off.

But those silly songs were so fucking great. It becomes even more apparent how great the album is when you listen to early takes of the songs. As essential as Slanted and Enchanted- Luxe and Reduxe was to any serious Pavement fan for its inclusion of tracks previously found only on hard to find eps and singles, the 2004 reissue of Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain isn't quite as rewarding. Once you hear the early versions of the songs that ended up on Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain you realize that these guys aren't just a bunch of slackers who got lucky in the studio. This album took a great deal of craft. And they captured it on these 12 tracks. The reissue is interesting, but we don't need 37 additional tracks to remind us how great Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain is.

Wowee Zowee took care of that.

Ok, I can't end there. Wowee Zowee isn't a bad album. It's just not a Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain, Then again, few albums are.

1993- TRANSMISSIONS FROM THE SATELLITE HEART

In 1993 Bill Clinton took office. He was the first president I voted for, and since I was too young to really remember Jimmy Carter, he was the first Democratic president for me. My memories consisted of Reagan and Bush. Clinton was a voice of change. It felt like things could happen now–like the youth had spoken to an extent and I was part of it.

I was living at home. I decided to take a semester off from school, and I pretty much vowed that I wouldn't go back to Whitewater. I'd had my fill. It was time for a change, but I wasn't ready to take any radical steps.

I listened to a lot of Tom Waits. Bone Machine was in my cd player for most of the year. My room was below the living room and my mom would ask me who the guy with gravely voice was, and I'd tell her. "I kind of like him," she'd say, "that I don't wanna grow up song should be your theme song."

I'll never forget my Dad's reaction when I brought home The Black Rider. It was one of the rare times when I asked my parents if they minded if I put something on. The Black Rider begins with this circus noise and Tom coming in with a megaphone screaming "ladies and gentleman under the big top tonight, we have...". My Dad puts down his paper and looks at me and says "I don't know how you can listen to this. You call this music?" Sure, I'd long given up the Metallicas and Iron Maidens, and I choose this album to play in front of him? Of all albums, of all of Tom's albums, The Black Rider? It was too perfect.

I worked at this factory that made playground equipment for kids. Plastic slides and swings that came with plans to build a structure to attach them to. You had to look busy all the time. You could sweep the floor ten times and the employees would still get nervous and the supervisor would tell us to look busy. Everyday the temp service would send in new people and the boss guy would go around and fire people who looked lazy. If you weren't moving when he came around, you were a goner. Apparently the temp service owned the factory.

You couldn't smoke there either. If they caught you smoking, even in your car on the way out of the parking lot, you were fired. Punching in was a problem too. If you punched in a minute or two late, they weren't too happy. But if you punched in too early you'd also hear about it. So there was a huge line of people waiting to punch in at exactly six am. And if you were slow, the guy behind you would give you crap. It was a cold dark winter. I wanted to take a Sharpie and write the words "help me" on one of the slides. I'd imagine this perfect scene of a suburbanite dad putting together a swing set for his kids and seeing my unexpected plea.

After helping to fund the city of Whitewater with the finest in police vehicles, SWAT teams and ammo, I finally turned 21. No more hiding in dryers and refrigerator boxes. No more sucking on a penny and praying that it would work this time. No more visits to a lawyer's office in an attempt to be the one guy who would finally stand up to the injustice of not being able to drink a beer at the age of 20. No more of any of that. But at 21 I hardly cared. I was burned out and sick of it. All it really meant for me was that I could finally serve alcohol without supervision at the bar I was working at.

Hotheaded owner aside, the bar job was pretty cool, and it didn't take long before I was bar manager and was pretty much running the place. It brought a sense of freedom and built my confidence up, even though I couldn't use it on any of the customers. Nobody under 40 ever set foot in there, and if they did, it wasn't to sit at the bar.

Mary used to come in and order gin martinis every afternoon around three o'clock. I'd pour her one and she'd nurse it down. I'd hand her another one and reach for ice cube remains of her old glass and she'd slap my hand. "I'm not done with that." I'd watch her suck those ice cubes past her false teeth and suck each one of them dry and spit it back in her highball. Sometimes she did it twice before letting me take the glass.

Then there was this guy named Chuck. He sold real estate, and he was the sleaziest old guy I'd ever met. Every other word that came out of his mouth was "pussy". It wasn't the word itself, but how he said it. He made it sound like the vilest thing on earth. I didn't like the way he ate his ruebens either.

Maureen and Dave were a cute couple. At 70-something years old, they'd been coming to the bar since it opened. Everyday. Without fail. She had a several glasses of White Zin after an initial martini. He loved his manhattans. I never thought about cutting them off even though they had four or five of them. They were like grandparents. They probably drove like grandparents too, only loaded. I tried not to think about that.

The summer was winding down and I remembered something. I had been accepted at the University of Minnesota. I'd applied almost a year earlier, but I was good to go if it was something I wanted to do. I knew I was never going back to Whitewater, and I feared if I didn't make a change I'd be stuck in Janesville. I was really curious about Minneapolis too, ever since I got into Prince and The Replacements. I thought the city would be purple.

I moved to Minneapolis in the fall. For a couple weeks I don't think I talked to a soul. School hadn't started. I was alone if my one room apartment. Or at least I thought I was alone. Wake up in the middle of the night and turn on the light, and the roaches told a different story.

One day the cable guy knocked on my door. It was so nice to interact with a fellow human being, so I let him talk me into one of his special introductory packages. This was the Paragon cable days. Back before all of the cable mergers happened. I ended up getting all the basic cable channels plus a DMX music tuner with over 100 cable music channels. The remote would list each artist, song title, album and label the song could be found on. I set it to the alternative/college rock channel.

This song came on that I had never heard. I instantly loved it. It was so poppy. So positive. It made me forget about the creepy guy down the hall who I thought was chasing me up the stairs one night. It made me ignore the roaches and not think too much about the Murphy bed and everybody who slept on it and the bathroom I shared with the guy next to me and how I had to knock to see if he was in there. It made the 100-degree room seem tolerable and the showers I'd rig up in the bathtub and the hose that would usually explode when I had shampoo in my hair and soap all over my body not seem so bad. It gave me hope that maybe this was a just a temporary funk and that school would be starting soon and I'd meet new people and would look back on this time as a defining moment in my life.


Flaming Lips
"Turn It On"
Transmissions From The Satellite Heart
Warner Brothers Records

1992- AUTOMATIC FOR THE PEOPLE

I can't listen to Automatic For The People with other people around. I don't like to hear it on the radio. And it's the most popular, and therefore most overplayed, record of one of my favorite bands.

Yet I love this record.

It came to me at a very dark time. I was halfway through college, directionless, and searching for some answers. I may not have found the answers I was looking for, but Stipe was at least asking some of the same questions.

Lacking the choppiness of either of its major label predecessors, 1988's Green or 1991's Out Of Time, Automatic For The People fulfilled the promise first heard on early I.R.S. albums like Reckoning and Fables Of The Reconstruction. Intense, personal, organic, mellow. This was the 'little band from Athens that could' operating on the world stage, but not sounding like they knew that's where they were.

I caught my first glimpse of the album cover on the back of Billboard magazine in my college library. The unassuming album cover seemed a sharp contrast from the brash Our Of Time cover. In small print at the bottom of the ad were three words: Still no tour.

At the height of their popularity R.E.M. did what few bands had done since the Beatles. They said goodbye to the road. And it's a good thing they did. Coming just a year and a half after Out Of Time, Automatic might never have happened if R.E.M. had undergone a world tour. The last single off of Out Of Time had barely left the charts at the time of Automatic's release.

I was eagerly anticipating this record, but knew very little about it other than the single, "Drive". I had a friend who was working at the campus radio station. He knew what a big fan I was and brought over the only copy of the CD in the city to my apartment three days before it came out. I listened to it and was blown away by the time I got to the second song. R.E.M. had produced a classic. A masterpiece. A record that could stand along side the works of the masters.

I haven't listened to Automatic For The People in a couple years. Maybe even three or four. It remains an intensely personal album for me, and I know a time will come when I'll need something from it, and I'll find it. Some albums are like that. It may not be the most played R.E.M. album for me, or even my favorite, but it occupies a space that very few albums fill. A timeless place. A place I don't want obscured by over familiarity or too much repetition.



*Automatic For The People is best served in the dark. Alone. With a bottle of wine. On a cold autumn night.

Bob Dylan's Modern Times

Bob Dylan has a new album and it's quite good. Much more in the vein of "Love and Theft" than Time Out Of Mind, this seems, as Dylan explained to Jonathan Lethem in his recent Rolling Stone interview, more like the 2nd part of a trilogy that started with "Love and Theft" than the final installment. The only thing the Modern Times really seems to share with Time Out Of Mind is the quality of the material.

Modern Times arrives at a time when Dylan's public and critical esteem is at a high not seen since the mid-seventies, and if the album suffers at all, it is because of this. We've come to expect a masterpiece instead of being pleasantly surprised when he delivers a listenable album. The 80's were not so kind to Dylan. For every Infidels and Oh Mercy, there was a Knocked Out Loaded or Down In The Groove. Inconsistency became the rule. A career renaissance began in the early 90's with his back to back folk albums, but he wasn't fully thrust back into the public limelight when his near-fatal heart problem became public. His recovery came in every sense of the word later that year with Time Out Of Mind.

With five or six years between albums, Dylan's not the most prolific artist these days. Although it's not because he hasn't been busy. Between "Love and Theft" and Modern Times he wrote a book, starred in Masked And Anonymous and contributed interviews to No Direction Home, and hosted a weekly radio show. His never-ending tour is still going.

Modern Times has a gently easy going vibe to it. Some of these songs wouldn't sound out of place on early 70's albums like New Morning or Planet Waves, or maybe even Street Legal. Modern Times has some of the longest songs Dylan has ever put out. With just 10 songs, the album clocks in at over 62 minutes. Brevity is not one of his common traits, and while the songs may initially seem to drag on for a bit, repeated listens warrant the extra verses. Lyrics jump out. Guitar parts leap from the speaker. Carefully produced by the bard himself, Modern Times sounds sublime.

His voice is rough in spots and drops off in others. "Thunder On The Mountain" contains several lyrics where Dylan's voice sounds like an engine being reved up at the end of the lines. "Spirit On The Water" almost requires a volume adjustment to catch what he's saying at certain points. Beyond this, his voice is quite good. Smoother than it's been in ages, and stripped of the production that dominated Time Out Of Mind, Dylan sounds like he's in the room with us, the audience. The band is playing quietly. The drummer uses brushes. Dylan's voice is front and center.

Like most classic Bob Dylan records, the more you listen to them the more the lyrics come out. Dylan seems to have a lot on his mind even if he is sometimes characteristic's vague. "Some lazy slut has charmed away my brains", he sings on "Rollin' And Tumblin' and he wants some woman to do just what he says in "Thunder On The Mountain", yet "When The Deal Goes Down", "Spirit On The Water" and "Beyond The Horizon" rank up there with Dylan's most sincere love songs.

Dark times are on his mind as well. Dylan takes on social issues in "Workingman Blues #2", and there's more than a hint of Katrina in "The Levee's Gonna Break", but his most profound statements come with the album's closing song, "Ain't Talkin".

In the human heart an evil spirit can dwell/ I am tryin' to love my neighbor and do good unto others/ But oh, mother, things ain't going well

His "heart is burning. He's "still yearning" as he walks "through the cities of the plague." The song echoes "Desolation Row" from Highway 61 Revisited. Just comparing a song from the 65 year old's new album to one of his classics would be plenty of praise. But this album stands on its own. Like "Love and Theft" and Time Out Of Mind, Modern Times ranks up there with his some of his finest recordings. And even though the album often sounds like it's from 1945 or 1952, Dylan brings it all home to the 21st century, a new album for modern times.

1991- NEVERMIND

1991. The Year Punk Broke. Or, more appropriately, The Year Assholes Started Listening To Better Music and Neil Young Became Fashionable. From all of the media coverage then and now, you'd think that 1991 was akin to 1968 or 1977. You'd think that there was this massive youth movement that everyone felt part of. Boy meets girl in their flannel shirts and move towards a grunge utopia where we'd elect a new President a year later put an end to conservative politics and Bush administrations for good. Yeah right.

I bought Nevermind in the fall of 1991. A friend of mine had played Bleach a few times and was talking about how great this upcoming album was going to be. I respected his opinion, and picked it up soon after it came out.

I bought Pearl Jam's Ten right around the same time. That one didn't last long at all. In fact I think I might have sold it back to buy Nevermind. I didn't really start to like the band until I saw them on Lollapalooza in 1992, but even then, my fandom was short lived. There weren't enough pearls in the jam.

But Nevermind. I remember liking some songs, but I couldn't understand why it had such a glossy polish on it. Kurt Cobain later said it was mastered wrong and ended up sounding like a Motley Crue record. I knew exactly what he meant and it was my main stumbling block with the record. It was probably the main reason why I shelved the record so soon after I purchased it.

This is how "grunge” arrived for me: One day I come home from class and the guy down the hall stops playing Def Leppard in mid-song. Cuts it right off. I don’t think too much about it, because I'm pretty sure that some metal meal ala "Cherry Pie" or a Van Halen "Poundcake" is about to be served. But there’s a moment of silence. Probably just long enough to take the cellophane off the CD. Then a familiar riff, big drums, and then everything gets quiet for a mumbled verse. Nirvana. "Smells Like Teen Spirit". Not the album, but just that song. Exclusively. Over and over again. The new Def Leppard had arrived.

So I shut my door and put on some Dinosaur Jr.

Truth be told, I spent a lot more time listening to and dissecting Achtung Baby than Nevermind that year. Lots more time. I’d always had a love/hate relationship with U2. They put out an album and I'd listen to it religiously, but by the time they went on tour their non-stop opinionating on everything imaginable, including religion, would drive me nuts. Too much Bono in the media. It's the reason I never saw them live.

Achtung Baby was a fascinating record though, and it more than made up for Rattle and Hum. It redefined U2 in a way nobody probably thought would be imaginable. It made them dark, somewhat dangerous, and definitely more of a rock band. Gone were the photo shoots of Irish castles, Joshua Trees and a stately looking rock band. This U2 had balls, and as overplayed as that record would become, I could still put it on and enjoy it today.

But Nevermind? It was everywhere, and it all seemed kind of silly. This wasn't a revolution as much as a progression. Kurt Cobain would dye his hair fuchsia and smash his guitar on Saturday Night Live, but anybody with a sense of rock history had seen those moves before.

Nevermind didn't do much for me at the time. Incesticide sparked new interest in them for me because it had a rawness and seemed like punk rock instead of this media phenomenon. But I wouldn't really get into Nevermind until In Utero came out. That was the Nirvana album that really won me over. Angry. Passionate. Haunting. Raw. It was everything that Nevermind was supposed to be.

Every rock-obsessed teenage kid has a band that kicks things wide open for them. For millions of kids it was Nirvana, but they were only the latest in a long line of inspiring bands. Big record labels had signed underground bands long before Nirvana. Husker Du, The Replacement, Sonic Youth and Soul Asylum all had major label contracts going back as far as 1985. College radio had existed for years. Labels like "alternative rock”, "independent rock” and "alternative" had been around for eons as well. Nirvana helped define a new market and give birth to a slew of imitators. They gave us "Grunge". Whatever that means.

And most of their listeners had no idea what Kurt was talking about. Nevermind was popular on the same level that made "Every Breath You Take” and "The One I Love” love songs for 80's proms and "Born In The USA" a re-election campaign song for Ronald Reagan.

Revolution doesn't come easy.

1990- ALL SHOOK DOWN

It's 1990. I'm 18 years old. I finished up high school and headed into college that fall. Much of the year was spent listening to Jane's Addiction and eagerly anticipating their Ritual De Lo Habitual album. I obsessed over that thing. When the single came out I had one of the most perfect listening experiences of my life. The American flag is coming down in a violent rainstorm. Through the rear view mirror of my car I can see a Perkin's employee trying to hoist the flag up as the tension mounted in the song and Perry Farrell screamed "erotic Jesus!". Yeah, that kind of shit is pretty bad ass when you're 18.

It's kind of hard to look back at Jane's Addiction now through the same lens. Perry's pretty much turned into a clown, and don't even get me started on that reunion record. But in 1990. Wow. Unstoppable. Rock and roll hadn't seen such a provocative frontman since Mick Jagger.

The full length record came out in the middle of my psychedelic summer. I was trying my best to "turn the 90's on their head" and recreate the 60's. Those words are Wavy Gravy's, but I got them off the Ben and Jerry's ice cream flavor.

Candles. Incense. Confused kids and drugs. That's what I remember about Ritual De Lo Habitual. Madison, WI. State Street. We all bought the album at midnight and then listened to it all night long. We thought we could find the inner workings of the universe through that record. "Been Caught Stealing" sort of interrupted that process.

I can't remember the last time I listened to that record. I doubt it's aged too well. Although I can envision a time in the near future when I'll light the candles and incense and get to know Viola, Casey and the erotic Jesus all over again.

A far more enduring album for me from 1990 is The Replacement's All Shook Down. The perfect college band kick started my college life with that record. I'd checked out Please To Meet Me from the library when I was in high school, and I'd seen the video for "I'll Be You" on MTV and loved it, and I borrowed a cassette copy of "Don't Tell A Soul", but as a freshman in college in 1990, I'd yet to actually purchase a Replacements album.

It was the single that got me. "Merry Go Round" is just such a perfect song, and a great way to kick of the album. "A hush is the first word you were taught..." Paul Westerberg sucks you in and immediately lets you know that this isn't going to be a party record. This isn't going to be another batch of songs about drinking red wine and Tommy getting his tonsils out and Gary popping a boner, as if any Replacement's record was really that simple. No, this is the flipside to all of that. It's the next day. You're an alcoholic. Your personal relationships are shattered and your band is breaking up. "Now is nothing like when it began".

Images are so profound on that album. Even on the sleeve itself. "Have you seen lucky?" it says on the back of the record. Some flyer stapled to a telephone pole. Inside there are pictures of empty bars, full ashtrays and abandoned beer glasses. And of course, Paul. He's disheveled and lost in thought. On the front of the album we see two wet dogs, looking sad and hungry and facing opposite directions. Nothing is working anymore.

Lyrically the album is a feast. "Popcorn for dinner last night it was cheesecake, a little sleepy-time tea spiked with another heartache." "Still in love with nobody, and I won't tell nobody." "Well you got your father's hair and you got your father's nose but you got my soul."

The previous album, Don't Tell A Soul, was a glossy attempt at commercial radio. It had some good songs, but a lot of it was a mess. All Shook Down was sort of a back to basics record, even if the band was hardly involved. Considered by some to be Westerberg's first solo album ,the record's liner notes even suggest this. "The musicians who played on this recorded thing include:" Among the 15 names are John Cale, Johnette Napolitano and Benmont Tench, right alongside the names of Tommy Stinson, Chris Mars and Slim Dunlap.

You get the sense that Paul just wanted to get it right this time. It's a sad record with it's share of flaws. "My Little Problem" would be the only song I'd yank, but it provides such a sharp transition to "The Last" that its inclusion is necessary.

"You been swearing to God, now maybe if you'd ask, that this one be your last". It was the last. No more Replacements albums came after this one. And for a long time, no more drinks for Westerberg. But it was the beginning of a long relationship with the band for me. Within weeks of buying All Shook Down I found like-minded fans in the dorms. One of the best uses of a Maxell XLII 100 minute tape was my Let It Be/Tim/Stink Replacements compilaton. I wore that thing out. Loved it. Still do, though I play the records individually now.

14 Songs was a shock for me when it came out in 1993. I could sum it up in one line, "I miss the hurt." All Shook Down was full of it. And some fans didn't care for it. But it was real. 10 years on the road had taken their toll, and Paul Westerberg had documented it. The party was over.

soundtrack of my life- 1990's

Pitchfork recently made a list of the 200 best songs of the sixties. A monumental task, I'm sure. I can't imagine undertaking it. I didn't grow up in the sixties, and I would certainly forget a bunch of important songs. Still, it is great to read a list like that. I just wish it came with a giant downloadable file of all the songs.

I was at the Bottle Rockets show last night at the 400 Bar. Midway through the set I started compiling my own list in my head. Not of sixties songs, but of nineties albums. Maybe it was the beer or the company I was with. Or maybe it was my 1993 pick I listened to on the way, but I was able to focus there for about a half hour and figure out what my list will look like. Now all I have to do is write it down.

The journey begins sixteen years ago. But I'm not getting started on it until this hangover recedes.

Hotter Than Hell

So I'm getting ready to go out of town. And it's hot. I mean it's beyond hot. Wear black outside for five minutes and it really does feel like you could catch fire. Or that fireballs will come raining from the sky at any moment. Maybe that would be a good thing. It would be pretty hard to argue against global warming if fireballs poured out of the sky.

I go the dry cleaners to see if they'll do some emergency cleaning for me. I have some nice shirts that I'd like to wear on my trip to Chicago. Problem is, they've been lying in a dry cleaning bag since at least last summer. Too lazy and cheap to clean them I guess. Or I've had such casual jobs I've gotten by with just a tshirt over the last couple summers. Anyway, I was determined to look my best so I thought I'd get these shirts cleaned.

The place across the street from my place says they have to ship everything out, and there's no way they can deliver them the same day. I figured as much. Very few dry cleaning places are going to deliver on the same day. Buy hey, worth a shot. And it turns out it's not a completely wasted venture. She tells me to try the place down the street. They do all of their dry cleaning on site and may be able to turn it around the same day.

I procrastinate. I sit in my air conditioning. I surf the internet. I make some lunch. A few hours later I get in my car and go to the other dry cleaning place. Upon walking in the door I feel like I'm going to die. It must be 120 degrees in there. A fan is on the floor and it's blowing behind me. It's hotter than hell. It's as if Gene Simmons is lapping at my legs with that long tongue of his and breathing his fire breath on me. Unbearable. I step out of the way of the fan. It's making things worse. I want to bolt.

An Indian woman comes out with the full headdress and gown on. She's dripping with sweat. I ask her if there's any way she can turn around an order for a couple shirts on the same day and she says no. Or more accurately she says "it's hot." When I ask her when she could get them done she repeats "It's hot." Then she says that she sent the guy that does the irons home. "Tomorrow...hot too.'

I feel like a jerk. This lady could die trying to get my shirts done for me. And if she did them for me I'd probably want them ironed too. Oh, I'm a bastard. So I leave and tell her to try to stay cool, and I head for Target. Maybe Dryell will do the trick. So what if it really doesn't do jack for stains. At least nobody dies.

Excuse me, but you owe me 3/10 of a cent!

I'm not one to bitch about gas prices, even when they get pretty high. When I'm on a road trip people often ask about gas prices in different cities I've passed through. Until recently I seldom paid attention. I have to use gas, and it's pretty much regulated, so what's the point in using mental energy to keep track of a couple cents difference.

$40 is a big chunk of change to fill up my sedan. Nobody's humping my hummer. My car is fairly eco-friendly. At least by US standards. But when I cross that $40 mark I start to pay a little attention. On a recent trip to Chicago it the lowest I saw was $3.09 in Minneapolis and Wisconsin and the highest I saw was $3.39 in downtown Chicago. But I'm neglecting something when I mention these prices and that is the .9 that's attached to each of them.

How is it that we allow the oil industry to attach an extra .9 to every gallon of gas we buy? Maybe this extra little perk explains some of those record profits. They've had us conditioned to look the other way every time we go to the pump. Was it the original Superman where some huge corporation was stealing a penny from everybody's paycheck? I wish I could add $.00.9 to every hour of my goods and services.

People are talking about how we should get rid of the penny because it costs more to produce it than what it's worth. I say we abolish the tenth of a penny. Or at least start going into gas stations and ask for the remaining 10ths of a cent that's owed to you. Hey, gas is expensive. You have to keep your eye on these things.

library of thoughts

Minneapolis has a new library and I could not be more impressed. I'm not even a library kind of guy. I check out a book and I only return it three years later when I move and it's under my bed hiding place is discovered. But I vow to make things different this time.

Well, amazing how fast things change. I type that sentence while I'm sitting in comfy leather chair in the Dunn Bros portion of the library. Let It Be by The Beatles was playing. Now it's Air Supply. Or at least I think it's Air Supply. "Here I am, the one that you love...asking for another day...understand the one that you love loves you in so many ways..." Jesus. Terrible.

But I'm not going to let that cloud my judgment of the new library. I can't. The place is just too cool. And very forgiving. My county library books that I just returned after having for two years didn't show up on their system. Lucky break. Instead I owed $16 for assorted fines. They let me pay just one dollar to get me below the $15 limit and scanned my book and sent me on my way.

I got the book I wanted to get too. I'd mention the book but I don't want Farmer Drew to fling poo at it before I get through the first chapter. There's something really reassuring about getting just the book you want. Half the time I leave the library with a stack of books that never get read. The reasons often that there was never a pressing need to get the book in the first place. Not the case with this one.

Oh and this place has a pretty good selection of cds and dvds too. I've been watching too much tv and swapping an absurd amount of music. So I really don't need that kind of media right now.

It's some light pop station. Now there's a commercial for discounted pet prescriptions.

I should probably mention the architecture of this building. Pretty sharp building. It's about 5 stories tall and very open. There's a huge open space running from the front of the building to the back, and lots of natural light shines through. You can enter on Hennepin and exit on Nicollet. It also has plenty of rooms to rent for group meetings. As I write I'm looking out 30 foot tall windows to a brick patio with metal tables and chairs. It's nice. It's hip. Too bad the music sucks. I guess that's what the ipod is for.

Okay...there's another problem I'm having with this place. But maybe it's a good one for the kids. I just tried searching for an image of this lovely library and my search was blocked. I guess image searches are strictly forbidden. I just hope the banning of content doesn't extend to the shelves.

But hey, free wi-fi at a library. Big, comfy chairs. Great coffee. Several bars on the cell phone. Not bad for a virtual office.

And now they're playing "Daydream Believer". Ahhh...I kind oflike this song. Sort of makes me smile.

(wow I can't even use spell check in here. Are they afraid kids are going to look up the definitions of cuss words???)

Let it rain. Let it rain. Let it rain. Seriously, I don't care if it rains like this for seven days straight. It's such a nice change of pace. There's something about endless summer weather that really starts to get to me. Especially when you have to run the air conditioning incessantly and keep the blinds closed to keep the sun from heating the place up. I'll take a good thunderstorm any day.

Then there's the cabin-like feeling of turning on warm lights on a dark day. It makes me want to read a novel or write a song. Maybe start my own book-in-progress. Creativity flows. It's not stagnated by shorts and t-shirts. Wearing long pants seems to do wonders for ideas.

I took an umbrella on my morning appointment today. It's been a long time since I've done that. It was nice. It made me feel important. I'm protecting my head from the skies because, at least today, it is full of ideas. We're operating on all cylinders baby.

shine on you crazy diamond

Roger "Syd" Barrett is dead. Any hopes of the biggest comeback in rock and roll history have now been extinguished. There will be no Pink Floyd reunion or Rolling Stone interview with the famous recluse. All we have is grainy You Tube videos and tributes like Wish You Were Here. Oh, and of course, some amazing recordings of Syd: Pink Floyd's Piper At The Gates Of Dawn and Syd's solo albums, The Madcap Laughs and Barrett.


People like to talk about the age of 27. Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, and then later, Kurt Cobain all died at that age. It's sad that those careers ended so early, but Syd's case is more heartbreaking. Imagine seeing the band that you started turn into one of the most successful bands in rock and roll history while you stay at your mother's flat and lose contact with the world. Too far gone to fit into society. Robyn Hitcock said it better in his song "1974":

Syd Barrett's last session, he can't sing anymore
He's gonna have to be Roger now for the rest of his life

Painting and classical music became his thing. But one of his nieces was interviewed several years back and said that she remembered Syd picking up the guitar occasionally. Maybe the best we can hope for is some basement tapes from the man. Some long lost recordings that verify that maybe he was alright. That he got better and chose to stay away. That maybe he had some choice in the matter.

I wonder what he painted?

Goodbye Syd.

Think Globaly, Drink Locally?

Al Gore wouldn't like Hennepin Lake Liquors, and I don't like it either. First off, they don't take credit cards. It's 2006, and they act like it's 1969. Checks are okay. Of course. Like I carry those around.

Secondly, they close at 8pm on weekdays. The laws changed recently to allow liquor stores to stay open until 10pm, so why doesn't this liquor store stay open for a couple more hours? You'd think they'd increase their profits. I went to the door yesterday at 8:10, looked inside, and practically got scolded by the cashier for even attempting to try the door.

Which brings me to Al Gore. I'm not going to go on and on about why everyone should see An Inconvenient Truth, but surely people can relate to the absurdity of having to get in your car and burn precious fossil fuels to get a six pack of beer when you live right in the heart of your city. Nightclubs are pumping. 20-something's are everywhere. But I can't take home some beer. It's absurd. It's the equivalent of restaurants closing at 7pm. Sorry folks, you didn't hear the dinner bell at 5:30, I guess you don't get to eat. Or, well I guess you can eat here, but don't even think about taking that food home.

I hate liquor laws to begin with, but this is ridiculous. I've left 6-packs of 3.2 beer at convenience store counters when I suddenly realize where I live and what laws we're dealing with. And it's not like I'm an alcoholic. We're talking one beer, but damn it, I wanted that beer. And I wanted it at home, at full strength, and not sitting in some bar. I can't pet my cat and read a book at a bar. It just doesn't work like that.

Well, goodbye Hennepin Lake. I guess I'll just have to add liquor stores to my big grocery/Target shopping trips. Those days when fossil fuels burn aplenty in the name of focused consumerism, and my patience isn't tested by some backwards liquor store refusing to sell me my Negra Modelo on a hot summer night when man and womankind should be entitled to beer by birth alone. Much less by turning that magical, but otherwise meaningless age of 21.

A special shout out goes to my good friends at Hums. We'll be seeing more of each other. See, they get it. And now they're getting me. And I'm getting my Negra Modelo. With a lime. You can't beat on a hot summer night around 9 o'clock. Trust me, it's worth fighting for.

The Home Office

So I'm hanging out at a coffee shop today minding my own business. I'm keeping a low profile, surfing the internet, and occasionally trying to get some real work done. The place is air conditioned and filled with people who seem to be doing the same exact thing. For some it seems like this place is an actual office. It's a sea of laptops. The Mac to PC ratio is especially high too. Most people are alone, but there are a few people who are sitting at a table together. I tend to think they're doing the same type of work I'm doing, but they look so stern. I try not to think of my work as being THAT serious.

IT guy is next to me. His cell phone startles him every twenty minutes with it's obnoxious ring and he digs for it in his dancing pants. He's far more flamboyant than any IT guy I've seen before. Mutton chops too. It's a real treat. And I'm listening to Morrissey. I swear you can't plan these coincidences.

No new emails yet. I have my gmail placed just underneath this page so I can see any developments that may occur in the inbox. In case I miss the action there, I have my gmail notifier at the top of my display. It's a sealed envelope right now, which is kind of a weird icon to have when you have no new mail. Maybe the empty mailbox is patented by AOL in every conceivable way.

It's a weird existence when you don't have to talk to someone everyday. You clear your throat to make sure you're capable of talking if the need shall arise. I get my practice with the counter girls too. "Just that?" they say, and I get my opportunity to answer back. "yeah, that'll be it. For now." I like that "for now" part. It means I'm not going anywhere.

I had another excuse to talk soon after I got here. I was rocking out and trying to write (yeah, this was before Morrissey) and this guy stands right in front of me. I ignore him. But he doesn't go away. He sort of motions for me to take off my earphones, and I'm thinking this guy really has balls if he's just going to ask me for money or something. I mean, I'm in a groove. Or at least as big of a groove as I'm able to get into this universal home office away from home. So I take off my earphones and what does he say? What are these words he exchanges with a guy who's had very few words with anyone all day long?

"Were you the one I was talking to about anxiety issues yesterday?"

Nope, that wasn't me. At least not yet.

Dylan in Modern Times

Bob Dylan is full of surprises. An XM radio show where he seems right at home spinning the songs that inspired him. A new album out in August called Modern Times. And hopefully the next installment of Chronicles before too long. This Letterman performance is pretty amazing too. Who knew he had such energy and confidence back in 1984? I guess this band only played for the Letterman shows and never toured. This Letterman performance (one of three songs he did that night) along with his albums Infidels, Oh Mercy and Time Out Of Mind have been dominating my stereo lately. I'll blog about that later.

Sketches Of Eddie

According to Tom Chase, a new age Christian writer who has used astrology and the bible to calculate when the antichrist will emerge, that date is today. 6/6/06. His emergence will be followed by an asteroid collision and a two year battle of Armageddon. The name of the antichrist? He says it's Vladimir Putin. Sort of reminds me of Star Wars and Emperor Palpatine, or whatever his name was.

Back in 1982, a different beastly event was unleashed on the world. It was the release of Iron Maiden's The Number of the Beast. By widening Iron Maiden's audience and helping to bring their brand of British metal to the US, it inspired a generation of metal fans to take up art.

Sure I'd drawn a Van Halen or Twisted Sister sign in sunday school or during a boring math lesson, but the intricate work involved in sketching Iron Maiden's mascot, Eddie, separated the novices from the die hards. I'd invent band names, album titles, tracklistings, and even complete bios and career trajectories of bands, but the cover art was always very rudimentary if it existed at all. Just like the Kiss logo before it, I knew that you had to use the right fonts when you wrote down a bands name, but actually drawing Eddie was far too complex for me.

I keep thinking of some of those metal kids. Long hair hanging over their faces and blocking their books in study hall so they could keep their head low and nobody can see what they were doing. Sometimes one of them would lift their head up at the end of the period and show you what they sketched. It was pretty amazing, if not a little disturbing. Eddie yielding an ax with Margaret Thatcher clutching at his leg. Eddie coming out of a grave and tearing off his clothes and howling at the stormy sky. Eddie with a chain around his neck, shackled to a prison wall.

They were nice kids. Just a little misunderstood, but weren't we all. They had a certain bond. They were united by metal and they showed it proudly with torn and frayed blue jeans, a black metal shirt with their favorite band on it, and a jean jacket to top it off. Sometimes they kept it simple with pins of their favorite bands on the front. Other times they went all out and put a huge patch of Metallica or Iron Maiden on the back of the jacket. It was a statement. It said "I do not like fake metal. In fact I hate it. Fuck Poison and Bon Jovi". It felt permanent, or as permanent as black metal got in suburbia. Tattoo parlors had yet to find their niche.

Eddie fed the imagination and illustrated Iron Maiden's music in much the same way that Stanley & Tchock's packaging colors Radiohead's music today. And it gave them an identity. As easy as it is to picture some of those kids in one of VH1's Fanatic shows with thousands of pictures of Eddie covering their walls and life size models of Eddie rising from coffins in their living room, the reality is they're probably just like you and me. Accountants, lawyers, dentists, truck drivers and cube occupants.

Although I'd like to think that at least a few of them took up art. I'd like to think that those long hours of sketching Eddie paid off in some way. Maybe I'll have to probe a little bit and ask the next graphic designer I meet what they were listening to when they grew up. If they could navigate through the hair bands in the 80's and find something with substance, they're probably doing it in their careers as well.

Or maybe if the fundamentalists are right about 6/6/06, we'll all be drawing pictures of Vladimir Putin come tomorrow.

The Salad Garden (Remnants of VH)

I always associate the Van Halen split with sliced roast beef. If I tune into a classic rock station and hear “Why Can’t This Be Love” or “Best of Both Worlds” or David Lee Roth’s “Yankee Rose” I instantly smell my Rax Roast Beef uniform. Sweat, roast beef and the remnants of my once favorite band on the stereo. It was summer, 1986.

I was too young to use the slicer. That was okay though. I was too young to earn minimum wage as well, and I guess you really should be making at least the minimum your employer can possibly pay you if your limbs are at stake. I was willing to smell like a roast beef and cheddar to finance my tape collection, but I didn’t want to sacrifice my fingers before I even get to my sophomore year of high school. Besides, I just started smoking and was quite fond of the way a cigarette fit between my index and middle fingers.

My responsibilities included busing the tables and stocking the salad bar. Instead of having large receptacles labeled TRASH with a little shelf on top where you could put your tray when you were done with it, Rax thought it would enhance the dining experience if they hid them. Only the bus boys knew where they were. So after years of being conditioned to dispose of their own food wrappers, our customers would stand at the door with trays in hand completely dumbfounded. “Oh, let me take that,” I’d have to say and quickly dispose of their hideous messes of catsup stained French fries and half eaten sandwich buns.

High class dining extended to the care of the salad garden as well. We didn’t want people to think of it as a salad bar. No, that was far too Mickey D’s. We wanted people to think of this as a garden. You start out with iceberg lettuce and you pick some frozen peas and cauliflower and top it off with some bacon bits and a little dressing we brought in from the ranch. Rather than exposing the garden for what it was, we covered up the ice that was packed around the containers with tough plastic lettuce. Or something that sort of looked like lettuce. It was actually a real plant. Kale. Years later when I found out it was edible, I was horrified.

We stored it in 5-gallon pickle buckets filled with bleach and water. Everyday I’d ring the solution out of that stinky weed and put it out on the salad bar. As the days and weeks went on the stuff started to look less and less green. It was soggy, slimy and its stench started to smell more and more like rotten trash. But a job’s a job, and they wanted their salad bar to be a garden.

One day I’m sitting in the break room, flicking my Marlboro Light into an aluminum foil ashtray and nursing a Mr. Pibb. Jason, the fry guy is bitching about his new Triumph album. Apparently there was some slip up at the manufacturing plant and even though the cassette was labeled correctly, when Jason put it his car’s deck it played the previous Triumph album. So much for the magic power. I guess even the band realized their better days were behind them.

So anyway, I’m back there enjoying the final moments of my smoke break when the assistant manager tells me to come out to the garden. Apparently there was something wrong with the salad bar. I get out there and see this older lady wrinkling up her face and holding her nose. Her plate is pushed to the far edge of her table and she’s looking back at the garden in horror. Her husband looks at me and says, “that’s the stinkiest salad bar I’ve ever seen”. I wanted to correct him and tell him that it was actually a garden and that sometimes gardens didn’t smell so good, but I resisted.

I look back at the assistant manager and he’s got a bucket. Only this one doesn’t have bleach in it. He starts grabbing the kale and frantically pulling the weed from the garden. I go around to the other side to help out. I grab the slimy stuff and start to throw it in the bucket and in a few minutes we’re done.

He runs in the back looking for fresh kale and I try to look busy by collecting all the miscellaneous pieces of lettuce, egg and cottage cheese that had managed to slip under the guard of the kale. When I looked over at the old woman she instantly shoots me another look. That’s when I took a whiff and knew that the kale had spewed its nasty stench far beyond its bleach stained exterior. The ice, the containers and even the food were all victims of its fowl menace.

The assistant manager comes back empty handed. He’s sweating profusely. His uniform is now wet under the pits and he’s adjusting his visor to keep his hair out of his face. He must’ve ripped open every box of produce we had looking for the kale only to find out it’d been months since someone had thought to order it. He tells me to get more ice and make it look nice. I keep thinking of the older lady though. But I don’t need to tell him. He gets close and realizes the whole garden has been compromised. He starts to dismantle the thing and tells me to tell the cashier that the salad bar is closed.

I get in a little scuffle with the cashier. I try to quietly tell her that the garden is closed but she keeps shouting at me that she has customers. When I get a little louder she doesn’t believe me and starts to shout for the assistant manager. He’s furious and looks over at me and shakes his head. Slamming a German potato salad down on the garden’s counter he shouts, “the salad garden is closed”.

As I walk back from the register I see the older lady again. She’s standing where she thinks the trash bin should be. I walk over to her and say “let me take your tray ma’am.” It was the least I could do. We were a classy joint.

How I learned to love Frank

The Pixies were one of the best bands of the last twenty years. Nirvana may have broke things wide open, but the Pixies pretty much invented that loud chorus/quiet versus thing.

Between 1987 and 1991, they released four amazing albums and an ep. One a year. They became a soundtrack for my late high school and early college years. When I decided to switch over to cds and could only afford one, I bought Doolittle. Everything was so perfect about it that I didn't really care about buying anything else for quiet a while.

Drunken dorm room sing alongs to Allison were just the beginning. Trompe La Monde came out my sophomore year of college, and my roommate and I dissected that thing as if it would lead to the path we should lead our lives down.

We saw them live on that tour. You could tell there were tensions within the band. Every time Black Francis said something, Kim Deal would roll her eyes. Of course the rest of the time I though she was looking right at me with a big grin on her face.

I was in love with the Pixies. Sure, I liked Kim. I followed her Breeders side project, and I loved her background vocals. Joey Santiago and David Lovering were pretty amazing too. But Black Francis was what it was all about for me. What an amazing character. Songs about slicing up eyeballs, incest, being alone on thanksgiving "here I am with my ham", wanting to be a singer like lou reed because he likes lou reed, and of course the girl with the tattooed tit that said number 13.

The tour tshirts said "Death to the Pixies". But nobody believed it or wanted them to end. In early 1993 when they called it quits I was sad. I went to a party that night and felt like I lost a friend.

"Just look at it this way", a friend of mine said, "now we'll have the Breeders AND Black Francis solo albums." He was only partially right.

Black Francis was killed off. Frank Black absorbed him into his ever-widening torso in early 1993.

The first couple Frank Black albums were okay. "Los Angeles" and "Headache" were great singles, but the albums lacked that something special that the Pixies had. Namely Kim Deal and Black Francis. The newly christened Frank Black was a totally different animal. Much tamer and more professional.

By the time The Cult of Ray came out, I'd lost interest. Frank Black annoyed me. On occasion I'd read positive reviews and pick up an album of his. I even saw him live on the first Frank Black and the Catholics tour. He played 2-3 early Pixies songs and shocked everyone that he still had those chops, then he bullied us with every Frank Black rarity and b-side he could dig up. And he has a lot of them. The boy is productive.

Flash forward to 2004 and the Pixies reunite. If ever there was a band that it seemed would never get back together, it was the Pixies. They had more bad blood than Pink Floyd. Their reunion, as well as the brief reformation of Pink Floyd, proves that bands never really break up anymore. They just go on hiatus.

The Pixies reunion was thrilling. At least when viewed from afar. The warm up show was here, but it would have been more accessible had it been in Africa. Tickets were impossible to get. The tapes sounded great though. It could have been 1989 again. Frank Black as Black Francis was back.

By the time I saw them on their regular tour stop here in Minneapolis, a lot of the excitement had died out. It was cool, but it sort of seemed like they were just going through the motions. Just one new song too.

About a year after I saw them live a peculiar thing happened. Instead of being annoyed that Frank Black put out a solo album while he continued to tour as a Pixie and deny us new band material, I started to like what I heard. Sure, I held out. At least six months. But eventually I checked out Honeycomb and was pretty impressed.

I'd like to say that I was blown away by Frank's latest. But Honeycomb isn't the type of record that blows you away. It's as familiar as a back porch on a rainy day, and it take a while for its sound to slowly envelop you. I didn't really notice the songs so much when I played the album straight through, as I did when I had my itunes on shuffle. Wait...what's this.

Apparently Frank had been in therapy. His marriage had ended, and he was searching for meaning. Not only did this result in the Pixies reunion, but it also provided the background for a much more serious singer-songwriter album.

Honeycomb was initially going to be called Black on Blonde, as a tribute to Dylan's Blonde and Blonde and the Nashville musicians who accompanied both Dylan and Black. The songs are loose, but not careless. And they're a million miles from the Pixies. Maybe it took this amount of distance for me to respect Frank Black and not curse him for abandoning Black Francis. Or maybe it was seeing the Pixies reunion and realizing it verged on becoming an oldies act.

Either way, I'm now a Frank Black fan. From 2004 on, anyway. He's set to pull a bit of a Red Hot Chili Peppers or Smashing Pumpkins by releasing a double cd in June called Faster Man/Raider Man. It may be a wealth of material, but I know that even if I can't digest it in one sitting, it'll always sound good when it comes up in a shuffle.

And I've stopped caring so much about the current Pixies too. If I want to listen to a little Black Francis, I'll pull out Surfer Rosa. But if I want to hear Frank Black I'll put on Honeycomb. I've even started filling my Frank Black section away from my Pixies section in my cd case. He deserves to stand on his own, and anyway, Frank Black was never in the original Pixies.

the long player, our old friend 33 1/3

Double Album in 1966: 71 minutes and 40 seconds

Single Album in 2001: 72 minutes and 50 seconds


Both are classics. This is rare. Most artists don't have an album as good as either one of these in their entire career, yet just about everybody today is putting out double albums. At least by vinyl standards.

Vinyl records had limits. Rules. Formats you had to stick to. Roughly 22 1/2 minutes per side. Rarely would you find a record over 50 minutes. The extra songs were used as b-sides, or they found their way into the band's vault. And I doubt most bands were forward thinking enough to envision the 5 CD box set.

The Ramones first album was 28 minutes and 53 seconds. Nobody called it an ep. The Fiery Furnaces put out an ep last year which was 40 minutes and 54 minutes long. Its title? EP.

Now, with 80 minute CDs artists can pretty much fill up the thing. Maybe they want to take a stab at a reggae song. Or the drummer wants a chance to write. Or they want to play jam band on a track or two. Many band arguments are probably solved by maxing out CDs.

We're constantly being told that we increasingly work longer hours and have less leisure time. So maybe it's good that you don't have to flip over the cd like you did a record. It saves a little time.

But do we really have the attention span for 70+ minutes of music on a single CD? I'm pretty into My Morning Jacket, but I end up buying their new albums before I've fully digested the older ones. They're just too long. And don't even get me started on The Smashing Pumpkins' Mellon Collie or that new Red Hot Chili Peppers double CD? 2 hours of music with people as grating as Billy Corgan and Anthony Keidus? That's equal to almost four records in vinyl terms. Fuck. Even Bob Dylan couldn't pull that off.

Songs in the key of life: Neil Young's Living With War

Neil Young has the touch again. For a while there was this theory that at the end of every decade he had a creative rebirth. Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere in 1969, Rust Never Sleeps in 1979 and Freedom in 1989. I'm not sure whether or not Silver and Gold from 2000 counts or not. It was a year late, and six years later it's really not that memorable.

The other theory around Neil Young is that his best work follows periods of intense personal conflict. The "doomsday" or "ditch" trilogy of Time Fades Away/On The Beach/Tonight's The Night, followed the deaths of his guitar player and roadie. And now following a near-fatal health scare and a corrupt US administration, we have 2005's Prairie Wind and this year's Living With War.

If Prairie Wind sounds like the redheaded stepchild of Harvest Moon's bastard son of Harvest, it's understandable. At least initially. It seems slightly hokey with odes to his guitar, Elvis Presley and of course the wind which blows across his prairie childhood home in Canada. But once you marry the songs with moving pictures, you'll never hear the album the same way again. Heart Of Gold, the Jonathan Demme concert film of Neil's performance of Prairie Wind and other acoustic-Neil classics, does that job, and it's a masterpiece. Watch the film and you really understand how important Neil is, and how close we came to losing him. Prairie Wind was written and recorded in a brief period of time after Neil was diagnosed with a brain tumor and told he had to have surgery. The album is reflective and conceptual, and it's the sound of old friends coming together to record new music under what could be dire circumstances.

Now, with Heart Of Gold still generating plenty of press and not even out on DVD yet, and a mere 7 months after Prairie Wind was released, Neil Young has a new album out. Living With War was written and recorded in late March and early April, it is truly amazing that this album is already on record store shelves. Credit should be given to Warner/Reprise for rush releasing this album instead of riding out the Heart Of Gold marketing plan and setting a release date for Living With War six months from now. But what's even more amazing is how good this record is.

It's easy for people to attack Neil for this record. It's anti-Bush. It has a song called "Let's Impeach The President". It has over the top lyrics and song titles like "Shock and Awe" and "Looking for a Leader" And Neil's from Canada, in case you didn't know. Never mind that he's lived in California for decades and raised his kids here. But what is truly amazing about this record isn't the press surrounding it.

Easily his best since Sleeps With Angels or Mirrorball, this album is the sound of Neil fired up and pissed off, as well as passionate and hopeful, despite the current political situation. While many artists have released political songs in the past five years, most of them are buried under metaphors and preach to the choir. Living With War is in your face, and doesn't know what subtlety means.

Recorded with a spare backing band, a trumpet player and a 100 piece choir, Neil confronts the Bush administration head on. He's living with war in his heart every day and damnit, he's going to say something about it. He's not going to rock out like Crazy Horse either. There are no extended solos here or any sort of jams. The songs are short and build off of each other. It's the sound of an artist writing a batch of related songs. There aren't any hanger on's from previous sessions. Everything is fresh and timely in a way few records are capable of today. It's simple dirty rock and roll. The type of music that would fit in well in the "ditch" trilogy. Or maybe "doomsday" was the better word after all.

Neil is back though. And whether it's his own mortality or that of a soldier's fighting a questionable war, Neil's found the perfect vehicles for delivery.

Pearl Jam- A Failed Democracy

Okay. I've only listened to the new record once. So let me admit that from the start. But you can tell a lot about a Pearl Jam record from it's initial spin. Mainly that you don't want to spin it again.

The record comes out soon. Next Tuesday, I think. But it's leaking all over the web. Jamming up the iPods of music lovers everywhere who hail the band as a survivor. A band that's been around for a long time. As if this they should be honored for this feat alone. I'm sorry, but it's pretty easy to stick around when you've got a ton of money. This isn't the Ramones touring around in a stinky bus, as much as Vedder wishes they were.

I liked Pearl Jam, and I suppose I still like Eddie Vedder. It was obvious right from the start that he possessed a pretty unique talent. "He understands women", a friend of mine said when I couldn't understand how she could get THAT into Ten. And it's true. There are several songs that really have a tenderness for women and their issues, without speaking out on "Women's Issues". He's also pretty good looking. And when you look at the singers of most of the hair bands that were dominating the day, it's pretty easy to see his appeal to women, as well as men. "Black", "Jeremy", "Alive"- these all have substance lyrically. It's a far cry from "Cherry Pie" and the Nelson twins.

They put on a good show too. Eddie Vedder would climb the rafters and you'd have that fear that maybe this time he'd hurt himself. But that got old quickly. The best part of seeing them live at Lollapalooza 1992 wasn't the Pearl Jam set. It was a 20 minute set that Eddie Vedder did with Chris Cornell on the sidestage. Without the internet to tell everybody about it ahead of time, this improptu show was played to just a handful of people. They sang "Hunger Strike" and a couple other acoustic songs and sounded amazing. Vedder was the highlight of course, and he sounded great.

Here's what happened. Vedder dominates the band for the first four albums. The slower more introspective songs, some of which were written pre-Pearl Jam, tend to be the best cuts. Not coincidentally they're almost always written solely by Vedder. Around the time of No Code the band must've had it with him. The world beat edge. The Dead Man Walking soundtrack. Maybe we can blame it on that Neil Young record that they played on. On Mirrorball, the band stood up and people noticed. Or at least Eddie did.

Since then they've had countless writing credits in the band. Everybody gets their shot. Even one of the drummers wrote a song. I'm sorry, but this band is not the Beatles. They love to be compared to the Who. So here it is: Townshend would never let Daltrey write the songs. So why did Vedder relent? Especially with the lyrics. C'mon!

With each Pearl Jam release we get less and less of the "Elderly Women" and "Wishlist" kind of songs and more and more of the ROCK songs. The type of song Pearl Jam was never that good at anyway. He slurs through the lyrics and gets excited about stuff, but half the time you can't understand him. Give me "Yellow Leadbetter" any day. I can't understand what the hell he's saying, but I feel something. And that's way more than I can say about the last few Pearl Jam records.