Right before your naked steaming laptop eyes...

I'm not much for video games.  Never have been.  But I was a true Van Halen freak back in the day, and I suppose there will always be a little VH in me that all those Sammy Hagar fronted albums and endless reunions will never be able to destroy.  So I get a kick out of this flash game where you get to shoot "assteroids" out of David Lee Roth, who is in permanent jump position.  Of course I suck at it, but I do manage to pretty much destroy Sammy Hagar every time he opens up his mouth and screams "55."  Give it a try.

Also make sure you check out Diamond Dave singing "Running with the Devil" with all the instruments removed from the track.

Judge this one by the cover: Bruce Springsteen's Working On A Dream

This is Bruce Springsteen, so a little respect is in order. And maybe some repeated listens. But first we have to downplay our expectations, which isn't easy to do. Long the perfectionist, Springsteen is known for taking years between albums, obsessively pouring over track listings and details, and leaving entire albums worth of material for the archives. The quick turn around of this album, which follows Magic by just over year, was surprising. Not since 1992's Human Touch and Lucky Town have we had such a burst of activity.

Unfortunately Working On A Dream sounds as creatively stagnant as Human Touch, with only a handful of songs reaching the quality of the slightly better Lucky Town. But that's where the comparisons to those two records should end. The problem with Working On A Dream lies more in its ambitions. Following the larger than life tour for Born In The USA, Springsteen put the E Street Band on hold and spent the next decade plus trying to reinvent himself. Stumbling on records like Human Touch, but succeeding on Tunnel of Love and 1995's misunderstood The Ghost Of Tom Joad, which seemed to give him a new identity that he could use for years to come. But as Springsteen began to look back with 1998's Tracks, rumors of an E Street Reunion were inevitable, and it happened the following year. For a while it seemed like Springsteen was balancing out the occasional E Street Band record with interesting detours like 2005's Devils And Dust or 2006's The Seeger Sessions, but now we have two back to back records that seem to be aiming for the music for the masses pop domination of Born In The USA. While the bombastic nature of Born In The USA obscured many of the songs messages, that record at least had several very good songs. Which is a lot more than can be said for Working On A Dream.

Springsteen has always been a little over the top, but the pedestrian lyrics of so many of these songs are quite surprising, and you don't have to look any further than "Queen Of the Supermarket" for a good example. "I'm in love with the queen of the supermarket/as the evening sky turns blue/a dream awaits in aisle number two." And that's about as good as it gets. "Outlaw Pete" is one of the better songs on the album, but even it begins with "At six months old he'd done three months in jail/
he robbed a bank in his diapers and his little bare baby feet/all he said was folks my name is Outlaw Pete." This is not "A Boy Named Sue," and these are not novelty songs. They're serious ones, which makes the lazy and sometimes downright embarrassing lyrics all the more puzzling.

Musically the album goes straight for the center of the road, and Brendan O'Brien's production is partly to blame, but so is Springsteen's recording style. Gone are the days of the E Street Band banging out endless tracks in a studio with the hope that some of them will see the light of day. Instead this record and its predecessor were largely recorded with a smaller band within the E Street Band and used the full band as overdubs. The result is a sterile flat sounding record that lacks any urgency. Bruce is in good voice, and the record sounds good as background music, but we expect more from him.

There are some highlights. "Lucky Day" is an uplifting pop song that you'd be hard pressed to get out of your head, and "The Last Carnival" seems like a good way to wind down the record, but so much of the album is almost immediately forgettable, even after several listens. "Working on a Dream" is an okay pop song, but it seems to lack any substance. If a fluff piece, which should resonate with a large percentage of his audience. Namely the folks that still don't know what "Born in the USA" is about.

Tacked on to the end of the record as a bonus cut is one of Springsteen's strongest songs in recent memory. "The Wrestler" was key to making the Mickey Rourke movie work, especially in the preview, and it's also the record's highlight. After listening to the album it's hard not to listen to the song from Springsteen's point of view. "Have you ever seen a one-legged man trying to dance his way free/if you've ever seen a one-legged man then you've seen me."

Hopefully he doesn't see himself that trapped, and the next detour from blandland is just around the corner.

You Read A Book (I'm Writing An Album)

The holidays are long over, winter has worn out its welcome, and it's time again for February Album Writing Month. The idea is to write an album worth of songs, 14 of them, over the course of the shortest month of the year. It started out in Madison, WI in 2004 and now has participants from all over the country, as well as different corners of the world.

For me February has always seemed like the ideal month to do something like this. Fight or flight kicks in around this time of year with the incessant winter weather of Minneapolis, and FAWM is the perfect distraction. Of course winter tends to work its way into the lyrics. 2005 was the first year that I participated and my lasting song from that year is called "Snow From A Window." Write what you know, I guess.

I've always written songs in batches, sometimes with long periods of inactivity between those creative spurts. I still get those moments of inspiration throughout the year, but I seldom finish a song during those times. Instead I grab a tape recorder and try to get as much of the idea down as possible, knowing that come February I'll probably finish it up. Or at least get it to the demo stage. Sometimes I have a large collection of song fragments, like in 2005, when after neglecting songwriting for much of the previous 3-4 years, I was finally able to take those "song starters" and finish them up. 2006 I wasn't so lucky. I had very few song fragments and had a very busy February. Only one song got finished and it isn't one of my best. 2007 I skipped completely. But 2008 I was very productive. Maybe because I had a couple years worth of song fragments again, although most of the songs that I recorded that year were written from scratch.

This year will be a bit of a challenge. I have a couple of uncertain things going on in my life, so the time issue could be impacted. And I don't have that many fragments this time, but I probably have a clearer idea of what I want to do. Of the starters I think I have 2-3, but I'm sure I'll find more as I go digging. That's part of the fun. And of course I can always go way back and try rewriting old forgotten songs. 14 is the goal, but last year I almost quit after 10 because I felt like for me, I had done what I set out to accomplish, which was to write a body of songs. This year I'll certainly try for 14, but if I was to write 8-10 songs that I was happy with it would probably be enough for me.

Check out my FAWM progress or register yourself at www.fawm.org.

1999- MULE VARIATIONS

Tom Waits records are events. Or at least they were when Mule Variations came out in 1999. It had been 7 years since his last real record. 1993's The Black Rider was more of an exercise in theater than a proper record. But even if you count that one, it had been a long wait. 1992, Bone Machine, I'm living at home while I take some time off from college. By 1999 I'd grown up a bit. For better or worse, Tom's characters were a little more real to me. And he always had some interesting things to say.


Got to get behind the mule, every morning and plow

I had a cat I hated. A kitten actually. A kitten with a rotten personality. I was feeling really down that winter and thought I'd go to the humane society and get a furry companion. A few minutes in the little room and I had bonded with him. "A Siamese," the lady at the counter said, "oh, you're going to have your hands full." I wasn't sure I liked the sound of that.

Niko was a waste of a good name. He liked to climb me like he was a monkey climbing a tree. And he never avoided my face either. I had to close my eyes and hope that he wasn't easily startled as he made his journey towards the top of my head. He liked to sit up there. Right on top of my head. I'd pull him off and put him on my lap or the floor, and then he'd run up my body and do it all over again. And more often than not, he'd jump from my head onto my papers. The little bastard had no respect for me working out of my home.

Mr. Curt lived across the hall. His first name was Curt, but I liked to add the Mr. because he was a very fastidious man. He didn't like me to do laundry after 9pm, for example, because he thought the noise would keep him up- even though the washers and dryers were in the basement and we were on the second floor. And if I had a girl over, no matter what hour she came over or left, he was sure to notice. But he was a good guy. We had our own little Kramer-Jerry Seinfeld relationship going on. The doors were usually wide open, and it wasn't long before he took quite a liking to little Niko.

I don't recall Niko ever making the journey to the top of Mr. Curt's head, so maybe that explains why Mr. Curt liked him so much. Then again, who doesn't like a kitten? His nose had likely never been clawed either, and therefore wasn't hindered in anyway in its sensitivity to smell. "Is little Niko liter trained?" Well, yeah. Or at least I thought so. I mean the stuff in the box was all covered up. I had my suspicions that maybe he was having accidents though. When this happens your nose kind of goes crazy and you think you smell it everywhere. So Mr. Curt was sort of my validation that maybe there was something wrong. I had stockpiled a huge stack of envelopes from the newspaper clipping service I used for sales leads, and I had a sneaking suspicion that he was doing his business back behind my couch where the bulk of those clippings were stored.

Presidents Day. I have the day off and decide to go record shopping. But I don't quite trust Niko. I'd had him about a month, and my apartment was starting to get a little funky smelling. Nothing I could pinpoint though. So I put Niko in my bathroom and closed the door. At least that way I could keep track of him.

So I come back to my funky smelling apartment. Mr. Curt is gone. He didn't have the work perks that I had, and didn't have the day off. I open the door to check on Niko and see him on top of the sink, ready to pounce on me. All around him, on all of the white porcelain are little tiny brown specs. It didn't take me long to connect the dots and trace them back to Niko.

Bye bye Niko. I didn't like him anyway. And he was kitten enough that I didn't feel too guilty. "It just wasn't working out" isn't an excuse that would keep him from getting adopted.

Mr. Curt on the other hand wasn't too happy. I guess looking back it was sort of like his cat too. I did tell him where he could find Niko though, and he didn't seem like he was in any hurry to go there and adopt him.

You don't meet nice girls in coffee shops

You don't. You meet them in rock clubs when your three sheets to the wind after seeing another band perform at another club a few hours earlier. The key was in my car door, but the night was beautiful. The perfect summer night. I didn't know who was playing at the 7th Street Entry, or even if I'd know anybody there, but I was set on making the most of the night.

Margaret liked rock and roll. And she went to shows by herself. If there's a weakness I have for women, that's it. You go to a rock show by yourself, you're pretty cool in my book.

We dated for close to a year and saw a lot of rock shows. Then we broke up. Right after having breakfast in a very coffee shop like place. To the sounds of Joy Division. To this day I can't think of a more miserable band to break up to. Awful.

When you share my bed, you share my name

I always thought this was a real bad ass thing to say, and I love Tom for saying it.

When the weather gets rough, and it's whiskey in the shade, it's best to wrap your savior up in cellophane

I'm not a church going man. I wasn't in 1999, and I'm not now. Some of my favorite songs in the whole world deal with spiritual rebirth or the longing for personal salvation though. Chocolate Jesus, however, is not one of those songs.

It does sort of present an interesting idea though. I mean, maybe taking a little time out on Sunday to enjoy a little Chocolate Jesus wouldn't be such a bad thing. If it's dark chocolate it's going to be rich in anti-oxidants, which is good for you. And there's a sort of zen-like quality that comes from taking a few moments out of your day to really focus on something. Even if it's something you eat. After all, people focus when they're taking communion. The way I see it, you're just consolidating things.

Come down from the cross, we could use the wood

Ouch. This one could really put someone in their place. You probably want to be careful who you say this to. I can think of a couple relatives that almost got this verbage from me, but I came to my senses before actually saying it. Again, pretty bad ass.

She's my black market baby, she's a diamond that wants to stay coal

I can't stand it when people ask why other people are still single. Hate it. I mean, right now, I wouldn't mind being married. Does that mean that the next person I go out with is THE ONE? No. Not at all.

It's also weird when people ask what "type" you're looking for. Usually I want to say "someone not like you", because usually the people who ask are so not my type. But I think I'm going to start saying that I want a diamond who wants to stay coal. Seriously. That's my line (well, actually Tom's) and I'm sticking with it.

fell in love with a gadget

I knew Apple was going to announce something yesterday. My hopes were that they'd finally reveal an iPod that either had satellite radio capabilities or at least a built in FM tuner. I've held off buying a new iPod for this reason, and thought of all of the new iPods received over the holiday season and how those people would be bummed that Apple one-upped them in much the same way that I was when I bought my Powerbook only to have the Intel version launched just a couple months later. This didn't happen.

Instead they came up with the kind of gadget everybody's been dreaming of since the invention of the cell phone. Finally, it appears as if one small device will be capable of everything we need for life on the go. Phone. Basic computer. MP3 Player. Camera.

Currently I bring my laptop, a cell phone and an ipod to work with me on most days. Sometimes I even bring a digital camera. Of these devices, my cell phone is the one I'm most attached to. I have an office computer I can use, and there's an office stereo and stacks of cds and other people's iPods around to fuel the soundtrack to my work day. But if I forget my cell phone it's like I'm running around naked all day. I can hardly remember what occupied the space in my front left pocket before the cell phone. Sure, I can call in and check my messages from my office phone, but it just isn't the same. I mean, someone could call. Or I might need to call someone. Or there could be an emergency. It's my lifeline to the world basically, even though I would hardly consider myself a heavy user.

With Apple's new iPhone, I would probably leave my laptop and iPod at home. I wouldn't get rid of either. I mean, surely the iPod would still be great for roadtrips, exercising or just about any other occasion when you need to have your musical library with you. And a large screen computer isn't going to go away anytime soon. But for everyday on the go use, I can't think of a better gadget than the iPhone.

I might have to be an early adapter for this one. It comes out in June, which means I guess I better start saving now. This thing is not cheap, at around $499 for the 4 gig model. And I'm sure there will be some bugs in it. But I know as soon as I see one I'm going to have to have it.

Brilliant invention.

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???)