Random Music #1

I did what I always do, randomized my music list and pressed play, giving me my entire music collection, at least two weeks worth of solid music, in a brand new order, never knowing what's going to come up next, determined this time to write along.

Song number one was Bach's Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring, the electronic version, by either Walter or Wendy Carlos. I listen and try to tell whether Carlos had a penis when he/she played it. In any case, a ballsy performance.

Next, right now, Leo Kottke's Vaseline Machine Gun, and I'm going to type along and try to keep up, much too fast, no words, the fastest fingerpicking, a modern miracle, my random music collection giving me random clues into the nature of the universe because it's not the songs themselves, which I've heard a million times, but the anticipation of what's coming up next, brilliant transition or some sort of glitch.

Gotta admit Kottke mutated nicely into Gershin's Rhapsody in Blue, another mysterious Christmasy choice which could just as randomly have been Zappa's My Guitar Wants to Kill Your Mamma. Here's that part again. You know the part. The Woody Allen part. Can't think of anything nicer to write to, right back to New York, '71, studying at Strasberg, trying to improvise, but then it all turns black and white, that montage, Christ, am I going to actually have to go out and look through my video collection for Manhattan? Is that the movie you're going to force your kids to watch?

I see movies when I'm not even watching them. I see movies when I look outside, when I stand in line, when I talk to people, face to face, every one a movie with a beginning, middle, and end. I can't help but see movies when I listen to music. I construct an entire miniseries in my mind every time I hear Every Breath You Take. I'll be watching you, particularly the Rockapella version, a cosmic barbershop quartet sets the scene for any number of cinematic happenings.

This seems to be one of those moments. I've woken up before them, made a cup of coffee, found a hole in my phonebook, and not merely dived but back-flipped into the keyboard for a moment of contemplation. It's still fucking Rhapsody in Blue. How long is this? Sixteen and a half minutes? Fuck it. I'm clicking on the next random song button.

10cc, Art for Art Sake, money for god sake, not their best but hard to delete.

Next. A piano piece by Buddy Foley, Seattle musician, ordained madman of the community, a subterranean world of technomythology and mysterious collections of infinite oddities. A nice reminder of another time in my life, but short, shit, it's already playing something else, what is it, Andrew Bird, So Insistent, plaintive violin, sort of Scottish, drunken sailors, a jig, add a guitar, they're dancing, bottles smashing, a whole movie in this song that won't be written by me because I'm too into the next one, Antonio Lauro's Valses Venezulanos, as good as classical guitar playing gets, I urge it upon you. I'm going to stop now and just listen to it, no, not just that, not just listen but pretend it's me. If I had the sheet music I could play the piece like Bach's Solo Cello.

Could I possibly be happier than to be listening to Allan Sherman's One Hippopotami? Not likely. A paranoia is a bunch of mental blocks, and when a Casey meets Kildare, that's called a paradox. A paramecium is not a pair. A parallelogram is just a crazy square. Nobody knows just what a paraphernalia is. And what is half a pair of scissors? It's a single sciss.

Wow, Day Tripper. You can't make me write about the Beatles. No. Don't make me go there, dammit, walking down Hollywood Blvd. to see a movie when it's all over the TV in the sidewalk shops, the souvenirs of Hollywood and somebody shot John Lennon. Prescient, got a good reason for taking the easy way out, yeah, right, classic in every way, that riff, the hook, It took me so long to find out. I found out. I found out.

Glenn Miller, The American Patrol, or is it? I've gotten two MP3s called Glenn Miller's The American Patrol and they're both entirely different pieces of music. One's a fraud, yuchh, ptuee, I spit upon it, the bastards, but the other one is surely the Glenn Miller I love. If it's not Glenn Miller, it should be, but there's another random Schroedinger's universe in which this song is in a box, 50% Glenn Miller, 50% not.

Warren Zevon with David Lindley doing Casey Jones, trouble ahead, trouble behind, and you know that notion just crossed my mind, not the Grateful Dead riding that train high on cocaine, but two other guys, Lindley a particular guitar hero I met on the set of Square Dance, invited by Rob Lowe to hang around the set that day, he played a village idiot who could play a mean violin, and there was David Lindley, whose violin work was actually going to be heard on the soundtrack. I watched as he gave a violin lesson to Rob, who would have to mimic Lindley in the film, eight degrees of mental connection, I'd forgotten all about it, answering the obvious question, whatayuh do if you want to play a musical instrument like David Lindley? Get cast as a village idiot and look like Rob Lowe. And you know that notion just crossed my mind.