Random Music #2

Pink Floyd. Hey You. Unmistakable. Hey you, out there in the cold, standing in the aisle, can you feel me, hey you, don't help them to bury the lie, don't give in without a fight. tinkling guitar and synthospace, the drums kick in, the harmonies, open your heart, is this from The Wall?, don't know, it's from Echoes, damn the best of, full speed ahead, fabulous solo, Hey you, always doing what you're told, won't you help me, saw Pink Floyd on acid at the Santa Monica Civic, can I handle the flash back, oh good, I don't have to, it's already playing Bach - Toccata & Fugue in F maj, not the famous one in C min, but similar, same fucking organ, same fucking cathedral, something sinister about to happen, mathematical fingerwork, like listening to a calculus professor solving equations, every possible permutation, calculated, solemn, dramatic, majestic, good typing music, the keyboards coagulate, letters and numbers and notes, it's all the same, a random flow from one to the next, thank you Sebastian, but can you please end this, turning into a sermon, a minister droning on and on about something in the bible, turn it off, I can't stand it, Bach, baby, okay, we get it, why is he still playing, how long is this, eleven minutes?, and we're only up to five? Fuck it, next...

John Mayer, I Don't Trust Myself (With Loving You), from his new album, Continuum, got the whole thing, still haven't heard it all or weeded out anything, sounds cool, smooth, Fly like an Eagle, I will beg my way into your garden, hold on to something, hold onto something something, look at you, finding something, Hall and Oates, nice guitar, reminds me of Larry Carlton, another of those singers who finds the strange space between regular voice and falsetto, a nice rasp, still haven't found the song from this album that makes me go wow, might not come up randomly for ages.

Marianne Faithful, Why'd 'Ya Do It she said, why'd 'ya let him suck your cock? You know it makes me sore. The closest any female has flipped the Jagger bit sideways, a woman, angry at her man, taking it out on the other woman, a bitter and spectacular performance, full of betrayal and conviction, driving outrageous guitar, solid backbeat, like Satisfaction, every woman listener thinking you go girl, and every male listener thinking oh fuck, I never want a woman that mad at me, chicks are all crazy, get in, get out, that's my motto.

Peter Gabriel, Steam, can't separate it from the video, like many of Gabriel's, a pulsing parade of imagination, directed by Stephen Johnson, who also directed Peewee's Playhouse, total genius, get a life with the dreamer's dream, you know your culture from your cash, I know you, you know your sinner from your saint, gimme steam, what the hell is it about, brilliantly mysterious, stand back, about celebrity heat, clay animation, real as anything you see, green from your read, quick from the dead, I know you, this is more than I can take, oh yeah, I need steam, I'm going to get up and dance till it's over.

Dixie Chicks, So Hard, I feel so guilty, that was a gift I couldn't give, life was how we picture it, prove everybody wrong, when it doesn't come easy, hoo boy, file this one under boners, right next to Pump it Up, sneaky hit songs about erections are so hard to come up with because everything they say sounds like innuendo and out the other.

Nick Lowe, sorta lame, Drive-Through Man, is this a parody, hokey, country, it wouldn't kill you to lift that blind, I know you feel it, exposed and uncovered, like a wild east wind, gimme a break, outta here.

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.