Notes regarding a track review that blooms into a Southern summer story, music lessons, a record shop, the best punk band, Bonnaroo, old-school photography, one night last spring, high school, a track review that blooms into a sound collage, death, and a tattoo.
Side A:
01. Upward Over the Mountain – Iron & Wine (5:56)
[audio:http://www.gadflyonline.com/wpblog/audio/upward.mp3]You visit Sam on your way home, when you take the long way home, the narrow road that rolls along with the hills and past pine trees, broken fences, little houses, and vegetable stands. As you bump down the dirt driveway, missing most of the potholes, you can see Sam on his front porch, leaning close to an old tape recorder, singing and strumming his acoustic guitar––the one he bought at a shop off the highway from an old man with one eye.
When Sam sees you, he smiles and offers you a cigarette. You thank him and sit on the steps next to his sleeping dog, who likes chasing dragonflies and bees and swimming in the river.
A breeze kicks up. Humid. Heavy.
Sam watches a girl flying a kite. His daughter. You watch her too. She wears a crinkled white dress and runs past the cherry tree, past the fallen tool shed, past the tire swing, and when you can hardly see her anymore, she comes running back. Sam calls her Rain and says she knows stories about angels who stitch quilts and maps of Virginia from patches of grass, magnolia leaves, and peach skins.
Sam asks if you want to hear the song about your mother.
You already know it by heart.
02. Maxwell’s Silver Hammer – The Beatles (3:27)
[audio:http://www.gadflyonline.com/wpblog/audio/maxwell.mp3]I learned to play guitar in a tiny gray room with two creaky chairs, a keyboard, a cassette player, boxes of tea bags, scattered paper, scattered pens, and one music stand.
Every Saturday at noon.
I learned from Chip. His hair sprung out in tight coils, but sometimes he slicked it down. He wore cargo shorts and sandals and short-sleeved, earth-toned button-downs
Chip let me play whatever I wanted, and I always chose The Rolling Stones or The Beatles. I had to miss a lesson to get my wisdom teeth pulled, and when I told Chip about it the next week, he asked what pain medication I’d had and if I had any left.
“You really should keep it,” he said. “I kept mine for a while, then I took a bunch of it and went bowling.”
03. The Fairest of the Seasons – Nico (4:06)
[audio:http://www.gadflyonline.com/wpblog/audio/fairest.mp3]Bins of new records along the right, used records along the back. Posters of Pink Floyd, Johnny Cash, Led Zeppelin, and Bob Marley cover the walls, and a low shelf displays extra-special classics––maybe The White Album French import, maybe even an autographed copy of Born in the U.S.A. The distorted jangle of The Velvet Underground crackles through overhead speakers, and I’m flipping through the bins for Chelsea Girl by Nico. Two skinny men wearing gray jeans and leather jackets compare prices of Neil Young albums. The phone rings.
Jay knows all of us by name. He wears a black T-shirt and rectangular glasses and writes receipts by hand. He squints at the price sticker on my copy of Castlemania, a tiny white square in the corner of the album’s pixellated rainbow cover and tells me that he doesn’t listen to much new music. I say they’re pretty off-the wall––psychedelic garage-punk, if you wanted to make up a genre just for Thee Oh Sees. Examining the concert tickets taped under the glass on the counter, I ask about The Clash in Atlanta in 1982, and Jay tells me that Joe Strummer had gone missing weeks before the show and only returned a day or two before, that they’d fired their regular drummer, that the band had hardly practiced at all, that they all hated each other from the beginning. A real disappointment.
04. Do You Remember Rock ‘n’ Roll Radio? – The Ramones (3:50)
[audio:http://www.gadflyonline.com/wpblog/audio/rocknroll.mp3]Joey Ramone didn’t like talking to anyone.
Johnny Ramone married Joey’s ex-girlfriend.
Dee Dee Ramone quit the band to start a rap career.
Tommy Ramone is still alive.
05. High And Dry – Radiohead (4:17)
[audio:http://www.gadflyonline.com/wpblog/audio/high.mp3]“I don’t know about you guys, but I’m so fucking stoked to see Jay-Z.” Angelica walked alongside the car, smoking, as Megan and I just barely rolled down the Tennessee highway, waiting in a line that stretched for miles, waiting with hundreds of others who couldn’t wait to spend four days camping and drinking and hearing music.
Angelica wasn’t used to humid summers.
“You’ve got to come out to Denver sometime. Seriously. You’d totally dig it.” I said hopefully August, and if not, then maybe October or December.
Angelica had teased blonde hair and wore heavy eyeliner. I’d only met her two days earlier, but I already knew that she planned to leave college for real estate school, that she hated her father, that her ex-boyfriend was spending the summer in Europe and she was wondering if he still loved her. We both liked early mornings and coffee and The Perks of Being a Wallflower. We’d both seen The Rolling Stones in high school.
She had an Elliott Smith tattoo on her ankle. XO.
“I can’t believe I skipped The Flaming Lips.” We were sitting in the grass, eating pizza and watching the Ferris wheel, and I told her that they played “Yoshimi” and that I’d seen lots of painted bodies and even an inflatable dinosaur.
We left late Sunday night instead of early Monday morning and drove an hour in the wrong direction.
06. Take Care – Beach House (5:48)
[audio:http://www.gadflyonline.com/wpblog/audio/takecare.mp3]11 p.m. on a Saturday.
23 strips of negatives.
A too-bright sky above a building with peeling paint.
Dark corners inside the shed filled with free books.
Unfocused trees.
Scratches.
But, I have the darkroom to myself, and I can play whatever music I want.
Side B:
01. One Fine Morning – Bill Callahan (8:46)
[audio:http://www.gadflyonline.com/wpblog/audio/one.mp3]“Do I smell like cigarettes? Tonight was the first time I smoked, actually.”
Jamie wore wire glasses and blue and gray plaid and almost-tight jeans. He spun a few times in his desk chair, then lifted his electric guitar from its hook on the wall. He strummed a few notes. Quick notes. Quiet notes. He played in a band called Midwest Unicycle Club––a name that made me think of skinny boys with big eyes and shaggy hair who wear marching band uniforms––one playing xylophone, one playing ukulele, one playing flute.
Jamie hoped they sounded like The Baroques with a post-punk twist.
“Whenever people come over, Daniel always makes them pick their favorite albums from the last ten years. Sometimes their favorite albums ever. It’s really fucking stupid.”
Daniel asked me, and I couldn’t decide, so when he mentioned In the Aeroplane Over the Sea, I agreed. Said something about it being classic. Jamie told me that Daniel liked to trick people this way, because no one ever denied Neutral Milk Hotel.
Daniel also hung a Motion City Soundtrack poster above Jamie’s bed, along with a purple paper cutout of a horse and a photo of a bobcat running through a puddle. And white Christmas lights, strung along the ceiling.
Jamie and I listened to a Beach Boys record and talked about our first shows and vintage shoes and our neighbors and local bread and William Faulkner.
02. Hello, I’m In Delaware – City and Colour (5:47)
[audio:http://www.gadflyonline.com/wpblog/audio/hello.mp3]May: flying a rainbow unicorn kite and writing our names in colored chalk on the sidewalk outside the library on the last day of school.
June: a twelve-scoop sundae with M&Ms, Oreos, whipped cream, and sprinkles.
July: a walk through Hollywood Cemetery and a picnic near James Monroe’s grave.
August: the watermelon festival and winning tiny stuffed dolphins for throwing darts and popping balloons.
03. (2nd heart tone) Mary, on the Wall – Grouper (6:08)
[audio:http://www.gadflyonline.com/wpblog/audio/mary.mp3]Can you dream the sounds of another planet? Not radio static or the heavy creak of a braking bus or the hum of your old refrigerator or the drips of your leaky faucet. Not loose change.
Maybe a music box. Maybe voices on home videos. Maybe colliding gems inside a kaleidoscope.
04. Daydream Believer – The Monkees (2:59)
[audio:http://www.gadflyonline.com/wpblog/audio/daydream.mp3]When my mother drove a minivan and I sat in the backseat, she played Monkees tapes. She knew that Davy Jones sometimes trained and raced horses just forty minutes from our house and wondered if anyone ever saw him there. She bought herself an autographed picture for Christmas.
When I read that Davy Jones had died in Indiantown, Florida of a heart attack, I imagined my mother still in our kitchen, drinking coffee and eating a bowl of cereal with raisins and watching the Today show, and I didn’t tell her anything.
05. Two-Headed Boy – Neutral Milk Hotel (4:26)
[audio:http://www.gadflyonline.com/wpblog/audio/two.mp3]I first heard Neutral Milk Hotel when I was fifteen, on a night close to Christmas when I couldn’t sleep. I liked playing In the Aeroplane Over the Sea in the car on the way to school, especially because my sister complained that it sounded like elevator music or construction noise and threatened to grab the steering wheel from me. In a nasal and sometimes trembling warble, Jeff Mangum sings or screams over guitars, horns, and drums. About angels, pianos, love, sex, parents, Jesus, suicide. Mostly about Anne Frank.
I knew that Jeff Mangum had disappeared in 1999, but I thought he might show up on the Elephant 6 Surprise Tour last year, because he’d been part of the Elephant 6 Collective before it fell apart in 2002. Julian Koster and Scott Spillane would be there. Half of Neutral Milk Hotel.
Jeff Mangum returned in November, and I saw him play in January. Julian Koster opened with his singing saw and his band, The Music Tapes. And stories. One about an old television named Static, and one about his circus gypsy ancestors who could pull dehydrated European cities from their throats.
Jeff Mangum played alone, sitting on a stool and hunched slightly over his acoustic guitar. He didn’t talk much. Someone in the front row shouted to ask where he’d been for ten years, and Jeff laughed, but only for a moment..
I knew all the words to all the songs, but I didn’t sing along.
