Pearl Who?

The great irony to Austin's last post "So You've Never Heard Of...?" which chronicled the creation of mixtapes for clueless members of the opposite sex, is that I've already gone through the process. When I met my beautiful girlfriend, Abby, some four years ago, I was quick to spout of a ridiculously long list of bands that I couldn't live without. Instead of just absently nodding her head, while I spelt out my adoration of the Stone Roses and The Stooges, she simply asked me to make a mix CD of my favorite songs. She did the same and we exchanged our labors of love. She handed me a CD with 14 or so songs that she listened to regularly. I handed her a meticuously selected 3-CD box set, complete with self-designed cover and booklet.

Now Abby has endured years and years of my endless rants about music I enjoy, and has weathered the whole assualy remarkably well. But while I've been able to convince her about the diviness of Rufus Wainwright and the genius of the Beach Boys, I've never really talked to much about Pearl Jam. That has more to do with me than with her. Pearl Jam is a band that I still admire, but just simply haven't listened to them because there past two albums have not been that great.

Now Austin framed the discussion around meeting a standard issue "blonde girl" at a bar. I'm lucky enough never to worry about the said situation, but for the sake of following Austin's template, I have chosen to write theoretical liner notes to the blonde girl after we have exchanged numbers. Here is what each song placed on the album really tells her.

1. Daughter - I am sensitive. I understand the enormous depth of the human soul, and will astound you with my mature opinions on various political, social, and economic issues. Also, I have remakrable taste and an eye for beauty as this gorgeous melody will attest for. But I'm dark around the ages, and hard to understand. You'll have to work to for me, but I'm worth it.

2. Lukin - I like to have fun. I like to drink $2 PBR with the guys and stay out until the sun comes up, and then lay around having sex all day long.

3. Wish List - I wish I was in love. Going out is fine, and I like the excitement of hard, late nights. But what I really want is to find someone I love, you, and to tell you that everything is going to be okay.

4. Long Road - And as we are making sweet love, i'll sound as seductive as Vedder whispering in your ear. It will last a long time, then we'll talk and I'll open you up to a completely new way of thinking and your mind will be blown.

5. Who are You - Once you have experienced the enlightened awakening we'll venture to India and meditate on our being in relation to the world. You will come up with a way to solve complex math problems and the future of the Palestinian state. You'll recieve world wide fame and recieve loads of money.

6. Go - Then we'll fucking blow the lot on drugs, rock out, and start a band that specializes in playing excessively load rock with wild guitar solos, underlined with a wonderful grasp of melody. Then maybe we'll get married.

Kyle Invites me to a burlesque

Timeline of Monday, January 15, 2005

8:00 p.m.
Kyle: Nick, do you want to see a free burlesque show?
Nick: I don't know I'm really tired. I mean what is a burlesque, really? Is it like a strip club?
Kyle: No idea
Nick: I mean, I have work tomorrow. It'll take an hour to get to Brooklyn. I don't have any interest in seeing a strip show. Oh whatever, why the hell not.

9:30 p.m.
Kyle: We have to see some plays, and I asked my professor if a burlesque show counted. He asked me if it was a gay burlesque show. I said no. He said it counted as seeing two plays.

10:00 p.m.
We arrive at the bar, it is filled with Williamsburg hipsters. A very large black woman is on stage talking about her vagina.

10:30 p.m.
Islamic woman comic: This year has been shit. It's good to know that when god closes a door he just rapes you through a window.

11:15 p.m.

Scotty the Blue Bunny: How you all doing tonight. Yes, I am a 39 year old gay man dressed in a blue bunny costume I made my self.

He notices a lady in front with very large breasts.

Oh, you have very large breasts, why don't you show them to the crowd? Why do I care? Because it looks like an ass. Oh don't freak out, there is no hole. Okay everyone at the bar move your drinks, some women are about to get up there and get naked. And when they strip you fuckers better yell.

11:30 p.m.
After some impressive burlesque dancing with scantly clad women, Scotty the Blue Bunny dances in five inch heels. In the middle of the song he pulls out some batons and proceeds to twirl them like he had practiced for years.

11:50 p.m.
More scantly clad women dance.

12:15 p.m.
Nick: Kyle, anytime you call me up out of the blue and say we are going to burlesque show, I'll say yes.

Life is so, so hard

I'm working at ____, a very nice fashion magazine for the week. This is the sort of conversation that I've been hearing all week long.

boss 1: My life is just in chaos. I mean my secretary is gone, though you're doing a fantastic job.
me: thanks
boss 1: And I have to fire my nanny. So my life is just messed up.
boss 2: Was she stealing?
boss 1: We just can't trust her anymore.
boss 2: You just have to get rid of them if they act up.
boss 1: My little girl is going to be really upset, but my little boy is so young he won't even know what happened. We'll just take them away for the weekend, and there'll be a new one. He won't have any idea that we fired the other nanny.

Falling in Love in the Key of C

Songs that have shaped my understanding of love



1. Wilco - A Shot in the Arm
“We fell in love / In the key of C” How convenient that must have been. Walking by the sea and fulfilling every cliche you’ve ever dreamed of imposing on the opposite sex. Some people have their soap operas, chick flicks, and fairy tales, but I use hundreds of pop songs to shape my understanding of love. And this song, this bitter, depressing, and oddly upbeat song - thanks to Jay Bennett’s pop posturing - was one that I kept playing over and over again when I was actually questioning my own love. For all I know, this song is probably just about drugs, which would explain the euphoric music that accompanies the chorus about needing a shot in the arm. But to me, this is classic pop heartbreak wrapped in attractive clothes. Why do I love songs about heartbreak? Because they sound this good.

2. Ryan Adams - Sweet Carolina
This is another song where I’m not sure he was ever thinking about a girl. So why has this song affected how I view relationships? I think the reason why I look to this song for some kind of answer is Emmylou Harris. It’s like Adams was too hurt to actually talk about the girl in the song. But she won’t leave him alone. Instead, she just hovers in the background during the chorus like the ghost of a woman who got away. And for some reason I always loved the idea that someone could so profoundly affect my life that I would be haunted by her memory. That being tormented by an unattainable ghost is bad, didn’t cross my mind until a while later.

3. Rufus Wainwright - Foolish Love
This list could have really been the best of Rufus Wainwright, as he feels the most romantic of all the artists I listen to. But this song is the best. I remember when I first heard it, I was sure it was the most beautiful song I’d ever heard. It took me some three years of me telling Abby that it was the greatest love song ever when she casually said, “But it’s about a foolish love.” So is my idea of love based on superficial actions made to look like someone is in love? “Go to all the poshest places / With their familiar faces /Terminate all signs of weakness.” Or what about “Or better yet / I’ll wear shades on sunless days” Though he talks of what is going to happen because of trying to avoid his “foolish love”, he never actually describes what his lover is like. He describes how he feels about his love, but never of what it takes to get that love. In the end, everything he does is a facade.

4. Blur - No Distance Left to Run
In high school, I once made a compilation for a girl who I knew just wanted to be my friend, but who I quite liked. I decided to put this song on there. On the label, while all the rest of the songs were written in black, I highlighted this one in bright red. Why did I want her to hear this song? We never experienced anything remotely close to the sentiments of “I hope you're with someone who makes you feel safe in your sleeping tonight”. But for some reason I wanted to show that I would love someone so much that when we broke up we would hurt that much. Because that’s obviously a goal. Jesus, this is getting depressing.

5. Bruce Springsteen - I’m On Fire
Springsteen wrote many songs about love and lust, but this is the one that gets under my skin the most. It’s undeniably sexy, but creepy at the same time.
“Sometimes it's like someone took a knife baby / edgy and dull and cut a six-inch valley / through the middle of my soul” That’s pain, as I you’ve learned from the previous entry, I thought that was a positive thing to attain.

6. Aimee Mann - Save You
In the middle of high school when I was making compilations for girls that didn’t like me, I started to dream about what my perfect woman would be. For some reason this is the first time I fell in love with the words of a woman. “You look like a perfect fit / For a girl in need of a tourniquet” It was vulnerable, sad, poetic, and oddly alluring. I wanted to meet this troubled soul, and be that person that saved her. That she sounded like a siren the entire time, someone who was waiting to bring me down too, I didn’t realize until much later.

7. Spiritualized - Ladies and Gentleman, We Are Floating in Space
“All I want in life’s a little bit of love / To take the pain away” Yes, and I want a rush of hypnotic guitars to envelop my ears that makes love sound this all-encompassing. This isn’t love as a relationship, but as a force of nature that ignores the rest of the world. Again, this song might be disqualified for its potentially about drugs.

8. Lucinda Williams - Those Three Days
The odd thing about songs about love, is that they never end. A song about heartbreak will usually be followed by a song about finding love again. Love seemed infinite to me, something that could never run out. Then I heard Lucinda sing this:
Scorpions crawl across my screen
Make their home beneath my skin
Underneath my dress stick their tongues
Bite through the flesh down to the bone
And I have been so fuckin' alone
The pain in those lines, and the violence and meanness implied, completely shook me. Of all the songs I’d ever heard, this one felt the most real for some reason. While the rest of these songs might have mystified love, this one actually made me fear losing someone.

9. Beach Boys - Good Vibrations
“I don’t know where, but she sends me there”
It’s hard to express what makes one fall in love considering what I’ve just talked about. With scorpions crawling up Lucinda’s dress, Aimee pulling ships into the rocks, and Springsteen getting his entire skull carved open, it’s good to remember that moment when you first fall in love someone. It feels just like this song. It’s awkward and exciting, like falling asleep in a bed with a girl for the first time.

Playing God with Mellon Collie

The challenge was simple. Austin decided to play god with Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness by chopping off an hour and rearranging the tracks to make it better. But oh how it hurt.

Favorite albums are favorite albums for a reason. When I am drunk, I do participate in games questioning the validity of some of the songs, wondering whether certain tracks could be lobbed off to create a more cohesive whole. But essentially what I am doing is trying to make other people agree with what I know. That Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness is perfect. And perfect things should not be destroyed and rebuilt.

But the gauntlet has been thrown and I will unfortunately respond with senseless vengeance.

At first it was easy. “Tales of the Scorched Earth” is needlessly distorted, which is a shame because a great song is buried in there. James Iha’s wonderful “Take Me Down” doesn’t really fit. “In the Arms of Sleep” has never really excited me...
...and that’s where it ended. Then it felt like I was burning friends alive as “Beautiful” disappeared, and “To Forgive” said goodbye. But enough apologizing for something that hasn’t been said. All I will say is that this was hard.

1. Tonight, Tonight
Well how else could it have started? The instrumental that starts the real album is really just an intro to the swelling strings that soar from this song. The song needs no explanation, it’s greatness, I don’t believe, is in any question. I thought briefly about stealing the b-side “Tonite reprise” is sort of an intro to the real song, but half its charm is the hidden quality of discovering it for yourself. It should stay only with the devoted.

2. Muzzle
Deleting portions of the album was hard enough, but chopping it up felt like destroying steal. This song is number 12 on Dawn to Dusk. What I decided to do was place like minded material together, hoping to stretch a certain mood long enough, until it would eventually get destroyed by other styles. So the follow up to “Tonight, Tonight”’s soaring romance fell natural to the warm-hearted “Muzzle”. Probably a ballad in it’s inception, and played like one on their remarkable pre-farewell concert at Chicago’s United Center.

3. 1979
Continuing with the nostalgia trip comes a song that has only grown more remarkable each year. Putting it so close to the beginning feels little greedy, but I guess this is the point of the whole exercise.

4. Thirty-Three
Not necessarily the best song on the album, this one still probably comes closest to encapsulating the message of this album the best. It’s gorgeous melody and reaffirming chorus of “Love can last forever” hide some pretty troubled doubts that tinge the beautiful veneer. Most people will forever swear there love for Siamese Dream, but that one had always felt too cold. And this song is one of the prime examples of what was missing from the polished surface of its more reputable predecessor.

5. Jellybelly
Sometimes I get these sounds in my head that race back and forth like an electric wash where the noise just boils over and I have to hold my head because these loud noises start piercing the sides of my skull and I can’t stop shaking. It’s usually the opening to this song that I hear. I’m not sure if I wish I was in a band that could play this song, or that I’m going insane, but I do enjoy it for some reason.

6. Bullet With Butterfly Wings
By now, the dream-laden rush of the beginning of the disc is gone, and we are in the middle of rocking seriously. The great wonder of hearing all these songs together brings out the junior high student in me, when I first realized that all rock was not created equal, and that the bridge freak-out contained here is close to godliness.

7. Zero
As we peer further into the dark eyes of the beast, one thing becomes clear. Billy’s long phrased poetry that appears at the start of the disc has slowly disappeared to simple declarative ranting. Much has been written about the clumsy writing contained in this song, but that is only when the lyrics are removed from the cyper-punk background. Not everything is wonderfully explained in life, and dangerous thoughts are not always eloquent. That doesn’t make them any less powerful.

8. X.Y.U.
In High School, Eric and I would ride around at night listening to music in my car, and at least once a week we’d crank this song to the highest setting and yell as loudly as we could into the night air. The complete desolation you hear is no mask. This is the angriest song they’ve ever made. The power of this song might come from all guitars set at destroy and the drums mercilessness pounding, but the strength actually lies in the catchy melody of “And I said, I want to give you up”. One of the few take-no-prisoners rockers that could have been easily turned into a pop song. Though, thankfully, it was not.

9. Cupid De Locke
With no where to go but the fiery pits of hell, I decided to look up to the most heavenly song in the whole album. Not that it has much to do with god, but both the lovely plucked strings and the sentimental romance, give heart back to this album that had just looked like it wanted to kill your babies and eat them.

10. Galapagos
Really two in the same, number 9 and 10 belong together as they first appeared on the original for no other reason than they sound like two sides. “Cupid’s” dream like narrative is fulfilled by “Galapagos’s” more human approach to love.

11. Stumbleine
If “Cupid” felt like the rush of young love, and “Galapagos” felt like the fight for innocence, then this one feels like acceptance of the dirty truth. That it remains so hopeful gives hope to the maturing attitude towards love that we all no is approaching but don’t really want to look for quite yet.

12. Porcelina Of The Vast Oceans
The most romantic of the epics is also the most mysterious. It doesn’t become audible till nearly 30 seconds in. I’ve always been drawn to its lovely stature, and it feels most at home with the rest of these odes. This combines the other three songs meditations on love, lust, and growing old. But throws in monster guitars, solos and whispering background noises.

13. Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness
Surprised? It’s a lovely intro, but played at the end the sadness of the whole experience comes back to you. The rollercoaster ride through this album is nothing but an emotional trip through nostalgia, heartbreak, and ultimately love. Because this album is really just a concept album to trying to sort through your own emotions. That’s why I love this album so much. And for some reason ending with this song is like the rolling of the credits. Seemingly unnecessary but moving at the same time.

total running time: 56.3 minutes