jukeboxgraduate.com

more comment bs

I had to do some tweaking with the comment mechanisms since I was getting flooded with spam comments still, so if you try to comment and cannot, please email me.

commenting is fixed

When I upgraded to the new blog software, I was sure I had tested the commenting feature, but apparently I did not, because I just realized that no one has been able to comment! (Thanks, Monica.) Typekey is turned off until I figure out how to implement it and you should be able to comments safely again (but fer the love o' Pete, please let me know if you cannot!)

as long as i gaze on waterloo sunset

somewhere off oxford street, 1985

Is it possible to be in love with a city you've never been to? When I got off the plane in the UK two weeks after graduating college, I had been besotted with London for as long as I could remember. It was the home of the Beatles and the Who and the Stones and Elvis Costello and the Clash and and and -- and I swore I was going there as soon as I could manage it.

Coming into London via British Rail, up from Gatwick, I remember seeing the Battersea Power Station in the distance, getting closer, and I felt like I’d reached the fucking promised land. I stared out the window, stunned. It existed. It was REAL. I could get off the train, walk over to the side of the building, and place my hand on it. I could touch it.

The Power Station was the first thing in London I saw that I could identify, and it was more critical to me than seeing Big Ben or the Thames or the Houses of Parliament, all of which rolled into view a few seconds later. Call me shallow, but rock and roll was what brought me there. Seeing the Battersea Power Station, the building I knew from album covers I’d stared at for hours, more than anything else brought home the fact that I was really, truly, in LONDON.

I spent the first few days in a kind of daze. It seemed utterly impossible that I actually had my feet on the ground of the place I had dreamed about, read about, thought about, for so long. Everything was fascinating to me: grocery stores, buying stamps, waiting for the bus, making a phone call. The friends I was staying with were endlessly amused.

I spent that first trip searching out obscure rock and roll landmarks. I didn’t go there for medieval history or great art, although I saw a lot of those things - I went to walk down Wardour Street and go inside the Marquee and close my eyes and think about the Who and the Stones on that stage. I stood in front of the sadly shuttered Finsbury Park Rainbow and thought about all the bands who had played there, from Eric Clapton to the Kinks to the Clash. I walked around Edith Grove, trying to imagine what it was like when Mick and Keith and Brian shared a flat there. Portobello Market and Kingsway and Ladbroke Grove in the steps of the Clash. Muswell Hill just to listen to the Kinks while I walked through the streets.

I have been to London well over a dozen times by now -- I even lived there for a few months -- and I love it fiercely, all of it, even the things my British friends would lovingly mock me for idealizing. I never thought it was perfect -- nowhere is, after all -- but there was a spirit and an energy embodied in the city that I have always adored.

Which is why my heart broke Thursday morning. But then, if you're human, surely it broke a little, even if you've never walked the streets of London.

be still my heart

Uptown Lights aka...

http://www.myspace.com/uptownlights ... and I quote:
"Armed with a setlist featuring the songs of their heroes, like O.V. Wright, Joe Tex, the Temptations, Aretha Franklin, Otis Redding and many, many more, this show is not to be missed... "

If I could get on a plane, I would. Dulli singing Otis? Kill me now.

Bruce Springsteen Song or Adult Film?

A Good Man Is Hard To Find
All Night Long
Brothers Under The Bridge
Dancing In The Dark
I'm Goin' Down
Man's Job
Man At The Top
My Love Will Not Let You Down
My Lover Man
Open All Night
Pink Cadillac
Protection
Ramrod
Restless Nights
Take 'Em As They Come
The Rising
Thundercrack
Unsatisfied Heart
Wages Of Sin

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*If you guessed this was another McSweeney's submission, you would be right. Then again, it took me all of three minutes to put together. It was inspired by some tangential discussion on rec.music.artists.springsteen that mentioned, in passing, an adult film.

ec is not god

A quote from a friend, summarizing a recent Time Magazine review of the new Eric Clapton record:

For example, they say "the only genuine emotion Clapton musters is reverence," and when EC sings the line 'There's a hellhound on my trail' "you wonder if the hound's name is Patches."

I hate Eric Clapton. And this isn't like me hating the Grateful Dead or Dave Matthews (even though you can't really compare my aversion to the latter to my disassociation of the former; I never got the Dead, but respected them as people and as musicians and as an entity, while I still consider DM to be the anti-christ incarnate).

But whoever wrote that Time review nailed it for me. I mean, yeah, sure, groundbreaking and all that. But this is still the guy who said that if he was stranded on a desert island, he'd rather have one of his Armani suits rather than a guitar. Now, first of all, he should be taken to task on the sheer impracticality of that situation alone - what are you going to do with an Armani suit on a desert island? Seems to me the guitar would at least give you something to do.

But what got me was that here is this rock and roll guitar god who seems to care less about the instrument, and by extension, the music. It's not that I don't think "Layla" is a magnificent song (even if I could happily live the rest of my life without ever having to hear it again - hey, I'm a casualty of 70s FM radio). It's that he played with this dispassionate detachment that I could never identify with. For someone whose guitar idols were Keith Richards and Pete Townshend - well, yeah, talk about polar opposites. (And even if Keith is way more laid back than Pete ever was or will ever be, I still felt the fire in his fingertips.)

So, there. I admit it. I hate Clapton. And I'd never date a guy who worshipped him, that's for damn sure. Because that would tell me more about him than a long weekend at a B&B in Victoria would...

ticketmaster search results:

when trying to find the listing for
the artist currently known as prince
performing at madison square garden*

Hamlet "the Prince of Denmark" Starring Francesco Vitali
The Happy Prince
Prince George Cougars
Event Parking for Prince - Gund Arena North Garage
B.G. the Prince of Rap
The Arabian Prince
House of Prince
Frog Prince
** Parking Only - Prince
DJ Jazzy Jeff and Fresh Prince

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*1. As submitted to, and rejected by, mcsweeneys.net
2. Was researching for a friend.
3. Would like to attend.
4. Hope to be in NYC that week to see Elvis C. at Lincoln Center.
5. Said friend obtained a above-average floor ticket for the 7/14 show.
6. I contributed nothing substantive to this friend's ticket buying mission, except advice, counsel and encouragement.