Caryn Rose's jukeboxgraduate.com

Tonight, Gorman Bechard’s Color Me Obsessed finally made it to New York City, and #1 Mats Fan Jesse Malin organized a homecoming party worthy of the movie, the band, and the fans. Highlights included Patrick Stickles from Titus absolutely nailing “Sixteen Blue,” Kevn Kinney’s lovely “Here Comes A Regular,” Tommy Ramone (who, you may remember, produced Tim) singing “If Only You Were Lonely,” – the list goes on, and on, and on, but was capped off (in my opinion) by the video above, Craig Finn and Tad Kubler doing “Within Your Reach.”

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Mudhoney at the Croc, 2000

I moved to Seattle in March of 1995. I had to get out of New York City, and it was Seattle over Chicago or San Francisco because I had a friend offering me a free room in her house. I was a jaded New Yorker who knew that living in Seattle didn’t mean I was going to run into Chris Cornell shopping for green beans any more that living in New York meant you ran into Lou Reed when you went out to buy milk. It was post-grunge, post-Nirvana, post-Everett True. It was two years after Mia Zapata was murdered and not even a year after Kurt killed himself. It was before they routed Pine Street through Westlake Park (and that will only mean something if you have lived there long enough to remember the difference), it was still quiet and dark and odd in that very Northwest, very Seattle way.

I explain all of this to give you background why I was so interested in, and thrilled by, Mark Yarm’s oral history of the scene, “Everybody Loves Our Town”.

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I remember Achtung Baby as the record where it was not just about what and who U2 were as it was about what and who they weren’t. At the time, people weren’t just U2 fans, you were either fans of the Joshua Tree- era U2 who didn’t love what was perceived as this sudden change, or you were the people who were starting to — not so much lose interest towards the end of that particular phase (including, by all accounts, the band themselves), but might have tired of some of it just a tad, and you loved Achtung Baby not because it was U2’s next album but because it was Achtung Baby. To me, it was closer to the era where they made their bones. For all of the insistence on noise rock influences and Einsturzende and their ilk, I heard the Stones at Nellcote, I heard Marc Bolan’s gold lame pants, I heard the Silver Factory, I heard the Bowie of Heroes, the Lou Reed of Transformer, the Dolls at the Mercer Arts Center. It was Manchester meets Motown.

It was iconic, it was ridiculous, it was groundbreaking. It was overwhelming and exciting – if you wanted to be overwhelmed and excited by all of the above, which I most certainly did.

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This was only my second Wild Flag show, having been out of town the first round of club shows. I paid full price to see them at Radio City, opening for Bright Eyes; even from 15 rows back in the canyon of Radio City, they ruled, and hard. With the space and the echo, that was where I first realized that the thing they reminded me of more than anything was Isle of Wight era Who – the lengthy jams, the interplay of drums and guitar. I know, you will tell me that you cannot compare a band that does not have a bass player with the Who, let alone Entwistle-in-a-skeleton-suit era Who, but somehow they are channeling that spirit.

THIS IS NOT A BAD THING.

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This was only my second time seeing Bryan Ferry, believe it or not (and I can’t find any documented record of the first time I saw him, more on this later). I bought this ticket without knowing anything about the tour or having heard his new solo album, or even knowing if it was good (it is), but more because at this point I start to worry about ever seeing certain artists. It was an indulgence, and I was prepared to be a little bit of a tourist or an outsider at this show in exchange for being able to see Bryan Ferry on stage and hear him sing live.

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Tomorrow morning at 10 a.m. Tonight (10/5) at midnight ET you can listen to my appearance on Dave Marsh’s Kick Out The Jams on Sirius/XM 30. We’ll be discussing the RRHOF, and B-sides and Broken Hearts. I read from the book, talk about it with Dave, and play a few songs. Happiness is hearing your teenage writing idol say nice things about your writing.

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I am thrilled to have been asked to contribute to Largehearted Boy’s “Book Notes” series on the blog today. I’ve been reading these for years and it was always a wish on my part to be asked to be contribute to this series – “authors create and discuss a music playlist that relates in some way to their recently published book” on one of my favorite blogs. (If you don’t know Largehearted Boy, and you love books and music, you are missing out.)

“Caryn Rose’s B-Sides and Broken Hearts is a rare book, one that incorporates music seamlessly into its core. Rose’s debut novel is filled with characters whose love for music is great and relatable, their passion for ’80s and ’90s indie rock and punk jumps off the page in this absorbing novel. In her own words, here is Caryn Rose’s Book Notes music playlist for her debut novel, B-Sides and Broken Hearts.”

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5/4/85, Williamstown, MA.

June 19, 1981. That’s not the date of the photo above, but is the date I saw R.E.M. play for the first time. The way I always remembered it, this was a Sunday night, the day I graduated high school, but the calendar tells me it was a Friday night. There was a club in Mount Vernon, NY, that was an old converted bank; it was called the Left Bank, and opened my senior year of college. By virtue of not actually being in New York City, but rather in Westchester, I was freely allowed to go to shows there. I was not legal; I am not sure if I even had a fake ID at this point. But I quickly became a regular at this club, which was about half an hour from my parents’ house, and it was a godsend to a girl who wanted to be in the City but couldn’t get there every time there was a show.

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If you don’t know about Rock Book Show, you should! The amazing Kimberly Austin talks to the authors of the latest and greatest books about music. I was honored that she asked me to be a guest, talking about B-sides and Broken Hearts:

When the Twilight Singers were forced to cancel the San Francisco date behind the latest album, Dynamite Steps, no one anticipated that the makeup date wouldn’t be just another show, somehow shoehorned into the tour schedule, but rather a first time one-off epic performance: Blackberry Belle, Dulli’s first post-Whigs magnum opus, performed in its entirety. Waiting on line to get into the venue, along with people from Chicago and Texas and Seattle and Canada I wondered if any San Franciscans had gotten themselves into their makeup date.

The emotional continuum of Blackberry Belle is a tough one for me. It’s a record that got me through an agonizing, lengthy breakup that I just could not get free of. I didn’t need to listen to music that was positive or uplifting, I wanted to hear the audible representation of how I felt inside and dig out of it that way. It’s kind of like the Whigs’ version of of “Come See About Me” – the way the Supremes sing it, it’s a cheery little ditty that’s hiding the main character’s true feelings. But when the Whigs did it? They turned it into a howling, dark, dissonant beast of a song that made you feel like you’d never heard it before. It owed as much to Husker Du as it did to Holland-Dozier-Holland – but make no mistake, it very much had a foot equally planted in both camps. Which is, of course, how I fell in love with the Afghan Whigs in the first place, and Dulli still does this shit.

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