Finally finished!  And it only took 3 months!

Ok – finishing the W’s with Doyle Bramhall II and Smokestack’s electrifying Welcome.  This is one the most underrated albums released this decade.  It got no radio play to speak of and was totally cast aside.  Speaking as a radio professional, we should all be ashamed that his label dropped him.  This record simply rocks.

Moving on to: New Dominions – Whatthehellhappened, Cream’s Wheels of Fire, Zero 7’s When it Falls, Fiona Apple’s When The Pawn…, Morrcheeba’s B Side romp, Who Can You Trust, and The Who’s Who’s Next – which contains one of my favorite songs written by the late John Entwisle – “My Wife”:

“Gonna buy a tank and an aeroplane
When she catches up with me
Wont be no time to explain
She thinks Ive been with another woman
And thats enough to send her half insane
Gonna buy a fast car
Put on my lead boots
And take a long, long drive
I may end up spending all my money
But Ill still be alive

All I did was have a bit too much to drink
And I picked the wrong precinct
Got picked up by the law
And now I aint got time to think”

Ah – remembering the old days!

Ok – Salvation again from Sheryl Crow, this time from her Wildflowers collection and on to: The Wired CD, Woodstock Soundtrack, Grateful Dead’s Working Man’s Dead, and Anna Nalick’s Wreck of the Day.

I rolled through the Y’s with Fatboy Slim’s You’ve Come A Long Way Baby onto the Z’s: Zero 7’s EP, John Paul Jones‘ assault on all senses – Zooma and ended the letters with Italian blues singer Zucchero’s live album of duets – Zucchero and Co.

The last few days have been spent going through numbers – including Elvis Pressley’s 2nd to None, a ton of Dead legs and Jewel’s 0304, which contained a very dark song called “Haunted”:

” I just wanna get along
This is your song
I wrote it in my head
But the melody’s all wrong
And it’s driving me crazy
Not having u, baby
2 keep me company
In my own private world”

Get those restraining orders ready kids!

Thanks for hanging through this oddessy and Happy Listening!

What could she be thinking?

I see a young college girl sitting on the train to New Jersey on a Saint Patrick’s Day. She has green eyes that match her silly green sweater and she is letting two of her drunk, passed out friends use her shoulders to rest their heads upon. Her eyes are open and she stares out at the wall. It is a blank stare that is filled with distant thoughts. She’s turned her head to look and listen to the loud college kid hitting on a woman in her thirties, coming home from work.

The Seton Hall student is now bragging about seeing a performance of SNL, in person. The well dressed woman works for a production company and the college boy is changing his tactic. He is now talking about film. He appears to be pitching a job, and hitting on her, telling her she’s pretty. The woman blushes and plays with her hair, applies lip gloss and smiles.

She gives him her card, takes out a gold Cross pen and writes her cell number on the ivory stock. “Call me and I can show you around,” she says. “We’re always looking for young, talented writers.”

He asks what makes her think that he’s a writer? She points at the Beckett play the boy is clutching. The cover is faded, the book is bent as though it has been carried around in his pockets for years. As he has been talking she noticed that the play’s pages are highlighted and annotated with phrases such as; “follow the meter” and “where does that emotion come from?”

“Actors don’t make notes like that.” She says, smiling and playing with her hair again.

The student launches into a monologue about his collegiate experiences thus far and talks about the film he’s making with his friends. “It’s a combination of Hamlet and Lethal Weapon. But with Italians…” He drones on and on and I notice that my first stop is coming up.

I look back at the young girl with the drunk friends passed out on her shoulder. She is now staring at me intently.

I step off the train and onto the platform and turn back. I notice that she is looking at me in square in the eyes. It is a gaze with desperation and determination.

The doors close and I see her mouth the words, “What does it all mean?”

More U’s today and some W’s (the real good kind).

We start with a brilliant album by Matthew Sweet and Susanna Hoffs, otherwise known as Sid n’ Susie: Under The Covers Vol. 1.  I got turned on to this by listening to a great podcast called Coverville.  I ran to Sid n’ Susie’s MySpace and thumbed through the track listing.  The track that hooked me to pick up this brilliant recording was a cover of Linda Thomposon’s “Who Knows Where The Time Goes?”  The track that is swimming around my head these days is “Different Drum,” written by Michael Nesmith for Linda Ronstadt:

“Oh don’t get me wrong
It’s not that I knock it
It’s just that I am not in the market
For a boy who wants to love only me

Yes, and I ain’t saying you ain’t pretty
All I’m saying is I’m not ready
For any person place or thing
To try and pull the reins in on me

So good-bye I’ll be leaving
I see no sense in this crying and grieving
We’ll both live a lot longer
If you live without me”

Next up: U2’s Unforgettable Fire, Medeski Martin & Wood’s classic Uninvisible,  Freedy Johnston – Unlucky, Paul McCartney - Unplugged, London Philharmonic Orchestra - Us And Them: Syphonic Pink Floyd and the highly underrated Valotte by Julian Lennon. 

I went quickly through Valut: Def Leppard’s greatest hits, if only to remind myself that I have only a passing admiration for them.  My ears were redeemed by Verve Remixed, a great blend of new and older sounds, then Frank Sinatra’s The Very Best of Frank Sinatra and The Very Good Years, Jimi Hendrix – Voodoo Child and then I landed on Pearl Jam – Vs.

This was a more meaningful album to me than Ten.  So much was happening in my life back in 1993 and now the song “Elderly Woman Behind The Counter in a Small Town” seems to make so much more sense.  Someone is trying to tell me something:

“I just want to scream…hello…
My God its been so long, never dreamed youd return
But now here you are, and here I am
Hearts and thoughts they fade…away…”

I started the W’s with U2′s War and the original single by ABBA – “Waterloo”, in Swedish. (I have to give a little northern love to my heritage):

“Jo, jo, man värjer sig och fäktas I det längsta
men men, mot känslor kämpar gudarna förgäves, har man sagt
det är som jag hörder en sång,
jag tror, det är kärlek på gång”

Tonight I finished up with The Dead – Wave That Flag 2004 8/14/04 Jones Beach and Simon & Garfunkel’s Wednesday Morning, 3am.  Hello Darkness, My Old Friend… that’s all for tonight.

Happy Listening.