continuing from last month...

say hello to dynamo, june 04

Oh! You Pretty Things – David Bowie, Hunky Dory
In truth, the entirety of Hunky Dory has been in your head all month long; you’ve easily listened to it once a day every day. Spaceoperasuperheroglamarama. Soundtrack to SOMA. Pitchfork declaring Low to be the best album of the Seventies will send you back to listen to Low which remains as narcoleptic and sad to hear as it must have been to make and so you listen to Hunky Dory even more, even louder. (And Ziggy Stardust and Aladdin Sane and Diamond Dogs…)

The Band Played Waltzing Matilda – The Pogues, Rum, Sodomy, and the Lash
Memorial Day.

The Only Answer - Mike Doughty, Skittish
You tear through New York for a fast-ass couple-days. Leaving Laguardia this pops in your head and stays the weekend. On your way via cab to fucking Queens—Queens, I tell you—you half-listen to the song and half-talk to the cabbie. He’s a Russian sailor, or was once, and has gone from sailing ships to driving a cab. You both laugh grimly at the lateral transfer. He’s going after his second masters in Maritime Contract Negotiation or some such bullshit so he can work in international shipping or I don’t know.

53rd & 3rd - The Ramones, The Ramones
While in NYC any time anyone gives you a street address, you sing it in your head to the tune of 53rd & 3rd, a little mnemonic that doesn’t end up working as one of the two streets will fall out of the verse and resume to default.

Dr. Feelgood - Motley Crue, Motley Crue
At Seth & Courtney’s in Brooklyn, dogtired and fattened on takeout, everyone goes comatose in front of VH-1’s 100 Greatest Metal Moments. As a result, you buy The Dirt the next day and read it on the flight home.

Do You Wanna Touch Me? - Joan Jett & The Blackhearts (live)
While watching the show, you decide what your superpower should be: whenever you make the Rawk sign with your hand, something 20, maybe 30 feet behind you should explode in a spontaneously kick ass pyro-show. So amused with yourself are you that you tell the joke again and again and this song is, for whatever reason, what plays while you demonstrate how it would work—Do you wanna touch? BOOM! Do you wanna touch? BOOM! Do you wanna touch maaaaaayyyyyyyy?

I Don’t Like Mondays - The Boomtown Rats, The Fine Art of Surfacing
You have to figure out what song should go on the new stack-reel. This is one of your suggestions. What a great way to say hi to new clients.

Figure 8 - Elliot Smith, Sweet Adeline (Import)
As is this. Slow jam for the spider-prom.

I’m Through With White Girls - The Dirtbombs, Dangerous Magical Noise
As is this. Which eventually dislodges “Do You Wanna Touch Me?” entirely from your head.

Bam Thwok - Pixies
You play it again and again and again and while it’s not “Debaser,” it sure as shit ain’t “Build High,” either. Those guitars, goddamn those guitars. A short track of the Pixies dicking around in a basement studio is ten million times more exciting than anything, oh, Creed or Bush ever did.

Super Disco Breaking - Beastie Boys, Hello Nasty
Six years after Hello Nasty, the new Beasties record comes out and they sound like tired old men compelled more by the times to put a record out than because they had anything in-particular to say. You barely get through one listen of To the Five Boroughs. Any kind of good jam is obfuscated by shrill, off-time whining.

Bush and Chey-NEY make me MAD
Nine eeLEV-en made me SAD
Vote for Na-DER we’ll be GLAD
Listen up all y’all let’s go ahead and free TIBET yo

So you bust out the old goods and say goodnight. It stays there for a few days.

Death or Glory - The Clash, London Calling
Debating with Xtop the Pitchfork list; A Clash discussion comes up, relative merit of London Calling discussed. “Death or Glory” is what comes out. He who fucks nuns will later join the church. Seems to fit the God stuff coming out in JUAREZ, anyway.

Androgynous - The Replacements, Let It Be
Just pops in your head in and out all month, usually while you’re out fucking around, doing errands, whatever. "Closer than you know/Love each other so"? Little slice of domestic homelife, maybe? God, your subconscious is shallow like a puddle.

Bad Guys - Alan Parker, Bugsy Malone
We could've been anything we wanted to be / Don't it make your heart sad / That we decided, a fact we take pride in / We became the best at being bad / We could've been anything we wanted to be / With all the talent we had / No doubt about it, we whine and we pout it / We're the very best at being bad guys / We're rotten to the core / Hey congratulations no one likes you any more /Bad guys, we're the very worst / Each of us contemptible, we're criticized and cursed / We made the big time, malicious and mad / We're the very best at being bad

You should sue for child abuse.

If It Takes All Night - Frank Black & The Catholics, Dog in the Sand
Back on the nocturnal writing schedule, you are. In New York, just before the meeting at Marvel, you stop in at a little stationary store just around the corner from their offices. They have the fat Mead notebooks Deke had and you’ve been hunting for years. You buy two; they’re the only things (aside from The Dirt) you buy in the city. Ever since you’ve been writing longhand, and you’ve been doing a lot of it. A welcome fucking change. Anyway. With the burst of productivity, any semblance of a normal bedtime has gone right out the window. You sit in the cat’s chair and write well past 2, 3, and 4. Crash and get up and start all over again.

Slick As Snails - Robert Pollard, Speak Kindly of Your Volunteer Fire Department
You see a snail on the sidewalk in front of Sand’s place; you’re buried in APOCALYPSE NOW for the big work project (“I watched a snail crawl across the edge of a straight razor…” or whatever the line is) and “speedy exit schemes” resonates big and loud like a tuning fork in your head a lot lately.

Everyday is Like Sunday, Morrisey, Who Gives A Fuck?
You were duped into losing your virginity to this record, you know. This song, some kind of quality of light never fails to trigger it in your head. Post rain, silver skies. Hard to explain, but it’s been happening a lot lately with all the rain.

Dogs of Lust - The The, Dusk
You catch American Catastrophe’s last show before Grace decamps to Europe for the summer. Terry plays harmonica. It gets you thinking.

The Bells - Lou Reed, The Bells
Here come the bells
Here come the bells
Here come the bells
Here come the bells

The Town Halo - A.C. Newman, The Slow Wonder
Just in under the wire, from Xtop. Stuck in pretty hard the last few days of the month. No association, no links or meanings to anything, just a killer hook. Cellos.