fear in the heart 11|04

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old phrenologies here.
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My GOD this is late. Eh. What can you do? The good news is that there's only been, like, six songs in December so far.

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Goin’ to Graceland - The Dead Milkmen, Bucky Fellini
If this were Disneyworld I'd buy a pair of Elvis ears.

Knock on Wood – Eddie Floyd, Knock on Wood

You haven’t changed the futurephoneblog over there to the left because you don’t want to erase Memphis, you know? Well, that and it’s broken. You don’t know if it’s being from Chicago, or maybe it was your parents’ tastes, or if maybe you’re just retrocooling yourself up some, but you remember knowing and loving the Stax sound way more than Motown or any of that other shit. Horns instead of strings, a pulse instead of a beat. Raw sweat and rawer soul, none of that Smokey Robinson tuxedo-and-choreography shit.

You loved the Stax Museum; the entire visit seemed like one exercise in gooseflesh after the next. Even though, yeah, it’s a reconstruction and fabricated and blah blah fuck you, you touched Booker T’s keyboard.

If you’re looking for the epitome of the Stax/Volt sound, and you think Green Onions is played out somehow, listen to this. Then grab your girl and dance. Thunder, lightning, all that.

Gardening at Night – REM, Dead Letter Office
You’re picking dead leaves out of the limbs and branches of a live tree. You wanna kill time while waiting for the dog to piss? Rake the deck. Who cares what time it is.

Death or Glory – The Clash, London Calling
Wow, this makes the first repeat track in the phrenologies. It’s the line “We’re gonna fight ‘til you lose.” It’s in your head all election day. You know, though, before you’re even home to watch the returns. You’re smoking and waiting for Kel and you’re already bargaining. You’ll quit sooner. You’ll quit right now. By the time you get home and sit down, the dread’s soaked you to the bone. Buck up, game face, all that-- but in your heart it was over at lunchtime.

Ohio – CSN&Y, So Far
It’s late and you’re exhausted. Propping eyelids open with cigarettes. The dog’s sniffing around the leaves. Ohio hasn’t been called yet, but it’s close. You do some quick math. With Ohio, without Ohio, with New Mexico and Colorado, without Florida and Ohio. Send it to Laurenn and Warren but it’s too late and you know it. Maybe The Dread hit because the back of your brain did the math already and realized Kerry had only one road into the White House, and the last few days, Ohio is all anyone’s been talking about. Nixon’s coming. Damn straight.

Xtop puts the NIXON NOW sticker on his car.

Boilermaker – The Jesus Lizard, Liar
November 3rd comes like a hangover. You lay in bed for, like, a half hour trying to sort through what’s happened and size up the shape of things. Look and learn about the hole you’re in. At some point in the shower, it starts: I’m calm now but I’m shaking. Make me. Anotherboilermaker. Make me. Anotherboilermaker. Make me. Anotherboilermaker.

Hold on Hope – Guided By Voices, Do the Collapse
My, isn’t that sweet. Some retarded part of your backbrain got a hold of the mental iPod and tried cheering you up. Ha ha ha.

Then, some point the next day, it starts to get a little better. You start knocking the stones in your head together and figure out what happened. You shake it off by afternoon, in-between digging up Goldwater info and scanning the precinct return numbers as Dave Leip posts them. Free from the shrill nattering of the blogoechosphere and the moment to moment minutae of the polls, you give yourself over to your higher power and have accepted you have no control. By the time Warren writes, you’re almost on fire.

You’re giving yourself through the holidays, just, you know. To be safe.

Underdog – The Dirtbombs, Ultraglide in Black
Wanders in during yardwork. What is it about songs about work, and working? Clutch, the Clash, this. Shit, any fucking reference to work, you’re a sucker for. Thirteen years later and Joe Lopina remains correct in his assessment of you.

Oh, Detroit, Lift up Your Weary Head! (Rebuild! Restore! Reconsider!) – Sufjan Stevens, Greetings from Michigan: The Great Lake State.

Winter’s coming and this really is perfect wintertime music, but what gets stuck is “It’s a great idea.”

Ha ha.

Shane – Liz Phair, Whipsmart
As if in response:

You gotta have fear in your heart. You gotta have fear in your heart. You gotta have fear in your heart. You gotta have fear in your heart. You gotta have fear in your heart. You gotta have fear in your heart. You gotta have fear in your heart. You gotta have fear in your heart. You gotta have fear in your heart. You gotta have fear in your heart. You gotta have fear in your heart.

Rednecks – Randy Newman, Good Old Boys
Man, this is the worst—WORST—song to have stuck in your head. Because you can’t sing it out loud. And if you do, people give you The Look.

Even in his Youth – Nirvana, Hoarmoaning
Okay, so—so then there’s just nothing. Everything to this point, these were all stuck up to maybe a week after the election. That’s the 9th. Then it stopped. Psychic radio silence. It’s weird. There’s just… aftermath vacuum, something, everything, nothing.

It gets cold fast. Fall spends itself faster than a gallon of milk stays good. Wheels always spin.

Marc keynoted in Memphis. Design Shaman, he says. You cringe. He comes out like an acid mariachi and immediately alienates The Russians. He plays, screams, yowls and howls and about an hour in, sonofabitch, he’s got you. And with fists of red glitter he goes exactly where you hoped and the whole thing splits your head open like a fresh melon. The rest of Memphis you and Kel and he noodle around. Lots of talking. He’s obsessed with his daughter in a way that makes other dads proud, I’d bet. And lovelorn like he’d just gotten his first broken heart. He’s also talented as a motherfucker and sharp like tacks and bees.

But, yeah, there’s just nothing there for a while. Work keeps you kinda ragged and you don’t get too much writing done and your head’s just turned off.

Then from nowhere, look--! Listen--! Our young Kurt. From out of nowhere. See, though, it’s all leading to something, isn’t it?

Bonnie and Clyde – Serge Gainsbourg, Comic Strip
Some kind of process has started, your shamanism, your excavation, whatever it is. You don’t know how to describe it, and you’re going to fail every time you try, but: something’s missing, right? The spark, the That Feeling. So you play at being Marc English here and there, doing your own little archeology. Watch/listen/read/dig for old sparks. Irma Vep, Book of Life, Alphaville, The Wild Party, any of it. From Irma Vep, this sticks. It’s around this time, oh, three years ago you hear it first in the Tiny Hammer. This sounds like fucking, you say. Darin either agrees or is horrified, you can’t tell.

To Catch a Thief – Lovage, Music to Make Love to Your Old Lady By
Here, here’s a funny story that you forgot, like knowing and forgetting that X meant Y, once upon a time: for a while, you were going to get Alfred Hitchcock’s profile doodle tattooed on your right bicep. Smitty takes the idea as his own but he doesn’t do it either and you only find out when X. mentions it.

Map it out: Irma Vep, Louis Feuillade, Lang/Murneau/Dryer/etc., silent guys that leapt to sound – Lubitsch, Hitchcock, Lang, etc.

This doesn’t have to make sense to anyone but you.

Sappy – Nirvana, No Alternative (I think?)
This used to be called Verse Chorus Verse. You have the tape somewhere to prove it.

So, what’s up with the two Nirvana songs after ten years of not thinking about them at all? Frame it, ten years back, NCSA stuff. Or is it just because of the box set coming out?

NPR does a think Thanksgiving day about Bit Torrent. You show Dad what they’re talking about by ganking the set.

Christmas in Hollis - Run DMC, A Very Special Christmas
It’s not Black Friday without a little Christmas in Hollis.