i’m jerry; this is my associate cornelius, 02 | 05

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Gates of Steel - Devo, Oh No It’s Devo

Driving down to Union Station to pick Danyon up at the Amtrak Depot; it’s still snowing fat flakes like TV static. It’s warm, though-- the snow’s not fooling anyone. The whole of Union Station is open, unlocked, empty, ghostly. Wander around with the other ghosts, then.

Dirty Work - Steely Dan, Can’t Buy a Thrill

Weird sex and heroin, weird sex and heroin, all Steely Dan songs are about weird sex and heroin.

Soul Kitchen - The Doors, The Doors

So, yeah. Danyon, on a breather between laps. We’re talking in the kitchen. Nnng.

Send Me a Postcard - Shocking Blue, The Best of Shocking Blue

On Han’s December mix. Only the bridge dates this; everything else about this track obscures its birthday. Like Janis Joplin in a garage band. You have to listen to it a half-dozen times before finally asking Han who it is and where it comes from. Thankfully, he doesn’t just tell you to read his fucking site.

Train from Kansas City - Neko Case, The Tigers Have Spoken

Another from Han. Sounds like a prime girl group steeped in heavy Spectorism. The treble peaks and it’s so goddamn beautiful.

Frug - Rilo Kiley, Initial Friend

You have no idea what the “Robocop” looks like when executed. Han explains but you’ve still got no clue.

One night you’re waiting at the El Taco Loco drivethru playing this fairly prodigiously loud, windows down, head bopping back and forth. Totally unselfconscious, totally embarrassing, no doubt. Something about the song, something about her voice, effortlessly evokes that response, even at a cholo fast food place a couple blocks too far east for your own good.

The cholos giving you the eye kinda confirm that one.

She Will Only Bring You Happiness - McLusky, The Difference Between You and Me is that I am not on Fire.

For some reason? Charlie, on LOST? You can’t watch the show without thinking his imaginary band sounds exactly like McLusky.

That said. Nikol makes you a little checklist notebook, with boxes and lines and the Dog-Shooting-Bees-From-It’s-Mouth-With-Arrows-In-Its-Neck logo on front, and you use it like a third hand. “Note to self,” pops in and out when you, uh, take notes. To self.

Christ. You’re a goddamn genius, you know that?

I Palindrome I - They Might Be Giants, Apollo 18

Xtop asks for Factory Showroom. Your TMGB is all unusable, un-rescuable, lost, gone. Craig comes to the rescue. This one sticks, emblematic of the whole record, maybe. It’s weird, you’ve not heard it in years and years and years but, still, it takes you right back to Craig’s car, or better yet, driving along with Hermitte and having to pull over because the two of you were laughing so hard at “I’m having a heart attack/I’m having a heart attack/I’m having a heart attack/I’m having a heart attack.”

Also: this is the catchiest song about euthanasia ever.

* edit:

There are two songs that go here, Humming One of Your Songs by Ane Braun and This Isn't It by Giant Drag. I didn't originally type them up here because they both came from Han's January mix and it felt spectacularly unoringinal or, should I say, more spectacularly unoriginal than it normally does.

How We Know - The Thermals, Laurenn hearts The Thermals

So, like, Laurenn sends this song to you, and it’s okay, and then, like, three months later? You wake up and it’s in your head like it’s picking a fight or something. A crease like god’s own thumb smooshed it in.

2000 Man - The Rolling Stones, Their Satanic Majesties’ Request

Amping up on THUG music. Driving to pick Ben up one morning and listen to this all the way from here to the River Market, and all the places I got lost in-between. Impossible to feel anything but Dignan-esque at inability to follow rudimentary directions.

He’s Simple, He’s Dumb, He’s the Pilot - Grandaddy, Sophtware Slump

...which leads to this.

Fail (You’re Prone to Failure) - Craig Moorhead, Craig Moorhead’s The Problem with Troubles

The line is “And all the neurons sang,” but the why completely escapes you.

Norwegian Wood - The Beatles, Revolver

Okay, so: Murakami’s Kafka on the Shore comes out, and the Times unlocks the whole of their Murakami archive in the Book Review. Interviews, reviews, all that. Which makes you think you should pull out the copy of Norwegian Wood you bought last year in Tokyo and finish it. Which leads to a very Murakami-esque couple of evenings where things inexplicably disappear and reappear, and you’re able to find absolutely everything you’ve been looking for for the past year except Norwegian Wood and it’s driving you crazy.

You do find Moorcock’s Cornelius Quartet and The Life and Times of Jerry Cornelius, the one that Vince found for you in Chicago, and start flipping through it. This sets you off digging up stuff on the New Worlds wave of stuff he was such a part of, Ballard and Delaney and Ellison and Spinrad. Spinrad wrote a book called The Iron Dream, as though he were Hitler, and as though Hitler fled Germany in the thirties, made his way to New York, became a painter of pulp covers and, eventually, a pulp author, and The Iron Dream is the pinnacle of his fiction.

Kel leaves town to visit Laurenn and then Courtney. Chad gets married the first friday she’s gone. You and Timmy go to his bachelor’s bowl-off at King Louie and get there early. Kill half an hour across the street at Half Price Books. Look for The Iron Dream; be amazed they actually have it.

It is the first time you have ever gone to Half Price Books and found exactly what you were looking for.

In a fit of Kel’s-Gone pique, you pick up a New Worlds anthology, and Spinrad’s Bug Jack Barron, too.

It ended up that Chris P. borrowed Norweigan Wood and you forgot. But Kel remembered. You start Hardboiled Wonderland and the End of the World instead. At one point, you actually lose the book while reading it.

River Deep, Mountain High - Tina Turner, Proud Mary: The Best of Ike and Tina Turner

Specktor. Spekter. Spector. Spectre. Specter. What was the line? The earth punching god and god punches back? Sure.