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You’re wrong to think you’ll never escape it

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Lou Reed & John Cale – Smalltown

Andrew was born into this world a year before Marlon Brando would begin school. Three years later he would be joined by James Dean.  He did not date boys as pretty as these or girls as plentiful as these two men finally would. Andrew wasn’t aware just yet, but at least he’d one day compete with these men for the minds of you and I. “One day I’ll be a superstar or work in a junkyard.”

Sometimes, as a boy, he would pray to his Superstar. Not on his knees, but in bed, wide-eyed. Andrew would ask not for change, but to change. However, later on, as an older boy, he would ask Jesus to join the party. Jesus was never photographed at these events, but Andrew felt he had arrived at one or two. “The advantage of an open invitation.”

In his teens he would hide pornographic images of men beneath his mattress. Occasionally he’d pray to Jesus, “I sometimes like who I am. I don’t want to be caught. Be my lookout. Thanks. In the name of the Father…”

Andrew would be a father of none, but a creator of many. It’s hard to know whether this was enough for him. Those entertainers on the stage were his. That splash of thought on canvas and the magnetic fascination of certain film would be his. All alive by the demand of his dancing hands. As a boy his hands would dance in secret. A peek behind closed doors and people would not have understood. At least now he had found men and women who responded to his contortion of fingers. He prayed for these men and women. He prayed that he may find them outside his home and town. “I see stars. I see colours. Jesus, help me beyond these gates and give me dancers.”

And Jesus did.

[Buy Songs For Drella.]

Posted on March 16, 2010 - Tunes - 2 Comments » Share

I’ve got a tucked white shirt with black buttons

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Billie Holiday & Lester Young – Mean To Me

“Whenever somebody is near, it must be great fun to be mean to me. “

I have secrets aplenty, but you’ll understand that I have very few to share. That said, for almost a month now I have thought a thought, one I would like to finally expose to you.

There are songs in the world that spark a desire for improvement in oneself. This is not hard to imagine. Upon listening to a piece of such exception an ear may be turned and interest may pique. This has happened to you and to us all. A voice of astounding artistry may compel longing for refinement in your very own. A lyricist of such striking lucidity will have us scrambling for the worn pencil lacking a nib and the notepad that has yet to be purchased and may never be. These moments, these sounds, although rare, exist and so does the song that promotes the desire for dance.

We must however – before ridicule and scorn become today’s theme – make a slight but salient distinction; almost all songs can produce a foot tap, a nod and a sway of hips, but it’s the song that incites the desire to perfect the art of the shimmy and the jive that is the rarest of all beasts’. I do not wish to replicate a Wallace and Vega moment. There is no awkward silence to veil with barefoot dance. This is the very secret I wish to share. For almost a month now I have dreamt a dream… of waltz.

Like a child beginning his list, I want to waltz with the girl.

I want the dance they would surely have danced had older film dared to allow their lovers to touch in their most private of homes – the hallways where love’s never been. I want God to give us just three minutes of Her and our time in black and white. I want the click and clack of heels on wood to tease the air with the threat to eclipse the crackle of vinyl song. I want white walls flush with quivering candle light. I want smiles that last and muscle that fail to strain. I want bodies’ tight, thigh to thigh, but fluid movement. I want shutters as windows with street noise augmented on opening. I want to see death to the rigidity of waltz – for sight over shoulders to cease and make way for a waltz of fervent admirers.

Yet to all of this, the details of a voyeur, I would be oblivious – because she was there.

She would be there and dancing.

And I want it all to this song and this song only.

“(Whenever somebody is near it must be great fun to be mean to me.) You shouldn’t for can’t you see what you mean to me?”

[Buy A Musical Romance.]

Posted on March 11, 2010 - Tunes - 1 Comment » Share

Like her lipstick on your lips

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The Horrors – Sea Within a Sea

We begin at zero and end at seven minutes and fifty-five seconds. This will be our journey time.

Durability not one of your strong suits? A shared complaint, undoubtedly, but you may be assured that song’s end shall be reached, if all you do is try. Come take the trek and “see the scraping sky.” To accompany you on your journey across this motley soundscape, one of pulsing land and blurred contours spitting glitter, will be a travelling package awash with sound.

This is what was found.

The original surge of our march is along the back of the murmuring bass line, dancing at the feet of the tormenting voice (a crooner, it shall eventually become), playfully predicting its next surge or fall and forever backed by a spry track of drumming so taut and exquisite it allows for an unforeseen wriggle free from the fetter of timekeeping. Wafting in the background throughout are the distant and distressed howls of guitar, black clouds lacking the temptation of linings. Guiding us through this terrain are pervading bursts of plush synth wrapping friendly arms around its cousin of synthesised dance pulsations. The dance floor cavorts beneath our very feet, so we won’t have to.

It is deliciously kaleidoscopic.

However, this sound is confusing. It’s exceptionally hypnotic and almost too aurally pleasing to deny yourself the joy of tormenting it with air thrown words like pop or catchy, yet its only true failing, if this can be classified as such, is its impracticality as a pop song – it just isn’t one, certainly not in shape – and so radio has spurned sound once again in favour of shape. The ear of the pop-savvy listener has been savagely denied a chorus.

Allow us to curse the very day.

Still, as the dissolving synth soars and dips and dives like a young bird adoring flight, taking the rarest of moments to bask in their newest sphere of confidence, the sound is finally swallowed whole by a falling sun. The minutes do come to a precipitous end. Fluttering keyboards providing the sounds of life with veins engorged and then one absolute slice and its final beat is had. The minutes, as many as there may be, are not minutes enough. This sound is a long trek so gloriously short-lived.

“So you might say the path we share is one of danger and of fear, until the end.”

This is the Horrors. This is Sea Within a Sea.

[Buy Sea Within a Sea.]

Posted on March 7, 2010 - Tunes - 2 Comments » Share

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