“You Just Messed With The Wrong Team, Better Not Try To Fall Asleep”
I’ll admit that, like every other good thinking person in the world, I didn’t give that much thought to either of John Lennon’s musical kids until fairly recently. Yes, Julian had that “Salt Water” song that was pleasant enough in a mid-1980s way, but that was about it… and then, in 2006 or so, Sean Lennon decided to reveal that he was not only his father’s son, but also Elliott Smith’s, somehow.
So much of Lennon’s Friendly Fire album echoes so much of what I love about either the Beatles, or Smith’s own Beatles obsession, that it feels as if parts of it have been created just to center on my musical sweet spot. The bitter lyrics – the entire album is centered around a recent break-up, as viewed from his point of view, his ex’s point of view, and the former mutual friend who caused the split, so… yeah. Not exactly the most ridiculously upbeat thing to sing along with – the George Harrison-esque guitarwork, the way the vocals fall and swoop back up effortlessly, the weird fragility of the whole thing that masks the anger and passion underneath (Seriously, listen to what he’s singing on “Dead Meat” under the carousel musicality, which again reminds me of Elliott Smith’s Figure 8 arrangements), it’s all pretty much the kind of pretty ugly pop that I’m a complete sucker for.
After Friendly Fire, I lost touch with what Lennon was up to somehow, so it made me ridiculously happy to discover The Ghost of A Saber Tooth Tiger the other day, his equally-ridiculously-named new band, filled with as much delicate pop, lovely vocals and barely-disguised melancholy as the album I’d fallen for so easily. It’s always nice to find new shards of magic when you don’t expect it, isn’t it?
Art Self-consciously meta Uncategorized: More Blargh Photographs From Around Town
by Graeme
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My Spider-Sense Is Tingling!
Still in crazy workmode.
The interesting thing for me about this recent crush of work – Brought on, last week, by a larger-than-usual workload mixed with spending hours and hours at the animal hospital with a dog who turned out to have a corneal ulcer (He’s okay now), and this week by trying to write ahead of deadlines because we’re traveling at the end of this week for a friend’s wedding – has been finding out just how much I can get done before I feel like I’m beginning to lose my mind a little. I feel like I’m getting a better handle not only on my own mental limits – No jokes, please – but also recognizing when I’m approaching them.
I was having a conversation last week about the idea that the body could inform the mind – that you could literally feel a physical reaction to something before you’re consciously aware of it, intellectually – and, perhaps because of that conversation or perhaps because that person turned out to be right, I’ve been hyper-aware of the ways in which my body is telling me to take breaks, instead of just sitting at the keyboard tying to get things done. Whether it’s feeling thirsty, or the back of my neck beginning to stiffen up, it’s like getting warning signs that I should stop writing and wander about, try to stretch muscles again and distract my brain from constantly thinking well this is a potential subject and what if you wrote about that and has anyone said this yet and so on and so on.
Of course, it might just be age. I am, after all, an old man these days.
This Is A Promise With A Catch
This is one of those cases where the lyrics you mishear are better than the real ones; I always hear the line “Don’t be sad/I know you win,” which sounds like one of the most supportive, lovely things in the world – Someone trying to help you not by stepping in to save the day, but by saying “It’s okay, you’re not wrong, everything will turn out okay in the end” – but the real line is “Don’t be sad/I know you will,” which is… still lovely, but slightly less so, to me.
That said, the second verse of this song still kills me every single time, as does Beck’s performance of the song in general.
(But, come on: “This is a promise with a catch/Only if you’re looking, will it find you/Cause true love is searching too/And how can it recognize you/Unless you step out into the light”? That’s just breathtakingly beautiful.)
Random Media: Ventura Highway La Dah Daaaaaa Da Daaaaa
by Graeme
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Geography Lessons, Stat!
Someone in charge of Netflix blurbs has a weird sense of humor:
America is a “British classic rock band”? Really? Are you sure?
Self-consciously meta: Blargh Photographs From Around Town
by Graeme
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It’s Been A Hard Day’s Night…
…And I’ve been working like a dog. For about a week now, in fact. Normal service will be resumed when I am not writing so much that my brain feels like it’s burning out (Oh, if only I were joking…).
“I Found Out What The Actual End Of The Rope Feels Like”
For the large part of this episode, I was in this room alone with Megan [Ganz]. I remember that experience very well because I was at my emotional wits’ end. I had been told numerous times before that, as early as episode seven, that I was at my wits’ end. People kept telling me to stop. They would say, “You’re at the end of your rope.” And I’d say, “Why are you saying that? That seems like a weird thing to wish on someone. I’m really happy. I love my show.” And they’d say, “No, no, you are exhausted, you need to cool out.” And I’d go home from those meetings thinking, “I think that they just wish that I wasn’t me.”
And it’s funny, because on that episode, I found out what the actual end of the rope feels like, because there is definitely no point in both seasons where I’ve been so terrified of my own failure. I’ve never been able to taste it like that. It was a combination of being that far behind schedule—there was no breaking the story, having a draft, table-reading, getting notes—and the episode obviously wouldn’t have existed if that had had to happen, because that process was designed to stop weird things from happening. And for good reason. There was too much risk and not enough reward. There is money being made and a business being transacted on every other network, and here we are on this little island of “Who gives a fuck?” But at some point, it doesn’t even matter. “Stop overthinking it; stop being weird. What’s the worst thing that could happen to your numbers if you go home and sleep a little bit?”
- Community creator Dan Harmon, talking about the “Critical Film Studies” episode. I don’t know why, but I responded very strongly to the idea of being “so terrified of my own failure” as a description of being at the end of your rope. The whole four part interview with the Onion is well worth a read, though, even if you don’t like the series (Although, if you don’t like Community, what is wrong with you?).
And If You Should Lose Me, You Will Track Me Down Again Before The Summer Ends
Badly Drawn Boy’s The Hour of Bewilderbeast was the accidental soundtrack of my summer in the year 2000. I’d bought it based on good reviews that compared him to Elliott Smith and Beck – although only the former seemed like a ringing endorsement to me at the time – but pretty much without having heard anything he’d done beyond maybe a couple of singles, and was pretty much unprepared for the warm, kind music that tumbled from it, humanity and humor and unembarrassed sentimentality that still felt a little bit like a revelation for a boy who’d learned so much from the irony of 1990s Britpop.
It helped, more than I think I knew at the time, that I was falling in love that summer; the album sounded out ideas and feelings inside me like sonar, like an X-Ray Machine made of melody, and I listened to it over and over again, wondering what new hidden treasures I could find inside myself when “The Shining” or “Magic In The Air” or “Epitaph” would come on. I’m not sure if it’s the music or the memories that have ensured that it’s definitely a summer album for me; every year, I’ll end up revisiting it when the rain starts to leave and the bird start singing just in case everything’s okay again.
My romance from that summer fared better than my love for Badly Drawn Boy; I got married to Kate, after all, and we’re still together a decade later (Ten years, we say to each other every now and again, in voices that mean both “Can you believe that it’s been that long?” and “I can’t really remember time before that, not really”), but BDB and I grew apart after a couple of increasingly disappointing follow-up albums that seemed more and more like attempts to recapture former glories. Everything after that first album has felt labored and difficult in the same way that the first album felt natural and effortless, although there have been songs and moments that felt “right,” for want of a better way to put it (His fourth album, “One Plus One Is One,” is the closest he’s come to matching the feeling of the debut, although there’s something to be said for his latest, “It’s What I’m Thinking, Part One: Photographing Snowflakes”). But even with all those later disappointments, there’s still something magical about the songs from that first album, the soundtrack to long days of longing, hopefulness and nervous excitement about what was to come.
