liner notes: Brandi Carlile

I promise I will be back on Friday or Saturday with the next song in the series, but for now I wanted to share the link to Billboard, where you can hear the upcoming album Give Up The Ghost by Brandi Carlile in its entirety!



I love Brandi, a singer/songwriter out of Washington, and her new single "Dreams" sounds like the sort of music Patsy Cline might make if she were a twentysomething gal alive today. Please check it out and remember that Give Up The Ghost is out next Tuesday! Also, if you get a chance to see her live, DO IT! I saw her play with Amy Ray earlier this year and she was amazing. She is touring with the Indigo Girls now! Here's a clip of her singing the most incredible song, "The Story" from her last album:

track 47: land of canaan

said it once before but it bears repeating



December 12, 1995: My 22nd birthday. I celebrate with my family at Planet Hollywood and am given one of the best gifts ever: 1200 Curfews, a double album that shows me that the Indigo Girls are even more awesome live. One of my favorite tracks is their cover of a song called "River."


next time: i'm so hard to handle, i'm selfish and i'm sad • now i've gone and lost the best baby that i ever had • i wish i had a river i could skate away on

track 45: come to my window / track 46: i am so ordinary

I immediately fell for Melissa Etheridge's hit song "Come to my window." When the album Yes I Am came out, I realized that it had a song I had fallen for three years earlier on it. The song was called "I will never be the same" and it was featured in the Winona Ryder film Welcome Home, Roxy Carmichael. The movie came out when I was a senior in high school. I remember being a huge Winona Ryder fan then and it was a great time to be one because Roxy, Mermaids and Edward Scissorhands all came out at the same time. I remember that Kristi and I had to go see Edward Scissorhands twice because the first time there were people around us talking through the whole movie. Then the second time we went, the same thing happened. Argh!



Anyway, "Come to my window" and "I will never be the same" inspired me to buy Melissa's album and I found myself enjoying it so much that I immediately went and bought all her other albums, too. I really love her first disc, Melissa Etheridge and Yes I Am the most, but Brave and Crazy is also really good. She rocked. AND she was one of the first openly gay artists, which was exciting, especially back in 1994. On July 3, 1995, she played at the Miami Arena and I went to see her with my mom and Dave. It was a fantastic show and she was a perfect fit for an arena show. However, I would find myself even more taken with her opening act, Paula Cole. Only (hello recurring theme) not at first.


Paula opened for Melissa and I remember liking her somewhat. I especially remember her cover of Dolly Parton's "Jolene." After touring with Melissa, she went on to perform with Peter Gabriel on his amazing (at least on video) Secret World tour. Soon after the show, my friend Shawn, who I had met through the Indigo Girls list, sent me a mix tape with three of Paula's songs on it. I got her debut, Harbinger. It has some great songs, "Happy home," "Bethlehem" and "Saturn girl" are some of my favorites. But some of it is a bit pretentious and overreaching.

My favorite song from the album (which was one of the three songs Shawn put on my mix) and my favorite Paula Cole song still, was "I am so ordinary."

i tell myself that love is truly giving
somehow i justify this
hoping you will understand me
hoping you will love me back
and she is your Holy Mary
and i am so ordinary
and she is your Queen Cleopatra
and i'm just your morning after
and she is your Star Spangled Banner
and i am just Frere Jacques

It immediately hooked its way into my heart. Little did I know that it would be the song I'd listen to over and over again three years later, crying over The Boy Who Broke My Heart. To this day, I identify with the lyrics, with feeling second best, not good enough. If she had never written another song, Paula Cole would have had my heart eternally for writing that one.

next time: i'm not your promised land • i'm not your promised one • i'm not the land of canaan • waiting for you under the sun

track 44: elsewhere

One of the problems with remembering all of this is that sometimes the timelines get mixed up. This song rightfully belongs a few spaces up. Track 42, where it would have been between Jeff Buckley and the Indigo Girls. Because I know that I listened to Sarah McLachlan before getting the Boys on the Side soundtrack.



Discovering Fumbling Towards Ecstasy was another case of reading so many reviews that I decided to take a chance on an album. I remember having liked Sarah's song "Into the fire" from her previous album, Solace. I remember the first time I heard it, one afternoon on WVUM, I thought it was a new Sinéad O'Connor song. I had probably also heard Fumbling's big single, "Possession" at some point before buying the album. In my mind, Fumbling Towards Ecstasy is a perfect album. It's also the only perfect Sarah McLachlan album. Because of course, I immediately dived into her back catalog, and as much as I love Touch and Solace, they have their flaws and can be a bit pretentious and flowery. Further on, Surfacing would suffer a bit, despite being her giant breakthrough to popular music, because anything following a perfect album will be a disappointment and Afterglow would be a bit dull.

Regardless, I was obsessed with Fumbling and with Sarah and soon my love for her and my love for the Indigo Girls would lead to big things: Discovering Joni Mitchell and introducing my friend Lisa to the music of Sarah and the Girls.

next time: i would dial the numbers just to listen to your breath

track 43: dancing queen

In March of 1995, I was dying to see an Australian movie I'd read a lot about: Muriel's Wedding. It was just opening in the US that spring and I went to see it at Kendall Town & Country with my mom. I seem to remember that this was a point in time where we'd all go the movies almost weekly. Aside from igniting my deep, unwavering love for actress Toni Collette, it also triggered a memory for me. A memory of my youth. A memory of a song. A memory... of disco.



After being busted at a friend's wedding wearing a stolen dress, Muriel Heslop is accompanied home by a pair of cops. Her father, an ambitious politician, butters the boys up with beers and smooths things over. While he does that, Muriel goes to her bedroom (bypassing her sister's "Muriel, you're terrible"), sits down, and presses play on her tape recorder. She is in a daze as almost angelic voices being to sing "ahhh" and then in sync with the singers, Muriel sings, "You can dance, you can jive/having the time of your life..." I found myself lip-syncing along, too. As the movie progressed and more ABBA songs played, I realized that I knew this music. And kind of well. I remembered that my mom had an ABBA cassette that we'd listen to in the car years ago. I probably hadn't heard ABBA for years before the movie, but it was all so familiar to me.



I went out and bought the recently released ABBA collection called Thank You For The Music. I listened to "Dancing queen" and "Fernando" and "I do I do I do I do I do" over and over. I loved the band's final single, "Under attack" and mourned the dissolution of ABBA, 13 years before I truly discovered them. I bought every ABBA album there was. I loved their harmonies, the pure cheesy pop goodness of it all. I still don't have any idea what a "Super trouper" is or why they wore the outfits that they wore. I know I should be ashamed to admit it, but no: I love ABBA.

next time: i believe this is heaven to no one else but me

track 42: power of two

In February of 1995, my mom and I went to see a movie called Boys on the Side. I am a huge fan of Drew Barrymore. I guess that's odd, seeing as how I'm kind of a movie snob and she tends to make highly commercial romantic comedies. But in the early 1990s when she was making her comeback via movies like Poison Ivy and Guncrazy, I read a big article about her and found myself really cheering her on. I remembered being a fan of Drew's from E.T. and one of my favorite 80s comedies, Irreconcilable Differences. I read her autobiography, Little Girl Lost, which is where one of my all time favorite quotes comes from: "Happiness is knowing that you're alive and have a fighting chance to enjoy it." Ever since then, I've just adored her - she's real and she's insanely positive and I have to admire that a lot.



The movie was one of her first mainstream films after coming back in a bunch of indie films and starring in Mad Love. It also featured one of my very favorite actresses, Mary-Louise Parker. I loved the movie and bought the soundtrack, which was a compilation of women musicians that included Melissa Etheridge, Sarah McLachlan, Bonnie Raitt and this little song called "Power of two" by the Indigo Girls. I fell in love with this song. It was swooningly romantic and full of gorgeous harmonies. I went back and found my copy of their Rites of Passage album and gave it another good listen. It was like something had clicked and I suddenly appreciated what I had dismissed a couple of years earlier. I was obsessed with "Ghost" and "Love will come to you" is my favorite IG song ever. And yes, in fact, Rites of Passage is my favorite IG album now. I bought Swamp Ophelia, which is where "Power of two" came from, and loved it, too. At the time, even more than Rites. The production on some of the songs was closer to the music I was listening to then, especially some of the Amy songs like "Touch me fall."



I really liked these albums, but it wasn't until I got the live 1200 Curfews set for my 22nd birthday (celebrated at Planet Hollywood in Coconut Grove, I believe) that I became crazy-obssessed-Indigo Girls fan. Because as great as the studio albums are, the live stuff knocked. me. OUT. It had so many songs that I didn't know, from the earlier albums, songs that I would soon become addicted to like, "Land of Canaan." Oh, how I love "Land of Canaan!" I soon went after the earlier albums, and immediately joined the IG mailing list online.



The simple act of joining The List affected my life greatly. For many years, I was friendless. I had dropped out of school and was working at Toys R Us. I had work friends, and some of those became the sort of friends who I'd go out with once in a while. But no one really shared my interests. So online, I had a bunch of Christian Bale friends, and a bunch of IG friends. Through the list, I met my great friend Shawn, I discovered the music of Dar Williams and Ani DiFranco, which led to another mailing list and another group of people. I met up with people from the list in 1996 at the New Orleans Jazz Festival, an unlikely place for my first IG show, and over the years have had several similar experiences. I remember debating which Girl says "Moo!" and discussing whether or not we were all Amy people or Emily people.

For the record, I started off as an Emily person and have grown into an Amy person. But I really love them both. I love Amy's rock n roll sensibility and growling vocals. I admire her so much for the songs that come from a darker place, but never stop being able to see the light, no matter how dim it may be. I love watching Amy play live because she is doing what she loves and she's enjoying it and you can just feel the amazing energy while watching. I love Emily's poetry and honesty. I also really love her dedication to her faith, especially as it comes from someone else who is gay. I'm not a big fan of organized religion or musicians who try to shove their beliefs down your throat. I see God in everyday things and I pray, but I also believe that everyone's entitled to their own beliefs. I don't talk about it much. But when I hear some of these songs (particularly "The wood song"), I feel moved and reverent; they are a bit like my own versions of hymns. And really a lot of the music that I hold dearest to my heart feels like that. As Emily wrote in the book co-written by her father, Don Saliers, A Song to Sing, A Life to Live: Reflections on Music as Spiritual Practice, "Anyone who struggles with love and suffering and searches for the mystery ends up singing- or at least listening to music."



In the end, what I love most is the combination of these two amazing humans, Amy Ray and Emily Saliers. When their voices come together, there's nothing I can think of that is more gorgeous or moving. Their music, more than anyone else's, has brought me joy and happiness, peace, and comfort when I need it. Their music, more than anyone else's, feels like home to me.

(There will be more blogs about Indigo Girls songs to come, especially one about visiting New Orleans and another about making my friend Lisa a mix tape that would have, one might say, a bit of an effect on her and eventually about the night I met Amy Ray.)

next time: you can dance, you can jive, having the time of your life...

liner notes: i'm your fan

I've added a fan page for the songs that made me on Facebook. I'll update it every time I post a new blog rather than clogging up the newsfeeds of poor unsuspecting people who have friended me. I hope you'll add it and if you think anyone else might enjoy reading this, pass it on.

The Songs That Made Me on Facebook

and as for the big Indigo Girls post... it'll be here soon.
thanks for reading!
rick

track 41: last goodbye

In late 1994, a song called "Last goodbye" by Jeff Buckley got my attention. It was a gorgeous, epic song with vocals more amazing than I'd ever heard by a male singer. At that point most of the albums I had by male artists were bands- INXS, U2, Nirvana, Depeche Mode. And as much as I liked them, I never seemed to become as big of a fan as I was of music by women. Jeff Buckley's Grace changed all of that. I don't think it hooked me completely at first. It took some time to grow on me. "Last goodbye" and "So real" and "Hallelujah" were all immediate favorites. I think "Eternal life" is currently the reigning champion, with "Dream brother" a close second. I still find that I hear something new now and then from Grace. The music that Jeff made was so much more sophisticated and almost otherworldy compared to anything else I knew. In time it would be a beloved album for me and now it's considered by most of the music world as a classic.



Needless to say I was madly in love with him. I've come a long way from Jordan Knight. Although it's always the dark hair and brown eyes, isn't it? Discovering Jeff Buckley was probably responsible for my taste in dark brooders, or as someone at work defined it, "dirty skinny white boys."




next time: i've seen the shadows of so many people trying on the treasures of youth • but a road that fancy and fast ends in a fatal crash and i'm glad we got off, to tell you the truth

track 40: make it home

One of my favorite things about working at Toys R Us was that it meant I wasn't always able to go out of town with my family. My stepfather's family had a place on Marco Island that they'd go to pretty often. Once in a while, it was fun, but frankly, staying at home for a weekend by myself was AWESOME. I would usually close on Friday nights, I think, and then not have to go back in till Sunday. So on Saturday, I would order a pizza for myself, put together jigsaw puzzles and listen to CDs. Ok, probably not your average 20 year old's ideal weekend, but for me it was bliss. I remember playing Belly a lot. Also, I was into a few bands from K Records at the time, specifically Lois (Butterfly Kiss and Strumpet are gorgeous lo-fi masterpieces) and Tiger Trap (whose self titled and only album is one of my ultimate favorites). I also remember listening to the 4 Non-Blondes album Bigger! Better! Faster! More! , but I think I only liked the single. However, the one I remember listening to and singing along with the most was Juliana Hatfield's solo debut, Hey Babe.



I used to listen to the UM radio station, WVUM, with my finger on the record button of my tape player. I'd tape the songs that stood out for me. I taped "Do you love me now?" by the Breeders, followed immediately by "Turning Japanese" by the Vapors. To this day everytime I hear "DYLMN?" I expect to hear the opening notes of "Turning Japanese" at the end of the song. One of the songs that I taped was "Everybody loves me but you." Juliana had that combination of melancholy and pop that I loved. "Everybody loves me but you" is what hooked me, "Forever baby" got me even more addicted and "Ugly" is one of my personal anthems. Sometime between Hey Babe and her album Become What You Are, Juliana toured with The B-52's. When they played Miami, she did an in-store appearance at Yesterday and Today Records on Bird Road. I was excited about it and took the bus to see her. I remember it being a sad day because I had heard the day before that my high school friend Kristi's mom had lost her battle with cancer. It was the first time that someone I was somewhat close to had died. They were having a funeral up in Alabama and I wouldn't be going. My mom encouraged me to go see Juliana anyway. I stood at the back of the crowd, happy to see her playing. She was signing after the show and I had brought the insert from her "Forever Baby" single with me. I had it in my jacket pocket so when I approached her and pulled it out she gave me this odd look kind of like, "Okay... where did that come from?" She signed it "Juliana Hatfield -XO"



In August of 1994, a TV show that I had heard a lot about premiered: "My So-Called Life." It had all of this buzz, really positive reviews, so I taped the first episode. It made me cry. I totally got that show and the character of Angela Chase. Even today I can relate. So much so that last week, when I happened to find some of my old journals and writing, one of the quotes I had at the beginning was from the show:

"But that's the part that's so unfair. I have NOTHING else on my mind.
How come I have to be the one sitting around analyzing him in like,
microscopic detail and he gets to be the one with
OTHER things on his mind?" -Angela Chase, "My So-Called Life"

I thought it was funny that the quote is still insanely relevant. I know that she was a 15-year old female TV character and I was a 20-year old gay lad, but I got being the self conscious, insecure person crushing on someone beautiful and unattainable. I'm 35 now and I still feel that way. Even the story of the first episode, feeling misunderstood by her family and her old friends, making friends with a couple of wilder outsiders... I had done that pretty much. I even dyed my hair red first. I remember the next day, I watched it at my dad's house. He didn't like it. He was just like "what's her problem?" But I didn't care, I was addicted. I taped every episode that aired and was heartbroken when it ended.




On the show's Christmas episode, "So-Called Angels," Juliana Hatfield appeared as a mysterious girl Angela meets. She sings a song, leads Angela's mom to find her and her runaway friend Rickie, and then disappears. At the end of the episode there is a moment that suggests that Juliana was actually a spirit, an angel. The song she sang was called "Make it home" and I recognized it right away. She had played it at the record store. It was beautiful and heartbreaking. When I remembered why it was familiar, it reminded me of Kristi's mom and it probably always will.

next time: kiss me, please kiss me - but kiss me out of desire, baby, not consolation

track 39: violet

I take adventurous chances with CDs. This used to be much more true than it is now, although it still happens. But nowadays, I can sample tracks online before taking the risk with a purchase. This was especially true in the 90s when, if I had read a really interesting article or inspiring review, I'd give something new a try sound unheard (?). I was a magazine fiend, Interview, Details and Entertainment Weekly and this is what inspired me to try Melissa Ferrick's Massive Blur, Eve's Plum's Envy, Liz Phair's Exile in Guyville and, thanks to an interesting article in Details back in 1993, Hole's Pretty on the Inside.



I stuck with Melissa Ferrick for a while until realizing that I was only enjoying a song or two from the albums after her second one, Willing to Wait and the second Eve's Plum album, Cherry Alive! wasn't as good as the first. Aside from the song "Jesus loves you (but not as much as I do)" which I loved. Liz and Hole were the only two that really stuck with me. I got Pretty on the Inside in the spring of 1993, when I was at Toys R Us. I remember getting it from Camelot Music. There was a musicseller there who helped me often, who had been there since I was in high school, buying lush's Gala album. (How do I remember this??) When I bought Pretty on the Inside, she said she'd heard about this, but wondered how it was. And in fact, it was unlike anything I'd ever heard. I was in awe. Just as Tori Amos a year before had moved me by baring her soul in hushed whispers, Courtney Love shook me by baring hers with kicks and screams. Weirdly enough, the first time I remember hearing Joni Mitchell's "Both sides now" was as part of the title track. I listened to it a lot and it ended up inspiring a lot of uncharacteristic writing. In the original article I read, Courtney was speculating about which record company would sign the band, since they were getting a lot of buzz, partly due to Courtney being Kurt's girlfriend. I remember she said she thought it would be Madonna's Maverick Records.



They ended up being signed to Geffen Records and just a week before Hole's second album, Live Through This, was going to be released, Kurt shot himself on April 5, 1994. I liked Nirvana. I had Nevermind and In Utero and liked them both. But I guess it makes sense, having always had a preference for women musicians, that I had connected more with the Hole album and was a much bigger fan of theirs. I was coming back from a trip to Georgia with my dad and Dave when I heard that Kurt was dead. It was such a shock and I remember thinking just as much about Courtney that day. I think I tend to think a lot about those who get left behind when someone dies. Particularly when it's a case of suicide. Having had an uncle who shot himself (and this past year, a grandfather), the pain and shock of finding out that someone you love has ended their life so violently is something I get. It's why whatever dark thoughts I have when everything seems hopeless, I know that suicide is something I could never do. Not to the people I love. That day, when we got home from our trip, I lighted some candles in my room and listened to Nevermind with MTV playing silently in the background showing the memorial in Seattle. Probably thousands of people were doing the same thing. Every time I hear "Come as you are" I can't help but hearing the lyric "i swear that i don't have a gun" and bitterly thinking, Fucking liar.



About a week later, Live Through This came out and it was powerful. Yeah, probably more powerful in this new context. Courtney Love shouting in "Violet" - "go on take everything take everything take everything" and in "Asking for it" - "if you live through this with me/i swear that i will die for you" meant something different now and it was like a punch in the stomach. The band's third and final album, Celebrity Skin, was a bit more mainstream and not as interesting as the first two discs and I never listened to Courtney's solo album. Hole still plays on my ipod and oddly enough, I discovered that when I moved I had brought with me all three of my Hole t-shirts. I don't have any Concrete Blonde t-shirts with me at all... but Hole? One day I wore one to work and Impossible Crush noticed it, saying that he had the same t-shirt in college. I haven't worn it since.

next time: look and you'll find that someone wants to love you

bonus track: dog days are over

I have to step out here, in the present for a minute to share this link with you to the BBC page for the Mercury Prize Award ceremony performance of Florence + The Machine. Florence was on the Mercury Prize Shortlist for her amazing debut album, Lungs, which is probably the best album I've heard all year. It's available in Europe and on iTunes now, but on October 20th the proper disc will be out in the US. I can't stop listening to it, but what won me over completely was watching that performance of "Dog days are over" at the Mercury Prize ceremony. No exaggeration: Astounding.



I also can't stop watching this video or listening to this song: "Drumming song" is pretty much my favorite song of the year. Anna Ternheim's "What have I done" comes in at a very close second.

The Florence + The Machine official website is here.

That's it. I'll be back tomorrow for a trip to the past!
xoxo
rick

track 38: fuck and run

I first read about Liz Phair in Interview magazine, which used to be my favorite rag. It was an article called "Folk Music That Will Make You Blush" or something like that. From that point on, I read so many great reviews about her debut, Exile in Guyville that I absolutely had to have it. I couldn't find it in any of my usual haunts. I eventually had to order it from an indie music store that used to be on Bird Road called Yesterday and Today Records. It took forever to get in, but when it finally did, I was in love with it. I'm a big lyrics person, so that's mostly what I connect with initially. Hers were clever and unsentimental and I liked the lo-fi vibe. I remember making a tape of it and playing it in the car on my way to work. My mom said something like, "her voice doesn't seem to be very strong." It's true, Exile sounds like I had recorded something and sang it, but I adored it. For me it was so much about what she was singing. It's a classic album.



I remember at the end of 1993, going back into Specs and seeing a whole shelf of copies. Exile had made many a Best Of list. The next year, I was all a-stalk for her follow up album, Whip-Smart, with the single "Supernova," jump rope chant title track and "Jealousy." Again, I loved it. Her third album, whitechocolatespaceegg was one that had to grow on me. It was a bit more produced than her previous efforts and felt a little less spunky, but in time I grew to cherish it, especially, "polyester bride."



However, I can't say the same for her self-titled disc a couple of years later. I got it when it came out, curious to hear what this mainstreamed version of Liz would sound like. And I'll admit that the singles "Extaordinary" and "Why can't I?" are pop-rock candy of the finest sort. I also really love this ballad, "Little digger," about a kid who is curious about his mother's new boyfriend. It's a really great song. But speaking of spunky, there was a little ditty called "HWC" and that was a deal-breaker. It felt like Phair was trying to be everything to everybody, a hit single sweetheart but also, "hey, remember when I used to curse a lot and talk dirty? I still do..." A lot of the Liz Phair album didn't connect with me and I haven't heard anything she's done since, but the first three discs? Essential.

next time: go on take everything take everything take everything

track 37: heal it up

During my days at MDCC, I traveled around on buses a lot. I think I'd do stuff just to get out of the house, which is the complete opposite of the way I am today. Often on Tuesdays, I'd take the bus down to South Miami where I'd pick up new CDs the day they came out at Specs on US-1 and then see a movie at the Riviera movie theatre next door. I remember the most: Deee-Lite's Infinity Within, The Lemonheads Come on Feel the Lemonheads, being insanely excited about buying Return to the Valley of the Go-Go's - a collection of hits, rarities and three new tracks by my beloved Go-Go's! I remember unwrapping The Essential Divinyls before catching My Own Private Idaho for the second time and even seeing Jurassic Park there by myself. Sometimes I'd even skip classes entirely and just go for a movie and a trip to Specs.



However, one Tuesday towered above all the others. October 19, 1993. That was the day that Concrete Blonde's Mexican Moon was coming out. I was terribly excited. I had even got a postcard from their mailing list, The Happy Hermit, saying that a limited number of the CDs would come prepackaged with Dream 6, an EP released in 1983 before taking the name Concrete Blonde. This was like my holy grail. I went into Specs incredibly psyched. You couldn't go too early or else they wouldn't have unpacked everything. But there it was, Mexican Moon! Only no Dream 6! I left and walked down to Dadeland Mall and checked the record stores there.

This was no easy feat. Because my feet were not at ease. Since high school, I had been having recurring problems with my big toe. The toenail kept growing far into my flesh. Somewhere around this time, I had a tiny surgery that resulted in half of my toenail being removed. I remember that it happened to be the same day that Concrete Blonde was performing on "MTV Live" which was a pre-TRL show and I was bummed about A) surgery, hello... and B) missing CB. My stepfather taped it for me (see, not all bad) so I could watch it when I got home. (And then commented during the interview sequence that Harry Rushakoff, the band's drummer "looked like a fairy" so there you go.) Here's a clip of them performing their cover of "Everybody knows" which I'm pretty sure is from that show:



Despite the discomfort of, you know, walking, I walked to Dadeland and none of the stores there had the fabled Mexican Moon - Dream 6 combination. But Mexican Moon was good enough for me. It was another amazing album by my favorite band. I loved the single, "Heal it up" as well as the title track and the beautiful "Rain." Concrete Blonde was always a band who had really great CD singles. I love their b-sides as much as anything else they did. This time they released singles for "Heal it up" and "Mexican moon" that had a cover of Bob Dylan's "Simple twist of fate" and a live version of the Tears for Fears song "Shout" that kicked. ass.



Soon after Mexican Moon, Concrete Blonde broke up. There was a great collection of b-sides called Still in Hollywood and eventually a collection of singles called Recollection. I was absolutely crushed, but the promise of some new projects involving Johnette cheered me up. The first would be a collaboration with Holly Vincent on Mammoth Records that was called Vowel Movement. It was fun enough at the time, but I think that only a couple of songs made their way to my ipod a decade later. Much better was her collaboration with Marc Moreland of Wall of Voodoo, called Pretty & Twisted. They released one self-titled album on Warner Brothers and it was really great, including songs like "¡Ride!" and my favorite, "The highs are too high." She would also combine forces with Jerry Harrison, Chris Frantz and Tina Weymouth of Talking Heads for their No Talking, Just Head album, featuring the original band without David Byrne and a rotating cast of singers. Johnette would be the main singer for their tour. Soon after this, Johnette & CB guitarist Jim Mankey collaborated with a band called Los Illegals for an album called Concrete Blonde y Los Illegals. Word was that it was a one-off thing and that Johnette would release a solo project soon. But for that, we'd have to wait a decade.



(I eventually did get Dream 6 when it was made available for sale through the awesome CD Baby website. It's good early stuff and includes an early version of Mexican Moon's "Rain.")


next time: "i want a boyfriend • i want all that stupid old shit like letters and sodas"

track 36: Galileo

Speaking of the Indigo Girls, around the fall of 1993, I joined Evil Columbia House. For one of my free introductory selections, I chose an album by the Indigo Girls called Rites of Passage because I really liked the song "Galileo."




I only played it a couple of times before it went on the rack with other random CDs I never got into. It gathered a lot of dust there.

next time: "feeling the fire under my feet • i was a liar, you were a cheat"

track 35: Santa Fe

Late 1993 or Early 1994. I was working part-time at Toys R Us and needed to get insurance. I needed a checking account to pay the monthly fees. I wrote my very first check at work to buy a copy of the Disney musical Newsies on VHS. I'd been eying the video for a while, even though all I had heard about the movie was that it was a musical. In fact, it was one of the last big musical movies to be made until Moulin Rouge in 2001. However, there was this guy on the cover...



I loved it. I tracked down the CD soundtrack, which at the time was a bit of a mission. It had yet to become the Gleek cult classic that it is now. My favorite song was Christian Bale's solo, "Santa Fe." When I took an acting class at MDCC, our first assignment was to prepare a song to sing in front of our classmates. I picked "Santa Fe." Which was a nice change from the 900 girls singing "Part of your world" from The Little Mermaid. It's hard to hear that song today without rolling my eyes and grimacing. I even had the Newsies poster on my wall.



But most importantly, I discovered that Christian Bale was not just a cute actor, but an awesome one. I became addicted to watching his films, to the point of interrupting Christmas tradition by going out to see Little Women when it opened on Christmas Day in 1994. I'd become such a huge fan of Christian's that as soon as I got my first computer and hooked up to the internet, one of the first things I did was visit his website, where I met other fans. This is how I ended up meeting Lisa, who became one of my closest friends. (A few years later, we'd actually meet Christian when he appeared at an awards show in Orlando) So picking up that random video because of its cover pretty much changed my life.



The movie also featured a group of actor/dancer/singers who would appear on a great sketch show called "Roundhouse" that followed "Ren & Stimpy" on SNICK! Eventually I'd even start up a webpage for one of these guys, David Sidoni, who became an AOL acquaintance/unrequited crush and went on to host shows for Nickelodeon before becoming a hardworking husband/proud papa.

It was really the first instance of me being a fan of something that led to connections and friendships. I'd experience that a lot once I became involved in the Indigo Girls fan community a few years later.

Click here to read my PICTURES & FRAMES Spotlight on Christian Bale for more of my life as a Balehead.

track 33: music of the night / track 34: all i ask of you

In the summer of 1993, something very strange happened. How? I don't remember. How did I get turned on to Barbra Streisand? I know that my mom had the Guilty LP and I remember liking it, but that was almost a decade earlier. I also know that this was around the time that Mike Meyers was doing his "like buttah" sketch on SNL. Perhaps I just read a good review of her new album, Back to Broadway and decided I needed to introduce myself to showtunes and be one with the music of my people. Regardless of why, I picked up the CD and was enchanted.



Her voice was gorgeous and the music drew me in completely. I didn't know a lot of the songs she sang, but was intrigued by the stories that they told. As a kid I really loved movie musicals, I remember listening to the soundtracks to Grease and Annie more than I remember seeing the actual movies. But Broadway was a complete unknown to me.

My favorite song from Back to Broadway was a duet with Michael Crawford, "The music of the night." I'm sure that I had heard of Andrew Lloyd Webber and The Phantom of the Opera, but this was the first song I had heard from it and I was quite mesmerized.

[Okay, so in writing this blog I'm adapting something I had written almost a decade ago. I tend to use the stuff I had originally written as a springboard and rewrite. So if something I wrote made me cringe, it usually stays in the past. But it must be noted that at the end of my bit about Back to Broadway and before the bit about Phantom I quoted the following lyrics:
close your eyes
start a journey through a strange new world
leave all thoughts of the world you knew before
close your eyes
let the music set you free...

Right. Cheesy. Let's never speak of it again.]



I soon bought a compilation of Andrew Lloyd Webber music called The Premiere Collection, which opened the floodgates to collecting all the Andrew Lloyd Webber stuff that I could. My very favorite was, of course, The Phantom of the Opera. It was just dark and spooky and wildly romantic enough to be perfect for me. I remember listening to the Sarah Brightman and Cliff Richard version of "All I ask of you" on repeat play. The fact that all of this started to happen during the summer of 1993 was perfect timing, because Phantom was on tour and coming to Miami. I got tickets for my mom and I to see it on November 11, 1993. I found out later that she was really worried that she'd hate it. She loved it. I loved it. It was the beginning of our fandom of musical theatre and over the next few years we would see any Lloyd Webber show that came to South Florida: Cats, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat and even got Dave to go with us to see Sunset Boulevard. I don't care what anyone says, I love Sunset Boulevard. We also saw Miss Saigon and of course, eventually, Rent, both on Broadway and on tour. There's something so tremendously exciting about being in the audience for a musical, for any sort of live theatre, actually. It's one of those things that I wish I could have done, being a stage actor. There is an energy, a chemistry between audience and performers, that is unlike anything else I've ever experienced. Raúl Esparza, my future husband, says something that I thought was really profound in the documentary film ShowBusiness: The Road to Broadway. He talks about this small chunk of Manhattan, the Theatre District, and about the fact that every night at 8:00 all of these amazing artists are taking the stage, putting on a show and how it's sort of magical.

When I moved to New York in 2005, I never thought I'd be able to afford to see a Broadway show. Luckily, I've gotten to see a few. Most of them were musicals. Some were just spectacles (Wicked). Some of them had bona-fide Broadway Legends (Patti LuPone in Sweeney Todd) or legends-in-the-making (Kristin Chenoweth in The Apple Tree and Audra McDonald in 110 in the Shade). I loved two so much that I saw them twice. (Dirty Rotten Scoundrels and Sunday in the Park with George) One became my favorite new musical and then disappeared (Grey Gardens). Then there were the plays, which I generally chose for the actor starring in them: Julianne Moore & Bill Nighy in The Vertical Hour, Jane Fonda in 33 Variations, Laura Linney in Les Liaisons Dangereuses, Ralph Fiennes & Cherry Jones in Faith Healer, Bradley Whitford in Boeing Boeing, Lee Pace in Guardians and Raúl in Speed-The-Plow.

Regardless of what I'm seeing or the reason why, every time I get to be in the audience for a show, I feel incredibly lucky and completely happy. And all just because I picked up a random Streisand album. When my mom visited around Mother's Day one year, I surprised her with tickets to see Phantom on Broadway. It was such a different experience for me, having gone to these other shows in the city to suddenly be in the Majestic Theatre, which seemed so huge compared to the other theatres I'd been to. The audience was full of tourists wearing t-shirts and shorts and I was astounded to hear people talking through the performance. But even though I'm not the huge Lloyd Webber fan I used to be (I blame discovering Sondheim), I was still hypnotized by the show, the grandeur of the sets - the spectacle. More importantly, my mom was thrilled. I think it's the best gift I've ever given her.



Along with discovering musicals, I was also inspired by Back to Broadway to listen to more Streisand. When I go for something, I tend to go completely, so the next thing I bought was the box set, Just For The Record.... It was a fantastic way to introduce myself to her older music and it guided me towards her early career, when she sang standards and still had a sense of fun to her music. Not to mention leading me to finding one of my all-time favorite films, What's Up, Doc?, a screwball comedy she starred in with Ryan O'Neal and my beloved Madeline Kahn. I even ended up converting my dad into a Streisand lover and whenever we take road trips, her CDs are a must-hear. The studio recordings she's made since Back to Broadway has felt a bit stuffy, too serious. It's only in the live ones that her sense of humor tends to peek out. But let's not even mention Meet the Fockers.

track 32: i should've known

My love for Aimee Mann's band 'til tuesday had developed about two years after their last album, Everything's Different Now had come out. I wore out my copies of their three albums listening to them over and over again. But there was hope: Aimee Mann was releasing a solo album! It was supposed to be out sometime in 1992. I remember a whole period of time when I was working at Toys R Us, hanging out at Record Bar all the time and constantly keeping an eye on their dry erase board with the list of upcoming releases. I probably asked the employees about it far too much. I was a bit obsessed. 1992 came and went, but no Aimee. Finally, in March of 1993, her solo debut Whatever came out on Imago Records. I - well, I typed "I made" and then backtracked, but let's face it, kids- I made my mom drive me to Specs on Kendall & 117th when she got home from work that Tuesday evening. Actually, I think she was probably going for her walk at Indian Hammocks Park. "Yes, I'll go walk with you, we just Have. To. Go. To. Specs!" I don't think it was considered a major release, so they had only unloaded the cassettes so far. Not the CD? No, the cassettes. I got it anyway and got the CD a while later. Aimee was worth it. And she totally was, Whatever was pop rock heaven. Nothing compared to the great single, "I should've known" and "say anything" was fantastic.






The album got really good reviews and it wasn't long before the news that she would have another solo album soon. And then the record company went out of business. She eventually released I'm With Stupid through Geffen Records and I was there to buy it as soon as I could. It was even better than the first album and the first single got played on "Melrose Place." One of Aimee's most beautiful songs ever, "Amateur" comes from this album. It's a song I really liked at the time, but would later come to really appreciate and identify with, during my experience about 4 years later with The Boy Who Broke My Heart. Aimee Mann was still my drug of choice.

track 31: full moon, empty heart

In November of 1992, I got a seasonal job at Toys R Us. It was the same store I had gone to as a kid, buying G.I. Joe toys with my allowance week after week. A bit later, I'd buy combination He-Man: Masters of the Universe and She-Ra: Princess of Power toys. It was okay for a boy to buy them because it was all part of the same universe!! So I told myself. I was a cashier and it was crazy. But fun. We were open till midnight from Thanksgiving through Christmas and the end of the night was spent re-shopping merchandise back to their proper shelves. I really liked it and was disappointed on December 31st, when I found out that the seasonal job was over.



Fortunately, in the spring of 1993, I got a phone call from one of the managers asking if I'd like to come back full-time. I began working as a cashier again. For a while I had to split shifts as a janitor, after one of the regular ones won the Fantasy Five. I had actually agreed to this. They asked me first. I thought it would be a week or so. It ended up being a month and a half. I remember one particular manager (that I didn't like very much in the first place) giving me a hard time one night when he asked me to mop something up and I didn't know how. I always vacuumed at home! One responsibility was bringing the shopping carts abandoned in the parking lot back inside. It sucked, but it really taught me to be respectful and aware of my actions when I'm anywhere outside. I dutifully return my cart to the holding pens and I understand that the maintenance workers have to deal with a lot of unnecessary crap and deserve respect. Especially because as amazing as it seems considering that their clientele is mostly parents with messy screaming kids, Toys R Us was the cleanest place I've ever worked at. The things that happen at a bookstore, some of the things I have seen and heard, are unbelievable and would never have happened at the toy store. :::shudder::: Anyway, one day I broke down, while trying to empty a garbage can from the front of the store. It was overflowing and heavy and the bag ripped. I sat down and cried and then went home early. Soon after this, they hired a new janitor and I think as a bonus for being such a dedicated good sport, I ended up manning the customer service desk. I helped out with returns, customer orders, cashier problems. I had a key. It was pretty awesome. Eventually I'd end up doing the morning cash reports and deposits and then moving to the "Security" section, which was my favorite part of the job: I was the guy in the video game booth! I got to play my radio (quietly) and take care of receiving and inventory for high-priced stuff like game systems and software, collectible Barbies and the pricier r/c cars. I spent about 1/4 of my time out on the actual sales floor. It. Was. Awesome. I worked at Toys R Us for exactly five years and two weeks.

Anyway, back when I was but a simple cashier, in the spring of 1993, I visited the mall during my lunch breaks and ate in the food court or visited the music store. I remember quite vividly being in Record Bar and flipping through the stacks to buy Belly's Star album and the Safari EP by The Breeders (which Tanya Donelly was a part of at the time). Both "Safari" and Belly's "Feed the tree" were staples of whatever MTV show I watched at the time, maybe "120 Minutes" or something. I fell hard for the Breeders and liked a couple of songs from Star.



Once again, it isn't until Belly's next album, King came out that I became such a huge fan. I couldn't stop listening to them and remember playing "Super-connected" over and over and over again. I went on a mad search for all things Belly, which was a fruitful one as they had some of the best EPs you could imagine. I loved the Moon EP with its remixes of one of my favorite Belly songs, "Full moon, empty heart." Their albums also had the most gorgeous artwork, mostly done by drummer Chris Gorman, whose brother Tom played guitar and actually created my favorite Moon mix.



Once they broke up it would be a few years before lead singer/songwriter Tanya Donelly would release her solo album Lovesongs for Underdogs, which was my favorite album of 1997. I adored "Pretty deep" and "Mysteries of the unexplained." I tagged "Clipped" as the song that would play over the final credits of the movie I was starting to write in my mind at the time, Birdwatching.




I've faithfully followed Donelly's career since then, from Beautysleep to This Hungry Life, her most recent disc. Aside from Lovesongs the one that I wish everyone could listen to and love as much as I do is 2004's Whiskey Tango Ghosts. It is the sort of album I wish I could have written and sang as my own. Beautiful.

track 30: rain

1992 was a big year for Madonna fans. That summer, she appeared in Penny Marshall's film A League of Their Own (with one of my personal favorites, Lori Petty!) and sang the song "This used to be my playground" on its soundtrack. In Miami, we were all abuzz with the news that she was buying a mansion on the bay, just houses down from Miami's beautiful Vizcaya House. (Always my favorite place to go on field trips.) When the Miami Herald published the news, along with the address, my friend Diana and I drove down just to drive past the house (okay, a couple of loops) in awe. Awful.

In October, she was the Queen of all media, with the release of her first proper album in 3 years, Erotica, through her own boutique label, Maverick, and days later, the publication of her naughty book of photography, Sex. On October 20, the day the album was released, my dad actually drove me to South Miami, where we had breakfast at Denny's and then went to Specs music store, where I bought Erotica. I didn't listen to it until I was on my own, though. I remember really liking it and I have especially always loved "Rain."



The book was a trickier purchase. It was $50 and I was still saving up my lunch money and allowance while going to classes at MDCC. I wasn't working yet; A month later, I would get my job at Toys R Us. But there it was, October and I had no money. I was a devoted Madonna fan and I needed to pay for Sex!! I became desperate. I take a handful of my least listened to CDs to sell them at the used music store. Paula Abdul's Spellbound and Skid Row's Slave to the Grind okay fine, but INXS Kick and X?? U2's Achtung Baby? Clearly I was insane. Surely something was affecting my judgement and making me sell these actually good albums for a book by Madonna!?!? Gay gene? I think yes. I even considered (and frankly, attempted) pawning a camera I got for a photography class in high school that I could never get the hang of using. Finally, I had enough. And the bookstore is sold out. All the bookstores are sold out, this book is like gold!! I order a copy. It's literally less than a week before they get more in and on Saturday, my mom drives me down to pick up my copy. A little old lady working at the store rings me up, takes my dirty U2/INXS stained blood money and says, "I hope you enjoy Sex."

It's at home in Miami on a shelf somewhere. It's a pretty cool book, although the metal covers + spiral binding does not = look at this book often. I'd never buy it today. Whenever I see anyone on Facebook or Myspace or back in the day, OKCupid, list it as one of their favorite books, I immediately check them off as a person I can't be friends with. I'm not sure what that says about me.