This thread got me thinking that I hadn’t posted here in a while and that my day yesterday would probably make a better story than that Shellac-and-Main bullshit in the archives so my day from about 3 pm August 19 went:
Sarah and I start drinking around 3. We were hoping to have some weed but we couldn’t find any despite Sarah’s best efforts (I’m more or less a parasite in this area). So we drink. I tell Sarah I’l turn off the shit that is on the radio and put on something with the soul of rock (Sarah likes to rock). I think it was Deep Purple’s Machine Head that I put on. Josh says he can see why I could find Deep Purple and Rush records for next to nothing but what does he know about it really, he likes boredom. I love “Highway Star” – it’s as everything-right-there as the Stooges. “Nobody’s gonna get my car/ I’m gonna race it to the ground/ Nobody’s gonna get my car/ I’m gonna break the speed of sound” while one chord jackhammers – he waits till the next verse to talk about his girl. There’s some nice jammy shit on the rest of the first side too. I like organs.
Sarah’s twit ex-boyfriend shows up dressed all homey talking a lot of shit about how he has three bitches ready to do his every bidding at any given moment. I put on the second side of Machine Head, which starts, of course, with “Smoke On the Water.” My friend Ross hates the song and the riff because he thinks it’s weak and light and faux-attitude but I like the way it motors, all in Gregorian parallel fourths too. So we finish the record, ending with the rightly titled “Space Truckin’.” The twit’s too cool for all this bullshit now, he puts on the hip new stuff he’s into now – Shaggy and Pink. Fine singles but I have a feeling that even if I were sober I couldn’t say a lot more for the albums sorry.
So Sister comes on. Sarah’s ready to concede that if it doesn’t quite have the soul of rock it has the soul of something, which is a step you know though I have been working on her since I moved in and she’s been the most tolerant person vis-a-vis my music taste I’ve met in my life (sigh I’ll miss her when I move). Twit accepts that it’s okay for mellow stuff but it’s not what he’d put on. What he’d put on is what he does proceed to put on which is Switchblade Symphony.
By this point most of the bottle of vodka’s done. A good portion anyway. So I don’t actually have much to say now about Switchblade Symphony, I don’t really remember a lot, I’m not sure I absorbed a lot at the moment other than that it was wimpy and I said “Oh, you’re into goth, let’s put on some goth that rocks.” And I put on the first side of In the Flat Field and the “Heart and Soul” side (which I’ve always played first but most people seem to think should be the second side just because that’s how the CD reissue was organized even though there’s nothing specified on the record) of Closer, which isn’t really goth of course but I love it and just want a reason to play it.
Somewhere in the middle of all this we listened to “Love to Love You Baby,” which right now I can accept as The Greatest Song Ever (TM). We close things with the first Zeppelin, of course. It thunders and pummels and sighs and howls, all so crudely resplendent and transcendent, yes. The profoundest truths are those understood by pre-teens, I still believe that.
Eventually the twit leaves and we go out searching for weed. The usual downtown source is dried up. We hang out at the Royal Oak for a while (they played rock, I don’t remember what). We ask these two guys if they have any leads. They don’t. One guy asks me if I’m an engineering student because I look like an engineer. I’m a little annoyed because just recently a supervisor thought I look like a comp sci major. She was surprised that I haven’t seen Star Wars not because everyone’s seen it but because I look like someone who must have seen it. I wonder what all this is supposed to mean.
We plan to take a 97 bus back but we take it the wrong direction and end up at Lincoln Fields station. These two kids who look 16 and say they’re 23 claim they have some because one of them has a biker father. We follow them to a house. They come back with our money, saying that cops must have raided and trashed the place, leaving nothing. They stare at Sarah’s feet a bit and ask her questions about her shoe size.
We take the 86, planning to get off at Meadowlands and Fisher. This unshaven guy in a baseball cap starts talking, saying he’s got cancer and only has one year to live. He says he’s picked out five things he wants to do before he dies (“three of them I’ve already done to one wonderful woman”) and won’t tell what they are. He tells us we need to grab life by the hair, pick out our own five things (“if they’re completely disgusting to other people, it doesn’t matter; if they’re completely degrading to other people, it doesn’t matter”) and do them. I’m already on the right path, he divines, but Sarah still needs to grab what she needs. Even if she’s engaged to a man at one point, he tells her, if she sees a guy walking down the street, she needs to grab it (“not him – it – grab your fantasy”). We miss our stop and have to take another bus home.
I put on Steve Reich’s Music for Mallet Instruments, Voices, and Organ to lull me to sleep. It sways gently but firmly, with soft rings overlapping and locking and rocking like a hammock.