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Once upon a time, I saw just about every movie I wanted to see. I knew in advance when good movies were coming out, and I waited excitedly for the release dates, and I bought my ticket and my popcorn and slid into my seat and hoped the audience wouldn’t be loud, and then I melted into the darkness of the theater and the vivid glories of the big screen. I was a happy cog in the Hollywood machine.
More than many of these outings were with TGOTS, especially during high school, college breaks, and the post-college years when we lived near (and with) each other. This was a perfectly normal part of our daily patterns at the time, but upon reflection — and apparently to others — it was a lot of cinematic escapism. “You guys sure see a lot of movies,” my sister remarked to me some time in the late ’90s. She, by then, had a baby, which might have had something to do with her lack of moviegoing — but I got the feeling that even if that hadn’t been the case, she would have viewed our predilection for The Pictures as somewhat odd.
When I moved to Boston I kept up the habit, seeing every damn movie I wanted to with whatever roommates, friends, or co-workers I could corral. I suppose there’s nothing so remarkable about that, but I can still feel the grime and glamour of certain city theaters; recall with crystal clarity the small talk made while waiting for the lights to go down; savor the good feeling of knowing you were in the company of someone who appreciated moviegoing as much as you did.
Despite all that, I don’t recall who I was sitting next to when I saw High Fidelity — was it you, TGOTS? — but I cannot hear “Let’s Get It On” without picturing Jack Black cavorting on stage, John Cusack and his punky girlfriend making (believable) surprised faces and happily reuniting as they watched him sing. This was, I think, one of my first exposures to Jack Black, when he was more of a revelation than a smug, preening ding-dong. I mean, not to cast apersions or anything. But I’m kind of over him.
Warm in the glow of that half-memory, I changed stations this morning and heard “Jumpin’ Jack Flash,” and immediately pictured Whoopi Goldberg being dragged through the street in a phone booth, croaking, “I’m a little black woman in a big silver box!” An entirely different movie in an entirely different era — but etched forever in my archives.
Today the Kitt Award goes to the — what are they called? Sound artists? Soundtrack creators? Musical technicians? — anyhow, the people who pick the songs used during key scenes in movies. They’re clever, those people. And even though I don’t get to drink in their work as often these days, they’ve littered my brain with happy memories.
Not sure why the plaintive croon of Jakob Dylan makes me think of a strip mall parking lot in my old southland home, but it does.
As this blog has proven time and again, just a few seconds of a song can evoke the most specific sites and unremarkable moments in my brain and MamaKitt’s. So it is that “One Headlight” makes me instantly think “Ooh. The parking lot by Target, right by the Chick-Fil-A.” And that is IT, my fine feathered friends. There is no more story than that.
The other day I was driving around my current town and trying to figure out if I still felt new here, after a year and a half, or if this place was starting to feel like home. I didn’t come to any firm conclusion — I think perhaps it does feel like home, but that I also still feel new — and realized, once again, that I still very much have the old place as a frame of reference. OH, doing errands here is easier than it was there. OH, I wish I still had a Trader Joe’s nearby. OH, I miss laughing at the Chick-Fil-A, whose name is the stupidest EVER.
So yeah, I don’t know. This entry is kind of a non-entry, and I apologize for that. “One Headlight” did spark a memory — just not a very good one.
PS whatever happened to Jakob Dylan and the Wallflowers? And Jakob Dylan’s dreamy blue eyes?
When you drive your child to daycare through the remnants of a snowstorm, you drive more slowly, and therefore have a long and lazy window of scan time available to you. If you’re a sicko like me, you leave it on the Softies station that offers, in quick succession, “Dream Weaver,” “Heard It In a Love Song,” “Turn the Page,” and “Maggie May.”
The hits! They just kept coming! Ever the musical masochist, I couldn’t pry myself away from this tuneful train wreck. But I must admit, they had me at “Dream Weaver.”
This, for my entire growing up and really most of my adulthood, charted as Worst Song Ever. My reaction to it has always been a visceral one — I can remember rambling around my oversized bedroom as a teenager, just puttering around doing not much of anything, and suddenly rushing over to my skinny silver boombox to turn the dial and find another station when the first strains of the song wafted through the air. Even static was a better option.
I have no legitimate bone to pick with the song. It was just Hate from the get-go. I might have to soften a bit on that after learning today that ol’ Gary Wright played on All Things Must Pass and was a pal of George Harrison (and still is, apparently, pals with Ringo Starr). So he must have some talent and/or redeeming personal qualities.
As for his astral plane, however … he can keep it.
Fleetwood Mac’s “Silver Springs” sparks in my mind a memory that is at once oddly specific and literal and cloaked in a vague, exhausted haziness.
I THINK that at the end of our month-long cross-country road trip eleven years ago, MamaKitt and I stopped by her uncle and aunt’s place in Washington, D.C. This would have been after we wound back from the west coast to Minneapolis to pile all my earthly belongings in a U-Haul, drove through the night to Virginia, put all my earthly belongings in another storage unit and returned the U-Haul, and pointed our car back toward New England for the conclusion of our journey.
I THINK that we stopped – for an afternoon? for the night? — at MK’s uncle’s lovely home, but the end of that trip is all such a muddle in my brain that I can’t make the fact of that stop absolute for myself.
I do remember freaking out that my little purple Saturn was going to fly off its hitch on the back of the U-Haul; I do remember making poor MK drive the moving van — MY moving van, holding all MY stuff — almost the entire way because it terrified me so; I do remember stopping to see MK’s sister in Northern Virginia and being barely functional; I do remember the time we spent in what was about to become my new home … but I’m not crystal clear on what came after that.
Let’s go with the story as I think it went for now, though: I think we dumped the U-Haul and then went and spent the night at MK’s uncle’s gorgeous house. And I think that, when we headed north toward MK’s apartment in Boston and my parents’ house in Maine where I was going to spend a few weeks, we were tired from our journeying and ready to be home, but happy to have had a nice final stop. (Really, you must meet MK’s uncle and aunt. They couldn’t be lovelier.)
As we left, we drove by/through Silver Spring, Maryland. I have no idea if MK or I sang some of the Fleetwood Mac song when we saw the signs, but it’s entirely possible. One of us would have sung it, then the other would have yelled “Shut UP, Stevie!” then both of us would have cracked up.
And for the next ten years, every time I would drive by/through Silver Spring on my way up or down the northeast corridor, I would think of my dear MK and the end of an epic journey — an adventure I’ll always be grateful to have — even if I can’t remember every moment of it clearly.
Some may think of the 1960s when they hear the Lovin’ Spoonful; I think of the early 1980s and early morning hot chocolates with plenty of whipped cream on top.
The town where I grew up had a little restaurant right in its center called the Lovin’ Spoonful. Maybe it was actually the Loving Spoonful — I can’t actually remember. Either way, the place where I come from is too small to attract attention for trademark infringement.
For a time when I was in third or fourth grade, my next-oldest sister and I were tended by a lady in town before and after school. This lady’s husband worked with our dad, and her five daughters were (sort of) our friends. (One of them was definitely my sister’s friend; two others of them, one a grade ahead of me and one a grade below, were sort of my friends.)
At the time, we were living up on the edge of town in a bright modern saltbox. My mother and baby sister would drop me, my other sister, and my dad each morning in the center of town then continue on their way to the town where my mother worked (and where my baby sis was tended by a different lady). Because the hour would still be early, my dad would often (always? I don’t know) take me and LilSis into the Lovin’ Spoonful before walking us to the babysitter’s, then walking to work with her husband.
In its heyday, the Lovin’ Spoonful was a bustling little place, the sort of small town diner/coffee shop that’s an institution, with its counter, several booths, and line of tables often full of coffee drinkers and sandwich eaters. It was run by a cheerful couple who lived in the apartment above — an arrangement that seemed wonderfully interesting to young me. Mrs. K, one half of the couple, would wait on us with a kind smile and questions about our school activities or softball games or dance classes. And the hot chocolate — a treat I haven’t actually liked that much since I was a kid — was delicious. Heaping piles of whipped cream will do that for a drink.
LilSis actually ended up working at the Lovin’ Spoonful as a teen, but since I was in college by that time I don’t really know much about that part of the story. All I can tell you is that any mention of the Lovin’ Spoonful (the band) makes me think of early mornings, hot chocolate, country-cutesy décor, and the houseful of girls where I spent those days.*
*Well, houseful of girls and one poor boy — the same boy who introduced MK to her fella, who took me to the prom, and who used to send me Happy Eddie Van Halen’s Birthday cards.
Call me a broken record if you must, but there is nothing hotter than Bruce Springsteen on a winter morning (or any morning, for that matter). Especially when he’s singing “Fire.”
Pause for shiver.
Heard that song this morning, though it was a slightly bouncier, more up-tempo version than the usual. In fact, I almost had myself convinced that Chris Isaak was covering it — and, for a millisecond, that it was actually Elvis* — before the radio readout confirmed that it was Bruce.
Fans more knowledgeable than I (Phil!) will have to weigh in on the origins of that perky version. I have to say, I much prefer the dragged-out, grinding one I know.
Have I ever written here about how my dear co-blogger reported seeing Bruce in concert in the late ’90s, and giddily told me he was “sex on a stick!” — and my response was along the lines of, “Bruce what? Who? People still listen to him?”
Suffice it to say I became a convert shortly thereafter, and remain firmly in Bruce’s pants court. Just try watching this and telling me it’s not the sessiest thing ever, despite the low quality. To quote one of the commenters on the YouTube, “HE IS THE BOSS, HE IS THE BOSS, THUM UP IF YOU ARE AGREE.”
* For whom the song was apparently written. Who knew? OK, legions of Bruce fans. But not me.
It wasn’t Eddie Murphy I heard this morning, but it might as well have been. For the life of me, I cannot keep his “Party All the Time” distinct from Don Henley’s “All She Wants to Do Is Dance” in my head.
Oh, I know the differences, “artist”-wise and music-wise. I can even hum a few bars of each one without getting confused. But they are forever linked in my brain, that’s all.
I’m somewhat relieved to see that both were popular in 1985, so I give my mental file cabinet a little credit. Also: If that’s the case, why did I hear Don Henley on the Oldies station this morning? Oh right, 1985 was a quarter-century ago. Hm.
Anyhow, it’s Eddie Murphy I really want to write about, though I don’t have that much to say. Like every other white kid in Maine in the ’80s, I found him and his humor a revelation. I wasn’t even exposed to Raw and Delirious — those semi-banned cassettes that had my cooler peers huddled around tape players and howling — until years later. For me, Beverly Hills Cop was hilarious enough.
Eddie was young and brash and had that amazing laugh. Over time, of course, he became … well, less funny. There was a time when catching sight of his later work just made me cringe. But it seems like he’s sharper lately. And that just makes me want to round up Rick James and party all the time.
I didn’t watch any football this past weekend — don’t watch any football ever, really — but I do know that the Packers and the Steelers are bound for the Super Bowl, and that I’ll be rooting for the Steelers (if not actually watching the game).
I pay only the vaguest of attention to football, just enough to know how the Patriots (for whom I am bound by New England birth to root) and the Steelers are doing. I pay attention to the Steelers because I’ve been around their coach, Mike Tomlin, a little bit, and have found him to be a very sweet, kind, funny guy. Not to mention handsome as all get-out.
Thinking of Mike Tomlin makes me think of my old life and the people who were part of it, particularly some of the colleagues who were part of the Tomlin encounters. So does hearing Nickel Creek’s “Smoothie Song,” as I did this morning, only because it was all over my local radio station while I was still working alongside those folks.
Thinking of Tomlin and Nickel Creek and old times gave me the shivers this morning. Even though I dwell on it less and less (all blog evidence aside), I’m still a little haunted by the frustrations and conflicts and defeats of those not so good old days. But this morning I forced myself not to think of the bad, and to remember — if my mind was going to go backward — the parts and the people that were good, even great. Because there were those as well. And all of it, of course, is part of what put me where I am today. For better or for worse.
I’m sure that’s what Coach Tomlin would want me to think, anyway. Rah rah, go team, etc. etc.
When I hear Natalie Merchant, I always feel like there should be more there there — in my head, that is. I consider her to be a capital-A artist, in all her musical earnestness, and my brain tsk-tsks me for never really getting in to her music. At the same time, I run through a mini-Rolodex of people I knew who did get into her music, mostly starry-eyed girls at my college who thought she had A Lot to Say, and I feel vaguely uncomfortable, and know I’m far too cynical to have gone that route.
Then I wonder what ever happened to old Natalie (short answer: still doing her thing, apparently). Then I get to the best part of all: remembering that my sister and her girlfriend once attended a Halloween party dressed as Merchant and Michael Stipe.
There was a distinct period, I guess in the late ’80s and early ’90s, when I found it fascinating that my grown siblings still participated in Halloween, and devoured their glamorous tales of going to parties all dolled up. My L.A.-based brother and his wife went one year as a pimp and a hooker — not the most inspired costume, I guess, but outrageous and fabulous to hear about over the crackling long-distance line in rural Maine.
It was a few years later that my sister and her girlfriend went as the musical duo to a party in Boston. They were an intense couple in real life, and it turned out that more often than not they weren’t having much fun together. In point of fact, I don’t even know if they had fun that night. But I picture them utterly joyful, my sister turning circles in a big, colorful, swirling skirt, her girlfriend chivalrously standing by in nerdy glasses and hat, the two of them full of music and laughter and life.
Every Halloween should be like that. Maybe every day should be like that. I’m glad that, of all the places Natalie’s earnest warbling could take me, it takes me there.
For a while, in college and after, it seemed like “What was your first concert?” was a fairly common question. And I’d pretty much always lie when I gave my answer.
Sometimes I would talk about the romantic outing to see the Beach Boys and Chicago at the old ballpark; sometimes I would describe my one moment of teenage coolness at the B-52s show. But I’m worried that these were actually my second and third rock shows.
Because friends, as the sound of Tommy James & the Shondells singing “I Think We’re Alone Now” from my radio this morning reminded me, I fear my first concert may have been … Tiffany.
You remember Tiffany, the red-headed, bad-girl popster who was on the charts at the same time as Debbie Gibson, her blonde, good-girl opposite? Yeah, I totally saw her live at the Portland Expo in 1987 or 1988. My dad — my poor dad! — took me, my sister (I think — you were there, right, Lil Sis?), and my friends JB and BB to see her do her thing.
I must have been into Tiffany enough to beg to go to her show, but the fact that I can barely remember it suggests to me that the infatuation was short-lived (unlike so many that I have had over the years). I know I had her record, but can no longer remember what she sang other than “I Think We’re Alone Now.” Oh, and “I Saw Him Standing There.”
Oh, man. What a lame-o first concert. But — maybe I’m wrong about it being first. I honestly can’t remember.
Let’s just pretend it never happened.
