I've seen better days, but I have only myself to blame...
That's the thought that popped into my head, and I record it here only for posterity. It sounds like a song lyric, doesn't it?
Speaking of song lyrics, I'm listening to E's second album, Broken Toy Shop. This was one of those mostly ignored albums I discovered during my tenure at the RecordShop in the mall. We'd run through literally hundreds of promos, and most were expendable, but occasionally one would stick. This was one of those. It never seemed to get old, and still doesn't. Even E's later work with the Eels, which is just as melodic, though harder-edged and more beat-heavy, has its occasional clunker or song that just doesn't work in context with the rest of the album. ("Susan's House" from the first Eel's disc springs to mind).
There were other albums like this from that era that I still listen to frequently. One is Charlie Sexton's Under the Wishing Tree, another is (don't laugh) Tears For Fears' Elemental. All three of them couldn't be more different. Broken Toy Shop is pure Britpop (odd, considering E's American), the most melodic and hummable since the prime of the Beatles; Charlie Sexton sounds like the crossroads of Dylan and Stevie Ray Vaughan; and Elemental is complex rock, something like Rush without all the regimentation. About all they have in common, really, is the singer/songwriter aspect, and the fact that none really made any impact on the pop music charts. Hell, only the Tears disc is still in print.
There is some comfort, I suppose, in taking pleasure in obscure or unpopular things. It means you're selective and a connoisseur. It also means that when you discover someone else who has the same taste, you've not only found someone you have something in common with, but also someone whose tastes you can (at least partially) trust. And then there's the feeling of superiority you get knowing you've hit upon something great that others aren't aware of.
Still, that sensation seems woefully rare these days. I gave up listening to the radio when the repetition factor got too high and the crossover with my tastes got too low. With a miserably slow Internet connection and thus no access to file sharing, my ability to explore new artists is limited by my pocketbook, which is extremely constricted as it is. The last good new artist I discovered was Queens of the Stone Age, and only because of the cut-rate price and the bonus DVD (and, okay, Dave Grohl's participation) did I give it a try. I've been hearing some good things about a new band called The Music (there's a name begging for a VH1 documentary) and the album is only 7 bucks, so I suppose I can afford to give it a shot.
My time at the music store has been on my mind a lot lately, and not just because I encounter a lot less good new music these days. I feel like I've made a wrong turn somewhere, and I haven't a clue how to get back to... whatever it is I need to get back to. It was easy, until about two years ago, to see the through-line in my life, but recently, it's gotten muddied. I could see how I got from there to here, and what brought me that route. It's probably just selective perception, but so what? It felt like direction anyway.
I always envied people who had a predetermined destination. Sure, most of them wound up somewhere else, but at least it gave them something to think about in the mean time. My friend Andy swore up and down that he was going to be a vet, and at the moment he's doing technical consulting, I think, but at least he got to focus on that until he ended up somewhere else he was happy with.
The difficulty for me (and likely for just about everyone, but I can't speak for them) is narrowing down the possible choices. There is the constant fear of choosing the wrong path for fear of getting on one that you don't like and not being able to change. I took a sales job a few years back, and now that seems to be the only type of job available. And sales makes my skin crawl. (That's not entirely true. I enjoyed sales when I had a boss I got along with. The likelyhood of that happening again seems dim.) If I'd taken more journalism jobs in the past, perhaps I could have avoided this conundrum.
It's probably all just a lot of paranoia. Everybody has regrets. Anybody without a few has to have some sort of mental imbalance. If I could have one superpower, I'd like to see as many of the possible outcomes of my actions as possible without going nuts. But then, it's that uncertainty that motivates so much of human behavior, isn't it?
Anyway, there's not much one can do but soldier on. I have a page of original artwork from the comic "Transmetropolitan" that I picked because, out of context, the words seem more like a comment on existence than dialogue: "What I'm doing now changes everything. Just like that. No going back."
Because if what you're doing doesn't change anything, what's the point?
That's the thought that popped into my head, and I record it here only for posterity. It sounds like a song lyric, doesn't it?
Speaking of song lyrics, I'm listening to E's second album, Broken Toy Shop. This was one of those mostly ignored albums I discovered during my tenure at the RecordShop in the mall. We'd run through literally hundreds of promos, and most were expendable, but occasionally one would stick. This was one of those. It never seemed to get old, and still doesn't. Even E's later work with the Eels, which is just as melodic, though harder-edged and more beat-heavy, has its occasional clunker or song that just doesn't work in context with the rest of the album. ("Susan's House" from the first Eel's disc springs to mind).
There were other albums like this from that era that I still listen to frequently. One is Charlie Sexton's Under the Wishing Tree, another is (don't laugh) Tears For Fears' Elemental. All three of them couldn't be more different. Broken Toy Shop is pure Britpop (odd, considering E's American), the most melodic and hummable since the prime of the Beatles; Charlie Sexton sounds like the crossroads of Dylan and Stevie Ray Vaughan; and Elemental is complex rock, something like Rush without all the regimentation. About all they have in common, really, is the singer/songwriter aspect, and the fact that none really made any impact on the pop music charts. Hell, only the Tears disc is still in print.
There is some comfort, I suppose, in taking pleasure in obscure or unpopular things. It means you're selective and a connoisseur. It also means that when you discover someone else who has the same taste, you've not only found someone you have something in common with, but also someone whose tastes you can (at least partially) trust. And then there's the feeling of superiority you get knowing you've hit upon something great that others aren't aware of.
Still, that sensation seems woefully rare these days. I gave up listening to the radio when the repetition factor got too high and the crossover with my tastes got too low. With a miserably slow Internet connection and thus no access to file sharing, my ability to explore new artists is limited by my pocketbook, which is extremely constricted as it is. The last good new artist I discovered was Queens of the Stone Age, and only because of the cut-rate price and the bonus DVD (and, okay, Dave Grohl's participation) did I give it a try. I've been hearing some good things about a new band called The Music (there's a name begging for a VH1 documentary) and the album is only 7 bucks, so I suppose I can afford to give it a shot.
My time at the music store has been on my mind a lot lately, and not just because I encounter a lot less good new music these days. I feel like I've made a wrong turn somewhere, and I haven't a clue how to get back to... whatever it is I need to get back to. It was easy, until about two years ago, to see the through-line in my life, but recently, it's gotten muddied. I could see how I got from there to here, and what brought me that route. It's probably just selective perception, but so what? It felt like direction anyway.
I always envied people who had a predetermined destination. Sure, most of them wound up somewhere else, but at least it gave them something to think about in the mean time. My friend Andy swore up and down that he was going to be a vet, and at the moment he's doing technical consulting, I think, but at least he got to focus on that until he ended up somewhere else he was happy with.
The difficulty for me (and likely for just about everyone, but I can't speak for them) is narrowing down the possible choices. There is the constant fear of choosing the wrong path for fear of getting on one that you don't like and not being able to change. I took a sales job a few years back, and now that seems to be the only type of job available. And sales makes my skin crawl. (That's not entirely true. I enjoyed sales when I had a boss I got along with. The likelyhood of that happening again seems dim.) If I'd taken more journalism jobs in the past, perhaps I could have avoided this conundrum.
It's probably all just a lot of paranoia. Everybody has regrets. Anybody without a few has to have some sort of mental imbalance. If I could have one superpower, I'd like to see as many of the possible outcomes of my actions as possible without going nuts. But then, it's that uncertainty that motivates so much of human behavior, isn't it?
Anyway, there's not much one can do but soldier on. I have a page of original artwork from the comic "Transmetropolitan" that I picked because, out of context, the words seem more like a comment on existence than dialogue: "What I'm doing now changes everything. Just like that. No going back."
Because if what you're doing doesn't change anything, what's the point?
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