My Secret Career 6: The True West EP, Winter ‘94

My time in Providence only lasted two calendar years. It felt like a lifetime.

Sidebar # 1: Rent. I shared a huge three bedroom apartment with two guys and we paid $450 a month. NOT EACH. $150 a month. It is the last time in my life that I wasn’t worried about where next month’s rent was coming from. I made my rent in a week at the children’s theater. This is how life should be for everybody.

The children’s theater was an incredible experience. Most days we did two shows, either morning and afternoon at the same school, or morning and afternoon at different schools. That’s approximately 720 shows in two years. A crucible of growth for an actor…those kids will let you know if they aren’t entertained. 

In and around this, I was rehearsing with The Mahoneys, doing staged readings at Brown, RIC, URI and Alias Stage, auditioning for anything and everything, and writing songs at a furious rate.

Then in the winter of ‘93, I was asked to be in “True West”. The director had heard my songs and wanted to use them in the pre-show to set the mood. She wanted to feature “Lean Hard Ghost”, “Passed Lamenting’s Past”, and “Dilemma”.

But rough live band recordings wouldn’t really fit the atmosphere so I reached out to an old college friend. Her husband was a guitar virtuoso and had a home studio. I went over there one free Saturday and we laid these three songs down.

He used a drum machine, played bass and lead guitar, and I played rhythm and sang. My old friend did backing vocals on “Passed Lamenting’s Passed”. 

Sidebar # 2: The Mahoneys refused to say the title “Passed Lamenting’s Past” when deciding what song to play next. They referred to it as “P.L.P.”, which is why it is labeled as such on “The Mahoneys: Live From The 20th Century”. That always made me laugh, them denouncing my pretention. God, we had a lot of fun in that basement.

A week passed. “True West” was about to open. We loaded the three finished tracks (the ones you will hopefully click on and listen to later) into the sound deck, teched the show, and that’s how my three songs played before an American theater classic.

It was odd to be backstage preparing to be someone else and hear my own voice floating out over the theater. I had to shape my pre-show prep to include that odd intrusion. Again I fantasized about an actual release of music, pressing vinyl in a rush to coincide with the opening of the play.

In an imaginary world where I had representation and management, this would have been a publicist’s dream! Actor writes songs inspired by Sam Shepard’s masterwork! Buy your copy in the lobby!

But alas, this aspect of my career was to remain secret, even with the songs blaring out over an unsuspecting crowd. 

The security and ease of my monthly bottom line had started to feel like a trap. A life almost entirely made up of rehearsal, performance and songwriting, but my ambition was curdling all of that sweet cream. 

Like Lee in “True West”, I longed for something bigger. Longed for achievement and recognition. Longed to jump into the slipstream of money that trailed behind mainstream American success.

I wanted to hit the big time.

Here are “Lean Hard Ghost”, “Passed Lamenting’s Past”, and “Dilemma”. Imagine you are in a darkened theater in the winter of ‘93/‘94 waiting to see “True West”!

Sidebar # 3: Whenever I do a play, I invariably wind up writing a song or two inspired by the experience. In this case, it immediately turned into The Mahoneys one epic song, “Angst, Or The Ballad Of Cricket Hicks”. It tells the tale of a drifter who comes back from the desert an avenging angel, looking for all those who done him wrong.

Within a couple months of “True West” closing, I had moved out of my Providence apartment, given my notice at Looking Glass, done my final children’s show of the school year, and moved back in with my parents for the summer.

I needed that $150 a month to get ready to move to New York City. The Big Apple might have been due but I was headed true west.

My Secret Career 5: Always Leaving Providence, or Brendan Goes Into A Recording Studio For The First Time

1993.

I somehow live in Providence. I am somehow in a band. I have somehow willed myself into being a semi-decent guitar player. But there is one song of mine that The Mahoneys just CANNOT get a handle on.

“Always Leaving Providence” would ultimately elude us as a band. It would also ultimately be the spur that led me to make the leap and move to New York City. I wrote it after one too many local artist had claimed that they planned to make that leap. But they’d lived in Providence forever, when did they think they were getting out?

The song gnawed at me. Every time I played it I felt implicated. The people in the song claim they have big plans but never go after them. Was this going to be me? Talking a big game but backing zero up?

The song gnawed at the band as well. Every week we tried to get the thing on its feet. Every week we failed. Or, more aptly put, I failed. I could never explain the structure of the song in any fundamental way. I could only play it to my own internal rhythm.

By this time, we already had recorded versions of every song we were able to play. But “Always Leaving Providence” could not be captured. I was also itching to play acoustically in the city. So I decided to go into the studio.

1993. Or early ‘94, not sure. Looked through the classifieds in the Phoenix, the arts circular that dirtied my fingers every week the entire time I lived in Providence. Found an ad for “Danger Studios”. Called. Booked a day.

I lugged my amp and guitar down there in the snow. I spent the day wrestling three songs. One was an instrumental that I think is the first piece of music I ever wrote on guitar called “Horizon Mother”. It became an intro to “Cyrano”, one of the first songs I wrote in my Providence apartment. The third was “Always Leaving Providence”.

Both “Horizon Mother” and “Always Leaving Providence” were solo acoustic recordings. But I wanted to layer another guitar track into “Cyrano”. I played my acoustic through my amp, putting a phase effect onto it, which causes a kind of cascade.

I distinctly remember the engineer guy rolling his eyes and saying something snide to another employee when asked about his day. It was difficult to get the two guitar tracks synced and my lack of experience meant that I wasn’t entirely sure what I wanted. The dude gave off serious Guitar Center vibes. 

I had the last laugh, though, because “Cyrano” came out great. I walked out of there with a master of what I considered my first solo single: A-side “Always Leaving Providence”, B-side “Horizon Mother/Cyrano”.

As is the case with all of my musical projects, it remained hypothetical. The Mahoneys continued to attempt “Always Leaving Providence”, but mostly the song began to envelop me a little bit more each time I sang it. Those desperate dreamers trapped within, trapped in Providence, pointed accusatory fingers at me, saying, “You’re no better than us. You’ll never leave. You’re trapped, too.”

By the fall I was living in Harlem, the cassette of  “Always Leaving Providence” tucked into my backpack as I tried to prove myself wrong before it was too late.

Here is “Always Leaving Providence”.  And here is the overlong B-Side “Horizon Mother/Cyrano”.

Years later I would have the ultimate revenge on that engineer, as this version of “Providence” was chosen to appear in the Showtime series “Brotherhood”. He got paid by the hour to help me out and I still get royalty checks on that motherfucker.

My Secret Career 4: The Mahoneys Play The Ocean Mist

I left for France in the fall of 1991 suffering from Lyme's Disease. While in France, I decided to buy the cheapest acoustic guitar I could find and learn how to play. By the spring of 1992, I am regularly strumming at French bonfires. I am terrible but determined.

I return from France in June.

That summer is eventful. I got asked to be in "South Pacific" at Theater By The Sea. This was a dream come true for me, since I'd grown up on musicals in Matunuck. To begin my professional acting career there seemed too good to be true.

The end of the summer brought another theatrical blast from the past, as I booked a job with Looking Glass Theater, a touring children's theater company who had entertained me at South Road Elementary School as a child. We drove the van, loaded and unloaded the sets and costumes, taught the kids their special parts, and put on a show two times a day, five times a week. I was also cast in a play at Alias Stage, an incredible work called "Kind Ness" by Ping Chong. I was doing two shows a day and rehearsing at night.

Parallel to this was my part time job. I worked for a company called Perspectives which ran a number of group homes in Rhode Island. The residents had various developmental challenges and our job was to facilitate their daily lives, both in the home and at whatever jobs they had. It was a very intense job.

I had started work there the previous summer in anticipation of going to France. I met a number of very cool people and enjoyed myself very much but then I got Lyme's Disease in the middle of the summer and I basically had to go on bed rest in order to get ready to go to France.

When I finished up "South Pacific" and got the Looking Glass Theater job, I knew I could pick up shifts here and there at Perspectives so I got back on the payroll. It was there that I reconnected with John Mahoney. We had gotten close enough the previous summer that when I gathered all my friends for a goodbye concert (Buffalo Tom at Club Baby Head) he and a number of his siblings came.

Somewhere in here I started writing songs. I don't remember most of them and didn't record any of them. But one day I was hanging out with another friend who worked at Perspectives and who was the leader of a very popular local band called Super Bug. He pulled out his guitar and I overcame massive shyness and sang one of my brand new compositions. I had only been playing guitar in earnest for about nine months at this point and I'm sure it sounded terrible but he encouraged me. He said I should start a band.

I can honestly say this thought hadn't occurred to me until that very moment. I guess I still thought that somehow Justin, Tom, Chris and I would make Fecund Youth happen and I would just get to go back to being a singer. But the thought stuck in my head.

Cut to later that summer. Word spreads through the Perspectives grapevine that three guys have been jamming and they are looking for a singer. I bring my electric guitar to a small garage space off of High Street. There I meet up with Pete and Rob, two Perspectives employees I have met a couple of times and Neal, a non-Perspectives person who just so happens to be good friends with John Mahoney.

That lineup lasted about nine months, we played one gig, at 3's in Newport. I couldn't believe I was in another band. We called ourselves One Man Out because someone was always missing from rehearsal. Then the drummer disappeared, we think to escape police action. We recruited another Perspectives employee, Steve Clary, who I had known for years via a URI theater woman he'd dated. I'd been to Steve's house to see his band Busful of Witches play in the basement for a theater party.

It was like Ringo joining The Beatles. All the overcompensation we'd been exerting to carry the drummer led to an explosion once we got someone who could play. Our sound was transformed overnight. 

We needed a new name. Nothing would stick. Then we got invited to play our first gig, a benefit concert being held at a Perspectives building, organized by John Mahoney and his family. As a gag we thought it would be funny if we called ourselves The Mahoneys for the gig. It stuck.

Then I got to step on ANOTHER legendary Matunuck stage that I had forever wanted to trod. The Ocean Mist. Again Perspectives was throwing a benefit to raise money. We were excited to be asked to play. There is no footage of this night. If anyone took pictures, I don't have them. 

So I have no proof when I say that we destroyed that stage. But I know it to be true. By this point we were a tightly coiled unit, and we could play our songs in whatever style we felt, depending on the moment. We would pull waaaaay back, rev waaaaaay back up, it was all instinct and feel but it came out of being very well rehearsed. I am very proud of that night.

As with Fecund Youth, I had dreams of The Mahoneys developing a local following and then going for the big time. I believe we could have done it. But life intervened. Pete moved to Alaska, I moved to New York, and The Mahoneys were no more.

The following recordings were recorded live in Steve's basement to a four-track. These are essentially what you would have heard had you been at the Mist that night. We hung a couple of mikes and let 'er rip. They make up an album I call simply, "The Mahoneys: Live From The 20th Century". 

Like I wrote in the imaginary liner notes to this album, in the summer of 1993, we were a great band. 

 

 

My Secret Career 3: Fecund Youth Accepts One Final Mission

Fecund Youth makes one more appearance in my own personal discography. 

In 2017 I settled on the name Sun Zed as an entity to release music under. I did make music while I thought of myself as that name but I never released any of it. This is a pattern with me. One piece of music spans many eras, the song “Hitler’s Chalet”.

The story of the song "Hitler's Chalet" goes waaaaaaaay back. Long before I ever saw "Inglorious Basterds", I dreamt that I was to infiltrate Berghof, Hitler's mountain retreat. The dream was vivid, with me riding up into the Bavarian Alps, formulating a plan to assassinate Hitler and thus put an end to WW2.

I could comb back through my dream journals to prove that I didn't crib this idea from Quentin Tarantino. My lawyers are still trying to get some money out of him for theft of intellectual property. I suspect that the glowing interior of the suitcase in "Pulp Fiction" was actually a page from my diary.

I had attempted to record a different song, with Cashel playing bass and lead guitar. I worked very hard at it, only to find that I had played the underlying structure incorrectly and now the lyrics didn't fit anymore. It sat on the hard drive for several years.

Then, and I am not really sure how this happened, I remembered the dream about Hitler's chalet. In the dream I was all alone. In the song, I rope Fecund Youth into the assassination plot. Quick as a wink, I scribbled new lyrics out, and finished the song. Here are the lyrics (such as they are) to "Hitler's Chalet" from Sun Zed:

Hitler's Chalet

Just another old man on a mountain top/Made me so mad I just about blew my top

The sidecar motorbike was vanished by the valet/Came back and ushered me into Hitler's chalet

We ain't got time to bleed/We only move at top speed

We need to breed/That's why we dropped our seed/"Fecund Youth!" is the creed!

Tommy D's on the parapet/Circling the drones

Christner's in the moat/Drilling in to cut the phones

J-Man is en route from the jet/If his parachute deploys before he hits the Rhone/He won't even get wet

Me, I'm serving up drinks in my rented suit/I'm about to drop the pills/Into the champagne boot

Sprinting down the hallway with a bloody corkscrew/Shaved off that stupid mustache too!

Well, who the fuck are you?

Here's Hitler's Chalet, by Sun Zed. But Fecund Youth would have covered the shit outta this song, right in between “King Of Rock” and “Fight For Your Right”. Or maybe this is Sun Zed covering an old Fecund Youth chestnut? Who can say anymore…

My Secret Career 2: Fecund Youth 2023, or "Hey Chris!"

Fecund Youth is no more. Founding member Chris Christner passed away in 2019 and it just wouldn't be the same without him. 

Christner was the definition of a gentle giant. He was the last one to join the band and the first of us to shuffle off this mortal coil. Which, by the way, was the name of a band I am sure he knew the entire discography of and had opinions about.

And that's what this post is about. Before he joined the band, I barely knew Christner. By the time we left high school he was one of my best friends. He made me mix tapes of some of the weirdest out there music you will ever hear. We often disagreed vehemently with each other about this or that musically but that was the whole point. It was always a BLAST to talk music with him.

He loved all the punk music that we were into and emulating as a band, but he also put Blue Oyster Cult, Frank Zappa and Emerson, Lake and Palmer on tapes for me. He defended Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band, a stance I still can't quite believe he was willing to argue. And every time I hear “Night Moves”, I think, you know what? Maybe Christner was right?

He loved prog rock, crazy shit that I'd never heard of. Often our conversations would start with "Hey Brendan" or "Hey Chris" and a lengthy deep dive into some song or band usually followed. I always called him Christner, EXCEPT when saying "Hey Chris".

I was deeply impressed that he simply decided to become a bass player in order to play our songs. Tom and Justin showed him how to play the songs, note by note, fret change by fret change, (even though he somehow started playing on a fret-less bass) and within a couple of months, he didn't need their help anymore. 

In 2018 we knew Christner was ill. By some strange convergence, it was clear that Tom, Justin and I might be on the East Coast at the same time that spring/early summer. I floated the idea that we might try to get together to play. Maybe Christner would be able to make the trip?

Probably against medical advice, he decided to do it. Fecund Youth would ride again. Justin's old friend was a drummer (we never had a steady one) and we decided to meet in Connecticut and rent a rehearsal space and play.

I am very glad that we did, even though it was clear that it was a lot for Christner to undertake. Even still, the guys ran through a ton of material, some old that I took the mic for, some new that Justin sang.

That night, Tom, Christner and I slept in sleeping bags in Justin's basement like it was a sleepover back in the day, laughing in the dark, full grown men on a teenage mission.

I was unable to attend Christner’s funeral. A death in my family occurred and the funerals were on the same day, across the country from one another. It upsets me that I couldn’t have been in two places at once. 

Cut to 2023. Again, Justin is stateside, visiting family. I now live in Rhode Island. We met up. And for the first time ever, I wrote something that seemed to me to be a Fecund Youth song. You have to understand, in this band, I was the singer and occasional lyricist. I had never actually PLAYED a Fecund Youth song on the guitar. I had never written the music, I had just sung along.

Here is Fecund Youth, improbably, again, with… 

Hey Chris! (FY '23)

It is just about hanging out with my three best friends. Who happen to be in a legendary band called Fecund Youth.

Tom and Justin actually both contributed to "Hey Chris! (FY '23)", Justin with the music of a section of the song which he played and recorded in five minutes in his brother-in-law's garage, and both of them yelling "Hey Chris!" along with me throughout the song. Each of them recorded those vocal parts across the pond and sent them via phone to me and I threw them into my computer and mixed them into the song. We'd come a long way from pressing record on a boombox.

I just wish Christner had been there to sing along with us. I really miss him.

for Shannon Louser Christner, Cameron Christner and Owen Christner and Christner

My Secret Career 1: Fecund Youth, The Band That Started It All

It would have been September of 1984. That's when my friendship with Tom began. Sophomore year.

Now, I knew of Tom, had known of Tom since junior high, but if I ever actually met him before randomly being sat next to him in math class, I don't remember it. How did I know of Tom? Well, Tom was infamous because in junior high he had shown up to school with a mohawk. This was when a haircut could get you in trouble. He had the same haircut as Joe Strummer of The Clash and it meant that he was a punk rocker. 

I can't stress how much this haircut reverberated through the school. It was DISCUSSED. "Did you see the kid with the mohawk?" Punk rock was not a widely known phenomenon at this time so the mere appearance of such a haircut was like an early version of the internet. It informed people. It was social commentary. 1982 was weird.

By the time I actually met Tom, he no longer had a mohawk. But I knew that he used to. Everybody knew. It was like the Scarlet Letter. We hit it off and somehow he invited me over to study for a test. And this is when I can honestly say that I was forever changed.

Now, up to that point, I had become obsessed with popular music. My childhood had revolved around our record player. We would put on musicals and act them out as we sang along. We also delved into my parents record collection, an odd assortment of folk music, Beatles albums, and Paul Simon. Then my tastes expanded once my older sister started listening to Casey Kasem's Top 40 broadcast. We would tape the show Sunday morning with our little hand held tape recorder and then wear it out during the week. “Purple Rain” and “Thriller” ruled supreme.

But punk rock? I knew The Clash song "Rock The Casbah". I knew about the episode of "Chips" which warned of violent punk bands. My notion of punk was also received via 60 Minutes style reportage. People were very worried about punk rock. To say you were a punk rocker was to reject all sense of decency and community. This nihilistic violent music was going to ruin the world.

The Clash had broken through to mass popularity but the underbelly of that success was very disturbing to mainstream early 1980's America. So when Tom invited me over, I knew I was entering a world that was foreign to me. I knew Tom was a punk. 

We climbed the stairs to his room. We opened math books and promptly ignored them. Now, I am probably misremembering because I always do, but I feel like Tom played DJ that first hang. Did he have a record player? I think he did. He put on a Minor Threat album.

Nothing prepared me for the sounds coming out of Tom's speakers. I looked at the album art the way a starving castaway might look at a gourmet meal. It looked homemade. It was so far away from the commercialized Top 40 music that I was familiar with that I almost suffered whiplash. 

What's more, Tom had an electric guitar in his room. A black Aria Pro 2. That he knew how to play. He flipped on a Ross Loudmouth amp, plugged in, and a distorted live guitar tone hit my eardrums for the first time. I had been to a couple of concerts (The Fixx, Squeeze) and my Mom taught guitar lessons, but that fuzz, that buzz, that distorted growl that came out of that black box literally altered the course of my life.

Sometime during that year, Tom and I "started a band". We called ourselves The FLAs, which stood for "Frustrated Landsacape Artists", a term our Humanities teacher Mrs. Franco had used to describe these poor painters who kept having to do portraits of rich bored royalty instead of the nature scenes they really wanted to be doing. We thought this was hilarious!

The first song we ever wrote together was called "Get Away". In fact, on the recording of that song that you are about to be subjected to, I announce the name of the band before I sing the first line. "This is the FLAs."

We spent several months writing and recording whenever we got the chance. And by "recording", I mean pressing record on my boombox and playing/singing live as the cassette rolled. I mean, you could see by looking at the Minor Threat album that these guys were just like us. They weren't seasoned musical professionals who had gone to the big city to make it. They were high school kids. They lived with their parents. If they could do it, why couldn't we?

A few months later, when I went to Tom's, he had invited Justin along. Justin also played guitar. He was joining the band. I had already been friends with Justin in junior high. We did a French project together that lives in infamy. We had hung out with a mutual friend on several occasions but we had not really continued to hang once we hit high school. We just weren't in any classes together. But it turns out that Tom and Justin had been flung together in a Latin and a history class and hit it off, much in the same way that Tom and I had in math.

Another phrase that a teacher had used was suggested as a name change to the band. Their history teacher (the incomparable Joe Laffey) was talking about a societal shift that happened during the French Revolution, maybe? He said that the conflict was between the crusty tired aristocracy and the "fecund youth".

The minute Tom, howling with laughter already, said, "Fecund Youth should be our band name", I was 100% on board. There were lots of punk bands out there with "Youth" in their name. Reagan Youth, Wasted Youth, Youth Of Today, Youth Brigade, Sonic Youth, it was a meme before memes. Our name was a subtle tweak on those, as we saw it, imbecilic slogans.

Fecund Youth. Say it five times fast it turns into a swear.

So the recordings that Tom and I had been making as The FLAs got co-opted. Justin learned the FLA songs and we became a three-piece. Sometime during junior year, Chris bought a bass specifically to join the band. He learned how to play our songs before he could actually play his instrument. We never got a regular drummer. But we rehearsed regularly and tried to concoct ways to play shows. Before Chris came on board, we played a party at another Tom’s house, opening for that Tom’s brother Steve’s group, who covered lots of hard rock and heavy metal. Eric Dwho lived down the road from me on guitar. They were pretty good, man. Erik S. drummed for us, too, a little bit, John B. joined on bass, and we attempted our songs. That was the first time I performed original music before an audience. I was instantly hooked.

This all was surrounded by the drudgery and magic of high school. Even when we weren't actually playing music, the band was an organizing principle in our lives. We were ALWAYS Fecund Youth. I designed posters. I drew album covers. I longingly looked at Chevy Econoline vans in used car circulars, imagining a barnstorm tour. If Minor Threat could do it, why couldn't we?

College loomed and I fantasized about not going, about turning Fecund Youth into a real band. I already planned on being an actor, why wouldn't I pursue something as reckless and uncertain as punk rock?

But Tom, Justin and Chris had other plans. They would be leaving Rhode Island to go off to college, while I would stay to attend URI. The idea of Fecund Youth lasted throughout our college years, however, with us getting together on breaks and playing, writing and recording more songs into my boombox, and even, on one memorable occasion, playing a New Year's Eve gig at the house I rented my junior year of college. 

All told we wrote a couple albums worth of material and amused ourselves for the better part of a decade. But more importantly, Tom and Justin showed me that writing a song was something someone like me could do. So eventually I begrudgingly picked up the guitar and began to write on my own. 

1984. Forty years of writing songs. And it all started with Fecund Youth. Here is unquestionably the very first moment of My Secret Career. Fecund Youth with Get Away.

Prince, Pt. 1: Jones Beach

For some reason I never thought I'd get to see Prince live. Most of the acts I followed throughout the '80's and '90's weren't popular enough to be a difficult ticket to purchase. But Prince? I imagined having to mortgage my parents house and hold a few hostages in order to get a seat. 

It's hard to be a Prince fan. Seriously. He rubs people the wrong way, namely my hot girlfriend. I can understand that. If I were a girl he'd creep me out too. What could be stranger than having an effeminate tiny man bump and grind the top of his head into your midsection while telling you he wants to watch you touch yourself in the bleachers while he shoots hoops? 

His sexual come-ons are juvenile and obvious, he seems to think he's the only dude who ever talked dirty or wished his girl would get freaky. Oooh, you blowin' my mind Prince Rogers Nelson! How taboo! You like titties! 

But I just can't help it. I love the little guy. First of all, he's from Minnesota which accords him instant underdog status in just about every category you could possibly imagine. Second, he plays every instrument known to man. Third, he is the Bruce Springsteen of R&B, putting on legendary concerts that last all night long and often continue late night at a smaller club near the arena. 

My love affair with Prince started, like most of America, with 'Little Red Corvette' and blossomed into total obsession when 'Purple Rain' came out. Unless you were living off the grid and mailing letter bombs to city council members in 1984 Prince was ubiquitous. 

Has there ever been a stranger chart topping artist? '1999' and 'Purple Rain' are wack-fests of the highest order. You get the feeling that you've been sucked into one of Prince's dreams and not just listening to his songs. My friend Justin once complained of Prince that his music just doesn't sound alive and it is a criticism that can be flipped into compliment. 

The songs are soundscapes that don't correspond to any blueprint, no matter how consciously he's echoing James Brown, George Clinton, Hendrix, The Beatles, whoever. They don't sound human, they sound Prince. After 'Purple Rain' everyone wondered what he would do next. He made two more fictional movies that rank up there with 'Ishtar' and 'Waterworld'. 

'Under the Cherry Moon' is my favorite album of his but it could possibly be the worst film ever made. My main problem with it is that there is no live performance of music in the film. Which leaves us with Prince's acting/physical comedy skills which rival Chuck Norris. Imagine Chuck Norris trying to sing 'Papa's Got A Brand New Bag' and you'll have some idea of how bad Prince is in this movie. 

'Graffiti Bridge' was even worse, so bad in fact that I never even saw it. He fell pretty far from the height of 'Purple Rain'. Then he released 'Sign O' The Times' and all was right again with the world. If you've never heard this album get it immediately. He also released a concert film along with the album which is as good as 'Cherry Moon' is bad. Why? Because he leaves out all the parts where he's not performing music live. He runs through every number on the double album as well as a medley of his previous hits. It is a masterful film and a gorgeous live show. I thought that was as close to seeing Prince live as I'd ever get. 

Cut to New York City 1997. My wife (now ex) and I were expecting a child come October. We'd moved to Park Slope in anticipation of the big event. Actually, judging by the stroller congestion, moving from Manhattan to Park Slope after a pregnancy is a law of some kind. My buddy Andy, who would come to be known as Quasi Uncle Andy after my son was born, called me up to remind me that his birthday was coming up. July 25. 

Who was playing Jones Beach that night? The little purple dude. I was now enough of an adult to realize that tickets to popular events could actually be obtained if you paid attention! The ex is a big fan of Prince as well but couldn't be expected to boogie on down when she was looking as if someone had shoved a Volkswagen under her shirt. 

Jones Beach is a dramatic place to see music outdoors. I am not a big fan of the outdoor concert. I think that a roof to rock and roll is like a lid on a teakettle. It won't whistle without the pressure. But Jones Beach has a grandeur to it because it sits on a harbor. You see the ocean stretched out behind the stage and feel as if you are on some sort of cruise ship. 

Oddly the open sea creates a sense of intimacy. Our seats were floor level about 25 rows back. Yes he played every song you might think he'd play. Yes the band was tighter than a drum. Yes he switched instruments left and right, drums, bass, keyboards, piano, etc. Yes he changed outrageous outfits just often enough to give the show a theatrical flair. All of these things were memorable. 

But what I'll never forget, what I marvel at to this day, is his dancing. The mixture of execution and spontaneity were staggering. He'd be on one side of the stage soloing on his guitar which he would then throw offstage to a roadie while pivoting and twirling into a full on high step sprint which he detoured into a two-knee slide popping up at the last second to land on his knees on the giant purple piano's bench pumping his fist into the air at the exact moment the band cut away and finishing by playing some impossibly intricate piano piece. He was a special effect. 

He did not seem human, much like the criticism leveled at his music by Justin. After seeing him live, I understood why his music sounded so alien, so non-flesh-and-blood. Because he just ain't like the rest of us.

Mercury And Mars

The Great Nothingness. All systems down. Thrusters inoperable. The vista of the Virgo Stellar Stream system sprawling out before him. How long had he been sitting there? He could no longer remember. 

The SS LJOM65 had served him well. He had powered the ship down to the bare minimum in order to prolong the life of the solar batteries. Only the distress system and his spacesuit in effect. Mercury and Mars "Opus 2" drifting out into space, searching for an ear. So far in vain. Oxygen falling. "All this world seems such a bitter place..." 

He drifted off into fitful sleep. Roaring across Centaurus A was a giant freighter, headed for Canis Major Dwarf. A deadline in effect. As the corbine element churned, the massive thrusters pushed the ship through solar dust and sonic drift. The communications officer banged on the captain's door. Still asleep at first he wanted to ignore the news. But interstellar commerce laws dictate that distress calls must be answered. 

The system was huge but not so huge that they couldn't detour and respond. Pulling on his deck whites, the captain reluctantly gave the order to change course. By now, the refrain came from "Opening Day"..."We watched the waves roll in/Under Jupiter and Mars". 

Europa. Experiment failed. Evacuation complete. Demolition crews roam the surface of the moon looking for structures to destroy. There can be no trace left behind in case the Entity is able to recognize architectural structures. 

Driving around in her decked out demo-rover, several explosions down for the day, she spots a hi-rise off in the distance. Altering her course, she prepares herself for the work ahead. A song she recognizes in a deep distant way comes over her lunar radio. Instrumental. She turns it up and waits for the DJ to tell her it is Mercury and Mars' "Grey Eyes". 

Dropping the charges around the base, she thinks about long ago pain and suffering, suffering that left her alone on Europa, destroying what was left of a once-thriving moon. She set the timer which would give her just enough time to shake loose on her demo. She set the coordinates and reversed her seat so she could watch the structure go down. That was her favorite part. 

But she'd forgotten to sweep for life-forms. A pinging hit her ears, interrupting "Lady Afterhours". Shit. She'd have to go back. Barely enough time for an extraction. Oh well, if today was her day, today was her day. 

All he could do now was count shooting stars. So many. Cold even inside his heated suit. Down to last rations of liquid. Thank god for music. Rueful laugh at "Hey, It's True". It certainly was. Double-checked distress signal. Going strong. Still time. Still time. 

So far the rescue seemed a bust. They couldn't raise the subject on any communication system and most likely he/she/it was dead. But the coordinates were set and so the freighter rushed on. The crew bitterly discussed this latest set of events. Their bonuses were contingent upon deadlines. Other captains ignored distress calls, why couldn't theirs? The captain thought back to a time in his hot-rod traveler when he'd gotten trapped in an asteroid belt and needed assistance. 

He sat for eighteen hours staring at "Orient Point", desperately calling for help. Since then he never let one go by. 

She skidded up to the high-rise and threw her heat-seeker on. As she blasted open the massive glass front doors, she identified the source of the heat. One-hundred and sixty-seventh floor. She blasted open the elevator door and activated her jet-pack. The walls of the elevator shaft were easy to bounce off of so she was able to motor pretty quick, rolling "Whatever You Want" on her headset. She didn't have much time. 

Something was wrong with the astral stabilizers. He'd have to power up the generator and take a look. Time was of the essence. He'd have just under an hour to fix them or he'd use too much of the battery and not be able to leave enough for his spacesuit specs. He always worked to "Am or Pm", somehow it relaxed him, something he'd need as he performed the tricky over-routing necessary to re-engage the A.S. system. 

As the freighter rounded the Sagittarius Elliptical Dwarf Galaxy, fortunes changed. A squadron of Goozies lay in wait. With "Rose Gold" blaring on the deck, the freighter did her best to act like a fighter. But with little to no maneuverability, and even less firepower, she couldn't stave off the attack. The rescue would have to wait as the Goozies would board, inspect and off-load anything of value they could fine. 

They were huddled in a corner, squalid and emaciated. Of course they would choose a high floor. Ensures invisibility. They just got unlucky, that's all. But she didn't have time to worry about them or what might happen to them once she got them out. The charges were still winding down and she'd have to hurry if she didn't want to be caught in the incineration. As "Slowburner"snaked into her ear, she shot all four of them with tranquilizer jets. She gathered them up in her extendable arms and rushed for the elevator shaft. Adhering them to the back of the rover, she accelerated. Ten seconds later a massive blast behind her almost toppled the rover, but she was able to maintain control. The debris from the building engulfed her and she disappeared into the cloud. 

Back in the cockpit, he heard "Pine River" and wished he might someday go. But the batteries were almost gone, his suit was ever so cold and he was so tired he could no longer keep his eyes open to see the shooting stars. Someone might still come. Someone might still come. Someone might still come. 

for Cormac

The Old Man, Clara, The Conducator

Last May my son studied the beginnings of the Holocaust in one of his high school classes. They were covering the ghettos when we talked about it. He said a few very interesting things.

First he said he was concerned that he wasn't more affected by it. He could understand it intellectually but he found it difficult to have an emotional response. As we talked about it it became clear that the reason his emotional response wasn't apparent was because the subject is so intense that there is no possible response that is large enough to be appropriate.

Second he said that he understood "deniers" because your mind cannot take it all in. The temptation is to dismiss the possibility.

Third he said that the only reason he felt like he could tolerate the discussion of the ghettos was because things were as good as they were ever going to be. What follows is unimaginable.

Fourth (and this is a film tangent) he referenced the Kubrick exhibit that we saw a while ago which chronicles a project Kubrick worked on and eventually abandoned that focused on the Holocaust. He said he was glad that Kubrick hadn't made the film because an artist as powerful as Kubrick doing a Holocaust film would be terrifying to behold.

I consider Scott Walker to be the Stanley Kubrick of song. He has written again and again about the brutality of various regimes. In fact, as he has increasingly distanced himself from the usual concerns of romantic pop, his work has turned ever darker and looked unsparingly at the depths that human beings will go to in order to maintain control over one another.

And just as that unfinished Kubrick project would have been almost unbearable to ingest, so do Walker's genocidal compositions defy any comfortable access to the listener.

On 1969's Scott 4, Walker had taken back his birth name to credit his songs. Noel Scott Engel wrote his first full length original album. It contained a song called "The Old Man's Back Again (Dedicated to the Neo-Stalinist Regime)" which was about what had occurred in Prague the year before and the Russian backed government that had taken charge.

Somehow Walker turned this into some kind of cool funk rock lounge dance track with a killer bassline...take a listen.

36 years later, he would write and record "Clara" for 2006's "The Drift". This song makes "The Old Man's Back Again" look like "I Want to Hold Your Hand" in comparison.

The title refers to Clara Petacci, Mussolini's lover who was executed along with the Italian dictator. Their corpses were strung up and desecrated by angry Italians. Walker recalls seeing a snapshot of this in a newsreel before a movie as a kid. It haunted him so completely that he made an almost unbearable work of art out of it.

Listen to "Clara". You won't be singing along too much. It is almost thirteen minutes long.

Just as disturbing is the track from Bish Bosch called "The Day The Conducator Died (An Xmas Song)". "The Conducator" is the Romanian word for "leader" and is what Ceaucescu called himself.

This tune is almost eight minutes long and is no walk in the park either. The lilting little Christmas coda is about as creepy as music gets and I am not even sure why. Check out "The Day The Conducator Died (An Xmas Song)".

Back to my son and his response to studying the Holocaust in school. And this is appropriate right now seeing as the new leader of Iran stood before the UN and said, "Yeah, we admit it HAPPENED in spite of what the last loser leader of our country hinted at over and over again."

See, we don't want to acknowledge our faults. Think about how truly difficult that is to do on a personal level. To say, "I did THAT. THAT wrong thing. I knew it was wrong and I did it anyway."

For the human race to do that on a global scale??? It is almost unthinkable. It seems impossible. But that is where ART comes in. Art doesn't have to be elected. It doesn't have to please constituents. It doesn't have to deliver food to the hungry or protect the weak from those who would oppress them.

But it can take the human race by the scruff of the neck and force it's stupid head in front of a mirror and hold it there until it cries and says, "I am sorry I have done such things."

Dr. Mars: Glamour, Clamor, And The End Of Time

For many of us, Dr. Mars represents everything good we used to count on. I say "us" and "we" as if there is some kind of organization but that really isn't the case. A few groups of threes and fours roam around, rarely sixes or sevens, mostly ones and twos. Nothing is constant these days but if you can locate a radio in an abandoned storefront it's a pretty good bet you'll hear Dr. Mars coming from it.

I remember tracking a group (not nice people from what I could tell) who were collecting guns from various abandoned armories. I thought maybe I could find a way to sabotage their progress, to do something that might convince them to change their ways. Then I saw them kill an old man for a rusty pistol and knew I'd better just let 'em go.

That afternoon I heard "Are You There" coming from a novelty radio from a toy store. The sound mimics what it feels like to be alive these days. It's so familiar, it feels like it was made long ago, but it has the urgency of an immediate performance. It also brings the hair up on your neck the way you get when you sense something important ABOUT to happen. If you're clocking tenses, that's past/present/future all in one.

When Dr. Mars says, "I've been searching so long/Are you there?" you know it could be about a certain girl but you also can't shake the suspicion that there is more information woven in that is not so easily identifiable.

Indeed, in the very next song "Personally", Dr. Mars talks about "encounters of the fourth kind" and says we should "take it personally" but also talks about taking Manhattan and outer space. The desire to boil everything down to the love of one girl being enough to make it on this crazy planet gains a massive layer of melancholy when you take into consideration how few of us there are left and how impossible that kind of dream can feel in the face of obvious mass extinction.

Later in a dusty old roadhouse bar with a flashing jukebox powered by some solar cell, Dr. Mars gives me "The Ashtar Command". If I had enough time with a pencil and paper and a few cold leisurely beers, I KNOW I could decipher it, but trouble has been in the air today and I only get one quick listen. Tension seems to be running high for whatever reason and I decide to skirt the city, nestling my nocturnal journey between the abandoned high-rises and the scorched forest.

I don't know where they broadcast from. Sometimes the sound comes from up in the hills, they must have a generator up there because I can hear the amplifiers. I've been skulking, hoping for some kind of signal that something might have changed somewhere important, that they have news I need from a place I can never access again.

Along the way, I meet a wayward damsel. We hole up in the Presidential Suite of some swanky relic. Sure enough, the bedside radio brings more Dr. Mars to light, "I'll Have You Anyway", which serves as a dirty backdrop to our furtive embrace. She's on her own path, headed in the opposite direction and the temptation to alter mine to match hers is strong. But I have my own unfinished business that somehow still feels important in spite of everything I've lost.

Somehow there is glamour woven in among the gloom and doom. All kinds of treasures are just lying around waiting to be picked up and used. I rounded a corner on Highway 54 and found a cabin tucked behind a row of forsythia bushes. Whoever built it must have seen the writing on the wall because they put a solar powered gennie in the garage. There was a tricked out '32 Ford Hot-Rod sitting there, gleaming under a layer of dust, dying to be aired out and let loose on an open highway. As I gunned it up to 120 MPH the radio static transformed into another transmission from Dr. Mars, "The Last Ride". Those falsetto background vocals hang over the driving rhythm section like thunderclouds over a plain.

You drive a rig like that around and you're bound to attract company. Especially of the femme fatale variety. Sure enough she stuck her thumb out and I dropped from 120 to 0 and watched her fold her long legs into the passenger seat. Sure her hair against the sunset streaming behind us made a pretty picture but her idea of fun was shooting windows out of abandoned cars as we zoomed past. Having spent many months living inside a car like that, I had to put my foot down. The silence was punctuated by the strains of "Whatever I Say Goes" drifting up from a shopping cart piled high with anything and everything, a detritus sundae topped with a transistor radio of a cherry.

The confrontation left her shaken. She wasn't used to people sticking by her AFTER a fight like that. We camped out next to the '32 and I stroked her hair as she cried. I remembered the Dr. Mars "Neptune's Daughter" song and thought about telling her about it but she was so muddled up it might just have made things worse. I settled on helping her focus on the crickets. She drifted off to sleep. But I told her the refrain..."You don't have to keep it all to yourself."

In the morning she was gone.

So was the '32.

Easy come easy go.

I backtracked and found that shopping cart. It made for slow going but whoever had put it together knew what they were doing. Water purification, dehydrated foodstuff, military rations, basic toiletries, a few simple tools, and best of all, five pairs of brand new boots, just my size.

And that transistor on the top. Remember, it's all static now except the few pockets of pirate radio. All they have is Dr. Mars last offering, "Stars In Our Favour". As I pushed my cart in my new boots, "The Golden Age" didn't even sound ironic. Sad, yes, but still somehow hopeful.

Are you getting the picture now? As I trudge I hear "You Had The Same Dream Too", some sort of elegy bound up with a tragic romance. Then "The Capsule" blasts off out of that emotional wreckage, giving me the impression that I'm not trapped here, that I can leave any time I want, that I'm not pushing a wire cage on wheels.

Where would I go in that little ship?

What coordinates would I punch into the interstellar destination locator?

Rumors from hobos hiding underneath every dusty junkyard mattress to machine-gun-toting guards at impenetrable compounds hint of colonies on some moon somewhere. Just when I scoff at the thought, Dr. Mars comes crackling out waltzing me out into that deep beyond with the desperate longing of "Europa". How could that song exist if we couldn't get there? When the horns come in I can't help but imagine Dr. Mars stepping out of a hatch onto a welcome platform, thronging masses of well-adjusted peace-loving human Europans cheering as one.

Just when that vision becomes too much for my poor little abandoned heart to take, "The Sweetheart Deal, Part Two" slides out of my radio and I think, maybe Jupiter is out of the question, but isn't it possible I could track Dr. Mars down and join? Like that old spiritual says, "He don't say nothin' but he must know somethin'".

But that's where the fear comes in because all I know about them is the way they sound. If I can believe what I hear, there must be something good happening in some secret locale. Some Hobbit hole with books and records and good wine and long stupid conversations punctuated by deliberate hilarity. I mean, somewhere you can really relax and feel like everything will be okay.

That's a big if.

Because everything is most definitely NOT okay. Whatever will be has not come to pass yet, if it ever will. You think "Europa" is hard to get to, what about the FUTURE? Only way to get there is one slow second at a time. So I push my cart and wear out my five pair of boots and wait for another cypher from Dr. Mars to tell me where I ought to be going.