Bummed Out City

There’s something eerily comforting about listening to The Streets. Mike Skinner is the fellows name and after listening to A Grand Don’t Come For Free the overwhelming felling is that you just had a long conversation with a friend over a pint or two. A conversation about life, girls, smoking dope, girlfriends, relationships, staying home to watch Arsenal Vs. Man.U., and loving a girl so much it hurts. He writes about his mates too, self doubt, drinks, and conversations. It’s all delivered straight to you. Straight like his elbows are on the table and the TV’s on in the pub and it’s pouring down rain outside.
Went down with the flu on Monday and never made it up again ‘til Friday when I had a gig out at the Grand Lodge. On the way out Casey called in from New York on the cell. He was standing in front of the Joe Strummer mural round the corner from Tompkins Square and read me the new graffiti people had tagged on. I was grouchy and driving through the impossible rain west of Portland and he was drunk in the East Village. All the world seemed right for a moment. The gig went well. Had a good crowd and sang through the flu and the snot and the stiff body after lying in bed for three-and-half-days. Saturday I played for the first time at the Alberta St. Public House. I opened for Myshkin. I finally played a set I wanted to play. All Tomorrow’s Parties -> Hanging On A Star, Wandering Stars, Rag-Tag, Workin’ On the Levee, Everybody’s Leaving. Short but cool. Mikey who ran sound paid me the complement of asking if I had ever listened to Dick Gaughan as my singing (phrasing actually) reminded him of Dick’s. That’s the highest honor. Yes, I said….of course I’ve listened to him. Mikey shook his head like OK – that makes sense. I had crossed some sort of threshold. Made me happy. We spoke for a bit in the back at the sound board and he told me that Dick was the first act on stage when the Alberta St. opened it’s doors. He told me that Gaughan had gotten stuck in Boston on September 12th after the fateful September 11 and had actually rented a car and driven across America from Boston to Portland to make the gig. That’s a quality fellow there. I told him that opening for Gaughan was one of the honors of my life. Myshkin and band played really well as always. She even spilled two beers on stage.
Now I’m obsessed with REM’s song The Great Beyond. I’m going to learn this song. It’s so beautiful. Music can be cathartic and healing when your sad and fucked up. Songs are like little bittersweet gifts. Found poetry, or fortunes. I hate songs sometimes. Some nights I stare at the record collection and think I hate all of you! All you famous tossers! I don’t want to listen to anyone and nothing speaks to me. (And I don’t want anything to speak to me. I just want to be left alone.) Then, suddenly, the world cracks opens again. Even just for a moment. It’s pouring down rain outside and basements are flooding all over Portland. My heart is sick. In twenty-two days it will be February. And it’s supposed to rain right through ‘til then. But Michael Stipe’s singing is so beautiful I can almost believe that things might just turn out OK. Almost. Melancholy and aching. Not dark and beautiful like The Cure. Mystic and sad and beautiful like my psychedelic summer circa 1985. Sometimes songs can do a heart some good.

“Sweetest dreams of you
I'll look into the stars
I'll look into the moon”