3-D Like Me: Action Is Character

Chelsea Light Moving
Chelsea Light Moving
3/5/2013

Help Me Out a Li'l Bit Here:
Thurston Moore--vox and guit-fiddle
Keith Wood--additional guit-fiddle
Samara Lubelski--bass
John Moloney--drums

(Originally written May 2013)

Definitely wasn't planning on reviewing this one; plans to post my write-up of Lee Ranaldo's Between the Times and the Tides, just a week after release, went tits up when I was admitted to the hospital.  A week later, I returned home and tossed the review in the garbage.

A few months later, I did the same to my life.

Wow, it's been a year...May 8th was when I just up and quite my title examiner job.  Nearly two years working in a well-respected office, in a well-paying position (secured by my well-connected sister)--gone.  Because I couldn't control my fears.  Because I was convinced I was wasting away, that if I didn't do something drastic soon, I'd never get published, I would die unsung.  So I quit my job.  In this day and age.  I was growing increasingly frustrated with my lack of motivation re: my fiction writing, and thought that such drastic action would provide the kick-start I needed.  I'd saved up a good amount of cash, I could live off that and maybe grab a part-time job until I got my li'l career going.

Reason No. 54 It Sucks Having All of Your Friends Live Far Away:  No one is there to grab you by your shoulders, shake you so you can hear your brain sloshing around inside your head, and yell "WHAT IN THE UNHOLY HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU?  You can make room for both your job and your writing!  You need to stop being so impatient.  Take a breath and work something out."

Next month I'll be moving back to Hagerstown.  Back in with mom, although she moved out of the house I grew up in last year, and now resides in a cozier crib near the city limits that was once owned by her son-in-law's parents.  This is the worst possible result.  I have lived the past two years in Frederick, a city just a half-hour drive away from Hagerstown, but oh does it feel like a whole new world.  The downtown in Frederick is actually vibrant--amazing restaurants, great bars, safe to walk, friendly people.

Mom's pretty confident I can find work again in Hagerstown, and once I save up enough money, I'll be out of there.  For good.  I really want to be back here for next summer.  I'm scared as hell.  This is failure on a level that breaks certain people.  Trying to remain positive.  If I have been one thing for most of my life other than overweight, it's resilient.

When I wake up in the morning, and realize what I have done and the damage I have caused, it feels like a line drive to the face.  Every day is like that.  I am doing this review in large part because I need to write something.  When all else fails, let me just kneel at the laver and cleanse my hands.  

"heavenmetal"--Instantly I hear the malfunctioning magneto.  Nothing within these two minutes is heaven, or metal.

"Be a warrior/Love life."  I have every reason to do the former and none to do the latter.  But I'll gladly isolate outstanding moments and throw them up on the shelf.

"Sleeping Where I Fall"--Same chords on every Thurston solo record ever.

He seems displeased with someones stifling presence in his life.  "I never know know what to do/Everybody knows it's because of you."  Everybody also knows you coulda chopped this tune in half and been just fine.

I wrote about Sonic Youth's "hiatus" in the lost-forever LR review, and I would be remiss to not speak of it here.  Did the news send me for a loop?  Absolutely.  Was I giving the side-eye to people online claiming to be in tears over the announcement?  Oh yeah.  I mean, I've been a fan for 23 years.  I've seen them live 58 times.  But things end, y'all.  They have to.  Sure, I would have liked for SY's end to be not so abrupt; to be not so precipitated by bullshit.  But that's how it played out. 

"Alighted"--Easily the best thing on here.  Faux black metal I will take any and every day over faux Black Flag (Bl'ast! did that best, anyway).   Not to mention we get a whole three minutes before any vocals kick in!

The fact that T can still crank out stuff of this caliber, clutching a severed goddess head in one hand and a bejeweled sword in t'other, fills me with hope.  I have come to dread that feeling. 

"Empires of Time"--Thick in tone, thick of bone.  Electric Wizard this ain't, and I will leave the interpretation up to you.

Haha, guess what?  Employed, you ain't.  Paid, you ain't.  Productive member of society, you ain't.

One foot in front of the other, babe.

"Groovy & Linda"--This album is rather hoary.  I listen and I hear ideas (both lyrical and musical) that are overly-familiar and well-worn.  This leaves me feeling underwhelmed at best, crestfallen at worst, and ultimately disoriented.

I want to exchange this album for a newer, younger-sounding one.  In fact, I think I'll go steal one from my friend's record collection. 

"Lip"--Fuck me in the fuckhole, this song is terrible.  "Too fucking bad!" ad nauseum, emphasis on the nausea.  A spotty snot of bother that comes off like an angrier, cussier "Hang Out," "Lip" is the audio equivalent of casu marzu--and the maggots are dead.  The jejune emotionalism is exasperating, and verges on charlantry. 

You'll get five across yer lip, Thurston, ya big dummy.  Stomp off to the corner, place this brown crown on your head, and think--I mean actually think--about what it is you've done here.

"Burroughs"--A ball-hoot which is neither ball nor hoot.  Thurston took inspiration from the last words Mr. Burroughs spoke before his passing on.  He called love "the most natural painkiller," which fascinated Thurston, as such a saccharine sentiment seemed incongruous with the legendary writer's cantankerous reputation.  "Hey Billy!  Hey Billy!" oh this is such a no-go.  You know the conventional wisdom about books made into movies?  Same applies to writers made into songs.

At least nothing on CLM is as barrel-under-the-chin depressing as Demolished Thoughts.  Good Lord.  Dude sounded on the verge of breaking into "If You Could Read My Mind" for half the record.

I must continue on.  I have been a fan, a supporter, of this guy's music for over twenty years.  It is a dereliction of duty to not listen to what he has to offer.  I just don't grasp his lust for the past.  I avoid the hell outta the past; he's running towards it with arms outstretched, corners of his mouth upturned, eyes wide and dewy. 

"Mohawk"--It's Beat poetry!  Oh goddamnit!  Dude, seriously, I have a life to try and turn around, it's pretty scary.  Stop insisting that a pudding cup constitutes a hearty meal, would'ja?

DROOOOONE
strumastrumastrum

So, hold on...T-man is approaching his 60s and he's responding by revisiting the 1960s?  Okay?

A poem is like a child--people only care if it's theirs.  And even if the li'l brat's as lazy as a Kentucky bullfrog or as incorrigible as a moonshine maven, you can't tell them that.  

"Frank O'Hara Hit"--Tall finger for the tall man and the strange news he brings about angels.  Six minutes, eh?  Kudos on becoming a hologram.

I can't lose much more time.  Memories splash my brain like hydrofluoric acid.  Unfathomable.  Hurts so much that I can't even scream.  Who gets halfway up the mountain and then says to themselves, "Fuck this, I'm finished" and takes knife to rope? 

"Communist Eyes"--One week, world.  Gimme one week of kindness.  Help me cast aside the devil that has taken over my heart.  Eyes pink and raw, mouth downcast, I can't grow accustomed to that face.

Eff the attempts.  Celebrate the achievements.  Praise those who make bearable the heaviness of doing. 

I'm neither antagonist nor ass-kiss, understand.   There's a discernible cynicism in certain songs here that disheartens me; Thurston's the guy who, in an interview published on the eve of Sonic Youth's 1994 release Experimental Jet Set, Trash and No Star, said that younger critics calling some of SY's songs "cynical" bummed him out, as cynicism was a quality that he felt had no place in art.  I liked that he felt that way; I didn't necessarily agree, or even think any artist could actually avoid cynicism in their work, but the 1990s were the decade of cynicism.  Such an attitude was pretty refreshing. 

I would like to end this piece with some positivity.  Not every song is a winnet clinging from the butt of rock 'n' roll.  Just most of them.  Also, although the album cover looks like Rush's Moving Pictures re-imagined by hippies, it's still nowhere near as terrible as the cover of Gang of Four's Mall. 

3-D Like Me: Heaven Swamps Everything

Thurston Moore
Psychic Hearts
5/10/1995

Help Me Out A Li'l Bit Here:
Thurston Moore--vocals, guitar
Tim Foljahn--bass guitar
Steve Shelley--drums

The Nineties.  In what other decade would a solo release by a member of Sonic Youth earn the lead review in an issue of Rolling Stone?  Without a cool human connect,  I relied on the music mags (RS, Spin, Alternative Press) and the radio.  This meant that in addition to enjoying the truly interesting new tunes I grimaced through some try-hard trash heap material.  Four years after the initial shock, green eyes were still fervently seeking the new Nirvana.  (Eyes and not ears?  Quest doomed.)  You know that hoary saying about not appreciating the good in life without also going through the bad in life?  True.  True true true.

1995 had some outstanding so-called "alt-rock" albums:  Alien Lanes, Wowee Zowee, Electr-O-Pura, Anything Near Water.  I could, either in person or on paper, make a convincing case for the year as an immaculate encapsulation of the musical zeitgeist, but I would have to ignore the very brutal truth that 1995 was also the year that more people gave an non-ironic fuck about Billy Corgan's music and opinions on music than at any other time in history.

Utopia ruined.

                                           ---------------------------------------------------------

So apparently some of the fine folks at DGC thought Psychic Hearts was going to be a hit or something?  After SY's first three major-label recs all failed to crack half a million sales in the US?  Well, it was a big smash in the "Used" section at a lot of stores....

Thurston did not make an ersatz Sonic Youth album, which may have seemed unwise at the time.  In retrospect, it was a decision that resulted in what is still his finest piece of solo work.

"Queen Bee and Her Pals"--No musician can sell out and cash in when they take such great pains to soak their heatstroke poetics in distortion over an instrumental that puts me in mind of a jack-in-the-box that's about to hurl.  The lyrics are meaningful on some alternate plane of existence where cheese grows on trees and books read people.

I sure paid that song a compliment with some odd currency, huh?

"Ono Soul"--The non-hit single is a white-boy snake charmer honoring not just the titular beleaguered, but all noisy female royalty worldwide.

The Sonic Youth Seal of Approval meant a great deal even before the band signed to DGC and started giving interviews to rags that could afford to print color photos.  Mostly it was Thurston, 'cause that guy would not shut the hell up, but really all four SY'ers had zero qualms about sharing their favorite bands/authors/artists/filmmakers that fans and journos may not have heard of before, or heard of but weren't inspired to check out for themselves.   (For every Redd Kross, Harry Crews, and Spike Jonze, however, you were sure to run across a Prolapse or a Cell.  I never said their opinions were unimpeachable.)

Almost as great was when SY referenced names that you would not expect to hear passing through the lips of such cool NYC art-trash--the Carpenters would probably be the primo example here.  Only someone unfamiliar with Yoko Ono's history in the avant-garde art world would really be surprised that hyper-aware archivist spirits would acknowledge her with the utmost regard, though.  That's a lot of someone's though, let's not fool ourselves.  She is still being blamed by millions of lunkheads the globe over for supposedly breaking up an already-volatile band of young male rock stars who were probably just one ill-timed fart in the studio away from breaking up anyhow.

Steve Shelley is the not-so-secret weapon throughout Psychic Hearts.  On "Ono Soul," his deceptively watchful drumming meshes superbly with yet another classic Harpo-meets-Lucy vocal turns by T.  The chorus, all gently-whispered code words and private messages thumped out furtively in the night's midsection, steals my breath, still.

"Psychic Hearts"--If you meet any girl or woman who is pretty much down to kill for Thurston Moore, it's because of this song.

Throughout the album, Thurston's vocals are sprayed with just enough distortion to keep them understandable.  I never knew if his reason behind this was to cover up his shortcomings (dude, we've been hearing you warble on that mic for over twelve years, what's it matter?) or to give these otherwise quite poppy and accessible songs an extra edginess.  It never bothered me, except for a bit with the title track.  As raw and insightful as "Psychic Hearts" the song gets, the distortion acts as a mesh netting of sorts, blunting the emotional impact somewhat.  Mind you, that is the only thing I can find "off" about the song.

There is nothing condescending in Thurston's message to a young girl with "a fucked-up life...in a stupid town."  He doesn't claim to relate, nor does he offer a solution other than to never submit to her worst impulses.  When speaking with the destitute of body, soul and pocket, one does well to skip the ornate jibber-jabber.

He does not ask her to consider how much worse her life could be, or how much worse things are for other people.

He does not implore her to reconcile with her family, because why should the onus be on her? Why should she be the "bigger person"?  What, precisely, is her shame?

 His "prayer" is one of hope and goodwill.  His final words are a promise.  Not a promise that her seemingly untenable situation will one day improve--how on earth could he guarantee that?--but that she will never be able to tell herself, "No one cares about me."

 A girl does not have to identify with each line here to be impacted.  The specifics aren't important when we're talking life and death.  The girl here seems to have retreated into an escape hatch more scandalously-decorated than mine, for instance.  Would she and I even be friends?  Likely not.  But I can tell you we wouldn't be enemies.  She's not some "psycho" punk chick.  "Pussy power" is a cover that she threw on hastily to prevent narrowed eyes from spying her blemishes.  She is understandably dubious of the man speaking to her--is his concern borne of solicitousness or salaciousness?  How can she trust a stranger when the very people supposed to show her love and keep her safe treat her like the result of a lost wager?

Thurston's use of the word "prayer" has always been very interesting to me, because he clearly is not approaching this from the POV of the god-boy who knows that all can be saved, so long as they are willing to give their lives over to a higher power.  There is a theodicy--referred to by philosopher Dr. Stephen Maitzen as "heaven swamps everything"--that suggests Heaven is such a wonderful final destination, so teeming with forgiveness and absolution, so rich with rewards undreamed of during one's mortal life, that it surpasses any and all pain and suffering endured on Earth.  The suffering is not required to receive the reward, but it will be received, and it will be rich indeed.

This raises some serious moral quandaries.  If you told someone being abused, "Well I know this is a horrible situation you find yourself in, but after you pass on into Heaven, the blessings you receive from God will compensate you and then some," there is a possibility that the person may decide to "grin and bear it."  No longer will they seek a way out, or wonder whatever they did wrong to deserve this horrific treatment at the hands of life, because things will work out in the end, quite literally!  It also absolves the adherents to this theodicy of moral culpability.

Thurston doesn't take direct action to improve this girls situation, but not because he believes she will one day look back on these tumultuous times with a non-grudging appreciation.  Nothing she has said or done justifies her treatment at the hands of others.  He understands that his role in her life is an ephemeral one.  Rather than advocate harsh action that could ruin her life for good, he suggests that she keep living, with intelligence and passion.  

"Pretty Bad"--In my review of Nice Ass from earlier in the week, I remarked how my first foray into pearl-diving led me to a bold assumption about the appeal of sex.  Well, right around the time Psychic Hearts was released, my little theory was proven correct.  The first--and last--guy I crushed on in high school, too.

And now back to, When Stoners Flirt.

T-Bone Mo' steps into the shoes of a guy who lacks the aplomb necessary to be a good stalker.  Always muttering or mumbling, as his eyes sink deeper back into his head.  He's not a menace; he's a mouse.

"Patti Smith Math Scratch"--Electric Moore!

Every song on Psychic Hearts fawns at the feet of Patricia Lee.  As it should be. 

Thurston was, for a time, ineffable.  Super-tall, hair flopped over his eyes, sunglasses on at all times.  Then there were the things he did to and with the electric guitar.  He could summons wails and wobbles, or he could bust out pig-tail twist and shout.  Shimmy up, shake down, shivers all around.  Quite the punky brew, sir T.  Wait, what?  2:45?  That's all?!  Unfair dude, I'm not finished dancing yet!

"Blues From Beyond the Grave"--Easily written off as a gorgeous submergence,  "Blues From Beyond the Grave" speaks a different language to me.

When one knows not how to swim, local pools can be every bit as frightening as the ocean.  The color blue is closely entwined with "danger" in my mind, and when they mate, what else can come but death.

Many a nightmare has featured my helpless body in the middle of the vast blue.  Frantically I come to realize that the rest of the world has disappeared, and I am helpless.  I will flail as the waters remain calm.  I will sink.  I will panic.  My vocal cords will seal up in a valiant effort to keep that vile fluid from entering my lungs.  Unfortunately, no air will be allowed in either.

That is why "Blues From Beyond the Grave" contains no words.

"See-Through Playmate"--Lively and lighthearted, until near the end, when Cindy drops by.  Mood switches just a bit, but things are still cool.  Might be a cat-fight as the party winds down. 

"Hang Out"--The lyrics felt good, so he did them.

Before them, though, we get a minute of decor-related drama at the site of the wedding reception, until at last the feng is shui'ed to everyone's satisfaction.  The happy couple materialize not long after:  the nastiest riff on the entire record and a drone that also baked the cake.  Sure it's not multi-tiered, but it's tasty, and there's two plastic people stuck on the tip-top, so baby don't be such a drag. 

"Feathers"--Aww, this sprightly declaration of ventricular devotion gives me the fuzzy-wuzzies.  Die grosse liebe!  "I've been told/Feathers are gold/But why should I care/When you're so near."  Yeah, I...the music is really easy to get caught up in.  Like northern cardinals flying around your head, chirping out their calls of contentment. 

Lucy was able to get into Psychic Hearts somewhat, much more than she ever got with an SY release.  Songs like "Feathers" appealed more to her sensibility--brief, hooky.  And she found Thurston's inability to sing "properly" quite amusing.  Oh how she would laugh and laugh, till her freckled face became as red as the hair on her head.

I found it funny that Thurston was still writing about romantic love in the coded language of the self-conscious poet, the bard who wants to make a reader feel without actually giving away too much of themselves in the process.   That isn't really a complaint; his focus seems much stronger than it was on Jet Set, as none of these songs, thankfully, are plagued by the same indiscreet narm found in "In the Mind of the Bourgeoise Reader." 

Lucy and I had no time for love, Charlie Brown.  Why bother?  Risk of disease, possibility of pregnancy, shaving your legs...no thanks.

"Tranquilizer"--Heavy?  They're playing cat's cradle with a yo-yo made from osmium. 

"Staring Statues"--T-man's Rumplestiltskin impression continues, and I almost wish I had a baby to hand over.  The chorus makes me pump my fist up at all the spry flies.  Sure "Staring Statues" was cobbled together with all the craftsmanship of a sno-cone made by an eight-year-old wearing an eye patch, and yet again he's decided that one verse should be all the verses, but that's awesome. 

"Cindy (Rotten Tanx)"--Hot nights with cool people.  The futility of deciphering Thurston's lyrics should just be accepted at this point.  The reverb effect helps more than it hinders most songs here, as I've said, and "Cindy" is not one of the outliers.

What are "rotten tanx"?  Dirty greasy grimy tank tops?  That's not sexy.  That's indicative of a poor self-image.  Or an unwillingness to do the laundry on a regular basis.  No, wait, "rotten tanx" is that ornery li'l groove the guys kiss and ride from 1:33 to 1:58, the one that crunches like a deep-fried peach pie. 

Where is the song named in Steve's honor, damnit??

"Cherry's Blues"--Folk singer solo set in a meat locker.  One man, one guitar, one stool, one blue bulb dangling from the ceiling.  Not one person in the audience.  Except the drummer.

"Female Cop"--A fatal auto accident occurred just the other day, you can stop by and check out where it was--skid marks the spot.  There's a killer on the road who'd make Marty Plunkett quake in fear.   The cop thought oil was leaking from the car until she got closer.  Once the wind picked up, and the smell hit, she knew then.

Women doing traditionally male jobs, or enjoying traditionally male hobbies...nearly twenty years after this song, I don't think we're any better off in terms of acceptance.  So what, I like to play video games.  I've been playing them since I was six years old.  I also owned Pound Puppies and a Darth Vader piggy bank.  No one ever sat me down and explained to me that I wasn't supposed to be into the things boys liked.  I liked what I liked, and that was that.  After seven kids, I don't know if my mom could summon the strength for some good old-fashioned parental hectoring anyway. 

"Elegy For All the Dead Rock Stars"--AKA "The Diamond Sea Before We Knew About The Diamond Sea," but lacking some key components that made Washing Machine's last song a lustrous gem.  Namely, emotion.  The instruments sound detached from one another, which in turn leaves me feeling detached from the sounds they make together.

Elegy, then, for all the dead guys and gals who did make haste to die.  Sympathy for all the living guys and gals with frozen fudge between their ears, the ones who can't understand how people who seem so well-off, so fortunate, could not find meaningful, reliable comfort in their solvency.

The overall sanguine vibe of Psychic Hearts can pulse through the listener in different ways.  In 1995, I would often lean into that pulsation, seeking comfort and counsel.  Much can change in 19 years, though, and much has changed.

3-D Like Me: Flashover Sequence

LEE RANALDO
East Jesus
4/18/1995

Help Me Out a Li'l Bit Here
Lee Ranaldo--guitars.  guitars.  I heard some guitars here and there.  He talks, too.
Steve Shelley--drums, track 4
       
                              ----------------------------------------------------------------------

East Jesus differs from the other records in this review series in that it is not a collection of new songs written for a specific project.  The ten songs here were culled from a ten-year period, mostly the mid-80s, and they're honestly less classifiable as "songs" and more as "pieces."  It took three decades for the one member of Sonic Youth whom fans could most easily hear putting out a traditional singer-songwriter record to actually record and release that traditional singer-songwriter record.  This hardly bothered those in the tribe who were just fine listening to CD's full of free-form eavesdrops instead of rehashes of "Mote" or "Wish Fulfillment."  Even if some of us did have to pay one whole arm and half-a-leg to order 'em from the record shop.

"The Bridge"--Assuming things about the artists you follow ain't a recommended course of action, as you will most assuredly wind up feeling at best idiotic, at worst betrayed.  But I wouldn't feel too ridiculous saying that Lee Ranaldo is aware of the motion of music, maybe more so than most others in his line.  Especially forward motion.  The more distance between a person and their past, the more concise and cogent their reflections and observations will be. 

Even if the elapsed time from event to recollection is a mere one week, as is the case with "The Bridge," Lee's sap-free (but hardly sapless) story about a truck ride alongside his old man.  Any expectation the listener might have as to insight into the familial dynamic is dashed as Lee obsesses instead over pungent odors and slippery sounds.

"The Bridge" inspired me, not long after my first listen, to attempt a similar piece of writing.  Several years had passed by--eight, nine?--since I'd had cause to be in a vehicle with my father for any considerable length of time, and that last instance had been just like all the other instances:  driving to Kentucky to visit family, mostly Dad at the wheel because, as he frequently explained to my mother, "Women can't drive for shit."  Especially women who are getting barked at every twenty seconds by their cantankerous husbands. 

Just as Dad was unwilling to budge even half an inch away from his abrasive way of doing things, I could never match what Lee accomplished here--he put the listener in a confined space, with at least two other people, but made the focal point of the piece anything but human interaction.   Did Lee and his father hold any conversation during this entire ride?  Maybe, maybe not.  Adding snippets of their exchange, if they indeed had one, would not have enhanced the work.  Likewise if Lee were to mention, however casually, the taciturn nature of the trip, it would not have enhanced the work.

My failure, thus, was down to a fiendish combination of my limitations as a burgeoning writer as well as my fierce struggles reconciling conflicting emotions over all the crap accumulated from my childhood on, crap that I, a young girl facing adulthood head on, should have tried harder to let go.  Harder to relinquish the hurt when the fanciful side of you is practically crying, "But I'm a writer, I'm expressing myself, it is imperative that I use my trusty pens to tear into my flesh--and isn't there just plenty of it!--and rip away chunks to expose the flesh, blood and pulsating veins to the bravest eyes in the world!  Hmm...hey, would it be pretentious of me to use ergo instead of therefore?"

Overlong journeys lead to overlapping memories.  Sentences snap in half, glimpses are cut up into chunks.  Before long, like remora, these fragments latch onto a larger, fuller area of my brain.  The burger joint with the gumball machine outside.  "You can take the barbecue master outta Texas, but you can't drive for shit, goddamn women."

See, I still can't do it.

"Time Stands Still/Destruction Site/Oroboron/Slo Drone"--It is not the fault of any music, film or book.  Simple reality drove me to complex fantasy.  Walking to and from school every weekday sure is tiring, but wouldn't it be great to have a slide made entirely from the cleanest ice beginning at my front door and ending at the school entrance?   WOOOOO.  No, there wouldn't be any need for bumpers along the sides.  Gravity obeys my laws here. 

I would hop on the swings and launch myself up into the air, losing myself in the worlds of others that I had visited.  I mimicked the language and gestures of the citizenry,  made people pay attention, made them laugh.  That's me, in the midst of all the action.  Unbound.  Flawless.

I would lie in bed at the shelter, earbuds plotting vengeance most foul as East Jesus berated them.  No matter.  I'm about to be published.  My first novel.  My dream made reality.  Inside of my fantasy.

"Some Distortion..."--Obviously, I have not put a sufficient amount of distance between myself here and now and myself there and then. 

The ten wonderful minutes of the previous slash-fest give way to twelve-plus minutes of...some distortion.  Some signal-bouncing.  All glorious.  Most people would not want to catch these sounds alone in a dark alley.  I sure as fuck would.  To think that while I was sitting my little ass at home, devouring entire bags of Ruffles chips and guzzling can after can of Pepsi, a band who got no play on the MTV were a five-hour drive away, making the music that would one day flip my wig.  All I had to do was find the music for myself.  All I had to do was turn into that alley.

"Live Co. #1"--Lee, live, is hot to jump out of his skin.  Every now and then a guy's gotta fall to pieces in front of people.  Purge by fire going on, and only a fool reaches for the extinguisher.

My dude is driving himself crazy, and if there's any room left in the truck, I'd love to join in on the adventure.  I don't care how foul it smells in there.

Let loose.  Don't sweat the locution.  Wetly embrace the passion.

"What road is this?"

Wait, you don't know?  Uh-oh, dude.

"Death holding court."

Swerve!  Swerve!  

"New Groove Loop"--Erosive influences all over this album, especially here. The roads do no end, nor for that matter does the sky, which we would all do well to remember represents the road to other creatures with whom we share this planet.  

"Some Hammering..."--Growth is not necessarily commensurate with time.  There are people on this plane of existence who can do more, can give more, can offer more, with just thirty seconds than some others with thirty years.

"Walker Groves"--When indulging in a bit of the old ultra-reflection, avoid despondency by not obsessing over all those times the off-camera flash was not utilized by remembering that it was not always an option. 

I need to stop doing that, I want to stop falling into that same trap, I mean it hasn't even evolved.  Cheese on the goddamn trip every time.  No peanut butter, no pizza?  Come on me, it's like you don't even know me.  Stop thinking that you need everything you want.  One's trash is the second's treasure, and hands will inevitably be dirtied, bruised, even pricked, but judging the exploration a failure simply because no scars were inflicted or no blood brought to light or you didn't get what you were hoping to find has to end.  

No such thing as a superficial scavenge.  Not when survival is at stake. 

"Fuzz/Locusts/To Mary x2/Lathe Speaks"--In this test of Ultimate Tensile Strength, the pen wins again.

1987...my fifth-grade class was introduced to the haiku poem,  5-7-5 format.  This would be the day.  The match was struck, then casually dropped.  (I was drenched in diesel already, just didn't realize.)  Asked to write as many haiku poems as we could manage in five minutes, I came up with eight or so, but if the teacher had warned us in advance that we'd be called upon to read our writing out loud in class, I would have written just one.

Good thing she didn't give us the heads up; my poems proved to be the best of all 20+ students.  The teacher told me.  The other kids told me.  Compliments?  Asking me how I can come up with all those different topics to write about, and so much in so little time?  I'm not used to getting all this attention for something other than being a weird fatso...

"You seem to have a real talent for writing, Jennifer."

That was it, then.  People realize they were meant to be writers, and not just people who write, when they realize nothing else behaves like them.  Soon as the bell rang, I walked home as fast as my chunky legs would allow, raced up to my bedroom and filled the front and back of one sheet of lined paper with more writing.  Writing about my day in school, about my room, about family, about anything that struck me right then and there.  I read what I had scribbled down, and could scarcely believe I had really done it.

 I really do have a talent for this.  I can really bring my thoughts to life.  

I can still bring my thoughts to life.  The words themselves are finite, no matter how many languages one learns, but the desire to communicate is boundless.  I'm not finished; no writer is ever finished.   

"Deva, Spain (Fragments)"--Good grief, more fragments?

I don't mean little kids talking about farts when I say small talk stinks.  Enough with these wispy words and sentences in need of sponsors; where can I go, and how much do I pay, to see my young life represented in voxel form, stripped of natural bias and pesky emotion? 

On hold, the looping guitar keeps me free company.  I am conditioned to respond warmly to the very same feedback that sends others into paroxysms of visible displeasure.  I grew up with storytellers, and with little effort I glean the tantalizing tales lurking in the corners.  Lee is definitely the storyteller of Sonic Youth.  Even when he's not saying a word.

"The Resolution/King's Ogg"--Loop.  Loop.  Pool.  Pool.  Wait, I can't swim.  Loop.  Loop.

A place for everything and everything in its place. Updated biofeedback treatment for syncope sufferers.

Asthma sufferers, keep looking.  Keep fishing.  Keep the rod and reel well-strung, the multi-tiered tackle box stocked with colorful come-ons.  The willows along the stream protect stream life and the rows of trees help us breathe.  Feeling as though the natural world is closing in on you does not mean it actually is closing in on you.



Unequal parts serenity and carnage...East Jesus is life in miniature. 

3-D Like Me: Girl on the Verge

FREE KITTEN
Nice Ass
1/30/1995

Help Me Out a Li'l Bit Here
Kim Gordon--vox, guitar, drums
Julie Cafritz--vox, guitar
Yoshimi P-We--drums, vox, trumpet, harmonica, guitar
Mark Ibold--bass

                                               ---------------------------------------------

Early '95.  Still half the year to go before I could say farewell forever to formal education.  School and I never jibed; our time together was awkward, a matter of need rather than want, requirement over revitalization.  Teachers, and even other students, remarked that I was a classic case of "bright student who doesn't apply themselves."  I suppose what turned me off was the formality, the rigidity.  On my own time, I read widely--fiction, non-fiction, poetry, much-honored classics and underappreciated gems.  Imagine a black hole at the intergalactic dinner table.  That's how I treat information.

Prima facie, you would have classified me as a geek.  You would have been right as rain.  All I lacked were the corrective lenses--they'd come later, after I graduated.  Yep--I went through twelve years of public school with severe myopia.

1995 was one of the better years of that decade, leastways for me.  As a Sonic Youth fan, it was kinda hard not to love 1995.  Not only did the group headline Lollapalooza that summer (one of the great "well, on paper…" ideas in concert history), not only did they release an album containing one of their all-time classic tunes, but there were side project releases from Kim Gordon, Lee Ranaldo and Thurston Moore (with Steve Shelley on the assist) as well.

Lollapalooza gets the bozack and gas face, however.  Closest it came to Maryland was the goddamn race tracks in Charles Town, West Virginia.  My best friend Lucy and I were all dead-set on attending--me for the music, she to get away from her grandmother, with whom she lived--but our grand plan fizzled out thanks to a lack of reliable transportation.  The one and only time I can remember Luce's ol' green Chevelle letting us down.  My anger over missing not only SY, but Pavement and Jesus Lizard as well, hung around my neck for awhile afterwards, but it had dropped away unceremoniously by spring 1998, when I finally saw the Youth live for the first time, at DC's legendary 9:30 Club.  Several years after that, as I laid incredulous eyes upon footage of Pavement being pelted with mud during the very Lolla gig I was going to be at, forcing them to abbreviate their set, I realized I hadn't missed very much at all.  That was a very silly couple of weeks I spent being angry over what could have been.

Feeling especially unoriginal, I told myself, "No regrets, Coyote."  Then I realized I'd never once spotted a coyote in Hagerstown. (Playwrights, sure, but no coyotes.)  So I murmured, "No regrets then, unleashed pit bull" and wondered if I could really, truly live the rest of my life so carefree.

                                   ----------------------------------------------------------------

Kim Gordon contacts long-time friend/former Pussy Galore'r Julie Cafritz.  "Let's adopt a baby boy elephant," she says, no discernible inflection in her voice.  Julie agrees without hesitation, the way only a best friend can.  As the ladies are sussing out the logistics of pachyderm ownership, the idea of bringing a couple other people on board is suggested.  That's how the SY/PG/Boredoms/Pavement hybrid known as Free Kitten started.

Conceived and executed with all the deliberate sloppiness of hillbilly goulash, Nice Ass is the most "of the era" album involving a Sonic Youth member in a significant creative role.  The alt-rock/indie in-jokes contained within were plentiful and potentially off-putting, especially to people named Billy Corgan.  But so what?  Free Kitten's gutsy blues-punk tribble rock electrified the French, baby.

"Harvest Spoon"--I never was a Riot Grrl.  I believe wholegutedly in egalitarianism, so scorched earth divisiveness never rang the bell.  Nope, not even when I was a teen, and that's the time in a person's life when they're expected, hell, encouraged, to believe in things with all of their heart and a bit of their brain.

The only thing I love more than an educated woman is an educated woman with a great sense of humor.  That's why Bratmobile got play from me, while Bikini Kill--despite being the far more heralded band--did not.  That's also why Kim Gordon meant more to me than any other female musician, even the ones closer to me in age and/or geography, those hyper-politicized essay writers I was supposed to gravitate towards in frenzied kinship.   Kim relocated from California first to Toronto then to NY in pursuit of an art career, eventually dropping the paints and pencils for strings and cords, proving that individual integration is a move much gutsier and more pregnant with revolutionary possibilities than calling for audience segregation.

A decade into her musical career, Kim was still subject to her unfair share of sexism.  When Neil Young's douchenozzle road crew drooled over strippers and gaped in wonder at this chick with the opening band who acted like she belonged onstage with the guys, Kim didn't respond with foot-stomping, hair-pulling, teeth-gnashing or even zine-publishing.  She let her disgust simmer and stretch.  Behold--metaphors! Evocative imagery!

Could she have unleashed a throat-throttling "fuck you and everyone who willingly stands within five inches of you" to those dimwitted sexist bums?  Certainly.  But the music sounded obscene enough, stepchild treatment and all.

"Rock of Ages"--The in-crowd at my high school was outta control lame.  All those handsome and beautiful creatures cared about the things I couldn't even pretend to be moved by.  Far removed from my redneck of the woods, Sonic Youth, Pavement, et al. represented the rolling stoned in-crowd that at least had the decency to sound better than most everybody else.

"Rock of Ages" is not a Def Leppard cover.  Different cat altogether.  Chester Cheetah in one speaker, MC Skat Kat's homeless brother in another.  Blinding sheen versus corrugated steel that has been intentionally rusted.  An actual kitten playing a red-and-white Fender Strat is the only thing chillier.

Kim and Julie, see, concocted a glorious piss-take pep talk consisting of literal shout outs to all the indie heartthrobs, with their sexy mugs and spindly arms.  They even dare to be gauche by mentioning the dude in their own band!  (I recall a mag writer at the time wondering if "Mark, 32" referred not to Ibold, but instead to Fall frontman/boss-level football results-reciter Mark E. Smith.  Eh, pretty sure Mr. Smith was already 32 years old by the time he exited the womb.)

"Proper Band"--Listening to the lo-fi likes of Sebadoh, I was never once struck with the desire to disown the music that moved me as young girl.  With few exceptions, the exceptionally-produced pop music of the 1980s endures, just as powerfully as the four-track bedroom recordings of a careworn former HC kid.

Sometimes, I just stare at my music collection, and wait for all those discs to start fighting with one another.  (I should mention here that I don't use drugs.  Seriously!)

"We're Kitten and we're better than you."

No such thing as a mature amateur.  Either they're ensnared by snarling insecurities over the fact that their songs will never come off as crisp as Duran Duran, or they rhyme "band" with "sounds" and suddenly things are okay.

"What's Fair"--"Girls are freaks, don't even try."

I hear the cats jingling some jewelry…

99% of the kids in any one of my classes were the enemy.  Either passively or aggressively.  Those who fit into the latter description would toss sundry objects at me--balled-up paper, pen caps, staples.  The former type would be those students seated in the very same row as me, who found great amusement in passing notes to one another containing on-the-spot observational humor about yours truly.  Ugly fat face, ugly cheap clothes, ugly deep voice.  Haha, she doesn't even realize she's passing notes talking shit about her!  Until that day I did.  Did they even have the decency to be chagrined?  Did they hell.

School is a house of learning, after all, so I learned to keep one open just a little wider than the other.  To this day, I do not miss nor misinterpret a social cue.  It's like the opposite of Aspergers.

Like right now!  You held back that eye roll pretty well, but you couldn't avoid that oh so slight ihuff of breath signalling impatience.  

"What's Fair" is a perfect example of why no one but me listened to this stuff.  Sure, I could have scratched a nerd and discovered a casual SY fan in my midst, but Free Kitten?  With their laissez-faire approach to songwriting?  Come on, it sounds like they're just making it up as they go along.  Christ, their equipment sounds like it's about to die.  The guitars and pedals are all like, "No Kitten, stop using us this way, or we're gonna jump!"

"Kissing Well"--Sometimes a swig can lead to a waterborne coolness infecting your system.  Not here.  Ah well.  I preferred liquid sugar anyway.

The second-longest song on Nice Ass is unfortunately the least-engaging.  The K&J Show sound bored, and not in the way they sound bored throughout the rest of the album, I mean these women come off legitimately disinterested in the performance aspect of being in a band.

"Call Back"--The primacy of the feline in the domesticated animal kingdom is arguable.  Economical in size, softer in vocalization, exemplary fastidiousness re: personal hygiene…oh yes, a strong case can indeed be made for the cat.

For a creature that supposedly loathes the water, this Kitten is swimming with the current, strokes tight and strong.  Still no gold to be spied gleaming from the ocean floor, though.  Highs, lows, choke choke.  Back on land, the word salad bar is now open and stocked full of fresh-ass ingredients.

Henry Rollins namedrop!  Lucy loved her some HR.  Couldn't name a Black Flag song at spray-point, but his spoken word "confrontations," where he bared at length the bigger-than-yours-motherfucker heart that beat beneath all that inked-up musculature, she couldn't get enough of that crap.  I had to sit there, phone held up to my rapidly-reddening ear, and listen as she would play selections from The Boxed Life, pausing only to ask me rhetorical questions that I would nevertheless answer with annoyed grunts that she never picked up on, because unlike me, she never developed the opposite of Aspergers.

My favorite aspect of Henry Garfield's inexplicable rise to mainstream acceptance in the 90s was the attention he received over starting his own publishing company.  Fuck yeah, books!  He's got a band?  And they sound like Black Flag meets Black Sabbath meets black tar heroin?  Not interested!

Imagine Kim with her own publishing imprint.  Imagine Kim doing her own singer-songwriter solo album.  Imagine Kim curating a music festival.  Oh heart, why does my imagination insist on breaking you so?

"Blindfold Test"--The "da da da" song, I love this one!  Catchy as yawning, but with just a touch of abashment.

Pin-up girls and all-American boys, guess who doesn't need you?

"Tryin' to find a lovely time."

Where could I do that at?  Not in Hagerstown.  Shit no, heaven and Earth had to be pushed pulled and prodded with sprinkles on top and all along the sides just to ensure a night where I didn't gaze forlornly at the TV, frantically pushing buttons until I arrived at some ephemeral escape, anything to not lose my mind wondering if I would die in the same culture-free hellhole I was born into.  Lucy seemed sure that I would be one of the success stories, but curiously held no such hopes for herself.  Hagerstown is that kind of place, y'see--a place for people who are content to say, "It's not much, but it'll do."  For those who observe their surroundings and proclaim, "It's not much, and it'll do me in," action must be taken sooner rather than later.   I'm not finished yet, I'd remind myself.  I really haven't even started.

"Greener Pastures"--Kittens gonna kitten.  Meaning?  Meow, mamas.  Roll over, paw at the head of that much larger dog and purr.

Cash?  None.  Responsibilities?  Few.  Favorite author?  Dr. Seuss.

"Revlon Liberation Orchestra"--"Soft and sexy," over and over.  Dual vox takeover, pillowy and furry, quicker and harder to pin down--which shouldn't even be the intent.  Why are the drums off in kitchen baking pies for astronauts?  'Cause they're hungry and NASA is some cheap bastards.

"Like Sylvester without Tweety Bird!"

Forget X-Girl; Lucy and I dressed up in Girl, Why?  Supersized tees, all the better to hide the blubber, frequently decorated with a cartoon character making some silly face or spouting a sillier catchphrase.  Lucy stretched her jeans to capacity, while I--in the interest of feeling as little of my cellulite pressing against fabric as possible--opted for sweet sweet sweatpants.

And no make-up.  What would be the point, precisely?

Me:  I'm gonna be a writer, I don't need that extraneous crap.  I'll be selling my words, not my face.  Lucy:  Right on.  I don't put any on 'cause I'm just lazy!

"The Boasta"--Julie Hatfield on the mic.  Kim and Yoshimi switch instruments for the ninety seconds allotted to scrape as much chipped paint as they can into a cup of already-acrid coffee. Ugh, coffee.  My folks seemed to have the Mr. Coffee switched on to "Always and Forever."  Wake up, smell the damn Folgers.  Arrive home from school, smell the damn Folgers.  Go to wish Mom a good night, she'll respond in kind just as soon as she's done taking a pull from her damn cup of Folgers.

The way Julie changes "solo" to "solah" to make it rhyme with "told ya" is the sort of playful attitude to lyricism that Ready Red desperately needed for his verse on "Do It Like a G.O."  Sure enough, there is a solo here, basically just makin' gravy for the biscuits.  Now that is a smell from home that I enjoyed.

"Scratch the DJ"--Hey, a kitten's gotta scratch somethin'.

A hip-hop tale of vengeance against a violating disc jockey who dared opine over the airwaves that Belly ruled whereas Kitten drooled.  Kim's Cali speak-sing makes for some hilariously great accented syllables and profanities delivered so casually I almost forgot they were "bad words."  Hard for me to envision such a seemingly-mellow person bum-rushing the booth and knocking out a talking asshole--really seems more of a "Julie thing"--but how can I disbelieve a voice like hers?

This is my favorite on Nice Ass, just edging "Blindfold Test."  I'd say mentioning LeShaun (rapper of the greatest song about fingering a dude's ass you are likely to ever hear) is what puts this one over the top.

"Secret Sex Friend"--Forty-one seconds of hells-a-lockin'.  Gotta song in your head gotta get it out get it out get it out NOW.

Not long after giving myself an orgasm for the first time, I concluded that sex was something surely hindered if not ruined by the presence of another person.  Not long after hearing this track for the first time, I imagined my own super-duper sex friend got off by wearing a bright yellow strap on that she'd christened The Bangnana.

"Royal Flush"--Three and a half minutes?  This is totally their "Achilles Last Stand."  Actually it's Kim's lament for the "sugar pop queen," which may have been a reference to Mariah Carey.  I don't know.  Free Kitten were built for the short, sharp shocks.

"Feelin'"--What turns "pretty good" into "really good"?  Is it one word?  One taste, one glimpse?  When the weekend drear got me down, I just made one call.

Hey Lucy let's go to the park, nah we ain't gotta walk.  Let's just park the Chevelle in the gravel lot.  We can grab some BK on the way and eat it while we catch up.  Nobody's gonna bug us 'cause they'll be too busy doing drugs or drug deals or engaging in some empty sex.  Nobody's gonna look twice at our pockmarked faces or our expanding waistlines.  Five minutes?  I'll be out front.

"Alan Licked Has Ruined Music For An Entire Generation"--Who? How?  Ah nooo, Free Kitten have just told an in-joke that I can't somewhat appreciate!  And considering the track is only eight scree-ing seconds long, this one must be the most gut-busting of them all!

Son of a bitch, it was!  Forget dissing the god of the "twee-rock," dude, someone was still referencing Tone-Loc in the year 1994!

                                       -----------------------------------------------------------

Y'know, I never wanted to swallow the treasure, so to speak.  Whatever bands I enjoyed, I didn't feel protective of them or their music.  Loving Sonic Youth didn't make me feel smarter than anyone else.  I would have been so happy having a friend with whom to share the more "subterranean" selections from my CD collection.    Alas, that I had a friend at all seemed accidental. 

3-D Like Me: Introduction

Frederich Nietzsche had his flaws; he once opined that women were "at best cows," for example.  However, he also once famously stated that "Without music, life would be a mistake."  So perhaps I shouldn't be judge so harshly, hmm?

Even as I toil away at fiction and poetry, prepping projects for publication, I always seem to return to writing about that great justifier.  Despite the range of my tastes, it's undeniable that I've written more about one band in particular than any other.  As I unreservedly refer to Sonic Youth as my favorite-ever racket-gang, this is not surprising.  Nor is it the slight some anonymous fingers intend it to be when they comment on my allegedly narrow focus.

Sonic Youth never went gold in their home country, but for a goodly number of us, they were the band that mattered most.  (To call them The Only Band That Mattered would not only cheese off Clash fans, it would run counter to the implicit lesson to be gleaned from SY's oft-challenging output: art is knowledge is power is life is good so take in and take again, as much as you can.)

That ain't pithy, but it's every inch the truth.

The decision to write about six select recordings released by the group's three vocalists, dating from both before and after their "hiatus" was announced in late 2011, was not I reached haphazardly.  I wanted to avoid indulgence, meaning no syrupy sentences of hopeless devotion wherein I all but called for the sainthood of each individual member and no tawdry speculation re: the rather sad circumstances leading to the group's dissolution.

As it transpired, I encountered zero difficulties in achieving this aim.  Why, you will discover as you read.

                                               -------------------------------------------------------

Don't misunderstand, I enjoy tales of rock 'n' roll debauchery as much as the next painfully shy person.  A story concerning a morally rudderless millionaire musician who sniffed drugs off a strippers tits...while banging her in the style of some animal...atop a private jet flying thousands of miles in the air?  Golden.  (Also impossible, but I wouldn't doubt the guys in Led Zeppelin asked Peter Grant how plausible such a scenario was.)  The willful destruction of lavish property?  Let's go.  That sounds fun, that sounds crazy, that sounds like no one I ever knew did anything like that nutso ever.  My dad got super drunk one night and took half a bushel of soft-shell crabs out to our patio, where he proceeded to eat clean every damn one, including the spongy gills of the animal (colloquially known as "dead man") located under the shell and over the meat.  As you may suspect if you don't already know, consuming the gills of the crab is advised against, for eating them in great quantities--like, say, half a bushel's worth--will make one very very ill.  And also subject to being locked out of their own home because their spouse doesn't want them vomiting all over the nice things.

And that's a funny li'l story, but it's not exactly on par with sticking seafood up a well-worn snatch, now is it?

Sonic Youth, if they ever had such salacious moments, did a good job of keeping them under wraps.  They came to a screeching halt not because of something absurd, but because of something distressingly commonplace.  A bog-standard ending is not what I wanted for or expected from a group of amazingly-gifted folks whose sustained excellence (and influence) over three decades defied the expectation of what a rock band was supposed to be.

Still, defiance can curse as well as it can bless. 

Play It Again, Charlie Brown

AIRDATE:  3/28/1971

STORY:  The seventh Peanuts special is the first to not center around Charlie Brown.  It is perhaps because of this that very few people seem to remember it, even vaguely.  (Even It's Arbor Day has a reputation as "the one with the trees.")  The story itself is hefty as a leaf:  Lucy, at her wit's end from being thwarted time and again in her strange pursuit of Schroeder, invites the towheaded genius to perform at an upcoming PTA program.  He initially agrees, only to renege upon discovering that the audience will be expecting some up-tempo rock music.  Schroeder refuses to compromise his artistic integrity, leaving Lucy in the lurch.  She suggests he sit in with the guitar/bass/drums trio of Charlie Brown, Snoopy and Pig Pen, adding a classical touch to their "modern" sound.  Try though he does, each note sounded feels like an icepick to the back of Beethoven.  In a fairly anticlimactic conclusion, Schroeder backs out backstage.  One might then hope that Lucy would learn her lesson about unrequited love, but it's just as Shakespeare said:  Love is not love which alters when it self-absorbed musician finds.  5

ANIMATION:  Monochrome mania!  I love going crazy.  (Beats being crazy.)  The big ol' mouths get a bit silly, but that's a small nit to pick.

I'm intrigued by the scene wherein Lucy asks if Schroeder realizes he has "pretty eyes."  His face briefly darkens, although he continues playing the piano.  Soon enough his skin returns to its normal color, but was this meant to express his embarrassment over such a girly compliment, or was it an animation error?  8.5

MUSIC:  Vince Guaraldi and Beethoven are officially credited with providing the sound, additional mention to John Scott Trotter as conductor and Lillian Steuber as the player of those sonatas Schroeder caresses out of his little piano.  Considering the special revolves around music, anything less than a 10 would qualify as a disappointment.  We get black-and-white tinkles, funky brat jazz, and best of all we get the aforementioned power trio sounding like an especially good song by the Knickerbockers.

The end credits music is a party and a half.  Hands slap, booties wiggle, and Dr. Funk runs the 40 in 4.  Yep, sounds like a shindig that Danny Hutton's mama would not approve of.

VOICES:  The first special to not focus on the adventures of Charlie Brown is also the first without Peter Robbins voicing the poor fella.  His replacement, Chris Ingles, does decent enough (7), but every other character here outshines him.  (So was producing a special with minimal Charlie Brown involvement right after Robbins had to move on a coincidence or...?)

Stephen Shea is still a great Linus (8.5); likewise Hilary Momberger in the role of Sally (9).  Christopher DeFaria does a fantastic Peppermint Patty for the second straight special (9.5), ceaselessly chilled and creaky as a basement floor.

While Danny Hjelm's Schroeder is the best the character has ever been (9)--and Charlie Brown-esque, like he studied the prior shows--it's Pamelyn Ferdin who takes top prize (10) as Lucy.  Less abrasive than most other Lucy's, and just a tad cutesy.  It's challenging to make her sound fun, and Ferdin pulls it off.

All these kids just sound so...like kids.  The struggle is real, and it's adorable.

LED ZEPPELIN, GANG OF FOUR, NIRVANA

--Animated characters speak coherently, at length, despite the absence of a nape.

--Schroeder calls Peppermint Patty "Patricia."  I tried hard to recall another time--either in the strips or a TV special/film--where those two ever interact.  What exactly would you do with those two together?

--OG Orange amp.

--Lucy has a very profound personal crisis when she realizes "women's lib" would kick her out of the movement if they ever discovered what a fatuous ninny she makes of herself just to get a nanosecond's attention from an indifferent boy who hero worships a composer whose lifelong bachelorhood is a key part of his mammoth legend.

--Schroeder's reaction when Lucy kisses him is nearly identical to her reaction upon receiving a Snoopy smooch in A Charlie Brown Christmas, right down to the cries for iodine and hot water.

--Entire show validated by animating the "Art! Art! Art!" strip.

KINGDOM COME, FRANZ FERDINAND, BUSH

--Dog you look good, won't'cha dance ya ears off.

--Spray can...that plays music.  You press down, glorious melodies fill the air.  Absolutely one of the most outta left field things to ever appear in Peanuts, and it shoulda stayed in the dugout.

--Snoopy's about as subtle as Bill Melendez was when it comes to dispensing romantic advice.

Gigantic fan I am, I didn't see Play It Again, Charlie Brown until the 1990s, when I rented it from Wonder Book and Video.  It's hardly a lost treasure, but I dig the style those specials of the 1970s had.  Might have been more eye-grabbing than bone-tickling, but hey...style must occasionally be the guitar solo to substance's barre chords.

Race For Your Life, Charlie Brown

U.S. THEATRICAL RELEASE DATE:  8/24/1977
Director:  Bill Melendez

The Peanuts gang goes to summer camp in their most action-packed, least depression-inducing adventure to date!

STORY:  School's out (for summer, not forever) and the great outdoors beckons.  No one is anticipating their time at Camp Remote more than wishy-washy Charlie Brown, who imagines that the experience, in addition to being rugged, will imbue his spirit with the assertiveness that he so desperately lacks and desires.  As is evidenced by his behavior at a rest stop, when he lets every other kid get back on the bus ahead of him, only to have the bus drive off without him.  Forced to endure an uneasy ride on the back of Snoopy's bad-ass scooter, he still arrives at camp 'round the same time as the others--just in time to commence acclimation to a strange new environment.

It is Charlie Brown's dream to attain the status of alpha male, while avoiding the pitfalls of inflexibility and insensitivity.  Three classic examples of what he doesn't want to become soon make themselves known and overblown:  the camp bullies.  Tall Skinny is joined by his cronies Short Fat and Average Build, and they waste no time in belittling Charlie Brown before moving on and making all the other kids feel like ants who've wandered into the pachyderm plaza.  What's worse, the bullies are tailed by a coarse cat named Brutus, who terrorizes poor Snoopy and Woodstock.

Camp Remote is a nice enough place to sew wallets and race in sacks, but the crown jewel of activities is the river raft race.  (Anything that alliterative has to be awesome, aye?)  The boys (Charlie  Brown, Linus, Schroeder and Franklin) occupy one raft, while the girls (Peppermint Patty, Lucy, Sally and Marcie) ride in another.  Snoopy and Woodstock are also participating, sharing an inner tube, while the bullies three will be tormenting the water in their own special "raft," complete with outboard motor, radar and sonar.  As if the technological boosts didn't provide enough of an unfair advantage, they wait until nightfall to deflate each competitors rafts.

Friggin' jerks.

The ill-gotten head start proves pointless when their engine sputters out after mere seconds.  Although they quickly fix the problem, their boisterous celebration over such a basic-ass accomplishment ends abruptly when the boat--and their heads--crash into a wooden dock.  A predicament that they will not extricate themselves quite so easily.

When I sit down to watch a cartoon involving river rafting, I assume hijinks are imminent.  I anticipate bullies cutting each and every corner in a shameless attempt to win.  I foresee danger signs being futzed with, placing the good guys in harms way, all appearing doomed I tell you doomed until the dog among them saves the day with trademark aplomb.   Can't say I was expecting the snowfall during summer, but I was totally waiting with held breath for the horrific storm that tossed the riders to and fro, sending the kids ashore and separating Snoopy from Woodstock.  Which, let's be honest, is like separating cheese from pizza.  Snoopy is so sad sans his yellow buddy, so utterly lost, that he can only go a few paddles back into the water before heading back to land and deciding to hike the terrain.

Skies cleared, the teams take inventory and prepare to re-enter the race.  Charlie Brown worries over not seeing Snoopy and Woodstock post-storm, and when he locates their abandoned watercraft, decides to put the race on hold until the two animals can be found.  The girls agree to join the search--after a democratic vote, of course--and each group breaks off to traverse the woods.

After a fruitless day, the boys locate a swanky, unoccupied cabin and make it their home for the evening.  The girls, who have been equally as fortunate in finding S & W, join them just in time for a hearty dinner of dry cereal.  It's Thanksgiving all over again, what with a displeased Peppermint Patty and a chastened Chuck.  Charlie Brown however finds himself unable to remain equanimous in the face of such thoughtless behavior!  He is fighting the urge to sock Peppermint Patty in her fat baccal cavity!  A rhubarb is brewing!  All is forgotten and forgiven, however, the moment they hear a knock on the cabin door--it's Snoopy and Woodstock!  (Much like death, you don't have to search them out; they'll find you.)  For awhile, all is peachy.  Waltzes are danced, classic folk songs are butchered by tone-deaf teapot humans, and the race is the furthest thing from any grapefruit in the troop.  But then bedtime beckons.  The girls vote out the boys, despite the fact that the fellas found the cabin to begin with.  Well...it ain't right, it ain't fair, but as the socially and politically dominant gender you can't really complain too too much, guys.  Sleep in the snow tonight, run the country tomorrow.

Over breakfast, Charlie Brown is aghast to discover that the other kids seem to have forgotten about the raft race.  Just as he begins chastising everyone for lacking that play-to-win spirit, snow balls pelt the side of his big ol' melon.  Darn you, bullies!  With a renewed conviction, the gang makes their way to their rafts...only to see that the bullies are already there.  They straight up destroy the boys' ride and send the girls raft into the water.  Gosh darn you, bullies! 

Charlie Brown fails to lead the human chain to the girls raft, but Pep Pat retrieves the ride (after informing Chuck yet again what a massive failure he is, by all quantifiable measures).  The girls are all prepared to leave the boys pruning in their own misfortune, until a democratic vote finally determines they can be permitted aboard.  Out of nowhere, Peppermint Patty declares Chuck the leader of the newly-unisex vessel. It's a dream come true, blockhead!  Onward to victory! 

Snoopy sure could use some help, 'cause he's fooled by one of the most blatantly devious signs ever to be.  The rest of the gang are tricked simply by their own lack of cynicism (and short memories).  A rip current carries them to the top of a watermill that has been jammed with a plank of wood.  It's all synchronized screaming until fearless leader Chuck B. climbs down the structure and pries the board loose.  Onward!

With the finish line now in sight, a reinvigorated Charlie Brown announces his pared-down plan:  boys row like hell, girls lay low.  This proves wildly effective, until the imminence of immortality proves too much for the girls to handle--they leap up in the raft, arms extended outward in the universal gesture of the overjoyed, sending the boys into the water yet again.

With our heroes taking an unscheduled soak, the bullies retake the lead, despite manning a craft that resembles two green beans attached to one another.  It can't be, but it is:  these dastardly bastards are primed for what the French call victoire.  Then...their beans sink.

Enter Snoopy.

Slowly and surely, the beagle and the bird are coasting along on their inner tube, barely realizing they are now in plum position.  The ideal finish is ruined, though, when Crookshanks' illegitimate spawn punctures the tube with a fang-like nail.  Woodstock recovers promptly, fashioning together a small twig-n-leaf vessel that proves impregnable under the aegis of Snoopy.

Woodstock wins!  A bird triumphed in the river raft race!  Still makes more sense than David Arquette winning the WCW World Heavyweight Championship!  (Not to mention Patty seems to think it's just the dearest thing ever.) 

The fact that he lost again doesn't deter Charlie Brown because this time it wasn't his fault!  Hey, he was actually leading the team to certain victory until those stupid girls got all prematurely excited!  On the last day of camp, as all the kids say one last goodbye to the site of Woodstock's greatest triumph, Chuck is inspired to deliver a "the reason I don't suck" speech.  It's impassioned, heartfelt, hopeful and...the bus drives off and leaves him standing there.

It was a short-lived boost in self-esteem, Charlie Brown.  9

ANIMATION:  Melendez and co. excelled at drawing and coloring realistic landscapes.  But I do love it when they dare a little, and in Race For Your Life, they play it pretty safe.  The notable exception comes during the end credits--somebody got hold of a crazy dose.  Also, who doesn't dig a bikes-eye view of life?  9

MUSIC:  After being passed over for Snoopy, Come Home, Vince Guaraldi was the creative team's choice to score their next feature film.  The intention was never to move on from Guaraldi's fever-stricken jazz; simply to experiment with a more mainstream sound.  Before production on film three could even begin, however, the man known as Dr. Funk died at the age of 47, collapsing in his motel room after performing the first of two sets at Butterfield's Nightclub in Menlo Park, CA.  The filmmakers looked to composer Ed Bogas, who does a more than adequate job, adding flute trills and trumpet blasts to a rather Jerry Reed-y theme.  Another stand out contribution is the fuzzy, oscillating guitar that hearkens back to Bogas' days as a member of the United States of America.  Comfortable and comforting.  Much like the film itself.  9

VOICES:  Duncan Watson initially grates as Charlie Brown, but he does improve throughout.  Huh.  Kinda like the character does in the film.  8.  Gail M. Davis does a point better as his perpetually-disenchanted little sister.  Melanie Kohn is relatively unspectacular as Lucy (understandable, as she doesn't have much to work with; 7.5) but her distaste for CB is ceaselessly hysterical.

The bullies (voiced by Tom Muller, Kirk Jue and Jordan Warren) are as obnoxious as dropping a piece of peach pie on the floor.  (Despite what Homer Simpson claims, floor pie is not mmm-worthy.)  Liam Martin is a nice, if sadly restrained Linus (8) but poor Greg Felton got a rock when he was picked to voice Schroeder (5).

This leaves Peppermint Patty (Stuart Brotman) and Marcie (Jimmy Aherns) and what a perfect pair of cherries atop an already piquant treat.  Brotman's reading of the word "chimney!" was achieved when Bill Melendez put a live mouse down the back of the kid's shirt while he stood at the microphone.  I'm supposing.  One coin in two characters, Patty and Marcie could have not only sustained a comic strip on their own, they could have easily sustained a movie on their own. 

HELLO MUDDA, HELLO FADDA

--Lucy's languorous longing for a goodnight smooch inspires what is arguably the film's comic highlight:  Snoopy, who has somehow heard her from his tent outside, comes into the girls cabin to dispense smooches.  Good and well is the way of the walk until he does the "ballerina beagle" onto Peppermint Patty's waterbed.  Shenanigans ensue!  The entire situation is the opposite of restful!  Then Marcie says, "Sir, you're making too much noise.  Can't you just kiss him good night and let it go at that?"  WOW.

--Waterbed leads to water head.

--Snoopy and Woodstock's reunion warms the heart.  You could lay a Pop-Tart on your chest and have a nice toasty treat in just a minute or so.

--Snoopy is so thrilled he briefly turns into Beagle Jesus!

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Munchin' on some...Pagit?  Pagu?  What the world type name is that for a cereal?  Is it Italian?  Do you pour on some sauce instead of milk?  Grossness.

--I love Charlie Brown's random elbow scratch whilst chatting with Franklin.  Very third-base coach.  Possibly also racist.

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WHAM!  Now that is a cereal name.  Really wakes you up before you go-go.

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"Other Animals, eh?  Well, I kinda like Woodstock and ol' Snoop.  I guess it wouldn't hurt to get some other animals in on the action.  Whatever happened to Frieda's cat? Actually, whatever happened to Frieda?"

--Taking a rest from Woodstock-hunting, Snoopy stumbles upon an empty cabin.  His time there is brief yet stupendous:  leg caught in the floorboards, lamp dies out, throat exchanges blood-curdling screams with a polite bear.  That's how you do filler, people.

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Corn Pow?  Corn Pow.  We have reached the peak of fictional cereal names.  I still refer to Corn Pops as Corn Pow.  Even though one is yellow sugar nuggets and the other is brown sugar nuggets.  All flavor for your face. 

--The bullies lose the river raft race because they have to lose the river raft race; nefarious chicanery must never best heart and sportsmanship in the Peanuts world.  Charlie Brown will lose in life, and this is another "must," but he will lose only to his friends, his dog, or his dog's best friend.  No way these recalcitrant other kids are getting the best of him.

--I'd love to have this painted on the roof of my building.

SHUT UP AND LEAVE ME ALONE

--It does no good to ponder the logistics of the raft race.  Time, distance...don't try.

--I never summer-camped, but I once outdoor-schooled.  Don't recall much of it beyond that one night I peed the bed.  Almost as unbearable as the humiliation I faced from my peers was the wet chill I felt upon waking.  It was like lying on a popsicle.  A really stinky popsicle.

--The very sound of Charlie Brown's name amuses Jelly Belly Bully so immensely, he has to hold his face so's it doesn't drop onto the ground.

--Snoopy's idea of racing in a raft is lying back with your eyes closed.  The benefit of rafting while lying back with your eyes closed is looking super-cool.  The detriment of rafting with lying back with your eyes closed is the odds of crashing go up 300%.

--Speaking of which...the bullies should have died here.  In 1993, an eerily-similar accident took the lives of two major league pitchers.

--Peppermint Patty does not grasp simple concepts.  It's not that she has butter fingers--she doesn't even curl 'em up.  She used to think Snoopy was a kid, albeit one with a large honker.  Possibly her poor sleep patterns are to blame (her father works late, and nerves won't allow her to conk until he's home).  Maybe she really struggles without a strong mother-figure in her life.  Perhaps she has more freckles than IQ points.  At least she believes in the democratic process!

--The bullies tactics are more than devious--try deadly.  It's a minor miracle that the boulder shower didn't claim any casualties.


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The owl from The Great Pumpkin sees his chance!

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Charlie Brown is the Zodiac Killer.



The good news--Race For Your Life, Charlie Brown makes a fine addition to any discerning DVD collection.  The bad news--Race For Your Life, Charlie Brown has not yet been given an official DVD release.  That's simply bananas.  In the meantime, enjoy it on YouTube.