1spy

[1spy]

In the summer of ’96, I was about to enter my fourth year of college and my second year at the University of Houston. I was looking for a new place, and I had heard through a friend that a fellow UH student was looking for a new roommate, so I got his number and reached out to him.

Patrick rode his bike up to meet me while I was working box office at the Landmark River Oaks 3, the arthouse theater at the corner of Shepherd and West Gray. He seemed even taller and skinnier than me. Older too, with shards of grey in his jagged mop of black hair. He was gangly and wore glasses, and he talked with a funny accent I’d never heard before. He was from Queens or Flushing, but it was not a New York accent. He spoke like a witty professor, every word considered and sculpted before it was spoken. He was an architecture student, and I was to Iearn later he was a guy who built his words carefully, and who listened well, so that you could add to the structure.

We met and chatted briefly at the theater, then I drove over the next day to check out the place. He was renting a spacious but spare two bedroom upstairs apartment in the heart of Houston’s Montrose neighborhood, which was known as the city’s gay / bohemian neighborhood. But in the mid-90s it was one of Houston’s only truly walkable neighborhoods. Rent was $550 plus utilities, and I was to pay half.

I moved in within a week after only meeting twice. And in retrospect, I have no idea how Patrick put up with me. I was loud and opinionated and I smoked in the apartment. I would do dishes, but I was not neat. I would talk constantly while he tried to work at his drafting table in the kitchen. He didn’t have a TV when I moved in. I insisted on getting cable. Where he once had enjoyed a quietude with his former female roommate, I was a jackass braying about. 

But if Patrick had reservations about me moving in, he made no mention of it. And I took to him immediately. He had a combo record / cd player on one side of his drafting table and a box of vinyl record albums on the other. I loved going through his music and listening to stuff I’d never heard. I remember he had a couple of Orchestral Maneuvers in the Dark (OMD) records, and I’d never heard of them. Simon and Garfunkel. Talking Heads. Brian Eno's Music for Airports. Dire Straits’ self-titled debut. He also had Beatles Past Masters on CD, and I had never listened to the Beatles before outside of what I knew from the radio. In the two and half years I lived with Patrick, I would fully absorb Revolver, Abbey Road, and The White Album. I also made my way through the Beatles Anthology documentary on VHS which came out in 1996.

In 1996, my music collection was much more extensive than Patrick’s, but he wasn’t much interested in the music I liked. I would play him stuff, and he’d say listen for while, before saying something like, “Interesting” or “Hmmm.” He eventually would admit he wasn’t very interested in most of the stuff I played him. And he didn’t spend time combing through my collection the way I had dissected his. Patrick had an intense relationship with a small number of songs and albums he already liked, and he listened to them repeatedly. At the time I met him, he wasn’t listening to much new music at all.

There was one band I played for him that he really liked, and fortunately it was my favorite band of all time: Yo La Tengo. After I showed it to him, he listened to their album Painful a ton in his obsessive way. Sometimes jamming it all night while he worked on his portfolio projects. I was proud as hell. I at least had one significant victory in my tiny, personal campaign to win him over to my favorite musics.

I talked to Patrick recently, because I told him I was writing this essay about him and Yo La Tengo. We discussed the day I walked up Montrose Boulevard to Soundwaves to buy the new Yo La Tengo CD, I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One. Almost 30 years later we both remembered it was a sunny afternoon when I returned home and popped into the tray and hit play.

“I took to it immediately,” Patrick said. “I didn't have that kind of natural reticence that I normally have with with any new music. Like I just, I just kind of glommed onto it.” As he did with Sade and Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Goin’ On?,” he became obsessed with one song in particular playing it over and over again for weeks. That song was the closest thing the band ever had to a hit: “Autumn Sweater.” 

As Patrick and I talked about the song, it dawned on me that I had misunderstood the lyrics for literally the entire time I’ve listened to the song. In my head, I always thought it was a date situation, a girl was coming over to go on a date with the singer. That’s why he’s nervous when he hears the knock at the door and “couldn’t catch my breath.”

But Patrick’s reading of the song is that it’s about a couple who are already together. One of them (Ira Kaplan, who sings and plays organ on the song) is an introvert and the other (Georgia Hubley on drums) is having a group of people over to hang out. 

“What any introvert really dislikes, Patrick said, “is the idea of people coming over. We agreed a week ago that this would be a good idea for everybody to come over, but now it's actually happening, and I, I'm struggling to deal with it.”

Suddenly, talking to him, it’s obvious Patrick is right about the song. In 1997, Georgia and Ira had been married for 10 years and writing songs as Yo La Tengo since 1984. In the song, Ira has agreed to host this party, but he’s simply lost having to talk to all these people when what he really wants to do is “slip away / wouldn’t that be better / me with nothing to say / and you in your autumn sweater.”

Even if I was wrong about it, with Yo La Tengo and “Autumn Sweater” I had finally broken through. Patrick liked something I played for him. But it was frustrating too, because he wasn’t really into the whole album like I was. "Autumn Sweater” wasn’t even my favorite song on the record. Probably wasn’t my fourth or fifth favorite song. What did Patrick like so much about it?

“I loved Simon and Garfunkel and I loved, you know, other other, like folksy music,” Patrick said. “I really seem to enjoy music that one would be incapable of dancing to. But like, here, you had introduced me to a band that wrote this completely grooving song with with, like an introvert’s voice at the center. Yeah, so, like, I didn't, I didn't know that there could be a song like this. I didn't know that a song like this was possible.”

“He’s not shouting,” Patrick continued. ”He’s something between talking and whispering. ‘I tried my best to hide in a crowded room. It's nearly impossible.’” 

The more we talked, I started to appreciate the way “Autumn Sweater” spoke to the odd-couple collision between Patrick and me. Patrick, reserved, quiet, studious, older than me. And, certainly at the time, early in my 20s, I was not quiet, studious, or reserved. I hosted parties. I drank and smoked. I played in a rock band and practiced guitar quite loudly. I wrote and sang all my songs in the living room without regard to the silence.

“Autumn Sweater” is a lonely dance party of a song that seemed to capture both of us. A minor key organ and quiet singer ruminating his way through a party in his own home he wants badly to escape. When they play it live, though, it has a monster beat. Because Kaplan’s bandmates, Hubley and bassist James McNew, are both hammering away on the drums throughout the song. “Autumn Sweater” is the sound of that organ trying to slip away from the persistent, oblivious rhythm swirling all around it. 

But if Patrick and I were an odd couple, we remember the two years and change as a beautiful time for both of us. We read the New York Times together on Sundays and drank our coffee. We’d watch Law and Order and Martha Stewart. Play Mario Kart on Nintendo 64. In a city where nearly everyone has to drive everywhere, we mostly walked and rode bikes, and took the bus. Living in the heart of city, wherever we went felt like a college campus. Neither of us had money to burn. But we could get 99 cent pizza at Bambolino’s on the corner and $1 margaritas at Chapultepec across the street. 

Each of us late into our college years, with no other pressing responsibilities and oceans of free time. It’s was the time of your life where two years feels like 20. I could write a whole book about my adventures with Patrick in those last few years before graduation. Maybe one day I will. 

If you’re this far down, you probably feel like I already did. 

Favorite Lyrics:

So I looked for your eyes And the waves looked like They’d pour right out of them I’ll try hard, I’ll try always, But its a waste of time  If I can’t smile easily Like in the beginning

[1spy]

1996 | Tom Petty - "Walls (Circus)"

I didn't deserve Tom Petty or seek him out. I didn't have a friend who introduced me to his music. Tom Petty is just kind of the air we breathe in America.

I grew up watching his videos. I was immersed in his singles. Everywhere the radio and MTV were, there was Tom Petty. Other bands and songwriters I loved, I had to go back and find them. I had to uncover them in the books and magazines I was reading or in my mom's record collection. I had to order their CDs from BMG or Columbia House and delve into their music.

But I didn't think I needed to buy a Tom Petty record to figure him out. He was just there, singing to me, and always had been.

When Full Moon Fever came out in 1989, it was the first time since I had become a sentient music-buying fan that I noticed Tom Petty and thought of him as a current musician to whom I should pay active attention. Sure, Bob Dylan and George Harrison considered the younger musician a peer in the Traveling Wilburys, but I didn't think Petty's music was deep or important. This guy wasn't on the level of Paul Simon or Neil Young or Lou Reed. His lyrics weren't going to be collected in any coffee table books.

I didn't buy Full Moon Fever, but I loved the sound producer and ELO genius Jeff Lynne gave that record, and I never changed the channel when "Free Fallin'" or "I Won't Back Down" came on. I loved the video for "A Face in the Crowd." The same thing happened with Into the Great Wide Open. The title track and "Learning to Fly" were great, but I still didn't buy the record.

In '93, Tom Petty released his titanic Greatest Hits record. Even my brother bought that CD, but not me. "Mary Jane's Last Dance" was probably my favorite song of his since "Refugee." Every cover band I saw in college seemed required to play it. Still, I fundamentally thought of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers as a singles band. And those hit singles were literally everywhere. I didn't need to own them.

When Wildflowers came out and critics called it one of the best albums of his career, I checked it out. But like the A&R guy in "Great Wide Open," I didn't hear a single. I watched Dave Grohl drumming with the Heartbreakers on SNL, which made me wonder whether I should be more interested. I was not.

It wasn't until 1996 that I bought my first Tom Petty album. It was the soundtrack to She's the One, the now-all-but-forgotten Ed Burns romantic dramedy co-starring Jennifer Aniston. I thought the movie was okay at the time. I couldn't tell you anything about it now. But working at the arthouse theater where the movie played, I got extended exposure to Tom Petty's music for the movie. As soon as I heard "Walls," the movie's signature song and single release, I finally heard a Tom Petty piece I had to own.

I'm not sure what took me so long. But I think part of it was that I was becoming a songwriter myself by this time. I was starting a band. I had recorded dozens of songs on my Tascam 4-track cassette machine. And I realized I sounded more like Tom Petty than anyone else. I didn't sing like him exactly. But even now, the way I put my songs together is a template I learned from Petty, with new elements I would eventually pick up from bands like Spoon and the Shins. Cowboy chords with big, memorable choruses—that's what I was going for. And I was finally learning how hard it was to write the simple hit songs Tom Petty had been writing for more than 20 years at that point.

He didn't do anything on "Walls" he hadn't been doing for years. Although She's the One is credited to the Heartbreakers, it was actually an extension of his nominal solo album, Wildflowers. It consisted of leftovers from those Rick Rubin-produced sessions. She's the One sounds more playful and experimental in parts. It had a lot more reverb. And it featured left-field covers of Lucinda Williams and Beck ("Asshole" is from Beck's One Foot in the Grave and features backing vocals from Fleetwood Mac's Lindsey Buckingham). It's also more slight than Wildflowers, with two of the songs, "Walls" and "Angel Dream," appearing twice on the record.

So it's not like Tom Petty had finally made his best album and now I was paying attention. Most Tom Petty fans would consider this album well down the list of his best work. What had changed was me. I was hearing Tom for the first time. The way he turns little strums or tight arpeggios into sturdy hooks. The way he uses simple words to describe universal emotions and builds whole worlds with his choruses. You read the lyrics and think, "There's not much going on here." But the meaning is in the way he sings the words. He sounds like he's just talking to you, and he's letting the details fall into the cracks of your mind. You get to do the rest.

"Half of me is ocean," he sings, "and half of me is sky." The part in between is the listener. Petty made iconic videos and now was scoring a movie. But the real movie is what you're seeing in your head when he sings. That half-spoken voice is one-third of a holy trinity, with Benmont Tench's keyboards and Mike Campbell's guitar. Listen to the way Tom whispers before escalating into a series of increasingly urgent choruses before Tench and Campbell finally break the tension and trade solos in "Grew Up Fast." It's a microcosm of the Heartbreakers.

Petty had changed in one key way, and I thought it started back on Wildflowers. Petty's lyrics had become less detailed and story-oriented. Petty had always had the ability to set the scene with painterly, specific detail. And he also wrote about women with uncommon empathy and perspective. But there's no "American Girl" or "Mary Jane" or "Free Fallin'" on Wildflowers or She's the One. Starting in '94, and for the rest of his career, his songs are haunted by his failing marriage, memories of his early family life, and his turn toward substance abuse. There were fewer songs describing a scene outside of himself, and more that were vulnerable and autobiographical. Songs that just chronicle his emotions and memories as his relationships start to falter. Starting in the mid-90s, there's less narrative and more songs written as dialogues between "I"/"me" and "you."

It's more solipsism than cinema by the time you get to Wildflowers and She's the One. We're getting the confessional, emo Tom Petty. And it should totally suck. But it doesn't. And I think it's his voice that holds it together. That voice, borrowed from the Byrds and Dylan and George Harrison and smoothed out into a warm, winking smile, had always invited us into Petty's songs of America, and now it was inviting us into his personal meltdowns, yearnings, and anxieties.

Petty's baritone/tenor has a way of putting you at ease and then making a joke or a threat that can surprise you with its sudden sharpness. One of my favorite moments in music is when Tom Petty sings in "Walls," in apparent contradiction, "If I never do nothing, I'll get you back someday." It's a double negative. A worthless promise. An empty IOU. A declaration of asymptotic love that might one day come near, even if it never quite takes you all the way. In the earlier part of the verse, he's lazily drawling, but at the moment he sings "get you back," there's a clutch of ferocity that could be hopeful or harmful.

It's hard to explain, but there are depths to Petty's music that make him just as valuable to the American songbook as Dylan or Paul Simon or Lou Reed. You can't grasp that depth on the page; you have to listen to Petty sing it. But once you do, you find yourself singing his great lines to yourself all the time. Singing them the way Tom sings them.

"Who knows, maybe you were kidnapped, tied up, taken away, and held for ransom?"

"I’m learning to fly, but I ain’t got wings / Coming down is the hardest thing."

"But when she puts her arms around me / I can somehow rise above it."

"You take it on faith, you take it to the heart / The waiting is the hardest part."

"But remember, good love is hard to find."

"And I'm a bad boy 'cause I don't even miss her / I'm a bad boy for breakin' her heart."

"Well, she was an American girl / raised on promises."

Okay, so that last one's so good, it even looks good on paper. Sometimes now, I think Tom Petty's songbook is the real great American novel, and that's the first line. Up there with Dickens and Dostoyevsky among the best first lines ever. He's written so many hits, they kind of have a cumulative effect. Collected not on your table, but stuck there in your head. And maybe in your heart.

Favorite Lyrics:

You've got a heart so big It could crush this town And I can't hold out forever Even walls fall down

[1spy]

1995 | Pavement - "Father to a Sister of a Thought"

I was helping my brother move in 1995, driving his Chevy S-10 pickup, when I finally made friends with my favorite album of all time. It had taken me long enough to come around on Pavement. When I sampled Slanted and Enchanted at Sound Warehouse, I thought it was annoying and unlistenable, the treble from the guitars making my ears hurt. And sure, I had seen "Cut Your Hair" on MTV. It was okay, but I wasn't in a hurry buy their second album either.

And then, my pal Marshall Sanchez, whose mom worked at Pavement's label, Matador Records, gave me a cassette of Pavement's third album Wowee Zowee. Marshall knew my favorite band was Yo La Tengo and we were both huge phans of Liz Phair. So he gave me an envelope that had Yo La Tengo stickers and an advance cassette of Liz Phair's Whip Smart. I hadn't asked for a promotional copy of the new Pavement. But Marshall insisted to me that it was incredible and I should give a listen.

I didn't give it a shot until it was summer, and the album had already come out. But when I shoved it in the cassette player on that drive to my brother's new place, Pavement finally clicked for me. __________

Music critics love to compare albums to the Rolling Stones' Exile on Main Street. They've been doing it since Exile came out. They use it as shorthand for albums that are sprawling and inspired, albums that have songs instead of singles, albums that have detours; that are messy and flawed, but whose flaws reveal layers of intricate sonic detail and, I'm gonna say it—genius. Music critics love Exile on Main Street, and that's why Liz Phair's decision to name her debut album Exile in Guyville and to frame it as a song-by-song response to Exile on Main Street was so inspired. Critics ate that shit up. Like the Stones' classic, Phair's debut had exactly 18 songs whose different modes and moods matched the scope and breadth of the original Exile.

Pavement made no mention of Exile on Main Street when they released Wowee Zowee, but their third album also has 18 tracks. It's also much messier and more jagged than Phair's debut. But it's the record's sweeping scope that amazes me. Whenever I recommend Wowee Zowee to a new listener, I talk about how it seems to be the perfect apotheosis of mid 90s indie rock, capturing the whimsy of Beck ("Rattled by the Rush") and the swagger of the Beastie Boys ("Serpentine Pad"). The detuned guitar heroism of Sonic Youth ("Flux = Rad"). The wracked and wicked guitar bends of Blues Explosion ("Best Friend's Arm"), and the tuneful, wandering lyricism of Guided By Voices (the Spiral Stairs jams, "Kennel District" and "Western Homes"). The dense, pot-headed production of Flaming Lips ("Motion Suggests Itself") and Ween ("Brinx Job"). Then there's songs where you can hear the sad bastard streams cross themselves, like "Fight this Generation," where the band starts singing a ballad they stole from Mercury Rev before rousing themselves into a Slack Motherfucker fighting stance and finally, vibe shifting into a jazzy denouement. There are 18 songs on the album, but it feels like more because so many of the songs shift into something else once or twice or thrice. “Half a Canyon” starts with a straight-up Stones imitation a la “Can’t You Hear Me Knockin’”, builds into an intricate, melancholy guitar bridge—mocking hippies on the way—before launching into a 3-minute guitar and organ jam session with bits of Stereolab and Krautrock buried just underneath the surface. They aren’t a jam band, but as guitarist a singer Steven Malkmus proved in his solo career, they easily could have been. There’s a reason Phish loves to cover Pavement.

__________

As vibe shifts go, I've always loved track eight, "Father to a Sister of a Thought." A gentle country ballad with Sweetheart pedal steel guitar whose chorus is interrupted by rude and stuttering prog rock guitar. The way the song stumbles into "Extradition" is one of my favorite sequencing transitions ever. Did I mention the sequencing? It could be 18 or 36 songs, or it could be one. Because they all sound like one organism breathing irregular life into whatever moment you're in, whatever head space you've got going on. There's no time for external worries or distractions, because you can't pause the album without ruining it. This is a pack of Parliament lights, smooth and sable, and you're gonna have to smoke the whole thing. And you can finish that sixer of Red Dog, too. You're gonna be here a while.

__________

I'm gonna leave you with with my list of favorite indie rock songs that feature pedal steel guitar:

Lemonheads - "Hannah and Gabi" (pedal steel by Jeff "Skunk" Baxter, the Steely Dan and Doobie Brothers legend)

Camper Van Beethoven - "Sweethearts" (pedal steel by David Immerglück, one of the band's several multi-instrumentalist members)

Neko Case - "I Wish I Was the Moon" (pedal steel by Jon Rauhouse, I love the overdrive / distortion on this one) 

Wilco - "Dash 7" (pedal steel by Lloyd Maines—I love how his playing here makes you feel like you're flying)

The Shins - "Gone for Good" (pedal steel by Kevin Suggs)

I forgot to mention who plays pedal steel on "Father to a Sister of a Thought"—it's Doug Easley, the owner and namesake of the studio where the Wowee Zowee was recorded. In my review of mid-90s indie rock above, I mentioned a slew of iconic bands, and almost all of them recorded at Easley's famous studios. Incidentally, that includes Wilco. Their debut album, including "Dash 7," was also recorded at Easley.

[1spy]

1994 | Beck - "Cyanide Breath Mint"

Beck's single and video for "Loser" had a seismic and immediate impact on the culture, but it didn't hit everyone the same way. For a lot of music critics I was reading at the time, the impact was a mile-wide and an inch deep. Beck was a one-hit wonder; a meme. A signifier of slacker culture whose laconic, absurdist imagery could now be redeployed in funny ads aimed at Gen X. In some respects, this was accurate. This was RUN-DMC and Aerosmith again. Beck's monster hit seemed to repackage Beastie Boys rap with classic rock tropes, mashing together thrift-store hipster nonsense in the verses with a monster chorus that sounded like a Rodney Dangerfield / Weird Al cowrite. The song was massive and influential. But disposable.

And because Beck's success was so sudden and silly, there was a swift and mean-spirited Beck-lash. After Kurt Cobain died, one critic mused that when he heard police were confirming a blonde musician in his 20s had committed suicide, he hoped it was Beck. He was the voice of a generation for slacker idiots, and it was a characterization he memorably rejected a 1994 cover story in Spin Magazine:

“I’ve always tried to get money to eat and pay my rent and shit, and it’s always been real hard for me,” he says, affecting a certain amount of B-boy swagger. “I’ve never had the money or time to slack.”

To people paying close attention, the dude writing dejected ballads about the string of low-paid jobs he'd endured in New York and LA couldn't be a one-hit wonder. For one thing, "Loser" wasn't even the best song on the album.

The best song on Mellow Gold was the gleeful amphetamine boogie, "Beercan." Or the psychedelic raver "Fuckin' With My Head". Or the droning, dooming stoner dirge, "Steal My Body Home." Or the whimsical, yet tender Father John Misty precursor, "Nitemare HIppy Girl."

Beck had too much to say to be limited to one hit. Indeed, in 1994 it felt like like there was a new Beck album or EP every time I went to the store. Me and my pals would go to CD Warehouse and there would magically appear a recently released Beck CD traded in by someone who was probably expecting another "Loser."

Thanks to a unique feature of his major label deal with DGC records, Beck was permitted to put out independent records on his own schedule without regard to whether they might interfere with his Mellow Gold album cycle. These records were DIY affairs that were not going to make it to the Buzz Bin. Beck put out three albums in 1994, and the other two were full of four-track noise jams and lo-fi dustbowl folk songs.

His first album of 1994, Stereopathetic Soulmanure, is sometimes unlistenable and sometimes pastoral (see, e.g., "Rowboat" and "Modesto"), but it's also where you'll find one of his best early songs, "Satan Gave Me a Taco." "One Foot in the Grave" was his third album of 1994, and it was my favorite of the three. It might be my favorite album of his, period (although some days it's Sea Change and some days it's Midnite Vultures).

Listening to One Foot in the Grave, the Beck who rejected the slacker label and who lived paycheck to meager paycheck comes into focus. Beck wasn't trying to get on the radio with slick rap/rock confections. He was deconstructing depression-era protest songs using stream-of-conscious imagery reported from early 90s East LA. He was getting high, riding a lawn mower through a Hieronymus Bosch landscape of capitalist atrocities. The album was recorded, and in some cases cowritten, by K Records impresario and indie rock icon Calvin Johnson, with guest appearances by members of Built to Spill and Presidents of the United States of America (!!). It's sparely and simply presented with a focus on the vocal arrangements and unadorned instruments. It includes at least three interpolations of old blues and gospel standards. The shoestring slide guitar, haphazard harmonica, and shoe-stomp percussion make it sound like it's from another time. And that is the point.

Beck's lyrics on the album (and much of his early work) are about skewering modern life and all the store-bought things and sideshow busywork that make it unbearable. My favorite song, "Cyanide Breath Mint," is a dead-serious call to reject all the things we have to do to make ourselves safe and marketable. It's a song for people born out of time; for whom the mid-90s was, "definitely...the wrong place to be." On "Cyanide Breath Mint," Beck is preaching resistance to corporate messaging and fever pitch consumerism, insisting "there's nothing to tell you / there's nothing to sell you." Unbelievably, he also predicts our national horror of forever chemicals in a throwaway aside: "I got a funny feeling / they got plastic in the afterlife."

I'm not sure which song has my favorite lyrics of all time. It's either this song or Camper van Beethoven's "All Her Favorite Fruit." But I sing the ending verse of "Cyanide Breath Mint" to myself once a week at least. I don't really pray, but sometimes think about this song, and whether I'm on right path. Whether any of us are. A great song can do that without even trying. But Beck was. Trying, I mean.

Fave lyrics:

When they want you to cry Leap into the sky When they suck your mind Like a pigeon you'll fly I know, I know It's the positive people Running from their time Looking for some feeling

[1spy]

1993 | Dinosaur Jr. - "Start Choppin'"

In my senior year of high school, I wrote my first song. I don't remember the words or the melody or really anything about it, except that I felt like I'd done something very few people ever do. Or even attempt. It was exhilarating. I ran downstairs and then ran back up because I didn't know what to do with myself. I still feel that way a little bit every time I finish a song. I wanted to be in a band. I wanted to be the singer. But I had tried to get a band off the ground my junior year and it went nowhere. Because I couldn't do anything. Like, I couldn't even sing. Much less play guitar. So even though I was trying to write lyrics and singing along with the bands I liked, there was no path toward being in a band unless I could play and write music.

I found my dad's old guitar and took a few lessons, but after learning Brown Eyed Girl and a simple 12-bar blues structure, I abandoned it and started teaching myself from a book by Ralph Denyer called The Guitar Handbook. There's one page where all the basic cowboy chords are perfectly illustrated and photographed from the top down, so I could see where I was supposed to put my fingers. I figured if I learned these 15 chord shapes I could start using them to play and write songs. I'd sit in front of the TV for hours trying to move between the chords quickly and accurately without looking.

And because I tend to approach things systematically and obviously, I started buying music by all the great songwriters I had been reading about in magazines. Bob Dylan and Paul Simon to start with. A lot of Dylan. And then I got deep into the Stones' Exile on Main Street and Sticky Fingers.

I got into the Stones because, of course, I loved The Black Crowes. But I also became curious when I read a Keith Richards quote inside The Guitar Handbook that permanently changed my thinking. Not just about guitar, but about everything:

What interested me about Chuck Berry was the way he could step out of the rhythm part with such ease, throwing in a nice, simple riff and then drop straight into the feel of it again. We used to play a lot more rhythm stuff. We'd do away with the differences between lead and rhythm guitar. You can't go into a shop and ask for a "lead guitar." You're a guitar player, and you play a guitar.

I hadn't even thought about being a lead guitar player. I thought that was something separate and beyond my abilities. But Richards made me think I could be just good enough at it to be dangerous. That I could learn scales and incorporate that into my writing.

What I understood from it, even though I wouldn't have articulated it that way at the time, was that I could be a generalist. I could be just good enough at lots different things, I could solve for aspects of different problems and be useful to a band, because I did more stuff. If I wrote the song, and played the song, and could maybe write a bass line or a lead part too, they'd have to let me be in the band. Because then it would be my band. Except I still couldn't sing. I mean, I had an okay voice if I wanted to do church choir. I had a pretty good Mick Jagger impression. But I didn't sound anything like me yet.

Freshman year at Baylor, my friend Chris got me into Dinosaur Jr., and things clicked into place for me. J. Mascis is a god-tier guitar player, but that wasn't what intrigued me. It was his voice.

There are lots of singers who aren't great but have made a career anyway. Mascis and his conversational, childlike warble convinced me that if he could find the voice that was perfect for him, so could I.

I started singing into the answering machine at first. Then a tape recorder. And then finally I got 4-track and started recording my songs. I had to spend time with my voice and learn the way I really sounded before I could sound the way I wanted to sound. To hear myself the way others heard me, and make that sound as good as it could be.

I wasn't trying to sound like Mascis. But I did start there. Just speak-singing into the mic and then gradually iterated until I found the voice I still pretty much have today. Which a lot of people say is much more Smashing Pumpkins' Billy Corgan than J. Mascis. I never heard the Corgan thing, but you know what? I'll take it.

[1spy]

1992 | 10,000 Maniacs - “These Are Days”

It is hard to be a person. And, to me, the hardest thing about being a person is seeing yourself the ways others see you. The best gift I’ve received is when someone—anyone—pulls me aside and tells me I’m being an asshole. And exactly why they think so. But that hardly ever happens. Because people don’t want to waste energy and social capital explaining to me that I have have obvious, correctable issues. Or that I have said a terrible, stupid thing. It is an unpleasant conversation, and I do not take it well. Ask my wife. Even she is reticent to give me the clarity I badly need. Because I will deny. And resist. And be angry and hardheaded. Or blame her instead of myself. But eventually I realize she is right. And she is always right. And I do try to be a better person. For you who may be recent acquaintances and doubt my improvement, believe me. This is the best I have been. And worse, I hope, than what I will be. Because the understanding of others is so valuable, I have always appreciated advice. A good advice giver will provide practical guidance earned with experience. But most advice, even bad advice, will also include an assessment of you and your circumstances. The words may be polite and unoffensive, but encoded within will be a valuable glimpse of how that person sees you. It’s not as pure or as valuable as someone telling you “hey, you just showed your whole ass back there.” But advice, though perhaps less useful than direct instruction, is more pleasant for both the giver and receiver. Right now, you’re probably wondering “is this dude really gonna write 10,000 words before he says anything about 10,000 Maniacs?” I do apologize. There may be no album I’ve listened to more than Our Time in Eden. I listened to it 10,000 times my senior year of high school and that summer before college. I’ve returned to it many times since. Because the way I hear the album it is a friend giving me the best advice I’ve needed and wanted to hear. Or it’s a girl taking down a book of poems and reading. Or it’s the memory of me hanging out with the first great group of friends I had just as I was becoming an adult. It’s always been all of these things at once. When I hear singer Natalie Merchant’s voice on these songs, what I remember most is how amazing it felt to have good friends for the first time in my life, to feel warm and optimistic. Like I had figured things out at just the right time in my life. When I listen, I remember being 18 and graduating high school. I remember my freshman year in college and being with my first girlfriend. I remember all of us driving to downtown Houston to watch folk singers play at Cyrano’s coffee bar next to the Montrose library. Or going to a jazz bar. Or watching movies at Landmark River Oaks 3 (before I started working there). I think we all felt very adult and artistic, but also just grateful to be with each other. The magic of the album, and probably the point of the title, is the way Merchant’s words encouraged me to appreciate the greatness of the moment, being on the cusp of innocence and adulthood, in real time. Hearing this album when I was 18 and 19, I felt nostalgia for my life as I was living it. I knew exactly how I good I had it.

These are days you'll remember When May is rushing over you with desire To be part of the miracles you see in every hour You'll know it's true that you are blessed and lucky It's true that you Are touched by something That will grow and bloom in you

Lyrics that read, on the page, as if they were lifted from an old Romantic poem or graduation speech, sound more convincing when Merchant sings them over the best songs and arrangements 10,000 Maniacs had ever put on record. This was the first and only 10,000 Maniacs album I liked enough to buy. The earlier records seemed bogged down by preachy lyrics and uninspiring 80s college rock production. But on Eden, Merchant’s righteousness mostly gives way to empathy and wisdom, and the band’s arrangements are bolstered on every song by lush, forceful piano playing from Merchant and original keyboardist Dennis Drew. In these songs Merchant is remembering, too. In “Stockton Gala Days” she sings to a departed (deceased?) friend about how changed and withdrawn she’s become since they grew apart:

That summer fields grow high. We had wildflower fever. We had to lay down where they grow. How I've learned to hide, how I've locked inside, you'd be surprised if shown. But you'll never, you'll never know

In “How You’ve Grown” she rewrites the trite expression into on observation about how slow it seems to finally grow up ourselves, and how bittersweet it is to see our our distant nieces or friends’ daughters become women in our absence:

"My, how you've grown." I remember that phrase from the childhood days, too Just wait and see." I remember those words and how they chided me When patient was the hardest thing to be Because we can't make up for the time that we've lost I must let these memories provide No little girl can stop her world to wait for me

“Few and Far Between” begs a lover to stop using memories and regrets as an excuse not to move forward:

'Till you make your peace with yesterday You'll never build a future, I swear by what I say Whatever penance you do Decide what it's worth to you And then respect it However long it will take To weather your mistakes Why not accept it?

When I hear the album now, there’s kind of a darkness mixed in with the good. Because I do have regrets. Because I have made mistakes. Because I’ve done things to lose some of the great friends I’ve had in my life. When I play it now, it’s the opening minor chords in “Noah’s Dove” that fill me, not with dread, but with a ruminative hollow. I remember the good and the bad. But it’s the missteps that are more deeply felt and acute. You can get lost in memory and nostalgia. In regret. And at times, that’s what this album has been for me. A place to sit and have my coffee (or, my beer and cigarettes, when I was lost in those things), and think of old faces and trips I took or should have taken. A worn chair where I can be an emo sad bastard. I don’t get to go back in time and fix my mistakes. I haven’t always made things right with the people I’ve hurt. Sometimes they drift away and I never find out why or what I did or said. Because I maybe didn’t matter enough to them to make that effort. In the title track, Merchant sings:

Believe me, the truth is we're not honest, not the people that we dream We're not as close as we could be

The best friends I’ve had have been willing to help make up the distance. To show me a glimpse of the person I could and should have been in the moment. To, let me know I missed the mark. I know it takes tremendous effort and patience and love to correct a friend and build a better friendship. It’s a lot to ask of someone. Maybe too much. Instead, I just have to keep trying to be a better person. And of course, every now and then, when I could use some advice, I put on this record and remember that these are days, too. The ones I’m living now. The ones I share with you. Fave lyrics:

These are days you'll remember Never before and never since, I promise Will the whole world be warm as this And as you feel it You'll know it's true That you are blessed and lucky It's true, that you are touched by something That will grow and bloom in you 

[1spy]

1991 | Matthew Sweet - “Girlfriend”

In the fall of 1991, I saw a video on MTV that changed how I thought about music and shifted my tastes significantly toward what would become known as alternative music.  No, not THAT video. I’m not talking about Nirvana and “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” It was Matthew Sweet’s anime-infused video for the title track of his third album, Girlfriend.

I’d sometimes wake up and watch MTV in the upstairs den before going to school, and I remember it was morning, and I stood there in front of the TV transfixed throughout the entire thing. I wish I could go back in time and see it again for the first time. Or see the dumb look on my face as I  heard the first strains of feedback while watching a spaceship emerge from the ocean, and then watch as a sexy, sophisticated space opera takes place over the next three minutes, interrupted only by Matthew Sweet’s disembodied head and voice.

Another version of me might have gone down the anime rabbit hole and become obsessed with manga. And I was intrigued, of course. Space Adventure Cobra: The Movie looked like the Voltron cartoons I loved as a kid, but seemed to contain nudity and adult situations. That movie looked incredible! But this was pre-internet and I had no idea where to go for softcore cartoons. Or even how to find out what movie it was. It’s been more than 30 years, and I still haven’t seen it.

Music though, was something I was learning how to investigate. And hearing Sweet’s precise stabs of dry rhythm guitar and 18 layers of harmony vocals be absolutely ripped apart by multiple unhinged guitar solos, well, that blew my mind. I had never heard anyone play guitar like that, and I wanted more of it immediately.

The “it” was Robert Quine who was, prior to this, most famous for playing with Richard Hell and the Voidoids, one of the first American punk rock bands to come out in the mid-70s. He also played with Lou Reed on his classic album, The Blue Mask. The pairing with Sweet was odd, because Sweet’s first two albums were polished, shiny pop albums that sounded like…a less exciting version of the Bangles or Cyndi Lauper. Sweet’s third album stripped away all the, uh, sweetness, but doubled down on Sweet’s layered harmony vocals while letting his guitar players go wild. 

I didn’t know it at the time, but Quine and the other main guitar player on the record, Richard Lloyd from the band Television, were actual punk pioneers. Punk rockers who played early shows with the Ramones and pre-dated british bands like The Clash and Sex Pistols. They were from a generation before Nirvana and Sonic Youth, and they specialized in the kind of guitar that rock critics called “searing” and “angular”. Together, they just kicked all kinds of ass all over this record and were a key reason why Matthew Sweet’s third album isn’t just a power pop classic. It has frequent moments of ecstatic, blistering fury and jazz-like bursts of melody. And those sounds were thrilling in the context of Sweet’s sophisticated, Beatles-soaked songwriting.

The whole album really is a power-pop masterpiece. Sweet wrote it after he was divorced from his first wife. It has big divorced guy energy. Half of it is consumed with recriminations and regrets from his dissolving relationship, the other half are wistful fantasies about finding new love. The love songs included one named for Winona Rider and one called “Evangeline” about a girl who cares more about God than she does about Sweet (btw, my parents were going to name me Evangeline had I been a girl). There’s a surprising amount of theological content on the record, and Sweet has said the record captured his emergence as an atheist. It’s his lyrics about searching for a God who seems frustratingly absent that are the album’s most consistent and compelling lyrical theme.

Finally, let me add that the ballads are killer on this album. “You Don’t Love Me”, “Your Sweet Voice” and “Nothing Lasts” provide a break from the punk rock guitar heroics in favor of pedal steel guitar from one of the masters, Greg Leisz. 

Two weeks ago, Matthew Sweet suffered a massive stroke while he was on tour in Europe with Hanson. He’s returned to the states and is now undergoing treatment and therapy towards what I hope is a full recovery. You can donate here:

[1spy]

1990 | The Black Crowes - "Twice as Hard"

My mom bought me the Black Crowes' debut album, Shake Your Money Maker for Christmas in 1990. She also got me ZZ Top's Recycler. They were first two compact discs I owned, and she also bought me my first CD player, a small boombox that could play cassettes, too.

Which was good because at the time, all I the music I had were several Eagles albums on cassette, plus Aerosmith's Pump and Don Henley's The End of the Innocence. I also had some of my mom's old records and a record player I had set up in my room.

I had turned 16 in September of 1990, and my first car was my mom's old 1979 Mustang. The same car my brother and I used to ride in on the way to preschool listening to Queen on 8-track. At the dawn of the 90s, that car was now mine, except the 8-track didn't work anymore. Instead, I just switched between the rock and classic rock stations on the old analog radio dial. There was a very narrow band of music I wanted to hear, and it lay between 101 KLOL (Rock) and 107.5 KZFX (Classic Rock). 

The Black Crowes were just like all the classic rock bands I was listening to on the radio, except they were young and cool. Other kids at school liked them. Their videos were mainstays on MTV’s Top 20 Countdown. They were getting press in the music magazines I just was starting to read. 

Getting into the Black Crowes felt like I had finally found a popular band that was mine. I wasn’t late to the party. I was in on the ground floor from their very first record. They were really the only modern rock band I liked in the first half of high school (along with Guns N’ Roses), and so they had huge impact on me. Seeing Axl and Chris Robinson on MTV made me want to be a rock singer. Before I could even play guitar I was practicing their moves and trying to sing like they did. 

I even met some other kids at school who liked the Crowes and tried to start a band. I quickly realized just being a singer wasn’t gonna work, and that’s what got me started on guitar. The first guitar tablature I ever bought was the Black Crowes “Remedy” from their second record, The Southern Harmony and Musical Companion. Eventually, trying to play guitar like Rich Robinson got me into open tunings and Nick Drake. Which is why I was listening to Pink Moon well before the famous Volkswagen commercial aired.

All of which is to say that when you’re young, just being super into one band or one album can have a huge effect on your life. Send you down all kinds of rabbit holes. And here I am typing in my office with seven guitars on my wall, still gloriously stuck in the dirt I started digging 34 years ago.

This morning, November 3, is my mom’s birthday. In a million ways, she’s the reason I started digging. Her 8 track cassettes. Her records. Waking me up at the Kenny Rogers show when I was five to make sure I heard my favorite song. Taking me to see Don Henley at the Woodlands Pavilion. Buying me my first CD and first CD player. Signing me up for my first Columbia House subscription. Paying for me to have guitar lessons at Rockin’ Robin. And it was her subscription to Entertainment Weekly that eventually turned me into the music editor for my high school newspaper.

One of my earliest memories was my mom rushing me home in time to see Kiss Meets the Phantom of the Park on network TV in 1978. I didn’t know then what the movie was called then. I barely knew who Kiss was. I only knew Gene Simmons was my favorite and that his tongue was scary. And that the whole band looked frightening and insane. I was only four years old. But what I remember clearly is how harried and stressed out my mom was trying to make sure that I got home in time to see it.

Well, I got to see it. I don’t remember seeing it. But I remember you. Happy birthday, Mom. I miss you.

Fave lyrics:

Twice as Hard As it was the first time I said goodbye And no one ever want to' know Love ain't funny A crime in the wink of an eye

[1spy]

1989 | Michael Penn - “No Myth”

So these posts I've been writing are documenting a project: A playlist that gets to the core of how I've experienced music in my life—one song for each year I've been alive. As I've been going through the process, I noticed most of the songs I chose are from foundational artists with long careers. Most of these artists have multiple songs and albums that are special to me. And I've had a REALLY hard time picking just one song and one year to represent these them.

But "No Myth" by Michael Penn isn't really that. It's just a great song that haunts me. A song that felt formative in my life, even if I never really cared about anything else he did. I mean, it's nothing personal. Michael Penn has had a long and fruitful career. He's released multiple critically acclaimed albums. He's the brother of famous actors Chris and Sean Penn. He's married to one of my all-time favorite songwriters, Aimee Mann. He's been a prolific film and tv composer.

So while It's accurate to say "No Myth" was his only Top 40 hit, I don't consider Penn a one-hit wonder. Still, that's kind of what he is for me. I've heard a bunch of his other stuff, and it's fine. But I only liked this one song. 

But, damn, what a song.

The insistent marching drums (for which the album is named). The oblique, literary lyrics. The hummable, descending bass line in the verse. The exquisite Lennon-esque vocal melody over a simple, driving acoustic guitar. Hearing this song is when I started to figure out what I love about music. And when I started to write my own songs, I was trying to build songs like this.

But I said haunting, and what haunts me is the Chamberlin organ the song uses to augment its god-tier guitar solo. As I learned from MTV, Harry Chamberlain's invention was a precursor to the Mellotron: an analog electric keyboard that played short tape recordings of music each time you pressed a key. Essentially, it was a machine built to play back samples of music before samplers or synthesizers existed.

The sound of the Chamberlain undulating beneath the lead guitar is intoxicating. And for a long time after hearing this song, it became what I demanded when I sought out new music. I wanted guitars and keyboards, but I no longer wanted songs that sounded like the bright synths and super-compressed lead guitars of the 80s. I wanted stuff that evoked the Beatles and Stones. Stuff that sounded like classic rock but also sounded new. Back then, I would describe this as "organic," years before organic food was really a thing. I was probably reading too much music criticism (I definitely read too much music criticism).

Fave Lyrics:

Some time from now you'll bow to pressure Some things in life you cannot measure by degrees I'm between the poles and the equator Don't send no private investigator to find me please 'Less he speaks Chinese And can dance like Astaire overseas (okay)

P.S. Lots of people I know love the rest of the album. They love multiple Michael Penn albums. But, as I said, I only really like this one song. I made a whole other playlist of songs that are like this for me. Not necessarily one hit wonders. Most of them aren't hits at all. They're just songs by artists both obscure and well-known where, for whatever reason, only one song ever did it for me. The playlist is called The Sound of One Song Hitting.

Apple Music: https://music.apple.com/.../the-sound-of.../pl.u-y9XVfz4y41v

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6EpdbOvAPpvMrqRElfjZmo...

[1spy]

1988 | Guns N' Roses - "Patience"

I was riding my bike with a friend back in middle school, and he started singing this song that sounded really cool. The kids now would call it a meme song, where there's just one catchy bit that gets memorized and transmitted instantly to seemingly every kid you know. All I know is we were riding our bikes around and singing this song at the top of our lungs like kids did back then:

Take me down to the paradise city / Where the grass is green and girls are pretty / Oh won't you please take me home

It was so dumb and fun. And I had not, at the time, even seen the video for "Paradise City." In fact, the first video I remember seeing from Guns N' Roses was their mega-popular acoustic ballad "Patience."

It's not the most representative song in their catalog. GNR's debut album, Appetite for Destruction, had come out in 1987 and was full of heavy, uncompromisingly sleazy hard rock bangers that made other LA hair metal bands sound tame and fake in comparison. The album painted a portrait of a Hollywood underworld where sex and drugs are traded for access and opportunity, but where the American dream is most likely to end in an overdose. All of which seemed pretty far away from my life in suburban Spring, Texas.

But Patience was a perfect entry point for me, a kid whose favorite band was—at the time—the Eagles. The gentle acoustic ballad opens with Axl whistling, which may have been a savvy bid for pop relevance only one year after Bobby McFerrin's huge #1 hit "Don't Worry Be Happy" also included prominent whistling. Patience got all the way to number four.

I wasn't the only one connecting GNR to the Eagles. Hotel California and Appetite for Destruction have similar themes involving sex, excess, and corruption in a drug-soaked Hollywood. Axl had performed backing vocals on Don Henley's album, End of the Innocence. And Henley played drums and sang backup when Guns N' Roses played "Patience" on the 1989 American Music Awards.

It took two years for it to happen, but the singles for "Welcome to the Jungle," "Paradise City," "Sweet Child O' Mine" and "Patience" eventually made the band ubiquitous. And Axl was constantly in the news for being a terrible human: starting shows late, nearly starting riots at his own shows, saying racist, misogynistic, and homophobic shit, and otherwise being a huge asshole.

At the time none of that mattered to me. What mattered was the way I felt when I pressed play on the CD. It was exhilarating every every single time. It still is. Appetite for Destruction is the best selling debut album of all time because it has no skips. It's an incredible hard rock album front to back, full of songs that are musical, surprising, funny, sophisticated, angry, and—more than anything else—convincing. It was hard to listen to Appetite and then put on Warrant, Poison or Motley Crue. Nirvana killed all those bands, but GNR put them on notice.

"Patience" wasn't on Appetite. It was on a follow-up collection of two EPs called GN'R Lies. The GNR half was old live performances from 1986 ("Move to the City" was my fave). The "Lies" half was a set of four acoustic originals whose popularity may have inspired MTV Unplugged:

"Patience"- the second song I ever learned to play on guitar all the way through.

"Used to Love Her" - A jokey song about killing your girlfriend and burying her in the back yard.

"You're Crazy" - Better, bluesier, and somehow darker than the version on Appetite.

"One in a Million" - The song whose lyrics included racist, anti-immigrant, and homophobic slurs, but also functioned as an Axl Rose origin story.

Even when I was a kid listening, the lyrics to "One in a Million" bugged me because Axl's lyrics on the song weren't just hateful, they were the worst lyrics he had recorded. It was a missed opportunity, because it's probably the best song on this record. It was his best vocal performance, it had the best solo, and Axl whistles over the opening again with an even better melody. It sucks because he ruined the song with half-assed, bigoted lyrics.

None of this is to provide an apologia for GNR (or for me). They were my favorite band until my senior year of high school. They were the reason my first guitar was a Gibson Les Paul like Slash played. And I dove DEEP into both Use Your Illusion records when they came out (I could write three or four more posts about UYI I & II).

But once Izzy Stradlin' left the band, I knew they were never going to make another record as good as Appetite. The best songs off Use Your Illusion are the Izzy songs. The coolest guy in that band was Izzy. And the best post-Appetite record by anyone in the band is Izzy's solo record with the Ju Ju Hounds.

I went to see Guns N' Roses in 1992 with Soundgarden opening. And I'm glad I did. But Izzy wasn't there, and I felt his absence. Basically, it feels like I left GNR when Izzy did.

But if he ever rejoins the band, I might see them again.

Fave lyrics (for someone who loved walking the tough suburban streets of Cypresswood at night):

I've been walking the streets at night Just trying to get it right It's hard to see with so many around You know I don't like being stuck in the crowd And the streets don't change but maybe the names...

[1spy]

1987 | Bon Jovi - "Livin' on a Prayer"

Entering middle school, I didn't really have a musical identity. My folks listened to a blend of oldies, country, and Christian radio. And while I was pretty meh on Christian radio, I decided I liked late 80s country and the oldies station quite a bit. I used to fall asleep listening to KILT country and Oldies 94.5.

Listening to Randy Travis, George Strait, Dwight Yoakum, Reba McIntire, and the Judds on one hand, and The Beatles, Stones, Otis Redding, Supremes, Creedence, and Sam Cooke on the other provided a decent musical education for a sixth grader. I realize now, listening to old people music all the time made me a weirdo for my age.

Although I wasn't a music fan yet, with my own tastes and identity, I definitely had a window into what that might look like. My older sister had band posters on her wall. She had concert tees. It was peak glam metal years, and she loved it. So I kinda liked it too.

My sister had been a HUGE Journey fan as a tween / adolescent. But in the mid- to late 80s, Bon Jovi was becoming the new Journey, and she made the transition, too. The memory of her coming home from the Bon Jovi show and talking about how incredible it was, including the trademark flyover above the crowd was something I've remembered the rest of my life—even if I never emulated it on my own.

Meanwhile, in sixth grade, we had to make a music video for theater arts class where you record yourselves lip syncing to a popular song, and the two other boys in my group decided to do "Livin' on a Prayer." That would not have been my choice, but it indicated to me that Bon Jovi wasn't just a girl thing. The boys liked them too.

The song itself could be the sequel to Journey's "Don't Stop Believing," as the two young lovers who met and teamed up in the earlier song are now fighting for survival under the heavy weight of late-stage capitalism. But both songs invite you to look past the current troubles to a future that can become better, if you only believe in each other and the power of, um, thoughts and prayers.

I don't mean to sound skeptical. I fully and unironically love both bands. And that's something that was true in the moment. Journey's Live in Houston '81 album is committed to memory, and if you don't like it, I will fight you.

And Bon Jovi updated the Eagles' outlaw cosplay with "Wanted Dead or Alive" and the surprisingly decent Young Guns II soundtrack (it kinda holds up). That soundtrack was one of the first 15 or 20 CDs I owned, and Jeff Beck's solo on "Blaze of Glory" absolutely slays.

In my late 20s I caught Bon Jovi's show at the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo, and they ripped through a classic set in impressive fashion. A tight show in under 30 minutes, and they rocked them all. They are a great band, full stop. Also, props to Bon Jovi for being masters of the pre-chorus that's just as good as the chorus. Example below.

Fave lyrics:

Tommy used to work on the docks, union's been on strike He's down on his luck, it's tough, so tough Gina works the diner all day, working for her man She brings home her pay, for love, mmm, for love She says, "We've gotta hold on to what we've got It doesn't make a difference if we make it or not We've got each other and that's a lot for love We'll give it a shot"

Whoa, we're half way there Whoa oh, livin' on a prayer Take my hand, we'll make it, I swear Whoa oh, livin' on a prayer

[1spy]

1986 | Run DMC & Aerosmith - "Walk This Way"

The best book I've read on creativity is Jeff Tweedy's "How to Write One Song." I've been writing songs for 30 years, but I don't write songs nearly as well as Jeff Tweedy does, so I still learned quite a bit from checking it out. Indeed, I've not read a better book about how to access, stimulate, and use your inherent creativity. It doesn't tell you how to play an instrument, but it's an immensely readable and practical guide to writing songs that can help anyone be more creative. Even if you don't play an instrument.

My second favorite book about creativity isn't like that at all. Rick Rubin's "The Creative Act: A Way Of Being" is a collection of bite-sized koans and deep thoughts about being creative. It's his accumulated wisdom and advice earned over five decades as a legendary music producer. Most of it seems to have been re-purposed from his Instagram.

There's actually a lot of overlap between the two books. But what I love about Rubin's book isn't only what he says. It's how he says it. I can't overstate this enough: get the audio book. Hearing Rubin read his book is a guided meditation in itself. It's very short, and I've been through it twice now just because I love the headspace his voice puts me in. Don't get me wrong, Rubin's book has a decent amount of substance and good advice, but the audio book improves the experience significantly.

Rubin is famous because he's produced or had a hand in a ton of classic albums, including some of my favorite albums of all time. His main skill seems to be having good taste. He claims to have no musical ability or technical knowledge. And while that's probably exaggerating things a bit, it's true that the artists who swear by him are mainly interested in his ears and his guidance and feedback. They don't hire Rubin to mix or engineer. He's basically a coach for musicians.

I'd argue Rubin is most famous for masterminding two ingenious cross-genre covers: Johnny Cash's devastating cover of Nine Inch Nails's "Hurt" and Run-DMC's collaboration with Aerosmith, "Walk This Way."

Watching that video in MTV at my grandparents' house in the summer of '86, it was the first time I'd ever heard of either artist, and it was the first rap song I ever heard. I think that's probably true for a lot of Gen X white kids who grew up in the suburbs. It didn't immediately turn me into a huge fan of hip hop, but (just like in the video) it definitely broke down walls in my understanding of what music was and could be.

That song broke down a lot of barriers. It opened the door for rap on MTV. It revived Aerosmith's moribund career. And it made Run-DMC into superstars.

I still love listening to it years later, and I like it WAY better than Aerosmith's original version. Not just because of Run-DMC. I actually think Tyler's vocals and Perry's guitar, and the re-worked chorus, improve on the original. But that could just be because it's the version I heard first.

[1spy]

1985 | "Weird Al" Yankovic - "Yoda"

When our kids were quite young, but old enough to already know and to love Weird Al, we surprised them by taking them to see Al at Bass Concert Hall. We didn't tell them where we were going until we got to the venue and told them the real reason we were on the University of Texas campus.

I think much the same way I'm thankful that Kenny Rogers was the first concert I remember attending, we were delighted "Weird Al" would be theirs. For one thing, both our boys genuinely liked Al and had their own favorites apart from the songs we had grown up with: "Party in the CIA," "White and Nerdy," "Word Crimes,""First World Problems," "Perform this Way," and "Jurassic Park." Arguably, Al had been a more successful parodist in their era than in ours.

But also, Weird Al is just cool now? I think part of the reason he had all those hits in the 2000s is that no one wanted to say no to Al anymore. In the 80s the parodied artists weren't always keen on being the butt of Al's gentle jokes. But now, if you get a Weird Al parody, that's definitely the pinnacle of your career. Seriously.

At the show, Al played all those hits I mentioned above and tons more. With elaborate sets and costume changes, all while he and his band demonstrated the serious chops that come from years of touring.

But you know what the encore was, right?

It was Al's two signature Star Wars parodies: "Yoda" (a parody of "Lola" by the Kinks) and "The Saga Begins" (an even more ambitious parody of "American Pie" by Don McLean from 1999).

In 1985, I had memorized "Yoda" and sang it all the time. Not the whole song, but just that key hilarious line.

"I know Darth Vader's got you really annoyed / but, remember if you kill him then you'll be unemployed, oh my Yoda / Yo-yo-yo-yo-Yoda."

This line is so iconic it later became the plot of The Lego Batman Movie.

I repeated this lyric constantly. I am sure it was annoying how often I sang it. But I didn't own the tape or anything, and I never bothered to learn the rest of it until I was an adult singing along with my own kids.

But as much as I loved "Yoda," I didn't hear the Kinks' original, about the titular transgender woman, until I was a teen. And then I found out why the "Yoda" melody was so good.

I already mentioned my fave lyrics from "Yoda." Here are my fave lyrics from "Lola:"

Girls will be boys and boys will be girls It's a mixed up, muddled up, shook up world Except for Lola Lo-Lo-Lo-Lo-Lola

[1spy]

1984 | Prince - "When Doves Cry"

In the summers, my brother and I would usually spend at least a week with my dad's folks at their house. We loved visiting our grandparents, because we got to go out to eat every day at lunch, and at night our Nanny would provide us with amazing Cajun home cooking. They had way better cable than we had at our house, including all the movie channels. We got to watch many more R-rated movies than we could at home.

Briefly, they even had a subscription to the Playboy channel. Unscrambled. I'm sure it was error of some kind. What an education we had.

My grandparents' house in Deer Park, Texas is where my brother and I first started playing tennis. It's where my Papaw would take me to the library to check out every Encyclopedia Brown book I could get my hands on. And there was a playground at the end of the street we could walk up to anytime we wanted.

One of the kids we met there lived right by the playground, and we'd hang out at his house sometimes. I remember he had an Atari 400 computer with Jumpman on it. At the time, that was the best video game I'd seen outside of an arcade.

In the living room of his house, with his babysitter sitting there talking on the phone with her boyfriend, is where I first saw Prince's "When Doves Cry" video. At the time, I can honestly say that absolutely nothing about it seemed weird to me. I was just riveted at how cool he looked on his purple motorcycle. And stressed out watching him break up a violent fight between his parents. What I remember most is how much better it looked than almost every video on MTV.

Watching it as an adult, I appreciate how deeply transgressive the opening scene of this video was for its time. A beautiful naked man getting out of a bathtub holding his hand out to the viewer, inviting you into everything that follows. Also weird: when the movie part ends and suddenly a door opens, and a dove flies into the room where a man in scrubs and sunglasses is about to play keyboards. And they all jam out in their incredibly fine costumes.

Go back and watch it again. Keyboardist Dr. Fink is just as surprised as we are at what's about to go down.

But as a kid, I didn't even blink at that shit. When you're 10 years old and you watch MTV all the time, you're not surprised by anything that shows up on the screen.

Now, every time I hear this song, I'm impressed at how it doesn't seem dated at all. The insane opening guitar solo, the insistent keyboards, the menacing synth drones, Prince in '84 still sounds like music from another planet.

And the lyrics: musing on your parents, wondering what parts of them have become a part of you. Trying to figure out whether their past is your future. Afraid that the animal instinct to find a partner is just repeating a self-destructive pattern. Prince goes deep, y'all.

"Hey Ya" from Outkast covers similar ground. We'll hit that later.

Fave Lyrics:

Dream, if you can, a courtyard An ocean of violets in bloom Animals strike curious poses They feel the heat The heat between me and you

[1spy]

1983 | Michael Jackson - "Billie Jean"

Y'all know that thing when you're a kid, and you notice there's this really cool, fashionable thing all the other kids are wearing at school, and you go home and ask your folks for the fashionable, exciting thing so you can be cool?

But then your folks buy you the thing that looks sorta like the fashionable, awesome thing, but is very obviously not that?

Let's just say the parachute pants I requested were not parachute pants.

Eh, I got over it.

Our nextdoor neighbors had "Making Michael Jackson's Thriller" on something called Selectavision. Us kids would go over there and watch it all the time. They also had Dark Night of the Scarecrow. I think they owned like five SelectaVision discs in total, so there was not a lot to choose from. But holy shit, I never got tired of watching John Landis and Michael Jackson collaborate on that video.

I was almost as curious about the SelectaVision.

They looked like giant flat 8-track cassettes to me, and I had no idea how they worked. These weren't laser discs. They were a competing format that had come out earlier. The SelectaVision discs were packaged inside a giant plastic case (like a big 3.5" floppy disk). These Capacitance Electronic Discs (CEDs) were developed by RCA as an updated analog format. They worked very similarly to vinyl records. From Wikipedia:

"First conceived in 1964, the CED system was widely seen as a technological success which was able to increase the density of a long-playing record by two orders of magnitude. Despite this achievement, the CED system fell victim to poor planning, various conflicts with RCA management, and several technical difficulties that slowed development and stalled production of the system for 17 years—until 1981, by which time it had already been made obsolete by laser videodisc (DiscoVision, later called LaserVision and LaserDisc) as well as Betamax and VHS video cassette formats."

Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, Billie Jean is one of the best songs of all time. Like maybe top five. Certainly top 10. His performance of the song on network TV was like a Gen X Beatles-on-Ed-Sullivan moment. And while we'd all learn more about Michael Jackson than we ever wanted to, all 1983 me knew about 1983 Michael Jackson was that he was the coolest human alive.

Of course, that was right before I learned about Prince.

[1spy]

1982 | Joan Jett and the Blackhearts

Joan Jett is such a rock star.

In the very earliest days of us having cable and MTV, she was the biggest star on the channel. It's also the earliest I remember being cognizant of the pop charts. It was a big deal when "I Love Rock 'N Roll" held the top spot for seven weeks in a row. And I remember rooting for her to make it to eight.

My favorite part is when she says, "owww!" And the guitar solo. But the most compelling image was everyone in the black and white video pumping their fist in unison to the song's triumphant chorus. After that, I was kinda sold on both Joan Jett and MTV.

We weren't technically allowed to watch MTV. But we were latchkey kids. And in the summertime, when mom and dad were at work, we watched videos all day long. "I Love Rock N Roll" was the beginning of a 15 year love affair with the channel. Do I remember when they used to play videos? Yes. Yes I do.

It's worth noting that "I Love Rock 'N Roll" is a cover of The Arrows' 1975 original. Take a listen to their version. It's all there. Jett's cover is super faithful and doesn't really add anything to the core arrangement. But the original is anemic and plodding. Jett's recording is supercharged. Part of that is just that adding Jett's voice and rhythm guitar give her recording additional depth and power. But there's an intangible quality that puts Jett's version over the top. To use a scientific term, it just rocks a lot more. And I love that.

Fave lyrics:

He smiled, so I got up and asked for his name "That don't matter", he said, "'Cause it's all the same"

[1spy]

1981 | Kenny Rogers - "Coward of the County"

The first concert I remember attending was Kenny Rogers at the Astrodome for the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo. I'm not sure which year it was, but I was pretty young. Four or five? But I had a favorite song, and my folks knew what it was so they tried to make sure I was paying full attention when it came on: "Coward of the County." I've not mentioned it yet, but I was born in Pasadena, Texas, the home of Gilley's nightclub and Urban Cowboy and Luv Ya Blue. I lived in and around Houston nearly all my life until moving to Austin in 2012. I was born into being an Oilers and Astros fan. So having my first concert be:

At the Astrodome;

For the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo; where I saw

Houston native Kenny Freaking Rogers...

Well, that's a very Houston way to grow up. If you rep Houston, if you love Houston, if Houston sports, Houston music, and Houston food are in your blood, then you and I are good friends. Even if we have never met. That being said, I'll go ahead and tell you: in this ongoing playlist—50 songs for 50 years—this is probably going to be the only country song. And that's not intentional. It's just kinda how things worked out. But it's not a reflection of how much I love country music or how influential it's been in my life.

My mom played pop and rock, but my dad played country music on the radio. And I have lots of fond memories riding around in my dad's Chevy Blazer listening to Country Radio. So here now are my top 10 favorite songs i remember from riding around with my dad as a little kid:

Johnny Lee - "Lookin' For Love"

Merle Haggard - "Rainbow Stew"

Mel McDaniel - "Louisiana Saturday Night"

Don Williams - "I Believe In You"

Conway Twitty - "Tight Fittin' Jeans"

Roseanne Cash - "Seven Year Ache"

The Charlie Daniels Band - "The Devil Went Down to Georgia"

Eddie Rabbit - "Drivin' My Life Away"

Dolly Parton - "9 to 5"

Willie Nelson - "Mama's Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to be Cowboys"

These aren't my favorite country songs. But these are the non-Kenny songs I remember loving when I was a little kid living in Houston in the late 70s / early 80s. Kenny's not on there, because if he was, it might just be a list of Kenny's songs.