I just watched this documentary called The Cruise about Tim ‘Speed’ Levitch, who you may know from his animated appearance in the movie Waking Life.
Here’s a clip from one of my favorite scenes of The Cruise, which I can’t embed, unfortunately, but it’s well worth your time to watch it.
Neil Finn is a genius. If you weren’t already aware of that, go seek out his albums from his time as the leader of Crowded House, as well as his two solo albums. I can’t recommend them highly enough.
He’s also a consummate performer (his concert in 2001 was one of the best and most memorable I’ve ever seen to this day) and a very genuine person as well. In fact, the word ‘truth’ appears in more of his songs than any other word I can think of. Important words, I mean, not like ‘the’ or something. You know what I’m saying. Anyway, here’s an interview I came across that really captures his spirit well, I think. It’s from a dopey Australian comedy show, and the host plays him a dopey song that he’s been working on, and he asks for Neil’s opinion and some advice on how to improve it. The ‘money shots’, at least for my money, are of the slightly uncomfortable look on Neil’s face as he’s listening and trying to figure out what in the world to say. But the bits about ‘being in the moment’ are just so dead-on and earnest. It just shows how real, how funny, and how intelligent (not to mention talented) Neil is, even in a ludicrous setting like this. He appears about two minutes into this clip, so you can feel free to snooze through the rest of it until then.
In a more serious mini-documentary/interview called “A Good Tune Is Always In Short Supply,” he goes into great detail about his process of songwriting, and even lets us in on his secret formula. I’ll post Part One here, and if you’re interested, Part Two is easy enough to come by.
I’d like to take a minute to tell you a story in the long string of heart-warming online tales that illustrates the power of the internet to connect people who have been estranged for decades. It also illustrates the power of music, and the power of a certain kind of mental pathology, too. You’ll see what I mean.
One of my cohorts from Iron Horse received an out-of-the-blue message on Facebook yesterday, at 1:30 in the morning, from someone he didn’t know, that said, “Are you [misspelled his last name] from [our high school]? I remember you; we wrote a song in detention.’ He named the song, and correctly wrote out the chorus. No, I’m not going to quote it here, because then it would be searchable, but he totally nailed it.
His profile was private, there was no picture, and he had a very unusual first name, but my friend didn’t recognize him in any way. He had eleven online friends, all of whom shared his surname. My friend responded, “Yeah, that was me. I kinda remember writing that in detention. . .I changed the lyrics around, and my old band used to play that song. Do you have a picture or something to jump-start my memory? What years were you at [our high school]?”
The guy wrote back that he moved away from Yakima in 1987, and that he’s living in California now. He’s of a certain nationality, and “try to get sum pic’s.” (I took the liberty of cleaning up his grammar and punctuation before, but it was all typed lower-case, with slightly awkward punctuation.) My friend accepted his friend request, and we’ll see where the story goes from here. The two of us can’t help but wonder what the guy’s life is like, since he’s writing to someone he met only one time, in high school detention, twenty two years ago (!), and seems to be hoping to rekindle a friendship where it left off.  I mean, sure, my friend is a great guy, and we were a pretty good band, but this guy doesn’t even know about the band, because he left town before my friend and I even started it. Oh, AND. I should mention that my friend was neither a miscreant nor a ne’er-do-well (I love those two terms, and I love it when I get the opportunity to use them), he was only in detention that one day, and never saw this guy ever again. He’s not anyone I knew, either then or now, but I haven’t been able to find my yearbooks to investigate him.
Incidentally, speaking of the band, the community access TV station still plays our videos to this day, which completely mystifies my friend and me. These are not new videos I’m referring to, either. They were filmed and originally aired during that same time period, from 1987 to ’89, which is when the band was in existence.  We were just a bunch of high school kids, playing some songs that we wrote ourselves, and I can’t imagine why anyone watching now would even enjoy the songs these days, let alone find a bunch of kids from twenty years ago compelling.
Be all that as at may, I admit that it’s gratifying (in a weird way) that they do still play that stuff. We had a good time making the videos, and like I said, we were a pretty decent band, but we had no delusions about our abilities or chances for stardom, either. We were just a bunch of kids who had a band, like a million other kids in a million other bands.
Just for fun, here’s a picture from our very first show. In fact, it could well be of the song in question, too, because I just now remembered that I actually sang the whole second verse of it (and I didn’t sing lead very often), so it seems very likely that this picture was taken during that song.
I just love the oversize mirrored sunglasses, and you can see that I was working hard on Mullet Number One as well. Gee, I wonder if this was the 80’s?
Meanwhile, back to the topic at hand.
In the interest of full disclosure, and the interest of fairness to this guy, I’ve spent the better part of this month reconnecting with friends from years ago, one of whom had also been twenty years ago (she reads this blog, too, by the way), and it’s been really great for everyone involved. You probably already knew that if you’re reading this, though, since I’ve written a bit about it lately. More than once but fewer than three times, in fact, just in case you were counting.  So I have no business knocking the guy for trying. As human beings, we all are basically social animals (some of us more than others) who are looking for connections wherever we can find them. But the people I’m talking with are people with whom I had actual relationships and friendships. They’re based on more than just a one-time meeting, in detention, more than half a lifetime ago.
The title of this entry, incidentally, comes from a book that our high school’s choir director had on the bookshelf in his office, and it seemed apropos to use it here. Iron Horse shortened it to ‘Mental Game’ and we used it as the title of our album. I mean cassette. Oh, how dearly I wish I had a copy of that. I have a lot of old videos, and tapes, and pictures, and notebooks, but I’m not sure I have that cassette cover floating around anywhere. I’ll have to do some digging.
I can’t wait to see how this story unfolds.
When I wrote last, I had a feeling that this week might get away from me, but I had no idea just how much that would happen. Most of alll, it was time spent reconnecting with friends who I’ve not seen in years. The total for this month is now up to twenty two. TWENTY TWO. . .and it’s due in a large part to Facebook.
This week, I had two rehearsals, four gigs, two trips to the beach, and as soon as I finished Gig #2 the other night, at ten-thirty at night, I got a text message saying, “Did you get my text yesterday?”
“I don’t think so. Which one?”
“About me being in the hospital?”
“OH MY GOSH. No, I didn’t! What happened? Are you okay?” [I tried to call her, but she couldn’t answer.]
The rest of the story is that she got really sick on Wednesday with what she thought was food poisoning from bad cream in her coffee, but she kept getting worse throughout the day, so she went to the hospital Wednesday night, to find out that she had frickin’ appendicitis, so she got her appendix sucked out through her navel on Thursday. RockShowGirl and I raced over to see her Thursday afternoon, just as her mom was arriving to take her home for a few days. She’s there now, sans appendix, recuperating with her new friend Percoset.
I drove RockShowGirl to her condo downtown and then came home back to clean up my place, in order that FriscoFriends could stay here tonight. They arrived five minutes after IrishBand had finished Gig #3 on Thursday night, and we talked at the venue for a while, before driving back to my place and retiring to the front steps with glasses of wine. We all slept in late yesterday, and I tiptoed out to the living room to retrieve my keys, so that I could walk to the grocery store and be back before they awoke. I whispered, “Is either of you awake?” The fakers both instantly opened their eyes and stretched their arms.  I laughed and said I’d be right back with coffee and ingredients for breakfast. We had scrambled eggs with mozzarella cheese, with fresh tomatoes and basil from the garden (I got slimed by a slug who was attached to one of the tomatoes, and it took hours to get all of that sticky, yellowish, gooey crap off of my hand!), French press coffee, and toast with homemade raspberry jam courtesy of Mom ‘n’ Stepdad.
At about half past noon, we happily piled into our respective cars and caravanned to Seaside, where we met up with their family, who I’ve also known for years. It was a great time. They told me to bring my bike, since everybody else had theirs as well. That turned out to be the best idea of all. We rode up and down the Promenade, and all around the town, and I found the house we used to stay in when I was a kid that belonged to our family friends. It’s also located right along the Promenade, and it was nice to see that unlike the rest of Seaside, it was unchanged, save for the fact that it is now a vacation rental home. We rode to the ice cream shop for cones, and down along the riverfront marina and walkways as well. In a great show of our Second Childhood, three of us raced to the top floor of a parking garage, and back down to street level, skidding on the sidewalk and having the time of our lives.
Then it was time for dinner, and a walk down to the beach, which included a small fire, s’mores, and a radio-controlled car and plane. First time I’ve ever flown a model plane, by the way, and it’s much more difficult than it appears. Then we walked back to the fire and sat around talking until dusk, when I had to pack up my car and drive home, after hugs all around.
Today I’m devoting to cleaning up my kitchen from all the cooking, and getting the living room back to normal now that life is back to normal. By ‘normal’, I mean a gig tonight, meeting two more friends in the next couple of days, and then three gigs in a row next week, followed by at least one more beach trip (but it’s more likely to be two) before things start to settle down in the following week. At the end of that week, I’ve been invited to play in Whitefish, Montana with a nationally known songwriter who just so happens to live here in Portland. He also just so happens to be the significant other of someone with whom I played for almost three years, so I’ve had the opportunity to play with him many times before in that context, but it will be really great to play with him in this new context. He’s an amazing banjo player and guitarist.
By way of an ending to all of this miscellany, I’m going to tell you that I’m listening to “El Choclo” by Astor Piazzolla, and I like to share examples of these obscure songs when I can find them. I scrounged up a video to this one, which has a bunch of misogynistic hilarious pictures that accompany this beautiful and romantic tango music. If you can read the captions, please feel free to comment and translate them, because it’s all Greek to me.
If you know who made this, please let me know so I can give them credit for being the geniuses that they are. This is priceless.
