LISTENING PARTY: This Fire

Two embarrassing confessions, one after another
On Januray 20, 1998, I sat down with my friends Kristen, Jessica and Dan to watch the premiere of “Dawson’s Creek” a new teen drama on the fledgling WB network. Dan and I worked at Blockbuster at the time, and one of the downsides of the job was that while we were supposed to watch something called a screener, which was a two hour long video tape of ads that ran on a loop. A lot of time they were ads for movies that were coming out on video tape, but some promotional consideration was paid for to air ads for things that you couldn’t find in a Blockbuster Video. Like the premiere of “Dawson’s Creek”. One 2-hour screener probably had the Dawson’s Creek ad six times, and during an 8-hour shift you would watch the screener 4 times, meaning on the days when we didn’t defy corporate orders and put in a movie instead of the screener (which wasn’t as often as it would be a few weeks later when I was promoted to assistant manager) I would see the Dawson’s Creek ad 24 times a day, 5 days a week. And it became kind of a joke between me and Dan, about how many times we saw the Dawson’s Creek ad, that we would have to watch the premiere. We HAD TO.

We did watch about the first twelve minutes of the premiere and then we all just started doing other things. The show didn’t really captivate us. It never was supposed to. I was not exactly its target audience, and while I don’t think Dan really cared, I was secretly disappointed. Which is directly tied to my second embarrassing confession: the reason I was so pumped for Dawson’s Creek had to do with its theme music, “I Don’t Want to Wait” by Paula Cole. Because one year earlier, I had purchased Cole’s second album, and fell deeply in love with it. That’s my second embarrassing confession: I love “This Fire”

It’s like how some people have weird attractions to girls with hair on their face, or dudes with lazy eyes. There’s no way to really explain away it; if you’re being honest, you dig bearded ladies or lazy-eyed dudes because you’re just a sick freak. And that’s the best way I can describe my love for Paula Cole’s “This Fire”. I’m a sick freak.

This isn’t like my love of Meatloaf, or Rush’s early 90s work, where I can love it actually, but also from a safe, ironic appreciation of how cheesy it is. “This Fire” does not allow me that. I can’t claim to love it because it’s cheesy. It’s so overly earnest it would turn cheese right into skim milk.

I had seen Paula Cole perform with Peter Gabriel a few years before, and when I stumbled upon her record at my local Strawberries, and with disposable income for the first time in my life, I bought it, without even having heard a single song from it. (Can you imagine a time before hearing ‘Where Have All The Cowboys Gone’ or ‘I Don’t Want to Wait’?)

And I listened to it. And I loved it. And I’ve been ashamed ever since. This is my Paula Cole cry for help. Somebody start calling around to set up the intervention.


“Tigers”- One way to know that you’re about to listen to an overly-earnest album. It starts with a cappella singing. Oh God, sitting here listening to the lyrics to this song closely is about as painful as reading some girl’s high school journal. She just said something about sex-starved teachers staring at her ass, and then followed it up by ‘Goodbye lions, tigers, and bears.” So this song is about a loss of innocence, perhaps? God, at least when Alanis Morrissette awkwardly revealed her sexual history with a gross old man, it was Dave Coulier. Unless Paula Cole’s professor was Mr. Feeney from Boy Meets World, I just can’t get behind this. The song ends with backwards singing, which sounds like Paula is sucking all the words she just sang back into her throat. If only I could do that with all the vomit I spewed during this song.

Where Have All the Cowboys Gone?- You’ve heard this song. Don’t pretend you haven’t. Unless you were born three days ago and haven’t discovered what a radio is yet. I feel like the 90s was the only era of music where there were this many songs with spoken word verses. I would also like to point out to Miss Cole, that cowboys in general did not enjoy the most stellar reputation for how they treated their ladies. Besides, I thought all cowboys were into other cowboys. Where have all the cowboys gone, Paula? Up to Brokeback Mountain. You’re going to be waiting a long time.

Throwing Stones- I should point out that Paula Cole picked out a really killer band. Jay Bellerose has become this generation’s Jim Keltner--the session drummer who plays drums on every cool singer-songwriter album recorded in the last decade. If you own a record produced by Joe Henry or T-Bone Burnett, Bellerose is the drummer. The guy is amazing. The record sounds great. It’s very well produced, and I believe that Cole got a Grammy nomination in 1997 for producing this record. What she did not get a Grammy nomination for? Non-pretentious lyrics. Because this record does not really have any of those.


Carmen- This song is a really beautiful song. It’s really sparse, it sounds like it’s only a single guitar and maybe a bass, and then the whole rest of the song is in the drums. I’m not usually a drum guy, but this record has some of the best drum playing of any record I’ve ever heard. I don’t know who Carmen is, but I do know that he eats acid. I’m not usually a drug guy, but I thought you dropped acid. Like isn’t that the terminology? Or are people eating acid now? That just sounds dangerous.


Mississippi- This song features a didgeridoo. And mentions that Cole likes it from behind. That combination must make it unique in pop music, right?

Nietzsche’s Eyes- In case you hadn’t figured out that Paula Cole went to college, she has a song named Nietzsche’s Eyes. She might have well just included a Photostat of her BA in the album’s liner notes.

Road to Dead- Many of these songs have a certain musical kinship to the work Peter Gabriel was producing at this time. Weird bubbling keyboards. Guitars used more as textual effects than harmonically. Great, atypical drumming. I thought I’d bring that up. Like I said, lots of this record sounds really really good. What doesn’t sound so good is writing lyrics that make it sound like you think Dead is a place. I mean, you could walk on a road to Death, I suppose. You could walk on the road to the Dead. But a road to dead? That just sounds like you didn’t learn proper grammar. And as we learned the last song, we know Cole went to college, so what gives.

Me- As I usually do before I start one of these, I went to youtube and searched for Paula Cole songs, and found about 14,000 videos of women singing this song into their computer cameras. I suppose it is a really empowering song. You know what’s an even more empowering song for ladies to sing in the privacy of their bedrooms into their webcams? “Sussudio.”

Feelin’ Love- Do we really need a song about sex at this point? We already know that you like it from behind while someone plays a didgeridoo. What else do we need to know? That you can come up with five and a half minutes worth of strained sexual metaphors? Got it. This guys makes you feel like a sticky pistil leading into a stamen. Those all sound like sexy words, but I don’t know. If my wife were to say that to me, I’d probably hide her copy of Planet Earth from her for a while. Near the end, Paula Cole tells us that she is both Barry White and Isis, and I couldn’t help but think of a team-up between the late soul-singer and the 70s super heroine. What adventures they’d have had.



Hush hush hush- This sound features Peter Gabriel and a very determined clarinet. Thinking back upon it, I wonder if I heard that Peter Gabriel appeared on this record, and that’s why I bought it. But he sings about 8 bars in this song. How do you think something like that works? Paula Cole sings back-up on PG’s 1993-4 world tour, goes into the studio, and invites him in? Did she write those lines in the song with him in mind, or did she find the best two lines on the whole album for him to sing on? I’d be a little intimidated, if I felt Peter Gabriel owed me a favor, asking him to sing just two lines on one song on my album. How did she know that these two lines were the best ones for him to sing? What if your next album you come up with something even better for Peter Gabriel to sing, but oops, you’ve already used up your shot. I couldn’t take that level of pressure. But I’d probably never be asked to sing the Kate Bush part on “Don’t Give Up” either, so I doubt it’ll ever come up.

I Don’t Want to Wait- There are about 7 billion people on the planet. It’s a huge figure, one almost beyond human comprehension. If you want to realize how big the number 7 billion is, just think about how many times you’ve heard this song. Because you’ve probably heard it at least 7 billion times. Now imagine that every time you heard it, a new person was born. And now you’re starting to get a handle on our burgeoning overpopulation problem.

But honestly, what did you think of this song before you’d heard it billions of times? It’s hard to remember, but I remember thinking the song was pretty pisser. I thought this whole album was pretty pisser.

And now comes the shocking third embarrassing confession: I still love this record.

I wrote this months ago and have had it saved on my computer under an innocuous title so that it wouldn’t arose my wife’s suspicion. Several nights since I’ve had nightmares where federal agents seize my computer, having gotten word that I was involved with “some unsavory Paula Cole stuff.” I wake up in cold sweats. But I felt like it was time for me to be honest with all of you. I have a problem.

There aren’t really any programs for people like me, who love, irrationally, music that even Sarah McLachlan finds too preachy and feminist. I also have been having nightmares about Aborigine porn.

LISTENING PARTY : Speaking in Tongues

I knew about David Byrne’s big suit before I had heard his music. My dad had the cassette tape of “Stop Making Sense” in his car, and I would see its cover amongst my father’s other cassettes. “Bat Out of Hell” had a guy on a flaming motorcycle, like Ghost Rider. “Led Zeppelin I” had a flaming dirigible. Talking Heads just had a guy in a suit. And you couldn’t even see his face. I wouldn’t know what David Byrne looked like until I bought his solo record “Uh-Oh” in 1992. I just saw the suit. And like a lot of things that you see out of context when you’re a kid, I didn’t really think that there was anything weird about the Big Suit. It’s probably why all the suits I made my mom buy me for all my middle school and high school semi-formals were always several sizes too big. It was my upbringing you see.

I didn’t really listen to Talking Heads until my dad got their final album “Naked” in the then nascent CD format. It was the first CD we owned. I loved it, and went back and dug out “Stop Making Sense” their famous live album. Most of the songs on the cassette version (which contained 8 songs, as opposed to the remastered version, which has 406) came from their “Speaking in Tongues” record. In a lot of ways, it’s my least favorite of their records, but truthfully, it’s probably their truest. Their first record they are still developing, and the songwriting isn’t so strong. Their next three albums were collaborations with Brian Eno. Their post-Stop Making Sense records were either David Byrne solo records in all but name (Little Creatures, True Stories) or the sound of a band falling apart (Naked). Speaking in Tongues is the album that sits more or less in the middle of their ouvre and was the first one they wrote and produced together. It’s also a weird album. Even for them.

“Burning Down the House”- I think that ‘Psycho Killer’ or ‘Once in a Lifetime’ will probably be their legacy song, but this song was their biggest hit. I’ve read that it was payola, that Sire records paid radio stations to play the song, but it is catchy. Even if it contains the most nonsensical lyrics every written. Trying to analyze these lyrics is like recovering from a stroke: you recognize all the sounds the words make, but it still sounds like Dutch.


“Making Flippy Floppy” first of all, if making flippy floppy means what I think it does, it’s no wonder I was terrified of sex growing up. Byrne spends the whole song giving directions: “lie on your back, put your feet in the air, bring me a doctor, I have a hole in my head.” It’s like if David Lynch wrote a ‘Dear Penthouse’ letter. The instrumental section sounds like a sea lion have sex with a power drill. I remember listening to this song in my dark bedroom when I was 13 and swearing swearing swearing that I would becoming a monk and never think about girls again.

“Girlfriend is Better”- This is a sad true story. When I was a freshmen in high school, I used to sing the refrain to this song (“I’ve got a girlfriend that is better than that”) out by my locker so that girls would either think I had a girlfriend or ask me if I had a girlfriend. This was my plan for getting a girlfriend. It didn’t work. I don’t know exactly my thought process was--maybe that if enough girls associated me with the word girlfriend one of them would want to become mine. Only one girl--Jill Pittsley--even noticed. She said something like, “Wait. Do you have a girlfriend?” And I was like, “No.” And then she walked away.

“Slippery People”- As I mentioned, I heard the live version of most of these songs well before I heard their studio counterparts, so I always think that my ipod is dying when I hear this song. It’s soooooo mucccchhhhh slllloooowwwweerrrr than the live version. Which makes it creepier. Because it’s about people. People who are slippery. Why are they slippery? Have they been making flippy floppy with each other? Do you have to get slippery to make flippy floppy. I swear swear swear I’ll become a monk and I’ll never think about girls again. Please don’t make me get slippery.

“I Get Wild/ Wild Gravity” -I think I’ve spoken before about my distrust about songs with parenthesis, but I’m ever more dubious of songs with slashes. Am I supposed to circle which one I think the title should be? Is this a test? I think it should be… Wild Gravity. That seems more like a Talking Heads song title. I Get Wild sounds like something by Morris Day and the Time. Or something that someone who has never gotten wild says to impress some college guys, or like what a narc says to try and convince somebody to sell him drugs. Wild Gravity sounds like something that happens while you’re making flippy floppy. Do you see a pattern forming?

“Swamp”- While the groove starts, the vocal microphone picks up Byrne mumbling. Maybe he’s calling somebody from the studio, telling them a dirty joke or something, or telling them about the last time he got wild. The band lets him do this for about half a minute, and then he realizes what’s happening and starts singing the song. I don’t know why it’s called “Swamp” (well, yes, I do. I listened to the commentary on the Stop Making Sense DVD.) It was called “Addiction” and then they remixed in an attempt to make it more swampy. Nowadays, that’s just an effect in protools. You just click a button. But back then, the only way to make something more swampy was to douse it with a special chemical, light it on fire and toss it into a swamp. At least that’s how it worked for Alec Holland.

I like the idea that you just name your song based on how you want it to sound. “Give it more reverb. We’ll call this song, ‘Reverb’.” If this were the way bands named songs, then every Boston song would be called ‘Better’.

“Pull Up The Roots”- David Byrne has told us how to have sex on side A, so now that we’re on side B, he’s giving us gardening tips. Songs that were recorded for this album but not included were: “Rotate Your Crops”, “Stain Your Deck”, and “Plunge the Drain”.

“Moon Rocks”- David Byrne starts off this song by claiming that he can do flying saucers. I’m not really sure how one does flying saucers. He then tells us that because of protons and neutrons he ate some moon rocks. Also that he has some of those rocks in his boots. Maybe this is a song about an astronaut. Because who else would have moon rocks in his boots? Unless moon rocks is 1983 slang for some kind of drug. Like, “Oh, man, I got wild last night with some moon rocks in my boots.” Actually, that really does sound like an outdated drug reference. “I are a rock on the moon.” God, I hope that’s a drug reference, because I’d hate if we were meant to interpret this literally. Imagine what eating moon rocks would do to your teeth. Also, wouldn’t you have to take your helmet off to eat the moon rock? Or are you eating the moon rock back in the space ship? Didn’t NASA send you up with any of that space ice cream? Do moon rocks go good with Tang? Damn, these lyrics are deep.

“This Must Be the Place (Naïve Melody)” - Finally, some parenthesis. This is a really beautiful song. At least I thought so. I was asked to DJ a dance when I was in 8th grade, and I played this song, expecting it to be a good song to slow dance to. It’s a little too fast for a slow song. Also, it sounds a little bit like the music from “legend of Zelda”. And while I was the kind of 13-year old who thought lines like “We drift in and out. Sing into my mouth” were romantic gold, I was also the kind of 13-year old who thought singing about how my imaginary girlfriend was better than that would somehow nab me a real girlfriend. Needless to say, the dance floor cleared, and shortly thereafter somebody commandeered the stereo system and put on a BoyzIIMen tape.


David Byrne taught me a lot about romance. He taught me that suit jackets should always be several sizes too big with giant shoulder pads. He taught me that sex involved lying on my back with my feet in the air until I got slippery. And that “hit me on the head and I go who-oo-ooo” was a tender romantic pick-up line.
It’s a miracle that I’m not a celibate, sexless freak.