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.

LISTENING PARTY: Frank

As I’ve mentioned before, the summer and fall of 1992 was the beginning of my love affair with popular music, and as such, I spent much of that time meticulously going through and listening to all of my father’s records and CDs in an attempt to discover what kind of music I was going to like. In December, I made it to the sole Squeeze CD he had in his collection: Frank. I don’t know what exactly prompted me to pick up this CD, but if I had to guess, its turtle-based artwork might have been the big draw.

I listened to it before we went to his officemate’s Christmas party. I didn’t really know many people there, and spent most of the time either sitting in an easy chair, or studying the breakfast cereal in their pantry, thinking about menstruation.

Because the cornerstone song, for me, on this album is about menstruation.

So if there were to be some kind of word association game, it would go like this.

Christmas--Roly Blanchette’s house--Captain Crunch Peanut Butter Crunch cereal--turtles--menstruation.

God Bless Difford and Tilbrook!

"Frank"- This album starts off with a 15 second intro in which the keyboardist refers to the drummer as Fatty, and as a result, the drummer refuses to count off the song until he apologizes. This might be my favorite opening track of all time.


"If It’s Love"- Squeeze is probably best known for their song ‘Tempted’ and that’s a good song, but I think that ‘If It’s Love’ is the quintessential Squeeze song. It’s catchy as all hell, is full of weird British vernacular, and utilizes some of the most bizarre metaphors. Something about how love makes your teeth green. Or that it makes you like an egg in the teeth of a shark. I don’t know if that’s a thing that’s happened. I haven’t watched much Shark Week, but I feel like sharks ate lots of eggs, I’d have heard about it by now. Regardless, I’ll have this song stuck in my head for the rest of the Obama presidency.

"Peyton Place"- This song is another catchy one. Here’s a spoiler alert: all of these songs are catchy ones. It’s what Squeeze does. Glenn Tilbrook writes catchy tunes, and Chris Difford writes lyrics to go along with them that are reference 1950s novels about deceit and hidden decay in suburban America. I know that doesn’t sound like a winning formula, but I don’t know what else to tell you: it is. You are wrong. Think about the catchiest song you can imagine. Now imagine if the lyrics were based on ‘Revolutionary Road’. It’s like a 1000 times better now. Also, I’ve never said this before in my life but: this piano solo is so amazing I never want it to end. It’s over, but I’m still thinking about it.

"Rose I Said"- Usually a band might put two catchy songs at the beginning of the album, then stick in a ballad, or maybe a less melodic bluesy number or something. Not Squeeze. First of all, they’re so confident, they don’t even open their album with a catchy song. They open by making fun of how fat their drummer is (or how much of a jerk their pianist is) and then throw three catchy songs right in a row. Probably that’s because they don’t know how to not write catchy song. Squeeze has had like 4000 different bassists, but the one that seemed to last the longest (from their middle period) Keith Wilkinson, is probably the most interesting. His bass parts are always melodic, realizing that having a more straight bass part might make the songs easier to listen to, but Squeeze is almost performing an experiment to see how much melody one song can contain before it explodes.




"Slaughtered, Gutted and Heartbroken"- Some of my favorite moments on Squeeze records is when they let Chris Difford take lead vocal. He’s got a deep, relatively unattractive voice, but maybe because he writes all these lyrics, or maybe because he sounds a little bit like Droopy Dog, he really sells the comical despair of this song. I kind of love the line “like a bad coat I need shaking” like enough that I would marry it if I wasn’t already married, and song lyrics were marriable. Unlike the piano solo in Peyton Place, the guitar solo could disappear and I’d never mention it again. Back to the lyrics: there’s something brilliant about spending the whole song talking about how much you’ve screwed up your life and your marriage, but then having the chorus be “Things could be worse” In the outro he just keeps repeating that he’s a stitch short of a tapestry, which is similarly brilliant. Everything about Chris Difford is brilliant, and screw you if you disagree.

"This Could Be The Last Time"- This song has the distinction of being the song before the song about menstruation. It’s catchy, and kind of forgettable. Man, Keith Wilkinson must have gotten paid by the note for this bass line. It’s really busy, and there’s something that sounds like synthesized background vocals which is probably the only touch to remind you that this album was made in the 80s. It otherwise has a pretty timeless quality. Here comes the song about menstruation.



"She’s Doesn’t Have to Shave"- So, you’ve guessed it. This song is about how women get their periods, and how it makes them really emotional volatile. I know that Difford is trying to be supportive, offering to do the dishes for her, and ruminating that women are lucky they don’t have to shave, and men are lucky they are not doubled up in pain. Both of those things are true, but I hope he’s not trying to say their comparable. As a man who has had a full beard for most of his adult life, I can admit here: mainly it’s because I hate shaving. But shaving isn’t something I dread or despise. It’s just kind of annoying. And the razor blades cartridges are expensive. I certainly wouldn’t compare it to all the shit women go through when they get their periods. It’s kind of shame, because this is literally the catchiest song on the album which therefore makes it the catchiest song in the history of recorded music. And it’s kind of embarrassing to think about for too long, and especially to sing along to.
Embarrassingly, later that year, I was in my 8th grade biology class when our teacher graphically described menstruation and I passed out in front of everybody. I would’ve thought that this song had prepared me, but it let me down.

"Love Circles"- Difford’s back on lead vocals. He’s not quite as well suited to this one, but it’s still a terrific song. It’s catchy as all---yeah, all right, you’ve got it. These songs are all catchy. “Love circles up above and waits until you break down and weep, and then it’s out of your reach.” That’s really heartbreaking, and probably true. This song is all about being alone--there’s a great line about cutting yourself some cake “but just one slice” before going to bed. I like that because it highlights that the narrator is all alone, but also because I’m impressed that anybody can eat just one slice of cake. If there was a whole cake in my house and I lived alone, there wouldn’t be any cutting of any slices. I would just try and eat the whole thing, eating it like a watermelon. Thank god there isn’t any cake here right now, and that I have a wife that would ask me where a whole cake went. The guitar solo is naff in this song. For the longest time, what I thought was the guitar solo was really the bass line going on while the atonal guitar solo was going on. I don’t know what Glenn Tilbrook was thinking. Maybe he had a whole cake in the recording booth and that’s the sound his guitar was making while he stuffing his face.


"Melody Motel"- I don’t really have much to say about this song. It’s catchy, clearly. It’s kind of honky-tonkish. But that’s it. I just really want some cake right now. Damn you Squeeze!

"Can of Worms"-This song is catchy, but that’s almost offset by a really bad woodblock part. That’s right. The woodblock part is so bad that I actually notice that there even is a woodblock. I’d hate to think that somebody recorded the woodblock part separately, headphones on in the recording booth, just bopping his head, every third beat, hitting the woodblock. Whoever it was should be ashamed of himself. Was it the producer? Did they let Chris Difford do it since Glenn Tilbrook tends to play most of the guitar parts himself? Was it somebody’s girlfriend? We’ll never know. But I will never rest until I found them. And make them pay.

"Dr. Jazz"- The keyboardist of Squeeze is named Jools Holland, and for the past twenty years or so, he’s been a talk show host on the BBC. He left Squeeze shortly after this album (he wasn’t included in the band photos that went along with this record with the note, ’Jools was on holiday’) and this is his lead vocal track. He also wrote the song, and it’s decent. It’s also pretty catchy, although probably the least catchy song on the album--which means it would be the catchiest song on any other album you can think of. This is probably the best line-up Squeeze ever had, and this is probably their best album because of it. It’s also impossible to find (it might be on itunes, but it’s been deleted from A&M for twenty years) and I’m really glad it was one of the 16 free Cds my dad picked when he joined the BMG music club in 1988, because I can’t imagine how different my life would have been if I hadn’t heard it. Like for example, if I hadn’t heard their menstruation song, who knows what would’ve happened when I was in 8th grade? Maybe I would’ve gone into a coma.

"Is It Too Late?"- Never, Squeeze. Never.

LISTENING PARTY: The Wall

I don't know what it is about the early winter months that makes me nostalgic for overblown, bombastic, and pretentious rock albums. I figured I'd take a break from all that and listen to one of the least overblown, bombastic, and pretentious rock albums of all time. Pink Floyd's The Wall.

I have to admit that I had no idea who Pink Floyd was in the early days of December 1992, when my friend and bandmate Jesse let me borrow his copy of the wall, taped off of his father's vinyl. I subsequently dubbed a copy of that tape, which meant that for the first four years of listening to this album, it was on a twice-dubbed cassette copy of a 12-year old vinyl record. Meaning that, while 13-year Ryan listened to this album for the first time with the lights off in his bedroom, freaked out by all the strange noises and weird screaming that accompanied this album--due to the poor quality of the tape he had, there was still so much strange noise and weird screaming he couldn't hear.

"In the Flesh?"-So, if you're making an overly pretentious and overblown concept album, the first thing you need to do is record a piece of spoken dialogue and then split it in half and play the second half at the start of the record and the first half at the end, so that it creates a loop. I think Britney Spears did this same trick on "Oops, I Did It Again"

I have since read many books on Pink Floyd, a band that I have been fascinated with since that fateful December night 17 years ago when I first heard singer/composer Roger Waters barking out orders to the lighting crew before airplanes zoomed by and crashed. So I know a lot of the backstory behind the creation of this album: Waters' loss of his father in WWII, the slow descent into madness of Floyd's first singer, Syd Barrett, the increasing dehumanization of rock n' roll tours. But I knew none of that when I first heard this album. Instead, I thought I was going fricking crazy.

"The Thin Ice"- Yoko Ono's biggest solo hit was a song called "Walking on Thin Ice." I mention this because Roger Waters sings a little bit like Yoko Ono on this track. Which is to say not at all.

"Another Brick in the Wall, Part 1"- This album was also my introduction to songs that had parts to them. In my youth, a song was a song, and then you'd just hear another one. But then Roger Waters came along and decided that songs were never finished, just replayed again later with slightly different lyrics and even more headache inducing vocals. This song ends with a long guitar coda overdubbed with sounds of children playing. This scared the shit out of me when I was 13 for some reason.

"The Happiest Days of Our Lives"- This song starts with a helicopter. I don't really know why. I also don't know why that this was its own song and not just the beginning to "Another Brick in the Wall, part 2" It's all about how teachers are mean to kids. Which means your seventh grade brother wrote it.

"Another Brick in the Wall part 2"-Somewhere, someone has written a 40-page dissertation on the way this song blends disco beats with the refrain "we don't need no education" but I don't want to read it, and neither should you. And the person who wrote it should be ashamed of themselves. This song is famous for its use of a children's choir on the second verse. Those kids were all paid for their services with a copy of the album. Roger Waters used the money he made off this record to buy a private island. I don't know what that means, except that while Roger Waters has gone to write and record several more rock operas and one for real opera, none of these school kids ever went on to record their own rock opera. So while we'll never know who was the real musical genius behind the Wall--Roger Waters or a group of 20 eight year olds--I think we can make an educated guess. What?

"Mother"-After hearing this song, I was terrible to my own mother for about five years. So I think Pink Floyd owes my mother an apology.



"Goodbye, Blue Sky"-This is a really beautiful song about a cat eating a bird. And then about some zombies.

Then there are two flowers raping each other.


"Young Lust"-I think this song reveals the brilliance of the collaboration between Roger Waters and guitarist David Gilmour. So this song is supposed to be about a young boy's grappling with his nascent sexuality in the grip of a controlling mother.
I feel like Gilmour took one look at the song title and said "'Young Lust'? My guitar knows how to do that." and turned Roger Waters lonely song about masturbation into one that was 100% about cock. That's magic, folks.

"One of My Turns"-This song starts with the mother from Leave it to Beaver playing an operator trying to reach Pink Floyd's wife. And some man answers, which leads Pink Floyd to bring a groupie back to his hotel room. And then the groupie talks about all the cool stuff that it's in the room. This lasts for about forty-five minutes. Then the song starts. Over a really 1979-esque synthesizer, Pink talks about feeling cold as a razorblade and tight as a tourniquet and dry as a funeral drum, and then the drums and guitars kick in, supposedly representing his freak-out. He asks the groupie if she's like to see his favorite ax. When I was 13, I didn't know that people referred to guitars as axes, and thus thought he had turned into a serial killer. Or a lumberjack.

"Don't Leave Me Now"-During this song he doesn't mention anything about trees or logs or how cold it is, so I'm thinking he's not a lumberjack.

"Another Brick in the Wall part 3"-I had to convince my mother to let me rent "Pink Floyd The Wall" the movie from our local video store because it was rated R. I'm pretty sure I saw it before Christmas, which was only about two weeks after Jesse lent me the album, but it seemed the longest two weeks of my life. I was desperate to see the film the band made about the album, and when I finally saw it, it was torturous. It felt like two whole weeks while I was watching it. I thought that maybe everything just felt like it took forever when I was 13, but last year I tried to watch 'The Wall' movie again, and after about four hours I stopped, unable to take anymore. And that only got me to the second roar of the MGM lion.

"Goodbye Cruel World"-This is the end of the first disc of the double album, and I wonder what someone would've thought if they bought this from like a used record store and it only came with the first disc. I'd ask them, but they probably have killed themselves due to extreme depression.
The stage show for this record involved a giant wall being built across the stage with this song being the one where Waters inserted the final brick. I actually think this is one of the coolest conceits for a rock n' roll show I've ever heard of, although I don't know how I'd feel as an audience member if the band I went to see didn't want to see me so much they built a wall in front of me.

"Hey You"- I remember I went with this girl named Jenny to a homeless shelter to volunteer, and when her mom was driving us, this song came on the radio, and Jenny said "Oh, Mom, I love this song! Turn it up!" and I decided this meant that she and I needed to get married. She went on to become a Patriots' cheerleader and I write about albums I listen to on a blog that nobody reads, so you can see how that turned out.


"Is there Anybody Out There?"-This is a mostly solo acoustic guitar piece. I'm sure if I went to the Wall show, this is where Floyd started throwing rotten fruit at the audience from over the wall.

"Nobody Home"-This is one of the most affecting songs on the album. And really, if you wanted to know what Roger Waters felt about the rock n' roll lifestyle, this song would do the trick. He talks about having the obligatory Hendrix perm, which someday, when I'm not too busy writing on this blog that nobody reads and wondering what Jenny is up to, I might go into a barber shop asking for the obligatory Hendrix perm just to see what might happen.


"Vera Lynn"/"Bring the Boys Back Home"- These two songs are really one song, which is all about WWII. Roger Waters is meant to connect rock n' rollers going out onto tour with young men going off to battle the Nazis. One group saved Europe from self-destruction. The other made it cool to wave around lighters and dayglo sticks in the air and yell out "Freebird." I'm not one to pass judgment.

"Comfortably Numb"- This is probably the most famous song from this album, and is probably tied with "Money" to be the most famous Pink Floyd song of all time. Which is funny, because it's all about getting a hyper-cortisone shot before going onto stage to perform in a giant stadium rock show. That really boils down the universality of the Wall to its core, doesn't it?


This performance is from 2005, the final performance of Pink Floyd ever, and the first time the original (well non-Syd Barrett original) members played together in 25 years. I mention this because for all the fun I'm poking at this record, seeing this band reunite after so many years was a big deal to me, even though I was an adult. It was a great moment. Even though David Gilmour looks a little bit like Skeletor.

"The Show Must Go On"- You wouldn't know it from the liner notes (the liner notes don't even mention the band's drummer,Nick Mason, so I'd hardly call them comprehensive) but this song features background vocals from Toni Tennille, from the Captain & Tennille. Which might be the scariest thing about the whole record.



"In the Flesh"- A reprise of the album's opening track, this time without the question mark, and with added racial slurs. There's some business when you watch the film that Pink Floyd (the character, not the band) has turned in a fascist. Which I guess is cool. I mean, I'd guess I'd rather have a rock star pretend to be a fascist then pretend to be a socialist, like when John Lennon tells us to imagine no possessions when he's playing an ivory grand piano in his mansion.

"Run Like Hell"- At this point in the record/movie/Roger Water's life, things are so bleak I applaud all of us for keeping on.

"Is there anybody weak in the audience?" We're all weak, Roger.

"Waiting for the Worms"-There's actually an interesting point to be made with the central metaphor of this song, about how isolating ourselves from the world makes us vunerable to the decay of self-doubt. The problem is if you weren't isolated from the world before you listened to this record, you probably would be by the time you got to this song. Although I suppose it's better than another Captain and Tennille song, I suppose.


"The Trial"- I can't even imagine being a Pink Floyd fan during this time, having grown up with the band since the late 60s. Getting stoned and listening to Ummagumma or Set the Control for the Heart of the Sun getting to the end of this record and hearing them performing a Gilbert & Sullivan number about dueling toothed vaginas.
And giant balls.

Somewhere there is a cassette tape featuring the band I was in when I was 13 performing a cover of this song. This alone will prevent me from ever running for public office.

"Outside the Wall"-At this point in the show, the giant wall would be torn down, showering lightweight cardboard bricks on the audience, followed by this quiet melodica-driven song. On the tape I had, the sound quality was bad, I don't think I even heard this song at all the first few times I listened to the album. I was still thinking about the raping flowers, and giant toothed vaginas, and how rock music turned you into a nazi, and I just pulled the covers over my head.

LISTENING PARTY: Radio KAOS

I think that what the world needs more of is sci-fi concept albums. I know that we all have our favorites: Kilroy was Here by Styx, 2112 by Rush, Psychoderelict by Pete Townsend, that album that Isaac Asimov recorded with Rage Against the Machine. But my favorite, by far, is Roger Waters' Radio KAOS. And it's not because it's the story of a paraplegic boy interfacing with the world's computer systems to threaten the world with nuclear annihilation. It's not because Roger Waters believes in the power of a radio DJ to save humankind. It's because he believes that the soundtrack of the future is white English guy funk.

"Radio Waves"- There are some concept albums that have a loose concept that you really can only glean from reading the liner notes and interviews with the artist (e.g. any album Tori Amos has ever released)and there are some that act like a soundtrack to a movie that doesn't exist, with the concept hinted at with interstitial material between the songs (The Wall, before The Wall movie existed) and then there's "Radio Waves", where Roger Waters just tells us about Billy in his wheel chair, picking up radio waves through the computer system that allows him to communicate. This isn't really enough to fill up an entire four minutes, so Waters just spends the rest of the time naming US cities. Highlight: when he sings "Oklahoma City" and then lets out a 'Yeah!' after it.

"Who Needs Information?" So we get our first snippet of dialogue before this song, where DJ Jim Ladd plays DJ Jim Ladd who takes a call from Billy. Billy tells him he's from the Valley, and when Ladd thinks he means San Fernando, Billy calls him a schmuck and tells him that he meant Wales. Isn't that kind of a ridiculous thing to expect a DJ in L.A. to guess? It would be like I told you I spent the day in the city, and you, knowing I live in Southeastern Massachusetts, guess that I meant Boston, and I was all like, "No, The Emerald City of Oz! Jesus, you douche!" Okay, the song's about halfway over and I still haven't even started talking about it yet. Waters gives us a snippet of information about the plot of Radio KAOS, which somehow involves Billy watching his brother throw a cinderblock or something off an overpass. That's like two lines in the whole song, the rest of which is just typical Roger Waters-I hate everybody especially everybody else from Pink Floyd that isn't me. And it segues, rather unconvincingly from R&B background vocals, and a lite funk horn part into a Welsh choir. Because I always put those two things together. Just like I put together the plot from 'My Left Foot' with 'War Games.'

"Me or Him"- Let's slow things down here guys. Let's enter ballad territory and explain a little bit more about where everybody's coming from. So, apparently, after throwing a cinder block off an overpass, Billy's brother gets sent to jail. I don't know what he was expecting. Like, I've heard of people spitting off an overpass, but a cinderblock is just a whole other level of douchery. So Billy, all sad that his cinderblock throwing brother is in jail, decides to start calling into radio shows, and apparently he becomes so popular that people all over the world tune in to listen to him. Which seems about as likely as someone from Wales starting WWIII, so you can see that the window of disbelief is closing rapidly. This doesn't really work very well as a concept album because so much shit is happening, so much backstory needs explaining. That's why the best concept albums have such simple concepts. You know when your mother sees a really complicated movie, and she starts trying to explain it to you, and it doesn't make any sense because she just tells you snippets and forgets to fill you in on the most important parts. Now imagine if she wasn't your mother, but instead was the former bass player of Pink Floyd. And imagine while she's telling you about it, a competent but lifeless band played lite funk tunes behind her. There, I just saved you $8.99.

"The Powers That Be"-So three songs into his eight-song masterpiece, Roger Waters has decided to abandon the storyline he's been building so compellingly to throw in a song about how the world is run by a powerful cabal of leaders and businessmen who don't care about the common man, common men who can communicate with complex computer systems with their brains. And then he's decided that Mike & the Mechanics isn't going to steal his thunder, so he invites Paul Carrack to sing much of the lead vocal on this track. I wouldn't be surprised if that makes this the most successful song of Roger Waters solo career, because Carrack also sang lead on Squeeze's biggest hit, "Tempted." Which I think was about packing toothbrushes and combs and also about Cold War politics. I THINK.

"Sunset Strip"- I can't believe this song is written by the same guy who wrote "Animals." Because it sounds like mid-80s Don Henley. Except instead of the smooth California vocal stylings of the Eagles, it's sung by someone who sounds like one of the weird angry Muppets who used to appear on early Saturday Night Live.


"Home"-Okay, we've only got three songs left, and the plot hasn't really moved in two songs, and Waters includes a long DJ bit about different kinds of fish. I've struggled to tie it in as a metaphor for what's happening on the album, but it seems more like a private joke between Roger Waters and Jim Ladd. Although that seems unlikely, since can you picture Roger Waters being part of an private joke? This guy has only laughed once, and that was only the scary maniacal laugh at the end of "The Dark Side of the Moon." Also, we just passed my favorite part of the whole album, when Waters sings "Cowboys and Arabs" and he double tracks it, because it needs to be highlighted. I'm assuming Cowboys are the U.S. and Arabs are well, Arabs. This song also has nothing to do with the over-plot dealing with Billy's plan to annihilate the world because he's...bored? Pissed his brother was incarcerated for throwing a cinderblock off an overpass? Maybe he just hates the radio programming on radio KAOS. And since it seems to only play really lame lite-funk tunes by Roger Waters, maybe Billy's got a point. My second favorite of the whole album just passed by, too, where Waters sings "could be a baker, could a Laker, could be Kareem Abdul Jabar" which is the first time I've thought about Kareem since I was seven years old.

"Four Minutes"-Okay, right after "Home", Billy tells Jim Ladd that he's pressed the button, and Ladd laughs and hangs up on him. And then, for some reason, Ladd seems to really take it seriously, and starts to make announcements about the end of the world coming. A woman, it might be Clara Torres-who was the lady who orgasmed all over 'The Great Gig in the Sky' on Dark Side, is now orgasming all over this track, which is called four minutes to represent the four minutes I guess Waters thought we would have from when the Ruskies pushed the button and actual nuclear annihilation. I think a really good Twilight Zone episode would be if the button were actually pressed and then somebody sat down to listen to 'Four Minutes' and then halfway through just looked over at his wife or someone and said "Shit, it's really taking its time, huh?" Waters is really throwing out all the stops here, including using the sequencer part from 'On the Run' (again from Dark Side) as well as snippets of Margaret Thatcher speeches, and then it all builds to a crescendo: "Goodbye Billy," Jim Ladd says. And you think maybe the album is over. But you didn't count on one thing: Bob Geldof.

"The Tide is Turning (After Live Aid)"- Okay, as far as I can tell, Roger Waters was so moved by Live Aid, the big all day concert Bob Geldof put together to battle famine in Africa, that he wrote this song. And I guess I'm supposed to guess that Billy also saw Live Aid and then decided not to destroy the world after all. I have another hypothesis, though. Billy did destroy the world, and the afterlife is this song, over and over again. That's right, for our sins, we've all gone to Hell. This is probably the catchiest song Roger Waters has ever written, and I remember feeling moved when I watched his concert from the Berlin Wall, where he played the whole of "The Wall" one of my favorite albums of all time, and then closed out with this song, because after the fall of the Berlin Wall, maybe it did feel like the Tide was Turning, more so than Freddie Mercury rocking the crowd at Wembley Stadium with "Another One Bites the Dust" or something. Okay, so the song is winding down, and Roger Waters sings 'The Tide is turning' over and over again, and near the end, he says 'The Tide is turning, Billy', which of course is a reference to the main character of his thirty-seven minute epic (who has only like four lines, and isn't even mentioned in half the songs) but then, the very last line is "The tide is turning, sylvester." WHO THE HELL IS SYLVESTER? I have no idea. Is it the cat from those cartoons? Then who is Tweety? Who is the Old Lady? I think maybe I've missed Disc 1 of this album. This can't be it. But at the same time, I thank God that it is. Because I made it about thirteen minutes into this before I wanted to destroy the world. And scarily, it's actually an album I like. Especially since it includes this guy:


Who represents....maybe American imperialism? Or mutually-insured destruction? Or just cats with lisps?

LISTENING PARTY: Green

I've mentioned before the magical summer/fall of 1992, when fueled by teenage hormones I decided to listen to every record in my father's collection in an attempt to discover music. For a large part of my life prior to this, I had almost zero interest in popular music, except for an intense Weird Al period when I was in third grade and a short-lived and peer pressured interest in the rap group the Fat Boys. I suppose a really terrible graduate level thesis could be written about why certain albums spoke to me (Rush's "Roll the Bones") while others didn't (Supertramp's "Breakfast in America", but I'm not going to talk about those ones. I'm going to talk about the Chris Elliot show "Get A Life" and its soundtrack, "Green" by R.E.M.
"Get A Life" was a short-lived sitcom in which Chris Elliot played a 35-year paperboy who still lived with his parents.

(Did you catch the pedophile reference? Pretty edgy for 1991.)
Now "Green" by R.E.M. was in no way the soundtrack to "Get A Life", but the show did use the R.E.M. song "Stand" as its theme song. And here is my entrance way into the world of Mssrs. Berry, Buck, Mills, and Stipe.

"Pop Song 89"- This is one of those songs that never mentions its title in the lyrics at all. It's really less of a title than a description. Imagine how confusing bands' albums would be if they just described the song instead of naming it? How would you know which was your favorite Fray track if they were all just named "Mopey Song 07"? Or if Randy Newman albums just were listed "Ironically Racist Song" numbers 1-9? I could probably spend all day playing that game, but now the song is over. It was pretty good. Here, check it out yourself:


"Get Up"-I hope Michael Stipe isn't yelling at me to "Get Up" in some kind of political fashion, like "get up and end the invasion of Nicaragua" and is instead telling me to "get up off the couch and stop blogging about our albums and go eat one of those fancy cupcakes you have in your fridge" but I'm not sure. Oh, I thought of another one. Going to a jukebox and trying to decide if you want to hear "Song with Beautiful in the Title 2000" by U2 or "Song with Beautiful in the Title 2007" by U2.

"You Are the Everything"- That's nice of you to say, Michael. Unless you're making a comment about my weight, which wouldn't necessarily be uncalled for. Maybe I should get up more. But seriously, this is a really beautiful song. I'm pretty sure some one is playing a mandolin, presaging R.E.M.'s decision to record every song with a mandolin forever. Or just on "Losing My Religion" which I've heard so many times that it just seems like forever.

"Stand"- Sweet jesus is this song terrific. I love how anthemic it sounds, including the "straight-on-the-eighth-notes" piano hammering that happens during the chorus. Also, amazing? The wah-wah on the solo. What is more amazing than that? The lyrics, you say? I should agree. I read an interview with Michael Stipe once where he said that "Sugar, Sugar" by the Archies was more culturally significant than anything by the Beatles. And if that's true (and I might not totally disagree) than that must make "Stand" by R.E.M. the most culturally significant thing since the Renaissance. I'm only half-joking. Here's a clip of Chris Elliot riding a bike to watch while you think about it.

"World Leader Pretend"- I remember being 13 and struggling to understand the grammar of this title. Shouldn't it be world leader pretends? And then what is he pretending? Or she, although in 1988 I think the only female world leader was Imelda Marcos, and I don't think this song is about her, because the lyrics do not mention shoes once. So you do the math.

"The Wrong Child"- I'll just take a minute to express how impressed I am with R.E.M. "Green" was their major label debut for Warner Brothers after making five records with independent label I.R.S. and it's so weird. There are probably lots of songs you think came from this album that didn't. "The One I Love"? "It's the End of the World as We Know It And I Feel Fine"? Both from the album before. They get signed to a multi-million dollar major label record label,and you can picture the A&R guy rubbing his hands together thinking about all the hit singles R.E.M. are going to produce and they make this weird, weird record. It's beautiful and haunting, like the song "The Wrong Child" which sounds like Peter Gabriel-era Genesis, but man it's still pretty weird. The weirdest thing? The album is called "Green" but the album cover is totally orange. Did I just blow your mind? I think I did.

"Orange Crush"- This is probably the kind of song that Warners thought R.E.M. would be recording, and I like to imagine that they wrote 11 songs like this one, and then recorded a bunch of weirder songs, releasing those, but including this one, just so people knew that they could. I don't really know what this song is about, although I remember thinking that it was about Vietnam, probably because I had also just watched Apocalypse Now, and while I don't think they mention the defoliant "Agent Orange" by name in it, I made the connection none the less. Listening to it now, I can also hear helicopters in the background where you would imagine a guitar solo or something, which adds to the 'Nam effect. I would someday like to front a good rock'n'roll band, and I will have the drummer start each song with the rapid fire snare hits that Bill Berry uses throughout this song, no matter how poorly it fits with the song we're playing, or how sick the drummer or our audience gets of it. That's how rad it is.

"Turn You Inside Out"-I'm not sure if this is supposed to be a good thing to say to another person. I wonder if this is how Michael Stipe picks up guys or ladies at the bar? I don't know what I would do if somebody approached me and told me they would turn me inside out, although I might point out that it's probably pretty gross in there. I mean, the digestive system alone! Leave that stuff on the inside. Couldn't you just turn me upside down? Although that might succeed in making me turn myself inside out. How about you just buy me a drink and then tell me you like my smile?

"Hairshirt"- I have a hair shirt, if by hair-shirt you mean a hairy chest.

The first line of this song is "I am not the kind of dog who could keep you waiting for no good reason." Do dogs ever have good reasons for keeping people waiting? Isn't it usually "There was another dog butt over there" or "I'm a dog and I don't understand what you're saying, so I'm just going to keep standing here for a few more minutes until I get bored"? More mandolin, by the way. How did nobody not notice this before? People always talk about R.E.M.'s follow-up record "Out of Time" as being the one with all the mandolins, but they probably were thinking of this one. Man, it's hard to keep R.E.M. records straight. Imagine how much more difficult it would be if all the songs were just described instead of titled? Oh, wait, I already did this joke. Did I already mention that the album is called "Green" but the album cover is orange? I did. Man, it's a good thing the next song is the last song.

"I Remember California"- Which is a funny title, because have you ever tried to name all the U.S. states from memory? Because nobody ever forgets California. Or Texas. Or Florida. The weirdly shaped ones. You're more likely to forget Oklahoma. Or Missouri. Have you noticed how little I've talked about this record itself? It's because it's pretty good, although it would probably rank near the bottom of my favorite R.E.M. albums. But I really like R.E.M., much to the chagrin of my poor fiancee, so even one of their least-liked albums is still pretty good. But I'm glad this is the last song, because I've run out of funny and/or interesting things to say about this album.

Curses! An untitled, unlisted track! I know I've written about this before, but who was the first artist to include an hidden bonus track on a CD because I'd like to kick them in the face. I hate putting a CD into my itunes and it has like 47 tracks of silence before the bonus track which itself only starts after 3 minutes of tape hiss. Or when the last track on the CD is 35 minutes long because it has the really awesome last song from the album, twenty-two minutes of silence, and then a kind of lame jam type song. Sorry, I didn't realize I had all that anger in me. Although I will admit this hidden R.E.M. song is a separate track and there isn't a ridiculously long silence before it starts, and it's actually a pretty fun and cool little song, so I'll just pretend that the track information from song number 11 just fell off the back of the CD case. Which is orange, if I haven't already mentioned it.

LISTENING PARTY: Batman

Take that, Heath Ledger!

1989 was an important year for me. I of course can remember specific incidents from before then: a day here, an moment or two there. But 1989 was the first time I had a visceral sense of the passing of time. Where I was aware my life existed on a continuum with each day leading from the day before and leading into the next. Some might say this is because I was approaching my tenth birthday and was becoming more aware of time worked. Other might claim that I was beginning to mature and develop my sense of self. But the truth is this: I became cognizant of the passing of time in 1989 solely because I was counting down to the release of the Batman movie.

Nowadays I don't think you can walk six feet without tripping over a superhero/comic based movie, but in 1989 the release of Tim Burton's Batman was unprecedented, especially to a 9 and 5/6 year old boy like myself. I couldn't wait, and in anticipation of the film, I gathered every piece of movie related merchandise I could get my hands on (mainly, since I was so young, other people got it for me, but I was such a willing recipient.)

So I had the Batman action figures, the Batman movie novelization, the Batman poster and sticker book, the Batman cereal. I even had the Batman shaped piggy-bank. But the strangest Batman-related item I owned was Prince's Original Motion Picture Soundtrack. I begged for this, even though BOTH my mother and father asked me several times if I was sure I wanted it, because they were certain I wouldn't enjoy it. How wrong they were!

"The Future"-The album opens with dialogue from Michael Keaton's amazing "Tell all your friends about me" line from the film. And just as the crook he's dangling over the edge of the building whimpers, "What are you?" Prince's funky drum machine kicks in to answer: I'm the funky Batman, retard. This song's only relation to the film is that it quotes Jack Nicholson's "Think about the future" line. So much of the 1989 Batman film boils down to a collection of little catchphrases that I'd heard well before I went to opening night with my dad on June 23, 1989. I marvel that anybody at Warner Brothers thought that Prince, who looks like a Batman villain, should do the soundtrack, but it's one of those decisions that seems so brilliant in its stupidity that whoever came up with it must've been an idiot savant like Rain Man. Which also came out in 1989. It comes full circle.

"Electric Chair"-If I knew anything about electric guitars back in 1989 I'd have been pretty impressed by Prince's playing on this track. But at the time I was probably just waiting for him to drop a Riddler reference into the lyrics. As it stands, this song has nothing to do with Batman at all, except that its chorus says that if a man can be considered guilty for what goes on in his mind then give him the electric chair for all the dirty things he's going to think. This just shows how little Prince understood Batman. The Caped Crusader is against capital punishment, which is why the Joker is able to kill dozens of people every time he escapes. Because Batman won't even put someone in the electric chair for the crimes they actually commit, nevermind those that go on in their minds. My best guess is that Prince wrote this song before he ever heard of the Batman movie, probably as part of his deal with the devil to write two songs every hour in exchange for girls not laughing at how short he is. Seriously, Prince is really, really short,but still gets lots of beautiful women. And he writes a lot of songs. I think the connection is obvious.

"The Arms of Orion"-Sheena Easton? Whatever happened to Vicki Vale? And this song, again to the disappointment of 9 and 5/6 year old Ryan, has nothing to do with Batman whatsoever. And what are the arms of Orion? I'm seriously not up on my astronomy, so I wouldn't even know where to look. Also, how much stargazing do you think they get to do in Gotham City, with that Bat-signal shining all the time? I suppose you have bigger concerns than star-gazing when at any moment you could get impaled on a giant umbrella by the Penguin. This song sounds like it was written for Barbara Streisand instead of for the Dark Knight. Very disappointing. I mean the song is decent, it just doesn't inspire me to go out and strike fear into the hearts of criminals. It does make me want to invest in a Fairlight synthesizer and tympani drums.

Partyman by Prince from the film Batman


"Partyman"- I just heard the Joker! He said something before this song started! That's what I'm talking about. Prince deliberated speeds up his voice in this song, similar to how he did it in the song Kiss, which in 1989 I hadn't heard yet. In 1989 I wasn't so concerned with how Prince was kind of doing lamer versions of better songs he'd already written so much as I was with how he was insisting on calling Joker "Partyman" They do play this song in the movie, when Joker is destroying all the artwork in the museum, which seems like kind of a crazy party, if you ask me. However, I wouldn't be surprised to find out that this is the kind of party Prince has for his birthday.

"Vicki Waiting"- This song has it all. Jack Nicholson voice sample, ringing phone sound effects, name of Batman character in the title. It also has a dirty joke in the first verse about the size of Batman's organ. This is probably the only time in the thousands of Batman stories that someone has accused the Dark Detective of stuffing his codpiece. I think Prince=sex for most people (which a week after the passing of Michael Jackson reminded us that for most people Michael Jackson = sexless freak. Complete opposites) so he adds an inappropriate sexual edge to what is probably the least sexual character to dress up in an all rubber suit ever.



"Trust" This song is also from the movie, where the Joker lures the denizens of Gotham City to his parade so he can give them free money then gas them to death. I'm surprised more politicians haven't attempted this tack. I think even when I was 9 and 5/6 years old I could tell that Prince played all the instruments himself, and I think this track is the most obvious about it. Oh, sweet, a Robert Wuhl vocal sample. I remember feeling like I should watch his show Arliss when it premiered out of some kind of outdated loyalty to this movie. That's how important Batman was to me back then. If you were in the movie, I treated you like royalty. The actor Pat Hingle played Commissioner Gordon and for years afterwards, I would watch any shitty movie that was on UHF Saturday afternoons if I saw his little hangdog face in it.

"Orange Crush"- I love this drink. Oh, wait, the title is "Lemon Crush" which sounds even tastier. This song is one of my favorites on the record, even though it is even further away from the movie than all the other tracks. The liner notes tell you who is "singing" each song, and this one is credited to Vicki Vale for some reason, even though one of the verses actually uses the word "jobba" which, as all my fellow nerds will recognize as the name of the slug gangster from Return of the Jedi. I think my 9 and 5/6 year old self would have killed to have Batman team up with Han Solo to battle Two-Face and Boba Fett. It was never meant to be. And if it happened now, I would probably kill someone to PREVENT it from happening.

"Scandalous"- This song is "sung" by Batman. Not even Bruce Wayne. I think I would really like to see a Batman musical. I know that Jim Steinman, the guy who wrote all of Meatloaf's songs, wrote one ten years ago, and his sturm und drung approach to rock music with bad punning titles is maybe even more inappropriate to Batman than Prince's slow-groove sex music. Example: In this song, Batman tells...someone...that he can't wait to wrap his legs around them. Usually if Batman wraps his legs around you, it is because he is trying to break your spine while his hands are bound behind his back. People he might be saying this to: Killer Croc, Mad Hatter, Bane. I don't think Prince means it the same way, though. Also, and this might be my lack of sexual knowledge here, but isn't it more common for the lady to wrap her legs around the man? But then again, Prince is in to some pretty freaky shit. I mean, Batman is, too, but in a different way. I mean Batman might dress up like a bat and terrorize the criminal element, but he isn't the kind of guy who would wrap his legs around a girl in a romantic gesture. I mean, c'mon.

"Bat Dance" What.the.hell.is.this. When I was a kid, I begged my mom to let me watch MTV when this premiered, as I wasn't typically allowed to watch it. And sweet lord. Check out this link if you thought your life was complete without a bunch of dancing Batmen in it. I know mine wasn't. This song isn't so much a song as a sound collage of random snippets of dialogue from the film against so bad they should be outlawed drum machines and an actually pretty rad guitar solo. And in this way, Prince is just like Batman: both see a world that is falling apart at the seams, and each has found his own way to try and make that world right. Batman strikes out into the night to avenge the death of his parents to try and prevent anyone from suffering like he has. Prince dresses up like the Joker (and he started doing this at least 5 years before the movie came out) and records an average of one album every six hours to avenge the fact that he is only 4 feet 11 inches tall. Which was exactly how tall I was in 1989, when I popped this cassette into my boombox, stared at the giant bat emblem on the tape cover, and got superfreaked in the ear for forty-two minutes. Luckily, I got taller.



This was probably the best day of my life to this point.