My music taste is extremely eclectic but I also – as evidenced by the all-Humphrey-Bogart-all-the-time energy in other aspects of my life – have a one-track mind when I’m into something. Like … watching a movie right now that doesn’t star Humphrey Bogart strikes as me JUST PLAIN WRONG.
It’s a phase. It’ll pass.
But I’m like that with music too. The same 5 CDs are in constant rotation.
It’s like my passions are actually VIRUSES. Like: just sweat it out, it’ll pass, the fever will pass.
This morning, I thought: Huh. Perhaps a constant diet of Foo Fighters and Eminem is getting a bit old. What else have I got going on…
Anyway, saw a random CD that I bought years ago while I was in Ireland. Robbie Williams – the bad boy of British pop – who is … just … the man cracks me up. Not wildly talented, no. But hot, in a very bad boy way. He is completely living it up, while his 15 minutes of fame last. And there is this campy ridiculous energy in his music – it just strikes me as hysterical. He plays stadium shows in Europe. He’s HUGE over there.
When I was in Ireland, you literally could not get away from Robbie Williams. It was 24/7 Robbie Williams, Cher, and boy bands galore. That was IT. I remember my sister Jean murmuring to me, “Damn, I yearn for something acoustic!!”
But by the end of our trip, I had fallen deeply deeply in love with Robbie Williams. I couldn’t get enough, frankly.
So I bought his first solo album (he had broken free of his boy band … oooh, he’s such a rebel). It’s hysterical.
The best thing about Robbie Williams is he doesn’t take himself seriously. AT ALL.
Two Robbie Williams anecdotes – He’s always showing up at press junkets wasted and saying wildly inappropriate things. It’s so refreshing.
1. Robbie Williams has an enormous shrieking female following. He’s a classic bad boy. Er … my type, exactly. A reporter asked Robbie, “So Robbie – what is the most interesting thing a female fan has ever given you?”
Robbie replied, “Herpes.”
2. The second story is this: Robbie Williams told it himself in some interview I read. He was high on ecstasy (see? I just … I think it’s hilarious that he would blatantly admit that at some press junket.), and he went to a party. He was high as a kite. Completely out of it. He walked over and stared at an enormous and gorgeous painting on the wall – he was entranced. He stared and stared and stared and stared.
Bono finally walked over to him and said, “Hey there, Robbie, what are you lookin’ at, mate?”
Robbie raved, “This painting! God, it’s amazing, isn’t it?”
And Bono replied, “That’s a window.”
Dysfunctional? Oh yes.
Devastatingly charming? Uhm … YEAH.
At least for a girl like myself.
Anyway, where was I. Oh right. Robbie Williams.
I haven’t listened to this CD in years.
So I had one of those weird time-travel moments when I heard the first chords of the first song. I was catapulted immediately back to the exact time and the exact place in my life when I regularly listened to this album. The entire picture unfolded before me, fully-formed, in 2 seconds.
Everything was there. What I saw, the smells, the sounds … the FEEL of the time …
You know how songs can do that? Uncanny, right?
In the fall of … I don’t even remember the year … it was a couple of years ago … I was involved with a semi-homeless alcoholic bipolar gorgeous WACKO man who also happened to capture my heart for a brief season. You may remember him as Rimbaud’s Son.
He lived at the YMCA in Bayonne, New Jersey. He worked at the A&P. He had written a novel. He loved Rimbaud. He is now living on the streets in New York City.
I was living in Hoboken at the time in a great apartment, just the BEST – with Jen, my roommate of many years. And suddenly I started bringing this man around … Oh, words cannot describe how … insane and indiVIDual and … unforgettable Rimbaud’s son was.
At the time – the autumn that I dated this guy – I had a car. My sister was in Ireland, and gave it to me while she was over there. It was little Camry. Grey.
And I would drive down Kennedy Boulevard to get to Bayonne, to pick up my bipolar boyfriend. It was always like a prison-break for him. I was his savior.
And every single time I made this drive, I listened to Robbie Williams.
To me, Robbie Williams was as much a part of that drive down to Bayonne as my car keys, my key chain.
So I heard the first chords of the first song today and – like magic – that entire world manifested in front of me.
— the sun on the windshield
— the leaves turning red, purple, falling
— the institutional white brick of the YMCA on a nice old street in Bayonne
— my crazy green-eyed boyfriend sitting on the steps, waiting for me, smoking
— the slightly uneven slant to the floor in my apartment’s foyer – Jen and I used to place a ball at one end and watch it roll across the room on its own
— the way Jen and I painted the walls of our kitchen a deep baroque red
— the gleaming World Trade Center out our kitchen window, the sunrise on the red walls
— our amazing fire escape, facing the Manhattan skyline – she and I would sit out there in our tank tops and boxer shorts, drinking beer at night
— I would buy coffee at Dunkin Donuts – one for me and one for Rimbaud’s son – A month later, after I broke up with him, he called me, randomly, all suffused with melancholy: “Member how you used to bring me coffee???” The smell of coffee on a sunny Saturday morning.
— I also remembered Rimbaud’s son sitting next to me in that little Camry, as we careened down the sun-blasted Kennedy Boulevard, drinking coffee – and he was as happy as a little kid to be with me … and Robbie Williams blared … there’s one line in one song, “and that’s a good line to take us to the bridge…” (Robbie is commenting on his own song-writing skills – or lack thereof) – and Rimbaud’s Son always thought that was a very clever line. Every time we heard it, he would crack a smile. “I like that.”
This entire time in my life began to run in my head. Like a movie. A newsreel.
Strange. How memories, how life, is contained in something like as simple as a song.
When my father first told my brother and I that my mother had died, “The Tide Is High” by Blondie was playing on a radio somewhere in the background. I completely freak every time I hear even a few notes of that song. It gives me the creeps. It’s a perfectly decent song, but I hate it more than any other in the world and can’t really explain why.
Makes total sense to me why you would hate it. Total.
1) “I Guess That’s Why They Call It The Blues” by Elton John. I was working at a radio station, in college, and realizing the girl I’d been madly in love with since tenth grade was never going to reciprocate, not really. Not the kind of song that I’d ever pay attention to otherwise – and yet when I hear it (and it’s been popping up a lot lately), I can still smell that old control room.
B) “Money For Nothing”. I first heard it on the road to the Twin Cities, the day I moved here after college. When I hear it, I can smell burning oil (from the car I had at the time, which cost $125 and a case of Miller), and feel the stifling heat as I prowled the ‘burb my girlfriend at the time lived in, trying to find where I was supposed to be. “Shout” (Tears for Fears, not the Isley Brothers) is about the same, actually.
III) “Darkness On The Edge Of Town”. I hear this, and BOOM, it’s ninth grade, recognizing the characters living all around me, and can sense the panic, realizing I HAD to get the flock out of North Dakota.
1) “I Guess That’s Why They Call It The Blues” by Elton John. I was working at a radio station, in college, and realizing the girl I’d been madly in love with since tenth grade was never going to reciprocate, not really. Not the kind of song that I’d ever pay attention to otherwise – and yet when I hear it (and it’s been popping up a lot lately), I can still smell that old control room.
B) “Money For Nothing”. I first heard it on the road to the Twin Cities, the day I moved here after college. When I hear it, I can smell burning oil (from the car I had at the time, which cost $125 and a case of Miller), and feel the stifling heat as I prowled the ‘burb my girlfriend at the time lived in, trying to find where I was supposed to be. “Shout” (Tears for Fears, not the Isley Brothers) is about the same, actually.
III) “Darkness On The Edge Of Town”. I hear this, and BOOM, it’s ninth grade, recognizing the characters living all around me, and can sense the panic, realizing I HAD to get the flock out of North Dakota.
1) Moondance, by Van Morrison always takes me back to a particularly erotic, tequila soaked night in Snug Harbor………….. aaah.
2)Oh, and Jim Moore (remember that sweetheart, Sheila) and I decided a long time ago that whenever one of us hears “Brandy”,we would think of each other because we both loved that song so. I always do.
3) My Old School, by Steeley Dan…. the Wrigleyside of course!
Any song from “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road” reminds me of your room with Marilyn in Heathman. Also, James Taylor “Sweet Baby James” and Eagles “One of these nights” reminds me of Heathman Hall. “Crazy Love” and “This Woman’s Work” remind me of when my babies were born. Sheila- I made Tom a book for Christmas one year with lyrics of songs that had meaning for US, with little stories and memories, explaining each of them. It was so much fun to make.