The first note of Frogger

On the old Atari 2600 I would play a lot of Frogger. The opening theme, you may recall, went something like this:







(at 0:49 in this review)

However, if you held down the reset switch, that first note would go until you let it back up, which made it seem like a pickup note and made the melody sound more like this confusing version:






I remember holding down the switch for as long as I could. That's still the feeling I have for long pickup notes landing into the start of a melody. And maybe it has something to do with these retarded remixes I am so fascinated with.

Also, there is the matter of

Barbarbara Ann

Take my hand.

Do you have to?

Do you have to?

The top four lines from "Against the Wind" by Bob Seger

• "I wish I didn't know now what I didn't know then."
  
• "Never worried about paying or even how much I owed."
  
• "I was living to run and running to live"
  
• "I found myself alone, surrounded by strangers I thought were my friends"

Also, the top concept from the song: the transition across the three verses from running to seeking shelter and back to running against the wind (first a youthful running against & not even noticing the wind, then with age noticing and seeking shelter against the wind, and then the final running against the wind as the conscious choice of the aging rocker burdened with worldly duties).

It's so surprising to finally listen to these lyrics that have gone in one ear and out the other my whole life, and find them so poetic.

Also, the piano solo.

Even bluer

This one was too easy so I only did some.

A time to die

I heard Gram Parsons talked them out of this version.

Rare Vincent Price outtake from the Thriller sessions

Most people don't know this, but they actually had to bring in a ringer with a spookier laugh.

Maybe the People Would Be the Times or Between Clark and Hilldale

Here is a rare outtake from the Forever Changes sessions. Arthur Lee and the trumpet player both nearly passed out after the passage beginning around 1:43, so they decided to shorten it in the album version we all know and love.

Ritchie Valens rare studio outtake

I recently came across this rare recording of Ritchie Valens' Come On Let's Go. I guess he had to shorten some of these notes so the song could fit on a 45. Also I never knew he was part robot.

It isn't easy but I'll try

I woke up with this terrible pun in my head, then spent the past hour or so trying to build a joke around it. I think it was gonna have something to do with that movie Throw Momma From the Train. It was gonna be something like "What did Sidney Poitier say to Danny Devito on the set of Throw Momma From the Train?"

Figure 12: Toss her with love.

I was a highwayman

Willie Nelson says:
I was a highwayman
Along the coach roads I did ride
With sword and pistol by my side
Many a young maid lost her baubles to my trade
Many a soldier shed his lifeblood on my blade
The bastards hung me in the spring of twenty-five
But I am still alive.

then Kris Kristofferson says:
I was a sailor
I was born upon the tide
And with the sea I did abide.
I sailed a schooner round the Horn to Mexico
I went aloft and furled the mainsail in a blow
And when the yards broke off they said that I got killed
But I am living still.

after which Waylon Jennings says:
I was a dam builder
across the river deep and wide
where steel and water did collide
A place called Boulder on the wild Colorado
I slipped and fell into the wet concrete below
They buried me in that great tomb that knows no sound
But I am still around..I'll always be around..and around and around and
around and around

and finally Johnny Cash concludes:
I fly a starship
across the Universe divide
and when I reach the other side
I'll find a place to rest my spirit if I can
Perhaps I may become a highwayman again
Or I may simply be a single drop of rain
But I will remain
And I'll be back again, and again and again and again and again..


In this song Willie Nelson is a dude who robs ladies and kills soldiers. A bad ass. An outlaw. But eventually he gets caught, and hanged. But see, then his spirit returns, a bit later in History. Now he is Kris Kristofferson, who is by far the most likely sailor of the bunch. Now who can say how glorious it is to make a boat go around some land (I mean, what the fuck, are you gonna go through the land?), I guess in this chapter it's just he's kind of an idiot and he fucked some kind of thing up with the sails or jibs or whatever, I dunno, go ask some blue-blood yacht dude. Anyhow, you'd think this spirit was gone by now, since it got hanged and also drowned. But nope. It comes back, a bit further into History, this time in the person of Waylon Jennings, who got a hand from FDR what with the WPC building a gigantic dam. Here things might be said to get a little metaphorical. The place is called Boulder but it's getting filled with concrete. The Colorado was wild but they are taming it. Steel and water did collide, but at what cost? At the cost of one Waylon Jennings. Granted, he was clumsy and he was the guy who didn't do the smart thing and be extra careful while walking around on top of a giant not-yet-solidified dam. So anyhow now the spirit got hanged, drowned, and encased in what was at the time the largest man-made monument named after a vacuum in History. This brings us, dear reader, not to the present, because the present can't really mean anything to itself, now can it, so instead it brings us instead to the Future, in the person of Johnny Cash, starship pilot. He is flying the entire distance of the universe, not just lurkin' around outside a town, or going around some land in a boat in the water, or spanning the distance between two sides of an enormous gorge. As we well know the universe is finite and who knows what is on the other side. There are those who say it is the same, only backwards, only you can't even tell it's backwards, since you, too, are backwards. There are those who say it is just sort of boring. Nobody knows for sure. Johnny Cash doesn't even know for sure, but he has whittled down the possibilities to two: either he will become a highwayman again, thus starting the cycle anew, or, alternatively, and I'd like to put in my vote for more likely, he may become a single drop of rain. Here is where I like to imagine that every drop of rain used to be a highwayman, an inept sailor, a clumsy dambuilder, or an astronaut. One of those four. Nothing else. I myself, when I reach the other side, may turn into a single grain of sand. I think that is the fate of the musician, the logger, the banker, and the flight attendant. Whereas it has been demonstrated that piano tuners, butchers, systems analysts, and tinkerers shall return a single breath of air. We will all try to find a place to rest our spirits if we can, but chances are we will be back again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, only each time one step lower in a major scale, until we get almost back to the tonic again, at which point I suppose you should just restart the song because not even Johnny Cash could hit that bottom one if he tried.

The Spanish Civil War

When I was a kid I loved Metallica, and they had a song called "For Whom the Bell Tolls" that every single kid metal band since then has played. I swear to god. You got a little brother or cousin in a metal band? Ask them. They played it.

Anyhow, I heard there was a book by that title and so I read it. I found it BORING, but I was probably too young. That experience saved me a lot of time, since I was also into Iron Maiden, and they are famous for having songs named after great literary works but having nothing to do with those literary works:

• Stranger in a Strange Land
  
• The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner
  
• Murders in the Rue Morgue
  
• Phantom of the Opera (it was too a book)
  
• Revelations (do bible chapters count?)
  
• Rime of the Ancient Mariner
  
• Heaven Can Wait (ok, that's a movie, but still)
  
• A Tale of Two Cities (ok, I made that one up, but still)
  
• Only the Good Die Young (do Billy Joel songs count?)

When I was an even younger kid I had been to the Alcazar in Toledo and was pretty moved by it. I must admit that I still don't really know much about the Spanish civil war, but I do know this giant half-crushed building made me feel something. There was a story, I don't even know if it went with this building or some other one, but there was a story of a besieged building, and of a tired general finally surrendering with only two words-- "no más." That really stuck with me.


A while back I had this list of embarassing confessions that started out with me not getting what was so great about the Clash. Well, that caused a small outcry with some of my friends, and soon I had a lot of advice on what to listen to and why. I had mix CDs and playlists and documentaries and books, and I decided it was my duty to give the Clash another try.

It didn't work.

Until one day I was tinkering around on the piano, and my wandering made-up melody suddenly seemed like it had to go a certain way-- a certain AWESOME way that must be from the awesomest song ever, what the hell was it from?

It must have sounded kinda like this:



I had to ask around and see what it was I was stealing, because I know the feeling of making something up and I know the feeling of stealing something you didn't even know you knew, and I knew this must be a little turn of musical phrase I had heard somewhere.

Lo and behold:

* * *

I've never read another Hemingway novel. I still listen to Metallica and Iron Maiden from time to time. I dream of going back to Spain. I love the Clash.

I offer you this humble song

I knew this guy in high school
everyone called him Steve
but Steve was really his middle name
his real first name was Jesus

Well everybody used to make fun of him
when they found out Jesus was his name
I remember I used to make fun of him too

[instrumental interlude]

Oooohh, Ooooohh
Whoa-oh-ohhhh, etc.

[electric piano solo]

Ooooh, ya, whoa-oh, etc.

Well you know, you grow up, you get more mature
your horizons grow and then sometimes
you hang out with people you used to make fun of
and go over to their house sometimes

Well I met Steve's folks once after we saw a movie
it was Halloween 4, it was ok
I shook Steve's dad's hand and he said "call me Phil,
but my real name is God

but not the famous one,
never knew my dad but I heard he was a heathen
probably just forgot to finish writing Godfrey
on the birth, on the buh-urth, on the biiiirrrth,

[whispered] certificate"

Yaaa, oooh,
[guitar]

Well they went by Steve and Phil
so people wouldn't make fun of them
but really they were Jesus and God
but not,

but nah--ot,

but naaaa-y-aaaaa-y-aaaaaaught, whoa-oh-whoa-hoh,

the famous ones...

[outro]