If the cover song is the highest form of musical flattery, then David Byrne must be tickled pink at how his 1983 classic “This Must Be the Place (Naïve Melody)” has fared over the years. It was perhaps most famously covered by Arcade Fire, with the endorsement (and participation) of Byrne, as a B-side to their single “Neighborhood #3 (Power Out).” But it’s also been moped over by the Counting Crows, stretched into a full-on jam by The String Cheese Incident, piped from a laptop by MGMT and whimpered by Kyp Malone of TV on the Radio, who prefaced his cover by saying “A lot of people have told me this is their favorite Talking Heads song.”
It’s a special springtime here at Trash Collector, as the spirit guides of trash connoisseurs everywhere, the Ramones, have two crucial releases out: Johnny Ramone’s autobiography, Commando, and Joey Ramone’s second posthumous album, …ya know?. Since the Ramones are probably the reason why I started this column in the first place, I’m taking the opportunity to analyze Johnny’s book, Joey’s album, and what they add to the band’s mythology.
The summer after my junior year of college was one of those dips in my life where I started feeling a reflexive boredom with music. At the time, I lucked into a cool job booking bands at the town’s largest venue, The Dame. Unless we had booked a larger national artist that routed through on a Monday, we hosted an open mic night against our better judgment as a means to have some sort of music on a slower weeknight.
Jeremy Larson does the best Michael McDonald impersonation that I’ve ever seen. It’s low-toned, muffled, and sounds like a decade’s old Trans-Am chugging around San Francisco’s concrete slopes on a rainy day. Oddly enough, the only person that comes even close is the artist himself in one of his über-ironic self parodies (something he’s done fairly recently). Granted, anyone can channel McDonald’s funky baritone, and it’s an entertaining voice to dabble with, but Larson’s is a cut above the rest. For some reason, I think about this every time I hear The Doobie Brothers’ “Listen to the Music” – even if it’s in the shower, post-gym, and I’m singing along, too.
I’m a lucky guy.
At this year’s South by Southwest, I had the chance to see The Jesus and Mary Chain’s midnight gig at The Belmont. It was the perfect storm of amazing venue, sizable crowd, great weather, and the band being as witty and on the ball as possible. I can say without even a hint of dishonesty that I enjoyed the concert, but like so many other times, I didn’t enjoy it the way I should have or with as much intensity. The whole time, I found myself obsessing over minute details: the distance of my feet from another attendee’s, if I’d remember the setlist, when the last time I ate was, why the guy in the vest has his arms folded, how long until bootleg footage ends up on YouTube, and a million other useless thoughts that only serve to detract.
I never loved living in West Virginia.
Even growing up in Huntington, home of Marshall University and a decent hub of culture with such novelties as a modest annual international film festival and a gay bar, I felt isolated from the offerings of the wider world. Not realizing what a walking cliché I was, I reveled in hating my small town and yearned to live someplace worldly, like New York City or Haight-Ashbury in the ‘60s. My father’s commitment to his home state, and his frustration and wounded feelings over my disdain for the Mountain State didn’t hurt either. There’s a picture I remember from when I was about three: my dad and I posing in front of a tent in Cranberry Glades, where he loved to camp. And he looked so happy. Little did he know that, years down the road, I’d start to prefer hanging out with my friends on the weekend to hiking, or start to think his music, which I’d once loved wiggling to, was terrible. By the time I graduated high school, being too cool for West Virginia had become a linchpin of my identity, and being a monster to my dad was a favorite pastime.
Here’s what I remember about the first time I visited San Francisco: I saw Alcatraz, I paid an all-silver man to robot walk while playing a kazoo, and I was giddy when I learned that George Lucas lived nearby. I was 10.
Rob is really excited to talk about Phish in the way that a stock broker would be really excited to talk about his latest D&D match. Like other marginalized groups, being a Phish fan carries a certain kind of guilt that transforms into a torrent of excitement when the environment is free of any kind of judgment. In Rob’s and my environment, this behavior is called “nerding out.” But outside the safe zone, Rob talked about “coming out” as a Phish fan as if liking the band was somehow shameful, a word Aaron Leitko chose for his 2010 article “For indie rockers, ‘jam band’ increasingly no longer a shameful term”.
At my first Bonnaroo, I kept wondering who this “Molly” character was. I felt bad for these stray souls crying out, “Have you seen Molly? I’m looking for Molly!” My Roo-Crew and I took to belting out other female names in a half-baked attempt to poke fun at these misplaced festies. “Stacy?” “I’m looking for Bethany!” “Rebecca, where are you?” Eventually, the lingo was explained to me by my more savvy crew, who informed me that we were actually mocking these people’s constant quest for pure MDMA, the ecstasy base also known as Molly.
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