And every little lady dreams lavender memories

Dear friends,

I'm so busy and so broke (SO MANY EXPENSES! Note to self: get loan) that I've jumped past "terrified" into what is an almost exhilarating, frenzied, speeding Red Shoes pirouette towards fiscal self-destruction. I need to make more money NOW or at least be locked in a little room for the month of Spendtember and not be allowed to buy anything, go anywhere or organize anything. Since that's not gonna happen any time soon, I may resort to writing some wish-fulfillment chick lit tome packed with enough sex and clothing detail that it would rake enough buckage for concerts and "projects" for years to come.

1. Morrissey's Boy Racer gets stuck in my head like a Brain Candy memory; an endless, hellish loop of a happy moment.


It's not the whole song, it's not even the chorus, it's the first few lines: "He's just too good natured AND/he's got too much money AND/ he's got too many girlfriends/I'm jealous/that's all" over and over and over and over in my head. I'm jealous, that's ALL!?!?! Oh are you really? Tt's just so damn succinct, I can't go further in the story; it's all been summarized. Not that Boy Racer in its entirety is no good, the tune goes along pleasantly and has the not completely unexpected typical Morrissean chorus shift upwards at the end. But those opening lines... that Moz. He sure understands how to deliver simplicities with unexpected force. He hits you with a flower.

Buy Southpaw Grammar by Morrissey.

2. I'd like to draw your attention to the now slightly less ghetto show listings over here on the left. Now the bands are all linked to their sites or the approximation thereof. Someday I'll even link the venues but not now. I'm not that good or that fast at the whole typing thing. I got a two finger method. It works for me.

I would like to have included a listing for this Friday, September 9th's FREE El Jezel and Emma La Reina show but being that the venue is a practice space/loft in that mysterious area known as Dumbo, I'll direct you towards Stereoactive NYC instead. The site should be able to provide ya with all information you need regarding the start time, how to get there, etc. Contributor Bryan is mc-ing. That alone should be worth the trip.

3. Lavender Hill by The Kinks is a song I would have on the soundtrack to my murder mystery movie, if I ever were ever to make one. This film would be set in the country (of course) and the detective assigned to the case is sloppy but brilliant in a Falk/Matthau way. At some point towards the end, a skittish townsperson who is about to provide the investigation with an important last minute clue will get brained by a large piece of stonework before they can deliver it. In a wintry garden. Full of squawking birds. Now, despite my love of cinema cliches, I would eschew the whole "This is why I did it" speech that the killer always gives after they've been exposed. I hate those scenes. Actors always go all dead eyed and steely voiced to show they have been secretly EVIL all along and yawn, yawn, yawn city.

But this has nothing to do with the song, does it? Lavender Hill is more than a mid-tempo bit o' 60's fluff about some man's nostalgia* for a time and place that probably doesn't even exist outside of his whimsical head. Thanks to the layered harmonies that go "Ooooh" like cartoon ghosties behind Davies' powder soft vocal, it has some of that same subtle creepiness that's in the better known (and also tea-time set) Sunny Afternoon. But unlike Sunny Afternoon (which is a genius ditty that sits in a very exalted place in the musical tchochke case of my mind. Come to think of it, The Kinks take up several shelves), it doesn't have that particular protagonist's lazy hostility. The narrator of Lavender Hill is a quiet sort who has resigned himself to be forever chasing rainbows or at least dreaming about it. A nice mix selection should you be looking for one.


Lavender Hill/The Kinks (mp3)

Buy The Kinks Are The Village Green Preservation Society by The Kinks.

Love, D

* Isn't it interesting how past the early I'm-gonna-get-a-slice classics, Raymond Douglas Davies wrote almost exclusively about nostalgia? And he was in his freakin' 20's? Tt's like he's been waiting all his life to be the old man he's always seen himself as. For a delightful, if a bit bizarre, late summer read, check out his "unauthorized autobiography", X-Ray. Not your mother's or even dirty old uncle's autobiography, X-Ray is as dryly humorous, elegant and quietly sad as anything in the man's musical canon.