I'll give you peace of mind

Dear friends,

I never go to shows alone*. Mostly because I'm full of ride-subways-by-myself fear. Late one night at home, bleary eyed and bored, I saw the video for UNKLE's Be There featuring Ian Brown on the TV and it played like one of my mini-nightmares. For those of you of you who will watch it, the nightmare is the subway car not the fake-out prior, which I love, because it makes people very uncomfortable with themselves.



As to the song itself, Ian Brown is, was, will always be one of my favorite vocalists. Whenever J and I have the "The Stone Roses weren't ALL that" conversation (him being the hatah, natch), all I can do is babble about how when I bought that tape, it was the best thing going at the time and neither the benefit of hindsight (the songs are fairly simple) or my relative maturity (Madchester?!?) can change my opinion that I Wanna Be Adored, Made of Stone and I Am The Resurrection are the shhh! Brown, with his Manc accented not quite bored, not quite apathetic, schoolboy growing out his hair and dabbling in psychedelics delivery, manages to succeed where other singers biting his style fail. He makes his ambivalence sound like passion. And in Be There, that style of his makes it sound like the you got a friend-type promise of the title is coming from as far away a place as death. So what does that make him? A ghost? A guardian angel? Either way, it gets you.

Love, D

PS Contributor Stephanie would very much like to see the somewhat terrifying (to me, anyway) Leslie and the Ly's live. Unfortunately, their shows at The Bowery Ballroom on 4/22 and 23 are SOLD OUT. Anyone out there who has any information on somehow getting tickets to this event, please contact us. We would be most appreciative.

* or to Clinton Hill/Greenpoint/Williamsburg for that matter. I heard that the G train was "the rape train" way too many times at an impressionable age, which means I will never, ever ride it by myself past the gremlin hour. To those friends of mine that reside in those illustrious cemented areas, I am sorry, I am so sorry, can I offer you a cup of coffee? And yes, I know, this is irrational but some people are afraid of moles and spiders. Thems the breaks.