The B52's - Love Shack

I am a gypsy. Although I have spent the majority of my life living inside the Beltline, I have moved every year for the past oh…. 6 or 7 years to a new apartment. A break back to my folks’ house once after a break-in at a house I once lived in off of Gorman Street.

This Gorman street house, although I didn’t make it there a full year, holds some of the deepest, darkest, most insane memories for me. Mostly these memories are centered on parties that reached epic proportions. This song, while played to death on most pop radio stations and holds a special place in the heart of everyone on earth for some reason or the other, makes me think of drag queens and Goths raging at 4 in the morning in that little green house.

What had happened was: I was living in Cary with my ex. We split up a year or two after we probably should have, and I decided to purge myself out of that apartment. (I basically pulled a Peaches.) I put out some feelers and much like every random hook-up I’ve ever received in my life; my mom’s mastery of word-of-mouth at her hair salon came through. I cannot tell you how many jobs, piano teachers, boys, apartments, cars, etc. I have gotten through my mom’s shop. A client of my mom’s, Ms. Hazel, had a house for rent. It was 3 bedrooms, old and busted, and only $500 a month. It took my dad and I a few Saturdays to paint, clean and fix it up to a livable condition (leveling the toilet, lying carpet, lining cabinets, you name it.) We finally got it move-in ready and filled that house with a bunch of adopted furniture and salvage from the NCSU lot.

I wasn’t there long before I realized I needed to have a housewarming party. I did. Not much longer, in the midst of a horrific depression, I realized I was broke, so I got a part time job. I wasn’t working the part time job long before I realized I needed to have yet another party, a New Year’s Eve party. Yes friends it’s THAT New Year’s Eve party. There are some people who have been in the scene long enough that *still* talk about this party. I used every connection in every scene and clique, getting the word spread, even handing out flyers at the store. 3 bands played. Every scrap of furniture or anything that wasn’t nailed down got shoved into a locked back room. I got a keg. I even bought chips and a veggie tray.
This is an excerpt from my long-lived and still kicking livejournal (began in 2000! Keepin’ it oldschool!) about the evening:

“…so alot of sh*t got f*cked up. one of my nicest turtles got broken. my coat rack got ripped off the wall. tons and tons and tons of beer spilt on the floor. assholes outside kept dropping their cigs on the ground on my front porch so theres like a million scorch marks in the outdoor carpet. im still not done cleaning up... not anywhere near done. im too tired.”

So many things happened that night. I met my first drag queen. Liquid acid was rampant, people still come up and tell me new stories about that night involving acid that I didn’t know anything about. (Talking to azalea bushes?) Lots of sexual deviances. Troops of hippies, Goths, punks, rock stars, frat guys, supermodels and pre-hipster-hipsters came through there. I managed to stay sober the entire night and the cops only came once to tell people to move their cars to the other side of the road. It went on until dawn and at one point there was a count of about 300 people inside and around the house.

My crowning achievement… my glory and hopefully my legacy in Raleigh will be this party and what happened after the bands played and the CD player got turned over to the PAs set up in the living room. The microphones were still on and ready for the loudest most ridiculous 3am karaoke jam in existence. After much Olive, Vengaboys and the like, the real “party” music started. I very vividly remember a goth friend of mine, one of what I would have at the time considered queen of the Über-goths, took the mic and sang this song at top volume while Babs, the S&M drag queen, danced with the hippies.

When I hear this song I think of New Year’s 2001.


Then I think about what happened after on Jan 21, 2001. (Made public for posterity. Please note I was 23 at the time. My head is hung in shame.) Needless to say, it wasn’t very much longer after that I moved out of that house.

(note: livejournal is now basically hidden to anyone not on my flist, so all you'll get to stalk of me there is a bunch of random youtube videos and other vague such things. enjoy!)

Claude Debussy - Suite Bergamasque, m.III, Clair de Lune

I have mentioned before in this blog that I was not a very active kid. While my brother spent the majority of his free time chasing his friends around playing “war” and climbing trees, I was hiding out in a corner with a book. I do remember playing outside and learning to ride a bike and all that typical stuff. What I think of most when I think of the old house and the life I lived there until the age of 7 is reading, the turntable, being scared of the dark and my piano.

I don’t remember asking or being asked if I wanted to take lessons, I just remember one day that my mom said I was going to start taking lessons. I’m sure I replied with the 5 year old equivalent of “oh. ok, cool,” which probably involved me flipping off couches and asking a million questions. I don’t clearly remember my first lesson, just bits of it. My first teacher was the wife of our preacher at the time, my lessons for the first few months were held at the parsonage. I didn’t stay with her long until my mom met the woman who would become the person I came to admire the most and despise the most for the next 11 years. Her name was Mrs. Hamme (pronounced hammy) and she and her husband lived off western blvd in a 60s ranch house with a car port that had a long sloping driveway, surrounded by trees. The driveway was at a sharp incline and had a bridge over a creek in the front yard. This was my favorite thing about her house. My second favorite thing was the pink and black tiled deco bathroom.

Playing the piano over the years, became the thing that defined me. It was the thing I was most proud of myself for being able to do but it became an obligation for me. My parents would request certain songs and I would pull my hair and overreact. I grew to resent it. I quit as soon as I could, it only took oh… 13 years? I was never one of those Ben Folds type people who could sit down and just make something up. I was trained so strictly by Mrs. Hamme in the classical style. I can remember maybe… 3 songs total that I ever practiced that weren’t some sort of etude, sonata, or fugue. I never chose my own pieces. In the last few years of study my parents would literally sit an egg timer on top of the piano and I wasn’t allowed to move for an hour, minimum. I never wrote my own songs, I never improvised. I never learned how. I met a man at the Landmark once who told me that since I couldn’t improvise that I only had ‘ability’ and since he could, he had talent. I laughed it off, but it crushed me. Because it was true.

Because of all this training and practicing and effort put into this thing, this instrument throughout my life, I was on a much more musically mature level than most of my peers. I had a deep and abiding love for classical music. Amadeus was and still is one of my most favorite and cherished movies. At any time I can be found listening to a mix of crappy eurohouse and opera. When my friends were raving about cockrock and hairmetal, and I was trying to branch out into some deeper roots, there was always Beethoven, Bach and Brahms on my playlist. It’s just been a part of who I am for so long. I am deeply attracted to classical music. That is the point of this.

One of the things I regret most in my life is not taking my piano playing to a further level. It became such a just… pain in my ass, towards the end that I closed the lid on the piano and didn’t open it again for years. However when I hear any song, pop or not, that features a piano, I imagine myself learning to play this song. I have lots of fantasies of performing like this. There are mix cds that I have made for myself in the past that were full of songs I wished I had learned when I had the chance. You would imagine that playing the piano is something akin to riding a bike, you don’t forget. I took a music theory class 2 semesters ago and I panicked the first few days of class because I was so mad at myself for forgetting as much as I did. By the end of the class, I was probably about halfway where I was when I left. It solidified in me the fact that I really, really need to get my own house so I can move my piano over and practice. Not because I have to, but because I want to.

This song; Debussy’s Suite Bergamesque, specifically the 3rd movement, the Clair De Lune, is a very well known piece, and is one of my absolute favorite pieces of piano music. I look at the sheet music and I know I can learn it, but I haven’t. (D-flat major! Christ!) I try to explain to people… my favorite thing in the world is “Bittersweet”… the feeling, the memory, the taste, the definition. My favorite feelings and memories are bittersweet. This little 5 minute piano tune is the truest and closest piece of music that I have ever heard that resonates who I feel that I truly am - the things that I really love in this life. When I die, it is the piece of music I know for sure I want played at my funeral. It is hopeful, it is sad. It has the smallest hint of drama and a deeper sense of peace than any song I have ever heard. And I've heard a lot of songs. It is everything beautiful in my heart that I can’t and won't ever let go of. It is the sound of every memory I thought would kill me but won’t allow myself to regret because these things made me who I am, and who I am has to be a beautiful person, right? This song is me saying "Life will not bring me down. No matter how much shit gets thrown at me, I will never stop believing in beauty, truth and love."

.... I may have tricked you a little with this post. You may have thought I was done there. This song makes me think about playing the piano, right? Makes me think about "life" ...Yes. But something else happened recently that has made my connection infinitely stronger to it, for the time being.

A few months ago, without forethought or hesitation I let myself fall madly in love with a beautiful boy. I was feeling pretty good about myself, the timing seemed right and he seemed to be crazy about me, so i didn't hold back. I rarely do. Things went really well for a while; we took a trip to the beach. Saturday morning, I woke up early, around 7:30am and couldn’t sleep anymore, so I rolled up my jeans, stuck on my headphones and took a walk on the sand, down to the pier. I sat on the pier and I stared out at the water and I let my iPod shuffle itself silly, and then suddenly this song came up.

I asked my best friend earlier today if she had any suggestions for what I should write my next post about, because I wasn’t really inspired. I was sitting at my desk earlier and this song came back up again and I knew this was it. This was something beyond inspirational and bittersweet and raw, how could I not do it?

Listening to this song today, after the boy and I are no longer together, has been an altogether different experience. After a messy end, including a lot of tears and denial from me, today it takes on a different level of bittersweetness, but that morning on the pier I was in another place. I remember sitting there and praying, thanking God that I found him. That when I went back into that room, that amazing person would be there waiting for me and he would be happy to see me. And he was. The bittersweetness on that pier was all the trials and pain it took for me to get there. The reward I received in the form of him. The justification and happiness and acceptance of my journey.

That morning, I very specifically remember praying: “Even if it only lasts a minute and there’s hell to pay, I am happy right now. Thank you.” The bittersweetness I feel when I hear it today is the acceptance of that prayer. It was only a minute. There was hell to pay, but god damn it was worth it. The pain subsides, the memories that remain are gorgeous.

Elton John & Kiki Dee - Don't Go Breaking My Heart

“Reality leaves a lot to the imagination.” - John Lennon



An over-active imagination for a child can be either a blessing or a curse. If a child was to never learn to control this imagination, to distinguish reality from the fantasy land in their heads - this would be a curse; this would be me. When the fantasy that a person makes up in their own mind becomes literally painful to let go of, this is bad. most kids learn how to let this go. I held on voraciously. It is one of the things I like most and least about myself. when I think of where it all started, this black and white perception of reality that I seem to have, my all or nothing personality, I have no one but Elton John to blame.

To explain:

Growing up in the little ranch house near Lake Wheeler, It was me and my brother surrounded by kids I had trouble connecting with because I couldn’t play regular kid games. I wanted to play “house” or “stories”, wherein I would create some elaborate set-up, epic love story or something involving shipwrecks or space shuttle launches. When my friends would get tired of me being so bossy and trying to direct the action of the story, they all wandered off to climb trees or ride bikes and I retreated back inside to my real friends; my 7” vinyl collection and fisher price portable turntable.

I don’t remember who bought all these vinyls for me, if I adopted them or they were picked up at flea markets, they were just there. I do remember buying a few with my allowance, but the rest of these singles, of which there were and still are stacks of them, I hoarded and multiplied. Titles I would have never thought to have picked out for myself but played over and over again because I could control them. Eddie Rabbit’s “I Love a Rainy Night” and The Beatles “Revolution” are a couple of the ones I remember playing the most.

I remember sitting on the floor of my living room with my headphones on, listening intently with my hand on the dial of the receiver of that huge Kenwood stereo my dad had back then. I couldn’t have been more than 5 or 6, so this is 1982-ish. I can very clearly remember formulating this theory that seemed completely rational to me at the time, which was that for every song on the radio, the Band or Musician had to be in the studio set up and ready to play each song. For the same song to play on two different stations meant the band had to move very fast and hopefully the radio stations weren’t very far away from each other. This is why musicians were paid so much for what they did and had such big fancy houses like Graceland; so much work! This is when a child’s overactive imagination is a blessing because it’s adorable to look back and laugh at myself for this.

Around this same time, I very vividly remember dragging the portable turntable into my brother’s room and playing Elton John and Kiki Dee’s “Don’t Go Breakin’ My Heart” on 7” vinyl over and over; dancing/spinning in circles. (I had a constant habit of spinning in circles to music as a kid. This lasted way into my early teens. I apparently was a whirling dervish in my past life.) I very suddenly had a very vivid realization of the true meaning of the song… The man was singing, quite literally about his heart breaking. This singer was having a heart attack. This somehow translated into some sort of Frankenstein situation whereupon the Man singings’ heart has been broken and the woman sings “I’ll give you my heart” and therefore some sort of post-modern promethean heart transplant takes place. I then spent the remainder of the afternoon staging and perfecting the stage production or perhaps music video of this song, acting out both parts on my own. I can’t tell you how many times I picked up and dropped that needle that day. I played both the donor and the donee, there was dancing, props, the works. I can still quite literally remember dance moves to certain parts of this song. This was the first time I ever did this to a song. Now this all I do to songs. Damn your lyrical prowess, Bernie Taupin!

Here is the curse of the overactive imagination. One would assume as a child, such daydreams with any activity, musical or otherwise, are normal or encouraged. However, it became a type of compulsion and expectation for me that remains to this day. My favorite songs all have choreography or a story/music video in my head. The best songs are the ones that have me starring as the lead singer, perhaps on stage. This entitlement I seem to have to these songs, the trigger in my head that won’t allow me to listen to a really good song without spacing out and creating the story in my head that best fits it, causes me to sometimes become what others would perceive as abnormally attached to certain songs. Or even certain bands. There are songs that border on absolute obsession for me because the story is so emotionally and personally strong in my mind that I have laid claim to them.

My overactive imagination married me to this ideal of only songs that are worthy of a story are worthy of a place in my heart. There are many, many songs with many, many stories. Some of them are true, some of them are what I wish were true. I created this blog to keep up with the true ones. The rest are stored in reserve on my external hard drive and in my noodle.

This is the song that started it all. Thank Elton.

Daft Punk - TEACHERS

One October, many years ago after working by day as an accounting clerk for a local university for several months and finding the transition to a once-a-month pay schedule a bit of a purse stretcher, I decided to seek out a part time job. I knew I didn’t want to do anything that required a nametag or a training video. I casually applied to several locally owned independent books, video and music stores, one of which was a now non-defunct indie store called “the record exchange” at mission valley shopping center. I wasn’t expecting much of a response. Applying for “cool” jobs so close to a major university is a total crap shoot. It shocked me when I got a call for an interview a few weeks later. It was, in fact, my favorite interview of all time. All my soon-to-be-boss and I did was sit and talk about music for over an hour; favorites and shows we’ve seen. I got the job.

For the next 4 years or so I worked 20 hours or more a week, but I use the term “work” loosely. It was your standard retail store for all intents and purposes. We had daily checklists (pull old flyers from the windows, empty trash cans, etc…) but the majority of our time there was spent talking shit with customers and ourselves, going to shows with free tickets, hoarding vinyl, and scoping out promos. Some of the friendships born from the people to whom I sold music we mutually liked are still going very strong to this day, 10 years later.

When I left the store, it wasn’t pretty and isn’t relevant to the story. It wasn’t long after I left that the store sold out to a chain in Virginia and closed up and turned into a comic store, which failed after a year. The store sits empty to this day.

Over the years that I worked at the Record Exchange, a number of coworkers came and went, and there were about 3 of us that remained the entire time I was there myself, my boss and another part timer included. One of these gentle music obsessed souls that floated in and out of my life was a kid named Jade. He was Pilipino and a local house DJ. I can’t remember why he worked there for so short a time, I think he was one of those that just randomly didn’t show up one day. I don’t hold this against him, he was a cool kid. He was the one that told me about the edit of Phantom Menace that had JarJar Binks completely eliminated. This kid still has to be around town here somewhere, but it’s been so long, I wouldn’t probably know him if I saw him.

There was an order to the way things worked at TREX. We had a wall behind us that had a “now playing” rack. The rules were that we were supposed to pick 5 very different cds and put them on shuffle. If Jeff, the boss, was in store, then this is what you did. If he wasn’t, then the rules changed. They became, "whoever came on shift first had dibs." So say I come in at 4 and you came in at 5, I had enough time to scour the used cds and find every U2 and Erasure cd or something and you were screwed until close. I got stuck with a lot of crappy music that I eventually came to really like in this way. I would have never given Dave Matthews or Mindless Self Indulgence a chance before they were forced on me. Now I know to give any band 2 minutes to impress me.

However, when working with Jade (we called him Jader, as in Darth,) as he was a DJ, he was one of the few, if not only coworkers with whom I had a total rapport with musically. We spent a lot of time playing house music and bopping around the store, flashing the lights off and on, faking raves.

Daft Punk’s homework came out in January of 1997. We got an advanced copy a few months eariler that Jader and I literally fought over. We compromised by not shuffling the disc-changer at all and playing this album back to front, over and over for our next few shifts together. Jader was the only other kid I knew who knew the DJs/Artists listed in this song.

For example:
Jammin Gerald
Little Louie Vega
Green Velvet
Joey Beltram
Derrick Carter
Armand Van Helden


When I listen to “Teachers”, I think of the first person I knew who knew what I knew: Daft Punk is king and Homework is perhaps one of the best albums EVER.

I also think about this weird/awesome dance Jade did to this song across the store once, no idea how to describe it, so I’ll just say what I said and leave it at that.