#1spy

1988 | Guns N' Roses - "Patience"

I was riding my bike with a friend back in middle school, and he started singing this song that sounded really cool. The kids now would call it a meme song, where there's just one catchy bit that gets memorized and transmitted instantly to seemingly every kid you know. All I know is we were riding our bikes around and singing this song at the top of our lungs like kids did back then:

Take me down to the paradise city / Where the grass is green and girls are pretty / Oh won't you please take me home

It was so dumb and fun. And I had not, at the time, even seen the video for "Paradise City." In fact, the first video I remember seeing from Guns N' Roses was their mega-popular acoustic ballad "Patience."

It's not the most representative song in their catalog. GNR's debut album, Appetite for Destruction, had come out in 1987 and was full of heavy, uncompromisingly sleazy hard rock bangers that made other LA hair metal bands sound tame and fake in comparison. The album painted a portrait of a Hollywood underworld where sex and drugs are traded for access and opportunity, but where the American dream is most likely to end in an overdose. All of which seemed pretty far away from my life in suburban Spring, Texas.

But Patience was a perfect entry point for me, a kid whose favorite band was—at the time—the Eagles. The gentle acoustic ballad opens with Axl whistling, which may have been a savvy bid for pop relevance only one year after Bobby McFerrin's huge #1 hit "Don't Worry Be Happy" also included prominent whistling. Patience got all the way to number four.

I wasn't the only one connecting GNR to the Eagles. Hotel California and Appetite for Destruction have similar themes involving sex, excess, and corruption in a drug-soaked Hollywood. Axl had performed backing vocals on Don Henley's album, End of the Innocence. And Henley played drums and sang backup when Guns N' Roses played "Patience" on the 1989 American Music Awards.

It took two years for it to happen, but the singles for "Welcome to the Jungle," "Paradise City," "Sweet Child O' Mine" and "Patience" eventually made the band ubiquitous. And Axl was constantly in the news for being a terrible human: starting shows late, nearly starting riots at his own shows, saying racist, misogynistic, and homophobic shit, and otherwise being a huge asshole.

At the time none of that mattered to me. What mattered was the way I felt when I pressed play on the CD. It was exhilarating every every single time. It still is. Appetite for Destruction is the best selling debut album of all time because it has no skips. It's an incredible hard rock album front to back, full of songs that are musical, surprising, funny, sophisticated, angry, and—more than anything else—convincing. It was hard to listen to Appetite and then put on Warrant, Poison or Motley Crue. Nirvana killed all those bands, but GNR put them on notice.

"Patience" wasn't on Appetite. It was on a follow-up collection of two EPs called GN'R Lies. The GNR half was old live performances from 1986 ("Move to the City" was my fave). The "Lies" half was a set of four acoustic originals whose popularity may have inspired MTV Unplugged:

"Patience"- the second song I ever learned to play on guitar all the way through.

"Used to Love Her" - A jokey song about killing your girlfriend and burying her in the back yard.

"You're Crazy" - Better, bluesier, and somehow darker than the version on Appetite.

"One in a Million" - The song whose lyrics included racist, anti-immigrant, and homophobic slurs, but also functioned as an Axl Rose origin story.

Even when I was a kid listening, the lyrics to "One in a Million" bugged me because Axl's lyrics on the song weren't just hateful, they were the worst lyrics he had recorded. It was a missed opportunity, because it's probably the best song on this record. It was his best vocal performance, it had the best solo, and Axl whistles over the opening again with an even better melody. It sucks because he ruined the song with half-assed, bigoted lyrics.

None of this is to provide an apologia for GNR (or for me). They were my favorite band until my senior year of high school. They were the reason my first guitar was a Gibson Les Paul like Slash played. And I dove DEEP into both Use Your Illusion records when they came out (I could write three or four more posts about UYI I & II).

But once Izzy Stradlin' left the band, I knew they were never going to make another record as good as Appetite. The best songs off Use Your Illusion are the Izzy songs. The coolest guy in that band was Izzy. And the best post-Appetite record by anyone in the band is Izzy's solo record with the Ju Ju Hounds.

I went to see Guns N' Roses in 1992 with Soundgarden opening. And I'm glad I did. But Izzy wasn't there, and I felt his absence. Basically, it feels like I left GNR when Izzy did.

But if he ever rejoins the band, I might see them again.

Fave lyrics (for someone who loved walking the tough suburban streets of Cypresswood at night):

1989 | Michael Penn - “No Myth”

So these posts I've been writing are documenting a project: A playlist that gets to the core of how I've experienced music in my life—one song for each year I've been alive. As I've been going through the process, I noticed most of the songs I chose are from foundational artists with long careers. Most of these artists have multiple songs and albums that are special to me. And I've had a REALLY hard time picking just one song and one year to represent these them.

But "No Myth" by Michael Penn isn't really that. It's just a great song that haunts me. A song that felt formative in my life, even if I never really cared about anything else he did. I mean, it's nothing personal. Michael Penn has had a long and fruitful career. He's released multiple critically acclaimed albums. He's the brother of famous actors Chris and Sean Penn. He's married to one of my all-time favorite songwriters, Aimee Mann. He's been a prolific film and tv composer.

So while It's accurate to say "No Myth" was his only Top 40 hit, I don't consider Penn a one-hit wonder. Still, that's kind of what he is for me. I've heard a bunch of his other stuff, and it's fine. But I only liked this one song. 

But, damn, what a song.

The insistent marching drums (for which the album is named). The oblique, literary lyrics. The hummable, descending bass line in the verse. The exquisite Lennon-esque vocal melody over a simple, driving acoustic guitar. Hearing this song is when I started to figure out what I love about music. And when I started to write my own songs, I was trying to build songs like this.

But I said haunting, and what haunts me is the Chamberlin organ the song uses to augment its god-tier guitar solo. As I learned from MTV, Harry Chamberlain's invention was a precursor to the Mellotron: an analog electric keyboard that played short tape recordings of music each time you pressed a key. Essentially, it was a machine built to play back samples of music before samplers or synthesizers existed.

The sound of the Chamberlain undulating beneath the lead guitar is intoxicating. And for a long time after hearing this song, it became what I demanded when I sought out new music. I wanted guitars and keyboards, but I no longer wanted songs that sounded like the bright synths and super-compressed lead guitars of the 80s. I wanted stuff that evoked the Beatles and Stones. Stuff that sounded like classic rock but also sounded new. Back then, I would describe this as "organic," years before organic food was really a thing. I was probably reading too much music criticism (I definitely read too much music criticism).

Fave Lyrics:

Some time from now you'll bow to pressure Some things in life you cannot measure by degrees I'm between the poles and the equator Don't send no private investigator to find me please 'Less he speaks Chinese And can dance like Astaire overseas (okay)

P.S. Lots of people I know love the rest of the album. They love multiple Michael Penn albums. But, as I said, I only really like this one song. I made a whole other playlist of songs that are like this for me. Not necessarily one hit wonders. Most of them aren't hits at all. They're just songs by artists both obscure and well-known where, for whatever reason, only one song ever did it for me. The playlist is called The Sound of One Song Hitting.

Apple Music: https://music.apple.com/.../the-sound-of.../pl.u-y9XVfz4y41v

In the summer of ’96, I was about to enter my fourth year of college and my second year at the University of Houston. I was looking for a new place, and I had heard through a friend that a fellow UH student was looking for a new roommate, so I got his number and reached out to him.

Patrick rode his bike up to meet me while I was working box office at the Landmark River Oaks 3, the arthouse theater at the corner of Shepherd and West Gray. He seemed even taller and skinnier than me. Older too, with shards of grey in his jagged mop of black hair. He was gangly and wore glasses, and he talked with a funny accent I’d never heard before. He was from Queens or Flushing, but it was not a New York accent. He spoke like a witty professor, every word considered and sculpted before it was spoken. He was an architecture student, and I was to Iearn later he was a guy who built his words carefully, and who listened well, so that you could add to the structure.

We met and chatted briefly at the theater, then I drove over the next day to check out the place. He was renting a spacious but spare two bedroom upstairs apartment in the heart of Houston’s Montrose neighborhood, which was known as the city’s gay / bohemian neighborhood. But in the mid-90s it was one of Houston’s only truly walkable neighborhoods. Rent was $550 plus utilities, and I was to pay half.

I moved in within a week after only meeting twice. And in retrospect, I have no idea how Patrick put up with me. I was loud and opinionated and I smoked in the apartment. I would do dishes, but I was not neat. I would talk constantly while he tried to work at his drafting table in the kitchen. He didn’t have a TV when I moved in. I insisted on getting cable. Where he once had enjoyed a quietude with his former female roommate, I was a jackass braying about. 

But if Patrick had reservations about me moving in, he made no mention of it. And I took to him immediately. He had a combo record / cd player on one side of his drafting table and a box of vinyl record albums on the other. I loved going through his music and listening to stuff I’d never heard. I remember he had a couple of Orchestral Maneuvers in the Dark (OMD) records, and I’d never heard of them. Simon and Garfunkel. Talking Heads. Brian Eno's Music for Airports. Dire Straits’ self-titled debut. He also had Beatles Past Masters on CD, and I had never listened to the Beatles before outside of what I knew from the radio. In the two and half years I lived with Patrick, I would fully absorb Revolver, Abbey Road, and The White Album. I also made my way through the Beatles Anthology documentary on VHS which came out in 1996.

In 1996, my music collection was much more extensive than Patrick’s, but he wasn’t much interested in the music I liked. I would play him stuff, and he’d say listen for while, before saying something like, “Interesting” or “Hmmm.” He eventually would admit he wasn’t very interested in most of the stuff I played him. And he didn’t spend time combing through my collection the way I had dissected his. Patrick had an intense relationship with a small number of songs and albums he already liked, and he listened to them repeatedly. At the time I met him, he wasn’t listening to much new music at all.

There was one band I played for him that he really liked, and fortunately it was my favorite band of all time: Yo La Tengo. After I showed it to him, he listened to their album Painful a ton in his obsessive way. Sometimes jamming it all night while he worked on his portfolio projects. I was proud as hell. I at least had one significant victory in my tiny, personal campaign to win him over to my favorite musics.

1993 | Dinosaur Jr. - "Start Choppin'"

In my senior year of high school, I wrote my first song. I don't remember the words or the melody or really anything about it, except that I felt like I'd done something very few people ever do. Or even attempt. It was exhilarating. I ran downstairs and then ran back up because I didn't know what to do with myself. I still feel that way a little bit every time I finish a song. I wanted to be in a band. I wanted to be the singer. But I had tried to get a band off the ground my junior year and it went nowhere. Because I couldn't do anything. Like, I couldn't even sing. Much less play guitar. So even though I was trying to write lyrics and singing along with the bands I liked, there was no path toward being in a band unless I could play and write music.

I found my dad's old guitar and took a few lessons, but after learning Brown Eyed Girl and a simple 12-bar blues structure, I abandoned it and started teaching myself from a book by Ralph Denyer called The Guitar Handbook. There's one page where all the basic cowboy chords are perfectly illustrated and photographed from the top down, so I could see where I was supposed to put my fingers. I figured if I learned these 15 chord shapes I could start using them to play and write songs. I'd sit in front of the TV for hours trying to move between the chords quickly and accurately without looking.

And because I tend to approach things systematically and obviously, I started buying music by all the great songwriters I had been reading about in magazines. Bob Dylan and Paul Simon to start with. A lot of Dylan. And then I got deep into the Stones' Exile on Main Street and Sticky Fingers.

I got into the Stones because, of course, I loved The Black Crowes. But I also became curious when I read a Keith Richards quote inside The Guitar Handbook that permanently changed my thinking. Not just about guitar, but about everything:

What interested me about Chuck Berry was the way he could step out of the rhythm part with such ease, throwing in a nice, simple riff and then drop straight into the feel of it again. We used to play a lot more rhythm stuff. We'd do away with the differences between lead and rhythm guitar. You can't go into a shop and ask for a "lead guitar." You're a guitar player, and you play a guitar.

I hadn't even thought about being a lead guitar player. I thought that was something separate and beyond my abilities. But Richards made me think I could be just good enough at it to be dangerous. That I could learn scales and incorporate that into my writing.

What I understood from it, even though I wouldn't have articulated it that way at the time, was that I could be a generalist. I could be just good enough at lots different things, I could solve for aspects of different problems and be useful to a band, because I did more stuff. If I wrote the song, and played the song, and could maybe write a bass line or a lead part too, they'd have to let me be in the band. Because then it would be my band. Except I still couldn't sing. I mean, I had an okay voice if I wanted to do church choir. I had a pretty good Mick Jagger impression. But I didn't sound anything like me yet.

Freshman year at Baylor, my friend Chris got me into Dinosaur Jr., and things clicked into place for me. J. Mascis is a god-tier guitar player, but that wasn't what intrigued me. It was his voice.

There are lots of singers who aren't great but have made a career anyway. Mascis and his conversational, childlike warble convinced me that if he could find the voice that was perfect for him, so could I.

I started singing into the answering machine at first. Then a tape recorder. And then finally I got 4-track and started recording my songs. I had to spend time with my voice and learn the way I really sounded before I could sound the way I wanted to sound. To hear myself the way others heard me, and make that sound as good as it could be.

1992 | 10,000 Maniacs - “These Are Days”

It is hard to be a person. And, to me, the hardest thing about being a person is seeing yourself the ways others see you. The best gift I’ve received is when someone—anyone—pulls me aside and tells me I’m being an asshole. And exactly why they think so. But that hardly ever happens. Because people don’t want to waste energy and social capital explaining to me that I have have obvious, correctable issues. Or that I have said a terrible, stupid thing. It is an unpleasant conversation, and I do not take it well. Ask my wife. Even she is reticent to give me the clarity I badly need. Because I will deny. And resist. And be angry and hardheaded. Or blame her instead of myself. But eventually I realize she is right. And she is always right. And I do try to be a better person. For you who may be recent acquaintances and doubt my improvement, believe me. This is the best I have been. And worse, I hope, than what I will be. Because the understanding of others is so valuable, I have always appreciated advice. A good advice giver will provide practical guidance earned with experience. But most advice, even bad advice, will also include an assessment of you and your circumstances. The words may be polite and unoffensive, but encoded within will be a valuable glimpse of how that person sees you. It’s not as pure or as valuable as someone telling you “hey, you just showed your whole ass back there.” But advice, though perhaps less useful than direct instruction, is more pleasant for both the giver and receiver. Right now, you’re probably wondering “is this dude really gonna write 10,000 words before he says anything about 10,000 Maniacs?” I do apologize. There may be no album I’ve listened to more than Our Time in Eden. I listened to it 10,000 times my senior year of high school and that summer before college. I’ve returned to it many times since. Because the way I hear the album it is a friend giving me the best advice I’ve needed and wanted to hear. Or it’s a girl taking down a book of poems and reading. Or it’s the memory of me hanging out with the first great group of friends I had just as I was becoming an adult. It’s always been all of these things at once. When I hear singer Natalie Merchant’s voice on these songs, what I remember most is how amazing it felt to have good friends for the first time in my life, to feel warm and optimistic. Like I had figured things out at just the right time in my life. When I listen, I remember being 18 and graduating high school. I remember my freshman year in college and being with my first girlfriend. I remember all of us driving to downtown Houston to watch folk singers play at Cyrano’s coffee bar next to the Montrose library. Or going to a jazz bar. Or watching movies at Landmark River Oaks 3 (before I started working there). I think we all felt very adult and artistic, but also just grateful to be with each other. The magic of the album, and probably the point of the title, is the way Merchant’s words encouraged me to appreciate the greatness of the moment, being on the cusp of innocence and adulthood, in real time. Hearing this album when I was 18 and 19, I felt nostalgia for my life as I was living it. I knew exactly how I good I had it.

These are days you'll remember When May is rushing over you with desire To be part of the miracles you see in every hour You'll know it's true that you are blessed and lucky It's true that you Are touched by something That will grow and bloom in you

Lyrics that read, on the page, as if they were lifted from an old Romantic poem or graduation speech, sound more convincing when Merchant sings them over the best songs and arrangements 10,000 Maniacs had ever put on record. This was the first and only 10,000 Maniacs album I liked enough to buy. The earlier records seemed bogged down by preachy lyrics and uninspiring 80s college rock production. But on Eden, Merchant’s righteousness mostly gives way to empathy and wisdom, and the band’s arrangements are bolstered on every song by lush, forceful piano playing from Merchant and original keyboardist Dennis Drew. In these songs Merchant is remembering, too. In “Stockton Gala Days” she sings to a departed (deceased?) friend about how changed and withdrawn she’s become since they grew apart:

That summer fields grow high. We had wildflower fever. We had to lay down where they grow. How I've learned to hide, how I've locked inside, you'd be surprised if shown. But you'll never, you'll never know

In “How You’ve Grown” she rewrites the trite expression into on observation about how slow it seems to finally grow up ourselves, and how bittersweet it is to see our our distant nieces or friends’ daughters become women in our absence:

"My, how you've grown." I remember that phrase from the childhood days, too Just wait and see." I remember those words and how they chided me When patient was the hardest thing to be Because we can't make up for the time that we've lost I must let these memories provide No little girl can stop her world to wait for me

“Few and Far Between” begs a lover to stop using memories and regrets as an excuse not to move forward:

'Till you make your peace with yesterday You'll never build a future, I swear by what I say Whatever penance you do Decide what it's worth to you And then respect it However long it will take To weather your mistakes Why not accept it?

When I hear the album now, there’s kind of a darkness mixed in with the good. Because I do have regrets. Because I have made mistakes. Because I’ve done things to lose some of the great friends I’ve had in my life. When I play it now, it’s the opening minor chords in “Noah’s Dove” that fill me, not with dread, but with a ruminative hollow. I remember the good and the bad. But it’s the missteps that are more deeply felt and acute. You can get lost in memory and nostalgia. In regret. And at times, that’s what this album has been for me. A place to sit and have my coffee (or, my beer and cigarettes, when I was lost in those things), and think of old faces and trips I took or should have taken. A worn chair where I can be an emo sad bastard. I don’t get to go back in time and fix my mistakes. I haven’t always made things right with the people I’ve hurt. Sometimes they drift away and I never find out why or what I did or said. Because I maybe didn’t matter enough to them to make that effort. In the title track, Merchant sings:

Believe me, the truth is we're not honest, not the people that we dream We're not as close as we could be

The best friends I’ve had have been willing to help make up the distance. To show me a glimpse of the person I could and should have been in the moment. To, let me know I missed the mark. I know it takes tremendous effort and patience and love to correct a friend and build a better friendship. It’s a lot to ask of someone. Maybe too much. Instead, I just have to keep trying to be a better person. And of course, every now and then, when I could use some advice, I put on this record and remember that these are days, too. The ones I’m living now. The ones I share with you. Fave lyrics:

1983 | Michael Jackson - "Billie Jean"

Y'all know that thing when you're a kid, and you notice there's this really cool, fashionable thing all the other kids are wearing at school, and you go home and ask your folks for the fashionable, exciting thing so you can be cool?

But then your folks buy you the thing that looks sorta like the fashionable, awesome thing, but is very obviously not that?

Let's just say the parachute pants I requested were not parachute pants.

Eh, I got over it.

Our nextdoor neighbors had "Making Michael Jackson's Thriller" on something called Selectavision. Us kids would go over there and watch it all the time. They also had Dark Night of the Scarecrow. I think they owned like five SelectaVision discs in total, so there was not a lot to choose from. But holy shit, I never got tired of watching John Landis and Michael Jackson collaborate on that video.

I was almost as curious about the SelectaVision.

They looked like giant flat 8-track cassettes to me, and I had no idea how they worked. These weren't laser discs. They were a competing format that had come out earlier. The SelectaVision discs were packaged inside a giant plastic case (like a big 3.5" floppy disk). These Capacitance Electronic Discs (CEDs) were developed by RCA as an updated analog format. They worked very similarly to vinyl records. From Wikipedia:

"First conceived in 1964, the CED system was widely seen as a technological success which was able to increase the density of a long-playing record by two orders of magnitude. Despite this achievement, the CED system fell victim to poor planning, various conflicts with RCA management, and several technical difficulties that slowed development and stalled production of the system for 17 years—until 1981, by which time it had already been made obsolete by laser videodisc (DiscoVision, later called LaserVision and LaserDisc) as well as Betamax and VHS video cassette formats."

Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, Billie Jean is one of the best songs of all time. Like maybe top five. Certainly top 10. His performance of the song on network TV was like a Gen X Beatles-on-Ed-Sullivan moment. And while we'd all learn more about Michael Jackson than we ever wanted to, all 1983 me knew about 1983 Michael Jackson was that he was the coolest human alive.

1980 | Christopher Cross - "Sailing"

Her hair reminds me of a warm, safe place Where, as a child, I'd hide And pray for the thunder and the rain to quietly pass me by

from Guns 'n' Roses - "Sweet Child O' Mine"

There's not a better way to say what I need to say, so I'm quoting one of Axl Rose's most memorable lyrics. When I was 5 turning 6, "Sailing" by Christopher Cross was my warm, safe place.

At that moment when my parents were getting divorced, when my mom and dad were fighting, and when me and my brother and my dad were getting packed up and moving together out of the only house I could remember, this was the song I disappeared into. This was the song that let me sail away, like Where the Wild Things Are, and drift deep inside my head—into what my college girlfriend used to call Marshall-land. When I've sailed away into Marshall-land you can't talk to me. I can only nod and pretend to hear. When this song comes on, that is still where I go. "Yacht Rock" is the reductive term for songs like this. The nautically inclined soft-rock that came out in the late 70s and early 80s, but I don't hate the term. I love yacht rock. It's a useful genre that's probably prolonged the relevance and the lore of this music well beyond the shelf-life it might otherwise have had. And for me, this song (along with Baker Street), are core to so much of who I am and the musician and music fan I became. I was never going to be a punk rocker. I was adult contemporary before I was ever an adult. I was a dad rocker before I was ever a dad. Christopher Cross was there for me when I needed him. Left me a boat by the water, so I could float away to Marshall-land and feel at peace with myself. And that feeling is at the heart of most of the music I love and (hopefully) the music I make. Fave lyrics:

It's not far to never never land No reason to pretend And if the wind is right you can find the joy Of innocence again Oh, the canvas can do miracles Just you wait and see, believe me

1979 | Sister Sledge - "We Are Family"

I love disco. I love it still. I love it always. I know 1979 is the year disco died at Comiskey Park, but it didn't die for me. I love it. I love all of it.

And of the disco songs I actually remember experiencing when I was five years old, Sister Sledge's "We are Family" is my favorite. My mom didn't play this one at home; I experienced it mostly as a radio song in the car riding along with various babysitters. The reason I remember it so fondly, even at a young age, was its curious grammar. I thought the chorus was "We are family / I got all my sisters in me." In reality, they sing "with me" not "in me," but the latter is what I heard and believed for years. At the time, I didn't have a sister, I only had a brother. And having all your sisters inside you didn't make any sense. But it was gloriously nonsensical. And if that was the lyric, I think it'd be even cooler.

Per Wikipedia, this is the first song Nile Rodgers and and Bernard Edwards wrote for another group outside of Chic. And Rodgers's Hitmaker Strat is a key reason why it's awesome. Also, inject that piano hook and luxurious lead vocal into my veins. This single was released at the very apex of disco in April of 1979. Three months later, disco was dead. But not for me. I got it in me, still. Fave lyrics:

No (we), we don't get depressed 'Cause here's what we call our golden rule Have faith in you and the things you do You won't go wrong, oh no This is our family jewel