Next month sees the release of my new novel IMMORTALLO. It was written this past fall at the dining room table of my new home, and shucks if I don't like it. Here is the back cover copy:
Steven wakes up each morning in a bed next to his beautiful wife. He drives his two young daughters to school before heading into a job that is pleasant but mindless. He has as close to a perfect life as anybody could want.
But he remembers another life, a different life, in a world vastly unlike our own. A world of magic and wonder. And as these memories slowly seep into Steven's waking life, it threatens to unravel everything.
In this new novel by the author of The While, the nature of reality and identity is questioned. Can we ever be sure of who we are? How can we tell the life we know is real? And who, or what, is Immortallo?
Well, I never set out to be a copywriter. But look for more details about the book's release date, as well as sample chapters and even a free downloadable e-book, for people who don't mind reading things off a computer screen and don't like paying for things, here and at the Immortallo blog. Thanks.
I've never been in a physical fight in my life. I've been kneed in the groin, and punched in the mouth (two separate occasions, but by the same individual) but I never struck back. If my life were a movie, I would've been taunted for my inaction, and I would've scurried away in shame to find a stereotypically Asian older man to teach me some martial arts and also, maybe, some important lessons about life. But in my both cases, I took my lumps, and then went on to enjoy the smug superiority of the pacifist.
There were many times, especially as a teenager, where I seemed eager to broker some kind of physical altercation. One Fourth of July, stuck in traffic following the local fireworks show, I got out of the car I was in and started bothering the people in the cars surrounding us, including one with tinted black windows, thumping bass, and pot smoke seeping out the cracked windows. I asked the occupants if they would be willing to take a survey of Russian literature, and they took this to be an insult to their intelligence (which, looking back, probably was) and they spilled out of their car and started threatening to fight everybody I was with. There were, inexplicably, two German exchange students with us, and this almost literally scared the piss out of them, five giant wanna-be gangstas (we were in Abington, after all) shaking the chassis of our car and demanding we stop "frontin'" and come out and fight them. The police intervened, and somehow I found myself uninvited to the party we were all headed to later that night.
My first girlfriend left me for a young man in lock-up, and when he was released, he thought it incumbent upon himself to kill me, or at least stab me. He'd show up places I was, including the front yard of the new girl I was seeing, and so I sent him a letter, typed, that read: "I know gonorrhea sucks, but stop taking it out on me. Love, Ryan." I took great amusement at this, especially the "love, Ryan" part, and dropped it into the mailbox. One of my friends, I don't remember exactly who, shook his head at this. "I think you're trying to get yourself killed." I never heard back from the hoodlum, so I wrote a song about him, called "George Has Got A Knife" which was really one elaborate "small penis" joke, and then with my band opened our show at our high school with it, in front of several of George's friends. "I think you're trying to get yourself killed," somebody in the band told me, and I had to wonder if they were right.
I had many near encounters with physical violence, but all came to not. I threw some coins at a drunken table who were singing loudly (they invited me to join them). I called the boyfriend of a girl I worked with a prick one night when I ended up going out with her and him and about six of his stooges and he tried to coerce their former high school teacher into buying them booze (The boyfriend seemed kowtowed that I stood up to him). I humiliated men in front of women they were trying to impress, I openly and notoriously attempted to court away girls from boyfriends who I shamelessly mocked. From the ages of 15 to 20, I was literally begging for somebody to hit me.
I don't know if I would know how to hit someone, and the last ten years I've worried what would ever happen if I was forced into a physical confrontation. When I was young and seemed to be inviting people to fight me, I don't ever really thought that I would prevail in a fight, but I don't think it ever occurred to me that I would totally embarrass myself. But I would. I'd probably get dropped in one punch.
I think I imagined that adrenaline would take over, that I wouldn't need to consciously think about how to hit someone or how hard I would need to do it. That something animal would turn on in my brain, and, even if I didn't win the fight, I'd at least get some good shots in. In all likelihood, I don't know if I ever actually thought that much about it. I don't think I ever thought the words "I want to get into a fight" but clearly my actions demonstrated that's what I was angling for.
I live a pretty safe life now. I spend my mornings writing and lounging around with my cats, I teach teenagers about how to graph rational expressions and write papers about Steinbeck, and then come home and sit beside my bride-to-be as she watches terrible television. I happened home a few days ago to catch a few minutes of MTV's Jersey Shore, and while I was simultaneously amused and mortified at the behavior of the cast of characters (especially mortified when Lisa informed me that some of them were 30) I also recognized something, far away and distant, in the way the men on the show seemed to invite and relish violence. In one sequence, one of them literally pleads with a drunken passerby who is taunting him, pleading to not make him fight him. I shook my head when he finally did start swinging. I thought about the times that I had been hit, and how I had walked away. But, in the split second after it was clear the fight was going to happen but before it started, I turned my attention to the drunken instigator, the one who was taunting the over-muscled and greased up Jersey Shore cast member. Shit, I thought. I think I know that guy.
If it seems like I've been a little less than active, well, that's probably true. There are a couple of reasons.
* I completed work on my new novel, "Immortallo" in early December, and I've spent the last few weeks working on prepping the manuscript for publication, hopefully in late February, early March. Right now things are in the hands of members of my design team, so things like jacket design are up in the air right now. As we get closer to the release date, I'll share some excerpts and artwork. I'm really proud of this one, and I hope people like it as well.
*I'm trying to save up some creative energy for next month's RPM challenge. This is a yearly competition in which entrants must write and record 10 original songs during the month of February. I entered the contest last year (the songs can be heard on my music site, primarily here, here and here )and I'm looking forward to taking part again this year. I'll post links to the songs once they start showing up.
*After that, hopefully the weather will start to warm up a bit, and I'll be in a better writing mood, at which point I'll start work on the next novel, tentatively titled "Harry Swan and the @#$*%#**!!" We'll see how it goes.
*Republican Scott Brown's victory Tuesday in his bid for the late Ted Kennedy's senate seat really put me in a fowl mood yesterday, one that I decided to try and alleviate by raising my snark level to 11. I had a devilish amount of fun deriding Mr.Brown's supporters online yesterday, but probably took it a bit too far. I still hope that most of the people who voted for Mr. Brown were unaware of his anti-gay, anti-woman voting track record when they cast their ballots, and am disappointed that the Democratic party opted to run a robotic and anti-charismatic candidate who was nearly impossible for anybody to get excited about. But as I woke up this morning, determined to post today (initially I was planning to do another Listening Party entry) I just felt I need to dial back on the snark--snark which I feel has been particularly pervasive recently. That could change tomorrow, if I find myself listening to a Paula Cole record or something.
When you drop an old fashioned Coke glass, they bounce once and then shatter in mid-air. I know this because I have dropped at least a dozen old fashioned Coke glasses, and at least eleven of those were on purpose. I'm not sure when the statute of limitations on petty vandalism runs out, but it's been ten years, so I hereby confess to the Friendly's corporation: I broke those goddamn glasses on purpose just because I liked the way they broke.
I also facilitated the breaking of at least a dozen more, as during my very brief tenure as a Friendly's manager, I found that the best way to relieve an overly stressed employee (and at Friendly's most of the employees were teenage girls)was to invite them behind the restaurant and give them some Coke glasses to smash on the pavement. It always seemed to make everything feel better.
The first Coke glass broke by accident. I fell right from my hands, and I watched it fall in slow motion, the way things that you don't want to fall fall. Everytime thereafter, the glasses fell too fast. Gravity never lets you savor the fall when you're enjoying it.
It was a job I didn't want. It fell out of the sky. I had just left my last job after the general manager had tried to pull a "Treasure of the Sierra Madre" between me and the rest of the management staff over a missed place drop box, and my friend Keith and I went to the local Friendly's to flirt with the waitresses we knew there. And one of them--was it Rainee? Janine?--said it when they took away our ketchup stained plates. "Ryan, you should just come work here." And so I did.
About three minutes into my first shift I knew I was not a good fit. I think a person needs a certain temperament to work at a restaurant, and I don't think I had it. It was Pammy the fountain girl who made me promise not to quit. She made me pinky-swear on it. I was 20 years old, and she was 17. It wasn't as sordid as you think. So I stayed.
I wasn't really a very good manager. I don't think I succeeded in closing a night without some kind of food related mishap. There was a complicated series of steps for each food station, and I'd invariably forget one of them. I wouldn't cover up the cheese, or I'd forget to refresh the soft serve machine. These weren't really little things. I think everybody's fear when they go out to a place like Friendly's is that somebody left the cheese out all night, or that they let the mayonnaise spoil. Like I said, I was ill-suited for the job.
But I did a pretty good job at managing the restaurant itself. I was really good at making unsatisfied customers--those dads who threaten to walk out without paying for anything because the waitresses were too slow, their kids' food was served cold--calm down and stay. I was also really good at managing the staff, and when one of those 16-year old waitresses had been yelled at by a customer, and she would be crying in the back, begging me to drop off the bill for her, I'd tell her she needed to do it, that it would make her feel better and stronger if she went out there and faced those customers and showed those mean bastards that they hadn't broken her.
And I'd ask her, when she was crying, when she threatened to quit, what would be the worst thing that could happen? "Nobody's going to die," I'd say. And then I'd take her out back to smash old fashioned Coke glasses.
Only once did my direct boss, Tina the general manager, indicate to me that she suspected anything nefarious about the broken glasses. But I had learned at an early age the power of misdirecting someone without lying. "We dropped them," I'd told her, and that was 100% the truth. We did drop them. Over and over again. Until our sides hurt from laughing.
I knew that I was basically taking money away from the Friendly's corporation. I knew that the glasses cost money and would need to be replaced. But I figured that the glasses were in some way some kind of hazard pay. On a busy night--especially a busy night where we were short-staffed: a usual recipe for late-night glass smashing--the company made more money while we made exactly the same. It was a small form of profit sharing. It was a tiny workers' revolt.
I guess it would seem different if we'd been taking cash out of the register. But we weren't. That would be wrong. And this, this glass smashing? How could something that felt so right be wrong?
Nobody was going to die.
I'd already decided I was leaving, putting in my notice, the night that the Pisser showed up at the door. It had been a crazy busy night--so crazy and hectic and short-staffed that we didn't even have an opportunity to unwind with some glass smashing--and a man knocked at the front door after we had closed. He had a bad mustache, a silk dress shirt unbuttoned too far, black trenchcoat, and a curly mullet. "I need to use your bathroom," he said, standing at the glass door at the front of the restaurant.
I didn't open the door, just kind of yelled to him through the glass. I told him we were closed.
"I need to use the bathroom," he repeated.
Our Friendly's was literally surrounded by bars that were still open. "Why don't you go use the restroom at Bob's?" I said, pointing to the local bar adjacent to us.
He told me he had had a problem with the bouncer there and couldn't go back in. I think I must've known he was drunk before this point, but this was where I really noticed how much he was swaying.
"I need to use your bathroom or I'm going to be sick," he told me. "I've got a condition."
I apologized and told him I couldn't let him into the restaurant after we had closed. He closed his eyes for a second, like he had fallen asleep standing up, then reopened them slowly.
"Remember this face," he said, pointing to his bad mustache. "Remember this face." His fist came out of nowhere. "BECAUSE THIS IS THE FACE OF THE MAN WHO IS GOING TO F*** YOU UP!" he yelled as he shattered the glass door with his fist. I instinctively fell backwards as the glass rained down onto the floor. He ran off into the night.
He wasn't a very adept criminal. The police caught him an hour or two later. I had to go to the police station at 1:45am to make an ID. He was sitting in a room, virtually passed out, his fist wrapped in bloody bandages, his mullet and mustache still intact.
"That's him," I told the officer.
"Are you sure?" he asked me.
I nodded. "He told me to remember his face."
It was a good line, one I couldn't wait to repeat at his trial, which I later received two summons for. I imagined leaning into the microphone at the moment when his defense attorney asked me the question. "Are you sure this is the man you saw that night?"
Dramatic pause. "Yes. He told me to remember his face."
I ended up sitting in Brockton superior court on two separate mornings just to listen to his lawyer ask for a continuance. I only found out months later, after I'd stopped working at Friendly's, that he eventually plead guilty and had to send Friendly's $20/a month until he had paid for the repair to the door. I never got my moment in court.
Some other stuff happened that night--some real Keystone Cops moments with the Bridgewater PD, trying to explain the situation to the night cleaning crew who only spoke Portuguese. An old acquaintance showed up at some point while I was waiting for the police, having taken some bad acid and in need of someone to talk her through it.
I spent a lot of time that night on the phone with the general and regional managers, filling them in on what had happened. It was late at night, I imagine I had woken both of them up, but they didn't seem to grasp what my biggest concern was. We had no front door. The whole door was glass, with the exception of a metal bar across the middle for pulling and pushing the door open, and all that glass was lying in the entrance way.
"Just hang a sign on the door," Tina said.
I tried to explain that there was no way to keep anybody--or any animals--from just walking into the restaurant by just climbing either under or over that center bar. "Just hang a sign on the door," she repeated.
I think I worked there for another month. I thought about just never going back, but I had pinky-sworn to stay, and so I did.
A day or two later I went to work and the glass had been replaced. I guess there would have been some dramatic irony in me being there the day they replaced the front glass door--representing, perhaps, all the glass I myself had broken--but I wasn't. Like I said, it wasn't a job I was really that invested in.
*Listening to Roger Waters' "Amused to Death" in the dark, Christmas night, 1992.
In the olden days, my father would bring us to his aunt and uncle's house in Melrose for Christmas dinner, and give us our Christmas gifts when we got home. Melrose was probably an hour away, and we'd usually stay late, so we wouldn't get home until 10 or 11 o'clock at night. In 1992, my dad gave me "Amused to Death" the new solo record from Pink Floyd's Roger Waters. I'd asked for it having seen a magazine ad for the album's cover, a monkey watching a TV set. I had never heard any of the songs, nor had I heard any Pink Floyd (although my friend Jesse would lend me a copy of 'The Wall' about a week before Christmas), but something about that album cover really grabbed me, so when I opened it up Christmas night, I went down into my dad's unheated basement to listen to it (that's where the stereo was--it had speaker hook-ups throughout the house, but my sisters were asleep) and I sat in the cold dark as monkeys screeched and little boys talked about war, and scared the shit out of myself.
*Reading "Arkham Asylum" by Grant Morrison and Dave McKean, Christmas night 1989, 10pm-11:45 pmI don't think I've ever been so excited by a Christmas gift that ended up horrifying me so much. Released following the successful Batman movie, Arkham Asylum by Morrison and McKean is probably the most disturbing thing I'll ever read. Because when you are 10 years old, there are fewer disturbing things than reading a book on Christmas night about Batman stabbing himself in the hand with a shard of glass.
*Listening to "Fairytale of New York" on repeat at the Rockpile, Christmas Eve 2001
I used to work at a great used record store in my hometown, and I used to work Christmas Eve morning before my boss came in and the place basically turned into a Christmas Eve party for all his friends. I put this song on, probably the only song that reminds me of Christmas that is actually about Christmas, albeit a Christmas between a drunk and verbally abusive couple.
* Lee Carvallo's Putting Challenge from the Simpson Christmas episode, Christmas 1995 The Simpsons have done several Christmas episodes, but this is my favorite. Bart really wants a particular videogame called "Bloodstorm" and after several attempts to earn the money, he instead shoplifts the game. It's actually a pretty heart-rending episode, as Marge discovers his larceny and feels like she doesn't even know her own son anymore. And while it does have a pretty sappy climax (Bart takes the money he's saved and has his portrait taken for her) the ending is maybe my favorite Christmas ending of all time. Marge gives Bart his gift--shaped like a video cartridge--and he opens it expecting Bloodstorm. Instead it is 'Lee Carvallo's Putting Challenge'--Marge informs him that Bloodstorm was sold out. This kind of reminds me of me and my mom.
* Pretending "The Road to Ensenada" by Lyle Lovett was country music, Christmas season, 1998
I was involved with this girl who really loved country music (I remember she had a Garth Brooks boxset) and I was really, really, really trying to learn to like it, as almost a Christmas present to her. Lyle Lovett was about as far as I could go.
*"Sin City" by Frank Miller, Christmas night, 1992
I remember telling my father's older cousin asking me what I had asked for for Christmas, and when I told him a few CDs and a few comics, he asked me if they were those kind of comics with naked ladies in them. I said no, but when I finally got a chance to go home that night and read the first Sin City collection, which my father had gotten me for Christmas, well, Frank Miller made a liar out of me. That's a comic with a lot of naked ladies in it. And I think reading about a guy sawing off somebody's limbs and feeding to the dogs on Christmas night would have disturbed me more if I hadn't already read Arkham Asylum. I was growing up. * The "Madonna" episode of MacGyver, Christmas, 1989 I loved MacGyver when I was like 9 or 10, and this Christmas episode, in which a statue of the Virgin Mary disappears, and the Boys and Girls club that MacGyver's friend works at is going to be closed, except they put on some kind of talent show that saves the club and oh, yeah, it turns out the Mary statue didn't disappear, it just turned into a bag lady who made MacGyver finally deal with the death of his mother, and you may say that I don't love Christmas, but I love this.
*The Fourfignewtons Shirt, Amherst MA, Christmas 1997 My friend Jess' birthday is about a week before Christmas, and I went to visit her in Amherst one year for it. She's a lover of really bad jokes, and I found this t-shirt with four fig newtons dancing in a chorus line, with the tag "fourfignewton" (play on the Volkswagon farfegnugen catchphrase) and then we went Christmas shopping in Northhampton, and I bought the really weird Joni Mitchell album where she included random recordings of people singing happy birthday to Charles Mingus and listened to it the whole long and cold ride back home.
*Watching Bob Dylan Unplugged, Christmas Eve 1994
Surprisingly, I don't think I had ever heard "Like A Rolling Stone" before, and this is the version I hear whenever I think of the song. My favorite bit, however, is Dylan's realization a few bars in that the band's instruments are out of tune. This raises the interesting question: If Bob Dylan can tell when things are out of tune, why has he been singing like that for forty years?
*Reading "Jack Kirby's Fourth World", Christmas 2008 For those who are unfamiliar with Jack Kirby, he created the Fantastic Four, Captain America, the Hulk, and the X-Men, as well as literally hundreds of other characters. But none of his work gives me as much joy as the Fourth World, a series of comics he did for DC in the early 70s. I had black and white reprints of most of them, but last Christmas crazily splurged and purchased all four hardcover collections of the work in color and in the proper order. There's really nothing Christmas-y about gods who look like Black olympic skiers and who collect the spirits of the recently dead. Or maybe there is?
*Watching "True Stories" on DVD, Christmas Eve 2000
I'd seen this movie back in the winter of 1992, and I probably could've included it then, but 1992 is pretty jammed packed. I got my first DVD player in 2000, and this was the first DVD I got to watch in it. It's the movie where David Byrne from Talking Heads puts on a bolo tie and makes fun of people from Texas for an hour and a half. There's a part at the end of the movie, where Byrne as narrator talks about how he likes forgetting. Leaving a place, and you forget all the things and people and places, and so when you go back there you get to rediscover them all again. This is probably one of the central tenets of my life, and why I can listen to Bob Dylan flub the intro to 'Like A Rolling Stone' or reread a drugged-up Batman kicking a supervillian in a wheelchair down a flight of stairs, or listen to Roger Waters talk about how God wants TV and cash contributions, because during the year I forget all these things, which allows me to come back to them and rediscover them like I was 10, or 13, or 20, all over again.
That having been said, this year will be the first year my wife-to-be and I will be spending Christmas together, so I imagine in a few years, a list of my favorite Christmas things might look entirely different.
I don't know what it is about the early winter months that makes me nostalgic for overblown, bombastic, and pretentious rock albums. I figured I'd take a break from all that and listen to one of the least overblown, bombastic, and pretentious rock albums of all time. Pink Floyd's The Wall.
I have to admit that I had no idea who Pink Floyd was in the early days of December 1992, when my friend and bandmate Jesse let me borrow his copy of the wall, taped off of his father's vinyl. I subsequently dubbed a copy of that tape, which meant that for the first four years of listening to this album, it was on a twice-dubbed cassette copy of a 12-year old vinyl record. Meaning that, while 13-year Ryan listened to this album for the first time with the lights off in his bedroom, freaked out by all the strange noises and weird screaming that accompanied this album--due to the poor quality of the tape he had, there was still so much strange noise and weird screaming he couldn't hear.
"In the Flesh?"-So, if you're making an overly pretentious and overblown concept album, the first thing you need to do is record a piece of spoken dialogue and then split it in half and play the second half at the start of the record and the first half at the end, so that it creates a loop. I think Britney Spears did this same trick on "Oops, I Did It Again"
I have since read many books on Pink Floyd, a band that I have been fascinated with since that fateful December night 17 years ago when I first heard singer/composer Roger Waters barking out orders to the lighting crew before airplanes zoomed by and crashed. So I know a lot of the backstory behind the creation of this album: Waters' loss of his father in WWII, the slow descent into madness of Floyd's first singer, Syd Barrett, the increasing dehumanization of rock n' roll tours. But I knew none of that when I first heard this album. Instead, I thought I was going fricking crazy.
"The Thin Ice"- Yoko Ono's biggest solo hit was a song called "Walking on Thin Ice." I mention this because Roger Waters sings a little bit like Yoko Ono on this track. Which is to say not at all.
"Another Brick in the Wall, Part 1"- This album was also my introduction to songs that had parts to them. In my youth, a song was a song, and then you'd just hear another one. But then Roger Waters came along and decided that songs were never finished, just replayed again later with slightly different lyrics and even more headache inducing vocals. This song ends with a long guitar coda overdubbed with sounds of children playing. This scared the shit out of me when I was 13 for some reason.
"The Happiest Days of Our Lives"- This song starts with a helicopter. I don't really know why. I also don't know why that this was its own song and not just the beginning to "Another Brick in the Wall, part 2" It's all about how teachers are mean to kids. Which means your seventh grade brother wrote it.
"Another Brick in the Wall part 2"-Somewhere, someone has written a 40-page dissertation on the way this song blends disco beats with the refrain "we don't need no education" but I don't want to read it, and neither should you. And the person who wrote it should be ashamed of themselves. This song is famous for its use of a children's choir on the second verse. Those kids were all paid for their services with a copy of the album. Roger Waters used the money he made off this record to buy a private island. I don't know what that means, except that while Roger Waters has gone to write and record several more rock operas and one for real opera, none of these school kids ever went on to record their own rock opera. So while we'll never know who was the real musical genius behind the Wall--Roger Waters or a group of 20 eight year olds--I think we can make an educated guess. What?
"Mother"-After hearing this song, I was terrible to my own mother for about five years. So I think Pink Floyd owes my mother an apology.
"Goodbye, Blue Sky"-This is a really beautiful song about a cat eating a bird. And then about some zombies.
Then there are two flowers raping each other.
"Young Lust"-I think this song reveals the brilliance of the collaboration between Roger Waters and guitarist David Gilmour. So this song is supposed to be about a young boy's grappling with his nascent sexuality in the grip of a controlling mother. I feel like Gilmour took one look at the song title and said "'Young Lust'? My guitar knows how to do that." and turned Roger Waters lonely song about masturbation into one that was 100% about cock. That's magic, folks.
"One of My Turns"-This song starts with the mother from Leave it to Beaver playing an operator trying to reach Pink Floyd's wife. And some man answers, which leads Pink Floyd to bring a groupie back to his hotel room. And then the groupie talks about all the cool stuff that it's in the room. This lasts for about forty-five minutes. Then the song starts. Over a really 1979-esque synthesizer, Pink talks about feeling cold as a razorblade and tight as a tourniquet and dry as a funeral drum, and then the drums and guitars kick in, supposedly representing his freak-out. He asks the groupie if she's like to see his favorite ax. When I was 13, I didn't know that people referred to guitars as axes, and thus thought he had turned into a serial killer. Or a lumberjack.
"Don't Leave Me Now"-During this song he doesn't mention anything about trees or logs or how cold it is, so I'm thinking he's not a lumberjack.
"Another Brick in the Wall part 3"-I had to convince my mother to let me rent "Pink Floyd The Wall" the movie from our local video store because it was rated R. I'm pretty sure I saw it before Christmas, which was only about two weeks after Jesse lent me the album, but it seemed the longest two weeks of my life. I was desperate to see the film the band made about the album, and when I finally saw it, it was torturous. It felt like two whole weeks while I was watching it. I thought that maybe everything just felt like it took forever when I was 13, but last year I tried to watch 'The Wall' movie again, and after about four hours I stopped, unable to take anymore. And that only got me to the second roar of the MGM lion.
"Goodbye Cruel World"-This is the end of the first disc of the double album, and I wonder what someone would've thought if they bought this from like a used record store and it only came with the first disc. I'd ask them, but they probably have killed themselves due to extreme depression. The stage show for this record involved a giant wall being built across the stage with this song being the one where Waters inserted the final brick. I actually think this is one of the coolest conceits for a rock n' roll show I've ever heard of, although I don't know how I'd feel as an audience member if the band I went to see didn't want to see me so much they built a wall in front of me.
"Hey You"- I remember I went with this girl named Jenny to a homeless shelter to volunteer, and when her mom was driving us, this song came on the radio, and Jenny said "Oh, Mom, I love this song! Turn it up!" and I decided this meant that she and I needed to get married. She went on to become a Patriots' cheerleader and I write about albums I listen to on a blog that nobody reads, so you can see how that turned out.
"Is there Anybody Out There?"-This is a mostly solo acoustic guitar piece. I'm sure if I went to the Wall show, this is where Floyd started throwing rotten fruit at the audience from over the wall.
"Nobody Home"-This is one of the most affecting songs on the album. And really, if you wanted to know what Roger Waters felt about the rock n' roll lifestyle, this song would do the trick. He talks about having the obligatory Hendrix perm, which someday, when I'm not too busy writing on this blog that nobody reads and wondering what Jenny is up to, I might go into a barber shop asking for the obligatory Hendrix perm just to see what might happen.
"Vera Lynn"/"Bring the Boys Back Home"- These two songs are really one song, which is all about WWII. Roger Waters is meant to connect rock n' rollers going out onto tour with young men going off to battle the Nazis. One group saved Europe from self-destruction. The other made it cool to wave around lighters and dayglo sticks in the air and yell out "Freebird." I'm not one to pass judgment.
"Comfortably Numb"- This is probably the most famous song from this album, and is probably tied with "Money" to be the most famous Pink Floyd song of all time. Which is funny, because it's all about getting a hyper-cortisone shot before going onto stage to perform in a giant stadium rock show. That really boils down the universality of the Wall to its core, doesn't it?
This performance is from 2005, the final performance of Pink Floyd ever, and the first time the original (well non-Syd Barrett original) members played together in 25 years. I mention this because for all the fun I'm poking at this record, seeing this band reunite after so many years was a big deal to me, even though I was an adult. It was a great moment. Even though David Gilmour looks a little bit like Skeletor.
"The Show Must Go On"- You wouldn't know it from the liner notes (the liner notes don't even mention the band's drummer,Nick Mason, so I'd hardly call them comprehensive) but this song features background vocals from Toni Tennille, from the Captain & Tennille. Which might be the scariest thing about the whole record.
"In the Flesh"- A reprise of the album's opening track, this time without the question mark, and with added racial slurs. There's some business when you watch the film that Pink Floyd (the character, not the band) has turned in a fascist. Which I guess is cool. I mean, I'd guess I'd rather have a rock star pretend to be a fascist then pretend to be a socialist, like when John Lennon tells us to imagine no possessions when he's playing an ivory grand piano in his mansion.
"Run Like Hell"- At this point in the record/movie/Roger Water's life, things are so bleak I applaud all of us for keeping on.
"Is there anybody weak in the audience?" We're all weak, Roger.
"Waiting for the Worms"-There's actually an interesting point to be made with the central metaphor of this song, about how isolating ourselves from the world makes us vunerable to the decay of self-doubt. The problem is if you weren't isolated from the world before you listened to this record, you probably would be by the time you got to this song. Although I suppose it's better than another Captain and Tennille song, I suppose.
"The Trial"- I can't even imagine being a Pink Floyd fan during this time, having grown up with the band since the late 60s. Getting stoned and listening to Ummagumma or Set the Control for the Heart of the Sun getting to the end of this record and hearing them performing a Gilbert & Sullivan number about dueling toothed vaginas. And giant balls.
Somewhere there is a cassette tape featuring the band I was in when I was 13 performing a cover of this song. This alone will prevent me from ever running for public office.
"Outside the Wall"-At this point in the show, the giant wall would be torn down, showering lightweight cardboard bricks on the audience, followed by this quiet melodica-driven song. On the tape I had, the sound quality was bad, I don't think I even heard this song at all the first few times I listened to the album. I was still thinking about the raping flowers, and giant toothed vaginas, and how rock music turned you into a nazi, and I just pulled the covers over my head.
Francis Ford Coppola decided, after almost two decades, to return to the Godfather movies. The first two were and are among the most critical acclaimed movies in American history, so who could argue with a Godfather part III? FFC wrote a script, signed all the principals (Al Pacino, Diane Keaton) and hired the talented Winona Ryder to play the key role of Mary, Michael Corleone's daughter. But weeks before shooting was to start, Ryder got sick and dropped out of the picture, and FFC replaced her with his young, inexperienced daughter.
I mention this because Meatloaf also decided to make his Bat out of Hell series a trilogy, and when his collaborator and songwriter Jim Steinman quit the project, Meat was forced to hire Francis Ford Coppola's daughter to fill in. Well, not quite, but Bat Out of Hell III is a weird hybrid creature; Meatloaf found a few older Steinman songs lying around (including a few from an unproduced Batman musical, and one from a Celine Dion record) and then filled them in with songs that sound like they were only written because Winona Ryder got sick.
"The Monster's Loose"- This song is written by Nikki Six and John 5. I think that first guy is from Motley Crue, and that second guy is the robot from Short Circuit. Which would explain the fact that the music sounds like heavy metal-lite music, with lyrics that seem like its author was taught human emotion from Steve Guttenburg. This song also serves as the album's subtitle. Any album that needs a subtitle is definitely in trouble. It would've been like if Bat II was subtitled "The Wrath of Khan."
"Blind as a Bat"- This song is also not written by Jim Steinman. It was written by Desmond Child, who co-wrote "Living On A Prayer" with Bon Jovi. However, unlike that song, Blind as A Bat doesn't make me want to rollerskate around Skatetown. It doesn't even make me want to be blind as a bat so much as it makes me want to be deaf as Marlee Matlin. I do want to give Meatloaf credit for singing his heart out on this song. I give him credit for really committing to it, like award-winning actor Raul Julia did when he appeared in 'Street Fighter' with Jean Claude Van Damme. "It's All Coming Back To Me Now"- Ah, the first of the Steinman scraps. This came from a Celine Dion album. His duet partner, Marion Raven, is not, as I imagined when I first listened to it, the girl from 'That's So Raven', which ruins whatever tiny enjoyment I got from the song. I do remember one of the few bits of pre-publicity buzz this album got was due to the fact that Meat had apparently asked Scarlett Johansen to sing this with him and she turned him down. She went on to record an album of Tom Waits' songs. Winner? Nobody.
"Bad for Good"- Our second Steinman scraps, and dear god, I thank you that this album exists just for this one song. I believe it comes from Steinman's solo album, when Jim Steinman, the she-male who wrote all of Bat Out of Hell decided he didn't need Meatloaf's voice and charisma to make his overblown and creepy songs less overblown and creepy. He just embraced their overblown and creepiness. The best part of this song? Well, that's like asking which atom of the sun makes you the warmest, but the thing that I love particularly about this song at this moment is that they recruited Brian May from Queen to record lead guitar on this song. Combining Meatloaf and Queen is almost too much to handle. If Phil Spector had produced it, this song would've been so rock n' roll decadence that it would've crushed the earth and all life on it. But the combination of Meatloaf's voice, May's guitar, and Steinman's "You think that I'll be bad for just a little while, I know that I'll be bad for good" chorus hook, is enough awesome to make my bones ache. This is the one song on the album that feels 'Bat Out of Hell'-ish even a little bit. Part of the reason for that is this song is copyright 1979, before being a sexless freak had completely embittered Jim Steinman. That's actually probably the only reason, now that I think about it.
"Cry Over Me"-Having run out of Steinman scraps for the time being, Meat turns to songwriter Diane Warren, who also wrote 'I Don't Want to Miss A Thing' for Aerosmith. This might be the moment where you look around and think "Meatloaf's here, the album's called 'Bat Out of Hell', there's a bad painting of a guy on a motorcycle with a sword fighting a giant bat....why does it all feel so wrong?" and the answer, again, is that THIS SONG IS BY THE WOMAN WHO WROTE THE THEME SONG TO ARMAGEDDON. If an asteroid smashed into my house right now while I'm listening to this song, I'm afraid I'd deserve it.
"In the Land of the Pig, the Butcher is King"- STEINMAN! STEINMAN! STEINMAN! Oh, thank you Jim Steinman, for not only writing an unproduced Batman musical, but for also leaving the sheet music laying around for Meatloaf to find. So I think this song is written from the Joker's point of view, or something. You'd think the combination of Jim Steinman and Batman would be as awesome as the Steinman/Queen combo, but I guess Prince's "Batdance" has ruined me forever.
"Monstro"- What? No. Instrumentals? I feel like they made this in the hope they could get Jim Steinman to come in and do his creepy spoken word thing, about I'm a big whale and I'm going to swallow you and then you'll have to light a fire inside me and I'll sneeze you out, but, like, sexually. And then Jim didn't show up.
"Alive"- It does segue way into the Trans-Siberian Orchestra. Oh, wait, no, still Meatloaf. Is this song also written by Johnny 5? ("Johnny Five...alive!") No. This song is written by four people, which outside of a band situation, just strikes me as too many people. If it takes four people to write a song this generic, maybe it means that the idea for the song wasn't that good to begin with. I hate that I can't direct my disappointment toward Jim Steinman. I could have so much fun picking on him for looking like Cloris Leachman when she first wakes up in the morning, but now I have a bit of begrudging respect for him deciding not to take part in this deal. And I don't want to blame Meatloaf. I'm so conflicted.
"If God Could Talk"- He'd say, 'Stop making Bat Out of Hell III.'
"If It Ain't Broke, Break It"- Oh, Steinman, I'm sorry for how much I picked on you during Bats I & II. It doesn't mean I want to hang out with you or anything. This song is also from your unproduced Batman musical, and while it isn't objectively good in any way, I love it still because it's YOURS.
I mean, it's total shit, but it's YOURS.
"What About Love"-Ah, the last non-Steinman song. It's also written by four people. Steinman must sit around listening to his complementary copy of this album, brushing his long, white hair and just laughing that it takes four people to even try and write a Bat Out of Hell song. And then he takes out his Batman action figures and starts using them to perform his Batman musical. "Robin, quickly! To the Tony Awards!"
"Seize the Night"-Another Batman musical number. Since I've kind of made a truce with Jim Steinman, I'll just include some scenes I'd like to see in the Batman musical if it ever comes to pass.
"The Future Just Ain't What it Used to Be"-
"Cry to Heaven"- Here I am. I've nearly completed my look at the Bat Out of Hell trilogy. I don't know if there will ever be a Bat Out of Hell IV (although my guess is that if Meatloaf invested his 'Bat' money in the stock market, the answer is yes) but if not I'm disappointed that the whole thing ended without the giant bat getting his comeuppance. You can't just go and grab big-breasted women in chain-mail and make guys ride enchanted motorcycles to get them back too many times before you get your comeuppance. So if I could implore Meatloaf and Steinman to reunite one last time to write and record one more song in which the motorcycle guy finally defeats the giant bat. Steinman, you can probably just use that song from the 'Beowulf' musical I'm sure you've got kicking around somewhere. Just don't let it end here. That motherlovin' bat's got it coming. To be continued....?
