Curtis Mayfield, "Pusherman"

No special life-lesson observations here, just want to point out that this song was blasting from a pizza parlor that I passed on my way to work yesterday (walking down the street), because the snowstorm put my GRE test on hold and well, after waiting for the ice and snow to clear out enough to risk driving, I figured I couldn't use the weather as an excuse to lay out of work (I must say, I am not missing much of daytime TV when I'm at work. The hours I'm at work are much more wisely spent than they would be if I were at home, watching ESPN's First Take for the simple fact that I can't decide who's more of a horse's ass, Stephen A. Smith or Skip "I wrote books about the Cowboys" Bayliss. Probably Skip, if I had to decide with a gun to my head. God, what an ass).

Like I said, my GRE test is delayed, by almost a month (Feb. 24th is the make-up date they gave me, which I hope works with the college I've applied to grad school for). If not, hey, there's always next spring (2015). I've had to wait this long, shit, I can stand to wait longer.

Anyway, I need a nap because I feel like it would be nice to have one (driving to work this morning was potentially a mistake because I was woozy from something or another). No drinking or anything; I just think I'm sick. Tis the season for that, assuredly.

Anyway, go find this song on YouTube or ITunes (I might have to purchase the Superfly soundtrack asap, I had this from iTunes but I don't have iTunes anymore). Trust me, it's the perfect motherfucking song to get your swagger back with, provided you don't slip on any ice and bust your ass. And I didn't slip on the ice (though I did notice an awful lot of dog turds on the sidewalks downtown. Thought you were supposed to pick that up, pet-owners...somebody's being lazy). Anyway, gonna take a quick nap then get myself home so I can relax a bit and start prepping myself for the GRE test now almost a month ahead of me. Unless it snows again.

God, I hope it doesn't.

Anyway, good day to you all! (and if you haven't read the book already, seek out The Fortress of Solitude, this is a fantastic book!)

Warren Zevon, "Excitable Boy"

My GRE test is coming up this week (Wednesday, at 12:30, so of course now they're saying there might be a chance of snow the night before), and I've checked out three books from the local library and read the math sections front to back (I'm pretty sure I can handle the English stuff, but I won't neglect to look those over too), and I can safely say that I hope they grade on a curve...a very large curve.

In all seriousness, the GRE isn't really a test you can study for; either you paid attention and learned all that stuff in your math classes during middle school, or you didn't. In my case, it's about fifty-fifty, though I will say that looking thru the books this past week has been good refresher-style practice on the sort of stuff that might (I stress "might") show up on the test. It's just something that has everything to do with whether I get into grad school, no pressure whatsoever...wait, why is Queen and David Bowie cueing up in my head?

The horror, the horror...

I am given to exaggeration and hyperbole, naturally, so in the long run I'm guessing the test will be merely a prelude to my glorious entrance into grad school in the fall, provided my application meets with approval...shit, my application! Knew I forgot something!

I kid, but I know from past experience nothing is in the bag. I don't care how much I try to say "meh, it'll be alright," I'm hard-wired to stress about such things, either on a grand scale or a mini-grand scale, until the ordeal is over. For that reason, I have chosen to distract myself with another book that, like Moby-Dick, I always meant to get around to but never had found the time for.

In this case, it's Jonathan Lethem's The Fortress of Solitude, which as well as being an apt metaphor for my GRE-studying living conditions, is pretty good so far. I have circled around this one for a few years, only getting a few pages into on various tries before throwing up my hands in dismay. So far, though, I'm a hundred and twenty pages in and it's not too shabby.

Anyway, Wednesday can't get here fast enough, but then again it can. I respect the GRE test because I fear it, but I know I won't sweat the English sections too hard (unless I've been wrong to focus on math and get to the English test after receiving an emergency lobotomy that reduces me to a drooling mess). Anxiety is both a blessing and a curse before a test that could have serious impact on your life and future plans. But once the test is over, I can sit back, relax, and kick myself for the questions I know I got wrong. Stupid fractions, why you gotta be messing with my flow?

Oasis, "Don't Look Back In Anger"

In 1996, at the height of "Oasis-mania," I opined to anyone that would listen (and most everyone else) that if guitarist and main songwriter Noel Gallagher put out a solo album, I'd buy it. He finally obliged me in 2011, with "Noel Gallagher's High-Flying Birds." I have yet to buy said album.

Whose fault this is, is debatable; clearly, sixteen-year-old me is no longer the same guy as thirty-something-year-old me. But Noel took so damn long to leave Oasis behind (by my reckoning, 1997's Be Here Now was the last listenable Oasis album, and not by much at that). Sure, you could say that the band *was* his band anyway, and that letting nasal-voiced little bro Liam be the main vocalist for the group was his way of heading off blame for when the group's music declined. Perhaps Noel's voice, used sparingly on lead vocals for such songs as "Don't Look Back In Anger," was better in small doses anyway, and a solo album by him might have ruined it.

Perhaps I need to get out more, talking about a band that hasn't meant anything to anyone over the age of twenty since about 1999...

Anyway, "Don't Look Back" came on the radio today, either before or after a gigantic bird almost collided with my windshield while in mid-flight (I'm not sure what the damage would've been, but I'm just glad I had my wits about me to slow down and let the vulture or whatever it was continue on its low-level buzzing of the highway), and it put me to mind of my adolescent interest in a band that, honestly, time has not been kind to. When they first came to my attention, on the crest of "Wonderwall," I was just getting into the Beatles, and it seemed like Oasis were like the Beatles (they were from England, they had accents, and Beatles hairdos). Of course, hindsight proves that Oasis weren't the Beatles; they weren't even Gerry and the Pacemakers. But it was a good run while it lasted, wasn't it?

Noel took over the band that was essentially Liam's, on the condition that he'd write all the songs. I can only imagine how bad Oasis' songs were before the regime change, but listening to the actual lyrics of "Don't Look Back," I'm struck at how much they suck. The song is fantastic, musically; but the combination of the music and lyrics is a bit like a really awful hangover mess: you go to bed with the beautiful guitar work, only to wake up to the ugly-as-sin lyrics in the cold light of day.

Man, that near-bird collision really shook me up...

But Oasis were part of my childhood, of feeling left out of the social norm (though that was a blessing in disguise) and needing something to cling to pop-culture-wise that spoke to me, or seemed to. I guess it's why tween girls like Justin Bieber, he of the ever-changing-haircuts and burgeoning career as a rehab patient in countless downward spirals and comebacks. When those girls get older, they'll look back at the amount of time they spent looking up to Bieber and wonder what the hell they were thinking. For me, Oasis is the albatross of my musical education, a group that I can't really believe I ever liked, but that I like all the same for the few fleeting good things that they did (terrible lyrics and all). In terms of artistic relevance, they're just a shade beyond fellow Mancunians the Hollies (Manchester really has produced much, much better bands). But in terms of taking me back to my childhood, they're tops.

Perhaps if that bird today had been a high-flying one, I wouldn't have been prompted to write all this...

The Beach Boys, "Darlin'"

I was perusing the bootleg section of a small record store on the last day of 2013 (the same day that I bought Talking Heads' Fear of Music album) when I came across a curious-looking artifact: a CD with the same color scheme and design of the Beach Boys' landmark 1966 album Pet Sounds, but by Charles Manson (he of the "Manson Family murders of 1969" fame). The "album" was a collection of songs old Charlie did in the pen (namely, San Quentin) where he's been locked up since the Nixon administration.

Of course, anyone who knows their pop-culture history should know that Manson and the Beach Boys intersected oh-so-briefly during the late Sixties, and that Manson harbored dreams of being a folksinger or rock star (when he wasn't harboring dreams of race war and mass murder). Dennis Wilson, the free-spirited drummer of the group, even let Manson and his "kin" crash at his home for a time. Fortune did not favor the insane, however, and the Beach Boys were not on Manson's hit list when the shit hit the fan.

For my money, this is just one of the many aspects of the Beach Boys' collected history that make them the most interesting band in American musical history. Not the most important, mind you (that honor belongs to the Velvet Underground), but the most tabloid-friendly of the whole Sixties bunch. Brian Wilson may get the biopic treatment soon, and I imagine a whole new generation may be exposed to his brilliant pop melodies and songwriting prowess. Or they may be scared off by the Reagan-era "Kokomo," which led to recurring guest-starring roles for the BB's on temporary drummer John Stamos' Full House.

In fact, I first heard about the Boys in the late Eighties, when they always seemed to crop up on TV shows singing about fun in the sun and the girls they saw on the beach (though at this point in time, they were already pushing fifty as the median age for their individual ages). There was nothing cool about the Beach Boys twenty years ago, when as all aging rock stars of the Sixties they were still striving to be "relevant" by jumping on the synthesizer train to Hitsville, USA. If you can remember Starship's "We Built This City," you know what I'm talking about. I've always been a narrative junky, however, and as I read more about pop music and the Beach Boys in particular, I had to admit that Brian Wilson and company were compelling even when a lot of their music might not be.

The Wilson brothers, cousin Mike "No, I just like wearing hats, my hairline isn't receding" Love, and high school pal Al Jardine first made music together in 1962, and from the outset they were managed by Murray Wilson, the tyrannical father of brothers Brian, Dennis, and Carl. Brian Wilson couldn't handle the fame that engulfed the group and, on the verge of a European tour in 1964, had a mental breakdown and had to go into seclusion (leading years later to his manipulation at the hands of a glory-hound psychiatrist who surprisingly enough isn't named "Dr. Drew."). The group turned to Brian as songwriter and arranger, and the situation worked for quite a while. There was Pet Sounds, "Good Vibrations" (salvaged from the abortive SMiLE sessions of 1967), and countless other hits. But the Sixties passed the group by, and the Seventies weren't much better. By 1983, Dennis Wilson was dead, and Carl would follow in 1998. Last year the Beach Boys reconfigured because "hey, fifty years have passed and we need to make money" (I'm sure that was the sole reason to force poor Brian Wilson back out onstage). They've been riding the nostalgia gravy train for so long, even the hipster ironists who "embrace" them can't tell if they're the ones being ironic or if the band is.

A few years ago, during my "everything I write must be GENIUS" phase, I penned a slightly bizarre hard-boiled mystery short story for National Lampoon which featured Brian Wilson (circa 1966) as a special helper to the LAPD, with Darryl Gates (the police chief at the time of the Rodney King beating, but in my story a lowly detective) as his reluctant sidekick. They were on the trail of what was going to turn out to be the Manson Family, if I'd seen the story through (I was so pleased with myself over the execution of the detective noir set-up that I didn't bother to think ahead to how to make it convincing. This might be why I don't write mysteries). It never got beyond the rough, rough draft stage, and on some level I'm fine with that. But when I read Thomas Pynchon's Inherent Vice, it occurred to me that maybe there had been something in that idea (at least the burnt-out detective, though in Pynchon's case, Doc Sportello had nothing to do with pop music except as a listener). I might try and revisit that someday, or at least leave it up to someone who can take the idea further than I could.

Like a lot of people, I wish the Beach Boys had never recorded "Kokomo," and if you ask anyone with half a brain if they like that song you'd be hard-pressed to find a fan of it even then. I love Pet Sounds, I love the version of Smile that Brian Wilson released a few years back, and I like "Darlin'," a song about which I know very little. But it's a good one, and the best Beach Boys songs help you forget the endless cash-grabs, the nauseating association with Reagan's "Morning in America" crap, and Mike Love's seemingly endless collection of baseball caps that don't actually feature team logos on them (always seems to be some fishing buddy's savings and loans or something). Then again, we're talking about Brian Wilson, the man who penned "Don't Worry, Baby." I guess he can do whatever the hell he wants.

Van Halen, "Panama"

Ever since Johnny Cash's first collaboration with Rick Rubin, 1994's American Recordings, Volume One, it seems like we see a cycle of once-great (or once-chart-topping, anyway) artists get the revival treatment, be it ironically (Pat Boone) or with great respect (Loretta Lynn). This past holiday season, you couldn't turn on a TV without coming across Michael Bolton (rescued via a very funny Lonely Island short about Jack Sparrow) pimping for Honda. And believe me, I'm glad that's over with. But now we need to ask ourselves who's next in the "gosh, we didn't realize how good you were or hey, wouldn't it be funny if we pretended to like you again" sweepstakes.

My candidate: MC Hammer.

But one name that I hope never comes up for consideration, one figure whose legacy should remain unsullied by a stab at late-career relevance, is the man himself, the epic mind behind the memoir Crazy From the Heat (one of the best punchlines on any episode of "News Radio," when Phil Hartmann gives Dave Foley a copy for his birthday without having any idea who Van Halen are). Yes, the one and only Diamond David Lee Roth should never be resurrected as a cultural icon. Because there's absolutely nothing wrong with him the way he is.

I'm not joking when I say that Roth is the last in a long line of rock and roll frontmen who would be fun to party with. Think about the rock gods that came in his wake; you think Kurt Cobain was a barrel of laughs? Of his hair-metal contemporaries (well, his stint with Van Halen predates most of that, but he certainly inspired the hair aspect of it if not the metal), Roth stands alone as a man who would never do a reality show unless it was to reform Van Halen (and even then he'd probably bail). Axel Rose would cut you just as soon as look at you; David Lee would share his cocaine with you.

That being said, I wouldn't mind partying with some of the big names in rap and hip-hop over the years, but for pure balls-to-the-wall rock and roll, I think DLR can't be beat. And that's why I don't think he should ever be in line to sell his voice by pitching for a car company.

I have a cousin who unironically loves Van Halen, especially the DLR era (some people prefer Van Hagar, but no one loves Van Cherone). Because of his love, I've heard far more Van Halen than what's usually played on the radio. You'll never mistake it for the Velvet Underground or the Who (or even the Guess Who), but as fun party-time music, it's hard to beat. What sells me on the DLR-era VH is his goofiness, even as he's trying to seduce the women in the audience. He's a clown, but he's also a rock god.

Comedians always want to be rock stars, rock stars always want to be comedians. Diamond Dave is both, and he's just so goofy that, even if you think Van Halen is not as great as all that, you can't actually hate the man behind the vocals (well, if you're the Van Halen brothers you can. See "every attempt to reunite the original line-up" if you want a lesson in how bands can go up Hindenburg-style). An un-ironic appreciation of DLR is just not what pop-culture needs. When Roth is off to that Great Titty Bar In the Sky, maybe then we can unearth lost recordings in which he tackles the great American songbook and wrings hard-won lessons from the bluesmen who came before him. But for now, let's all sit back and laugh along with Dave as he tells us he's just a gigolo. When he gets to the part about how he can't find nobody, ignore the women who still flock to his lair in the DLR abode.