The Kinks, "Victoria"

First rule of writing exclusively about a particular music artist for more than one blog entry at a time: don't listen to their best-of day in and day out to get the creative juices flowing. I had the "Singles" CD in my car the better part of this past week, and I got tired of the Kinks as far as listening to them for a while. This happens with just about any artist that you overplay, though, so don't doubt my Kinks fandom. I'm just saying I'll be using my mental iPod from now on, at least for a few weeks.

Anyways, I wanted to tackle "Victoria" next because it was actually the genesis of my idea to write about the Kinks in general. Back when the royal baby was on his way (and back before anyone know the sex of the little tot), I began to think of the song "Victoria" as perhaps endemic of the world's seeming obsession with all things royal this past summer. After all, I kept screaming at the TV (and trust me, I didn't seek out wall-to-wall coverage of Will and Kate's bundle of joy; every network or cable news outlet was more than happy to oblige), everyone knows (or should know) that the idea of a monarchy in post-1776 times is just batshit stupid, and besides the Brits have a constitutional monarchy, which is basically there for the sake of tourism. The royal family has about as much real power as George W. Bush did during his "presidency" (zing! Got you again, heartless bastard Dick Cheney!). Imagine if your family was paid to simply appear at places, looking ridiculously decked out, and people took pictures or followed you around with cameras. That's right, the Windsors are Kardashians with less body hair.

But deep down, in a part of me that doesn't come to the surface often (because I am of course opposed to the idea of any kind of hierarchial system which promotes people over others simply by matter of birth), I have to admit that I'm a little interested in the idea of people being born to rule, even if I don't agree with the principle. Back when I was a wee lad, reading encycolopedias for fun, I'd often stumble across the entries for kings, emperors, Roman guys who ruled for maybe a month and a half, anyone who ever found themselves not democratically elected to office (basically every dictator ever) and become fixated on the birth- and death-dates, the time they came to power and the circumstances under which they lost it (natural causes or a jealous son who was eager to get control so that he could hold gladiatorial contests and punish Russell Crowe? The world has to know). I've always retained that sort of interest (I wouldn't call it "morbid fascination," though you might), whether it's kings and queens or rock stars who OD'ed early into the reunion tour that they were hesitant about in the first place. I like figuring out if someone who died in 2013 died before or after their birthday during that year (I like figuring out exactly how old they were, maybe not down to the hour but at least to the day or month). I'm enough of an immature person sometimes that I can't help but snicker when someone dies at the age of sixty-nine. Perhaps I'm just a terrible person.

But I do not "like" the royals of any country, because I don't like the idea of anyone giving themselves carte blanche to rule over people without being held accountable (though of course, you could always have a French Revolution or two to settle the balance). I come from the middle class, or at least the lower rung of that, and certainly some of my dislike is based on the inherent mendacity that comes with seeing someone better off than yourself (or perceiving them to be carefree, though rich people have their problems too; they're just easier to buy off) and envying them. But there's that whole notion, first proposed in Grendel, that basically says kings are the guys who, in a contest over a field or piece of land, have either the cash to buy off the other person or the stones to simply murder them, then claim "divine right of kings." That doesn't sit well with me, as an American and a punk-rock fan. Hatred of wealth and privilege can be corrosive, of course, and I wouldn't suggest a Romanov-style farewell to the Windsors. But maybe we could tone down on the number of royal correspondents (i.e., people who dress really extravagently to be interviewed in their posh country homes) who come out of the woodworks every time Kate Middleton has a contraction.

Like I said, though, I have been known to be a "people in power behaving badly" junkie, and I find it hard to trump the ancient Romans (basically, everyone after Commodus is either bloodthirsty, idiotic, or delusional. What's amazing is that the empire survived Joaquin Phoenix in the first place and stuck around for at least two hundred more years to boot). But the Windsors (real name: something German and hard to pronounce) aren't far off the crazy mark. For every George VI who was an inspiring leader during WWII (and played to perfection by Colin Firth), there's your Edward VII (I think that's the number, anyway the one before George) who abdicates to be with an American woman and oh yeah might have been a Nazi sympathizer. George III went batshit crazy sometime after losing the Colonies in America, and Victoria gave her name to an era in which no one apparently had sex or thought bad things (people did die of tuberculosis, of course, mostly female novelists and entire ships' crews of Arctic explorers). Like Elvis Costello with "Veronica," the Kinks recall this bygone era with tongue-in-cheek, but not at anyone's particular expense. While Costello is the one punk forefather who continues to make significant music and thus unlikely to be on Elizabeth II's knighthood list (no doubt because of the one time Johnny Rotten made that whole song about her being a heartless bitch, or the fact that the Smiths envisioned an England in which the Queen is dead), Ray Davies might get by if he hasn't already. Elizabeth will hear his quaint tales of provincial life, and she'll enjoy the genuine toe-tapping rhythm of this song. But while she's about to bestow the title of Lord upon him, she won't notice the wry smile of Ray Davies pulling another one on the English upper class. That's my hope, anyway; can you imagine anyone in pop music actually *liking* the royal family?

Oh wait, I forgot about the twat everyone now calls "Sir Paul" ;-)

The Kinks, "A Well Respected Man"

It's hard for me to pick just one Kinks song to write about for this blog, and I'm toying with the idea of devoting more posts to individual songs because Ray Davies is just so freaking brilliant that you can't just talk about one of his songs. But assuming that the "Kinks-a-palooza" runs out of steam before it gets out of the station, I think I've got a good one here to sum up why the Kinks rock.

There's quite a few things that I consider distinctly English: Shakespeare, Jane Austen, those novels of Graham Greene's that are set in England (though the expat novels do a good job in carrying Englishness around the world), and the songwriting career of Ray Davies. When the Kinks started in 1964, they came over to America as part of the "British Invasion," but an issue with their travel visas kept them from touring the States between 1965 and 1968. And while you could easily see an American blues/R&B influence in most British rock acts (with an acknowledgement of many of those band's members' Irish heritage mixed in as well), the Kinks never really seemed anything other than English kids, talking about life in England, with a respect for the fact that America was "the tops" in terms of pop culture but not really embracing the idea that they had to forsake their Englishness for success. Let the Yardbirds and the Stones eulogize dead bluesmen; the Kinks would rather sing about Queen Victoria and tea with the parents.

Of course, a mere surface reading of the Kinks' most famous songs would seem to yield the notion that they were fuddy-duddys, adults in a kid's world who distrusted "fun" and "illegal narcotics" because that got in the way of football or fashion. Then again, you should be clued in by Ray's playful vocals that he's in on a joke at the central figure's expense, especially in "A Well Respected Man." If the lyrics don't give it away, the very brilliant opening riff by Ray's brother Dave is a tip-off that some well-intentioned satire is about to be underway.

When I was first getting into British rock of the 1960s, the Kinks were sorta like the odd men out; they went to art school like the Who, but there was nothing "maximum R&B" about their sound (apart from the first song that got them noticed, "You Really Got Me"). If they had Irish blood in them like the Beatles or the Stones, they didn't advertise it much. Their very image, of dandy Edwardian-types lost in the melee of pop-music-crazy Britain and its fashion-conscious "mods," wasn't likely to inspire hero worship from red-blooded American males. But there was something just a little off about them that appealed to me. I loved the Beatles and the Who, but the Kinks were kind of a guilty pleasure, as English as English rock and roll could get.

"A Well Respected Man" may well be the highpoint of their Sixties career (they carried on, off and on, through the Seventies and Eighties before the Davies brothers couldn't stand one another anymore and called it a day in the Nineties). Other candidates might come to mind amongst Kinks-krazies, but for me everything that makes the Kinks so frustratingly fun to love (their refusal to abandon what they know, which was English provincial life and the class structure that dominated it, while tweaking their nose at the well-respected man who sounds like a mama's boy and a basket case of unacknowledged lust: "He adores the girl next door/'cause he's dying to get at her"). Their gift is in crafting lovingly amusing portraits of small-town people whose lives revolve around the telly or whatever social clubs they belong to, with nary a thought for the tumult in the world around them. Maybe that's the key to their timelessness, the lack of timeliness in their most well-known songs. Mick and the boys might be street-fightin' men, but Ray would prefer to thumb through his autumn almanac and take a holiday.

I might just have to return to the Kinks again at some point, violating the now somewhat arbitrary rules of the premise that Jonathan Garren established sometime last year (back then, of course, I had a working iPod and iTunes library, so a lot has changed about how the songs get picked anyway. Why not repeat an artist or two?). I don't have much in my record collection beyond the BBC Sessions CDs and their "Singles" release, but those really have plenty that I can cover, from "Waterloo Sunset" to "Lola." Yep, I'm not done with the Kinks yet, so expect something else by Ray Davies to crop up in the next update which I know you are all breathlessly awaiting...

The Clash, "The Magnificent Seven"

To me, Joe Strummer should not be referred to in the past tense. He should be alive and well and doing great music even now. But in December 2002, he breathed his last breath, and the world is a lot sadder for his absence.

I think Strummer's death was the most shocking "celebrity death" I can recall in terms of someone that I was a fan of, up until Adam Yauch's passing a little less than ten years later. Both men excelled at their craft, making the music style that they were known for (Strummer in punk, Yauch in rap) so much better than had they never lifted their voices to begin with. Granted, you could argue that Strummer made his most vibrant music twenty years before his death, with the Clash, and that everything since the band's dissolution had been window dressing on a well-earned reputation as a punk icon. But for the sheer force of his personality, Joe Strummer remained important right up to the last hour of his life. It's hard to believe that the Clash would've cashed in and taken the easy route (a reunion tour like the Police), but we'll never really have that option again, now will we?

I blame Sid Vicious, though perhaps I could put Buddy Holly, Johnny Ace, and (going way, way back) Thomas Chatterton, Shelley, and Keats for the world's fascination with rock stars or literary figures who are gone way too soon, but by punk standards Joe was an "old man" of fifty. Many of his contemporaries who didn't meet an early grave (Vicious, Ian Curtis, etc.) didn't manage to hang on much past the turn of the century (three-fourths of the original Ramones died within a three- or four-year span of one another). It could be the heavy drug culture that surrounded the scene in the late Seventies (punks did their fair share), though some of the forefathers of the movement (Iggy Pop, Lou Reed) took rhino-sized portions of cocaine and other goodies and live today as revered father figures. John Lydon, the former "Johnny Rotten" of the Sex Pistols, is another survivor of that era, and when I first read his takedown of Strummer as being "inauthentic" as a source on punk for the movie Sid and Nancy, I took him at face value. Early on, I preferred the Pistols to the Clash, and the myth of their rise and fall in less than two years was more attractive than the Clash's solid ten-year existence (though I later learned that existence was anything but solid, especially after Mick Jones left the group in 1982).

Like a lot of things I believed in when I was young, the notion of what makes someone "authentic" when they claim to speak for something has changed. Sure, Strummer (real name: John Mellors) came from a fairly posh background, as the son of a diplomat, while Lydon's parents were poor Irish living in squalor in London. But Strummer, like a punk-rock Buddha, came down from his heights to survey how the less-well-off were living. And he embraced the young audience for punk in a way that Lydon never has and never will. The Pistols were notorious, and attacked because of it; the Clash were beloved.

I guess I can see how Lydon might rankle a bit at the idea that Strummer was better at the punk game than he was (after all, the Pistols started the whole damn thing, whether or not it really was just a ploy by Malcolm McLaren to get more people buying in his clothing shops), but the Clash were the one group to emerge from that initial wave to rival and, in time perhaps, surpass the masters. They stayed together longer, put out more music, evolved in their style (none of the original punk bands would be considered "punk" in the didactic, rigid sense of what "punk" is as believed by people who don't know better), and made the world safe for rap with their single "The Magnificent Seven." In my leaner economic years, I sold the "best of" CD that had this song on it, and I regret it to this day. I still have the dynamic first album (which includes "Police and Thieves," the song I was going to write about until I changed my mind), but there's not enough Clash in my record collection right now. I hope to right that wrong soon.

Strummer wasn't "authentic," but he was intelligent enough to speak for those who couldn't pick up a guitar and speak for themselves. The Clash really did care about their fans. In an article he wrote in three installments for NME in 1977, Lester Bangs described the band's close relationship with their fan base (which often included sleepovers, not in the dirty groupie "rock star" sense but genuinely decent acts of kindness). You know that such relationships can't exist today, despite the so-called "connectedness" of our digital age. You think Belle and Sebastian would invite me in for tea if I just showed up at their rehearsal space (okay, maybe they would, they're nice people, but you get my point). The world lost something when it lost Joe Strummer, and I doubt we'll ever see it again. But we have the music, and thank God (and Joe Strummer) for that.

Al Green, "Love and Happiness"

My grandmother, who is convinced that I'm going to hell because I don't go to church anymore (good thing she doesn't know that the reason I don't is because I've converted to Rastafarian Satanism with a touch of Scientology thrown in for good measure), recently observed that I wouldn't like gospel music because it's more spiritual than the kind of stuff I listen to. I beg to differ.

Music is always a spiritual experience for me, no matter how secular the artists or songs involved. Whether a song moves me to tears or moves me to change the radio station, it always leaves some kind of impact. And I *do* listen to gospel music, of a sort. The soundtrack to O Brother, Where Art Thou? is a treasured piece of my CD collection, and I'm pretty sure the Band has some soul to them, as well as Marvin Gaye (though his soul was always torn between the phyisical pleasures of the world and the divine pleasures of the spirit world). And then there's Al Green.

It is hard to put into words my affection for Mr. Green (an actual honest-to-God reverend, with his own church in Memphis). I have always like solo soul and R&B artists like Sam Cooke, the marvelous Marvin, and Al Green. Interesting tidbit: Cooke and Gaye added the "e" to their last names for showbiz purposes, while Green dropped the "e" at the end of his name for the same reasons. All three had backgrounds in gospel music but struck out to reach a wider audience in the secular world. And while Green is still alive (Cooke and Gaye were both shot to death twenty years apart from one another), he had his own brush with mortality (the infamous time when a woman he was seeing threw hot grits on him and then killed herself).

After that crisis, Green returned to his roots in the gospel world, putting out spiritual albums and eventually becoming the licensed reverend that he always was in spirit. And while I once would've marveled as to why anyone would turn their back on worldly success for the spiritual life, as I get older I see the superficiality of the modern, secular world, and I can understand why that is tempting. Hell, has worldly success worked out for Lindsay Lohan? Exactly.

A lot of the time when I'm at work, I find myself whistling the chorus to "Love and Happiness" aloud, not for long but just at intervals to keep my mind off the drudgery and other shenanigans that occur in workplaces. I think I've said it before, but it bears repeating: art has a way of lifting you out of the common ordinary and into an appreciation of something more than yourself. If that's not "spiritual," I don't know what is. Whatever my belief system (and I was raised Southern Baptist, so I still retain some of that awe-struck fear that my transgressions will come back to haunt me, be that transgression a horrible act or simply not reading my Bible enough or at all), I can appreciate that there are just some things that defy rational thought and logic. And the song just makes me feel good, even if I'm simply whistling it a little (or a lot) off-key. I doubt anyone at work would identify it as "Love and Happiness" if they heard me whistling, but then again they might.

It's been a long summer, and it looks like the fall might be more of the same in certain ways, but different in others. I'm hopeful that some job oppertunity for which I am qualified may come along, but til then I got bills to pay. Life just keeps on and on, and it's the little things that make days that suck more bearable. I guess for me, it's whistling "Love and Happiness" whenever the moment strikes me. Whatever it is for you, as long as it works I'm down with it.

The Rolling Stones, "I Am Waiting"

If you'd told me at the age of fourteen or fifteen that I would ever, *ever* like the Rolling Stones, I'd have slapped you in the face (if you were male. If you were female, I'd have said "no!" emphatically). I came to rock music and a deeper appreciation of it through the Beatles, and in the divide between them and the Stones (to some extent manufactured by the Stones to get attention, but very real in some aspects) I was firmly in the camp of John, Paul, George and Ringo. I'd have made the argument that the Fab Four stopped while they were ahead and, barring John's tragic death in 1980 (when I was one year old, mind you), they could very well have reunited and been just as important without soiling their legacy. Whereas the Stones, off and on, have been around since the Kennedy administration, and apparently still liking rock and roll enough to keep on with a series of albums that I'm guessing would satisfy only those rare completists in the Stones camp (though I've never listened to any post-1969 album in full).

Sure, the Stones rock, especially in that fertile period between 1965 (the debut of "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction") and 1978 (I'm sorry, but I will not apologize for liking "Miss You." You can't blame Mick and the boys for jumping on the disco bandwagon that year, anyway). But for the longest time I was of the opinion that their legacy was as also-rans, nowhere near as balls-out rocking as the Who (and I didn't get Pete Townshend's devotion to the Stones, either. His was the better band, right?) and without the storied legacy of the Beatles. I preferred the Yardbirds when it came to authentic (or what I took for "authentic," which is a bit of a misnomer in certain circumstances anyway) British blues-rock (Eric Idle's famous definition of the blues in The Rutles as "black music performed by whites" certainly applied to the way in which America was introduced to a rich legacy of blues and R&B thanks to pasty English kids who sang of the Old South with a Cockney accent). As I hope has become well apparent for anyone reading this blog regularly, I can often times be fucking stupid.

Because, as it turns out, the Stones were not and never have been also-rans. And their take on R&B early on developed into their own unique, powerful version of the blues, which is still there just under the surface. One criticism I'd level at heavy metal (a genre that I don't necessarily hate, but which I'd be hard-pressed to enjoy listening to except on occasions when I want my face melted with the awesomeness of an Angus Young guitar solo) is that it almost completely eliminates any traces of the R&B/blues roots of rock and roll (though conversely, you couldn't find any traces of the country & western strain that helped cement rock and roll in heavy metal, either. I think this negates any argument to be made about any racist overtones in heavy metal, so please if you're a metalhead reading this and getting pissed at me understand that). You still hear the influence of Muddy, Robert Johnson, B.B. King and other paragons of blues past and present in Mick's singing, Keith's guitar work, and the band as a whole.

Also, their story is almost as good (if not better) than most of the other "rock histories" you'll find. Yes, they came along in the shadow of the Beatles, and they could've easily folded under the weight of that (as countless bands like the aforementioned Yardbird, the Byrds, Gerry and the Pacemakers, the Searchers, etc., did). They forged their own path, however, and when I came across first Symphony for the Devil by Philip Norman (author of another important book, Shout!, all about the Beatles), I got a taste of how interesting they were. When I took a film class that covered all the genres and included the documentary Gimme Shelter, about the Stones' concert in Altamont. Seeing Mick Jagger wince as he saw the murder of a fan by one of the Hell's Angels hired to provide "security" at that event humanized him for me, and I started to see that the cocksure, strutting wildman of legend was in many ways simply the creation of a young man looking for an identity beyond that into which he had been born. Isn't that what we all seek to do, over time?

All of this is a long way towards getting into why "I Am Waiting," a minor song that doesn't often get included in the "greatest Stones tracks ever," is the one I'm writing about here. The film Rushmore took over my life for a period beginning in early 1999 (after I'd bought the soundtrack album at Christmas without even seeing the film first) and continuing for some time after. "Waiting" wasn't on the soundtrack, but as I learned when I finally saw the film, it was included almost in its entireity as part of a montage showing the fall (and subsequent rebirth) of Max Fischer. I considered dressing up like Max in his iconic (to me, anyway) blue blazer and khaki pants, his uniform to navigate the halls of a high-end private academy that he dominated through his arrogant intelligence (hmm, sounds like someone who fronts a very popular, long-lasting band if I do say so myself). I was going to do so for Halloween in 1999 (I was working at a grocery store at the time, just in time for the Y2K madness sweeping the nation, and we were encouraged to dress up for that day if we were working), but a co-worker talked me out of it with the words "I have no idea who you're talking about." A few years later, needing something formal to wear (either to my aunt's graduation or to a wedding, I can't remember which), I picked up a blue sports jacket and thought myself quite dashing in it.

Anyway, the song "I Am Waiting" was something of a gateway drug for me, allowing me to sneer at the songs people already knew (and which I secretly liked, though don't tell the Beatles crowd that) and say "well, this is one of their best songs, acutally." When I finally got iTunes, this was high on my list of songs to buy, and later on I got a nice collection of Stones cuts. Over time, I became less concerned that liking the Stones would lessen my love of the Beatles (did I mention how fucking stupid I can be?). In fact, it made me love the Beatles more, to see that their competition with the Stones (and the Beach Boys) pushed them all to heights never experienced in popular music before. Yes, the Stones carried on for far too long in some aspects, but I didn't get why this didn't matter until I read Keith Richards' autobiography (my earnest desire to do so would have struck my fourteen-year-old-self as idiotic, though the only official word from any of the Fab Four was George Harrison's brief autobiographical section in I Me Mine). The reason the Stones continue is because they found something that they love to do (make music, be it for their fans but mostly for themselves) and they want to do that for as long as they can. Don't you wish you could say that about your job?

My passion is writing, and writing about music has been and continues to be something that I love to do. And yes, my song choices might be off the beaten track sometimes (though as in the case of Jay-Z or Queen, I'd probably be seen as the kind of guy who just listens to whatever's popular on the radio by people who don't bother to read anything else I've put here). But I love doing this, I love getting the inspiration for doing it from my buddy Jonathan Garren, and I love being able to share songs that might not be on everyone's iPod (but they should be). "I Am Waiting" kicks ass and takes names, in an understated way that someone who only knows the Stones of "Jumpin' Jack Flash" might not understand. It may not be their best song, but it's probably my favorite (though the song and restaurant chain "Ruby Tuesday" inpsired my favorite piece I've ever written for McSweeneys). I doubt I'll ever love Mick and the boys the same way that I love the Beatles, but I think that's okay.

Day for Night

I love the films of Francois Truffaut, the ones I've seen (and thanks to TCM, I've seen a couple more that I hadn't previously viewed, as well enjoyed a couple of old favorites). I like what his buddy Jean-Luc Godard did with cinema, don't get me wrong. But if I want to sit back and enjoy a good movie with subtitles that doesn't involve violent Hong Kong-set gunplay a 'la John Woo, it's Truffaut for me, hands down.

Like I said TCM has been showing Truffaut movies all this month on Friday nights...which, as next week is when August starts, means that if you didn't know about it already and wanted to see what I'm talking about, you might be out of luck (I'm sure all his stuff is on Netflix). I wasn't stoked about The Soft Skin when I saw it was on at eight to start one of the Friday nights, but it's not half bad (and the guy royally gets it in the end, a hallmark of all Truffaut movies where a "happy ending" usually proves elusive, but not as much as in Godard). I couldn't stay awake for Two English Girls, thanks in large part to Jules and Jim coming on before it. I doubt I'd care to go through all the trouble Jules and Jim do with Catherine (who's a little bat-shit crazy, truth be told), but I'll gladly watch them go through it for me. Shoot the Piano Player, one of my favorites, was on at four in the morning and, try that I might, I'm not getting up any earlier than seven-thirty on a Saturday.

Last night was, well, the last night, and it started off with what may be Truffaut's best film, Day for Night. It's a movie about a movie being made (in this case, a melodrama that wouldn't be much for any director's career, be he founding figure of an artistic movement like the French New Wave or just another Michael Bay wannabe), and most of the drama takes place away from the cameras filming the story in the movie, Meet Pamela. The lead actor is a spoiled brat, the main actress is a basket-case, the older male lead a closeted homosexual, and the secondary female lead an alcoholic who can't remember her lines. Guiding them is Truffaut himself, playing the director (Godard famously wrote Truffaut a letter about how the director was the only character who didn't sleep with anyone. Truffaut was well-known for sleeping with his leading ladies, he got pissed at Godard, and they never talked again). It's not snobby or pretentious like many Americans think foreign movies are (and truthfully, apart from some films that marry politics and cinema a little too fervently, a lot of foreign movies are just American except in language. Trust me, no one emulates the politics of Battleship Potemkin but they all crib from the Odessa Steppes scene. Does anyone steal anything from the movie Battleship? Doubt it). It's just a bunch of people stuck together, trying to make a movie (nothing artsy, just something that will return on its investment), and struggling with all the things that can go wrong. It's funny, too.

I think I respond to Truffaut more on an emotional level because he came from a situation I know personally (and which, when I find it out about a celebrity or artist, does make me more attune to what they're trying to do): he grew up without a father. Sure, the guy who gave him his name (his step-father) was around, when he and Truffaut's mother weren't mountain-climbing. Truffaut found out later that his real father was Jewish, information that could've been a death sentence in Nazi-occupied France. It was art that saved Truffaut, much as art saved another fatherless son, John Lennon. I understand that Godard might be more "important" or "influential" in film, and I do enjoy quite a few of his movies (Weekend deserves special mention for its cannibal hippies who dress like they stepped off the cover of Sgt. Pepper, but I wouldn't recommend it for family movie night). But I love Truffaut's movies, not all of them (The Bride Wore Black isn't much more than him trying to be Hitchcock, and it's not that good), but quite a few of them. They're sentimental at times, hokey at others, but for moments like Antoine Doinel riding the gravity-pull ride in The 400 Blows, Catherine Deneuve visiting her in-hiding husband in the bowels of their theater in The Last Metro, or the scene that immediately follows the cliched line "if I'm lying, may God strike my mother down" in Shoot the Piano Player, you can't beat Truffaut. It's a shame that he died so young, at fifty-two, of a brain tumor. He should be around now, making more movies. But the ones he did made are worth seeking out. Trust me on that one.

The Ramones, "Surfing Bird"

As I've said before, I'm not a musician. I'd love to be able to play an instrument or sing (or both), but my best efforts at either endeavor have drawn more attention for their lack of what most people call "talent" than anything else. Granted, I can flatter myself that, in my head at least, it sounds exactly like what I'd like it to sound like. But chances are that the best I can manage is some sort of "American Idol" what-the-hell audition-quality performance. I'm no William Hung, but I might not be far off.

That said, I do have some small music-performance triumphs in my past. When I was in my teens, I located an old drum set that had belonged to one of my uncles and set it up on the hill in the backyard of my grandparents' home. I could keep a decent beat so long as I was playing the same beat (it sounded that way to me, anyway), and to this day I find myself drumming along to whatever song is playing in my head (it must sound like a cacophany to anyone around me). Also, a few nights back I could've sworn that I plucked out the last mournful part of the melody of the 400 Blows theme at the beginning of the film, on my cousin Sebastian's guitar. Seb is eight, by the way, and his guitar looks more like a ukelele. But still...I think it sounded close to what you hear as the opening credits fade and Truffaut's masterpiece starts up. Someday I might have a go at replicating the theme to The Third Man on guitar, that already sounds weird enough for me to manage.

But when my niece was born, in an attempt to bond with her or put her to sleep one day (I can't remember which), the song "Surfing Bird" (or "Surfin' Bird," as it's also known) got stuck in my head so I started singing it to her. It kinda became our song, because every time after that when I wanted to get an easy laugh from her, I'd start doing the "papa-ooh-maw-maw" and watch her giggle and smile at her tone-deaf uncle trying to sing the Trashmen's classic ode to avian water-sports. Of course, the song became part of the single greatest first act of any Family Guy episode, when Peter tortured his family by playing the song at all hours until Stewie and Brian couldn't take it anymore. So I'm in pretty good company.

The Ramones were the best of America's pure punk bands (and the fact that three-fourths of them are dead is not comforting unless you consider that God might want one hell of a band in heaven), and on their album Rocket to Russia they cover "Surfing Bird." I had to buy this album when I saw it on the track listing. Had to. The Ramones have a pretty good track record with covers ("Needles and Pins" never sounded better, and Joey's cover of "What a Wonderful World" might be the best version), and "Surfing Bird" doesn't disappoint. It's just a fun, goofy, stupid-ass song that works wonderfully either as a punk band's "are they joking?" album ender or for a musicially-challenged uncle trying to entertain his beautiful niece.

Some of these song reviews are about serious songs, or "serious songs"; there's nothing serious about "Surfing Bird," no hidden meanings or messages (it's a song about a surfing bird, for Pete's sake). But for dumb no-thinking fun, it's hard to beat (though the B-52's "Rock Lobster" deserves a mention, as it was also central to a great Family Guy moment). Yeah, I can't play any instrument, and my singing would make deaf people cringe and run for cover. But my niece seems to like it just fine when I start asking if she's heard that the bird is the word, and sometimes that's more than enough.