PJ Harvey - "Rid of Me"

When I turned 25 I was struck with the powerful realization that if I didn't leave Danbury, CT I was going to marry another fat alcoholic and we were going to have fat alcoholic kids who hated us.  I would drudge along doing what I was told and secretly rebelling in my heart until I had a heart attack or cirrhosis of the liver.

My car had died and I was bumming rides from a lovely coworker kind enough to drive my sorry ass to work.  I threw my four functioning brain cells together and figured that if I lived in New York City, I wouldn't need to drive, I could probably get gigs and maybe, oh, become famous or something ridiculously arrogant like that.

I knew someone who knew someone who was living in an all women's residence, kind of like a dorm, on Gramercy Park.  It was pretty cheap, rent included breakfast and dinner, was in a great neighborhood and foolishly, they accepted my application.  I had a place to live.  I was working in direct mail marketing and NYC is the Mecca of the industry, so finding a job wasn't difficult.  I was good to go.

So almost two months to day after I turned 25, I moved to New York City, not knowing anyone, really, not knowing my way around, and with very little material possessions.

One thing I did have was a CD-player/boom-box kind of thing.  One of the first places I wandered was St. Marks Place which led me to the record store, Sounds.

Giddy with excitement and the possibility of recreating myself, I decided to discover something NEW for me.  I'd been listening to a lot of alternative rock for a while, thrown in with some R&B and dance music and of course, the stand by classic rock that is ever present in Danbury, CT.

I had never heard of Polly Jean Harvey, and I saw this CD cover and bought it without even hearing it.  Sounds doesn't have listening stations:

Oh my God.

I was an instant fan.  She was angry and tiny and loud and played her own guitar and I wanted to be like her.

This CD was on heavy rotation for the majority of that summer and fall.  Whenever this song pops up on my iPod, it's so quiet in the beginning I usually think my iPod has accidentally shut off, and then I start to hear that high falsetto "lick my legs, I'm on fire" and I then I smile and turn it up.

This song reminds me of walking around New York and getting confused because I just left W. 4th Street, how did I end up turning on 10th Street? I remember smuggling bourbon into my room at the Parkside Evangeline Residence for Young Business Women - which was strictly verboten, but I thought I was slick enough to get away with it.  I think of my first friends in New York, other "inmates" of The Convent, as we liked to call it.  I think of how I would walk to work, hustling my ass off to get there on time and hating my co-worker Eyeore who tattled on me all of the time for my personal calls and ate lots of stinky fish at her desk.  I think of the first time my ass was grabbed on the subway, the first time I had street meat, and the first time I hugged myself with insane glee, knowing that I was finally in New York City and now maybe my "real life" could begin.

More than anything, "Rid Of Me" reminds me of my strong desire to be a musician, and how I had almost the same amount of fear.  Sometimes I would audaciously audition for a band, or even at Don't Tell Mama up in the Theater District, where I did a vampy strip tease to "You're Never Fully Dressed Without A Smile" I was wearing a suit jacket and skirt and looked kind of like a mini-van Mom before shimmying and shucking it down to a very tight white tank top with a giant smile painted across my large boobs.  The gays loved me.  I was asked to come back in a few weeks, but I didn't, because the fear kicked back in.  I have something I call "Reverse Stage Fright".  I have the nads to get up and read poetry or sing my songs, some of them very emotionally bare...and when I sit down, at the end of my spot, I shake like a leaf, waiting for punishment for putting the truth out there. 

P.J. Harvey is so raw on the album, I aspired to be as honest and as open about my passion and pain.  One of my deep regrets is having the ambition and a touch of audacity to start to go for my dreams, but not enough audacity or self-confidence to keep going.  At least I didn't have it at 25.  At 25, I was still not exactly sure who I was or what I really wanted.  At 25, I was starting over after already feeling like I had lived a lifetime of failure.  At 25 I was sitting in my little room on Gramercy Park, blowing pot smoke out the window and staring down on Irving Place, scouring the Village Voice for auditions and bands looking for singers and attempting to write my own music on my beat up, mis-strung Giannini guitar.  "Rid of Me" puts that ancient crap guitar back in my hands, and the pavement under my feet - I had no idea what was going to happen to me, I just know that I wanted SOMETHING to happen.

The Beatles - "Eleanor Rigby" - And Other Early Musical Influences

For my 4th birthday, I was given a orange and white plastic portable record player.  When the lid was down it looked kind of like a modern plastic suitcase. I loved it.  With the record player, I was given some Disney albums and some of my mother's old 45's.  My mother also bought me the 45 for "Yellow Submarine" because she thought it would be a good kid's song.

Little did she know that I preferred the B-side, which happened to be "Eleanor Rigby." 

Lutherans don't believe in reincarnation, but I don't know else how to explain my instant connection to the lonely people in this song.  I also think I wanted to know the answer to "Where do they all belong?" because I already knew I wasn't exactly right.

Don't get me wrong, I was definitely young, and my second favorite song was from Dumbo.

So I wasn't exactly a pre-gothic/emo type at age 4.  Eleanor Rigby spoke to me, Yellow Submarine did not.  Did that make me a screwed up four year old? Maybe.

My mother gave me a lot of her 45's.  My parents were squares.  My parents like show tunes and some modern music, but neither of them had their fingers on the pulse of what was hip.  I grew up listening to Broadway, Disney, pop songs from the 50's, doo wop, Simon and Garfunkel, Chicago and the Beach Boys.  Later, after my parents were divorced, my Dad had other music that he played in the car - the Muppet Show soundtrack, Queen, Supertramp, more show tunes.  I didn't really start exploring the radio or music on my own until I was about 10 or 11.

So some of the songs below were big favorites from ages 4-10.  I wish I could find all of them, some of them were hilarious B-sides to big sappy songs.  My Mom was a big Perry Como fan.

"Raindrops Keep Fallin' On My Head" was a song my Dad would often play on the piano, and I would sing along with him.

Ooh! The Aristocats! One of my all time favorite Disney movies, I loved this Soundtrack, very jazzy/swing.  They never re-release this one! I wonder why? Oh yeah...watch the video:

"Spinning Wheel" was another big song on the Dad's Piano Hit Parade:

Ah, old awesome Chicago before Peter Setera took over and wussified it.

One of my all time favorites from Paul and Art.  In fact, my Dad once improvised while playing the organ at church and played the melody of "Sound of Silence" on the bass pedals while playing the old Lent hymn "There Is A Green Hill Far Away" on the upper keys, and the story goes I gasped and turned around and started excitedly telling my mother about what he was doing, because at age 4 or 5, I recognized the bass line immediately. 

You know, watching these videos, I'm struck by the racist stereotypes in both Dumbo and The Aristocats...I wonder if that's why they haven't been re-released in a million years? Wow.

Barry Manilow - "I Made It Through The Rain"

The year was 1981 and I was in 7th Grade at Immanuel Lutheran School. Our Church was throwing their inaugural Dinner Cabaret, a fund raiser that included dinner (roast beef, green beans with almonds, boiled potatoes, always) and a show.

The show was a variety show comprised by different acts performed by church members.  The principal of Immanuel Lutheran School (ahem, my father) dressed up as a girl and sang, "I'm Jest A Girl Who Cain't Say No" while sitting on the lap of the Assistant Pastor.  There were dance numbers, and a "Who's On First" number, and many different kinds of vocal stylings.  The Youth Group, of which I was a member, decided to perform "I Made It Through The Rain" with a twist.  The girls stood around the piano and sang while the boys did a dance number with umbrellas.  It was cute and funny.

The rehearsals took place in the school gym, where incidentally the Cabaret would also take place.  I was one of the few 7th grade girls singing, while a few of the 7th grade boys were dancing, but the bulk of the performers were the (scary) 8th graders who were all cooler than me.  I was very nervous being around them, feeling awkward, dorky and horrible - which is pretty much how I felt all through grade school, but if you saw me then, you'd understand.

I need to digress a moment and talk about Flair Optical.  Flair Optical was owned by my grandparents and located in Hollywood, Florida.  My grandfather was an optician and my grandmother, well, Grandma Rootbeer put the FLAIR in Flair Optical.  Considering their target market, the fashionable frames were skewed toward South Florida Retirees.  Now, my parents were divorced, my mother a single Mom with a limited income. Grandma Rootbeer hooked us up...all I had to do was take my pathetic myopic eyes to a local optician who would measure my pupil distance and the bridge of my nose and we'd send these measurements and my prescription down to Grandma and Grandpa.  A week or so later, voila, free glasses.  But keep in mind, I am a 12 year old goofball wearing South Florida Retiree glasses.

Wait, look:

Here are my brother, cousins and I sporting Flair Optical glasses.  This photo, incidentally, was a huge hit at Flair Optical.

However, a very socially conscious, boy crazy, painfully self-aware 12 year old did not find the very large glasses a big hit.  However, they were free, and I wore them and while they may have caused me emotional pain, I had no other options. I believe they were very similar to the ones my ginger cousin in the middle are wearing in the photo.

So, there I was in the school gym on a rehearsal night, trying not to do anything totally uncool that would cause me to suffer open ridicule.

I was goofing around on the opposite side of the gym in the dark while the rest of the act was working their dance steps or gossiping around the piano when suddenly the director called for our act to start.

Panicking, I took off into a full-on run for the stage.  I was in an enormous empty gymnasium.  Completely empty except for one lone basketball lying off center on the floor.  I hit that basketball at full speed and caught some air.  In my mind's eye, I see this as a spectator, not as the actual jackass who is airborne.  I'm helpless to stop the forward momentum and hit the ground chest first, my arms out to the sides almost as if I'm doing a swan dive.  Mr. Holmes, the school custodian, always waxed the gym floor until it was hard and shiny like ice.  On my stomach, arms spread, I slid about 12 feet, but the impact had jarred me and my huge glasses hung diagonally across my face, one arm still hooked behind my ear, the other dangling down by my jaw.

From what I hear, this was quite a sight.  From the laughter that met me when I skidded to a stop a few feet away from the piano, I imagine it was.  My friend Cecil still can't tell that story without laughing so hard she can't breathe.  Well, I HAVE A STORY ABOUT HER, TOO, so...yeah.

I love me some Barry Manilow, and this song is a fine song, not my favorite of his, but this song will always remind me of that first Cabaret, being involved in youth group and all the joy and pain that brought into my life.  This song reminds me of the smell of the Immanuel Lutheran School gym, those putty colored mats that hung from the cinder block walls.  That particular funk in the girls' locker room -- old water and Comet.  This song reminds me of roast beef and the dumbwaiter in the kitchen at Immanuel Lutheran School, and the boys we sent down the dumbwaiter.  This song reminds me of that coterie of scary 8th grade girls and how they'd bring their curling irons to school to get their hair to flip JUST SO.  This song reminds me of my friend Jimmy, who was the only guy to get the dance moves right away and the only one that didn't look miserable doing the dance.  This song reminds me that I, too, made it through the rain of supreme dorkitude, and that though I didn't know it that humiliating night, I would soon find the others who got rained on too, and made it through.

Incidentally, you couldn't pay me enough money to go back to 7th grade, they don't print enough.

Spandau Ballet - "True"

Sophomore year in high school, I met him accidentally because he was in the car with my friend and her boyfriend when they stopped by.  I had never met him but was standing under the mistletoe hanging in my hallway and sort of pointed up at it in what passed for charming at 15 years old.  So he did what any spontaneous red blooded teenage boy would do and dipped me back for a kiss.  A real kiss.  A great kiss.

Boom!  That's how we met. 

I ended up liking him more than he liked me.  I give him tremendous credit though, because he told me no lies, he told me exactly where he stood, he did nothing to lead me on.  I knew adult men who weren't as mature or as kind as he was back when he was a teenager.

We went on a few dates, and laughed a lot.  I believe we went to see Gandhi, primarily because it was a long movie which meant we could make out for about 3 hours.  I still can't tell you what happened in the movie, what, Gandhi sat down for a long time and then England went home?  Don't know.  I do know that after the movie he purchased onion rings and a black coffee and that wasn't as much fun to kiss.  We talked about books and music and practical jokes.  He was one of the coolest people I had ever met, at that point in my life (parochial school really limits your social circle).

This song is my song for him, and it's because I misunderstood the lyrics.  For years I was under the impression the first verse of this song was "So true, funny how it seems, always in time, but never mine for keeps. Head over heels when toe to toe, this is the sound of my soul."  Which made sense to me because he was great! A great friend, a great kisser, but never mine for keeps. 

The actual line is "Always in time, but never in line for dreams." This would not apply to my little thing for him.  We didn't date for long, a few weeks maybe?  I'm sure I had hurt feelings at one point because I was an oversensitive romantic weenie who lived to pine, so at some point I know I played my "cassingle" of "True" a few times in a row and cried.  I might have written a poem.  And then I could be his friend.

Happily, he was someone I would run into again a few times in my life in different stages - we had mutual friends in college.  He's my friend on facebook.  He's still an amazing human being and I'm proud to count him among one of my favorite people that I've known in my life.  He is still one of the coolest people I know, a go-to guy for good books or good music.  He's a good husband to his wife and a great father, and I respect the hell out of him.  Still a straightforward stand-up guy.

And when I hear this song, I think of him. I also think of innocent little 15 year old me, the girl who thought the biggest tragedy in love is someone who wouldn't be mine for keeps, OR stand in line for dreams, I guess.  I think of the me that wouldn't have known what to do with a committed boyfriend if I had one at that point anyway; the me that was more comfortable pining for what I couldn't have rather than dealing with what I could have; the me that swooned to English bands with falsetto voices and slicked back hair. 

"True" hasn't aged very well, it's a very obviously 80's song which is why it always ends up on "The Best of the 80's!!" compilations or playlists and on many soundtracks.  I believe it makes all of us who heard this song first at a school dance suddenly remember our innocence.

Bruce Springsteen - "Backstreets"

When I was about 12,  I fell in love with the Tiger Beat frequent cover-boy, Matt Dillon, an up and coming movie star with big brown eyes and floppy hair and a cute smile.  One of the issues of Tiger Beat asked Matt Dillon what song he wanted played at his wedding and he said, "Born To Run" by Bruce Springsteen.  I had never heard of Bruce Springsteen, or if I had, I hadn't paid any attention to him.  But suddenly I was compelled to hear the song that was going to be played at my wedding to Matt Dillon.  So I gathered my allowance/babysitting money and marched into Record Broker on White Street in Danbury, CT and purchased the album "Born To Run".  I brought it home, put it on my record player and promptly forgot all about Matt Dillon and fell head over heels in love with Bruce Springsteen.

Bruce Springsteen is the only musician that has ever inspired me to write a fan letter.  I threw it out when I re-read it because I felt that it was stupid and didn't want to embarrass myself. I think I wanted his respect.  Bruce Springsteen is the first guy who made me yearn for something I couldn't explain, I didn't have the words for what it was I was pining for back then.  But when I heard his lyrics, I felt that yearning.

I've been known to diagnose girls with something I call "Thunder Road Syndrome". In the song he claims that Mary is "waiting in vain for a savior to rise from these streets".  He claims he's not a hero, but again is proposing to drive her out of town, off into the future with someone that doesn't need her to be beautiful because Eh, she's all right.  He gives hope to those non rock-video-vixen-types like me that some quirky-hot romantic guy with a guitar and a car would still sweep them from off their front porch and away from their horrible rinky dink home town.  Some girls are still waiting in vain, not knowing they can get their OWN guitar and their OWN car and get the hell out of dodge. BUT this syndrome only exists because the song speaks to that deep part down inside of us that wants to be rescued by someone who isn't even going to make any promises to us, adding that element of sexy insecurity and danger, allowing us to be a wild risk- taker instead of being completely taken care of like some suburban housewife.  It speaks to the wild part that wants to be taken but not really kept.  Bruce gets that.  God, I think I still might love him a little.  Well, I love the guy he was when he wrote that song, he's kind of all liberal and angry at everything now and I think he's too busy trying to make statements to notice there's magic in the night.

When I hear any song off the album "Born To Run" I am transported through time back into my bedroom that I shared with my younger sister Amy.  I can smell the heat coming out of the old register in the wall, and smell the tubes of my mother's old record player, she had the kind that looked like a suitcase, it was a few years before I'd get my Emerson "stereo", so I had to be content listening to Bruce on a turntable that was capable of playing something at 78 rpms.

"Backstreets", though, is the song I loved the most.  I had never been in love full of defeat. I had never gotten wasted, tried to escape my hopeless existence, and my town didn't have any back streets that I was aware of, but oh...I could just cry during the bridge, when he almost screams "When the breakdown hit at midnight there was nothing left to say, but I hated him, and I hated you when you went away."  Yes. I felt that.  I recognized it and while I related to the pain, it was the doomed passionate love that led to the pain that I craved.

Do you know any 12 year old boys? Then you probably know that I knew that it was hopeless for me to find anything like that in my 7th grade class.  I was funny looking, talked too much, and my glasses were too big for my face.  I knew the deal.  None of them would be okay with me not being a beauty, but being all right. Bruce wouldn't be okay with me either, because I was 12.  I could wish and hope but I knew that he would never ask me not to turn him home again.

Thus began a lifetime of unrequited love for broody musician types. Sometimes they loved me back.  But not when I was 12.  I mourned something I could never have at 12.  My whole life ahead of me, I knew I was missing out on something that I might never have, because I wasn't the kind of girl that Bruce Springsteen would write a song about.  I would get very moody and upset and take it out on my poor sister.

That piano run that Backstreets opens up with, those plaintive notes are enough to throw me right back into the heartbreak of wanting more than I can have at the stage of my life where I am.  Wanting to hang out with the last of the Duke Street Kings, but knowing that can never happen, because I am too young and I don't live in New Jersey.  Devastated because I am too nerdy to be one of those cool tough girls who end up in a car with Bruce Springsteen.  Longing for an escape from my small town, longing for someone to see something in me that was worth breaking me out, but still not promising me anything, because that would be too easy. Longing for someone to inspire me to take a big risk for love, passion, and rock and roll. 

Tenacious D - "Tribute"

The summer of 2002, I had just moved back to Connecticut, a broke-ass woman looking to rebuild my life.  I had moved in with my mother (TEMPORARILY, I made sure everybody knew) until I had enough money to move back to New York City.

Three things saved my sanity that summer.  My brother was also living at home, and he is one of the coolest people on the planet, I auditioned for the local community theater production of "Jesus Christ Superstar", AND my mother's house was less than 10 minutes away from my best friend Mothra's house.

When rehearsals began I would get into these combative debates with Annas about music.  Annas was in a band with M____, a guitar virtuoso playing in the pit.  M____'s brother was playing Jesus, but Jesus was a jam-band kind of a guy. M______ was more straight ahead Norwegian Death Metal, while Annas liked some prog rock and Anna's brother, Awesome Disciple liked a lot of everything.  What we all liked was Tenacious D, and we'd run around singing Tenacious D lyrics to each other, or M___ would break into "Kyle Quit The Band" much to our abject joy.

My brother also liked Tenacious D - sure, they were funny, but OMG, Kyle Gass could REALLY play guitar and I loved Jack Black's vocals, and their harmonies together, unreal.  A lot of people might think of them as a novelty band from their later movie, "Pick of Destiny" but those of us who remember them from Mr. Show know that these guys are the real deal.

Mothra was in it for the video, and do you blame her?  We made my brother play it over and over again on his computer, relishing in the little things, like how Jack rips his shirt open and Kyle's serious "guitar solo" faces while shoved in that little studio booth.  The dancing, too, of course.

I expected that summer to be the worst summer of my life, out of the city that I loved like it was human, broke, jobless, heartbroken, few prospects.  I look back on that summer as a summer of real joy, though.

One night Mothra and I decided to drive up Route 22, and we were playing "Would you rather..." and it started off pretty normal.  You know, "Who would you rather do, Matt Damon or Ben Affleck?" (Matt, definitely, no question).  Mothra and I degenerated into horror inducing choices, and we HAD to make a choice. Larry Budd Melman or Larry King.  We dug deep into the past and threw people we knew back in each other's faces, and would laugh so hard Mothra would do that thing she's been doing since she was 16 -- pounding on the steering wheel and slamming on the brakes because she was laughing too hard to drive.  We drove all the way to Dover Plains with aching stomachs from laughing.  And here we were, 34 years old and cackling like utter loons, just like we always have and I suspect always will despite how "mature" we appear to be.

I would sit on the breezeway in order to smoke and would bring my guitar outside, and my brother would sometimes join me and we'd sing some songs together.  We usually did Southern Cross, but one of the songs we tried to play was Tribute.  We got good enough playing it that Mothra's then-boyfriend's band let us get up and play it at the now-defunct Colorado Brew Pub.  We didn't do that bad of a job, either.

Dayo Matteo and I rip Tribute at the Colorado Brew Pub

I listened to quite a few songs/albums that summer, I had The Who's "Tommy" and Rush's "2112" on cassette, and I had to drive my brother's car - which only had a cassette player for a while.  The Red Hot Chili Peppers came out with "By The Way" and I couldn't stop playing that CD.  But when I think of the summer of 2002, I think of Tenacious D, and I think about how for a few brief months, despite feeling lost, I had bonded with my brother and my best friend a little deeper, laughed a lot harder than I had laughed in months, made some great new friends up here in the boonies and couldn't remember the greatest song in the world.

Portishead "Sour Times"

My roommate J___ and I were really really close, and then in the fall of 1995, I got sober.  It was a difficult transition for both of us.  I was a tremendous bitch because I was detoxing at home; I arrogantly believed that I wasn't screwed up enough to go to rehab.  I couldn't sleep for about a month since I hadn't fallen asleep naturally in years and my body was freaking out.  I was emotionally sensitive and absolutely unreasonable.

She was a bartender with a boyfriend who liked to get really drunk and she would bring friends back to the apartment after closing time. While I was lying on pins and needles up in my loft, they were smoking pot and the delicious aroma would appear in my mind like a misty hand, torturing me like I was Toucan Sam.

I moved out in the spring of 1996, into a Single Room Occupancy boarding house-type place in the West Village.  My room was on the top floor, a 4 floor walk-up with a bathroom in the hall.  The room was tiny with this awful pink shag carpeting and I absolutely loved it.  I had one hinged mullioned window that overlooked the courtyard of the huge apartment building behind Ardsley House.  I found some Buddha bells at a Tibetan gift store on Greenwich Street and hung them in that window and the Spring breezes would make them tinkle in a very peaceful way.

The first Spring of my sobriety was a turning point in my life. Early sobriety was hard for me, I had lost my roommate's friendship along with most of my other friends and had no idea who I was.  I spent that whole Fall and Winter wandering around Manhattan with a keen loneliness that was like a knife edge. I spent weeks obsessing about the Danish barista at the No Bar Cafe (Rasmus!) and never had the nerve to talk to him.  I would go to museums or Alt.Coffee all day, just for a place to sit so I wouldn't be in my roommate's way.  That Spring, I had started making friends at my regular AA meetings.  I had made a friend who lived in Ardsley House and she is the reason I ended up living there.  I was branching out, having dinner with the people who are now my good friends.  I had a regular gig playing guitar while standing in the window of "The Smallest Bar In New York" on Sullivan Street, attached to a sushi restaurant.  I began to really know who I was.

Who was I? I was a giant bag of pain.  There was more to me, but I had a lot to process, and one thing I would do was put on "Dummy" by Portishead, burn some Nag Champa, lie on my back and just let myself collapse into whatever it was I was fighting.  Self hatred, loneliness, feeling unworthy, unrequited love, frustration, feeling completely incapable to deal with life...."Dummy" was the soundtrack to all of that.

I was a little late to the Portishead game, one of my much cooler co-workers lent me the CD, and of course, for months, it was my go-to background music.  

For good measure, I'll throw in Glory Box.

Whenever I hear any song from this album, but most often it's Sour Times which I believe was the big hit from the record, I get that feeling again, that feeling of a new beginning with one foot in sorrow and regret.  The feeling of possibility and of dashed dreams and lost friendships.  The feeling of autonomy and also of abandonment.  The feeling of longing, but not knowing for what.