Th' Politician's Sexual Fantasy Matching Game! Democratic Edition!

It's the greatest. Just match the head of state w/ their sexual fantasy; who and how.

Answers below!

Ex-president:

1. Jimmy Carter
2. Bill Climpton
3. FDR
4. Lyndon Johnson
5. John F. Kennedy

spanks it to:

1. Emma Goldman
2. Emmylou Harris
3. Beyonce
4. Katherine Hepburn
5. Raquel Welch

scenario:

1. ceiling-peelingly slow cunnilingus followed by a first-rate rogering.
2. The "open lotus" position which opens all th' shakras. To a first-rate rogering.
3. Diamonds and rose petals spread about a large Sleep Number bed, followed by expert probings of the G-spot and then F.R.R.
4. He reclines and she sits on his Adam's Apple and goes gran mal while he hums "La Vie En Rose" at th' top of his lungs in basso-profundo. Ha ha. One for th' notebook, huh fellas?
5. The standard fare but with little touches. Ankles on shoulders. Arched backs. Some food maybe or lite tyings-up.

Answers:

1-2-2
2-3-5
3-1-1 ha ha ha.
4-4-4
5-5-3

Ha ha ha. Ha.

Th' Political Sexual Fantasy Matching Game: Republican Edition.

Yeah. Boy. Mm-hm.

this one's a little different.

Answers below! Woo-hoo!

Politician:

1. Donald Rumsfeldt
2. Karl Rove
3. Dick Cheney
4. Condoleeza Rice
5. Paul Wolfowitz

Spanks it to:

1. Ashley Olson
2. His own granddaughter
3. Jonbenet's mummified remains
4. Imelda Marcos
5. L'il Bow Wow

Scenario:
1. She shoves a ball-gag in his mouth and hits him in th' ass with a strap-on.
2. He holds a gun to her head and forces oral favors. When she cries he pistol-whips her.
3. Ball-gag, ass, strap-on.
4. They feebly couple and he shoots her in the head right when he's coming.
5. He sinks his teeth into her neck and turns her into a creature of the night.

Answers:
1-1-4
2-5-3
3-2-2
4-4-1
5-3-5

A Moment Of Complete Suspension.

I was inspired by a listen to th' remarkable Sundays remarkable 1992 gem Blind recently en route this week. It was the last thing before my cassette player blew.

It is on Blind that the young and lithesome Harriet Wheeler creates the definitive moment of her career with her breathy, ferocious, tour de force vocal on the song "Goodbye". All the vocal halmarks are here, the spartan overdubbing of ascerbic countermelodies, the perfectly-pitched, wide-open delivery, the un-comped performance.

"Goodbye" is clearly designed as even more of a vocal showcase for Wheeler than the rest of The Sundays' vocal-dominated canon. It's such an impressive piece of work and so affecting that it simply pulverizes their first medium-sized hit, 1990's "Here's Where The Story Ends". It reveals volumes about the fickleness of the market, the right-place-right-time absolutism of radio and the whole thing that this song didn't make any sort of splash.

I saw The Sundays on this tour at the beginning of '93 at The Belly Up in Solana Beach CA and I knew the live version of this song would make or break this band for me. They'd either be really good amateurs that struck on a sound and a great singer or they'd be In The Circle; Greats, craftspeople of th' highest order.

And when they opened with "Goodbye" Wheeler delivered the song note for note, every inflection intact, like it was Leider, you know? It was one of the five most musically impressive things I've ever seen. There was such a confidence, an off-handedness, about the way she sang it that it was clear she'd been doing it for two weeks running and would do it just the same for the next month. And never give it a thought. She was like a waifey Callas.

I think The Sundays might have run out of steam, victims of a crummy and sort of indifferent marketplace after their not-particularly-hailed, whisper of a record Static And Silence in th' mid-90's. Grunge edged out a lot more great bands than we'll ever even know. I think of the mighty Dada. Of the incomparable Jellyfish. The Elvis Costello of my generation, Michael Penn.
The Sundays got a little lazy as a band on their last effort, the rhythm section sounding a little phoned-in because they had the Wheeler vocal magic and her and soulmate/guitarist David Gavurin's dreamy turn of melody.

All that aside, this recording from 1992 is a little chilling in its canny encapsulation of every thing that was good about The Sundays. And as a widely experienced musician I point to Wheeler's performance on "Goodbye" as nothing less than supernatural. A moment of complete suspension.

Heh. That Last One Was So Funny

I'm taking th' night off.

What The Fucking Christ Do YOU Know About Brian Wilson???

Yeah, dang it. I'm talking to YOU. what th' fristing frack does YOUR sorry caucasoid ass know about BRIAN fuckin' WILSON???

Huh? What the fuck does th' likes of YOU know about dark nights of the polesmokin' soul??? Yeah, huh? Voices and all sorts of shit, and being MORTALLY AFRAIND IF DON AND PHIL SPECTOR??

You deaf? LIKE BRIAN WILSON IS IN ONE EAR, HUH? What th.....

Who the fuck knows about the having of a glass eye thrust upon one by one's own dear odl DAD? Of having to take craps on a newspaper in the kitchen??? What, you know all about that, huh? Ya weisenheimer? You FUCKIN' kids today with yer Underoath and yer emo and thinkin' it wasn't something that had already been done by some Dominican monks in like eleven-oh-fuckin'-thirty.

You know all about it? About that ultimate indignity- the having to hang out with that alien pod being of evil, Mike Love? That sick, talentless, first-cousin-marryin', TM-practicin', "Kokomo" writin' bald piece of rotten gall balder? And those other shits in that god damn band like that crack-shootin' Dennis and that sick, toddling little imp whatsisname there, Alan F. Jardine? That little sniveller? I'm telling you, man. That little pissant Jardine was like th' little yappie dog runnin' alongside the big dog licking the drool as it flies from the large dog's jowells. And that other dude? Brian Jones? All shaky and riding around Chairing Cross in th' back of a chauvinist-driven Beltley?

Me? Oh, man. Guy like me knows about Brian, man. The ups, the downs. The cocoaine visions. The eight months flat in bed. The music that raps at your skull from th' inside until you have to expose your sweet madness like a flasher at a middle school. Oh, the sweet, sweet insanity. Like a drug, man. Like being tickled with a million feathers by all th' cast members in one of those BW movies with the swimming. Oh, sweet Martha mother of Wild Man Fischer it's a long, dark, lonely street, man. A street named Desire, man. In a town called Alice.

Being misunderstood, man. Guys like me and Brian. That's our cross, man. Guys like me and Brian always got a cross and it's usually genius. And th' cross of genius is pointy and sharp. What do you know about pointy and sharp, bubba? Heads don't count, bubba.

You're just going to do your thing and walk th' line and make all the payments on time and that's all very wellandfine but to fellows like me and Brian Wislone that's just not going to happen. I mean, it's not like we think of people who aren't like us as "the little people", you know? I mean, we like to walk among you and all that and get the temperature of th' populist. For our next song thing, you know? Whatever it is.

Yeah, I guess that's what it's like with guys like me and Brian. And fuckin' Bo Beist. Bo knows the visions. The visions that come unbidden and won't go away until you best them. Best them in th' night. And you try to maintain and you're all in the studio at 4 AM for 50 hours straight. Brain Wilstone and Bo Beist and me?

And Rob Thomas.

The four of us? Like wraiths? Sweeping in and out of the emotional pulse of our times? Ears to the ground, eyes to th' sky? Four Norsemen of the Apothecary? It's almost like we're blood, man. Beacuse nobody else knows the trouble we have and the walking th' razor's edge and the heat. When hearts are on fire, man- people get burned. When the heat's on the street there's not much a simple man can do but try his best and that.

No, no simple man can understand. Just Brian Phillips and Bo Beist and Rob Thomas and me and Joey Macintire from Th' New Kids?

The nights? They're long nights. It's like you're some kind of weird sentinel when you're like Brian deSoto or Bo Beist or Rob Thomas or Joey Macintire or me. It's like, in a strange way, you've been entrusted wit hthe entire future of the race and it's, like, up to you to help them find the Good Ways, the New Ways.

And the New is always built from bits of the old, we five understand that.

You don't have to worry, see. You're fine. You'll walk in the sun and share the love of herth and himily and you'll have us to spin you to sleep with our visions, our music, our philosophy. LIke five stars in the sky we burn bright and hot, bright and hit in the nirthern firminnent. Me and Brian Wilson and Bo Beist and Rob Thomas and Joey Macintire.

And Davey Jones.

High Congress Presents

High Congress? Ain't it great? Th' DBA of my imprint since 1998 has been named after th' Kama Sutra's description of well-matched sex organs?

I give you Song #2 in th' Cifarelli recordings, "Rollin' And Tumblin'". Joe sent me this pretty, poignant tune at the beginning of the month and I went at it this way and that until I hit on a sort of smooth blue-eyed neosoul vocal combo thing. I based it on the Rhodes as opposed to the very guitaristic "Heartbreak" and I hung the dynamics on a rising crescendo of typed-in samples and live drums that take it to maximum heart-rend on the middle eight. I started out thinking of the classics of the genre, the "Sunshine Of My Life"s and "Still Crazy"s and let it go from there. I thought basing the central figure on guitar might point too much to "Dear Prudence". I also listened a bunch to the Babyface-produced Clapton song "If I Could Change The World" for ideas on how to treat a rock song to modern R&B touches. The verdict is mercifully out on my skills as a studio drummer but that's what multiple takes and punch ins are for.

Joe and his Strat came up last weekend and he just wailed onto some open tracks and I comped it all up and cut holes in it for the vocals. Joe's work on the verses reminds me strongly of Phil Manzanera's guitar on the last couple of Roxy Music albums; it has that sort of meticulously placed, very stylized, draped-filigree thing going on. And the middle eight and solo section are characterized by some cock-out rocking, I must say.

Vocals were cut hit-and-run between many Soulfinger shows and I chose a day of particular post-gig hoarseness for the lead. The massed vocals were built around some improv obligatos that I recorded against just the electric piano and then built up to 5- and 6- part with harmonies and counterpoints. Shit through a goose, man.