“To burn to the song outside, instead of inside”
She saw the doorway to a thousand churches in his eyes. Instead of solace, she only found flames. Still, he wasn’t expecting the chloroform and handcuffs, the dousing with kerosene, or her striking a match. The instincts returning on waking aflame were those involved in escaping before he burned alive.
A double drabble.
He hadn’t been out of the chair in three days, but that didn’t preclude movement. A pile of crushed, crumpled, balled-up paper spilled off the table where he sat, most streaked in smeary pen, some off-color with the salt of dried tears. A few featured drops of blood. He was exhausted, eyes open, yet the mouth hung slack, open, silent from the crying he’d done. Seventy two hours before the paper cascaded from his card table, before he broke the pens screaming. All because she’d walked by his picture window, new lover on her arm, but her eyes still spoke sadness. A sin unforgivable after the divorce meant to return her to a place inside herself, warm with history and the rich traditions of a family he never really joined.
The letters he fails to write are fire to be used against the predicament of place she finds herself in. In time, he will see by the light of that fire padlocks picked, a way cleared ahead. Her pastures are her own to burn; let her have the torches. The skies above are no longer off limits to anyone with the power to spread feathers and lean into the wind.
Leo in the Hall of Melodious Regret.
Leo sat in the back during the hand-bell choir concert. Zadie’s tiny, porcelain fists wrapped around each of her hand-bells ringing them, precisely, soulfully, at the musically appropriate time. Just before the end, Leo, weeping, slipped out unseen, so Zadie, and his ex-wife could go on believing he was dead.
Almost an entire year has gone by…
and I have not blogged here at all. It’s been a year of tremendous change, and while I’m not going to get into that now, I will say that I need to find a use for this space, and until I have a better idea…
50 word stories, written by yours truly, will begin appearing here on a semi-regular basis. Yes, you’re welcome.
Love,
Matt
Eternal Love, Eternal PRIDE!
I can't accurately calculate how many times I've spun this album. I can't even BELIEVE I found it in a bargain bin.
Because my tastes are so divergent, it becomes incredibly difficult to decide on one album to listen to for the rest of my life. So that album has to satisfy lots of my musical interests, even if it won't satisfy them all. And of course, it needs to have at least one anthemic song that compelled me to buy it in the first place. So dig it: my One Album For the Rest of My Life is…
PRIDE, Living Colour's Greatest Hits.
The guys in Living Colour established themselves as one of the definitive black rock bands of the 1980s and 90s, helping form the Black Rock Coalition with bands like Bad Brains and others. "Cult of Personality" was a huge hit, and my introduction to them. When I bought the album, though, I realized they were so much more than that. These guys were super-musicians, trained at the best music schools NYC had to offer. Their music wasn't just wild freak out guitar solos over heavy solid grooves, tighter-than-a-gnat's ass pocket and the most powerful singing in rock since Tom Jones or Freddie Mercury. No, no… the guys in LC were just as adept at funk, jazz, African high life music, drum and bass, reggae, and at least one of the best power ballads that criminally never seemed to get much play on the radio: "Broken Hearts."
Full confession: I cry when I hear that guitar solo, EVERY DAMN TIME. Something about the way it plays against the incredibly tasteful BASS solo just before it is perfection in a power pop song you NEVER hear anywhere else.
Why I don't just choose Vivid, from which both "Broken Hearts" and "Cult of Personality" hail, as well as the groove pop of "Glamour Boys", can be found in the wider scope of PRIDE, which contains tracks from all the other recorded output available to that point (no Collide-o-scope or Chair in the Doorway yet), including a RIDICULOUS live version of the Talking Heads' "Memories Can't Wait" as well as darker tunes from the Stain album. Of course, there's also the title track to Time's Up, as well as the aforementioned high life sunshine of "Solace of You". If you can't get up out of your seat to dance and smile to THAT track, you may just be dead. And hey, Living Colour doing dirgey, dubby tunes like "Happy Times" and "Visions" are way better than anyone else doing similar things.
Corey Glover has one of the best voices in rock. So good, in fact, that he toured as Judas Iscariot in Jesus Christ Superstar a few years ago. Vernon Reid's guitar skills are just mind-blowing, and Will Calhoun's drumming is peerless. I still miss Muzz Skillings, the original bassist, whose groove held it on lock for the first 2 albums. Of course, I can't complain about his replacement, Doug Wimbish, who has remained in the band since and thrown down some of the tastiest basslines on both fretted and fretless bass I've every heard. And hey, he was also the original house bassist on the Sugar Hill Gang's stuff way, way back when he was a teenager.
So, for that one-stop shopping of heavy metal, funk, jazz, power ballad, high life and such, PRIDE is my go-to for that desert island disc.
Captain Matt’s mandolin
My wife found a mandolin pick when cleaning this weekend.
Reminded me that I picked up the instrument this summer but stopped playing it because she thought it was too loud, carried too much through the apt. I’m going to start up again tomorrow…
loudness be damned. ;)
The dream that is the beginning to a screwball comedy
So I had this dream that’s quickly fading from my memory, but I’ll write as much of it down as I can remember before it completely disappears. Annnnnd GO:
The scene opens on the wooded acreage of a tony prep school somewhere in the burbs or maybe in a rural area of the state. Could be New England, or maybe just Bucks or Delaware County closer to home. There are teen boys and girls flitting hither and yon, dressed well for school, and I’m on campus, not sure if I’m a teacher there or somehow just passing by. An former teacher from my high school days, Mrs. Posey, appears at the door of the school to call students inside, sees me, waves, and asks me how I like Playboy of the Western World. This might make sense, as she teaches that in her class in waking life, and I’ve just recently seen it at the Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival, but that last time I saw her in waking life was back in November, before I had any plans to have seen it. Is she spying on me through my dreams? Inception?
Read more…
My Weirdest Pet Peeve: Turn Signals
Though I live in a large metropolitan area with many types of drivers, it irks me no end that people seem to refuse to use their turn signals. I can almost forgive it in highway traffic: we're all going the same direction, after all. When it comes to residential/city grid driving, though, my blood pressure begins to rise.
At intersections, I'm waiting and trying to observe the rights of way. Inexplicably, I get the high beams flash from the car opposite me in traffic, trying to Morse code the driver's thoughts or even worse, trying to elicit my own thoughts. The driver looks visibly frustrated, and mouths, "What the hell are you doing? GO!" almost every time, and I do, but as I pass through the intersection, I see them make that right or left turn. Seriously? Use your turn signal!
It only gets worse at T-intersections. You need to make a choice at those intersections, and here's brohams or sistah-friend, just SITTIN' there. How bout you make a decision? It's one way or the other, friend. And yet… drivers STILL lack the bare minimum competency to flick that little turn signal to let the drivers behind, and to the right or left of them KNOW their driving mind.
I yell.
Sometimes i think I'd be better off back where I was, taking public transit. Until I remember: I live in the land of SEPTA, the land of "We're Getting There".
F that.
Ladies and Gentlemen, I need to you tell you about something incredibly funny and HUGE for comedy here in Philadelphia. It’s ComedySportz International Tournament 2010, hosted for the very first time here in Philadelphia, PA!
A Three-fer Music Review
So I haven’t bought a lot of new music lately, probably because I’m behind the times and have been busy, but that changed this past weekend. I picked up 3 discs for 9.99 each at FYE, which, incidentally, is the least I’ve paid at FYE for cds ever. Here we go with some short and sweet:
The Black Keys, Brothers
Reviewed in a little more depth by a guy I directed years ago, The Black Keys‘ album Brothers continues to expand the duo’s songwriting chops, while still remaining firmly rooted in electric blues from the likes of Junior Kimbrough. This album features far more old R&B influence than previous albums have, and to great effect. Think Lloyd Price’s “Stagger Lee” meets Kimbrough’s “Get Your Hands Off Her” played by two white guys. Recommended if you like: blues duos, white guys playing the blues, singing through Green Bullet microphones.
Best “Ad” for an album I’ve ever watched.
