You Already Know How I Feel: The Five Songs We Use Not To Talk. Pt. 4

The Best Taste.

Several months ago more than a few of my friends got onto a Big Star kick. It was hard to shake and it was an addiction. Unlike a drug addiction a music addiction has the oddest “tells”. You might be at dinner with one of them and not even notice. But if you pay attention you’ll see. They might pause or interrupt the conversation, no matter how serious it is and say something like “Hey! This is great song”, or “Did you ever hear that crazy rumor about Rod Stewart”. Before you know it you might find yourself in a conversation about how the Deftones self-titled was their best record or how Flannery O’Conner could have been the best folk artist of her time. Finding their drug of choice to is just a matter of asking the right questions, such as: What were you listening to in your car on the way here or What do you want played at your wedding/funeral. These questions will help you out and possibly them as well because I guarantee it that are really wanting to talk about it, but back to Big Star.

If you don’t know anything about Big Star then don’t feel left out. Big Star is a musical treasure that only a few people have actually discovered. They were an American rock/power pop group from Memphis Tennessee back in the 1970’s. The Big Star story is not only a heart warming tale but it also totally pulls on your heart strings and makes miss authentic musicians. They never became a huge success until after the band had been disbanded for decades. Now with only one of the founding members still alive their music has only kept alive by musicians covering their songs or referencing them as a musical influence. Our addiction, well it all started with the documentary that was made in 2012 called, “Big Star: Nothing Can Hurt Me.” The documentary was showing at a local indie theatre downtown and it was all we could talk about in the weeks leading up to the screening. The three largest campaign managers of the Big Star addiction was Rob, Chris and I. Now Chris had a good reason for being on the sonic crack, he was throwing the event but for Rob it was painfully obvious. He has been addicted ever since he discovered the G chord. How do I even begin to describe this man?

Imagine that you are at a dive bar in a small southern town that you’ve never been to. The wind is blowing, the rain is falling in sheets and the sun won’t be back for hours. You sit alone at the bar, destitute and questioning if the person you are waiting for is really worth the awkward stares. You might have asked the bar keep for another brew and then suddenly felt that it was to late to recall your order. Then it happens. Crash! The front door bursts open with the wind howling and the rain sneaking in like a herd of cats. A tall figure looms in the doorway. His shoulders are broad, chest built like a whiskey barrel and his beady eyes are hidden by a prickly red and orange beard. The figure saunters towards you in a holiday pace and places his large mitt on the table top right by your beer. He looks you straight in the face and smiles.

“Dude, you straight up look like John Rzeznik! It’s uncanny! You smoke? Okay good. So do I. Want this expensive cigar, well to bad. Now let me tell you something, Broadway... not the most solid rock/pop song of the 90’s but damn, it was so much better than Iris. Are you drinking a Guinness? That’s my favorite. Irish, couldn’t you tell. Can I ask you something, have you ever listened to Carmen? Let me tell you something man... that song the Champion, doesn’t matter if you are an atheist, that song will save you. So what do you think of that cigar?”  

You can’t even get a word in. His cadence is like a freight train but his demeanor is that of a liturgical father. You feel comforted but yet at risk of learning to much. You softly sip your soothing juice as the night ages on. You have met Rob.

Mecca

That’s Rob in a nut shell, well besides the fly fishing of course. Rob has been a close friend and father figure in my life since I was 16. I met him at a small church plant and I quickly fell under his wing of musical guidance. Mainly thanks to people like him I was never able to let go of the 90’s and I am eternally grateful for that. Rob had a pension for all rock music and what I mean by rock music is Rock. Music. So when he heard about the Big Star documentary, he was in my face fast. We would pump each other by posting our favorite Big Star songs on each others social media sites and taking photos of CDs we found of theirs in used record stores. We’d talk about the passion it took to write such solid tunes for hours upon hours. Then it started, the music challenges.

I awoke one morning and decided to open my laptop before crawling out of bed. I could see that Rob had posted something on my wall and it said, “MUSIC CHALLENGE!!!!” He posted a play list for me to listen to and he “dared” me to have my mind melt by the power of rock. It was Big Star and Teenage Fan Club back to back to back and it was glorious. It was a perfect short compellation of their best tunes. I listened to it several times over and ever since then we have been dishing out Music Challenges. The Music Challenges range from “rock music for the sake of rock music” to “this is a serious tune that appropriately describes my soul.” To this day I open my laptop in the morning just to see if there is a Music Challenge waiting for me.

At the end of 2013 we had a celebratory get together at our favorite watering hole for Robs upcoming wedding. The bar was packed with all of my favorite people, but then their were the “locals”. What you have to know about this bar is that there is a jukebox in far corner. Cloaked in smoke and neon lights it sits, waiting for a suitor to bring it life. This jukebox is often abused by the locals. They braid it with songs by Creed, Shinedown and newest and latest pop travesty. When ever a good song is played it is swiftly followed by butt-rock. There was no winning. Imagine trying to train a puppy. You get him to shake for a tasty doggy treat but then, as soon as you turn you back he has turded all over the carpet and you are stuck with the stench for weeks. But that evening we had the Best Taste, Rob defeated the jukebox. Rob had dropped around 40 dollars in it and the whole evening was nothing but pure musical bliss. We heard Bush, Smashing Pumpkins, Sugar Ray, Bon Jovi, Bruce Springsteen, Weezer, Garbage, Blind Melon, Everclear, Our Lady Peace and much, much more. Our entire table was in sync. Every once in a while a random person at the table would be like, “Hey, hey! This song! This song right here...” and then they’d dive into story. The locals looked like lost and confused parrots. They’d strut around the pool tables and cock their head to the side trying to decipher what was playing. For them it was a different world, for us, it was the Best Taste.

We were lost in a world of nostalgia with the closest of comrades. Often when people in my generation have flashbacks of nostalgia it’s a haunting tale. We talk about the hard times, but also times when our best friends were there for us, with our arms wrapped around their shoulders. But the Best Taste is a dose of nostalgia with only the best of times being discussed. On this evening not a word had to be said, we were remembering the best moments in life where music had placed a song in our heart and smile on our face. When we use “The Best Taste” our soul connects to the fondest moments of our life and is uplifted through the power of music. The “Best Taste” can only be had though when we are surround by true friends. They understand our faults but see us for our strengths.  The friends that get us, know us and could pass for us on an electronic dating profile. That evening was the Best Taste in it’s purest form. We drank fine bourbon, smoked the best cigars, told the loudest of stories and listened to music that mattered. At the end of the night Rob turned to me and yelled, “Brady! I beat the jukebox! This better go on your website. I just completed the ultimate Music Challenge.” I raised my glass to him, saluted and said, “Yes Rob, you just played the Ultimate Music Challenge.” So maybe it’s time for you to gather your close friends, find a jukebox and partake in the Ultimate Music Challenge, defeat the beast and have the Best Taste. If I learned anything from the “Best Taste”, my friends and also Big Star it is this: The light that you have is the only light that you have. And you better put that shit on the line.

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you... BIG STAR!

An enzymatic chimera

The other night I had vivid dream. 

As soon as I woke up I knew I had to write it down. 

Three hours later this was the result.

There I was, on the shoreline. My toes dug into the sand like a kitten’s paw and my hands felt as if they had just held their first cup of morning coffee. The sun was shining like a molten marble. Its surface was a tempered glass and it's dusty tangerine rays slipped into the water like molasses. The sky around the sun acted like angels stuck in a mural. The clouds swirled like a fog on a bed of roses creating a painting of damp apricot yellows, coral pinks and a tawny red. Like feathers, the clouds got close, but not to close to the marble sun. The scenery moved like an oil painting instead of setting naturally like a floor prop at the opera house. It just hung there, dangling in the sky.

The carrot, the stick and the horse.

I stood there perplexed in it's queer beauty, "this had to be a dream" for like Frost, I don't believe that anything gold can stay.

I may have stared at this sun for only minute, but it felt like hours. Then, over the crashes waves there was a plea. My name, it was being called. I turned around to see a massive ship that may have just been a large tugboat and people were boarding. Walking up a wooded gangplank all the people were dressed in elegant suits and diamond incrusted gowns; it was a royal wardrobe. I stood there on the shore watching them from a distance as they all walked up the ramp like giant birds. The sun made their faces perfect; their complexion -- it was perfect. Then it happened. A tan gown, hemmed with golden fur, spotted like a leopard with diamonds the size of paperweights shaped into teardrops shimmered like a ribbon in a vineyard. Her arms and legs were a noble cream pale and her face burned like a rose stovetop. She wore white gloves to her elbows and small golden crown as thin beret.

I watched her from the shore like a snake. She walked up the gangplank onto the vessel like peacock, shimmering from side to side. 

My eyes traced her body, predicting her steps and imagining that she walks like everywhere. She walked like she had walked on water. But then she stopped, as if frozen in time or someone had pressed pause on videotape. She stood there perfectly balanced and composed in mid air. She turned her head just enough for me to see her face and at that moment I recognized her immediately. She smiled at me like she had done before, before the beach, before this dream. She brought her hand close to her face; she waved at me. Just as still as her pause, she waved. Time stood as still as a man's heart could and my body was an earthquake. As she looked at me her hand fell from her face and drifted to her side. She clutched the arm of the man walking her and then kept on going.

My lungs boiled, my stomach croaked and my heart calloused. I could feel my hands constricting like a statue and my feet pulsing. I was moving. Closer and closer to the ship like a creeping best I walked. Each step felt thicker, but with each step I grew stronger. The sand wrapped it's self around my ankles and parasitically bore it's way into my flesh. In and out, in and out the sand tunneled its way under my skin like a worm. It was not trying to stop me, for I could not be stopped. It wanted to come with me. My paces quicken leaving craters of footprints. Disgusting, it was disgusting. My forearms were bursting open with sand like puss. Which each new cavity the sand would spiral inside my wounds, like the worm it was feeding off of me. I no felt no longer human, I felt disgusting. My legs had become the size of cannons, forearms contorted and ribbed like sea rusted rebar and my eyes were bullets that had buried them selves deep within the concrete of my face. I stood in front of the ship, ready to explode. 

I heaved my carcass up on to the gangplank, snapping little bits of wood and shell littered the ship. The ramp creaked like a thousand year groan and the steel of the ship found its voice, it's dead hallows echoed in my ears from the weight of my body. I was an intruder and I was ready to act as such. But there was no one. In anger I placed my mitts upon my head, grabbed my hair and ripped it from my scalp. Sand, like to the texture of dried vomit oozed from scalp and drooled over my face. As the sand perpetrated my vision I could feel the anger subsiding. The monster in me was being tamed. I could no longer see and could only assume that soon it would creep into my open mouth and sing me to an eternal sleep.

Every thing in a bright flash went hazel orange. I couldn't remember what the boat looked like or even what she looked like. I could only remember the sun. And like the dimming flash from a camera my eyesight returned to me and I had not moved an inch. I was still standing on the ship, the sun was still hanging like a stocking and as I looked around there they were. Every person was looking straight at me. They were staring with a powder gaze and jinxed twitch in their fingers. I looked my hands and they were normal. My legs, they felt normal. I felt my face and it felt normal. I saw my self, and I was normal. The only think out of order was that I was dressed. I had a suit on and sailor’s hat. But it wasn't just any normal sailors hat, it was the captain’s hat. The fast forward button somewhere had been pressed. I was carried off to a gallery room by a blur of cocktail attire. People circled around me as if to congratulate me, made lines past me as to thank me and even all together avoided me as if to leave me.

In this blur I saw faces, terribly bland and unoriginal faces. The suits were all black and white while the dresses brushed the deck with the same hollow scrape as an empty can. 

I was alone now, alone in a room to which I could not see anything; except for that sun poking it's head through a small circular window. It still hung there. I had to escape, so I walked out towards the bow. I was alone again, alone to what fate had next for me. 

As I looked down from the railing the waves crashed against the hull, smacking it like toddler handling a balloon. The seagulls yapped and cawed above; it was just like it should be. I turned around to find my self-staring at the gangplank. It was about twenty yards from me and the sun had positioned it's self behind the women who was now walking towards the gangplank. It was she.

I ran to her but my feet went nowhere. The sun was blinding and the air was thick. I was still twenty yards away and she was getting closer, getting closer to leaving. I ran again. Nothing. I ran again. Nothing. Was the sun pushing me back or was the air holding me down. I ran one more time. My foot moved forward like an oar, and then the next foot. I was getting closer but then my feet developed a poor quality. I collapsed on the ground, my hands splintered by bracing my fall. Blood had collected around my palms in a sticky puddle.  I looked up to see that she had just made it to the gangplank. My throat took my body and set it on fire. I screamed her name. She stopped. She turned and smiled again, like she had done before, but this time she whispered something. But I could not hear it, I could not taste it and I could not feel it. I could only feel what was happening and several pieces of wood were burying their tack heads into my palms, the sun was glowering and the girl was leaving. I screamed her name once more. She waved at me once more and then she kept going. She had heard me, I know. Into the rays of the sun and golden heart of sand she was gone.

I regained my strength and brushed my self off. I looked down and my hands and they were clean. The rage came back and my body began to quiver. I marched back inside of the ship to find the crowd still; they were lingering with drinks and d'œuvres on tiny plates. Mouths full of crushed eggs and ranch soaked carrots. I pushed my way through the crowd like a plow in the field and made my down below deck to the engine room. It was full of grey steam that stung my cheeks and bristled my beard. I was alone again. There was one small port window, and there it was the sun glistening. 

The sand entered my body once more as I began to punch a very large control panel. Flames and metal glazed my fists as each impact went deeper and deeper into the metal box. The gears popped and fizzled like eggs on a skillet. My face filled with blood. I screamed again and again and again with each strike. I feel the life the ship crumbling beneath my weight once more. The room began to fill with hot flames. The great pistons of the ship snapped and started to thimble holes through the floor.  I gazed upon the engines, as I knew I was about to take its last breath when a hand placed it's self upon my shoulder. As I turned to look to see who had touched me the hand spun me around and it was a close friend of mine. He peered into my eyes and said, "It's time to go Captain."

I awoke with this song stuck in my head.  

A Far Cry // We Were Promised Jetpacks.