Love…

If I learned anything at all this weekend, it’s that I look pretty sharp in a tux.

Sure, formal wear is annoying and binding and it instills in one a total fear of soup or pasta sauce or any other kind of sloppy food, but you get six guys in tuxes all lined up, and they look snazzy. Especially if they’re all wearing sunglasses. Indoors.

I have been to a lot of weddings in recent years, but Sunday’s was the first time I have been in one – both a wedding and a snappy tuxedo. This was special for me partly because I introduced the bride and groom. I lived with Gary Porro all four years of college, and he was kind of a quiet guy who didn’t meet people very easily. (Which was a shame, because if you get to know Gary, it becomes immediately apparent that he’s one of the best people on Earth.) I was in several plays with his new bride, Lisa Assetta, and it was through that connection that the two of them met. Although romance did not blossom until many years later, I still take full credit, because that’s the kind of jackass I am.

So the wedding weekend arrives, and I get on a plane and fly to Boston, and within two hours, there I am at Gary’s house pulling old windowsills out of his walls. Seriously, not only does he make me put a tux on, but he puts me to work. The nerve of some people. And Lisa’s brother Guy is probably right now hanging drywall in those rooms, for free, while Gary and Lee (her preferred nickname) sun themselves in Hawaii. Who says good help is hard to find?

I’m kidding, of course. Oh, I did pull windowsills out of old horsehair for seven hours, but it was fun, and it gave me a chance to tell my story about the day I hung drywall for money. (Short version – the guy who hired me asked what kind of work I’ve done before, and I answered that I’ve been writing for newspapers and magazines. He looked me in the eye and said, “I’m going to teach you to hang drywall today, and when I’m done, you’ll never have to write for a living again.” And he meant it.) More importantly, as anyone who knows them will attest, Gary and Lee are the kind of people who would jump in front of a moving train for their friends. If anyone deserves total happiness (and a good, solid, insulated home), it’s them.

Lee’s dad sure seems to agree. If the hugeness of the wedding is any indication, Lou Assetta has been saving for this since he first heard the phrase, “it’s a girl.” I would guess the whole thing cost twice as much as my car. The reception was held at the Tewksbury Country Club, a mammoth and beautiful wooden hall with balconies and rafters and fountains. The band was Java Jive – three keyboards and some horns that played a mix of stuff from Harry Connick to Garth Brooks to OutKast. It was your classic wedding, full of food and dancing.

I most enjoyed seeing people I hadn’t connected with in a while. Bill and Sara Yates, who are still up in Maine and are about to have their first child. (Bill, a big Star Wars fan, was hilariously jealous of Gary’s idea to use the Imperial March as his processional music.) Calvin Sanborn, the coolest priest I know, who lives in Manhattan. (We also got to meet Cal’s great, funny boyfriend, Dan, for the first time.) Joe Wellman, another Mainer who is also expecting a child with his lovely wife Andrea. Jeff King, Jamie Grover, Jay Hutchinson – it’s fascinating to see where life has taken all of my college friends.

Then there was the conclusion of the Penguin Project, and now the truth can be told. Bridesmaid Christine Guertin has this stuffed penguin, see, and she calls it Juggernaut. She’s so attached to this penguin that it’s been an ongoing game of ours (myself, Gary and a bunch of other college buddies) to steal this penguin and put it through some form of torture. We’ve hung it from ceiling fans, thrown it down stairs, and chucked it out of third-story windows, all to see the look on Christine’s face. Well, about a year ago, we hatched this plan.

We stole the penguin from her house.

And we treated it like the garden gnome in Amelie, sending it places like Texas and Mexico, taking its picture and sending Christine emails from Juggernaut with the photos attached. Juggernaut has his own Yahoo account, and has been more places than I have. Life got in the way of the prank a bit – it should have been better than it was – but it was always supposed to culminate at Gary and Lee’s wedding. And so it did.

Midway through the reception, the lead singer of Java Jive produced Juggernaut, complete with little sunglasses and straw hat, and handed him over to a thoroughly embarrassed Christine while singing “Friends in Low Places.” Many pictures were taken, much video was shot, and it couldn’t have gone any better than it did. Many thanks to Christine for being a good sport about it, even when months would go by without word from her beloved penguin. As usual, the look on her face was worth it.

As the party wound down, I took a moment away from admiring my tux in every reflective surface I could find and really looked around. And then I looked at Gary and Lee, smiling and dancing and meeting people. If anyone doubts that you can physically see love, you need to see these two. I flashed on them cracking each other up during the wedding ceremony, and on Gary mouthing the words to “True Companion” to Lee during their first dance, and just to the way they look at each other. Gary is fond of saying that he doesn’t think he’ll ever be truly happy. I think he proved himself wrong on Sunday.

Congratulations, guys. You deserve every joy.

* * * * *

…And Death

When I was a teenage metalhead (yes, another one of these stories), I loved Pantera.

Here’s the thing. During the early ‘90s, the pantheon of metal bands started to fall apart. Metallica lost a limb when Cliff Burton died, and starting with 1991’s Black Album, they limped through more than a decade of uninspired crap. Megadeth had no such excuse, but they decided to suck anyway, and stuck to it for five increasingly awful records. Anthrax was still Anthrax, more or less, but they lost singer Joey Belladonna and started writing Seattle songs. Brazil’s Sepultura was still pretty great, but what about American metal? Wherefore art thou, Headbanger’s Ball?

The shining light amidst all the pop flotsam was Pantera, a group of four southern rednecks who never compromised their mission – pure, straight-up metal, complete with screaming vocals and shredding solos. They started out with a different singer and a more Judas Priest-style sound, but come 1990’s Cowboys From Hell, new singer Phil Anselmo locked in and Pantera made a classic metal record. And then they outdid it, twice, with 1992’s Vulgar Display of Power and 1994’s astonishingly heavy Far Beyond Driven. (It may be safe to say that Driven is the heaviest record ever to debut at number one on the Billboard chart.)

Vulgar, in particular, is linked with certain images in my mind – most ominously, the image of Steve Souza, my co-worker at Superior Junk Comics and dorm-mate at college, intoning the hook line of “This Love” at random moments. Seriously, this guy would come up to you and say, in a low, imposing, creepy voice, “I kill myself for you, I kill you for myself.” And then he would walk away. He also would blast “Fucking Hostile” from his dorm room pretty often.

I was a much bigger fan of the uncompromising Driven, especially its speed and complexity. “Shedding Skin,” “Five Minutes Alone,” “Strength Beyond Strength” – these were some of the best metal songs ever. And the not-so-secret weapon of Pantera was guitarist Dimebag Darrell Abbott, he of the screeching harmonic and the pulverizing riff. You could listen to Pantera just for the aggression, or you could parse out what Dimebag was doing and get a satisfying musical experience out of it. Their stuff was intense in all the best ways.

And best of all, they never sold out, not even a little bit. Their last album, 2000’s Reinventing the Steel, was a 40-minute statement of purpose, all thundering riffs and unstoppable metal power. It was a big middle finger to the corporate nu-metal that Pantera unfortunately inspired, and it turned out to be their swan song. Pantera’s breakup was acrimonious, of course – you just knew these guys wouldn’t part ways with a handshake – but Dimebag Darrell and his brother, Pantera’s awesome drummer Vinnie Paul, moved on. They formed a band called Damageplan and released their debut in February.

And now comes news from Columbus, Ohio, that Dimebag Darrell is dead, shot in the back of the head while onstage with Damageplan. Apparently an outraged fan stormed the stage with a gun, screamed something about Darrell breaking up Pantera, and killed him, along with four others. And he may have killed more people had a heroic police officer not taken him down first. Sickening stuff, and really unfortunate end to a great career. So I just wanted to say thanks to Darrell from my younger self, and rest in peace.

* * * * *

And the Greatest of These…

I have just written a story for the local paper that warmed even my cynical little heart.

The local middle school up here has a special education class that meets daily. Eight students, with disabilities ranging from autism to down’s syndrome, get together and learn about everyday things that will help them be more independent as they grow older. They learn hygiene, nutrition, and how to balance a checkbook, among other things, and they seem to have one of those rare teachers that really enjoys what she does. It’s a fun class to sit in on.

Anyway, as a project for the last few months, the students have started their own business. They called a vendor and got vending machines installed in the school hallways, machines full of pens and pencils that can be purchased for as little as a quarter each. Every day, these students rush to the machines, empty out the money, count it and deposit it in their business bank account. They’re learning about deposits, budgeting, ordering supplies, and basically running their own company.

That’s not the cool part, though. The students have just made their first purchases with the money from their business, and guess what they bought?

Gifts for needy families.

Seriously. Special education students have worked for months to buy Christmas gifts for needy children. If that doesn’t bring a snark-free smile to your face, I don’t know what will. ‘Tis the season and all that, but I have rarely seen a more tangible example of goodwill towards men than this.

And on top of that, scientists may have found a cure for tuberculosis. Life is good.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

December already. We have mild snow here in the Chicago area – enough to remind you that snow is pretty, but not enough to annoy the piss out of you. U2 landed at number one on the album chart this week, and Gwen Stefani stalled at number seven. And two of my very good friends are getting married this weekend. All seems right with the world.

So what could screw up my good mood? Well, Rolling Stone magazine.

I’m glad that Rolling Stone exists, if for no other reason than to give me example after example of how I don’t want to run this column. RS bills itself as a music magazine, but to my mind, it isn’t one, and hasn’t been one for a long, long time. It’s a culture rag, all about a certain marketing demographic and how they live. Which is fine – there’s nothing wrong with abandoning your original focus in favor of something else, but at least be honest about it. Musicians and music fans still turn to Rolling Stone as if their coverage had any purely artistic motivation, and their opinions held merit. The days of Cameron Crowe’s William Miller writing about the transformative power of rock ‘n’ roll are long gone.

But they’re not honest about it. They continue to do music magazine features like their latest, a list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. Let’s just stop for one second and marvel at that concept. The 500 best songs OF ALL TIME. Now, let’s note that by “all time” they mean “1950 or so to the present,” excluding songs like Beethoven’s Fifth and “Stardust” and “Giant Steps” and “Ave Maria,” which is still one of the greatest melodies I have ever heard. If they had just said that these are the 500 greatest songs you can still hear on corporate radio, then fine.

But that isn’t even my gripe. I find myself disagreeing with Rolling Stone’s reviews and proclamations more often than not, and I think it comes down to a fundamental difference in the way I see the job of a music reviewer. I like to discuss the music, and the artistic evolution of artists, whereas the RS review section is all about the cultural impact and importance of that music. Neither one is inherently right, but one is the purview of a music publication, and the other the focus of a pop culture mag. To put it another way, the music reviewer tells you what the music sounds like and means to him, letting you experience it and make up your own mind, whereas the culture reporter tells you what it means to you and your generation.

A culture paper can do music features, but I think those features should be held apart from serious criticism of the art. You can take Rolling Stone’s list and call it The 500 Most Influential Songs or The 500 Songs People Seem to Love Best, and that’s fine, but to put it out there as a definitive list of the greatest songs implies some measure of artistic examination. A favorites list is not a best-of list, because a best-of list would have to include criteria like the most effective use of a particular harmonic technique, or the most musically surprising bridge section, or the most genre-expanding mix of influences.

And that’s boring. People don’t like to read artistic criticism, they like to read lists of favorites and contrast them with their own. All well and good, and this is certainly a list of favorites masquerading as a critical ranking, because if one were to examine this list from any kind of musical standard, it would be one big 97-page joke. I have a lot of problems with this list, but one sticks out, and it’s a familiar one. (And it’s one for which my cousin Carol is going to repeatedly smack me.)

It is, of course, goddamn Nirvana.

I understand that this list only covers about 55 years – calling “Like a Rolling Stone” the best song OF ALL TIME is screamingly funny anyway, and it’s a little less absurd to call it the best song since about 1950. Still absurd, mind you, but a bit less so. Even with those limited parameters, though, landing “Smells Like Teen Spirit” at number nine is just insulting to all the brilliant songwriters represented (and unrepresented) on this list. The song is made up of four repetitive chords, played sloppily, with Kurt Cobain’s amelodic yolwing atop it. A fifth grader could have written it. Hell, I saw a kid on 60 Minutes last week who is composing fully orchestrated symphonies at age 12. He blew by Cobain in the talent department before he could even read.

But because this is a culture magazine, there are two reasons why “Teen Spirit” is this high on the list, or in fact on the list at all. First, it sold millions of copies when nothing else like it was on the radio. And second, its author killed himself a couple of years later. There is no doubting that Nirvana tapped into the zeitgeist, and provided a media representation of a generation, or some such crap. But – and here is the crux of my disagreement with Rolling Stone – that has no bearing on the actual music. If Nevermind had flopped and Cobain had gone on to live a happy, average life, “Smells Like Teen Spirit” would still be the same song, recorded the same way. And it wouldn’t be anywhere near this list.

It’s human nature to form associations. People hear a certain song they haven’t heard in years, and it takes them right back to their younger days. For a lot of people, “Teen Spirit” means something, and Cobain’s suicide means even more – a glorious dream deferred, the death of innocence, etc. People connect with huge events en masse, and often associate those events with a song or a film or a picture. And then all of a sudden, it’s more than a song – it’s a symbol, an unassailable monolith to some grand ideal.

And I think the job of the music critic is to break those associations and talk about the work.

Now don’t get me wrong. I like Nirvana, as modestly talented garage bands go, and I quite like In Utero, which I think is their best – it’s almost a halfway acceptable Pixies album. But come on. In purely musical terms, they were among the worst of their Seattle brethren. Their finished recordings sound like demos, which begs the question of why a three-CD box set of demos is necessary. But of course, it exists, and it’s selling. Having heard a good chunk of With the Lights Out, I can’t imagine anyone really wanting to listen to these hissy, sloppy artifacts more than once.

When you set yourself up as a critical examiner of music, and then rate “Teen Spirit” as the ninth-best song OF ALL TIME, your credibility is in serious jeopardy. Even on a list of American cultural favorites, though, its high rating makes no sense. Just for fun, here is a partial list of songs Rolling Stone considers lesser works than “Smells Like Teen Spirit”:

“My Generation”

“Yesterday” (and in fact every Beatles song except “Hey Jude”)

“Purple Haze”

“God Only Knows” (I mean, holy shit. Nirvana at nine, Brian Wilson at 25. On a songwriting list! They only saved themselves in this case by ranking “Good Vibrations” at number six.)

“Layla”

“Sittin’ on the Dock of the Bay”

“I Walk the Line”

“Stairway to Heaven”

“Georgia on My Mind”

“Hotel California”

“Let’s Stay Together”

“Tangled Up in Blue”

“I Heard It Through the Grapevine”

“I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For”

“Fortunate Son”

And that’s just from the top 100. Now, did anyone need me to list the artists’ names with any of those songs? Is there a single one there that people don’t know, or wouldn’t recognize within seconds if they heard it? I daresay that all of the above songs (and just about every Beatles song not listed) outdo “Teen Spirit” as musical works, and as cultural touchstones. Even “Every Breath You Take,” down there at number 84, would seem to outshine Nirvana on both levels. But Sting is still alive, and his later work has suffered, and he no longer symbolizes anything. So he’s out of luck.

I don’t even want to get into the bottom four-fifths of this list, and the insanely low rankings for Randy Newman and Neil Young and Elvis Costello and Stevie Wonder and Joni Mitchell and countless others. I will just add my own opinion that the worst song Elvis Costello ever wrote is still leagues better, and draws on a much more considered knowledge of music, than the best thing Cobain ever did. (And one more thing, because I can’t believe it – does anybody seriously think that R. Kelly’s “I Believe I Can Fly” (#406) is a better song than Led Zeppelin’s “Ramble On” (#433) or the Beatles’ “Penny Lane” (#449)? Seriously?)

There will probably come a time when this sort of thing doesn’t piss me off. For now, though, it just illuminates the ways in which I want to build my approach. The longer I do this reviewing thing, the more I define my own attitudes by carving away what they are not. At the risk of delivering a pompous, pontificating manifesto, here is the latest swing at a Tuesday Morning mission statement:

Music itself is more important than its effect on the culture, or even than the very culture it affects. It’s bigger and broader and more vital, and it doesn’t need our trends to change the world, one listener at a time. As long as I am doing this column, it will celebrate great music for its own merits, wherever it may be found. It will revel in the idea that the best song in the world may very well be on someone’s demo tape in someone’s closet, and only three or four people may ever get to hear it, but those people will be the luckiest on earth, and the song will still be the best song in the world.

This is, after all, just a tribute. Music is beyond us, and capturing the muse is far more important and praiseworthy than capturing the public attention. The best stuff is just waiting to be found.

Wow, that is pompous. And I believe every word.

As for Rolling Stone and its ilk, well, idolization of Cobain will continue in the same way that deification of Sid Vicious has. But even Cobain didn’t like “Teen Spirit” as much as Rolling Stone does, and he’s quoted in that very issue as saying so: “There are many other songs that I have written that are as good, if not better.” I agree with him – “About a Girl,” “Drain You,” “Aneurysm,” “Milk It,” “Something in the Way” and even “All Apologies” are more accomplished songs. He seemed to understand his place in the musical canon, covering David Bowie and Leadbelly with respect, even if his disciples didn’t, and still don’t. Culturally speaking, his impact was huge. Musically speaking, he was a blip, dragged into godhood at the expense of more deserving songwriters.

And there’s nothing wrong with celebrating his cultural influence. Just be honest about it.

End of rant.

Only two more columns before the Top 10 List hits on December 22. It is my favorite Top 10 List, by the way, since I have been keeping record of them. Dare I say it’s the best Top 10 List OF ALL TIME?

See you in line Tuesday morning.

Let’s just get this out of the way first: U2 is not now, and never has been, the best band in the world.

People love to bestow that honor on the Irish Fab Four, and it just ain’t true. But for a while there, in the early-to-mid-‘80s, they were perhaps the most important band in the world, and I think that counts for a lot. In a time when most acts strove for artificiality, U2 stood for something. A lot of things, actually – they were the most political and spiritual band to crack the top 40 during that bizarre decade, and their sincere belief that their music could physically change the world was refreshing. Sure, they got ridiculed for it, and they get ridiculed even now, but there’s a certain kind of bravery that comes with standing up on a world stage and singing a song like “Sunday Bloody Sunday.”

The first U2 album I heard was Under a Blood Red Sky, their live document from 1983. (I’m not sure, but I think I borrowed it from Chris Callaway.) I was eleven. I had no idea about the politics behind “Bloody Sunday” and “New Year’s Day,” and I was blissfully unaware of concepts like “earnest passion.” These songs just moved me. They sounded more real, more powerful, than anything I had heard. “New Year’s Day” especially – that one still gets me.

As a kid, I was full of passionate beliefs, most especially in the power of music, and I think I responded to that same sense of idealism in U2’s early work. Listening to War or The Unforgettable Fire, it’s obvious that the band strove to paint the sky with colors, most of them deep and foreboding, and worked overtime to change minds and move hearts. The first five U2 albums are what I have repeatedly referred to this year as big dreamer records. They are the work of a band who believed, fervently, that they could do anything, and one brave enough to put that belief out there.

I believe that the magic of U2 is their uncanny ability to make simplicity fascinating. If you diagram their songs, they are ridiculously easy. “Sunday Bloody Sunday” is three chords. “Bad” is two. To this day, one of their most moving numbers is still “With or Without You,” and that one repeats the same four bass notes for its entire running time. Their rhythm section sticks to straight time and eighth notes, for the most part, rarely displaying a sense of adventure. Nearly every song from the early albums is easy and anthemic.

And yet, they touch the soul like few bands ever have. When the boys in U2 are on their game, they bypass all that intellectual hooey and dive straight into the bloodstream. Take the aforementioned “With or Without You,” one of several huge hits from 1987’s The Joshua Tree. By the time the four-minute crescendo has reached its peak, Bono’s soaring voice and the Edge’s otherworldly guitar have enveloped you and carried you skyward with them. If the song were more complicated, even a little, it wouldn’t work as well. (And speaking of repetitive-yet-effective songs, one track later they’re assaulting you with “Bullet the Blue Sky.” Has there ever been a more ominous song? You can feel those fighter planes…)

I’m rhapsodizing the early work, because starting with 1991’s Achtung Baby, U2 stopped doing it for me. With a few exceptions per album (“Ultraviolet,” “Stay,” “Do You Feel Loved”), Bono and the boys decided to stay earthbound, to tinker with electronics and wield irony like a bludgeon. It’s been said that in the ‘80s, U2 was all about what they believed in, and in the ‘90s, they were about what they didn’t believe in. That’s as apt a description as I can conceive – ‘90s U2 albums were about excess and artificiality, and the huge tours matched that sentiment. Let it never be said that U2 does anything by halves, yet by the time of 1997’s Pop you could tell that this decade-long experiment was wearing on them. (And the less said about PopMart the better, I think…)

In most things, but most especially when it comes to music, I am a cynical idealist. I want to believe in music that can tear open the heavens, but nearly everything I hear these days is lazy and lifeless. I think a lot of music fans are like me – we want to be inspired. We want to love everything we hear. We want to rapturously embrace every CD we buy. We’re just so used to it not happening that we expect mediocrity. Thing is, in order to be inspired, we need artists who deal in inspiration. We need our musicians to believe in what they are doing, and why they are doing it.

For the entirety of the ‘90s, U2 fell short of that. With the exception of “One,” all of their big singles from that time period just whizzed right by me – “Mysterious Ways,” “Even Better Than the Real Thing,” “Lemon,” “Discotheque,” “Staring At the Sun,” etc. None of them made any impact on me, and the corresponding albums were bought and absorbed, but none of them affected me. There were glimpses here and there of the band they used to be, but they had lost their heretofore unswerving faith in the scope of their own creations. They had stopped painting the sky and started settling for billboards.

I have this theory about the younger generation of music fans. Many of them have only really known U2 as a lousy techno-pop band, and they don’t understand the loyalty and passion the band creates in its devotees. Every new U2 song they’ve ever heard has been second-rate. Younger listeners can’t quite fathom why their older counterparts keep buying new U2 stuff – they’re just like any other old band who used to be good, but aren’t anymore. And it’s true. We were just like fans of the Rolling Stones, who keep buying lousy new records hoping for that old spark that will never be rekindled. (Of course, Stones fans have been hanging on to hope for more than 30 years now…)

But we knew. If ever there was a band that would reward patience and faith, it’s U2.

I remember exactly where I was and what I was doing when I first heard “Beautiful Day,” the dazzling lead single from 2000’s All That You Can’t Leave Behind. I was working in a record store, and I had only days to go before packing my stuff up and leaving Maine for good. The opening was disheartening, all synths and programmed beats, but then the chorus kicked in, and the Edge found his six-string again, and Bono sang his heart out for the first time in my adult life, and all was right with the world. The album followed suit – though it rarely reached the heights of “Beautiful Day,” it pulsed with revitalized strength. Upon repeated listens, I realized that I may have overrated it – it does fall to pieces in its final third – but I couldn’t mask my joy at hearing this band’s rebirth.

Turns out, it was just the warmup act.

Let me put this as plainly as I can. How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb, U2’s 11th album, is their best, most inspired, most inspiring work since The Joshua Tree. All the while sporting the band’s dumbest album title ever.

By now, you’re all sick of the first track, “Vertigo.” Because of the band’s controversial deal with Apple, the song has been hammered down America’s throats via that ubiquitous iPod ad. (Yes, he’s counting “one, two, three, fourteen” on purpose. Get over it.) Its annoying omnipresence doesn’t detract from the fact that it’s U2’s most rockin’ song in ages – it’s dumb, fun, blistering and superb. But if history has proven anything, it’s that you can’t trust the first single from a U2 album. Those looking to Pop for a whole album of “Discotheque” were disappointed, and similarly, if you want 11 quick rock songs like “Vertigo,” you won’t get them here.

Atomic Bomb is a surprisingly mellow affair, full to bursting with expansive anthems that finally – finally – make full use of the Edge’s spine-tingling guitar work again. “Miracle Drug” is a classic U2 song, made even more so by their re-use of the bass line from “With or Without You.” This one soars, taken skyward by Bono’s vocals and the gorgeous guitars. “Sometimes You Can’t Make It On Your Own” is similarly fantastic, a slow ballad about the recent death of Bono’s father. When it crashes into its stunning bridge section, it’s the most U2 moment I can remember hearing since high school.

“City of Blinding Lights” is the most standing-on-a-mountain-shouting-at-the-sky song here, and it’s a wonder. U2 have taken everything they’ve learned about pop craftsmanship during their decade of irony and adapted it to their old style masterfully. “City” finds the Edge spinning a web of guitar tones beneath a glorious piano melody, and just where you’d hope the chorus would come in and send it into orbit, it does. Nothing here lies still. Even an experiment like “Love and Peace or Else” explodes into one of the Edge’s most stabbing guitar breaks since “Bullet the Blue Sky,” and when they lock into a groove, as on “All Because of You,” the result will have you air-drumming furiously.

Best of all, unlike every album they’ve made since Joshua, Atomic Bomb steadfastly fails to disintegrate by its final tracks. “One Step Closer” is a little too subdued for this record, but “Original of the Species” kicks it back up with a great chorus, and closer “Yahweh” is a superb upbeat hymn. There is nothing skip-worthy on this disc. It’s all good.

My only issue with it is Bono’s lyrics, which lean towards trite more often than not. U2 long ago stopped trying to affect political change through their music, and the focus here (despite the title) is on love and loss. Occasionally, Bono will haul out a stinker like this: “Freedom has a scent like the top of a newborn baby’s head.” But when he digs deep into his own life, as on “Sometimes You Can’t Make It,” it’s heartrending. He’s the worst part of this foursome, and yet he’s crucial to their U2-ness. Just try imagining this album without his voice, his straining yet heartfelt delivery. I don’t know what it would sound like, but it wouldn’t be U2.

And this album, finally, sounds like U2. They have never been the best band in the world, but for a sad long while there it seemed like they believed they were, no matter what tripe they recorded. The attitude from the U2 camp lately can only be described as humility. They said it themselves, they’re reapplying for the job, asking for devotion again, and they know that you start with writing great songs and making great records. They’ve made a great one here. It’s not quite in league with their best stuff, and they might never hit those heights again. But hey, I never thought U2 would sound this energized, this powerful, this important again. For the first time in 17 years, they’ve moved me and captivated me again, and that’s more than I ever expected. They may not be the best, and they may not even be the most respected anymore, but they’ve done right by this fan. I love this record.

Welcome home, boys.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

I just submitted my first writing-for-money work in two years.

It was a 400-word story for the local paper about the high school football team. Not the Great American Novel (or even the Great American Comic Book) by any means, but still. I wrote some words, I put them in order, I sent them to an editor, and in a week or so, I will get paid for it. For the first time in two years. Step one on a long road back, to be sure, but I can’t even tell you how good it feels to be semi-pro again.

Anyway, here’s some writing I did for no money:

* * * * *

I finalized my Top 10 List this week.

Well, I say finalized, but I should say “finalized,” because it’s only the third week of November. Still, I looked at the album release list for December, then looked over my stack of hopefuls for this year’s list, and realized that (barring some miraculous surprise) nothing from the list has any prayer of making the stack. Seriously, the month sucks.

I have now heard the two wild card albums, both late-year releases from revered favorites, and while I’m allowing myself time to put them both in perspective, both have landed in the stack. I’ll get to U2’s new one next week, but I will say now that I think it’s their best record since 1988, and more of a return to form than All That You Can’t Leave Behind was.

But that’s next week. This is Rufus Wainwright’s week.

You may remember that Wainwright ascended to the top of last year’s hotly contested Top 10 List, just barely beating out the amazing Bruce Cockburn, on the strength of a stunning album called Want One. Since that time, Want One has only grown in my estimation, and I find myself agreeing with Elton John (who ever thought that would happen?) when he says that Wainwright may be the best songwriter in the world right now.

You may also remember that Want has a second half, recorded at the same time as the first but shelved because DreamWorks Records didn’t feel like releasing a double album. Want Two was supposed to come out at the start of 2004, but then Universal Music, the lumbering cannibalistic giant running wild through the media jungle, gobbled up DreamWorks and spit out most of its roster. But now, thanks to David Geffen’s other record company, the one named after him, the record has finally been delivered, more than a year after its brother was born.

The imagery is apt – these albums are certainly siblings, if not twins. There’s no doubt that both Wants came from the same sessions, and from the same glorious musical mind. But you know how siblings can be very different, even if they look exactly alike? Want Two is darker, moodier, mellower and deeper than Want One – where the first album was a near-perfect pop explosion with some operatic touches, the second is its mirror image, a series of operettas composed and played with pop sensibilities.

It makes sense, though – Wainwright is a classically trained pianist who grew up as much in the world of Broadway and theater as he did in his famous parents’ folk circles. His music has always had elements of camp, of grandiosity, and it’s on the Want Two material that he lets those influences come to the fore. But coupled with that inherent pomp is a deep musical intuition. Wainwright has the soul of a composer, and the skills to match, and this album represents his most orchestrated work yet.

What we have here could be 12 songs from 12 different musicals, each with a different character at its core. Just about all of these songs would seem at home on the Broadway stage, sung by lovelorn misfits and beautiful mourners. Guitars appear on less than half the tracks – it’s mostly piano and strings and Wainwright’s delightfully odd voice. Is it a pop album? Yes, if you define pop the way Wainwright does, encompassing the likes of Irving Berlin and Gilbert and Sullivan. Simply put, if you’re looking for songs like “California” and “I Don’t Know What It Is” and “Beautiful Child,” well, they’re not here.

What is here? How about some of the most gorgeous music this guy has ever made. Opener “Agnus Dei” sets the tone – it’s a lengthy orchestrated dirge, all in Latin, with some lovely violin work. “The One You Love” is the only pop song here, but it refuses to be straightforward, dipping into odd times and cool piano bridges. “Crumb By Crumb” is almost a shuffle, with lovely, silly lyrics and an insanely catchy ascending melody.

The stretch of songs from track three to track 10 is the most sustained set of moody ballads Wainwright has yet produced. The whole thing is practically hook-free, but from the first strains of “Peach Trees” you’re immersed in it. “Little Sister,” flirting as it does with incestuous sexual yearning, is pretty much as campy as it gets… until you hit “Gay Messiah,” which belongs in an alternate universe reading of Jesus Christ Superstar. (As you may have guessed, this is an album that would make the moralists in the red states see… well, red.) “Hometown Waltz,” about wanting to torch one’s place of birth, is played for laughs and heartbreak, the cousin of Want One’s “Vibrate.”

But when things get deeper, Wainwright shines. He plays the part of a smitten young student in “The Art Teacher,” a romantic ballad that turns tragic by its conclusion. He probes the role of pain in relationships in the tense, sweeping “Waiting For a Dream,” on which he sings, “You are not my lover and you never will be, ‘cause you’ve never done anything to hurt me.” Best of all, though, he gently mourns the passing of Jeff Buckley on “Memphis Skyline,” the most subdued and haunting song here.

Wainwright’s only misstep is the closer, “Old Whore’s Diet,” which stretches its pulsing beat and its one melody out for nine minutes. He brings in a guest vocalist, Antony of Antony and the Johnsons, and it just… doesn’t work. The song’s structure mimics Want One’s opener, “Oh What a World,” but it goes on too long and wears out its welcome long before the impressive finish.

The production, once again by Marius de Vries, is perfect. It would have been sadly easy to let these songs slip all the way into camp with overblown arrangements, but Team Wainwright pulls off the balancing act again. (They get help this time from one Van Dyke Parks, who seems to be everywhere this year…) Even something as flamboyant as “Little Sister” avoids silliness through its careful score, and when the tone downshifts for something like “Memphis Skyline,” the production is breathtaking.

Despite this album’s obvious wonders, though, it is a much more difficult work, and I find myself wishing that Want hadn’t been broken up into two releases. I get the sense that Wainwright and de Vries crafted Want One and then assembled Want Two out of what was left, so perfect is the former record. Had Wainwright mixed his pop and his pomp more thoroughly, both albums would have been amazing. As it is, though, they are two distinct journeys, inviting comparison, and Want One wins it.

It would be a mistake to think of Want Two as a collection of cast-offs, however. These songs are just as worthy of release, even if cumulatively their effect is less. A disjointed Rufus Wainwright album is still better than most artists’ finest work, of course, and it seems petty to complain about a record with 11 fantastic tracks. If Wainwright himself hadn’t set the bar so high with Want One, I would be praising this no end. It’s best to think of this album as part two, as a second act that isn’t meant to stand alone, and if you listen to Want in its entirety, the scope of Wainwright’s vision is impressive. It’s just too bad it wasn’t released that way.

Still, nothing wrong with the silver medal, and if you have both albums, you can play them back to back and pretend the record company never messed with it. And then you can watch the excellent live DVD that comes with Want Two. And then you can play the albums again. Rufus Wainwright is on the short list of songwriters that I will follow until one of us dies, and if his next project brings together all of the disparate influences that make up Want into a cohesive whole, it will be downright incredible.

Next week, dismantling an atomic bomb with U2. This is my 200th column, by the way, and the usual thanks for supporting and reading my work are in order. I truly appreciate it.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

I promise, no politics this time. Honest.

Okay, just one little bit. Leave it to The Onion to get this election exactly right.

* * * * *

I had an interesting morning on the treadmill.

I know that is exactly the kind of sentence that is usually followed by a story that is not at all interesting, but bear with me. I lost roughly 40 pounds in 2003, and gained roughly 20 of it back in 2004, and I have to be in a wedding in less than a month (Hey Gary, hey Lee!), so… treadmill. This morning I decided on VH-1 for my exercise entertainment – that channel has very capably slipped into its role as MTV for old people, by the way – and caught up on the pop landscape.

First up was Gwen Stefani’s debut solo single, “What You Waiting For.” And honestly, all I could think was, “I don’t know about you, Gwen, but I’m waiting for a chorus.” She never delivered one. The video, by the by, concerns a company that cures writer’s block, and considering that this song sounds like the product of an idea shortage, she should probably get her money back.

From the inexplicable corner of my mind department, I absolutely love Switchfoot’s “Dare You to Move.” Don’t know why – it’s just the kind of mid-tempo alterna-pop I usually can’t stand, but something clicks here. I can’t understand it, but the song makes me want to sing along every time I hear it. I can’t intellectually tell you the difference between this and most Matchbox 20 or Collective Soul songs, so don’t ask, but this one just does it for me.

Then came John Mellencamp’s new video for “Walk Tall.” The song is Mellencamp on autopilot, and to tell you the truth, I can’t even remember it, but the video is mesmerizing. It stars 4’6” actor Peter Dinklage (from The Station Agent and Elf, among other films) and takes place in an alternate deep south where racism doesn’t exist, but the same level of racial hatred is reserved for short people. It’s a lot better than it sounds, and it’s beautifully shot, and its final act is jolting. One of the best conceptual videos I have seen in ages.

Quick update – I have been informed that it’s not Peter Dinklage at all, but Poncho Moler who appears in the Walk Tall video. Thanks to Christine Herndon for bringing this to my attention, and apologies to Peter and Poncho.

Most interestingly, I caught Sarah McLachlan’s “World on Fire.” If you haven’t heard about this clip, here’s the story: McLachlan was given $150,000 to make a video. She actually spent $15 on the video (so she says), using a single camera and stock footage. The rest of the money was sent to charitable causes in the third world, and the video details where it all went. (She set up a webpage to document it as well here.)

I think this is all well and good, despite the obvious soapboxing, but I do have one little problem with it: now that she’s made this statement, McLachlan can’t make any more $150,000 videos. If she does (and she will – her label will likely only allow a stunt like this once), she’s guilty of the same excesses and lack of caring of which her video accuses others. Now that she’s opened these floodgates, she’s ripe for criticism every time she mounts a huge tour, or takes three years crafting an album. Because of this video, we’ll be thinking of how much each of her future promotional endeavors costs, and the snarkier among us will probably figure out how much relief she is not sending to the needy.

Here’s the thing. I think this is a great gesture, a terrific way to help out, and if she had just donated the cash and turned in a cheap $15 video, that would have been fine. The implicit message of the clip, however, is that everyone who spends extravagantly on music videos (or any artistic project) is not doing enough to help the poor. This is true, of course – I can’t help thinking of all the money thrown away on crap like The Day After Tomorrow, for instance – but now that she’s made this point, she has to live it. Otherwise, the statement is hopelessly diminished. And that’s why entertainers don’t make statements like that very often.

Still, great video.

The last chunk of my workout was accompanied by MTV2’s Rock Countdown, since by that time I needed a jolt of adrenalin. I didn’t get it. What I did get was a slab of sad, same-sounding videos from the likes of Good Charlotte, the Used, Jay-Z and Linkin Park (Look! Rap and rock together! Why didn’t someone think of this before?), and Yellowcard. Okay, Yellowcard gets points for their violin player, but the same demerits for lazy songwriting. The whole sequence of videos was ungodly boring, and served to make me feel incredibly old.

I can scarcely believe I have become the type of music fan that is more at home on VH-1 than on MTV, but there you go. I don’t think it’s a matter of being unable to identify with the seething teenage anger that permeates the newer stuff, though – I’m still pretty angry a lot of the time, and the Cure’s Disintegration aside, I never really looked to music for personal identification anyway. No, I really think the songwriting has just gotten worse since the ‘80s, when even pop fluff was well-constructed and usually unique. Modern pop and rock just blends together in a sludgy pool of blandness, for the most part.

As if to test my theory that bands from the ‘80s were just better songwriters, we’re seeing a virtual renaissance of reunion projects these days. Bands who hit the charts two decades ago are burying the hatchet and dropping new discs left and right, and you know what? Call me ancient, biased and subjective all you want, but mostly, these records are just better than the works of their modern counterparts.

Take Duran Duran, for example. During their early-‘80s heyday, Duran was constantly accused of plasticity, of shallow fakery, despite the fact that they could outplay most of the folks they outsold. In contrast to the hollowed-out puppets topping the pop charts these days – hello, Ashlee Simpson! – Duran Duran was a band, with real songs and genuine musicianship. Ignore “Rio” and hear “The Chauffer,” skip “Girls on Film” and check out “Tel Aviv.” These guys knew how to write and play.

Hell, they still do. It would be tempting to call Astronaut, their new album, a comeback record, but Duran Duran never went away. They’ve consistently released an album every two or three years since 1981, and while some have been hit or miss, most are terrific, and none evidence the shallowness with which they’ve been associated. If Astronaut is a comeback, it arrives just a decade after their last comeback, fueled by an extraordinary single called “Ordinary World,” and if viewed as a whole, their output starts to look like a bold and idiosyncratic career, as opposed to a few stabs at pop stardom.

Astronaut is indisputably a reunion album, though – it marks the first time since 1983 that Simon LeBon, Nick Rhodes and all three Taylors (Andy, John and Roger) have been in the same studio together. If you’re expecting a return to the bass-heavy synth-pop of Rio, though, forget it. This is a much more satisfying record than that. It hearkens back to ‘93’s Wedding Album, and even ‘90’s Liberty, and while it unfortunately leaves the psychedelic touches of Medazzaland and Pop Trash behind, it delivers a nifty pop record with hooks and depth.

Leadoff track “(Reach Up For the) Sunrise” is certainly a classic Duran Duran single, with its sky-high melody, and songs like “Taste the Summer” and the big beat “Want You More” are crafted for radio play. (Or at least, late-‘80s radio play.) And “Bedroom Toys” fulfills their apparently contractually obligated one-per-album embarrassment. But the real meat of the album lies in the lovely guitar ballads that grace its second half. “Finest Hour” is the kind of song that just can’t be written by pop twits with no instrumental skill, and the seven-minute “Still Breathing” ends the disc on a melancholy, melodic note.

This is not the best Duran Duran album – there’s an emphasis here on production craft, sometimes over songcraft, and Le Bon’s voice has been compressed and processed a bit much. Still, it’s a fine pop record, and further proof that the Durans have always been more than their image. I, for one, am hoping for another blissful fade from popularity, another decade of quirky, nifty albums, and a third comeback in 2015.

It would be difficult to characterize American Music Club’s reunion as a comeback, since they never cracked the charts to begin with. Still, for six albums and nearly 10 years, they were critically lauded, and they made some great music. Their peak, arguably, was 1991’s Everclear, but every record of theirs is worth hearing.

And they’re important for another reason – AMC launched the career of Mark Eitzel, their charismatically sad lead singer. Eitzel is the quintessential hard-luck hero in the bowler hat, and his solo career has been one long melancholy high. Given that Eitzel’s last two solo records, Music for Courage and Confidence and The Ugly American, contained no new songs – one had covers, the other re-arrangements – fans of Eitzel’s gift for storytelling have been waiting for three years to hear new material from him.

But few expected that new material would come in the form of a new American Music Club record, and fewer still could have predicted that the album would be excellent. Love Songs for Patriots is AMC’s first record in 10 years, but it picks right up where they left off. Still, the hallmark of Eitzel’s solo work has been unpredictability – a jazz ballad here, a techno-mope there, a stellar rock tune over there – so the thought of him returning to AMC’s relatively standard instrumentation didn’t inspire excitement either. But surprise – Eitzel stepped up with a great batch of songs, and the band found new ways to accentuate them.

No one does hangdog like Mark Eitzel. On this record, he even makes a phrase like “I’ve been so lucky” sound worthy of pity. Love Songs for Patriots is louder and more energetic than anything Eitzel has done away from the band, with guitarist Vudi’s swirling walls of feedback, but most will still find it slow and depressing. I find it captivating – this is the kind of record that casts a spell on its environment. It takes its time, slowly unspooling, but when you arrive at an emotional catharsis like the chorus of “Home,” it’s genuinely powerful.

Who knows whether this is a new beginning or a final bow-out for American Music Club, but I certainly wouldn’t mind hearing a new one of these every two years or so. Love Songs for Patriots is a reunion record done right, a great example of musicians growing apart and then fitting back together beautifully.

They can’t all be like that, though. Sometimes when the musicians grow apart artistically and then try to make the puzzle pieces fit again, the result is a new hybrid that probably should have been called something else. That’s the case with the new Camper Van Beethoven album, but hell, if I had one of the three or four best band names in history, I’d want to use it, too. They came up with another winning pun for the album title, too: New Roman Times.

Unless you’re a fan, you probably only remember Camper Van Beethoven for their hit, a cover of Status Quo’s “Pictures of Matchstick Men.” If that seems an odd choice for a cover, then you really don’t remember Camper Van. Their five studio albums are all nearly random in their glorious quirkiness, from the anything-can-be-ska instrumentals of Telephone Free Landslide Victory to the near-prog stylings of their self-titled record to the moody fragility of “All Her Favorite Fruit” on their swan song, 1989’s Key Lime Pie. Camper Van Beethoven never did what anyone might expect.

So I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that their first album in 15 years is this fascinating mess. New Roman Times is a 67-minute political rock opera about the making of a suicide bomber. Its 20 tracks veer from psychedelia to country to prog and even to disco. It’s just as all-over-the-place as their first few records, tied together by a newly found weight and pretension. This is an exhausting listen, even with such early Camper-style gems as “Militia Song” sprinkled in. And it isn’t very much fun – the playfulness that used to be a CVB hallmark is all but gone.

If you’re wondering why, I have one word for you: Cracker. In the decade and a half since Key Lime Pie, leader David Lowery found (and lost) success with his other band, and the ‘70s rock that Lowery grew to embrace is all over this album. It is the loudest, most abrasive CVB disc, and in fact it often sounds like late-period Cracker with a violin. Sometimes the synthesis works, and sometimes it leads to repetitive fuzziness with little else to direct it.

So it sounds nothing like the other CVB albums, but that doesn’t mean it should have stayed on the shelf. When New Roman Times works, it’s terrific, especially on instrumentals like “Discotheque CVB” and “The Poppies of Balmorhea.” It’s obvious that this album is intended to be listened to back to front, but what the concept ties together, the random nature of the music rips apart. You’ll find yourself jumping styles too often to consider this a unified work, but that doesn’t render the enjoyable parts less enjoyable. In fact, by the time of the story’s distasteful conclusion, you’ll probably have decided to ignore it anyway.

Lowery and company clearly worked hard on New Roman Times, and it stands as the CVB album with the widest reach. But if you remember Camper Van Beethoven from the ‘80s as that goofy “Take the Skinheads Bowling” band, you’re in for a surprise here, and I can’t guarantee it will be a pleasant one. But take the time to dig into this album, and it will reward you. If this is the start of a new CVB renaissance, then bring it on, because if New Roman Times proves anything, it’s that this is a band without borders. You never know what you’re going to get next.

But you know it will be better than anything on MTV.

* * * * *

Well, that was a stream of consciousness. Anyway, I have been so wrapped up in the election that I forgot to congratulate the Boston Red Sox on their first World Series victory in 86 years. Needless to say, this is the biggest event to hit Boston in decades, and as an expat Bostonian, I couldn’t be happier. The series itself was anticlimactic after our near-miraculous trouncing of the hated New York Yankees, but the victory is sweet, and best of all, Red Sox fans never have to hear that damn “1918” chant again.

Good job, guys. At least I got one of the two pictures I wanted.

Next week, Rufus Wainwright, and then U2 and Eminem.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

I know I promised music reviews this time, but I just can’t.

I have put aside the purpose of this column several times to report on personal or political issues, and I have to do it again. I woke up Wednesday morning in a different country than the one I thought I went to bed in on Tuesday night, and where I expected to find rage I am only finding confusion within myself. I am unhappy with the results of the election, and that certainly qualifies as one of the year’s biggest understatements. But more than that, I am perplexed as to the actual nature of America, and terrified by a question I keep repeating: has it always been like this?

Here’s what I think we’ve just done.

President George W. Bush lost the popular vote in 2000 and squeaked by in the electoral college by just over 500 votes. Regardless of the deep division in this country evidenced by that vote, he interpreted his win as a mandate from God, and promptly stopped listening to any opposing viewpoints. He cut taxes, increased spending, took us from the largest surplus in years to the largest deficit in history, and responded to the terrorist attacks on September 11 by completely rewriting our core worldview.

In a post-9/11 world, according to George Bush, it is perfectly American to attack a country without cause, because we think they may, someday, become a threat. America was attacked by Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda, but rather than commit our troops to tracking him down, Bush proposed a wider, more encompassing war on terror itself. That war began with invading Iraq, presumably because of Saddam Hussein’s storehouse of weapons and imminent plans to use them against “freedom-loving people.”

We know now that this was never true, that our intelligence was either faulty or fabricated. We know that more than 1000 U.S. troops have died in Iraq because Bush, expecting an easy victory, did not plan for an occupation, and has no clear picture of how we’re going to withdraw. We also know that no matter how many troops die, no matter how much it seems the violent Iraq opposition forces want us out of their country, Bush will continue to say that things are going well, that all is proceeding according to plan, and that every day over there is a great day for freedom.

In his rush to war, Bush brushed aside the United Nations, choosing instead to build a coalition of his own and attack Iraq before the U.N. weapons inspections could be completed. Bush’s arrogance in this matter (and others, including the Kyoto Treaty, which every other nation signed but us) has alienated the rest of the world, and the citizens of many other countries consider the United States not the paragon of liberty and justice that we teach our children we are, but an empire-hungry giant with a crazed, illiterate cowboy for a leader.

Domestically, Bush’s new post-9/11 mindset allowed him to see it as perfectly American to crush civil liberties, the better to ward off terrorism. The Patriot Act alone is worth twenty columns this size, so counter is it to the very spirit of the country it purports to protect. Holding American citizens without due process, and without charge or evidence, just because the government decides it can is unconstitutional. (So is cracking down on “smut” sold to adults, a personal pet project of Attorney General John Ashcroft.) Discussions have already been held regarding Patriot Act II, a proposed permanent extension of the original Patriot Act that would increase the government’s powers even further.

Essentially, whether it comes to the multiple justifications for the war in Iraq (four and counting), the economy (which will not be improved by cutting taxes on the rich), education (left in the cold to fund defense spending and the war on terror), our personal freedoms (which the administration says they are not eroding even as they erode them), the environment (pushed aside as not even a legitimate concern in the face of huge corporate profits) or the very Constitution of the United States (the second amendment of which seems to be the only part they are not determined to dismantle), this administration has lied again and again. There is not one single thing George W. Bush has done while in office that he did not make worse simply by touching it.

The rest of the world has been watching this with a mix of horror and shame. But for the most part, people have been giving the average American citizens a break, because they believed the leftist spokespeople when they said that most Americans do not agree with Bush. They saw the results of the 2000 election and believed the popular vote – more people wanted Gore in office than Bush. And so they waited for 2004, trusting that Americans were just and fair-minded people who would only tolerate being led about by Tex and his oil cronies until they could vote him out.

In case you haven’t heard, that isn’t what we did.

Voters turned out in record numbers on Tuesday – more than 100 million of them, or more than one-third of the country’s population. And 59 million of them voted for Bush. Unlike the 2000 election, Bush clearly and cleanly won not only the electoral vote – 274 to 252 – but the popular one as well, by more than three million votes. Not only that, but voters handed the Republicans the Senate and the House of Representatives, too, so the administration should have no trouble getting through most of its initiatives over the next four years. Additionally, at least one Supreme Court seat is opening up soon, with as many as three possibly becoming vacant, and with a Republican Congress, Bush will undoubtedly stack the court in favor of the hardline conservative viewpoint.

Essentially, anything he wants over the next four years, he should be able to get.

So here’s what we’ve just told the rest of the world. We’ve said that 51 percent of our country – more popular votes than any president in history, by the way – has looked at the above list of crimes and misdemeanors and said, “We’re good with all that.” We’ve said that 59 million voters believe that Bush’s America – a nation of religious and moral crusaders led by liars and profiteers – fits their vision of this country just fine. This is where we want to go.

I am stunned by this. The results of this election leave very little room for doubt – this is where the majority of Americans want to go. We cannot blame hanging chads, low voter turnout or Ralph Nader this time. We held a fair, democratic election, and the people have spoken. They want the guy who talks to God and rushes to war without a plan. They want the guy who lies over and over again, to the country and the world, and then preaches moral values.

Moral values – there’s the crux of it. The primary issues that brought conservative voters out in droves concerned moral values. You can see that reflected in the referendums – eleven states proposed banning gay marriage, and all eleven voted to do so. I have yet to hear a rational reason behind disallowing gay marriage. The closest I have heard casts it as a difference of origin – where you come down on this issue depends on whether you see marriage as a religious institution with some governmental elements, or a governmental institution with some religious elements. Gay marriage is no big deal for the latter people, but a complete redefinition for the former.

That still doesn’t explain the belief that God disapproves of gay unions (or of gay people in general), though. It’s an article of faith for the religious – either that, or they really are as scared of gay sex as they seem to be. (‘Cause it’s icky, don’t you know, and contagious, like a cold. Gay teachers could, just by breathing on them, turn your kids gay. Fact!) What’s always fascinating about the religious right is that God seems to uniformly disapprove of whatever they dislike.

Voting for a lying warmonger because he likes Jesus more than his opponent does is something the rest of the world, God bless ‘em, is probably not going to understand. Whether or not the Bush voters agree with (or even understand) the direction he and his administration have taken this country, they have validated that direction in the eyes of the world. And it’s only going to get worse – Bush considers his vote a mandate. “I’ve earned political capital, and I’m going to spend it,” he said yesterday. “I’ve got the will of the people at my back.”

The thought that keeps me up at night is this: what if he’s right? What if all my moral-values-Jesus-voters-who-don’t-get-it posturing is a sham? What if 59 million people actually do see what’s been happening over the last four years, and fully endorse it? What if Bush’s America is actually America, and progressive-minded liberal thinkers are really the minority? None of that fits with my view of this country, but what if my view is wrong?

I’ve thought about that again and again these last couple of days, and I think I finally have my answer: the hell with it. And here I want to talk to the Kerry voters: we may not be able to see our vision of America right now, but we won’t get any further down the path of progressive change by lying down and giving up. Bush is going to steamroller his agenda through, but not without a fight. And no one can stop any of us from living the way we think Americans should live. At the moment, we still have a First Amendment, which guarantees our right to speak out against anything, at any time. And until they declare us enemy combatants and lock us away, I think we should, as often as we can.

We may be in the minority in America right now, but we can change that. It won’t be easy, but nothing worthwhile ever is.

I hope the results of this election haven’t permanently soured the record number of young and first-time voters that came out on Tuesday. This is democracy – sometimes it works in your favor, sometimes it doesn’t, and sometimes it gives you a clearer picture of what you’re up against. Is the country really this conservative? Sadly, it seems so… for now. We Kerry supporters have a fundamental difference of opinion with Bush voters over the nature and direction of the United States of America. Our president actively detests many of the hard-won principles of this nation, preaching its unassailable goodness to the rest of the world while holding it at gunpoint. Even if we win in 2008, it will be a long, hard climb back from the reactionary, fundamentalist pit in which Bush has left us.

But that doesn’t mean we can’t do it.

Don’t give up. Get to work.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

People that know me can tell you that I’m not much of a pictures guy. I’ve been to dozens of interesting places, both inside this country and abroad, and every time, I have failed to bring a camera with me. I just don’t take photographs that often, which is one reason I like hanging out with people who do – I enjoy having the memorabilia, but rarely enjoy actually snapping the pictures. I’d rather be in the moment.

I really only have a few photographs, anyway. I don’t usually keep them around. I have one or two each of the important people in my life, and a couple of well-composed ones from my time at local newspapers, and that’s about it. But in thinking about this year in particular, there are two photographs I would like in my meager collection before we head into 2005. I’d like to remember this year for the good times, for the moments of inspiration, and these two would top the list.

First, I would like a picture of my Boston Red Sox clinching their first World Series title in 86 years.

This one seems possible, even probable at this point, but as all Boston fans know, it’s never too late to lose all hope. Let me say this – if this 2004 Red Sox team is setting us up for a fall, it will be the most spectacular and heartbreaking collapse in this franchise’s spectacular and heartbreaking history. And it would be just like them, too.

See, last year was supposed to be The Year. I grew up in a house with a committed, passionate Red Sox fan. My father has never seen the Sox win a World Series. He remembers 1967 against the Cardinals, and he remembers 1986 against the Mets, the way some people would remember being stabbed. Every time they show Bucky Dent’s home run, or Bill Buckner’s classic fumble, it physically hurts him. And last year, the Red Sox nearly killed him.

The 2003 team was amazing, honestly. We hit the American League Championship Series with a great record, and with great gusto. And we outplayed the hated New York Yankees – we won that series like Gore won the 2000 election. We were just better, but in game seven, a bad management decision kept a fading superstar pitcher on the mound long after he should have been pulled, and a surprise homer by Aaron Boone entered the Boston Hall of Shame, right next to Dent and Buckner. I remember my dad not even staying up to watch the final innings, so sure was he after the eighth that his team had thrown it away once again.

This year, right from the start, was not The Year. In my humble non-real-fan estimation, we just haven’t been playing as well this year as we did in ’03, no matter what the numbers say. But we got a couple more aces this time, in particular one unbelievable pitcher named Curt Schilling, and we won every game that mattered in the regular season. We clinched the wild card and strode into the ALCS to face (who else) the Evil Empire, the satanic New York Yankees.

And they killed us for three games. We were a bunch of undisciplined, fun-loving fools coming up against the baseball equivalent of the U.S. Marines – tight, organized, fully armed and nearly unstoppable. In fact, in game three, they bitch-slapped us worse than any team had ever bitch-slapped any other team in the post-season. We were done. The Empire had struck back. There was always next year.

But then…

I can’t even describe the excitement in and around Boston as the Sox started their so-called impossible comeback. I was lucky enough to be there for these games, and everywhere I went, I saw people wearing big red B logos and talking about long-held faith in this team. Three outs from elimination in game four, the Sox improbably tied it up with a stolen base from Dave Roberts, and then won it on a homer from David Ortiz. And then they won game five, too. I should mention that no team in baseball history had ever come back from a 3-0 deficit. Ever.

And then our man Schilling, after a painful-to-watch performance in game one, risked his health and his career to pitch game six with a separated tendon in his right ankle. His sock was soaked with blood, yet he pitched brilliantly, and we won again. And then game seven… well, it would be uncharitable of me to say that we dominated game seven, but it was exactly like 2003, except for the blown lead and the lost game. The 2004 Boston Red Sox did what no team in baseball had ever done before, and they did it to the goddamn Yankees. Life was good in Beantown.

Oddly enough, Boston fans were so used to losing to the Yankees that they didn’t quite know how to take this stunning victory. Bill Simmons of ESPN quipped that he was waiting for them to announce a game eight. The Daily Show’s Rob Corddry, who’s from Massachusetts, suggested jokingly that Derek Jeter could fly counter-clockwise around the earth, turn back time and still beat the Sox. “It’s the Yankees,” he said. “They’re always pulling shit like that.”

But wait, it gets better. Not only are the Red Sox in the World Series, but as of this writing, they’re three games ahead. They are one victory away from silencing that damn “1918” chant forever. Now, I know this is the Red Sox, and there are still a hundred different ways we could screw this up, and I do realize this is the same position the Yankees were in 11 days ago. But damn, what if they actually pull this off?

I asked my dad last night what he would do if the Red Sox won the Series, and he couldn’t answer. “I haven’t ever thought about it,” he said, not because he’s ambivalent, but because he never imagined it would really happen. Part of being a Red Sox fan, especially a lifelong one, is getting used to endless disappointment and keeping at bay the crushing certainty that your team will never win the big one in your lifetime. After tonight, that could be over and done with. If I haven’t just jinxed it, that is…

So yeah, I want a picture of the Sox with their World Series trophy. Preferably, if at all possible, I want one with Curt Schilling and the trophy, ‘cause he deserves the respect and love of Boston fans for as long as he lives, no matter the outcome of this series. This team, all together, has been incredible to watch, and inspiring in ways that people who aren’t from New England probably won’t get. Personally speaking, I needed this, and I needed it now, so thanks, guys. Knock ‘em dead.

The other picture is going to be a little trickier, but I still think we can do it. I can’t think of anything I’d like more sitting next to my World Series pic than a photo of John Kerry taking the oath as our next president.

We’re less than a week away from the election now, and the polls are still showing George W. Bush with a slight lead. I’m hoping the polls are bogus. I know they don’t accurately reflect the possible votes of students and those whose cell phones are their only phone lines. I also know that the only poll that matters will be taken next Tuesday. So here’s my last passionate plea for registered voters to come on out and vote for John Kerry.

Many see this election as a referendum on Bush’s performance as president over the last four years. It’s not just that, of course, but even so, Bush failed miserably on pretty much every count. He inherited a huge budget surplus and pissed it away, leaving behind an enormous deficit. He gave tax breaks to his rich buddies, the people who least need them. He squandered the good will of the world after September 11 by rushing us to war in Iraq under false pretenses, and he failed to plan any sort of exit strategy. American soldiers die every day in Iraq, needlessly, and he still refuses to acknowledge that things aren’t quite going as well as he said they would.

Bush believes that God wants him to be president, and that He talks to him every day. His entire demeanor as president is based on faith – Bush truly believed there were weapons in Iraq, and that he had to go and get them to make America safer. It’s a belief he’s never relinquished, even in the face of incontrovertible evidence to the contrary. He has faith, you see, and he believes that slavishly adhering to one’s theses, even when proven wrong, is the definition of consistent leadership. Iraq has been a disaster. Education at home has been a disaster. The environmental policy has been a disaster. Bush cannot see when things are going wrong, and does not have the strength of character to admit his mistakes and correct them.

This is where John Kerry comes in, because even though Bush failed every test placed before him, replacing him with someone just as bad would be… well, just as bad. Kerry believes in repairing the alliances with the rest of the world that Bush has sundered. He agrees that the war in Iraq should never have been undertaken with haste and poor planning – an admission that will no doubt placate those countries annoyed with Bush’s arrogance. Kerry also believes in going after terrorists, not countries with flimsy-at-best ties to other countries that may have vague, unconfirmed links to people who may, in their off hours, know some terrorists.

Whether or not Kerry can make his economic and health care plans work, at least he has plans in both of those areas that don’t involve making rich people richer. Best of all, if a plan isn’t working, like the woefully underfunded No Child Left Behind act, Kerry is wise enough to tell people that it isn’t working, and explain why.

And here is where the Kerry campaign has really failed in this election. The Bush people have, from day one, accused Kerry of flip-flopping. He changes his mind, they say. He votes one way, and then the other. I’m not sure why the Kerry people didn’t latch on to this as a feature of Kerry’s character – he does, in fact, change his mind. And that’s a good thing. Bush will cling to an idea and a policy long after that idea and that policy have been proven ineffective. Kerry’s mind remains open to new ideas, new policies.

For example, Kerry voted to empower the Bush administration to wage war in Iraq. After seeing how badly they bungled it, however, Kerry changed his mind – not about the war on terror, but about this administration’s ability to carry it out. Kerry saw the same intelligence that Bush saw regarding weapons in Iraq, and he believed it at the time. But now, after reports condemning that intelligence and after so many lost lives, he’s changed his mind – the evidence caused him to form a new opinion. Bush? Not so much. Bush has beliefs that he hangs on to through thick and thin, even against an overwhelming tide of contrary evidence. Kerry has ideas that he tries out, and if they don’t work, he tries something else.

One is the mark of an ideologue, the other the sign of an intelligent and thoughtful man. I know which one I would want in the Oval Office.

So yes, a picture of John Kerry, his hand on the Bible, solemnly swearing to defend this country would be a perfect memento to cap off this year. But even if Bush wins, one thing I hope I don’t see this year is the same level of low voter turnout. I am right now wrestling with the state of Maryland over an absentee ballot, which they don’t want to give me because I’ve relocated. I’m going through this hassle because it’s important. This election will either validate the last four years or erase them in the eyes of the world, and whichever result you want, it’s vital that your voice be heard on November 2.

Next week, music, I promise.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

October 2004

I’m writing this on the last night of my life.

This is the fourth last night of my life in as many years. I seem to put one to bed once every 12 months, at least, these days. This time it wasn’t entirely my choice, but as I look around my empty ex-apartment, I’m filled with a familiar sense of adventure and dread. I don’t live here anymore. It’s an oft-repeated refrain in my perpetually nomadic existence, one I hope I don’t have to trot out again for a good long time.

As lives go, this one was spectacularly unsuccessful. I worked two lousy jobs, one physically demanding and one mentally deadening. I met almost no one. I entered into one of my most amusing and sad failures, romantically speaking – I had to look outside the country for that one, as if domestic heartbreak weren’t good enough. “None of that American heartbreak for me, I’ll take the imported kind.” Maryland has left me alone, broke and unemployed again, and although I’m getting used to it, the feeling is never uplifting.

So I’m sitting here in my one remaining chair, examining what will be my spare little living space for about 24 more hours, and I’m listening to Elliott Smith’s final album, From a Basement on the Hill. Although “listening” is not quite the right term – I’m wallowing in it, allowing it to surround me and drown me. “Let’s Get Lost” is just now finishing up, the sweet and melancholy tones of Smith’s delicate acoustic guitar are just now fading.

And I’m trying to connect my various lives, and finding that the only things that do it are old friends, and great music.

November 1997

I’m sitting in a movie theater in Portland, Maine. I’m with Sara Yates – who was Sara Hebert then, before she married her perfect match, Bill Yates – and Martha Cameron, the professor who for all intents and purposes dragged me kicking and screaming through the last two years of college. I’m just entering my second year at Face Magazine, and I’m still enjoying it. Sara, Martha and I made movie treks as often as possible, and I’m on one of them now. We’re watching a little film written by two guys from my home state of Massachusetts. It’s called Good Will Hunting.

And all of a sudden, this beautiful song starts playing. As engaged as I have been thus far with the witty banter, the dead-on Boston accents and the tale of a misfit genius in love and therapy, this song marks the first moment in the film that causes me to emotionally open up. It’s beautiful, a web of tones surrounding a fragile little melody that sounds impossibly sad, yet strangely hopeful. I vow to find out who this singer is.

I later discover, after the three of us have rehashed most of the film’s dialogue over pizza, that the song is called “Angeles,” and is one of six pieces on the soundtrack album by a guy I’d never heard. His name is Elliott Smith.

October 2004

I imagine that I am not alone in this. I imagine that many fans of sensitive, superbly crafted music sat spellbound in their respective theaters as “Angeles” played, and later felt the same tingles at “Miss Misery.” I admit to missing the boat on this one – Smith had three solo records and a career with the band Heatmiser before Good Will Hunting put him on the map. I’m just grateful that I got to hear his work at all.

“A Fond Farewell” has just started, its gorgeous clean guitar lines leading into a classic Smith harmonized verse. Every song so far is deep and wide, and this one is no exception – “This is not my life, it’s just a fond farewell to a friend,” he sings, delicately as always. And I nearly tear up. It’s just so good to hear this voice again.

October 2003

I’ve just finished writing the most emotionally draining column I have ever watched flow out of me.

Elliott Smith’s lifeless body was found earlier this week. Police have ruled it a suicide, though there are still some doubts about that. I can barely move, not just because one of the best songwriters to have been born in the last 40 years is gone, taking all his future music with him. No, I’m strangely immobile because I’ve been so incredibly angry for the last two days, and it’s all just exploded out onto the page, and I have nothing left. I’m spent.

Smith’s death has affected me more than I was expecting. It taps into my own tendency for self-destruction, my own desire for something to hope for, to look forward to. If such a wonderful spirit with such a prodigious talent and such a clear line to whatever force inspires great art can find nothing to live for, what hope do I have? So I’m angry, because it beats being defeated.

I briefly consider putting my just-completed emotional outpouring aside and writing a proper memorial, but decide, for better or worse, to share the moment and how it has affected me. I just hope that it comes across that I will miss him and his songs long after my anger has faded.

October 2004

And I guess it’s fully faded, because “King’s Crossing” just ended, and I miss Smith more than ever. The song is a swirling force of atmosphere, perhaps the best-sounding thing here despite its simplicity. Smith has somehow, on his final record, found a way to bridge the gap between his lo-fi indie recordings and his later major label outings. Basement is a self-produced effort, mostly completed at the time of Smith’s death, and though some say the man himself would have wanted it rawer and more ragged, to these ears it strikes just the right balance.

“King’s Crossing” wafts in on harmonized voices, crests on sweet pianos and finally crashes in with electric guitars and organs. It seems to be about expectations and label politics, but when he sings the line “I took my insides out,” it’s more than a little eerie. Basement is so far full of references to farewells and drugs, but it’s never crushingly sad, lyrically speaking. Thus far, it’s another really good Elliott Smith album, full of songs that are naturally simpler due to the self-production. Who knows if it would have even resembled the album he would have finished if he had lived, but it fits nicely between Either/Or and XO in his canon.

December 1998

I’ve just finished typing out the Top 10 List for the year, and I’ve named Elliott Smith’s incredible major-label debut, XO, as the best of ’98. It’s a feast for the ears, a treasure for melody addicts, a perfect collection of tricky and beautiful songs.

I’m in my third year at Face Magazine, and life is good. I’ve taken on many of the editorial responsibilities, gained the trust of the mag’s hard-bitten owner Bennie Green, and put together what I believe is a great first year of a column I’ve devised called Tuesday Morning 3 A.M. I’m known about town, I’ve made some great friends, and I feel at home. XO fits my mood perfectly – while some of it is downbeat, like my whole personality, the very sound of the album is bright and alive, full of possibility. I imagine aloud, over apple cider that night, that I will probably award Smith the top spot several more times in the coming years. His talent is that impressive, and my career as a music journalist is that assured.

Perhaps in a telltale sign, Bennie disagrees with me about XO. “It’s depressing, and the guy can’t sing,” he says.

October 2004

I’m in a record store in Woonsocket, Rhode Island. I’m here for the sole purpose of picking up Elliott Smith’s final album. Almost one year to the day after his death, which police have not yet definitively ruled a suicide, his family and friends have assembled his last recordings into a 15-song document of his final years. Smith had been working on Basement for nearly two years at the time of his death, and he intended the finished result to swing back and forth from full-band pop to spare acoustics and back again. The released record certainly does that, according to advance reviews, and any other intentions Smith may have had for it we can only guess.

I know exactly what I want when I walk in, but I start pretending to browse when I overhear the register jockey’s phone conversation. He’s breaking up with his girlfriend, and she seems to be letting him have it. He starts asking why, and choking back tears, and I feel odd just standing there staring at the Death Cab for Cutie CDs and listening in, but I’m also fascinated. His conversation seems to carry all the dashed expectations and self-questioning that I’ve gone through in the past few months, and it’s comforting to know other people can feel the same pain.

I know it gets better, and I want to tell him so, but I don’t know this guy, and have no idea what I would say. I’m also buying an album by a guy who believed, at the end, that it just doesn’t get better, and I know I will be looking to it for gems of hope amidst the turmoil, because if Smith could find them, then anyone can.

November 2000

I’m leaving my life for the first time. I’ve already quit Face in the wake of a frustrating year, butting heads with the new owner repeatedly and watching helplessly as the independent music rag I loved was turned into something I just couldn’t feel anymore. So I left.

And now I’m about to leave my second job, which had rapidly become my first after my exit from the magazine. I can’t say enough good things about Bull Moose Music, both as a store and as a haven for intelligent and creative people. To this day, I haven’t met a concentration of people with those two qualities like I met there. At the moment, I’m sitting in a dorm room with two of them, Kate Schier and Mike Moore (I know what you’re thinking – different Mike Moore), and we’re talking about Elliott Smith.

Katie and I are big fans, even though Figure 8, released in August, only finds its way to number six on my Top 10 List for the year. Mike has never heard a Smith album. And I’m amazed at how many superlatives Katie and I can come up with – we praise his voice, his playing, his arrangements, his neverending well of stunning melodies, and even his unkempt hair at one point. I’m left with a sense of awe – how this one guy’s music can connect people, can inspire the same adoration.

And afterwards, when I’m all packed up, I find myself strangely contented. I’m ready for the journey, ready to meet more like-minded people. I’m ready to go, ready for the next life.

October 2004

The album has started to come unglued.

In its second half, the seams start showing, and I can really hear the places where this unfinished record may have needed finishing. The delivery on “The Last Hour” is a little weak, the repeating synth line on “Twilight” is likely a place holder, and “Shooting Star” devolves into noise a bit too early into its six-minute running time. “Memory Lane” and “Little One” sound like demos, in a way that the other acoustic tracks did not.

It’s a sad reminder of what I’m actually listening to – remnants of an uncompleted life, cobbled together by loved ones to the best of their abilities. This is not an Elliott Smith album, in the way that his last three have been. It’s quite simply not finished. Like its author, it’s been cut down early, full of unrealized potential. In a way, the second half is sadder than the first, because these songs will never fully exist. They’re full of crumbling possibility, of the sad pall of death.

October 2003

It’s been two days since my Elliott Smith column hit the internet, and I’m staring at an inbox full of messages. I’ve been scared to read them, but this afternoon I make myself sit down and start to open a few. And I’m stunned – they’re almost all beautiful, literate, terrific letters from people who understood and responded to my emotional rant with gentle kindness. I met people just looking for catharsis, and for reasons to hope. I expected anger returned in kind, and I got the wonderful side of human nature.

And I need it now. My life is as bad as it has ever been – I work 12 hours a day at a terrible job, one that was quite literally all I could find. I am the poster child for dashed expectations. As embarrassed as I was by my downturns at my high school reunion last year, it’s only gotten exponentially worse. I can’t put it any more succinctly than this – I need a new life. This one has run its course.

But the mail keeps coming, and beautiful, warm-hearted people keep writing me, even though I don’t feel I deserve it. And I can’t possibly thank them enough.

October 2004

And some of them still write me, all the time, and I still haven’t found a way to thank them enough. I need a rebirth, now more than ever, and hopefully this move will give me one. Hope is really what it’s all about.

I’ve started From a Basement on the Hill over, and it sounds like a rebirth. The second half concludes gracefully with Smith’s old single, “A Distorted Reality is Now a Necessity to be Free,” which feels like a coda, a bonus track after a devolving set of demos in the last third. But “Coast to Coast,” the surging opener, is a complete song, a wonderful slice of Smith’s ample skills. “Pretty (Ugly Before)” is a joy, and “A Fond Farewell” remains the record’s high point.

And, of course, “A Fond Farewell” is a fitting soundtrack for the last night of my life. “This is not my life,” Smith sings, and as I take a few longing looks around this place I’ve grudgingly called home for months, I feel the same way. This is not my life. It’s all about believing that there’s something better. And about picking yourself up and going to find it.

The second half of Basement has just started again, the lovely tones of “Twilight” floating out of my speakers. I’m vaguely considering shutting it off before the unfinished tracks start playing, to save myself from feeling lost and wasted again, but I think I’ll let it run. It’s a shame that Smith’s last album is so incomplete, that it falls apart so dramatically, but the point here will be to listen for potential, not lament its half-constructed nature. These songs could be great, like everything else in Smith’s catalog. The framework is there.

And if, by the time it ends, I still haven’t shaken my sadness, then I can always press play again, and bask in the rebirth. I can always start over.

Yeah. I can always start over.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

All my furniture is gone.

I sold it all. I have not a bed to sleep on nor a couch to sit on. I have no tables, I have no chairs. I have a floor, a bedspread and a pillow. That’s all. My back hurts.

Final preparations for the Great Move of 2004 (as opposed to the Great Moves from 2000, 2001 and 2002) are proceeding apace. I have broken my lease, rented a truck, and once again boxed up my collected life. I have come to the conclusion, as I do every time I move, that I have way too much stuff. At present: 22 long boxes of comic books, seven smaller boxes of graphic novels, six big boxes of CDs, eight boxes of cassettes, and two boxes of DVDs and other sundry amusements. It’s a lot.

And I plan on getting more, too. Here’s a brief list of CDs coming out in the next few months that I am going to move heaven and earth to make sure I own: Elliott Smith’s final album, From a Basement on the Hill; Jason Falkner’s new EP Bliss Descending; Enuff Znuff’s perhaps-final album ?; A Perfect Circle’s two projects, Emotive and Amotion; the double King’s X live album; Neal Morse’s new One; Rufus Wainwright’s long-awaited Want Two; and U2’s horrendously titled How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb. All I can say is, thank God for credit cards…

* * * * *

Of course, no amount of financial distress was going to keep me from seeing Marillion on their first U.S. tour in eight years. My friend Jody and I went to the Washington, DC show, at the deceptively superb 9:30 Club, and feasted on three hours of auditory bliss. Steve Hogarth is an electrifying performer – he came out in an ill-fitting suit and tie for the claustrophobic “The Invisible Man,” slowly breaking out of this persona as the song built in emotional intensity. He has terrific stage presence.

Musically, the band has rarely sounded better to these ears. It was the first time I’ve seen them live, and the experience added new dimensions to the multitude of concert recordings I have. They played the one-disc iteration of Marbles all the way through as the first set, and it was splendid, even without “Ocean Cloud.” Watching the band play “Neverland” live is a life-changing experience. It’s pretty amazing.

Erik Nielsen, one of the vertebrae of Racket Records, booted himself from my Christmas list by taping down a bogus second set list full of older songs and numbers the band has never played. (“Built-In Bastard Radar,” for example.) When covering the fake set list with the real one, Erik waved off our joking complaints by saying, “You shouldn’t have been looking anyway!” Even with all that, the second set was extraordinary – “Living With the Big Lie” was a great opener, “Quartz” bobbed and weaved nicely, “Three Minute Boy” precipitated a scratchy singalong of the impossible high notes, and “Estonia” was beautiful. Three encores later, the band left the stage with a glorious “Easter.”

Among the funny bits sprinkled throughout was Hogarth’s rendition of one of his favorite Cat Stevens songs. The band happened to be on the same transatlantic plane that Yusuf Islam took to make his failed attempt at entering the United States, and they were diverted along with everyone else. Hogarth took the opportunity to poke a little fun: “Morning has broken, just like the first morning, I’m in a jail cell in Bangor, Maine…”

* * * * *

It seems that the up-and-down that is R.E.M.’s career is heading down again.

This has been a recurring pattern with the group since their debut. Not counting their first EP, Chronic Town, the just-released Around the Sun is R.E.M.’s 13th album, and of those, only four can be considered truly great. Murmur, their first outing, is still an amazing piece of work despite (or perhaps because of) its thin sound and frenetic energy. Fans had to wait three years and three albums before they delivered another one as consistent: 1986’s Lifes Rich Pageant, still their most complete rock record.

After that, the experimental phase kicked in, and the albums became hit-or-miss. That is, until 1992’s terrific Automatic for the People, a haunting acoustic record that may well be their best work of all. They followed that up with the atrocious Monster, and then weathered the loss of drummer Bill Berry. The trio of Mike Mills, Peter Buck and Michael Stipe carried on, though, with the dreary synth-mopes of Up in 1999.

Here is where I slip into heresy, however, because I still think 2001’s Reveal is a great album. It’s huge and lush and full of soaring Brian Wilson-esque melodies, yet tinged with sadness. As great as it was, though, I just knew that its follow-up would slip backwards into some as-yet-unidentified deficiency. It’s just the way this band works – they need to slog through the mud to find the gold. You’ll notice that none of the four great records I mentioned sound anything like the others, and that’s on purpose. R.E.M. is a restless band, and they are more than willing to put out three fair-to-middling records in order to dig for a new classic sound for the fourth.

The digging has begun again on Around the Sun. I had heard good things – that this was a natural sequel to both Reveal and Automatic for the People, that the melodies were sweet and memorable, that this was another great record. And I’m sorry, but I’m not hearing it. I can definitely hear what they were aiming for – this album is almost entirely based in acoustic guitars and layers of synths, like the strummier bits from Reckoning as produced by Moby. It’s as if the band is trying to go backwards and forwards at once, and the conflicting impulses cancel each other out.

The songs here are largely lazy folkers, appealing one by one but bland when stitched together. Opener “Leaving New York” is one of the most successful, melodically speaking, which doesn’t bode well for the rest of the record. Most of these songs – especially the middle eight, from “Make It All Okay” through “The Worst Joke Ever” – blur together in a haze. Even the Beatlesque bounce of “Wanderlust” barely breaks through the gauze.

So the songs themselves are less than inspired, but with the right production this could have been at least engaging. Instead of highlighting the hushed tone of the songs, though, the band and Pat McCarthy have smoothed everything out and compressed it, and the result is a record that just lies there, passive and motionless. Automatic was a slow record, too, but the spare arrangements lent it an intimacy that R.E.M. has not matched since.

This is not a complete dud, you understand – R.E.M. doesn’t quite make those. There are flashes of brilliance here, especially (and surprisingly) Q-Tip’s cameo at the tail end of “The Outsiders” and the aforementioned “Leaving New York.” In fact, the album’s best song is its last – the title track builds and moves like nothing else here, crashing into its somber finale on waves of tympani rolls. If only they had written another 10 like it.

Since C-minus albums are part of their process, it seems petty to complain about the quality of Around the Sun. All this loping, overproduced meander really means is that R.E.M. has started on another quest, and in a few years (and perhaps one or two more less-than-terrific records) we should have the fifth great album of their career, and it will all be worth it. Kudos to the band for not giving up when Berry left, and for continuing to turn over every rock they can find. It’s just a shame that we have to get through albums like Around the Sun on the way to something wonderful.

* * * * *

Final debate tonight, on domestic issues, which basically means that Bush should just not show up and spare himself the embarrassment. I am so happy that President John Kerry has shown up to both debates so far, as opposed to his long-winded, humorless twin, who did most of the talking throughout his campaign. But maybe Cheney will feed Bush better answers this time.

Tinfoil hat conspiracies aside, seriously, watch for yourself, and decide for yourself. And vote. Please vote.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

I’m a little distracted this week. I got fired on Monday.

It’s the first time I’ve ever been fired from anything, for any reason, and being who I am, I’m trying hard not to internalize it. The actual incident that led to my dismissal is somewhat trivial, and served as a convenient scapegoat, I’m sure. The simple truth is that I did not bring my A-game to this job, and I know it. I gave it probably 75 percent of the attention and concentration it required, and it showed in my performance – silly mistakes, simple misunderstandings, etc.

The fact is that this job was never going to work for me. It was both a) very boring and b) very precise, two things that do not go together well with my personality. If I’m not interested in what I’m doing, then my mind wanders, and my organizational skills falter, and I start getting numbers and dates and addresses wrong. And then they have no choice but to let me go.

It’s depressing, though – four months ago I had this whole life plan. I had a snazzy new apartment, I was going to share my life with a beautiful Brazilian girl named Carol (who undoubtedly is reading this – hi, sweetie!), and I was going to keep this well-paying job for as long as I needed to. Now Carol is in Brazil and is staying there, the job is gone, and I am packing my things once again and starting a new life.

So it’s off to greener pastures, I hope. I am headed to Chicago, the site of my greatest successes so far, to reconnect with old contacts and hopefully get something artistically and financially rewarding off the ground. I’m selling everything that isn’t a comic book or a CD, and ditching this failed attempt at a life. In a way, this is a positive thing – it’s shown me the kind of job I cannot do, and it’s given me the impetus to get the hell out of here, since the two years I spent in Baltimore rank as perhaps the worst of my life. I need to go back to school, I need to do something that makes use of my skills (instead of something that forces me to submerge them), I need a clean slate.

So I’m gone.

Thanks to everyone who has been there for me this week – your help has been invaluable, and I can’t even tell you what you mean to me. Thank you so much.

* * * * *

So of course, I needed to buy something this week that would cheer me up. Repeated listenings of SMiLE have helped, of course, since it’s the most playfully happy thing I’ve heard in years, but I’m all about the new. So of the 10 or so new discs that came out this week, I decided that I had money enough to buy only one, and it would have to be one that could lift me from despair and make me laugh.

So I chose William Shatner.

Shatner’s whole career deserves its own descriptive noun – Shatnerosity, perhaps, or Shatnericiousness. There’s almost no accounting for his longevity as a cultural icon, save for the all-encompassing significance of Star Trek. Shatner was only James T. Kirk for three years on television, but he spun that off into seven Trek films, books, convention experiences, other TV shows (TJ Hooker, the new Boston Legal), and a series of terrific commercials for Priceline.com, all without a modicum of what anyone might justly call real talent. He’s always himself, in exactly the same ways. The truth is, though, that some projects need an element of Shatnerosity, and the only one who can provide that is William Shatner.

Then there’s his singing career. It was short-lived – one album in 1968, called The Transformed Man. But what an album it is – poetry recitals, ‘60s psychedelica, and fall-down-funny versions of “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” and “Mr. Tambourine Man,” delivered in Shatner’s often-imitated, hammy, rhythmic speech. It was ridiculous specifically because it was so deadpan serious – Shatner never betrayed the sense that he was in on the joke, although he undoubtedly was.

Thirty-six years later, Shatner’s back with an album called Has Been, produced and arranged by Ben Folds. The pair met when Folds enlisted Shatner for his Fear of Pop album in 1998, and immediately clicked. The resulting album is as surprising as anything in Shatner’s whole bizarre career, largely thanks to his working relationship with Folds. What’s, indeed, shocking about Has Been is not that Folds gets Shatner, but that he shows us that there was something there to get after all.

It would have been easy to make the kind of album most people are probably expecting from Has Been. Just get Shatner to speak-sing some famous pop songs and make fun of himself, and it’s a million seller. While the album starts off in that vein, with Shatner wickedly intoning Pulp’s “Common People” to great effect, the rest of it will disappoint anyone looking for more of the same. Not that it’s any less funny, but Has Been refuses to be dumb-funny, aiming rather for a peculiar sort of is-he-serious autobiographical beat poetry that is never less than engrossing.

The best part of this album is that Shatner is treated here with complete artistic respect. The record plays to his particular strengths – his Shatnericiousness – as if he were Bob Dylan or Leonard Cohen, and it explains without having to just what it is about Shatner that people adore. He goes out on an emotional limb more than once here, especially on “What Have You Done,” a monologue about his late wife, and he eschews jokes and easy humor.

But in its own way, something as heartfelt as “It Hasn’t Happened Yet,” a lament for wasted potential, is just as funny as a farce like “You’ll Have Time,” with its Tom Waits-style backdrop. Shatner understands his own joke – it’s practically impossible to take him seriously, even when he’s absolutely serious, and he and Folds play to that throughout Has Been. The title track, for example, is a hokey Western melodrama in which Shatner earnestly defends his cultural status, but the hilarious setups and backing vocals keep it from pomposity. It’s a fine line, but Folds and Shatner walk it for the length of this album without falling off.

The parade of guest stars helps – the album is fashioned like a jazz-rock version of a hip hop record, with sung choruses by guest vocalists like Joe Jackson and Fleming McWilliams. The one real over-the-top funny moment here is “I Can’t Get Behind That,” a mock-furious rant that features Henry Rollins. Shatner matches him shout for shout, and the verse where he rails against singers who “can’t sing, and get paid for talking” is a hoot. (“Okay, maybe I can get behind that.”) Elsewhere, Nick Hornby (High Fidelity) provides very Shatner-esque lyrics for “That’s Me Trying,” about a father clumsily reaching out to his estranged daughter, and it (and Folds’ lovely sung chorus) fits right in.

In fact, the only moment that sounds out of place is the final track, “Real,” written and sung by Brad Paisley. It sounds very much like an outsider’s view of what it means to be plain old non-heroic William Shatner. Despite a classic second verse – “So next time there’s an asteroid or a natural disaster, I’m flattered that you thought of me, but I’m not the one to call” – this is the one song Shatner doesn’t seem to own. It seems to be missing a certain… well, Shatnerousness.

Has Been is a strange record, a perfectly made document of a singular voice, and one that works specifically because that voice doesn’t seem to deserve this record, and its owner knows it. No one else could have made this album, though, and kudos to Ben Folds for recognizing that anyone could have done a collection of parodies. Has Been is simultaneously more serious and funnier than a simpler project would have been, and I wouldn’t be surprised if you find yourself moved by it, too, in an odd sort of way.

Hell, it’s simply Shatnerific.

Next week, probably R.E.M.

See you in line Tuesday morning.