I've known a lot of nuts in my life. What's the polite term? "Mentally ill"? "Emotionally disturbed"? "Has issues"? Nah, nuts. That's the catch-all word for malfunctions between the ears. You're probably nuts, and I'm absolutely nuts.
If I tell someone anything that's in my head, the likely response is, "You should see a therapist." Maybe that's why I don't often describe my honest feelings, but online I'll open up:
♦ I talk to myself, a lot, sometimes saying very cruel things — about you, mostly, but sometimes about me.
♦ I eat too much, probably because I'm trying to fill an emotional emptiness inside.
♦ I'd rather be alone than in almost any social situation, which guarantees friendlessness — can't hang out with a friend, when anyone who invites me anywhere gets no for an answer.
♦ I kinda like disco music.
That's just the beginning of my nuttiness, of course; the list goes on and on. Stifle any advice, though. I've embraced my inner nut, and I'm doing OK.
And I'm not the only nut. We are legion. Any time anyone opens up about what they're going through or describes their honest feelings, it's clear to me that they're cashews and almonds:
♦ "I purge after every meal."
♦ "I haven't had a good night's sleep in years."
♦ "Most days I break down and cry, and I'm not sure why."
♦ "I count to 1,000 when I'm washing my hands."
♦ "I actually like my job."
… and more and more, all direct quotes from people I've known who are nuts. Everyone I respect is nuts, at least a little, maybe a lot. Also, everyone I despise.
Is there anyone on Earth who's not insane or going there? Is my perspective skewed because I'm nuts, so I tend to notice the other nuts? Are you one of the nuts, like me and everyone I know? Or am I just nuts?
And what about those lucky few people who apparently have no issues, those friggin' bastards who seem to be comfortable, composed, and at ease in any situation? If we got to know any of those not-nuts a little better, you know they'd reveal themselves as nuts, too.
Someone who’s limping, or someone who’s massively overweight, you can see their situation at a glance. We can't see other people's mental or psychological injuries, though, so there's a tendency to assume they're doing just fine. In truth, of course, all of us walk with a limp.
All of us are nuts, but some are nuttier than others. Someone who mutters about lizards ruling the universe is nuttier than me or maybe you, but it's only a matter of degree.
The root of the problem, I believe, is that most people can't or won't acknowledge that they're nuts. Tell them they're nuts and they'll argue. Me, I don't argue, I agree. Sure, I'm nuts and so are you. Why not say it out loud?
Self-improvement and world-improvement both begin by accepting that nuttiness is universal, and within all of us. The problem can't be addressed if it can't be acknowledged, so don't deny it, confess it. Shout it!
You might learn to live with your nuttiness (that's my choice), or you might try to reduce your nuttiness (and I'm rooting for you), but it's nuts to pretend you're not nuts. That way lies madness.
7/1/2020
Republished: 3/20/2024
> I kinda like disco music.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TU3-lS_Gryk
jtb
That is a fine piece of music. Never heard it before that I recall, and there must be a million grand pieces of music I've never heard. Is it Monday yet?
DeleteWondering now, would any of us have heard of Blondie had Debbie Harry not been beautiful?
They used "Dreamin'" as the theme song for the TV series on Angelyne, the LA billboard woman, and it's so perfect that the two are intertwined in my head now. First few episodes are really good, but it gets bogged down in telling her "real" story... which is interesting, no doubt, but took away from how impressive it was that she lived (and still lives) as this self-created character in a self-created fantasyland 24/7 for DECADES.
DeleteI have just educated myself on the basics of Angelyne. Not sure I'd ever heard of her before, nor do the billboards seem familiar. Very American, though — she bought her way to fame and success, and I gotta respect that.
DeleteI've only briefly been to LA and never saw the billboards but I used to read people mention them in passing in interviews and whatever. I had no idea I would enjoy the series before watching it.
DeleteEssentially she was just a person, there was some trauma in her life, and one day she pretty much... snapped. And rather than go postal, she transformed herself into a different person. Almost a cartoon person. To the extent that she refuses to admit she was ever anything else. That transformation is seriously even more American than the buying money and fame part haha
Adding it to the list, grazi.
DeleteHey, there's no place to park around here, so . . .
Delete> They used "Dreamin'" as the theme song for the TV series on Angelyne
I assume they used this song because Dreaming is Free.
John
I have no reply to that so I'll instead say that no business should be allowed to provide free parking, and all paid parking should be taxed at least #10 per hour. One small step toward getting people out of cars and onto public transit.
Delete"I eat too much, probably because I'm trying to fill an emotional emptiness inside."
ReplyDeleteHave you seen The Whale? Big deal Oscar bait, few years ago... curious what you'd think. I've never liked a single Aronofsky flick - he's as heavy handed and bombastic as Ollie Stone - so of course I hated it.
Also, man, you need to see a therapist.
Aronofsky's Pi and The Wrestler haven't gotten through to me, but I'll take a look at The Whale. I'm assuming the title refers to Brendan Fraser's weight, which seems heavyhanded and bombastic.
DeleteMy parents sent me to a therapist, and he was great. Got me to accept my weirdness a little more. Which was not the results my parents had been hoping for.
DeleteDisco's amazing, just another outgrowth of R&B that was loathed because its audience was black and queer and didn't pantomime behind Pat Boone. There's also so much soul music that's KINDA disco but got grouped together with disco that people really deprive themselves of some great music.
ReplyDeleteWhat's funny is when you go back and look at comedians and comedies making fun of disco in the '80s. They're all corny as fuck!
This is a music video that isn't disco but could pass the way a light-skinned African American used to be able to get into the grandstand at Yankee Stadium. Of course it's by They Might Be Giants and it's called Dr. Worm. I like horns. And the accordion.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mHliXVifhEM
John
OK, the problem is that I've been up most of the night listening to and watching TMBG stuff. It's been a few years since this happened. Well, it's happening again. This is fine American music.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=95mSdbGWK6w
jtb
The problem with disco, at least for me, was the BeeGees singing falsetto. Jeez, that grew tiresome. But even the BeeGees stuff was good, and Gloria Gaynor and Donna Summer and the Village People, yes and yes and yes.
DeleteDoctor Worm is weirdness.
On Istanbul, I would play this version of the song on a loop, if we could get the audience removed and preferably executed. Clapping and clapping at the start, there's a woman still clapping 14 seconds into the guitar solo, and then everyone's clapping and hollering over the jamming at the end. What the fuck is wrong with people? Was some moron clicking an 'applause' sign during the performance?
Studio versions are the best. Live versions are painful abominations. There are exceptions, rarely.
I am so unfamiliar with this, I had to google MFSB. Love that. John Davis ain't bad either, but the words clutter up the music.
DeleteThe MFSB stuff is awesome, I'm gonna play it overnight while I sleep tonight.
Great! MFSB is fantastic, they backed up practically everyone and were just phenomenal musicians and writers. Even more than Motown, almost all of the folks from this era were connected and wrote songs for each other and with each other. Yeah, there were also really crappy Dolly Parton disco remixes and the Bee Gees and all of that shit flooding the market, but there was also this kinda stuff too.
Delete> Studio versions are the best. Live versions are painful abominations.
DeleteI didn't go to concerts to hear idiots, but I refused to let them keep me away. If the artist or band tells the people to shut the fuck up, they usually do. Hendrix just turned it up to 11 and blew away the crowd noise.
jtb
Dozens of sessions players, playing together. Seems like something that should happen more often, and even outside of Philadelphia. I'm listening to more of their stuff, and wishing there was still more.
DeleteOh man, did you see Hendrix live?
DeleteYeah, late 68 or early 69 in Seattle. Great seats at a sold out house. He played the first side of Are You Experienced note for note because everybody had said he dubbed it. They he just went crazy. He was still with Mitch Mitchell and Noel Redding. I'm sure it was one of the last concerts before he went with the Band of Gypsies crap. We were maybe 100 feet away, just above the stage in the lower balcony. No idea how we lucked into those seats. I think we paid something like eight bucks per seat. He was just outstanding.
DeleteJohn
At the Seattle Center Colisseum? Not sure anyplace else could handle Hendrix in Seattle then. And there were probably several people clapping and hollering and otherwise being a nuisance.
DeleteEight dollar seats would be what, three hours at minimum wage, so $22 or $25 today.
I don't know how to do those computations, but that sounds about right. I remember it being affordable. Remember, Jimi liked to turn his Stratocaster and Marshall stack all the way up, so many assholes in the audience got drowned out.
DeleteJohn
I'd rather they just got drowned.
DeleteIt seriously baffles me. At the cinema, talking loudly or making unnecessary noise is thought impolite (or used to be). At the opera or a play or a classical concert, it's utterly gauche. But at a rock concert, talking, yelling, screaming, the loudest whistles a mouth can muster, it's all considered cheerio and good times.
If studio recordings were created all at once, and you could hear what the song was going to sound like on shellac or in bitstreams while you were in the studio, that would be an interesting listening experience. Members of the Wrecking Crew and other musicians who make records in studios frequently say that they have no idea how a song is going to sound until they hear it on the radio, even though they played on just about every bar of music.
ReplyDeleteRecorded music is a little like a magic trick: a drum rolls here, a bass growls there, violins play for a while, a couple of people play electric guitars, but, often as not, not at the same time, etc, etc, etc. At the end of all that, a lead singer adds the lead vocal to the music and a half dozen support singers made the lead singer sound better. Then the whole mess is mixed and balanced and remixed -- volumes are adjusted so, on the 33 1/3 versions the tone arm doesn't jump out of the groove when the bass drum goes off. Once the mix is homogenized, it is cut into records and bitstreams and sold for several dollars. Then you get to hear it.
In live presentation, all this stuff happens at once, and sometimes a guitarist will pluck the wrong string or a drummer will overtighten a snare and the drum sound will be 1% off, but at least you're watching the art being created.
The answer, as usual, is a compromise. Listen to a work that has been technically constructed to appeal to your senses, and listen to it live. They are different sounds and different experiences, but it's the only way to really understand the work of art.
John
You are more eloquent than me, 'specially when I've just consumed eight corndogs. Or as I call 'em, cornDougs. But riddle me this, philosophically, Batman:
DeleteWhen you're listening to a live performance, or the Memorex version of a live performance, have you any opinion of the screaming ninnies in the audience?
Srsly, and this is srsly what happened to me, picture yourself at a very rare reunion concert by Simon & Garfunkel. There's constant ambient noise from 65,000 people who came to talk to the other 64,999, and then the piano player hits a few tinking notes, everyone recognizes that it's "Bridge over Troubled Water," and the applause is thundering, so happy, so enthusiastic, and it lets up enough to hear the song after the third or fourth line is sung by Art, but the applause and screaming never lets up entirely.
Is that crowd noise just part of the art? 65,000 session players?
We talkin' bout two different things, bro. People in an audience who clap when they recognize a song from the opening bars and musicians playing the song a little differently, either by mistake or because they're tired of playing the same shit night after night. If you want to put a contract hit on people who clap when they recognize a song, I'll carry the ammo. But sometimes mistakes turn out to be new music, and that's not always a bad thing.
DeleteI saw S&G live twice, and I'm not a concert guy. The last time was at the Seattle Center building (Arena?) with the Everly Brothers in about 2002. People started applauding after a couple of notes, and the rest of the crowd booed them into silence. Paul said something like, "I'm glad you know our catalog, but I'd appreciate it if you'd let us play it". Very few early claps for the rest of the show. Paul said something like, "Don and Phil would like to hear us play, so please hold your applause until the song is over." No more claps. I'm sorry the crowd screwed up your experience. Clapping because you've heard something before should be reserved for three-year-olds. By the way, it was a hell of a show.
John
And I'm not on the masthead of the AVA and you are, largely because of your eloquence. I have no problem riding shotgun and having you lead the way.
DeleteJohn
I'm an anarchist, so no leaders, only shotguns.
DeleteI'm surprised that Simon & Garfunkel played such a small venue in 2002, but I guess most of their biggest fans are dying off. If I happen to bump into Paul, I will thank him for saying his polite shut-up to the crowd. I hadn't thought how frustrating that must be to the performers.
I saw them in Vancouver, around 1983 or so. There were lots more of us alive, so they needed a bigger place. If Paul said any shut-ups that night, I couldn't hear it over the crowd. But it was still a hell of a show.
Just by the way, Paul Simon is the best songwriter of my generation. OK, maybe tied with Lennon/McCartney who created better albums. I'd put Leonard Cohen in third and Dylan in fourth. I actually listen to the last three more than Mr Simon, but every time I hear The Late Great Johnny Ace I wonder why I don't listen to Paul more often.
DeleteJohn
"Just by the way, Paul Simon is the best songwriter of my generation."
DeleteI can't disagree:
https://youtu.be/PdsVRegEJTA?si=dATbgywZaEJSNCyV
I almost never listen to Paul Simon, or the Beatles, or Lenny Cohen, or music, except for your weekly playlists. Music just never occurs to me. Feel free to make the playlists longer, though, man. I always dig 'em.
DeleteS&G doing Sir-Mick'salot is the pinnacle achievement of modern technology.
DeleteMix is 60 years old, still mostly living in Seattle, and still performing from time to time. It's not quite my kind of music, but Mix is good for Seattle and DIY is a relevant and important branch of American Black music.
DeleteJohn
Didn't know he was local.
DeleteI first saw S&G in Gill Coliseum at Oregon State University in 1970 just as Bridge Over Troubled Water was being released. Seating capacity for basketball was about 10,000, so they must have used about half of that and sold out. Basketball coliseums have notoriously bad acoustics, but the boys sounded great. It was a long ride from Ellensburg to Corvallis and back on the Greyhound, but it was worth it.
ReplyDeletejtb
I owned the single, played it a thousand times and sang along, so it was Simon & Garfunkel & Holland. What was on the flipside? I played it once.
DeleteGreyhounds have a pooper in the back, which is very helpful when it's working. They do not, however, take the bus out of service when the pooper is out of order.
The B side of Bridge Over Troubled Water was Keep the Customer Satisfied. Lead vocals on the song on the album track were sung by Art with Paul only providing harmony on the third verse. I owned the album and I bought the CD version when it came out. I think the best song on the album was So Long, Frank Lloyd Wright, but I wouldn't argue if someone else thought it was The Boxer. "Bridge" is a nice song and the Wrecking Crew did a nice job recording and rerecording and rererecording the background instrumentation in L.A. The vocal was added in New York.
DeleteWithin five years of release, the album had sold more than 25 million copies worldwide, making it, at that time, the best selling album of all time.
It was the fifth and last album of new material Simon and Garfunkel recorded.
jtb
Not a fan of Frank Lloyd Wright, so the song has two strikes against it. He was an ass, and built shoddy homes.
DeleteThe Boxer, though. Man, I can still sing most of it without even YouTubing.
Here's the story. Art asked Paul to write a song about Frank Lloyd Wright. who he admired. Instead Paul wrote a so long song to Art and had Art sing it. It's not about architecture. It's about two childhood friends parting ways. They never made another studio album again. All of the nights we harmonized 'til dawn, I never laughed so long, so long, so long.
ReplyDeleteJohn
Toward the end of the song in the distant background, Paul sings or almost shouts, "So long already, Artie!"
DeleteI think highly of Paul Simon as a poet, as a singer, but it makes me think less of his character. Asking, even insisting that Garfunkel sing the song, and then being jealous of it when 'Bridge over Troubled Water' became such a hit?
Which is fine, really. I'm not auditioning superstars to be friends of mine.
Who knows what rock stars are really like? Paul's writing pattern was to write a verse or two, then sing it to Artie and ask him to suggest changes in music or lyric. For this album, Artie took off to make a movie, then to walk across Spain or Italy (I forget which). Artie said, "Send me a letter when it's ready for me to sing." At least that's Paul's story and I don't have any reason to disbelieve him.
ReplyDeleteAnd the world of music was changing fast. Folk music (and music that sounded like folk music) was vanishing, replaced by what was then called "singer/songwriter". Paul was a songwriter and he was a singer. It was time to move on. He had told Artie that a few times. On the other hand, a well-executed album like "Bridge..." was still selling. In any case, Paul's career justified the move and finally took him to Graceland which is easily his best album.
He played for thirty for forty years after that, but I didn't notice anything that would have better with Art by his side.
John
Every band breaks up eventually, except the Zombies. I ain't second guessing the split. Just, jeez, all the hits, all the success, the life he's had, and he's butthurt that AG sang that song... that he asked him to sing.
DeleteThe Zombies broke up in 1968 after recording what is now considered a pretty good album, Odessey and Oracle, when nobody played it and nobody bought it. Al Kooper, who was then signed with Columbia, talked Columbia into spending some money on promotion and She's Not There climbed into the top 10. The Zombies managed to make another album, then another, and to stick around another twenty years. I think you'd enjoy Kooper's book "Backstage Passes and Backstabbing Bastards". It's mostly a 40 year history of songs that got played on AM radio, but there's a little deep album stuff there as well.
DeleteJohn
They released an album last year, and Google says they're still touring, albeit slowly. I'm not going, though. No easy transit to Warsaw, and someone behind me would be screaming all through the music.
Delete