We Are All Going Down Together Thursday, May 05, 2005

Speaking of Billy...memories of 9/11...

I had tickets for a Laurie Anderson show a few days after the Event in Question. The new album was not my speed, and I didn't really feel like making the schlep into Fortress Manhattan, but the tickets had cost about seventy-five bucks each. Laurie was surprisingly sympathetic, stopping the show at a couple points to talk about how brave everyone was, including the mayor (!). Then it seemed every lyric from her back catalog had some special resonance: Sometimes I feel like a burning building, etc. (Not sure if she did We are about to attempt a crash landing.)

A thoughtful, avant-y night, exactly what you'd expect from L.A. A few weeks later, I watched the "Concert for New York" on PBS, the one performed for a crowd of firemen and cops. (Who heartily booed La Clintons when they showed up onstage. The Miramaxers, who threw the party, apparently edited that bit out for the DVD. More time for Opera Man!) The night had a wonderfully creepy beginning, with David Bowie doing a supremely eerie cover of Looking for America (which I think I've written about before. In fact, I'm sure I've written about all this stuff before. But if I don't remember it, what are the odds anybody else does?).

At any rate, after the strong start, the proceedings settled down into what you'd expect: Bowie doing a Frippless and dickless version of Heroes, the teasingly virile man-god described below essaying Little Pink Houses, James Taylor cranking out yet another Fire and Rain, Jon Bon Jovi doing whatever the hell he does (I think, in this case, that "o-e-o-e-o-e" song). In other words: balm.

Then out came Billy Joel, that jolly old elf--and he took things into prophetic-referential territory Laurie Anderson could only dream about. Which is to say, he sang Miami 2017--a song about the destruction of New York that he wrote God knows how many years ago.

That was wonderful enough. But his pre-song schtick gave me the Lawng Island shivers all over again. I will get some of this wrong, so forgive me: "When I wrote tiss, I thawt it was a science-fiction sawng. I never thawt it would actually happen. But now dat it did, unlike the sawng, we ain't goin' no-wair." For that, I can almost excuse For the Longest Time.

Anything else to moan about? The new Aimee Mann record is pretty darn good. She took a while. I put up the force fields when everyone tagged her as an unheralded genius--but she just seemed to be doing the same relationship-suckage songs as everybody else. Plus her version of The Other End of the Telescope, which she co-wrote with Elvis Costello, has some tremendously clunky lines that are clearly hers (since they don't show up in EC's recording).

Then, Magnolia, which offered an irresistibly hooky tune, Momentum. Then, Lost in Space, with an even more listenable hit, Pavlov's Bell. Now, The Forgotten Arm, a strong record from top to bottom. The hits are tremendous and the stuff in between is solid. Plus, produced by Joe Henry, whose lyrics I have written about on a couple of occasions.

Not much worth remarking on in real life today. We're starting from square one with the house search, and nothing popped up on the MLS. Wrong Turn Jr. had a daylong fit of the grinnies, which really has to be seen to be believed. Mrs. WTJ gets lovelier every day. And, for lack of anything better to do, I ate about half a pound of pistachios in one sitting.

More later. Pax as ever.

@ 8:48:00 PM,

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