"I time every journey to bump into you accidentally
I charm you and tell you of the boys I hate
All the girls I hate, all the words I hate, all the clothes I hate
How I'll never be anything I hate
You smile, mention something that you like
Oh, how you'd have a happy life if you did the things you like"
--Franz Ferdinand "Dark of the Matinee"
Can I have your attention, please? Pirate Cat Radio is (temporarily) off the air. Yeah. It sux. While driving out to the studio last Friday night to do my radio show, I tuned my FM dial to 87.9, and all I heard was STATIC! With one hand on the wheel I pryed the cell phone out of my purse and dialed Monkey to ask him what was up. He told me that he had just sent out an email letting all the DJs know that the crazy windy weather SF had been hit with over the past few days had damaged the antenna, which in turn ended up frying the 100 watt amp. So, unfortunately, the station is off the air for the next few days. Welcome to the unpredictable world of pirate radio! It's a good thing Monkey is a technical wunderkind. He's working on fixing everything and hopes to have it back on-the-air by Thursday (12/16), so I'll probably let you know if I'm doing my show this Friday night.
Another technical difficulty presented itself when I stepped up to the DJ coffins to spin my set at the Pirate Cat Listener Appreciation party at 12 Galaxies last Friday night. The bands were awesome and the crowd was pretty decent. And I should have known it was going to be an unpredictable evening when Mici, Daniel, and August and I started the night off by having our photos taken at the bar with unintelligible apocalyptic protestor, Frank Chu (the club is named after Frank's schizophrenic delusion about "the 12 galaxies"). So, back to the technical difficulty -- some of the Pirate Cat DJs and I had signed up to spin short 20-minute sets in between the live bands. Our intrepid event organizer Stoo told us that the DJ set-up would not have a turntable (alas, no records), and might not have inputs for iPods (alas, no mp3s). Since most of my music collection is made up of mp3s and vinyl, I decided that the most sensible thing to do was to burn some of my mp3s onto blank CDs so that I could bring those. After the Wendy Kroys performed, it was my turn to DJ -- so I was messing around with the CD players and talking to the sound guy. I wrestled one of my CD-Rs into the CD player and fiddled with my headphones, but no sound was coming out and it totally didn't recognize the disc. I tried to introduce them to each other politely, but they wouldn't say hello to each other or even nod. So, I tried another. Again, they weren't feelin the love.
It was loud in the club, so I grabbed the sound guy's arm, and pointed toward the CD player and tried to indicate its complete rejection of my CD.
"Yeah," the sound guy said shrugging, "Older equipment like this sometimes doesn't accept CDs burned from computers." So, at this point I'm starting to freak a little bit. Datner, the emmcee, is almost finished with her announcement, and the crowd is primed for more music. Meanwhile, I'm fumbling through my bag and realizing that I only brought 3 legitimate store-bought CDs with me: Dengue Fever (borrowed from August), the aislers set's "terrible things happen," and belle & sebastian's "This is Just a Modern Rock Song" import CD-single. "Oh man!" I was thinking. "It's like I'm finally getting my karmic pay-back for all of those pirated MP3s I downloaded on Napster and Scour back in 1999."
So what did I do? I played my favorite song (which was also thankfully the longest song) off of each CD, and then DJ Sherilyn (whose CD-Rs mysteriously worked) saved the day -- err night, by mixing in a song or two. I felt completely silly -- like Ashlee Simpson's "Milli Vanilli moment" when she was outed lip synching on 'Saturday Night Live', but rather than try out my own rendition of Ashlee's patented awkward hoe-down Dance of Distraction, I immediately scampered away to the green room to down a few beers. Technology is clearly trying to get its revenge on me.
Time is trying to get its revenge too. There just doesn't seem to be enough time in an hour or a day or a week or a month or a year to get the stuff done that I need to and I want to. I don't sleep much. I get up at 6a.m. I work 10-12 hours at my job, and then I'm not left with much.
"Do you work a 9-to-5 job?" one of my pirate radio compatriots asked me with a note of pity in his voice. He was trying to schedule an evening meeting time with me up in the city.
"Dude, 9-to-5 would be the dream, really," I said. "Right now I'm working more like 6-to-7. So, with my commute I don't get back up to the city until after 8p.m." I'm hoping someday that 9-to-5 will be sufficient, but I'm not holding my breath.
When I was in my late teens, I remember being around adult women who worked and thinking to myself, "Man, they're neurotic! Always so rushed and flustered and stressed and running around crazy. I will *never* be like that."
Now I've become that flustered overworked person.
A few months ago, I dragged August to see a Franz Ferdinand show, even though he thinks they're way too mainstream. I'm fully aware that they're too popular, and I tried to explain to August that what I find interesting about them is just how super-slick they are. For instance, their lyrics are solid, but not too deep or too complicated, and almost every single song on their album is anthemic. "It's not as if it's easy to perform so many rousing anthemic songs," I told him. "Plus, their dance moves are as coordinated and tidy as their mod ensembles." Sure, they aren't rough enough around the edges to put on a proper rock show, but c'mon. Cut the boys a break.
I cut them a break because there is one song on their album that I think comes close to being truly great -- "Dark of the Matinee". The lyrics on this one go a bit further and risk a bit more. And it totally captures what being 18 is all about: late nights driving around in cars and flirting with boyfriends by ranting to them (or them ranting to me) about all the people we hated and the styles we hated and the slang we hated. And I remember how we were perfectly comfortable and confident that we would never be anything we hate. That's the key difference in my mind between 18 and 30. By the time you reach 30, you realize that there will be a time(s) when you become at least some of the things you hate(d). Right now this isn't a depressing thought to me. I suppose it could be if I was in another mood.
Lately, I relate more to the songs third verse:
"So I'm on BBC2 now, telling Terry Wogan how I made it
And what I made is unclear now
But his deference is and his laughter is
My words and smile are so easy now
Yes, it's easy now, yes, it's easy now"
It's weird how when you set out to do something as your career, and you get the level of success you set out looking for -- you're not sure what comes next or even what to make of it at all. It's easy in some ways, but hard in some others.
It reminds me of a line from a Bay Area band you will surely make fun of me for mentioning -- The Counting Crows. Back in like 1993, they had a song called "Mr. Jones" (I know you're feigning obliviousness here) that had a line that went "But when everybody loves me, I'm going to be just about as happy as can be." The singer Adam Duritz wrote those lyrics well before the band was well-known or known at all (he had just dropped out of UC Berkeley to start writing songs). As you're probably loosely aware (although I know you certainly didn't like it!), that song became a pretty big hit and the Counting Crows became quickly and hugely famous and ended up touring ceaslessly and being forced to play that "Mr. Jones" song every night again and again. (As soon as they had actually become famous -- the lyrics weren't really relevent to them personally anymore.) I remember reading a review of one of their shows, and the reviewer pointed out that Duritz changed the lyrics when he performed "Mr. Jones" to say "When everybody loves me, that's just about as fucked-up as I can be." I'm not saying the song changed my life or anything, but the lyrical revision did somehow make an impression on me.
I dunno, these are my late night rants.
posted by Jess at 2:12 AM
