750 choice words about my feelings for the Beatles

I do not like them in a car. I do not like them in a bar. I do not like them in my yard, in a singing card, in a concert hall—or on my Facebook wall.

I do not like the Beatles.  I do not like them.

If you are alive and American or English, you probably know this band—a.k.a. The Fab Four. You may have credited them with the invention of pop music, of four-part harmony, of heavy metal, of MTV, and of, well, everything!

The Beatles are the best band ever, and here’s why: They are popular. They have sold over a billion records and have the most top albums and singles and number one hits and successful songs, and they wrote their own songs and used all kinds of crazy instruments (dude, a sitar! a mellotron!) and were on the Ed Sullivan Show. They were fucking popular, damn it!

And 42 years after they disbanded, they’re still fucking popular, damn it. From 1962 to 1970, they released about 24 albums and about 213 songs. Prolific popular motherfuckers. With all that going for them, why don’t I like them?

1. Their lyrics, for the most part, suck.

“Because the wind is high / it blows my mind” “And anytime you feel the pain, hey Jude, refrain” “She told me she worked in the morning and started to laugh” “Here comes the sun / and I say / It’s all right” “Baby, you can drive my car / yes I’m gonna be a star”

In general, I want more from my lyrics, though I don’t always need more. Bands like Led Zeppelin, who overflow in a bunch of categories, can be forgiven for things like “The Lemon Song.” Of course, there are exceptions, like "Let it Be."

2. They have no tasty guitar solos.

The only Beatles song that has one of those (and it ain’t all that) is “While My Guitar Gently Weeps,” and non-Beatle Eric Clapton played it. Fans will argue that guitar solos are not what the Beatles were about. Yes. And I don’t like that about them.

3. There’s no edge, no emotional conflict, no real passion.

The Beatles are suits. They had some longish hair, and that’s swell. But they are buttoned up and sound buttoned up. Again, not what the Beatles are about—and another reason I just don’t like them—in a car, in a bar, or in my room while I groom. Of course, there are exceptions, like “I Want You/She’s So Heavy.”

4. They’re not my cup of tea.

I like coffee, not tea. And it really comes down to taste and preference. Do tea drinkers dress better, think better, love better? It’s not about better. I like George Clooney, but I don’t like Brad Pitt. I take the cake but leave the pie. I like gerber daisies but don’t care for roses. It’s really as simple as that.

I have never, ever said, “I’m in the mood to hear some Beatles right now.” I’ve never put on an album. I have, however, turned them off. Some of the best Beatles songs I’ve ever heard are covers of Beatles songs, and I still don’t like them all that much.

My husband doesn’t care for the Beatles. My best friend doesn’t care for the Beatles.

I do love your passion. It might rival my passion for a hoppy, snappy IPA. What I don’t love, though, is your righteous indignation. What’s it to you? I hold no stock in Brewer’s Art or Rogue or Flying Dog, so if you’re drinking wine instead or, worse, Coors Lite, what’s it to me? Will I look at you funny? Maybe. Will it keep me from being your friend? Nope. I’m sure we can agree on a few other things. (Everybody loves Bruce Springsteen, right? WHAT?!?!?)

If you dislike my favorite bands (Chuck Prophet, Marah, the Black Keys, the Kills, Cheap Trick, Pink Floyd) or my kind of beer (Resurrection, Dead Guy), you won’t find me posting links to them on your Facebook wall or heatedly extolling their virtues. As I like to say: more for me. I won’t have to worry about fighting you for the last concert ticket or six pack.

I hate the Beatles. I do not like them in my ears. Or even after several beers.  And my last thoughts on this matter are whispered words of wisdom: "Let it be."

the new "about me" section

I have always liked to break things and put them back together in a random, yet tasteful, order.  You can apply that to art—mosaics, poetry, music—and life.  I rearrange the physical and metaphorical furniture of my life not just whenever necessary but  whenever possible.

It’s never been more true than now.  Every inhalation I take these days is a subconscious meditation on having cancer and turning fifty, and every exhalation is a breathy profession of my goals.  They are so simplistic that they can be summed up with a trite Bob Schneider lyric from "Captain Kirk":  “I just wanna feel good / I don’t wanna hurt nobody / I just wanna get a good time / out of my life.”

To that end:

·      I am funny, and I laugh all the time—even at my own crude jokes.

·      I keep your secrets.  I used to have no secrets of my own but am now working on generating a few.  Please return the favor and keep them.

·      I indulge my addictions.  All addicts say they can live without [objects of addiction]; they simply choose not to.  That’s the addiction talking, of course.  My addiction chooses to drink a beer (sometimes two) just about every day.  Until it interferes with work or life, 6:00 is Resurrection time.

fun at our last middle school PTA meeting

·      I am honest.  I ask for what I want, and I say what I mean.  I won’t waste another minute wondering what if.  If I want to know, I ask.

·      I am a poet.  There’s a beautiful and precise way to talk about anything. 

Lest you think this post is all about me, rest assured it’s all about you.  Even if you’re not turning 50, even if you don’t have a serious illness:

·      be funny; laugh all the time

·      keep people’s secrets, and generate some of your own to entrust with others

·      indulge an addiction that does no harm

·      ask for what you want; tell people how you feel

·      find poetry everywhere—a flower, a peach, an old salmon-colored Danelectro guitar with a moldy case, pickles, your friends.

And eat a salad and get some exercise, too, damn it.

Senior Citizens Ball

“We all wanna be big stars / but we don’t know why / and we don’t know how” —Counting Crows, "Mr. Jones"

British Invasion, February 2009

Last night, I attended the Senior Citizens Ball. The place was full of rockers. It was a bittersweet celebration, because the honorees would soon be gone. This was the last seasonal performance of thirteen graduating seniors of the Baltimore School of Rock.

We joined SoR because I was working on a book proposal—something about how you can be a rockstar at any age. (Because who didn’t dream of being a star something at one time? And who doesn’t have a midlife crisis and a spare ten grand to attend a fantasy camp to address it?)

Serena was ten and learning how to play guitar, so I dragged her to the 8x10 for the SoR’s tribute to David Bowie. She was reluctant but, by the end of the night, convinced. She’d go for a season to help out her mom. 

Show Team, Jr. Hunt Cup, April 2012

Four years and nearly 20 shows later, Serena is on the School of Rock’s Show Team and is about to start her sax-ademic career at the Baltimore School for the Arts. She is a confident, well-adjusted, creative, smart, nice girl. She’s a leader and a team player. Of course, I can credit her ultra-hip, uber-great parents. I can credit her education. I can credit her community—friends, family, relationships, neighborhood. But a good chunk of it goes to the School of Rock, who influences her for upwards of ten hours a week.

Awesome Ted Merrill, Graduate

In the last four years, we’ve seen some pretty average kids come through SoR’s doors. But we have seen so many of them turn into remarkable kids with extraordinary talent. They work hard. They play harder. But you know what else? Most of them are nice. Really nice. They are kind to us. They are respectful. They are good to my daughter.

Nice doesn’t get nearly enough credit. But think about it: Are you rooting for the nasty brat to get a Grammy? Should The Voice belong to a bitch? Should the American Idol be a back stabber? We have enough of those.

My agent and a few of my friends have always been a little suspicious of this cult that is the School of Rock. How rock and roll is it, they want to know, to have your parents pay for lessons (as if there were another way to get them)? How cool is it to play a club in front of your family and friends?

Phenomenal Ian Viera, Graduate

Cooler than singing into a hairbrush. Cooler than playing air guitar in front of a mirror. Cooler than being good at Rock Band. Even cooler than teaching yourself to play electric guitar in your bedroom. 

Nothing’s perfect, but it’s hard to argue with these results. Last night, thirteen kids played 22 songs, tunes from bands as diverse as Incubus and Rhianna, My Morning Jacket and Stevie Wonder, Toto and the Black Keys. They were as good as any professional rock band you’ve ever seen. (One of the best of these kids deserves his own shoutout: Ian Viera, the only drummer graduating, played every song, and if he wasn’t perfect, only he knew.)

Brilliant Jack Averill, Graduate
Janet Decker, Mom and SoR Director 

Between songs, some of the kids spoke of their experiences at SoR. You can guess what they said: “I wouldn’t be who I am today without the School of Rock.” “Thanks to my parents for paying and for driving me to the School of Rock.” “Thanks to the School of Rock teachers for inspiring us to be our best.”

A friend asked Janet Decker, the school’s director, which kid was hers. “All of them,” she said. And she wasn’t exaggerating. They’re my kids, too. And I am proud of every single one of them.

So congratulations to my kids: Jack Averill, Lindsay Baer, Evan Cooper, Will Fedder, Jordan Lagana, Meghan Malenski, Ted Merrill, Imari Miller, Caroline Myers, Andrew Potthast, Ian Viera, Nick Vogt, and Max Yates. And while we tend toward the figurative use of this phrase, I can say it here literally: You all rock.

And thank you, not just for the entertainment but for being such good people. That puts you way ahead of the crowd.

practice

By the time I kissed someone I liked, I was good at it. Pillows, posters of Peter Frampton, record albums with David Cassidy on their covers don’t kiss back, but you can press your lips against them with force or gentleness. You can make your mouth a powerhouse. Kiss your forearm, though, and you can imagine the give of another’s lips. Practice that. Kissing feels as good as being kissed. This is both.

This week, Rob Brezsny’s spiritual advice to those born under the sign of ADD (Libra, if you didn’t know) is to embrace quality over quantity. Sometimes—with the exception of having babies and infections—quality emerges from quantity.

Practice.

Practice isn’t a devil. It’s what separates the good from the great. I don’t need to prove anything, don't write about studies and such, but if I did, I would point to a particular book about what separates world-class performers from everybody else.

To become a better musician—whether you have natural talent or not—you work at it, and that means finding the time to practice. And practicing means doing. You play. You repeat the same song over and over until your wife or daughter or mother or dog wants to strangle you with your guitar strap or whack you on the head with the microphone.

If you’re a photographer, you take more pictures. You pose your dog, your daughter. You fidget with the lighting, her hair, his one floppy ear, the backdrop. You take the same picture 47 times until it’s exactly the picture you saw before you began.

Why do doctors practice medicine? Why do lawyers practice law?

If you’re a writer like I am, you write more: a story, a letter, a poem, sentences. You edit the words. You massage them. You fuck with them until they are sore and tired and smoking beside you on the bed.

On April 1st, because it was the start of National Poetry Month, I started practicing poetry again. It’s been a long time since I’ve thought like a poet for any length of time. I write nonfiction and advertising—in both my day work and my freelance life. The first can be poetic, but it doesn’t teach economy. The second is economical, but it’s rarely poetic.

Poems are not stories with random or even planned line breaks. They aren’t born like babies (though they are sometimes emotionally painful)—all perfect, if a little wet and icky. They would need more than to be cleaned up: chiseled, sculpted, molded, rearranged, cut, dissected, tortured. Even my happiest poems need to ache a little.

For the last ten days, I’ve written about a poem a day. I share them on Facebook but not publicly, in case there’s a chance I can torture them into a publishing opportunity. But it’s not, as some have surmised, about quantity. It’s about practice and discipline and the hard work of thinking in precise, power-packed words. They’re like astronaut food. They’re like the little sponges before they take on water and become bathtub dinosaurs.

The words I use in poems need to combine to form a drug. You need to blister a little while you read it. The last line should give you some euphoria. Or some despair. I want you to wonder when the next one will arrive. No, to crave it.

We don’t need to be the best at what we do. But we should always want to be better at doing it.

I never did kiss the real Peter Frampton or the real David Cassidy. I’m still practicing, but I think I’m ready.



- - - - -

("Kissback Bob" CD manipulation by Steve Parke)

drug of voice

Long ago, when I was crazy and couldn't sleep, my shrink, knowing of my life before baby, told me I needed to start writing poetry again or join a band. He believed insomnia to be a symptom of art withdrawal.

He was right. I had chosen the poetry, and my sleep was restored. I'd have started a band, too, except that I have crippling stage fright.

Back when I fronted Question 47 in the early eighties, we played out once or twice a week. I eased my fears with a gin and tonic or two, and I was usually comfortable by the third song. But I know alcohol only makes you think you sing great. Still, I pine for that unrequited love. I would rather sing and play guitar than do much else, even though I probably have no business doing it at all.

So here's what happens to me when I get on stage—even to read poetry or give a lecture: My arms get heavy and numb, and they sting, as though the blood in my veins were plaster of Paris mixed with rubbing alcohol; my legs stiffen and cramp; my heart pounds out of my chest, and you can see it through my shirt like some kind of alien spawn; my voice shakes and quavers, and I can't stay in pitch.

Because of my fear and lack of confidence, with the exception of one brief embarrassing moment at my daughter's bat mitzvah last year, I've not sung in public since my old band days. Until Friday.

After a story on 60 Minutes awhile ago, I wondered about using Propranolol (Inderol), a beta blocker, to ease my stage fright. I mentioned it recently, and my best friend, a speech pathologist, admitted that she takes it when she has to give presentations. So I called my doctor. He gave me five tiny pills and the instruction to take half a pill one or two hours before my performance. Our school's coffee house was 6-9; I took half a pill at 5.

At 8:15, my friend's band announced that they were taking a break and asked if I wanted to play. I'd pretty much given up on that idea. But when Dave asked me again, I was up like a shot. If I was nervous for a moment, it's a moment I don't remember.

And it's the only thing I don't remember. The pill gave me some kind of super memory! I didn't forget the chords or the words, even though we were playing a new song. And when someone asked us to play another, I did an original.

I'm not saying I was great; I wasn't. But I didn't suck, either, and that was enough to delight me. Maybe after a few of these little shows, my confidence can return.

I have enough pills for nine more gigs. And I plan to use them all.

the poet

On Sunday, I had breakfast with a poet. A real poet. He didn't have breakfast with me because he'd had some "Irish soda bread" at home on his horse farm before our late morning meeting.

Real poets have Irish soda bread on their kitchen counters on their horse farms.

Last time I met the poet in this place, I helped him set up a Facebook page. Now, his canonical status updates read like a taunt.

In this order: Up at five but it felt like four. Iced hooves. Thought about meditation. Thought better. Remembered Ackerman (Come to Bed Jack), her eyes. Listened to Mundy, Garbage, R. Head. Reread Paul Hostovsky's "A Little in Love a Lot" for the twentieth time. Found something I'd missed.

My update: Beer is fucking delicious. Beer is like crack. Fucking crack.

Nearly every poem he writes punches me in the gut. Across the table, the poet tosses me three pages. On the first is a poem about shooting a raccoon and putting up Christmas decorations. It is so perfect that I need to find a quiet place to both punish and forgive myself.

Sometimes I punch back. And sometimes, the poet flinches. Last week, I sent him two new pieces—one the lushest, most violent, aching, throbbing poem. He sent them back from South Bumfuck. In an envelope. With stamps. Like only poets and poetry-loving husbands do. I ran to the mailbox each day like a puppy, and when I couldn’t take it anymore, I begged him to send his comments by email so I could set my poem free.

That day, the longhand-edited pieced arrived—with an entirely different critique. He told me on the better page: "This one is a great poem." It’s covered in cursive and printing, three different colors and weights of ink: a fine-point black pen; a medium-point black pen; and a cyan marker, which is his commentary.

In one week, the poet will turn 50. He'll go out to dinner with his wife. They'll talk about horses and poetry and wine. When it's my turn, six months from now, I will scratch 50 until it bleeds. And I will drink the delicious crack of Resurrection. I will wake up the next day and be exactly the same, but I will pretend that it made all the difference in the world.

The list of things to do between now and the next rotation around the sun grows: publish another book of poems (the first one's due out in May), form a band that plays originals and wholly original covers, travel somewhere by myself, go to Barcelona to see the mosaics.

The poet has lived in Barcelona and describes standing in Picasso’s house like only a poet can describe it.

And because I, too, am a poet, I am, in that moment, there.

sweet harmony

Yesterday, I got to spend some quality, albeit brief, time with an old friend and his wife. We met at Nick's in Cross Street at noon and engaged in some laugh making, picture taking, Facebook posting, and two-fisted beer drinking. Despite the frenetic activity, not a drop of the 32-ounce trough of Flying Dog Pale Ale went anywhere but to my head.

We met when I was fourteen, some thirty-[inaudible mumbling] years ago. My best friend had just won 92 albums from WLPL (92 FM, of course), and I was the lucky bum who got to tag along. She and I were already cutting-edge ninth graders. We read Creem and Rock Scene and Circus. (We read Hit Parade, too, so we knew the lyrics to all the Aerosmith songs.)

We brought a shopping list. My girlfriend and I had seen pictures of the bands that made us swoon—The Sex Pistols, Richard Hell, the Damned, Television, the Stranglers—bands we couldn't hear on the radio. So we went to Harmony Hut to get schooled. Ira Kessler was the teacher.

From that moment on, I was home, even if home sometimes meant my dark closet with Patti Smith's Babel, a thesaurus, a notebook, and a pen.

I can't give Ira all the credit; I'd have found my way eventually. But that hour or so in Harmony Hut was a defining moment in my life.

Ira never left behind his career in music, even though he left behind Baltimore for Connecticut and, finally, New York. But in the early eighties, he and I were both in bands at the same time (his, Boy Meets Girl, and mine, Question 47, played many shows together). He's worked in the recording industry since his stint at Harmony Hut in Security Square Mall, and it was his first record company's reunion that brought him back to town after a couple years away.

One afternoon with his wife, Lori, proves that Ira's taste is still impeccable.

With maybe one exception: thirty-two ounces of Yuengling? Maybe it's a nostalgia thing. But he must now attend FuquinALE!, my seminar. And he might have to stay after class to exorcise those lager demons.