Time to Pretend

TIME TO PRETEND, MGMT

(February 2010)

Pre-leaving London: A lot of TV shows have great songs in their soundtracks, but very few of them know how to use them well. Take, as an example, Cold Case - because of their time-jumping stories, they play an insane amount of time-appropriate music, but never use it affectively. Shows like Grey's Anatomy, which uses a lot of indie-rock stuff, will have it playing in the background of an intense scene, and it's usually distracting for either the drama of the scene or the music playing. However, Skins used music really well in their scenes, and none better than MGMT's "Time to Pretend" in the second series finale. I heard it once the first time, then was stuck on it. In a weird way, it's a truly epic song, with its very grand dun-DUNs in the background and lyrics, though about the shallow rock-star lifestyle, has wonderful and thoughtful phrasing about the cyclical nature of life in a way that isn't usually mentioned in a song like this.

As a writer, music is really important to me when I write, and a lot of times, songs will figure in significantly to what I'm writing. I can only think of, maybe, one script I've written in the fifteen years or so of me writing where I haven't thought of a song to go in it (and that script was just written a month or so ago). I've decided that I want "Time to Pretend" to be in a script of mine - I can already see it, a music montage of characters growing up and getting into their twenties/thirties. Maybe I should be writing that instead of this blog?

Maybe that's not such a bad idea.

Can't You See

CAN'T YOU SEE, TOTAL

(July 1996)

Eighth grade summer at Summerbridge: it's halfway through the summer, and a group of the teachers are going off-campus to Burrito Express with a few random students, myself included. It was a warm, sunny day, surprising for July in San Francisco, but I remember walking down Washington to Divisadero and one of the seventh grade girls was singing Total's "Kissing You." Because of my R&B obsession at the time, I recognized the song through its butchered rendition. I'm not such a fan of "Kissing You" - I think it's pretty boring, actually, and since Total is on the lower half of '90s R&B girl groups (don't look at me that way, you know it's true. I mean, I like Total a LOT - hence the writing of this blog entry - but they more in line with MoKenStef and Brownstone, rather than TLC, En Vogue, or SWV), it's not vocally impressive really. But then, this girl began singing a butchered version of the song I later found out was "Can't You See," Total's first single.

It had been released the summer before that, before I listened to music on my own. I'm pretty sure I would have heard it then, but I was a year behind. It's a really good song, possibly Total's best song. It has a really great and simple bass line and a haunting quality to it, and I'm not sure I can describe why. I was annoyed, however, when twelve years later and I went to go see The Wackness that the main character, Luke Shapiro, attributes this song to The Notorious B.I.G. (who gives a trademark garble-mouthed intro) rather than to Total, not to mention that "Can't You See" was released in March of 1995, a few months after The Wackness takes place. It doesn't matter - the film uses the song in an amazing way, having it play in the background when Luke and Stephanie kiss for the first time in Central Park, and later on when Luke pulls a Billie Jean and dances on the sidewalk with the pavement lighting up underneath his feet.

Because I was so into that movie, I had the soundtrack. On my last day of working at Design Within Reach before I left for London, I had to take advantage of my discount in buying eyeglasses, and I needed new ones since I was going to London and my Rivers Cuomo glasses were/are kinda falling apart. I blasted "Can't You See" like four times as I drove Casey from Balboa Park Bart station, where she was parked, to West Portal, where the optometrist was. My big red glasses I bought cost me a pretty penny, but I was absolutely delighted with them. It was a hot August day, and as I slipped on those red glasses (which my mom hated initially, then came to begrudgingly accept; which Scott clearly recognized as a ploy to appear hip and fashionable in Europe; which I'm wearing at this very moment), I played the song loudly once again and drove home.

Semi-Charmed Life

SEMI-CHARMED LIFE, THIRD EYE BLIND

(September 1997)

Freshman year at SI: the funny thing about becoming a disciple of Z95.7 is that it completely changed the way I listened to music. When I started to listen to the radio and watching MTV on my own, I was heavily into R&B - TLC, Boyz II Men, Brandy, the works. Gone was strictly listening to the Old School and Latin music my parents listened to. But then, when Z95.7 was introduced, and with my overwhelming need to fit into a high school where I already felt intensely uncomfortable, I became a fan of whatever pop music was deemed cool, and I devoured all of it, even stuff that I didn't initially like. But what did I totally fall in love with? Third Eye Blind. I mean, my favorite song of theirs, "Never Let You Go," wouldn't come out for another three years, but until then, "Semi-Charmed Life" was good enough for me.

Third Eye Blind was the personification of the late-90s in San Francisco for me. I mean, it's probably because of the video, with Stephen Jenkins running around the Mission, that I think that if my high school life were ever to be shown in a montage, that song would play over it. It wasn't my favorite song as a teenager by far, nor the most meaningful, but because it was the first song I heard in that late-90s rock-pop style that would become the dominant musical trend of my high school career (along with teen pop, but more on that in another entry) that I feel that it encapsulates high school for me in a weird way. It would have nothing to do with the lyrics - despite what you might think, I was not a crystal meth addict as a fourteen-year-old - but the "feel" of it, for lack of a better word.

Because it's theoretically coming up next year, I keep thinking about my high school reunion, but aside from the fact that I'm sure I'll be completely awkward and will need to get completely sloshed beforehand in order to maintain some semblance of social behavior, I keep wondering what kind of music will be playing. I will be really upset if this song isn't played (though really, why wouldn't it be? Though if it's all 'NSync and P.Diddy (or Sean "Puffy" Combs, as he was known then), I will be really pissed and make a drunken fool of myself), but then again, I'm not in charge of the music. Though I'd like to think that if I were, it would be hella awesome.

Let's Make Love (And Listen to Death From Above)

LET'S MAKE LOVE (AND LISTEN TO DEATH FROM ABOVE), CSS

(December 2009)

Pre-Christmas in San Francisco: It was snowing, I was sick, and it was miserable. I was going back to San Francisco for Christmas the following day, but on this day, I had tons of shit to do. I had to do last-minute Christmas shopping (Selfridges on Oxford Street to buy some candy for my parents, Camden to buy a pashmina for my grandmother, etc.), I had to print my flight itinerary, and pick up a package for Nick from the post office. All while it was snowing. Heavily. Did I mention that living in London totally took away any sort of theoretical magical qualities that snow had for me?

I returned to Old Street at a fairly late hour (well, probably about ten o'clock), after having fallen on my ass around several places in London several times, and placed my snow-covered bag on my bed, took off my boots, and turned on the TV, hoping to catch an episode of "Come Dine With Me" on Channel 4. I had been unexpectedly surprised that morning when "The Ten Commandments" popped up on screen. So, I had high hopes that another one of the things that made my life the bright and sparkly thing it is would show up on my airwaves.

And what do I see? This perfume commercial, or at least it looks like a perfume commercial. You know, black-and-white, glossy, full of models erotically fondling a perfume bottle? I mean, usually the perfume bottle is the giveaway, but sometimes you're not sure. Anyway, in this commercial, the models were Chloe Sevigny, Clemence Poesy, and some other blonde chick, and the ad was literally close-ups of their faces and bare shoulders, holding the perfume bottle and, like, making out with it, all while this really cool electroclash instrumental is playing. When the 20-second ad was over, I was like, "Okay. I need to find out what song that is! (And so glad to see Chloe Sevigny not all Big Love-d out.)"

The interwebs informed me that this song was called "Let's Make Love (And Listen to Death From Above)" by Brazilian band CSS, or Cansei de Ser Sexy, which, like, really, what an obnoxious thing to call your band, even if the urban legend of them taking it from a Beyonce speech or whatever. They actually aren't sexy at all, unless you're into self-consciously indie goodness. In which case, pop in their video, unzip, and go to town.

I become obsessed with the song pretty much overnight, while I'm packing up to go back to San Francisco. I have to get to Heathrow really early in the morning, so I figure "Why sleep?" Especially since I have an insane twelve-hour flight. So, I play this song, like, five times in a row, then listen to an episode of "This American Life," then listen to the song another five times, trying to imagine what this lead singer looks like. I find out, later, that "Lovefoxx," as she calls herself, doesn't look like the dusty lean and thin model-type that I had in my head, but like an impish cross between my friend Liza and a Cabbage Patch doll.

I play the song when I'm back in London one day, and Nick is like "Oh GOD! I hate 'Let's Make Love'! It was played all the time, like, three years ago." I then started thinking about what music makes it big in the States versus the rest of the world, and this was just another example of a song being a big hit one place and being virtually nonexistent elsewhere.

And, despite the fact that I do find the band really up their own ass in terms of how too cool for school they are, the video makes me smile. It's so joyous. Weird.

Flashing Lights

FLASHING LIGHTS, KANYE WEST

(May 2008)

Summer pre-London: When you go to an SF Giants game, every Giants player has a theme song that plays when they step up to bat. In the 2008-2009 season, left fielder Fred Lewis' theme song was Kanye West's "Flashing Lights." The first time I heard it was during a Giants game, and I turned to Daniel, hearing Connie Mitchell's autotuned chants of "Flashing. Lights?", asking what song this was, and Daniel answered, "'Flashing Lights' by Kanye."

I've never been a big fan of Kanye West. I think that, despite being one of the most (if not the most) talented rapper of his generation, he's a big baby, always whining and crying about not getting this award or that kind of recognition or --

"Hold up, Cesar. I'm real happy for you and your blog, and I'mma let you finish. But Beyonce's got the best blog of all time. OF ALL TIME!!"

Um, fool, do I look like Taylor Swift? (Don't answer that.)

However, I do like his music, and "Flashing Lights" is my favorite Kanye song. For one thing, it's insanely, and I mean insanely, dramatic. It starts off with these filmic strings just crescendoing into this synth riff, with Connie Mitchell being all cracked-out: "Flashing. Lights?" Then, it's all about this relationship between these two extremely vain and narcissistic people who outbling each other until they die. Okay, that last part may not be true, but listening to the song, it sounds like that's what happened. The chorus that Dwele croons: "As you recall, you know I love to show off / But you didn't know I would take it this far!! / What do I know?" And it's like, what is that about? I like to think that the two of them kill each other with a massive blingy diamond chandelier, just like in "The War of the Roses." Otherwise, the song is so much drama without the payoff. I like the payoff. And so does Kanye, based on this song.

I used to love Nip/Tuck. In its prime (seasons 1 - 4, for those of you interested), the show was an addictive and awesomely graphic soap that had an amazing soundtrack. Like, possibly the best on TV. But after it went from a show about organ-harvesting rings and serial killers to a show about teenage vixens and teddy-bear enthusiasts, it still maintained that amazing soundtrack, and the trailer for Season 5.5 was set to "Flashing Lights," and it was an amazing trailer (go look it up on YouTube!), and I fell in love with the song all over again.

The reason for even starting this blog for me is that whenever I'm drunk at a party or whatever and a song I know really well comes on, I'll gasp loudly and be like "Omigod!! I remember the first time I heard this!" And the last time I can remember doing that was in London, when I went to Stacey's birthday party at the new house in Dollis Hill where she and Matt are living with other coursemates. I was already buzzing and then this song blasts on and I did my trademark gasp and statement.

The video for this is really cool, too, because Kanye is locked up in the trunk of a car and his girlfriend (to go with the operatic nature of the song) bashes him in the head with a golf club. Of course. And it's not that bad an image.

Oh, come on now, Cesar! I give you a shout-out in the song: "You know you can't Rome without Caesar!" Why you gonna play me like that?

Okay, you're right. I'm sorry, Kanye.

Bamboo Banga

BAMBOO BANGA, M.I.A.

(November 2007)

Stage managing at NCTC: I was stage managing the PSA-licious play "The Other Side of the Closet" at the New Conservatory Theatre Center in San Francisco, feeling pretty crap about myself. I had returned to San Francisco from LA, defeated, jobless, poor, and really not wanting to write. Eventually, I started feeling the bug again, but still unable/unwilling to write, so I did the next (best?) thing - I started stage managing. I started off at the Magic Theater as a production assistant, which meant me chauffeuring Marlo Thomas and Mark Rydell to and from their hotels, and somehow that led to me being a pretty in-demand stage manager. It was odd, and really I don't have the temperament for it, but I was oddly good at it.

"The Other Side of the Closet" was a traveling play - we went to different schools throughout the Bay Area with this really cheesy play about how horrible homophobia is (which it is, but then again, so is subjecting disaffected teenagers to really bad theatre), but one of the cool things about it besides meeting some cool people (?) was the soundtrack that Sara, the director, had chosen. In an attempt to make this play relevant to teenagers, she chose some really cutting-edge music for it, which I, as the stage manager, dealt with. One of the songs used was M.I.A.'s "Boyz," which is a truly odd but catchy song. The more I heard it (at least four times a week), the more I liked it, hence me downloading it. And, is my wont, I downloaded as many M.I.A. songs as I could.

"Bamboo Banga" is perhaps my favorite of the M.I.A. canon. The opening track to her second album "Kala," "Bamboo Banga" is like this crazy house song mixed in with this neo-hip hop vibe. I could definitely imagine dancing to it at a house party, and based on a video I saw of M.I.A. performing it at a concert, the fans love it. She was decked out in this pre-Lady GaGa space armor outfit, shaking her British ass all around the stage while the audience went bananas. It was a pretty cool image - in theory, I could have been there, since it was taken at an impromptu concert she held in San Francisco a few months prior. I didn't go because I couldn't find anyone to go with me - it was at Popscene at 33 Ritch, and the only person I knew of at the time who would have gone with me was Zarah, but she was busy that night. Unbeknown to me, my friend Michael was there and told me all about it a few weeks later. Alas.

I've always wondered why she never released it as a single - I think it's more radio-friendly than "Boyz," which was the lead single, or the follow-up, "Jimmy." I saw a cool video on YouTube of Fanny Pak, this dance group I was into from America's Best Dance Crew, performing this awesome routine to it.

Later on that summer, Daniel and my dad were at a Giants game, and I went to pick them up. I had burned "Bamboo Banga" on a mix-CD and was blasting it from Casey when I stopped on Berry Street to pick them up. Because my dad has this thing where no one can drive if he's around, I got out and sat in the passenger seat while he drove, and once we were on our way, he heard the song and was like "What the hell is this?" I laughed at his incredulity and told him that it was a song I really liked. He told me to turn it off because it was hurting his head, and I proceeded to ask him and Daniel how the game was.

The Promise

THE PROMISE, GIRLS ALOUD

(December 2008)

Christmas in London: "The Promise" by British girl group Girls Aloud is playing everywhere. It's the Christmas #1, hence it's always on BBC Radio1. It's playing in Harrod's when Daniel (who's visiting me since I can't go back to the States for the holiday) and I visit. It's playing at the Pizza Hut near Piccadilly Circus. It's playing on TV. It's playing at HMV. It's playing on New Year's Eve on Embankment by various BBC Radio1 DJs. It's everywhere, and slowly but surely, sinking its way into my brain.

I had become aware of Girls Aloud's existence in the months before moving to London, when I was trying (and failing, in hindsight) to absorb as much about the UK and London that I could. This meant reading endless travel books on London and watching "Skins" on BBC America. Somehow, I came upon a clip from a now-defunct (I think) show called "Generation XCess," which was a sort of 20/20 on teenage behaviors, and the clip focused on an amateur northern rugby team from Cheshire that indulged in, like, a thousand pints of beer a night, lots of bar-diving, and quite a bit of homoerotic behavior. At one point, they're all dancing in a pub to Girls Aloud's "Something Kinda Ooohh," and with all these macho guys singing along to this poppy girl song, I was like "What?" and decided I needed to know who this was. Hence, discovering Girls Aloud.

When I got to London, a week or so into my stay, I was watching TV with my housemate Stacey when the video for "The Promise" popped up (being the first time I heard it). I asked who was the group singing this '60's-soul-influenced pop song, and Stacey told me it was Girls Aloud and went with introducing me to the members, sorta: "That's the hot one (Cheryl), she's the one with a proper ledge of a voice (Nadine), she lives in Camden (Sarah), she likes to smoke pot (Kimberley), and that's the rubbish one no one cares about (Nicola)."

It's a great song, I think. It has a great backing, with these horns and awesome strings, which led a lot of music critics at the time to accuse writers Brian Higgins and Xenomania of jumping on the Amy Winehouse/Duffy/Joss Stone Brit-soul-girl thing, but I disagree with that assessment because, while on a superficial level, you can agree with that, but if you really listen to it, "The Promise" is not at all a traditional pop song in its structure: there's the catchy chorus, for sure, but each verse is constructed differently, to show off each of the girls singing, something a girl group in the States would never ever do (Destiny's Child, I'm looking at you). The first verse, which mimes the opening horns, is sung by all five of the girls, then chorus, then a verse with a new melody sung by Cheryl and Sarah, then chorus, then another verse by Sarah with a whole new melody, then another new melody by Nadine and Nicola, then chorus, then bridge (?) by Kimberley... it's a bit of a mess of a song, yet it completely works and you don't think about it when you listen to it. Because it's still an amazing song.

In the utility room of 43 Clarendon Court, which is where I lived with Matt and Stacey in Golders Green, we had a poster of "You Can't Mess With the Zohan" that we got at the Freshers Fair during our first week at Central that we dubbed "The Pissed Poster," meaning that anytime that any of the three of us were drunk (which was often), we would scribble a drunken message on the poster. At one point in early January, after Daniel had gone back to the States and Central had started up again for the spring term, I had gotten drunk at the pub (which meant drinking, like, a beer or two) and had "The Promise" stuck in my head, so I decided to scribble the lyrics of the chorus on the poster: "You're gonna make me, make me love you! Nothing at all that I cannot do! The promise I made, promise I made, starting to fade, starting to fade!" Matt and Stacey were thoroughly amused by this.