August 24th, 2008
These words have been with me since 1989 and they are the most beautiful and haunting collection of nouns, adjectives, verbs and emotions ever placed next to each other. You can see what inspires me here, almost like a magnified glass:
hopelessly drift
in the eyes of the ghost again
down on my knees
and my hands in the air again
pushing my face in the memory of you again
but i never know if it’s real
never know how i wanted to feel
never quite said what i wanted to say to you
never quite managed the words to explain to you
never quite knew how to make them believable
and now the time has gone
another time undone
hopelessly fighting the devil
futility
feeling the monster
climb deeper inside of me
feeling him gnawing my heart away
hungrily
i’ll never lose this pain
never dream of you again
untitled- the cure
Filed under: Commentary, Music, youtube | Tags: fall out boy, joy division, love will tear us apart, The Cure, youtube
August 6th, 2008
I want to make you feel the loss of your footing. Step out on to the edge and forget where you came from. You deny me and I walk away, will I be gone forever? Or if I do come back to you, will you be waiting?
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I was iTuning this morning and I don’t know why I have never owned any Fall Out Boy, so there I was click click clicking and I came across Love Will Tear Us Apart. What? That’s Joy Division. That’s m*therf*cking Joy Division, you can’t do that! That’s like taking Love Song by The Cure and putting a reggae beat to it… oh, wait that nightmare did happen… anyhow. I was curious, so I listened. Now, I have a hard time really really liking covers of my favorite bands of all time. But this one?… it’s respectable, and a little odd and out of place that they would chose such a “soundtrack to my life” song. I mean this one’s a classic and if you don’t know it, know it:
Of course after YouTubing it I discovered that tons of people, good and bad, have indeed covered it. Holy crap, even Arcade Fire and U2 get a go at it, albeit a rousing and crowd pleasing version, without the pain and angst behind even the one that Fall Out Boy seems to still capture. I mean that’s balls… to take on an anthem, alone with only a guitar, kudos:
Filed under: Etsy, Music, TV, poetry | Tags: bad poetry, crappy poetry, gabe garcia, Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me, march 3rd 2007, nashville star, poetry, stilettoheights.etsy.com, The Cure
August 5th, 2008
First off, yuck: 
Should have won: 
I mean I’m no expert or anything, but c’mon, I know what music I won’t be downloading from iTunes anytime soon. See, I got Idol this year so it’s whatever. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, it’s alright.
Seriously though, he’s so country and adorable, how can you resist? Moving on.
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Since it’s poetry month, and I’ve got 26 more days of this to go, I am going to have to get even more creative about this venture. I may even be digging up some old crap that I have written. Please don’t be offended that I call poetry crap, I’m really only referring to my crap as crap because that is what it is. Want some poetry that is everything but crap?
This collection of art and poetry is BEAUTIFUL and is a must have. So go get it and thank me later.
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Ugh, I wrote this crap last year when I was sick, very sick, at my worst: disclaimer- it’s very Cure, Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me-
from March 3rd, 2007
The sickness continues and I am losing ground, over and over again. I climb up to see the lights, grasping the earth around me, I fall only with the dirt between my fingers. Shake it off, I can’t. I am entombed in the folds of these depths and only the thought of touching the outside world can creep beneath them. I expel the illness that shackles me, no movement, only trembling from what I threw up on the bathroom floor. The medication turns me into a monster, not really feeling, only knowing the dullness of pain. There is no where else I want to be because the hope has faded and I invite the darkness in and let it take me. How can this erase the days of the week? Time is gone and I don’t want it back. Let it take me in its reaching hands, bruise my body and leave it for waste.
Filed under: Music | Tags: Boys Don't Cry, Disintegration, Japanese Whispers, Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me, Mixed Up, Pornography(The Cure), Robert Smith, Seventeen Seconds, The Crow, The Cure, The Head On The Door, The Top, Wish
July 28th, 2008
And so I finished the last installment of these compilation CDs and it’s only fitting that I finished with The Cure. I know I have said it before that these aren’t greatest hits mixes or best of, they are simply my favorites. This was by far the hardest one to make because there are so few Cure songs that I don’t like, I daresay none that I don’t like, just some that I have overplayed and then some that sound too much like their older or younger counterparts. So this is just the first of many, like skimming off of the top of my library, the tracks that peaked their heads out of the archives. One thing to note, I still buy every album The Cure puts out, I’ve never wavered because they have never wavered. Unlike U2 and R.E.M., The Cure has been constant. Robert Smith is true to what he laid out on the table almost 30 years ago, that is 89% of the reason that they are my favorite band of all time, 1% moodiness, 5% wallowing in own self pity, 4% men in black eyeliner/obnoxious red lipstick/big laceless sneakers, 1% this lifelong reoccurring dream that I was Sleeping Beauty in a past life. Is that 100%… okay, good.
1. Boys Don’t Cry from Boys Don’t Cry 1979
2. Jumping Someone Else’s Train
3. The Figurehead from Pornography 1982
4. A Forest (originally from Seventeen Seconds 1980; this version was released in 1990 on Mixed Up)
5. In Between Days from The Head On The Door 1985
6. Six Different Ways
7. Close To Me
8. The Walk (originally from Japanese Whispers 1983; this version was released in 1990 on Mixed Up)*
9. Just Like Heaven from Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me 1987
10. Hot Hot Hot!!!
11. Why Can’t I Be You?
12. Plainsong from Disintegration 1989
13. Pictures Of You
14. Fascination Street
15. From The Edge Of The Deep Green Sea from Wish 1992
16. Jupiter Crash from Wild Mood Swings 1996
Bonus track: 17. Burn from The Crow soundtrack 1995
*Side note: I only had this album on cassette, along with The Top album; I should really buy the CDs. Japanese Whispers is not available on iTunes.)
Filed under: Music | Tags: All That You Can't Leave Behind, Boy, Mike, Music, October, Rattle And Hum, REM, The Cure, The Joshua Tree, The Unforgettable Fire, U2, War
July 26th, 2008
Before embarking on this quest to compile my favorites from my top musical influences of all time, I had to consult a source. I’ve got all sorts of musical sources, my latest being my punk/rock/emo source and my other being my country source, I’ve got others but all of my sources are top secret. But my source for all things great, being the music that we grew up on and what shaped who we are is Mike. No surprise there. I do tend to pick on him from time to time for not getting up on the times, not partaking in any new music. Mike’s opinion is that no good music has been made since 1999. I don’t agree, actually, I vehemently disagree, but to each their own. So when it came to combing over my past he was certainly the one to journey that path with.
I introduced him to The Cure in 1992 and he introduced me to REM that same year. I started him out with Cure-lite, with the album Mixed Up, like saccharine filled goodness for the maudlin newbie. I mean I started out hardcore with (the best album ever created) Disintegration. And he started me off slowly too with Eponymous, a compilation of early REM besties, letting me discover (their best album ever) Life’s Rich Pageant. We would do our homework to these tapes, do our chores, do hum-drum everyday things to this melodies not knowing that we were letting these songs into the very fiber of our beings.
But this post isn’t about those two bands, that’ll be next post, if I can even come up with a nice and neat and presentable compilation of each, hence… impossible task. We decided to tackle U2 first. I had a love affair with U2 the moment I saw this, that video stays with you for a lifetime. But I broke up with U2 when they started releasing crap, and I’ll say this, IMO I was hearing crap because I wasn’t ready for U2 to change. Their sound had to change but at the time, 1990-1991, I just couldn’t handle it, I was changing too much already, I needed my music to stay constant and familiar. I have since added newer U2 to my library because they have managed to recapture their original sound, like many other bands who have survived their sophomoric branching out, only to come full circle to what made them great in the first place: their honesty.
So I humbly present my U2 Essentials, in no way does this encompass a “best of” or “greatest hits”, these are the songs that influenced me, were expressions of bottle necked rage and emotion and were there for me in those ever changing times.
1. I Will Follow from Boy 1980
2. Gloria from October 1981
3. Sunday Bloody Sunday from War 1983
4. New Year’s Day
5. Two Hearts Beat As One
6. A Sort of Homecoming from The Unforgettable Fire 1984
7. The Unforgettable Fire
8. Bad
9. Bullet the Blue Sky from The Joshua Tree 1987
10. Running to Stand Still
11. Trip Through Your Wires
12. All Along The Watchtower from Rattle And Hum 1988
13. All I Want Is You
14. Silver And Gold
15. Walk On from All That You Can’t Leave Behind 2000
Bonus track: 16. Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me from Batman Forever Soundtrack 1995
Filed under: Music | Tags: 120 Minutes, 80s, Depeche Mode, Morrissey, Music, REM, The Cure, The Smiths, U2
July 25th, 2008
A co-worker, and friend, and I were talking about music the other day. It seems that I talk a lot about music lately with people in general. I want to take it all in, all of it. I have pretty much opened myself up to trying everything and anything at this point. I’m not sick of what I’ve been listening to so much as I want to add to my oratory repertoire. I want to try on new things, just like if you got a make-over, you are still who you were before but improved for the experience.
But then my friend asked nearly the impossible. We were talking about what music shaped us and I happened to mention my top musical influences, The Cure and REM, they happen to be #1 and #2. Unwavering too, because no one will ever knock them off their pedestals in my mind. Some come very close, like my #3 through #10, among them are The Smiths/Morrissey, U2 (only up until 1988), and Depeche Mode. My friend mentioned that he never had really delved into either The Cure or REM because he was mostly disillusioned by any music that had come out of the 80s. I can’t disagree with him really, as much as I love the 80s most of the music was crap. Most of the music being played on the radio was crap that is. But who remembers 120 Minutes in its heyday, 1986 on Mtv very late night, that is where the greatness of 80s music was finally able to peak its head out from underneath the pop crap heap.
My task is to compile a sampling of both The Cure and REM. That’s like asking parents to chose their favorite child. Or if I was stranded an a desert island and I could only bring these x songs, what would they be?
(For my own prosperity, I will list my findings.)
Filed under: Emotions, Music, Surveys | Tags: love songs, Music, sappy songs, The Cure, The Smiths
May 10th, 2008
For a while now I have wanted to make a mix CD of the sappiest, most heart-wrenching songs. Not so much cheesy, I want these to be for reals. I love wallowing in those old feelings, I know! I’m mental. I grew up on The Cure and The Smiths so cut me a break here. Anyhow, I’m taking suggestions, requests and the like. They don’t even have to be the best of all time, they can be, but they can also be stuff most people haven’t heard. Whatever does it for you.
What am I going to do with these songs? Probably make a CD, like I said. I’ll post the final playlist here and heck, if anyone is interested in a copy, well, misery does love company.
Filed under: Commentary, Music | Tags: boys like girls, brendan james, David Cook, Every Avenue, fall out boy, forever the sickest kids, High School Musical 3, Music, the cab, The Cure, Thriving Ivory, valencia
Every Avenue- Shh. Just Go With It
Boys Like Girls- Boys Like Girls
The Cab- Whisper War
Forever The Sickest Kids- Underdog Alma Mater
Brendan James- The Day Is Brave
Valencia- We All Need A Reason To Believe
Thriving Ivory- Thriving Ivory
High School Musical 3 Soundtrack
The Cure- 4:13 Dream
David Cook- David Cook
Fall Out Boy- Folie a Deux