Thinking of 1995
I've decided to start writing letters again... beginning
with friends I've slowly begun to lose touch with over
the past three years since I moved back to BR from
Virginia.
I started with Jon Fine, my ex-bandmate and roommate
in NYC, who, since his New York Times covered wedding
I went to in December 2004, has become a relative media
star in the past year, getting his own column on advertising
in Business Week. But whatever.. to me, he'll forever be
the guy who played that horrifying guitar on Bitch Magnet's
Ben Hur (still one of my favorite records after 15 years!).
And I've only spoken to him once in the past year (after
Katrina), so I owed him a response to the wedding photos
and holiday card he sent me a month ago.
Next was Chris Brokaw, whom we intend to get down here
to help us produce our next record this fall. When I saw
Chris in Jackson, MS back in December, he'd just seen Jon
in NYC (they went to Oberlin together) and they went to
Barney's department store. Chris said he was shocked as
they went into the store and the clerks all addressed Jon as
"Mr. Fine" and proceeded to sell him a $500 pair of shoes.
Chris and I marveled to think that this was the guy who in
1994 lost a series of answering machines to cockroach
infestation. (Don't ask... I could never understand either).
Those two guys, and a few others from that era.. are both
heroes and big brothers to me in a way. Guys that were 6
-10 years older than me and seemed to have done so much
with their lives (and to think that in 1995 they were 1-5 years
younger than me). I can only hope that my younger friends
look up to me the same way. Or well, I don't really hope that,
because I have doubts about myself. And I know that Fine
and Brokaw did, too. Everyone does, I guess, a point made
clear when in Jackson last December, Brokaw asked me from
the stage "Fred, what should I play?" I shouted for him to
play "Recidivist" (a song I'd guess he was 32 when he wrote).
He prefaced it by grumbling into the mic, "Fred wants to hear
a song about... being a fuckup." I felt proud to know the
person who wrote something so amazing, but I had doubts
about the reasons I related to it so well. Everyone does.
Recidivist
"She's something that I won't have to quit
'cause she won't make me sick" --
quick wisdom from a cool recidivist
who always hides his wrists
and is always getting lost
when the stations get crossed.
And in the summer of 1961
a new plan got hatched
and it shone like the sun
and I thought it was the one,
but it was nothing
you haven't done before.
Don't think it's nothing.
Four thirty in the morning and twenty candles gone.
Well did she pass out?
Or did she pass on?
Or did she go alone
to an island
halfway across the world
with a tanned US girl?
I get lost in the trees
and I'll pass like the breeze
cause I'm nothing
you haven't done before.
Hey... don't think I'm nothing!
California stars fall through the sun
and land on the shore,
reborn in water
and blasted through black holes
The way out is in,
my leopard spotted friend.
You helped me begin,
just to watch you descend
a little more grown,
but you'll have to go alone
'cause of something.
And I can't forget,
but I'm still too _____