On Wednesday night, I asked Mark Burgess about standards, and in a drunken stupor, he confided in me a secret that I promised not to share. I will not divulge the specifics, but I will say it had to do with never being satisfied. But it’s not what you think. Here’s a man who fronted the Chameleons, one of the most influential post-punk bands of the 1980s, and the one band that built the bridge from the harrowing Joy Division angst to the sparkling Cocteau Twins melancholy. Burgess laid the blueprint used by countless shoegaze bands of the 1990s, and picked up years later by Interpol and all that followed. Take the Arcade Fire, a phenomenon that has taken over the music world that bubbles just under the mainstream; they’ve infiltrated large outdoor venues, the ipods of music lovers and pretenders alike, and the Leisure & Arts sections of serious Sunday papers all over the English-speaking world. Then trace the musical tree back to its roots, and at the very end of one of the largest roots you will find the Chameleons. But no one has ever heard of them.

So shouldn’t Mr. Burgess be bitter? Shouldn’t he, like Alex Chilton did, curse the industry and the hordes of tone-deaf punters that left him languishing in obscurity? Unlike Chilton, he hasn’t had the honor of hearing the cognoscenti cry, belatedly, “Our mistake, we get it now: you were (are?) a genius!” He hasn’t even had that consolation. By the way, that should have happened, and it better happen sometime before I die or I will leave this world embittered.

But no, Mark Burgess is not bitter for that reason. Here is how I saw him, and please understand these are first impressions only. I do not know the man. I only relate what I saw and sensed… In person he’s affable and aloof, looking out at the world with eyes wide and a boy’s grin. He appears devoid of guile, and all signs say he’s unconcerned with how he is being measured by others. Yet he measures himself, and for himself and his music he sets impossible standards. There was an underlying sadness there, a sadness that he hadn’t ever been able to faithfully and fully transcribe the purity of the music that runs through his subconscious.

Mark Burgess has got himself a new group of musicians, the next generation of Chameleons uber-fans, a friendly, well-spoken group of good guys from Los Angeles. They call themselves ChameleonsVox. Last Wednesday night I witnessed a note-perfect, energetic run through Burgess’ salad days, focusing mainly on Script of the Bridge, with a few tracks each from the other two early albums (no songs from the Tony Fletcher… EP, sadly, but that was to be expected…). Opening up with the chilling arpeggios of “Swamp Thing,” the tone is set: we’re looking inwardly, and we’re not scared away by the scariest things we might find there. The Chameleons’ sound is oceanic, urgent, aching, stormy, shimmering, beautiful.

The Chameleons: Swamp Thing

What makes this music work for me is that it assumes that somewhere, deep and unseen, there exists an unspeakable beauty. The assumption goes further, that one can never look this beauty squarely in the face, and yet one is tormented by the after-image, like sunspots on a retina. But for such an introspective artist, Burgess frequently looks outside, finding foils to the impossible beauty. In “A Person Isn’t Safe Anywhere These Days,” the inner demons become personified by preying thugs on the streets, and in “Monkeyland” he dives headlong into a Manchester filled with hypocrites and anonymous tricks of the light. The exile continues with the magnificent “Up The Down Escalator,” a song, in Mark’s words, about “helplessness in a world gone stark, raving mad.”

The Chameleons: Up The Down Escalator

It all culminates in “Soul In Isolation,” which is difficult to even write about. If there’s anything more primal than the fear we carry, knowing we will all die alone, it’s the accompanying terror in the knowledge that we live the same way. The imagery is shapeless. Burgess stands “surrounded by crowds,” but there are no descriptions of the outside world. You can’t feel or see Manchester in this lyric, nor any real place on Earth. There are a few renegade lyrics here – references to a “big bad giant,” a “jailer,” and even his mother – but for the most part it’s a world behind closed eyelids, and cries heard through a wall. It’s simply about a loneliness that never goes away. It’s acknowledged that one could simply shut it all out, or conversely one could swim in it. But to the end, Burgess holds to his unshrinking claim: “I’m alive in here!”

The Chameleons: Soul In Isolation

By the time they get to “Second Skin,” I’m mystified that this band never became huge. The chiming guitar leads of this song, the pulsing bass, the “floating on air:” it’s all a near-death experience made into sound. The way it all elevates off of the stage and fills the half-empty Ottobar – so putrid and dank, this Ottobar, so fleeting, so false, so mismatched – as Burgess sings “but is this the stuff dreams are made of,” convinces me that this is the only tangible form that it can take. It, meaning the aforementioned unspeakable beauty. The one that Mark Eitzel said is seen only “as it begins to disappear.” Or as Burgess sings, “when something slips through your fingers you know how precious it is.”

The Chameleons: Second Skin

And finally, there’s “Don’t Fall.” Inspired by a hallucinatory trip through Manchester, and the encroaching madness that went with it, the song stands undaunted. Like so much of Burgess’ work, it’s haunted by an existential throbbing: the nightmare worlds we inhabit, the rooms running red, the strange faces that follow us, gawking, oblivious, and we, left ultimately alone, stripped to the soul… in the end, what else is there? “But this roaring silence won’t devour us all. Don’t fall.” It’s a life of pleasure and pain, and we’re alive in here! It’s the only way to end the show.

The Chameleons: Don’t Fall

Simply put, this was one of the best shows I have ever been to. The musicians that make up ChameleonsVox (and all I can tell you is that there’s a guitarist named Andrew, because I remember that, but any information whatsoever seems non-existent on the internet… if anyone reads this, and knows the band members’ names, please contact me or comment!) are more than hired guns. They’ve come on board out of devotion for Mark and his music, and it shows. They’ve all put aside personal projects to chase after the impossible beauty, because they too hear it filling the air. And when they do, it sounds like Chameleons music, like a perfume garden:

I thought of stories
They told us long ago
Of how the world was a perfume garden
I haven’t yet learned to tame the creature there
And that at least I think is something good

With this perspective, I can understand why Mark Burgess isn’t bitter about his lack of fame. The music is so clearly born out of the need to make it. Some make music to make money, some to impress girls/guys, others just because they have to. For this type of songwriter, success is measured by how closely you get to that essential, unspeakable thing. The thing, whatever it is that drove it all in the first place. I think Mark knows that he got tantalizingly close, closer than almost anyone, which is why he can from time to time become transported. But I also think he knows that he hasn’t ever really got it (who could?), and that must eat at him. So as long as Mark Burgess wrestles with that creature in the perfume garden, it doesn’t matter whether he plays to ten people or ten thousand, he remains a soul in isolation, thrilled and terrified.

Please visit the Chameleons Website.

Please visit the ChameleonsVox website.

ChameleonsVox on MySpace.

The magenta skies are an otherworld of post-apocalyptic beauty, the celestial backdrop against which the Muses play, and spiritual beings perhaps, and ultimately it’s the clean slate that wipes us all out when Death finally rests upon us. Regardless of hopes and beliefs in an afterlife (which are not addressed in this song; I don’t get that far), the magenta skies will claim the spirit just as the soil devours muscle and bone. The magenta skies are the death of spirit. That’s what this is about, and I never realized it until this very post. There are temporary deaths of the spirit, while we yet live, but the spirit resurrects. My religious background taught me that the spirit never dies a final death, and I do believe that still, though I have no evidence for any of this. I think the spirit is kind of like a cell phone battery – you have to let it drain all its power and recharge it time and time again for it to remain at full strength…      (Um, OK, so chew on that one for a while. Talk about bringing the grandiose down to the pedestrian level…)

Anyway, below are the lyrics. Thanks to Dave Crozier for recording this with me. It sounds great so far, and I can’t wait to hear what happens to it after a bass guitar track and various guitar treatments are added.

Full of sweetness and light
Full of the moon
Empty inside
Dark as a mother’s womb
Bright as a bird whose song belies
Every shade of grey
In magenta skies

Shining actress in white
Hollywood star
She’s to die for
Always seen from afar
Wearing a blurred but bold disguise
Unafraid to play
In magenta skies

Banish darkness from night
Banish the sun
From the daytime
Let it come all undone
Call them absurd, the lows and highs
Let them fade away
In magenta skies

The Catbirds: In Magenta Skies IV [Demo First Mix]

I am Catbirdman. I don’t apologize for that fact; it’s who I am. It’s a name, sure. All of us are spouting names. Often called handles, they signal control. Where is my domain? Over which acres do I lord, upon which sharecroppers do I cop? What is owned and what is shared? How much can I handle? Names signify roots. Names root out good and evil; they document souls; they illustrate ideals. Names name that moment when, beset by buzzing flies and collapsing roofs, we stand up and dust ourselves off, upstairs and downstairs alike, remaining your faithful and obedient servant,

[signed]

And now, fuelled by anger, I will post this to my blog: I am Catbirdman. I haven’t been your bitch. I haven’t sold out. I’ve lived through the birth and the death of cool.

My friends and neighbors are in the above photograph. Bob and Cathy. They come as they are and they accept me likewise. I had dinner with them tonight, and we shared unedited opinions on veganism, religion, horror, Crispin Glover, and much more besides. We ventured into the most divisive of terrain, only to resurface repeatedly as neighbors in this murky and sweltering swim through the pool we dub reality.

Sagittarius: The Truth Is Not Real

Following that I headed on into the night life. There I met divers characters, all of whom I’m still trying to sort out:

1. Buck. Not Showalter. But he co-owns this place, and when he bought it, it was actually known as Showalter’s. True story. We laugh about that and trade well-meaning stabs into the anonymous night, when suddenly it’s revealed that he was the drummer for Arbouretum the night I saw them do their 45-minute rendition of Sister Ray. That prompts questions about the mysterious figure who held up the Subterranean cue cards a la Bob Dylan, and the joint that got passed around (which I passed on)…

2. …when out walks the bass player in that band. I recognize him right away, but already I forget the name.

3. ‘Cine (Scene?) was there too. Short for Francine.* I have no idea how to spell it, but I’ve met her before, and even had her and some friends at my house for an after-party, just last week.

4. One of what turned out to be 2 or 3 different blokes named Matt. This one was lanky, had a t-shirt with a top ten list, tuned in to popular culture, and he turned out to be a connoisseur of comic books.

5. The dude in the Cubs shirt, who looked familiar. Never did place where from, but he said he was in some videos. And you, I said, to the man sitting next to him on the bench, you look familiar too…

6. …’Have you seen Lost? he asks. Immediately it clicks. “The Man In Black.” Are you really him? “I’m really him” he says. Whoa. This was the dude in Lost. I take a picture:

I walk inside, and meet up with:

7. Dave, the bartender, whom I’ve seen countless times before. He’s in the band Celebration. They were signed to 4AD, and I squee’ed over that one night when I was drunk, embarrassingly. Dave is always who he is. Simply. Authentic.

8. Monica. Sitting next to her at the bar, I make conversation so that I don’t deny her claim on being human, just as I am. She’s winding down for the night. Her companion Raul is around here somewhere…

9. …Raul walks up, with a handlebar mustache. The compliment is obligatory, so I pay it, but to my credit, I do resist making a reference to Rollie Fingers.

10. In walks Jamie, who wouldn’t be here if I hadn’t called him. An insurgent social studies teacher on summer break, he makes the scene. He’s lived here forever, and knows the names, the labels. I was just blowing smoke (does that make me a [smoke] monster?) earlier; it is Jamie who’s seen the death of cool. And still he stands up to be counted: a Scene Man. But he doesn’t start and end there. He too is vulnerable to a truer reality… but I will not betray the secrets of the Confidence Man.

At this point I was officially part of the scene.

Best Coast: This Is Real

11. Another Matt.

12. The “Canton” crowd (in other words, the ones you’d find on Canton Square on weekends here in Baltimore)- i.e. the “frat” folks in the bar playing Toto on the jukebox and singing like it’s karaoke night. They draw the gentle scorn of my table, and now they’re coming near…

13. …and one of them tells me his name (forgotten… sorry)… and says to vote for a particular candidate… ew, politics, yuck….

14. …and a second “Canton” dude introduces himself to me, whom I later introduce myself to properly, and his name turns out to be “Steve-O” [sic]. The hipsters I was with couldn’t have hung with this conversation, but I actually find myself entranced by Steve-O’s tale: at just 24, he can no longer raise his left (throwing) shoulder above his neck (and yes, he demonstrates). Just a short while ago, there was a deal on some table somewhere worth 1.5 million dollars. He could have pitched for the Atlanta Braves farm system. But after his old man beat the shit out of him (and I swear to our loving Lord above, I can not reveal the reason why in this blog, to respect his privacy and all, but rest assured it is absolutely harrowing), he blew out his shoulder and no longer can throw 93 mph, or throw at all for that matter. For this he blames his dad, and baseball (“I fucking hate baseball” he says). But his mother is a saint, and by the way she’s running for office, and that’s why he’s up here from Florida, and one can only conjecture why he’s made himself so drunk this evening… the poor guy can barely form a sentence… my heart actually cries for him…

Codeine: Barely Real

15. Matt’s female friend, an old Baltimore fixture, whom Jamie knows. She barely gives me the time of day. So that’s all I will say about her.

16. Which leads me back to ‘Cine. I compliment her hat (it is cute on her). I extend all the expected courtesy of someone who has been under my roof. But then she trounces my one brush with fame: “Oh, the ‘Man In Black’? That guy’s a poser. He’s just Jimmy from the hood; I’ve played foosball at his house…” So it wasn’t Titus Welliver? I think to myself, but he seemed so authentic… Does that make him the Man In Grey? No – I know who he is. He’s the Man in a Gaussian Blur…

And then when the bouncers throw us out for the night, and we’re ready to disperse, ‘Cine almost comically announces her plans for an after-party in a manner that was clearly meant to bypass my detection… Well, what do you know, I am being brushed off. And I have done nothing to besmirch the coolness factor here, at least not by any standard I have ever been shown.

Which leads me to the end of this exciting evening in Baltimore. I was seething at that moment, to have it topped off by such insolence. But that begs the question: who am I? Am I someone who demands respect? Have I really seen the death of cool? I felt like years 30 through 35 brought about that death, and I no longer needed to posture. I have no will to preen. Yet tonight, I was proven wrong. I hate to say it, but ever since I left my neighbors’ house this evening, I felt like I was posing for a pin-up poster that’s already been outgrown, torn down, and labelled past-due.

In the end, I am a misanthrope. I don’t have the patience for the post-post-post- crowd, and I’m sick of all the disclaimers. Just admit you’re a stinking, scheming animal. Make the Scene regardless of how it seems. And if you’re the Man In Black, call a spade a spade. Be the Devil and be done with it. But if you have some good in you, be authentic.

The Louvin Brothers: Satan Is Real

*Not her real name.

It wasn’t quite a riot on the Sunset Strip, but Ariel Pink brought a piece of L.A. with him this year, and the following night my roof collapsed. Coincidence? Maybe.

Last year he and the Haunted Graffiti came through Baltimore, but this year it was DC only. Last year it was a yellow sweatshirt with an orange bunny rabbit on it. This year he brought the glam. Last year it was a tinty boombox three rooms removed; this year it was supersized woofers and tweeters wired straight to the brain.

In one short year, Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti have become the live show of the summer. Opening with the sleazy beatnik swirl of “Hot Body Rub,” with the delay on the sax bouncing off the walls of the Rock and Roll Hotel, landing a few songs later on “Menopause Man,” the crowd yelping along with cross-gender lyrics against a sulky pulse, and peaking on the tremendous “Round and Round,” the band sustained that rare high you get at one, maybe two shows each year, where the sound that falls forth in waves feels predestined.

In one short year, the group have emerged from a lo-fi smog that never really suited their sound, and have released a landmark album, Before Today, on 4AD, which has immediately become a measuring stick for all left-of-center efforts to channel psychedelia through a pluralistic musical landscape. On one end of the FM dial, I can almost hear Mike Love solo drivel (“Can’t Hear My Eyes”); on the other end, a Peter Hook-ish bass line drives the portentous “Revolution’s A Lie.” All of this is interpreted in a way that would fit nicely on a Nuggets compilation. The album might be the largest step forward since Deerhoof followed up Milkman with The Runners Four in 2005. You can tell it’s the same band, but the smog has lifted.

(The show was a week ago now. As I mentioned above, my roof collapsed the next night, and I have been computer-less until now; I blame Ariel Pink for all of this.)

Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti: Round And Round
Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti: Butt-House Blondies

The pulsing, screaming A-side is a straight take on an ended love affair. At his best/worst, Simon Le Bon is excruciatingly obscure, but this lyric is surprisingly literal: “Where are you now? / ‘Cos I don’t want to meet you / I think I’d die / I think I’d laugh at you / I know I’d cry / What am I supposed to do, follow you?” Yeah, we’ve been there. But I can’t help feeling that the young Le Bon struggles to turn it on its head, and it’s all a bit “post-breakup by rote.”

The one line that intrigues me is the one that references the slow burn: “It always takes so damn long before I feel how much my eyes have darkened.” That is what I want to hear about. Instead we get a wimpy second verse, referencing clichéd “signs of love life scattered” on a table, reflecting only slightly below skin level, asking meekly “what did it all mean?” No, Simon, I want to hear about the darkened eyes. Look underneath the lids. Go below the floorboards, through the muck. Lie low, let it fester, look it full-on in the eye. Rummage through it along with the rats.

It’s so much easier to be by oneself. Relating to other strange creatures is a constant strain. So many relationships become a power struggle. It is so easy to abuse or to be abused – the scales tip ever so slightly. Relationships are damaging. How does the mind process the damage? I am going to attempt to briefly process mine right now. Right here on this blog! (Roll up, roll up!) This might end badly. Here goes.

Piece #1:
Organisms can be really, really small.
You can’t always see them with the naked eye.
Take germs for instance.
This girl I knew had a conversation with her father about organisms,
except she used the word “orgasms” by mistake.
Soon thereafter she realized what she had done, and she was mortified.
I laughed as she told me this, but years later I realize that I too, am infected.

Piece #2:
Although there’s no proof,
I’ve always assumed that certain things exist:
A key under my pillow, below even where I placed a tooth, wrapped in mesh;
A rounded toe upon which my body balances;
A pinpoint of light;
Exactly half the distance, and half again;
Two people synchronized in movement and sound;
The fleeting memory of a fish, fully-colored and flecked, just before it’s gone;
A map of the flecks;
Preservation;
An impervious library of accidental sounds;
The inevitable reset;
A catalogue of individual sparrows;
An illustrated collector’s edition of sparrows;
A subset of sparrows I’ve seen, with footnotes;
A deluxe edition of each organism, at once exclusive and free for all;
Converging orgasms at the very tip;
The secrets of the open mouth;
The purest scream;
A world of unending Now.

Piece #3:
I explained that my brain has misfires.
As I explained, I bumbled.
Oh, she knew so well her own misery,
her disgust.
It infects us.

Piece #4:
Ian McCulloch once said about Radiohead, that no one who knows would ever use a word like “Android” in a song title.
I think “organism” is one of those words, but what do I know?
I ridicule my every word.

Ummmm…. OK. So that was a bit of fun. “Fun with Catbirdman as he trawls through bottom drawers and back doors in search of the darkening eyes…” Ironically, I ended up examining the brightened, widened eyes of a child for the bulk of it… I was trying to set up a contrast, but I don’t think it quite came through. Anyway…

A few notes on the remix itself: I took quite a few liberties here with the cut-and-pste approach. I took snippets and laid them in different points in the measures; I added kick drum accents here and there; I isolated certain frequencies and added effects. It ended up pretty shoegazey with that extended, noisy middle section. I’m actually quite happy with this remix, and my only disappointment is that the momentum is robbed somewhat at the end — it should have ended a minute earlier.

Duran Duran: Careless Memories [Catbirdman Version]

This single featured not one but two solid B-sides. My remix of Khanada lengthens the intro and reprises it before the final chorus. It’s purely an extended version. Fame, on the other hand, has some fun with the descending “fame, fame, fame…” vocal part and the wailing guitar, and a few other little tricks. This David Bowie cover reminds me that I started a thread a while back, mapping Duran Duran’s influences from The Velvet Underground through the 70s up to their first single… well, I never did quite finish that, and now I’m jumping ahead. Maybe I’ll pick that up again…

Duran Duran: Khanada [Catbirdman Version]
Duran Duran: Fame [Catbirdman Version]

• Artist: The Catbirds
• Tour: Subanimal Sounds Record Release
• Date: Thursday, March 4th 2010
• City: The Catbirds in Chicago
• Venue: The Hideout
• Address: 354 West Wabansia
• Venue phone: 773.227.4433
• Country: US
• Admission: $10
• Age restrictions: No Minors
• Box office: 773.227.4433
• Notes: Featuring Detholz! and Thad Salter Opening for Baby Teeth
• Add to Google Calendar | Download iCal

My group, aptly named the Catbirds (I am, after all, Catbirdman), has a new album coming out very soon. It should be available on my band site within the next few weeks, and physical copies will be in my hands in the next few days. This album, Subanimal Sounds, is the cumulative result of 20 years of backlogs, logjams, listlessness, and unfinished lists. One item on the list has now been checked off, thank God.

The above artwork, fashioned in a dark and woolly place by the great Kurt Lightner, fits the songs perfectly. My music draws from blurry impressions of sources, from half-remembered 70s TV soundtracks and devoured mice left on the doormat, to Beach Boys in the background of the sub shop that my Dad took me to on Saturday mornings, to the haze of self-awakening and the obscure forms that accompanied 90s shoegaze, to the singalongs for one that whirl through my head as an adult, singing to my cat like a fool.

Ah yes, the cat. I have driven away more than one woman when the revelation was made: I write songs about my cat. More accurately, my cat shows up in songs that are more deeply focused on other things: mainly the good old human condition. Why animals speak, how animals speak, if they speak at all, and what it might signify. The animal will. The decomposing guts and bones of a fresh kill. I do not apologize about writing songs about my cat. Her name is Addie, by the way.

If you’re looking for RIYL types of comparisons, well, the easiest frame of reference is Belle And Sebastian. I don’t usually explore the soft pink underbelly of soft rock as purely as they have, but I have been known to adopt the type of “hard melody” usually credited to the Beatles and onwards, appropriating it into a more wistful and stark setting There’s a similar humor in my songs, and this, too, has driven away many women in my life. I do not apologize for my humor. Here’s a song that in my mind illustrates the Belle And Sebastian connection:

The Catbirds: Looking Alive

The Beach Boys are the other easy reference point, and the modular wackiness of When you had babies is an example of that; it was in my mind coming from the Smiley Smile fantasy world of little pads and gentle jungles:

The Catbirds: When you had babies

My songs get dark. I often visit not just the cat, but the prey. I try to find out what happened to the prey, where it went. Every now and then I find myself in the loneliest place imaginable. I’ve written about that, and it is on this album. Sometimes it’s raw (“Wild Cat of Borneo”), sometimes it’s calloused (“Eyes in the dark”), and sometimes it’s a sadness bordering on elation (“The Eternal Meow”). Sometimes it’s naff (the various “chants” and interludes on the album), but don’t tell me that to my face.

The Catbirds will be playing a show to promote this CD, Thursday, March 4 at the Hideout in Chicago. We’re honored to support Baby Teeth and their fabulous brand of spastic stomp and bad-ass kitsch. The Catbirds feature members of the Chicago group Detholz!, and while we can’t promise the same amount of glorious spectacle (I can only dream…), we do hope that at least some of you will respond by throwing underwear onto the stage. It’s a natural response, after all, to psycho-cerebral musings on the existence of the Soul and the various levels of animal life, as told through cute little songs I sing to my kitty cat.

So please, come one, come all to the Hideout on March 4. There will be Baby Teeth merch for sale, and there will be Subanimal Sounds. If you like the samples in this post, we hope you will come out for the live offering and/or check the Catbirds’ website for streaming music, an EP for sale, and the album, which will be available there by mid-March. And even if you can’t stomach songs about a cat, well, just come around to see the Detholz! lads and to get blown away by Baby Teeth. See you then!

Catbirds band site: http://catbirdman.com/
Hideout main site: http://www.hideoutchicago.com/
Baby Teeth band site: http://www.lujorecords.com/artist.php?artistid=39
Baby Teeth MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/babyteethmusic
Detholz! band site: http://www.detholz.com/
Detholz! blog: http://detholz.wordpress.com/
Detholz! MySpace:  http://www.myspace.com/thedetholz
Facebook event page:  http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=289529616916&ref=mf

January is already in the books, and were it not for my lackadaisical bachelor ways, the songs would have been posted weeks ago. But I had a Natty Boh or three to drink, and a friend or two to see, and I had to sleep as well, and, well, let’s just be grateful they’re here at last. So without further ado, here are the January songs…

Dave Crozier starts off with a greeting to a former, or would-be lover, a fanciful desert mirage named Vera. He chose to play to his strength: taking on a dubious narrator’s voice, telling deluded tales of skewed romance. The narrator is never to be trusted in a Crozier song, and often times the narrative is told second hand, or seen from a distorted reflection. In this case, our protagonist reveals how often he has listened to a cassette recording made by the titular Vera, wearing it out as he wore out his heart. “You can’t put the contents of your life on a cassette,” the narrator moans, yet he must believe you can, or at least he searched over and over for the bottom line as he oxidized that C-90 that Vera gave him years back. Out of necessity, the singer writes in the present, but what ends up in the forefront are the contents of what has been lost over the course of many years. Loss is key to this song, I think. The singer saw a different future, which became the lost past, yet he won’t let go. A nice start for Mr. Crozier, a misty snapshot, a sketch of lost connections. Can’t wait to see what February holds.

Dave Crozier: Hello Vera

Mr. Catbirdman’s January song is called “Lesser Lights – see the lyrics here. In a nutshell the song is about what lasts and what doesn’t last, and what doesn’t last outlasts that which does. These efforts we make, the flashes and sparks, the rises and falls of celebrities, some known the world over (for now), some worshipped in nooks, unseen by others, and all of us trying to be heroic and bright. Me, I write songs. But who cares? Who will care a hundred years from now? No matter, it doesn’t stop me from writing. Nor should it.

The Catbirds: Lesser Lights

I had a conversation about our true selves,
the aspirations of artists and money-makers,
the children in our schools,
and the dead among us.

I met some early thirty-somethings,
artists, teachers, listeners —
Jamie, Jason, Bryson (known as Bill),
this post is for you.

It takes three decades to learn about your choices,
where they put you,
how that works.
100 years ago kids went to work at fifteen,
fixing on careers years earlier,
staring at their lot in life.

We of the Technological Age,
wondering in the wanderlust of block parties and book clubs,
floundering but funny,
well-fueled:
Empty, aren’t we?

Not really, no.
The dead still inspire the living.
Even my late friend,
even Christopher Tucker,
dead before 40,
never made it big,
even he speaks and points the way.

After the Industrial Revolution we trained children to work in factories.
That infrastructure is now dead,
but it’s still what we teach.
Some people have a genius for making money.
Some people write it all down.

I just wander and watch.

As I said, this is quick and unfocused.
I just wanted to document some of the themes that ran through my evening here in Baltimore, where I met some local musicians, remembered the dead (find rest, Gram Parsons), and pondered vocations and the inherent political baggage that each one brings.

Not that it pertains to anything in particular, but I will leave you with two songs by Baltimore artists that came up in conversation.

Arbouretum: Thin Dominion
Beach House: Take Care

Lesser lights will play out like loud celebrities
on stage in a forgotten age
Whether the world will stay in its orbit or it
withers away with a bang one day
could be fodder for a gossiping
writer’s scathing exposé
Lesser lights shine on all the same
in the darkest days

Lesser lights on a hill
a city in vain
Lesser lights in a pill
dissolving away
Take one for the pain

Lesser lights have made up all my songs
an immortal mistake while I was barely awake
Time has a scythe that takes out
my billy club and siren shake
with a spear that’s a fake
I could die and rise up again
with an adroit plié
Lesser lights are a rousing refrain
of legerdemain

Lesser lights are swill
a drunkard’s stain
Lesser lights can kill
and they can stay the killing for days
We’ll all burn away

01 Lesser Lights (demo)

Watch this space.