Dandy Warhols – "Bohemian Like You" (2000)

I really love your hairdo, yeah
I'm glad you like mine, too,
See we're looking pretty cool

[NOTE: I gave birth to 2 or 3 lines on November 1, 2009.  That means we'll be celebrating my wildly popular little blog's tenth birthday in just a few weeks.

I've decided to devote October to resurrecting some of the most significant 2 or 3 lines posts from its first year – which was probably its best year.  

Without further ado, here's a cleaned-up version of only the sixth post to appear on 2 or 3 lines.  It was originally published on December 5, 2009.]

*     *     *     *     *

Eight or nine years ago, while I was walking through the music department at Borders after getting my hair cut, I heard the then-new Dandy Warhols' CD (Thirteen Tales from Urban Bohemia) playing on the in-store sound system.

The first song from that CD was great. The second song was great. So I  immediately bought the CD:

If you knew me well, you'd know how out of character this is for me. I rarely respond immediately to new music – I have to hear it several times before it starts to grow on me. Plus I'm kind of cheap. (I don't buy books, I go to the public library. And I don't buy many CDs – I borrow them from my friends and my kids, or I go to the public library.)

*     *     *     *     *

David Allan Coe, an "outlaw" country-western singer who claims he spent time on death row for killing a fellow prison inmate who demanded oral sex from him, had a big hit in 1974 with his recording of the Steve Goodman song, "You Never Even Called Me By My Name." 

Coe said that Goodman told him he was sending him the perfect country and western song to record. But after reading the lyrics, Coe told Goodman that a song that failed to mention the singer's mother, trains, trucks, prison, and getting drunk could not purport to be the perfect country and western song. 

So Goodman wrote this new verse for the song:

I was drunk the day my momma got out of prison
And I went to pick her up in the rain
But before I could get to the station
In my pickup truck,
She got runned over by a damned old train

*     *     *     *     *

If you were writing the perfect Los Angeles (henceforth, "L.A.") song, what are the analogous key elements that you would just have to mention? 

It's been a few years since I've been to L.A., but I used to travel there frequently, and so I feel qualified to offer my list:

1. An obsession with physical appearance.

2. Cars. (Anyone who grew up listening to the Beach Boys and Jan & Dean and reading Hot Rod magazine knows that cars are a crucial part of L.A. culture.)

3. Wannabe actors/musicians who wait tables (preferably at a restaurant featuring vegan food, or food from an obscure third-world country) while waiting for their big break.

4. Romantic/sexual relationships where money or career advancement is the primary motivation for at least one of the parties.

By that definition, "Bohemian Like You" is pretty much the perfect L.A. song.

*     *     *     *     *

The lines quoted at the beginning of this post cover the physical appearance element. 

By the way, remember I said I had just gotten a haircut when I heard this CD for the first time? I'm such a creature of habit that I've gone to the same woman for haircuts for about 25 years – if she's booked up when I call, I'll wait a week or two. Before that, I went to her ex-husband for 10 years or so until he went into a different line of work. (They used to have a shop in a small town about 30 miles from where I live – and I would drive there in rush-hour traffic rather than take a chance with someone different.) 

The Dandy Warhols in 2003

And speaking of being a creature of habit, have I told you that I've made myself the same dinner almost every Monday and Tuesday night since 1992?

*     *     *     *     *

Here are the lines about cars:

You got a great car
What's wrong with it today?
I used to have one, too

Here's the part about working in a restaurant until you get a movie role or your band makes it big:

So what do you do?
Oh yeah, I wait tables, too
No, I haven't heard your band
Because you guys are pretty new

And last but certainly not least, here are the lines about the mercenary relationship:

Who's that guy just hanging at your pad
He's lookin' kinda of bummed
Oh, you broke up that's too bad
I guess it's fair if he always pays the rent
And he doesn't get bent
About sleeping on the couch when I'm there

*     *     *     *     *

Raise your hand if you think you know the gender of the singer and the person he is talking to, boys and girls. Who thinks we have two guys? Who thinks it's two girls? And who votes for one of each? (Don't cheat and watch the music video before you answer.)

It beats the hell out of me. The talk about cars would make you lean toward two guys. That would make it likely that the sexual relationships in the song were gay, but gays (at least according to popular stereotypes) are not into cars like straight L.A. guys would be.

The talk about hairdos would ordinarily make you think we had two chicks here, but this is L.A. we're talking about–- so it could still be two guys, or one of each gender. 

The Dandy Warhols in 2018

The fact that the two characters work at a restaurant and are in a band doesn't help us figure out their respective genders at all.

What about the guy just hanging at the pad? How does he fit in?

I'm guessing that the singer is a male and the person he is discussing hairdos with is a female – and there's no threesome involving the guy who has to sleep on the couch when the singer (presumably younger and better-looking than the guy on the couch, who is probably only allowed any privileges whatsoever because he pays the rent) spends the night.

But if you think the song is about two guys or two girls, I can't say you're wrong. Anything is possible. (The music video agrees with me.)

Forget it, Jake.  It's L.A. – anything's possible.

*     *     *     *     *

By the way, the song never mentions Los Angeles (or Hollywood or Beverly Hills or even the beach). The Dandy Warhols are from Portland, Oregon, so maybe the song's about Portland.

Naaaaaah. It's about L.A. One hundred per cent chance it's about L.A.

*     *     *     *     *

A final note. If you don't understand the references to "Bohemian" and "urban Bohemia," you can read all about it here. It's a French thing. ("Boho" is short for "Bohemian.")

Click here to watch the official "Bohemian Like You" music video.

And click on the link below to buy the song from Amazon:

Dandy Warhols – "We Used to Be Friends" (2003)

A long time ago

We used to be friends

But I haven’t thought of you lately

Yesterday’s 2 or 3 lines was about the Armistice that ended World War I almost exactly one hundred years ago.

I had planned to follow up with another World War I-related post.  But then I noticed today’s date.

*     *     *     *     *

At first glance, the lines from today’s featured song that are quoted above seem straightforward enough.  But upon further review, the meaning isn’t quite so clear.

Let’s begin with the first line.  What exactly do you think “a long time ago” means?   

If you’re a clock, time is an objective phenomenon.  (A second is a second, a minute is a minute, and so on.)  

But a clock can’t tell you what “a long time ago” is – that’s a much more subjective thing.  (If you’re riding a very scary roller coaster, two minutes seems like a long time.  But when you’re on vacation, two weeks seems to fly by.)  

I think most people would say that something that happened five years ago happened a long time ago.  

But I have vivid memories of certain events that happened five years ago.  They don’t feel like they took place a long time ago.

Funny how that works.

*     *     *     *     *

If you “used to be friends” with someone, you presumably are not friends with that person any more.

That means either that the two of you are enemies – or that the two of you are indifferent to one another.  I’m guessing that many more ex-friends are simply not friends than enemies. 

If you used to be in love with someone, it’s likely a different story.  I would bet that few ex-lovers are truly indifferent about one another.  (If you are, maybe you weren’t all that in love in the first place.)  

*     *     *     *     *

What are we to make of the last line quoted above – “I haven’t thought of you lately”?

“Lately” is no more capable of being objectively defined than “a long time ago” is.  So there’s an element of subjectivity here.

But more importantly, the lady – or the gentleman – doth protest too much, methinks.  

I won’t speak for you.  But if you hear me say that I haven’t thought of someone lately, you can bet the farm that I’m thinking of that person all the time!

*     *     *     *     *

I don’t think the lines above are meant to be taken literally.  For one thing, I think that the singer and the person he is singing to were more than simply “friends.”

If you ask me, what the singer of today’s featured song really means is that while it wasn’t all that long ago that he and the woman he loved split up, it feels like it was – and that even though their relationship has ended, he still thinks of her all the time.

The lyrics quoted above are an example of what the Greeks called antiphrasis – that is, saying the opposite of what you mean for rhetorical effect.

In other words, the lyrics are ironic.

*     *     *     *     *

Today’s featured song, “We Used to Be Friends,” was released in 2003 on Welcome to the Monkey House, which was the Dandy Warhols’ fourth studio album:

“Welcome to the Monkey House” is also the title of a 1968 short story by Kurt Vonnegut.  Here's how Wikipedia summarizes the plot of that story:

In the not-so-distant future, a criminal mastermind named Billy the Poet is on the loose and on his way to Cape Cod.  His goal is to deflower one of the hostesses at the Ethical Suicide Parlor in Hyannis.  The world government runs the parlors and urges people to commit suicide to help keep the population of 17 billion stable.  It also requires that the hostesses at these establishments be virgins on the basis that this makes the idea of suicide more appealing, especially to middle-aged and older men.  The government also suppresses the population’s sexual desire with a drug that numbs them from the waist down (but does not render them infertile, as that is seen as unethical and in violation of the religious principles of many).  This drug . . . was originally developed by a druggist who had been offended when, on a family outing to the zoo, his group were confronted by the sight of a male monkey masturbating.  

You younger folks out there will find this hard to believe, but people used to take Kurt Vonnegut’s writing very seriously.  (I’m not kidding.)

Click here to listen to “We Used to Be Friends.”

Click on the link below to buy the song from Amazon:

Dandy Warhols -- "Minnesoter" (1997)

I could own her, the crazy loner

If I found my way to Minnesoter

This is the third post in a series about my recent visit to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, with my parents.  Click here if you'd like to read the first post in the series (which featured a song by the young rapper, Mayo).  Click here if you'd like to read the second post in the series (which featured a song by the British group, Clinic).

(Did the penny just drop?)

While driving my parents from our hotel to the Mayo Clinic, I saw this highway sign:

I wonder if Winona Ryder's father saw the same sign 42 years ago, when his wife was great with child.  You see, Winona's parents -- her real last name is Horowitz -- were living in Olmstead County (which includes Rochester) when she was born.  They named her after Winona, which is a town of some 28,000 souls located on the Mississippi River less than an hour's drive east of Rochester.

Winona Laura Horowitz had an interesting family.  She was given her middle name in honor of the wife of Aldous Huxley, who wrote the famous dystopian novel, Brave New World.  Winona's younger brother, Uri, was named for Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, the first man to travel into outer space.  

Christian Slater and Winona Ryder in Heathers

Her father once worked as an archivist for the guru of LSD, Dr. Timothy Leary, who was Winona's godfather.  The family was also friendly with "beat" poets Allen Ginsberg and Lawrence Ferlinghetti and science-fiction novelist Philip K. Dick.  (Winona later starred in A Scanner Darkly, a movie based on the Dick novel of the same name.)

When Winona was seven years old, her family relocated to a commune in Mendocino County, California, where they lived with seven other families without electricity or television.

She read a lot -- Catcher in the Rye was her favorite book -- watched movies on a screen that her mother set up in the commune s barn, and began to take acting lessons in San Francisco when she was 12.

A very young Winona Ryder

Winona adapted the stage name of Ryder because her father was listening to Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels when her agent called to ask how she wanted to be identified in the credits of her first movie, Lucas, which was filmed when she was only 14.

Ryder has appeared in just about every kind of movie you can think of.  When I hear her name, I immediately think of oddball characters in oddball movies -- like Beetlejuice, Heathers, Edward Scissorhands, and Reality Bites -- but she has also appeared in movies based on famous literary works (The Age of Innocence, Little Women, The Crucible), chick flicks (How to Make an American Quilt, Autumn in New York), and science-fiction and horror movies (Dracula, Alien Resurrection, Lost Souls).

One of Ryder's best performances came in the 1999 drama about life in a mental institution, Girl, Interrupted.  That's not surprising because it seems like like Ryder is pretty crazy in real life -- not surprising  given her rather eccentric upbringing.  

That craziness really came to the forefront in 2001, when Ryder was arrested in Beverly Hills after shoplifting $5500 worth of merchandise at a Saks Fifth Avenue store.  (Saks is an expensive store, but $5500 worth of stuff is a lot of stuff -- I'm a little surprised she could carry it all by herself.)  Ryder was also accused of possessing Valium and a couple of pain medications (oxycodone and Vicodin) without valid prescriptions.  

It's possible that Winona's erratic behavior was the result of her recent breakup with Matt Damon.  Or it might go back to her somewhat less recent breakup with Johnny Depp, who ranks just as high on the crazy scale as Winona does.  (Depp got a tattoo reading "Winona Forever" on his arm when they were dating.  After they broke up, he altered it to "Wino Forever.")

Winona Ryder didn't live in Minnesota that long, but I like to think that her years in the "Land of 10,000 Lakes" had some influence of her craziness.  

I've written before about the cheery, polite, and utterly clueless residents of Minneapolis-St. Paul.  I still remember taking a walk on a trail that went around one of the numerous small lakes in the Twin Cities on a visit there a couple of years ago.  I noticed that the locals were sunbathing on what appeared to be beaches bordering that lake, but which turned out on closer examination to be 100% unadulterated dirt.  Apparently they didn't know that beaches consist of sand, not dirt.

I saw other evidence of this cluelessness on my more recent visit.  Here's a water fountain I saw in the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport.  It is specially designed so you can fill up a water bottle.  The water fountain actually counts how many times people use it -- there's a small meter built into the upper right-hand corner of the water fountain that indicates this fountain has filled up 4090 water bottles.  

It makes a big deal about how many plastic water bottles it is keeping out of the local landfills, but I've never had much of a problem filling up a water bottle from a regular water fountain.

Here's a thought -- why not just drink directly from the water fountain until you're not thirsty?  When you get thirsty again, just get up and walk over to the water fountain for another drink.  (I've never taken a water bottle to the airport, and I don't recall it being that inconvenient to stay sufficiently hydrated.)

One more thing -- this water fountain was outside the security checkpoint.  Have you ever tried to take a filled bottle of water through airport security?  (You have?  Care to tell the class what happened when you did?)

Before flying back home at the end of my Mayo Clinic visit, I took a hike through the Minnesota River National Wildlife Refuge in Minneapolis.  I'm sorry, but it was the most unattractive outdoor area I've ever taken a hike in.  

I saw absolutely zero wildlife that morning -- except for this very tame hawk in the visitor center:

Maybe that's because the wildlife refuge is only a few minutes away from the Mall of America (the largest shopping mall in the United States) and the airport.  Planes took off over the refuge every couple of minutes -- if you look closely, you can see one in this photo, which also shows some of the many suburban office buildings and airport hotels visible from the refuge trails:

No wonder there were no birds or other wild critters around.

The entire Danish army appeared to be checking in at a Delta gate in the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport that afternoon:

(I can just hear the disappointment in the soldiers' voices when they return to dear ol' Denmark and are asked by their friends and neighbors where they went.  California?  New York?  Florida?  "No," they reply sadly. "Minnesoter.")

I saw some puzzling sights in Rochester as well.  For example, there's a 50,000-gallon water tower that was built to resemble a very large ear of corn just a block east of that Winona highway sign at the beginning of this post:

I'm not sure what use the Snappy Stop burger carryout (which feature "California-style" burgers, whatever those are) puts these critters to:

I dropped into the 63 Club to wet my whistle with good ol' Grain Belt lager a couple of times.  Apparently, dogs are just as welcome as people at this friendly establishment.

I'm not sure why there were hundreds of dollar bills with handwritten messages on the walls and ceiling of the 63 Club.  But I was glad to see that they had a strict dress code:

(It you can't read that sign, it's just as well.  It would probably offend you.)

"Minnesoter" is from the Dandy Warhols' second studio album, The Dandy Warhols Come Down.  Another Dandy Warhols song was the 7th song featured on 2 or 3 lines -- we're now well over 500 songs.

Here's "Minnesoter":

Click here to buy the song from Amazon:

Dandy Warhols -- "Bohemian Like You" (2000)

I really love your hairdo, yeah
I'm glad you like mine, too,
See we're looking pretty cool


Eight or nine years ago, while I was walking through the music department at Borders after getting my hair cut, I heard the then-new Dandy Warhols' CD (Thirteen Tales from Urban Bohemia) playing on the in-store sound system.

The first song from that CD was great. The second song was great. So I  immediately bought the CD:

If you knew me well, you'd know how out of character this is for me. I rarely respond immediately to new music – I have to hear it several times before it starts to grow on me. Plus I'm kind of cheap. (I don't buy books, I go to the public library. And I don't buy many CDs – I borrow them from my friends and my kids, or I go to the public library.)

*     *     *     *     *

David Allan Coe, an "outlaw" country-western singer who claims he spent time on death row for killing a fellow prison inmate who demanded oral sex from him, had a big hit in 1974 with his recording of the Steve Goodman song, "You Never Even Called Me By My Name." 

Coe said that Goodman told him he was sending him the perfect country and western song to record. But after reading the lyrics, Coe told Goodman that a song that failed to mention the singer's mother, trains, trucks, prison, and getting drunk could not purport to be the perfect country and western song. 

So Goodman wrote this new verse for the song:

I was drunk the day my momma got out of prison
And I went to pick her up in the rain
But before I could get to the station
In my pickup truck,
She got runned over by a damned old train

*     *     *     *     *

If you were writing the perfect Los Angeles (henceforth, "L.A.") song, what are the analogous key elements that you would just have to mention? 

It's been a few years since I've been to L.A., but I used to travel there frequently, and so I feel qualified to offer my list:

1. An obsession with physical appearance.

2. Cars. (Anyone who grew up listening to the Beach Boys and Jan & Dean and reading Hot Rod magazine knows that cars are a crucial part of L.A. culture.)

3. Wannabe actors/musicians who wait tables (preferably at a restaurant featuring vegan food, or food from an obscure third-world country) while waiting for their big break.

4. Romantic/sexual relationships where money or career advancement is the primary motivation for at least one of the parties.

By that definition, "Bohemian Like You" is pretty much the perfect L.A. song.

*     *     *     *     *

The lines quoted at the beginning of this post cover the physical appearance element. 

By the way, remember I said I had just gotten a haircut when I heard this CD for the first time? I'm such a creature of habit that I've gone to the same woman for haircuts for about 25 years – if she's booked up when I call, I'll wait a week or two. Before that, I went to her ex-husband for 10 years or so until he went into a different line of work. (They used to have a shop in a small town about 30 miles from where I live – and I would drive there in rush-hour traffic rather than take a chance with someone different.) 

The Dandy Warhols in 2003

And speaking of being a creature of habit, have I told you that I've made myself the same dinner almost every Monday and Tuesday night since 1992?

*     *     *     *     *

Here are the lines about cars:

You got a great car
What's wrong with it today?
I used to have one, too

Here's the part about working in a restaurant until you get a movie role or your band makes it big:

So what do you do?
Oh yeah, I wait tables, too
No, I haven't heard your band
Because you guys are pretty new

And last but certainly not least, here are the lines about the mercenary relationship:

Who's that guy just hanging at your pad
He's lookin' kinda of bummed
Oh, you broke up that's too bad
I guess it's fair if he always pays the rent
And he doesn't get bent
About sleeping on the couch when I'm there

*     *     *     *     *

Raise your hand if you think you know the gender of the singer and the person he is talking to, boys and girls. Who thinks we have two guys? Who thinks it's two girls? And who votes for one of each? (Don't cheat and watch the music video before you answer.)

It beats the hell out of me. The talk about cars would make you lean toward two guys. That would make it likely that the sexual relationships in the song were gay, but gays (at least according to popular stereotypes) are not into cars like straight L.A. guys would be.

The talk about hairdos would ordinarily make you think we had two chicks here, but this is L.A. we're talking about–- so it could still be two guys, or one of each gender. 

The Dandy Warhols in 2018

The fact that the two characters work at a restaurant and are in a band doesn't help us figure out their respective genders at all.

What about the guy just hanging at the pad? How does he fit in?

I'm guessing that the singer is a male and the person he is discussing hairdos with is a female – and there's no threesome involving the guy who has to sleep on the couch when the singer (presumably younger and better-looking than the guy on the couch, who is probably only allowed any privileges whatsoever because he pays the rent) spends the night.

But if you think the song is about two guys or two girls, I can't say you're wrong. Anything is possible. (The music video agrees with me.)

Forget it, Jake.  It's L.A. – anything's possible.

*     *     *     *     *

By the way, the song never mentions Los Angeles (or Hollywood or Beverly Hills or even the beach). The Dandy Warhols are from Portland, Oregon, so maybe the song's about Portland.

Naaaaaah. It's about L.A. One hundred per cent chance it's about L.A.

*     *     *     *     *

A final note. If you don't understand the references to "Bohemian" and "urban Bohemia," you can read all about it here. It's a French thing. ("Boho" is short for "Bohemian.")

Click here to watch the official "Bohemian Like You" music video.

And click on the link below to buy the song from Amazon: