Apples in Stereo -- "Beautiful Machine Parts 1-2" (2007)

And you know nobody knows you better

Leave the light on in your room

One of my friends recently posted a video on YouTube that consisted of shots of post-tornado Joplin accompanied by the U2 song, "Where the Streets Have No Name."  Here's a link to that video.

For at least a day or two after the May 22 tornado, many of the streets of Joplin literally had no name.  That's because the street signs had all blown away.

The destruction in certain areas was so complete that even the people who lived there couldn't find their way home.  (I just thought of a song I could have used with this post.)  The visual landmarks had been so thoroughly obliterated that one block was impossible to distinguish from the next.  

Necessity is the mother of invention, they say.  One thing that the people in Joplin did after the tornado was to spray-paint street names on curbs and intersections:

Here's the intersection of 27th and Grand, facing north:

Many people -- or perhaps their insurers? -- have spray-painted their name, address, and their insurer's name on their houses:

The city has planted little street signs at many intersections.  Here's an example of a sign I saw at 20th and Delaware – the spelling leaves a little something to be desired, but it's close enough for government work:

Someone turned this abandoned love seat into a street sign.  (Speaking of spelling, I think it's "Moffett" – perhaps this person should have used a full-sized sofa, not a love seat.)

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I saw a lot of other signs as I walked the streets of Joplin last week.  Some of them -- like this "open house" sign -- were attempts at black humor:

This one's a little tricky.  Remember the NBC "Deal or No Deal" game show that was on the air a couple of years ago?  Remember the metal briefcases they used on that show?

But most of the signs I saw were serious.  Some were messages intended to reassure friends and families.

Here's another one:

And one more:

We'll stop here for now, but there will be more signs from post-tornado Joplin in the next 2 or 3 lines post.

Click here to listen to today's featured song, "Beautiful Machine Parts 1-2," by the Apples in Stereo.

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

Apples in Stereo -- "Skyway" (2007)

Fists loaded with a furious disdain

Your ferocity will be your shame
Fast motion like a curious flame
The best I can do is to turn my back on you

I went to Joplin last weekend.  (I used to say "Joplin, Missouri" when discussing my hometown -- unless I was sure that the person I was speaking to was familiar with Joplin.  I don't have to do that any more.  Just plain "Joplin" is enough now.)

After spending hours walking through the neighborhoods where the May 22 tornado wreaked so much havoc, I have only two simple questions:

1.  Why?

2.  Why not?

My first question is really "Why did the deadliest tornado of my lifetime strike the city where I grew up (and where my parents still live), plowing right through its midsection city, from its western border to its eastern border, as if it had been computer-programmed to do as much damage as it possibly could?" 

My second question is really "Why did it not destroy my parents' home, which stands less than 1000 feet south of houses that were completely wrecked?"

My answer to the first question is "I don't know."  That's my answer to the second question, too.

However, I do know one thing: no one else knows the answers to those questions either.

While I was in Joplin -- while I was taking long walks through my "half-erased" city (to quote an R.E.M. song written about New Orleans, but equally applicable here) -- I couldn't think about anything other than "Why?" and "Why not?"

My parents live at 2327 Alabama in Joplin -- their house is on the northeast corner of the intersection of 24th and Alabama.  Click on the "View larger map" link below  or simply click here for a larger map of their neighborhood -- everything north of 22nd Street on that map is gone.

Here's a picture of the house that is directly across 24th from them -- 2401 Alabama.  As you'll see, it sustained some roof damage, and perhaps some damage to the interior as a result of that roof damage.  (The residents of 2401 have written "Home is where family is" on the sheet of plywood that is covering up a broken window, and "Every day is a good day" on the roofing paper they are using to cover up what appears to be a badly damaged roof.)  My parents' house -- which was closer to the path of the tornado -- somehow suffered less damage.    

Here's 2209 Alabama -- only 8 houses (barely 1/10 of a mile) north of my parents:

Here's 2119 Alabama -- about a dozen houses north.  (Where that minivan is used to be a garage.)

Here's the next house (2115 Alabama):

Here's 2103 Alabama:

And here's 2102 Alabama, directly across the street from 2103:

Here's another house on Alabama -- sorry I don't have the exact address, but there wasn't enough left of this home to spray-paint four numbers on it:

I walked by these houses every day that I was in Joplin.  And each time I walked by them, I asked myself "Why?" and "Why not?"

I'm sticking with my plan of featuring songs from the Apples in Stereo's 2007 New Magnetic Wonder album in each of the next few posts.  Those songs really have nothing to do with what happened in Joplin -- if there are songs out there that somehow capture the essence of the May 22 tornado that killed over 140 people and caused an estimated $3 billion in property damage, I don't know what they are.

Having said that, the lines that are quoted above aren't a bad description of a tornado.

Here's "Skyway" by the Apples in Stereo:

Here's a link you can use to buy this song from Amazon:

Apples in Stereo -- "Open Eyes" (2007)

Now you lie here with open eyes and

Now you sleep by the phone

Now you lie here with open eyes and

Now you weep on your own

Now you lie here with open eyes and

You know you're not alone

We'll get to this song a little later, but (as my grandmother used to say) we've got bigger fish to fry first.

Legendary country music star Waylon Jennings was a 21-year-old guitarist for Buddy Holly's band who initially had a seat on the airplane that Buddy Holly chartered to fly from Clear Lake, Iowa, to Moorhead , Minnesota in February 1959.  But Jennings gave up his seat to J. P. "Big Bopper' Richardson, who was suffering from fly symptoms and didn't want to ride the bus that would carry the rest of the musicians who were touring with Holly to Moorhead.  

When Holly learned that Jennings was going to ride the bus instead of flying with him, he said, "Well, I hope your ol' bus freezes up."  Jennings responded, "Well, I hope your ol' plane crashes." Those words, though said in jest, haunted Jennings for the rest of his life.

Jennings had one of the most notorious cases of survivor's guilt, he was far from the first person to suffer from feelings of guilt after surviving a traumatic event when others did not.  "Survivor syndrome" is sometimes called "concentration camp syndrome" because many who lived through the Holocaust reported experiencing a variety of symptoms -- including anxiety, depression, and sleep disturbances -- resulting from the guilt they felt about surviving when family members and friends did not. 

One of my Joplin friends who survived the May 22 tornado that killed over 140 people, injured almost a thousand others, and destroyed about 2000 homes and businesses told my daughter (who is a newspaper reporter) that she was feeling overwhelmed by survivor's guilt.  I'm sure she's far from the only survivor in Joplin to have such feelings.

I was feeling guilty last week as well, although my guilt was something different from survivor's guilt.  I spent the Memorial Day weekend on Cape Cod, where my wife's mother and late father bought a beach house over 60 years ago, and where we go every Memorial Day with our kids.  I was born on May 30 -- which used to be Memorial Day every year -- so we usually celebrate my birthday there as well.

My 85-year-old parents, who live in Joplin, survived the tornado without injury.  Their house (which is only a few blocks from 20th and Range Line Road, where the tornado peaked in intensity) was damaged but remained essentially intact.  They could have stayed there if they hadn't lost electricity and water.  Fortunately for them, they were able to secure a hotel room the next day.

After monitoring the situation for a couple of days, my sister and I agreed that she would go to Joplin the Friday after the tornado struck to be with them for a few days, and that I would visit them the following Friday to help them fix up the house and do whatever else I could do for them.  That meant I could still go to Cape Cod with my family.

So I wasn't really feeling guilty last weekend on account of not being in Joplin to help my parents -- my sister is at least as capable of handling whatever needed to be done as I am, and it made more sense for us to go at different times than be there together.

What I was feeling a little guilty about was enjoying a gorgeous Cape Cod weekend in a very comfortable beach house with my kids -- riding my bike on the Cape Cod Rail Trail every day, filling up on the local seafood, and just enjoying the beautiful old houses and colorful flowers.  

I devoted a fair amount of time to watching the television coverage and searching for newspaper articles, photos, and videos online.  The Facebook group that was created for our 40th high school reunion in Joplin last summer was the place where I spent the most time.

Click here to read what I think is the best newspaper article written about the Joplin tornado.  (The New York Times sent several reporters to Joplin, including A. G. Sulzberger -- who father is the newspaper's publisher, and whose grandfather and great-grandfather were the publishers who preceded him.)

Click here to read the second-best article on the tornado.  (Sorry, Caroline -- I can't play favorites here.) 

Fortunately, it appears that most of my classmates and friends came through the tornado in reasonably good shape.  But I have no doubt that even those who live a good distance north or south of the storm's path were traumatized by the experience, and that the damage the city has suffered will make everyday life very difficult for them for a long, long time.

I moved away from Joplin after finishing school.  My parents never left, so I go back once or twice a year to visit them.  Losing so much of the city where I spent the first 18 years of my life and that is still my home in a way that no other place will ever be has certainly affected me.  But whatever distress I am feeling pales in comparison to what the people who live there are suffering.

Ordinarily, I post a lot of photos to Facebook when I'm on Cape Cod -- everything from beach scenes and sunsets to pictures of 200-year-old churches and houses.  But I didn't do much of that this past weekend.  It didn't seem quite right to be posting photos depicting my carefree vacation weekend in such a lovely and comfortable locale.

So this post contains only pictures of wildflowers I saw growing near the bike trail I rode on -- bits of beauty that owe nothing to humans.  

I spent more time that I should have trying to come up with a song with lyrics that said something about the Joplin tornado.  There are plenty of obvious choices -- "The Wind Cries Mary" by Jimi Hendrix, or the Doors' "Riders in the Storm" or even Sinatra's "Summer Wind."  Or I could have picked a song like "The End" by the Doors, which is not literally about wind or stormy weather, but which is suitably creepy and apocalyptic.

But no song can do justice to what happened in Joplin on May 22, so I'm not going to try to find one that does.  On the other hand, I'm going to be looking at the world through Joplin-colored glasses for a long time, and there are a lot of songs with lines into which I could read a Joplin-related meaning.

"Open Eyes" is a good song that I rediscovered while riding my bike this past weekend.  Let's just leave it at that, and not try to read too much into the lines I quoted above.  This song is part of this post not because it has any particular relation to what happened on May 22, but because every post on this blog starts out with a few lines from a song, and ends with links to that song.  

I rediscovered several other really good songs on the Apples in Stereo's New Magnetic Wonder album while riding my bike last weekend, and I'm going to write about a couple of other ones (as well as introduce you to the band) in my next couple of posts.  Those songs won't have anything to do with the tornado either.  As Freud once said that sometimes a cigar is just a good smoke, and sometimes a song is just a song.

Everyone I've spoken with who was in Joplin when the tornado hit or has visited since then has told me that it's impossible to describe what the city looks like today -- that you simply have to see it for yourself.  As of right now, my curiosity is running very high.  But I've heard enough to feel considerable dread of what I will see when I arrive there.

Here's "Open Eyes."  The music video features video of NASA's "Helios" aircraft, an  experimental unmanned solar-powered flying wing that once reached an altitude of almost 100,000 feet.  I have no idea why.

Here's a link you can use to buy the song from iTunes:

Here's a link you can use to buy it from Amazon:

N.W.A. -- "Straight Outta Compton" (1988)

Straight outta Compton
Crazy m*therf*cker named Ice Cube

From the gang called "Niggaz With Attitude"

When I'm called off, I got a sawed-off

Squeeze the trigger, and bodies are hauled off

With those lines, Ice Cube kicked off the first cut on the first album by N.W.A. – which stands for Niggaz With Attitude.

Straight Outta Compton was the first great gangsta rap album, and it achieved double platinum status without much help from radio airplay or MTV exposure. 

Compton is an incorporated city in Los Angeles County – close to the city of Los Angeles, but not part of it.  It was virtually all white until 1950 or so.  Compton is now identified with youth gangs and rap music in the minds of many people, but it has also produced a number of famous athletes – including tennis stars Venus and Serena Williams.

Ice Cube

N.W.A. was formed by Eazy-E (Eric Wright), a former drug dealer from Compton who started a record company with some of his ill-gotten gains.  The other members of the group were Ice Cube (O'Shea Jackson), Dr. Dre (Andre Young), and DJ Yella (Antoine Carraby).  MC Ren (Lorenzo Patterson) joined the group shortly after graduating from high school, just in time to contribute to Straight Outta Compton.

N.W.A. didn't last long.  Ice Cube, who wrote most of their debut album's lyrics but didn't think he got his fair share of the profits, left the next year.  He went on to have a successful solo rap career and an even more successful movie career. 

Dr. Dre

After the group's second album was released in 1991, Dr. Dre left.  His first solo album – The Chronic – was a huge hit for the new Death Row Records label.  Dr. Dre later started his own record company, Aftermath Entertainment, and produced albums for rap superstars Snoop Dogg, Nas, 2Pac, Eminem, 50 Cent, and Jay-Z.  N.W.A. never released a third album.

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It's something of an understatement to say that "Straight Outta Compton" is an angry song.  Each of the group's three main MCs (Ice Cube, MC Ren, and Eazy-E) contribute a verse, and it's hard to say which one is the most violent and offensive.

The most controversial song on the album was "Fuck tha Police."  An assistant director of the FBI wrote to N.W.A.'s record label about that song, taking exception to what he perceived as the group's advocacy of violence against law enforcement officers.  (That letter is on display at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.)

I think the best song on Straight Outta Compton is "Express Yourself," which doesn't talk about AK-47s or use profanity.  Dr. Dre handles the vocals, and shows he is as good an MC as he is a producer.

Click here to listen to "Express Yourself."

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Straight Outta Compton is included on a lot of "Greatest Albums" lists.  It was the first rap album to get a 5-star rating from Rolling Stone magazine, which subsequently called it a "bombastic, cacophonous car ride through Los Angeles' burnt-out and ignored 'hoods."  (Sounds a little like my son's "Grand Theft Auto" video game.)  Comedian Chris Rock rated it the best hip-hop album of all time.

Kid Rock paid tribute to the album in his 1999 hit, "Cowboy":

I ain't straight outta Compton

I'm straight outta the trailer

And an anonymous guy with a can of spray paint paid tribute to it on the approach to the bridge that takes the Cape Cod Rail Trail over Route 6 in Harwich, MA.  A very weird coincidence – I discovered the message and took this picture while riding that trail the day after writing the first draft of this post.  

(Note how the artist ran out of white paint and switched to purple for the last several letters.)

Click here to listen to "Straight Outta Compton."

Here's a link you can use to buy it from Amazon:

LCD Soundsystem -- "Drunk Girls" (2010)

Drunk girls know that love is an astronaut

It comes back, but it's never the same

James Murphy, a 41-year-old American, is a singer, musician, songwriter and record producer.  He is the creative force behind LCD Soundsystem, a "dance-punk" band that released three amazing albums before dissolving just a couple of months ago.

When LCD Soundsystem performed live, Murphy was accompanied by a half-dozen or so other musicians.  But the group's albums were pretty much all Murphy.  He not only wrote the songs and did the singing, but also played drums, guitar, bass, piano, organ, and assorted other keyboard instruments.

James Murphy, the man behind LCD Soundsystem 

"Drunk Girls" was the first single off LCD Soundsystem's third and final album, This Is Happening.  Someone sent me the official video for this song a few months ago.  I thought it was my Grand Exalted Senior Executive Big-Ass Contributing Editor or whatever the hell her title is.  (If that wasn't her title before, it is now.)  

She vehemently denies it.  I'm not entirely convinced that she's correct because that would mean I was wrong, and I'm not entirely convinced that I've ever been wrong.

Anyway, this video is SPECTACULAR.  (Take my word for it -- you'll be much better off skipping The Hangover (Part II) and Bridesmaids and just watching the "Drunk Girls" video.)  That really comes as no surprise, because James Murphy is brilliant, and so is the video's director, Spike Jonze.

A word about Spike Jonze, who was born Adam Spiegel in 1969 in Rockville, Maryland (home of 2 or 3 lines until I get kicked out of my house, which could be any day now). 

Jonze/Spiegel has had a remarkable career.  He was a BMX biker and a skateboarder and helped start Homeboy and Dirt, two "youth culture" magazines.  (Dirt was once described as "Sassy magazine for boys.")  He has directed numerous TV commercials and three movies -- Being John Malkovich, Adaptation, and Where the Wild Things Are.  He also acts -- his most prominent role was in the movie Three Kings.

Here's a scene from that movie featuring Jonze and George Clooney:  

Jonze has directed a number of music videos (for musicians as diverse as the Beastie Boys, the Breeders, Daft Punk, Fatboy Slim, Kanye West, Notorious B.I.G., and Weezer).   He was once married to fellow director Sofia Coppola (daughter of Francis Ford Coppola, and the first American woman director ever nominated for an Academy Award). 

Jonze deserves to burn in hell for being one of the creators of the Jackass television show.  On the other hand, I probably deserve to burn in hell for putting this picture on 2 or 3 lines:

(Can you believe I have a lot of female readers?  At least I used to have a lot of female readers.  The last post and this one may have changed that.)

If you are the kind of person who expects a music video to "mean" something, there's no point in you watching this one.  For the rest of you, enjoy:

Click here if you want to buy "Drunk Girls" from iTunes.  (To tell the truth, you'd be better off just bookmarking the music video.)

You can use this link to buy the song from Amazon:

Kanye West (feat. Mos Def) -- "Drunk and Hot Girls" (2007)

Driving around town looking for the best spot

For the drunk and hot girls

Up in the club -- looky here what we got! 

Some drunk and hot girls

Stop dancin' with your girlfriend 
And come dance with me

Stop talkin' 'bout your boyfriend 
Since he is not me

Stop running up my tab 
'Cause these drinks is not free

You drunk and hot girl

Call up the Guinness folks, boys and girls.  We've just set a new record for the fewest times 2 or 3 lines heard a song before writing a post about it: one!  Actually, it's more like 0.7 -- I never got to the end of the song until after I had started the post.

Here's the deal.  I'm riding my bike today, with my iPod on "shuffle," and suddenly I hear Kanye West sing the opening line of this song: "We go through too much bullshit/Just to mess with these drunk and hot girls."  

At the Rubicon

He pretty much had me right there.  By the time Yeezy got through the second verse, I was saying to myself "Alea iacta est!" -- "The die is cast!" (As my fellow classicists will know, that is what Julius Caesar declaimed when he crossed the Rubicon River and entered Italy proper at the head of the 13th Legion, violating Roman law and precipitating the bloody civil war that ended with Caesar prevailing over Pompey's forces and becoming the dictator of the Roman empire).

My son gave me Kanye's Graduation CD (which sold 437,000 copies the very first day it was released in 2007) as a Christmas present.  I immediately put a few of the singles from the album on my iPod and I've listened to them a lot.  But I don't think I ever listened to the entire album.  So although I've owned this song for several years, I think today was the first time I had heard it.

Musically, "Drunk and Hot Girls" is a waltz performed at a sluggish tempo -- almost as if the singer is a bit drunk or disoriented.  It samples a song by a German progressive rock band that includes the phrase "drunky hot bowls," which Kanye claims he thought was "drunk and hot girls."



The song tells a cautionary tale of a young man in a hurry.  Like so many other young (and some not-so-young) males, Kanye is trying to cut to the chase here and bypass the usual courtship rituals.  

Drunk and hot girl

Instead of going to a club and plying a young hottie with alcohol, Kanye goes looking for a hottie who is already loaded.  That is often an effective strategy, saving time and money.


This time, it doesn't work out.  The drunk and hot girl that Kanye zeroes in on  annoys him by talking too much about her boyfriend.  And she's not drunk enough -- he has to buy her more drinks.

Hot but not drunk girl

Things soon go from bad to worse:  

I don't wanna drop your friends off, I just want you

You drunk and hot girl

You wanna sit down but we hit the drive-through

You drunk and hot girl

Please don't fall asleep, baby, we almost back

Please don't throw up in the car, we almost crash

Oh now you sober, how'd I know you'd say that?

You drunk and hot girl

In other words, things quickly go from bad (she wants Kanye to drive her friends home and then stop at a restaurant before getting down to business) to worse (it looks like she is going to throw up in his car) to worst (she sobers up before he can close the deal).  Quel désastre!

Drunk but not hot girl

Before I bring this post to a close, permit me to share an anecdote about an old girlfriend of mine who was also drunk and hot -- a little more drunk than hot, I will admit.  

On New Year's Eve 1972, I was sampling the nightlife in my hometown of Joplin, Missouri, with a good friend and our dates when my female companion -- who was a bit of a binge drinker -- urgently instructed my friend to pull his very nice car over to the curb.  Fortunately, he was able to stop the car in time for her to open the back door and ralph into the gutter rather than spewing all over his back seat.  My friend was not a fan of this young lady either before or after this particular incident took place, and I will never forget him saying to me "Pard, you've got to do something about her" later that evening.

Here's "Drunk and Hot Girls":

Here's a link you can use to buy this song from iTunes:

Here's a link you can use to buy it from Amazon:

Sparks -- "This Town Ain't Big Enough For The Both Of Us" (1974)

This town ain't big enough for the both of us

But it ain't me who's gonna leave!

I used to have a real weakness for tongue-in-cheek pop songs with overly clever lyrics full of bad puns and "in" jokes and over-the-top theatricality.  I'm talking about bands like 10cc and City Boy and especially the Sparks.

I picked up three Sparks albums while I was in law school.  Kimono My House (released in 1974) was their third studio album and was a big success in the UK.  (Kurt Cobain supposedly said it was one of his favorite albums of all time.)  Propaganda (1974) and Indiscreet (1975) were also quite successful.

The "Kimono My House" album cover

I played those records a lot, and I'm surprised that this wasn't sufficiently annoying to my dorm neighbors to cause someone to punch me in the mouth.  (Assault and battery – two torts and a crime!)  Sparks is fun music, but it's not the sort of thing that is likely to be well-received by overcaffeinated, hypercompetitive law students without a speck of sense of humor.

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Sparks consisted of two brothers – Ron and Russell Mael – and a bunch of other guys who came and went.  Ron, who dressed in odd but relatively conservative clothes and affected a stiff and somewhat robotic persona on stage, played keyboards and wrote nearly all the group's music.  He sported a Hitler-style mustache (later modified to a pencil-thin mustache) and somewhat resembled Hitler, except he wasn't as good-looking and didn't have Hitler's charming personality.  

The Maels boys then

Russell, who was a fairly typical-looking rock star, helped Ron write some of their songs, but his main role was lead singer.  He sang in a very distinctive falsetto voice and jumped around the stage like a big crazy spaz.

I'm using the past tense here even though the Sparks are still recording and performing.  That's because I've paid no attention to the 17 albums Sparks released after the three that I own.  

I do know that in 2008, they performed all 21 of their albums in successive nights in London.  (They recorded another album in 2009, which makes my math come out right.  Did you really doubt me, dog?)

The Maels boys now

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"This Town Ain't Big Enough for the Both of Us" was the band's biggest hit single – it reached #2 on the UK pop singles chart.  The lyrics were undoubtedly inspired by  James Thurber's famous short story, "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty."

In that 1939 story, Walter Mitty – a mild-mannered suburban husband – accompanies his wife on their weekly shopping trip.  He has five heroic daydreams, each of which is inspired by some mundane aspect of the shopping trip.  

For example, Mitty reads a magazine article about German air power and starts to daydream that he is a Royal Air Force pilot flying a suicide mission against the Nazis.  Later, his driving past a hospital triggers a fantasy that he is a world-famous surgeon performing a very tricky operation.

The first four of Mitty's daydreams are interrupted (usually by Mitty's wife) just as they are getting good.  The last one is not interrupted but ends badly.  Instead of an exciting daydream, it turns out to be a frightening nightmare.

In the Sparks song, a routine airline trip causes the singer to have a fantasy that he is the bombadier of the "Enola Gay," the airplane that dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima.  The simple act of taking a shower causes the singer to imagine he is in an exotic foreign town, shooting it out with his enemies during a pouring rain.  Just as in the Thurber story, there are five distinct scenarios.

Click here to listen to "This Town Ain't Big Enough For The Both Of Us."

Here's a link you can use to buy the song from Amazon: