I’ve Never Even Been to L.A.!!!!
(a brief sidetrack into fiction)

At a sidewalk café, a gnome-like busboy sets a table. It’s quiet on the street, midmorning. Women in futuristic sunglasses walk by with bags, tasteful bundles, dogs in purses, and delivery boys ride by on their bicycles. The busboy lays down a fork and turns, picks up a white tablecloth, folded, and flings it out in front of him. It snaps out and luffs down, and he lays it gently on the last table. The lunch crowd will be arriving soon--

There is a distant rumbling, a quiet-getting-louder rumble, the engine of a car moving fearfully fast. The busboy squints down the street: he sighs and shakes his head. “Dios mio,” he mumbles. He scurries into the restaurant, behind a concrete support post, and braces himself--

Then there is a car (!), an angular red car (!), and the rumbling is now a ripping, too loud and then! The car vaults the curb and hits the street sign on the corner. The driver splashes gracefully through the windshield, onto the sidewalk, knocking over tables in a shower of splintered glass. The street sign is gilded gold (Hollywood and Vine), and it stands unmoved. The remains of a Ferrari ignite around it. Then there is quiet, except for the faint whisper of burning car.

The busboy tiptoes out of the restaurant toward the driver, who is slowly standing up. The driver is brushing himself off and he is shaking his head.
“That was awesome!” he says.
A concerned maitre’d has appeared from the dark of the restaurant:
“Are you OK, Mr. Lee?”
Tommy chuckles. “Hell yeah!” he says. He walks over to the burning frame of his car, split nearly in half, and circles around it, surveying. “I’m really running out of cars here!” The rearview mirror is dangling by a wire, and then it drops to the street with a metallic clatter. “These things aren’t cheap, and we all know my records aren’t selling like it’s ‘86!” He laughs loudest at this. “Hey, is there any way you could call me a tow truck?”
The maitre’d nods. “Absolutely, Mr. Lee. One will be here in a moment.”
“I’m sorry this keeps happening,” Tommy says, as he starts to hobble off. “I really am.”
“Mr. Lee, your head’s bleeding profusely…”
Tommy swipes a hand across his forehead, and looks down to check it out. “You know you’re right?” He throws his head back, laughing loud. “Hot damn!” he shouts. The maitre’d motions for the glass to be swept, the tables righted, but the busboy is already sweeping. The maitre’d disappears into the dark restaurant.

Minutes later, the wreckage is gone and the forks are replaced. The busboy stands in shadow behind his support post, watching all. An aging producer sits by himself, reading the trade papers and sipping a grapefruit mimosa. He is famished, and he waits impatiently for his mango-infused crab-encrusted crème brulee. He hasn’t eaten in a week; he hasn’t worked in a year. A comely blonde is sitting in the corner of the patio, and she is making a call on her microscopic cellphone. This is her first day in L.A.! An emaciated brunette (she’s been here for a year) is sitting on the other side of the patio, and her phone rings shrilly. She looks at the caller-ID and shakes her head.

“Jessica, where are you? I’ve been waiting for, like, five minutes!”
From the other side of the patio: “What are you talking about, Madeleine? I’ve been waiting for you for, like, five minutes!”
“Whatever, tramp!” says a smiling Madeleine. “So what are you doing?”
“I’m just sitting here reading Catherine Zeta-Jones’s autobiography. It’s really, really good.” She takes a sip of her passion-fruit daiquiri: she pokes her eye with the mini-umbrella.
“She wrote a book?” Madeleine asks.
“Yeah, US Weekly says she’s a genius with words. It’s all about her struggles with the paparazzi. Oh, and her eating disorders. It’s an inspiring story of a woman’s struggle to assert herself in a male-dominated industry. That’s what People says, anyway. I’m only on page 9.”
“That is inspiring,” says Madeleine, as she drops her fork. The busboy is at her side, laying a new one on the table. “I’m kind of using her career as a model for my own.”
“OH MY GOD, MADELEINE!” shrieks Jessica. “ME TOO!”
Madeleine pulls the phone away from her ear, frowning. “You don’t have to yell, Jessica, I’m right here. On the phone.”
“Sorry,” says Jessica. “It’s just that she was a pop star, and then she was a movie star, and then she married a movie star! And that’s exactly how I want my career to be! But music is my first love, of course. I can’t wait to get a record deal!”
“Tell me about it,” says Madeleine.

The aging producer has just ordered another grapefruit mimosa, and on that dead-empty stomach, he’s feeling the buzz. A runner (the busboy’s cousin) brings him his mango-infused crab-encrusted crème brulee from the dark of the restaurant.
“Ahhhh, food!” he thinks. “And crab-encrusted too! My favorite encrustation!”
He gobbles the first bite, the second bite, the third, but then he stops. He frowns. He motions for the busboy. “You can hardly taste the mango infusion!” he says. “It may as well be infused with guava, for all I can tell. I can’t eat this!”
The busboy nods, and takes away the offending dish.
“Guess it’ll be another week before I eat,” thinks the producer. “Oh well!”—

Jessica shrieks!
Madeleine shrieks!
Her hand now shaking wildly, Jessica stage-whispers into her phone: “Oh my God, Madeleine! You’ll never guess who I’m looking at right now—Anna Nicole Smith is walking right towards me! And she’s got her whole camera crew following her around!”
Madeleine is shaking too, and she’s practically yelling into her phone: “That’s nothing, Jessica! Kelly Osbourne is walking towards me! And she’s got her whole camera crew too! This is the most amazing thing ever!”

Up Vine walks Anna! Up Hollywood: Kelly! Indeed, camera crews follow each, in a hurried swarm that circles around each eye: Anna! Kelly! Big, lumbering cameras sit on shoulders, and packs of lowlies are circling and focusing and shushing the people on the street. Key grips run around the fringes managing wires, and best boys hold bottles of imported water and their own headshots, which they hand out at random as they walk (“Kevin Halsey Miller—actor, singer, dancer. I’m a triple threat! Kevin Halsey Miller—actor, singer, dancer. I’m a triple threat!”). The swarm surrounding Anna is getting closer to the swarm surrounding Kelly!

“OH MY GOD!” whispers Jessica. “This is my big chance!”
“What are you talking about?” whispers Madeleine. “This is my big chance!”
They both leap up at once and, snapping their phones shut, run out to the street—
“Jessica!”
“Madeleine!”
“I didn’t even know you were here!”
“I didn’t even know you were here!”
Madeleine swipes wildly at Jessica’s face with her inch-long nails, and Jessica throws a pointy elbow into Madeleine’s newly-botoxed cheekbone. As Madeleine doubles over, Jessica sprints over to the two camera swarms, now face to face at the corner—

“Heeeeeey, Kelly,” says Anna. “I love your show! Don’t you just love mine?”
“Fuck you, cunt,” says Kelly, the pink tips of her black hair ablaze.
“That’s assault!” shouts someone from Anna’s camp. “That is verbal assault!”
“But Kelly,” Anna drawls. “Why’re you so mad with me?”
She curls her lip up into a big, medicated pout.
“Oh don’t act like you don’t know, you whore!” shouts Kelly—
The busboy brings the bill out to the aging producer. He has now finished the second mimosa, and he sways dangerously in his seat--
“Oh my goodness, I completely forgot Muffy,” says Anna. She reaches into her blouse and pulls a tiny dog from the depths of her bosom. The dog is holding a bottle of pills in his jaw, wrestling with it. “No you don’t, you naughty Muff. Those beauties are for Mommy!” She pulls the pills from his jaw, uncaps, and then empties the bottle down her gullet. “That should do,” she says dreamily—

Jessica has reached the cameras first, and she spreads her arms out, opening herself up to her adoring public. “Finally!” she says as an aside. “And here I was thinking I’d have to give handjobs to get walk-on parts at UPN!” She clears her throat, and (holding a finger in one ear) hums a note (d-sharp). Then she sings!
“And then a hero comes along, with the strength to carry on…”
“Who the fuck are you?” shouts Kelly, turning.
Keeping the same melody, Jessica sings: “I’m a singer and a star, only you don’t know me yet, but soon you will and so…”
“Will somebody shut her the fuck up?” Kelly shouts.
“Oh I don’t know, Kelly,” says Anna. “Her lyrics’re kind of puuuuuuurdy…”
Now Anna is rocking back and forth, in time with Jessica, with stringlets of drool swaying from the corners of her mouth.
“I said, ‘Shut her the fuck up!’” yells Kelly.

Handlers and hangers-on run gingerly over to Jessica, but Jessica swats them away with superhuman strength. “Not today, you faggots!” she growls. “Today is about Jessica Alba-Henderson!” Anna’s stylist is thrown high through the air, but he tucks into a perfect barrel-roll as he hits the ground—he works nights as a stunt double for Lorenzo Lamas. Five-hundred dollar jeans are ripped down one thigh, but it’s actually OK because it gives the jeans street-cred. A Sidekick is trampled tragically underfoot—

Still with the singing, near-operatic now: “And you cast your fears aside--”
“Seriously, Keeeeelly,” says Anna. “What’s the matter? Why’re you always so mad, kitten?” Her eyes are heavy-lidded, and she’s humming along with Jessica’s singing now.
“He’s got bloody Parkinson’s!” she shrieks. “And he’s married! To my bloody Mum!” She advances on Anna--

Out of nowhere there’s an abrupt end to the singing! Another tussle begins! Madeleine has recovered, and in a sprint she’s collared Jessica with a flying leap. They roll around on the pavement, pulling out tufts of each other’s over-treated hair—
The busboy, seeing the commotion, runs out to stop the catfight. He pulls Jessica’s arms back and yanks her away, but as he does she takes a wayward stiletto to the forehead. Jessica slumps over in the busboy’s arms, and Madeleine slips her shoe back on. She stands and glowers over the unconscious girl.
“Mom always said I was the star of the family,” she says. “Guess she was right.”
She turns from her lifeless sister to the cameras, now ready for her face time—

The aging producer, shifty-eyed, sneaks a bite of Madeleine’s untouched salmon and caramelized-pineapple baguette. He checks again to see if anyone is watching him, but the busboy was the only one around. Then he bails on the check and darts from the scene, clutching handfuls of napkin rings and silverware, his mouth still full--

Getting hit in the face must have re-triggered the toxins in Madeleine’s cheeks, because as she speaks, her face twists and contorts horribly. Every few seconds there’s another spasm, and it screws her face into a pucker and slurs her speech—
“Oh Romeo, oh Romeo,” she cries. “Wheyrefowre art thou Rhwomeo?”

Muffy is licking Jessica’s face, and the busboy is trying to shoo her away—

“I still don’t know what you’re taaaaalking about, Kelly,” says Anna.
“You slept with my father, you pill-popping blob!” Kelly shouts.
“No bubble-brains, that wasn’t me,” chuckles Anna. “That was Delta Burke!”
“But that’s impossible, I saw the camera crews in his bedroom…”
“Of course, silly-head!” Anna laughs. “She’s filming a reality show about her divorce from Gerald McRainey! The whole thing was on Fox last night! Didn’t you see?”
Kelly shakes her head, and begins to mutter oaths of vengeance on Delta Burke’s full-figure. Madeleine drops to a knee and then pops up to her tiptoes, back and forth manically, as she is playing both slurred parts of the balcony scene (“Twuht’s in a nerm? That itch we call a rhwose…”) Anna smiles beatifically and holds out her arms for a hug. Kelly sinks her face into the ample bosom—

Across the street, the maitre‘d has appeared from the restaurant to find an empty patio, three unpaid checks, and a busboy missing. He storms into the street and grabs the busboy by the collar—
“Did you let our customers walk out on their checks?” he asks. “Could you possibly have abandoned your post?” This he asks with mortal horror.
The busboy, still cradling the unconscious Jessica, can only nod slowly.
“YOU’RE FIRED!” the maitre’d roars--

Hand in hand, Anna and Kelly are now walking off down the boulevard. The camera crews follow closely, as does Madeleine, who’s still delivering her dialogue through fits of facial paralysis. Producers from each show are swapping phone numbers, so that they can combine footage later. They’re going to make this into a season finale, a very-special episode.
“Did you know that Delta Burke is Anna’s closest friend?” Anna’s producer asks.
“Really?” Kelly’s guy asks.
Anna’s guy nods, smiling strangely. “She knew that Kelly would be here today too. We had it all timed perfectly.”
“Really?”
Anna’s guy nods again, laughing heartily now. “Boo-yeah!” he shouts.
“Now that’s what I call good TV!” the other yells.
The producers high-five, then give each other bro-hugs--

The busboy takes off his black t-shirt, and places it under Jessica’s head. He lies her on the sidewalk, and from a payphone calls her an ambulance. He leaves his dirty washcloth on an empty table. Then he climbs onto a bicycle, parked in an alley beside the restaurant, and begins to ride off.
As he leaves he passes another crowd, this time of still photographers, jogging backwards in the other direction. The crowd slows, then stops. In the middle of the photographers (all dressed in bright nylon jogging suits), is Catherine Zeta-Jones. She is wearing big round sunglasses and gray sweatpants.
“Do you guys want anything?” she asks the paparazzi. “I’m gonna grab a water.”
The photographers shake their heads, murmuring their thanks.
“Oh, and fellas?” She turns back to the photographers. “When I come out, get one shot of me smiling and laughing, and then one shot of me really mad, like I totally hate you.
“OK?”

OMG, I Heart John Mayer


These are trying times for little sisters. Gone are the heady days of 1997, a mythical time when boy bands roamed the earth, and Carson still hosted TRL. Our unsinkable economy has tanked, as has the pop market that banks on kids with 20 bucks to blow. These days, Justin’s rocking a fedora and a starlet, Britney’s been Dursted and then twice-betrothed, and Backstreet’s back--back at the theme parks and burger joints that spawned them. So what’s a little sister to do? Certainly not dig into her older brother’s record collection, a shining pillar of taste and refinement; no, that’d be too easy. My guess? Your little sister’s been listening to the wonder-bread stylings of John Mayer and Jason Mraz.

John Mayer wears white button-downs, and he bats his eyelashes just so. His videos feature audience shots of girls shrieking and swooning, even though you know they just had their braces tightened and they’ve got a quiz first period. One of his songs has the lyric “We’ll swim in a deep sea / of blankets”; if that wasn’t a line written during study hall, I don’t know what is. And how would a deep sea of blankets work anyway? Seems like you’d get all tangled up. Maybe that’s part of the metaphor! (Right now, little sisters everywhere are rolling their eyes and huffing: “Whatever, you just don’t understand his poetry,” they’re saying. “He’s totally sensitive.”).

Whenever people describe his voice, they use words like “husky” or “smoky”. I’m surprised they don’t use words like “lukewarm” or “painfully blatant Dave Matthews rip”—which, by the way, is about as lukewarm as it gets (lukewarm squared? Law of diminishing returns much?) Maybe ‘02 was a slow year for music, because his debut was nominated for an assload of Grammy’s; amazingly enough, he lost to Norah Jones (lukewarm to the lukewarmth power). Better luck next year, Johnny.

Jason Mraz is one mellow homeboy, a boogie-boarder on the great wave of life. I know this because of the totally carefree angle of his trucker cap. When he tells me in his single, “I won’t worry my life away!”, it’s like, “Hey Jason! Why you gotta point out the obvious?” Jason just wants to kick back on the porch, crack open a brewski, and listen to Ben Harper songs on repeat. And what’s so criminal about that? Christ. Jason is that guy, that miserable guy at the party who always brings his acoustic guitar. You know that guy? The one who comes in and turns off all the music, and then makes you listen to him butcher “Wish You Were Here”? After the fifth time he sings the chorus, you want to bash his fucking guitar and put the Digital Underground back on, but you don’t because he’s Jenny’s little brother, and Jenny’s a stone fox. Right?

I think the thing I hate most about this kid is that he named his single “The Remedy”. The remedy? After listening to it a few times, I’m pretty sure the remedy involves taking time to appreciate your pals, and the good times and stuff, just maxing and relaxing. Thanks, brah. If you’ve got the remedy, then may I have the plague from now until eternity.

It’s really not that I have anything against these guys, per se. They play mind-blowingly mediocre music, and they angle for the sensitive suburban high-school crowd. There’s nothing wrong with that, I guess, it’s just not my thing. Mraz is just a harmless little troll, Opie with a guitar and a record deal. That’s fine--his discs will line bargain bins for years to come. Johnny Mayer, on the other hand, seems to have real talent, and so my actual beef is probably with him. He went to the Berklee School of Music, is articulate and charming in interviews, and is in the position to put out some really good stuff; why then must we suffer through these awful teen-crush ditties? Every song he puts out is like watercress on matzoh. Can you throw me a dollop of mayo to spice shit up here?

Maybe it’ll take him time, and maybe his next album will be closer to Jeff Buckley than Richard Marx. The sensitive white-boy thing can be done well, but it can’t be pandering, and it can’t be safe. It seems like the guy’s so worried about mass appeal that he’s turned into the dreaded Radio-Friendly Unit Shifter, and that’s a fate worse than death.

It is possible too that, like the little sisters say, I just don’t get it. After all, this music wasn’t made for me, so who am I to criticize? My little sister thinks it’s the bomb-diggity, and maybe I should just defer to her wisdom. She’s got the albums, she’s got the posters, and I’m pretty sure I found a big heart drawn on her notebook, with E.G. + J.M. 4 EVA written inside it. Fuck it then. If it’s good enough for my little sister, it’s good enough for me. Jason Mraz and John Mayer are more than OK in my book.

JK, I still totally H8 them! LOL!

Unknown Pleasures

I have this friend, a weird little kid who dresses up like a mod and worships Andrew WK. He’s the guy I always end up with at the party, on the gamey loveseat in the corner, passing back and forth the last bottle of champagne. By this point someone has inevitably put on the Duran Duran, and the kids are raging right over us, crunching toes, and so we have to yell at each other over the din. The new Devendra record is brilliant! Really? Yeah! And British Sea Power too! Who? British Sea Power! They called their debut The Decline of British Sea Power! How badass is that?

It goes on like this every night, with the champagne and the bleary eyes, until one of us passes out, or my roommates drag me home. His taste is impeccable, his style refined. His parents are both storied academics, and he claims to be a cat person.

The other night we were yelling at each other, and he leaned in real close—
“I’ve got a confession to make,” he said.
“Oh yeah?” He passed the bottle and waited for me to swill the rest.
“Yeah, but you can’t tell anyone.” I crossed my heart, just trying to focus.
“I’ve been listening to a lot of Jamiroquai lately.” As he said this he winced, like a mutt beneath a rolled-up newspaper.
“Jamiroquai, huh?”
He nodded.
I smiled. “That’s great, man.”

Iron Maiden is not a guilty pleasure. People are always trying to say their dirty secret is heavy metal, especially Iron Maiden. They giggle a bit when they say it, and they fake like they’re blushing, but you know they don’t mean it. They aren’t really ashamed, because they know they haven’t confessed anything. Iron Maiden is not a guilty pleasure. Maybe they were, once, long ago, but by now they’ve been accepted wholesale, and they’ve become as legit as any T. Rex or Roxy Music. There’s nothing guilty about the Maiden, and people who try to pass them off as some dark secret are faking the funk—they’re trying to have their cake and eat it too. If you want to tell me something guilty, well by God do it. But when you make like you’re letting me in on a secret and give me Iron Maiden, then fuck off. Same goes for Cyndi Lauper, or Devo; these are not guilty pleasures. (And God help you if you try to admit to that Kelly Clarkson song—that’s just a great record, straight up.) You can’t have it both ways, chief. You’re either a cool cat who won’t admit to his dirty laundry, or you’re a badass who’ll cop to an unhealthy Jamiroquai obsession. You can’t be both though. You can’t confess to something that’s cool.

I suppose I should address another possibility, one far more terrifying than either of these—that a person could be guiltless, without any shameful Jamiroquai’s to cop to. I’ve been assuming that everyone has their secrets, and they either choose to admit or not, but it’s possible that some people don’t have any secrets at all, not a single guilty pleasure. Could you imagine? How boring it must be! Could such people exist, these robots programmed only for Pitchfork-approved music? No Soul Asylum? No Ja Rule? Come on, little Automaton! If you want to rock out to Lou Bega, then by all means do it. I won’t think less of you. Your friends won’t think less of you (unless they’re automatons too, in which case you deserve each other). No, I think everyone should have some good slutty secrets, a few Sugar Ray records hidden away somewhere.

Furthermore, I think people should be completely up front about them. Enough of this cool-cat bullshit, this snobbery and these impeccable record collections. Sure, The Kinks are transplendent, but they’re even cooler side by side with a Chumbawumba record. Alone they’re kind of boring: everyone’s got a Kinks record. It’s the imperfections that make things interesting. So you listen to Toby Keith in the shower? Wear it on a t-shirt. Cranking Slipknot when no one’s around? Shout it from the rooftops, tag it on a subway car.

There’s only one question left now, I suppose--what’s my own unknown pleasure? And I’m afraid, for the sake of a healthy blogger-to-imagined-audience relationship, that I can’t answer. Would you still respect me in the morning, if you knew I listen to “Trapped in the Closet, pts 1-87”, every morning before I brush my teeth? I’m supposed to keep up a certain level of decorum; my taste is impeccable, my style refined.

But fuck that. There will be no hypocrisy here, no hiding behind lame-ass expectations. I listen to some terrible shit. I can throw you a bone, and I’ll do it without a shred of dignity:

It’s Hootie. I’m a huge sucker for Hootie. “Let Her Cry”, “Time”, “Hannah Jane”, any of them. “Hold My Hand” is a little bit cheeseball, but it’s not like I’m gonna skip it when it comes on, right? I wasn’t a big fan of Fairweather Johnson, but Cracked Rearview was a stone-cold classic. I even liked Darius Rucker’s soul album from a few years ago. Is that guilty enough for you? Christ! Put that one in your pipe.

So are you sated yet, you vultures? I’ve laid myself bare, sinned against the critic’s nature, and now I lie down at your feet. Take your potshots if you will. Just promise not to tell anyone, OK?

Listen!
By King Rick Solomon

The voice doesn’t, in point of fact, actually know you. This is hard to accept.

Because it really does seem, when you’re listening to the bulky headphones late, late at night, that somehow, in some Twin Peaksy way, rock stars have been peeping in your sunless apartment windows. They’ve been cold-calling forgotten ex-girlfriends, reconstructing torn-up ATM receipts, tailing your taxi in that shadowy Impala a block back, sitting down to corned beef and cabbage with your charmed mother. It seems like the whole of life has led up to this freeze-dried moment, sitting cross-legged on this kitschy carpet, as this voice sings away the same ragged laments that seemed suffocating, just two and a half minutes before. Doesn’t it?

And it isn’t about an idol, a totem, a preening sex god in leather pants with one foot perched on the monitor. It’s about a buddy. It’s about the purest distillation of platonic love, from a coddled stranger in another universe, encoded in binary and then released again, poured through these plastic earmuffs like rainbows and unicorn breath. It’s about a voice that somehow knows everything true and just and terrifying, every answer that still seems to defy logic.

The voice becomes the best friend.

Coldplay has, quite possibly, the worst band name in recorded history. They have the combined edginess of a hamster. Chris Martin is one of the most defiantly generic lyricists of his generation, the lovechild of Joey Ramone and K.C. (of Sunshine Band fame). I never meant to cause you trouble/I never meant to do you wrong/Oh but if I ever caused you trouble/Oh no I never meant to do you harm”??? You can’t rhyme a word with the same word, guy.

They’ve become decent-enough songwriters, sure, but after 3 albums the formula has already laid itself bare—sensitive ballads that build to crashing peaks, thoughtful mid-tempo question marks, and blissful major-key anthems. Beyond that, they’ve refused to stretch in any direction. Do they ever want to rage? Do they ever want to write songs about fucking? Aren’t there any other notches in their emotional spectrum, outside of melancholy and bliss? And yet despite all of this, they are (aside from their big daddy U2) the biggest rock band on the planet.

Bright Eyes has a problem with—actually, there’s little that young Conor has a problem with. He’s actually pretty sweet. I guess if I had to find fault, he could do without those droopy eight-minute ambient noise pieces that he opens his albums with, the ones where he’s really saying, “I’m so sweet that you won’t turn me off, even though you know you want to.” Though getting better with age, he still drops into preciousness and self-indulgence and self-loathing far too easily (but I’m sure that’s part of his appeal for the satchel-toters and suicide girls, the Hello Kitty set). His electronic album was just this side of weak. His pronunciation gets too pronounced, too stylized and pretentious, even when he’s trying on a regular-ole drawl. Still—he might be the most important solo artist on the indie scene, and the fawning worship he inspires sometimes seems unreal, too intense. Indie boys want to mope like he mopes, and indie girls want to rip off his faded cowboy shirts with their teeth.

Phish was oftentimes phenomenal (when they weren’t enraging), but were they worth the life of ragtag devotion shown them by thousands of tourheads? Four unimposing goofballs put cheesy lyrics together with musical chops, secret ambition with a killer lighting guy, prog structures with endless jazzrock. They ended up with something that became religion to many people. Kids actually gave up their fucking lives to see every show, drove by night, parked in the lots and set up tables, to sell overpriced beer or gooballs or garlic grilled cheese or some shit, moving just enough product to buy the night’s ticket, the night’s drug. These kids lived like Dickensian orphans, just to hear a vaguely-nerdy jam band from Vermont.

These guys are the voices. These guys are the best friends (had you already guessed?).

It’s not anything native to the music, to the songwriting, to the actual sonic structure that’s most important here. Those things are important, yeah, but at heart it’s something so much more visceral and electric. It’s just the voice, quite simply. There’s something bleeding, dripping from the voices of these men, some pure texture that instantly passes on every bit of humor and memory, curiosity and experience and infinite sadness that hides in their skulls. You hear the voice, you know the man. Intimately. Watch the faces in the wash of red and white lights, eyes closed in silent prayer, listening to the gentle voice of Trey Anastasio. See the swaying of an entire stadium, cellphones aloft, while earnest Chris Martin sings one of those crashing ballads. Close your eyes as Conor Oberst belts the last-ditch high notes, the teenager as angry duckling, yawping into the breach on “If Winter Ends”.

There is nothing more intimate possible, within the structure of pop music, than the union between the voice of one man and the ear of another. It’s so simple that it becomes electric. In a way, the music almost gets in the way, creates an interfering medium (singer --> song --> listener), where the actual sound of the voice, and the humanity that’s transferred, is perfectly direct (singer --> listener). These men burn their brightest through their voices, and all that’s required of the listener is to listen. The audience doesn’t have to parse meanings or understand chord changes, they just have to be present. The desperate love that passes from one side of the speakers to the other is so tangible, so delicious and free that it’s hard to recognize a gap between the idealized union and an actual friendship. The voice is there to make you feel less alone. The voice won’t ever argue semantics, or eat your Thai leftovers, or take a few-months break to figure her shit out. The voice is a blessed constant, one of the very few.

And all you have to do is listen to the voice. It’ll become your best friend.