I woke up singing "Beware My Love".<\/p>\n
Well, actually, it wasn’t like a musical.\u00c2\u00a0 I didn’t sit up and burst into
song.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s just that when my eyes opened, when I finally realized I wasn’t going
to sleep anymore, I started to hear "Beware My Love" in my brain.<\/p>\n
I’m not sure where this came from.\u00c2\u00a0 I didn’t get home till after 3.\u00c2\u00a0 The
person who I was with was not in my dream.\u00c2\u00a0 It was someone from my distant past. It was one of those goodbye dreams.\u00c2\u00a0 Wherein you realize it’s over.\u00c2\u00a0 THIS
might be the closure everybody speaks of.\u00c2\u00a0 Fuck those conversations wherein you
state you’re going to remain friends.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s when they’re in your dreams and you
no longer want them that the relationship is over.\u00c2\u00a0 Still, why BEWARE MY LOVE?<\/p>\n
Then again, I discovered the track about this exact time of year.\u00c2\u00a0 Twenty
nine years ago.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s scary to think that ANYTHING occurred twenty nine years
ago.\u00c2\u00a0 Isn’t that kind of like what Warren Miller says?\u00c2\u00a0 Every hundred years, all
new people?\u00c2\u00a0 Think about it.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s kind of creepy.\u00c2\u00a0 We don’t matter.\u00c2\u00a0 Hell,
that was ANOTHER epiphany.\u00c2\u00a0 Sitting in front of my computer Saturday afternoon.\u00c2\u00a0
I was unsure about something.\u00c2\u00a0 Felt that SOMEBODY must have the answer,
SOMEBODY must know what’s going on.\u00c2\u00a0 And then I realized NOBODY does, that my
opinion is just as good as anybody’s.\u00c2\u00a0 They SAY they’re experts, they SAY they know what’s going on, but they’re human beings just like me.\u00c2\u00a0 Liberating and scary
at the same time.\u00c2\u00a0 I mean I can now say FUCK YOU to the system, but without
any answers, what mistakes am I going to make?<\/p>\n
Twenty nine years ago I was living in Salt Lake City.\u00c2\u00a0 And I was enduring the
world’s worst case of mononucleosis.\u00c2\u00a0 Still, I drove my 2002 entirely across
the country, in four days, back to Connecticut, to recuperate, to recover.\u00c2\u00a0
And I bought six new cassettes for the journey.\u00c2\u00a0 One was Wings’ "At The Speed Of
Sound".<\/p>\n
Do you know "Venus and Mars"?<\/p>\n
"Band On The Run" is one of the best albums ever made.\u00c2\u00a0 Oh, I know it’s hip
to say "London Calling", or "Nevermind", I mean this is a business within which
you’ve got to look COOL!\u00c2\u00a0 But the pure joy, the EXHILARATION of hearing "Band
On The Run" for the very first time, it was akin to discovering "Hotel
California".\u00c2\u00a0 And there was one good track after another, to the point where I
didn’t think twice about buying "Venus and Mars", I was EAGER!<\/p>\n
"Venus and Mars" is not "Band On The Run".\u00c2\u00a0 God, the hit, "Listen To What The
Man Said" is almost drivel, but there are WINNERS!\u00c2\u00a0 Like "Letting Go".<\/p>\n
"Letting Go" is a cult.\u00c2\u00a0 With no casual members.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s not peopled by
consumers who only purchase one record a year, who might have even BOUGHT "Venus and Mars".\u00c2\u00a0 No, the "Letting Go" faction is comprised of DIEHARD fans.\u00c2\u00a0 The kind of people who love LONDON CALLING!\u00c2\u00a0 There’s a riff almost as heavy as a metal song, there are the horns that the Eagles employ to play "Hotel California"
today, and on top of it all, is Paul McCartney’s VOICE!\u00c2\u00a0 Maybe if Paul was shot
instead of John, he’d get the due he deserves.\u00c2\u00a0 John was angry, sincere.\u00c2\u00a0 Paul
was like a choirboy fucking with the heavens.\u00c2\u00a0 The kind pulling the girls
behind the pews.\u00c2\u00a0 Oh, he smiled, but underneath that warm, unthreatening
countenance lurked the heart of a prankster, the type you want with you at the
campfire, the one you invite to be a member of the Dead Poets Society, this guy is
ALIVE!\u00c2\u00a0 I know, I know, it doesn’t look that way now, but that’s the price he’s
paid for continuing to live.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s hard to grow up when you’re a living legend,
just ask Phil Spector.<\/p>\n
Actually, "Silly Love Songs" is better than "Listen To What The Man Said".\u00c2\u00a0
Then again, "Speed Of Sound" DOES contain the execrable "Cook Of The House".\u00c2\u00a0
Still, there are gems.\u00c2\u00a0 Like Denny Laine’s "Time To Hide".\u00c2\u00a0 If it wasn’t on a
McCartney album, "Time To Hide" would be one of those secret tracks the
cognoscenti rave about, like the Sutherland Brothers & Quiver’s "(I Don’t Want To
Love You But) You Got Me Anyway".\u00c2\u00a0 Well, maybe not exactly, but CLOSE!<\/p>\n
Then there’s "Warm and Beautiful".\u00c2\u00a0 John Lennon could never write anything
like this.\u00c2\u00a0 Then again, maybe he never wanted to.\u00c2\u00a0 But, if you’ve got a
sentimental streak, if you ever felt happy as a result of your good fortune, you’ll
like "Warm and Beautiful".<\/p>\n
Still, it was "Beware My Love" that I woke up singing.<\/p>\n
I woke up singing the chorus, but when I inserted the CD into my Mac, I was
brought back to the magical sound, the intro to the track.<\/p>\n
It actually starts off like another song, something baroque.\u00c2\u00a0 But then,
twenty seconds in, an acoustic guitar takes over, in a completely different groove,
an OTHERWORLDLY ONE, kind of like Wonkaville, kind of like a DREAM!<\/p>\n
I could quote the lyrics, but no McCartney song made it because of the words.
\u00c2\u00a0Especially when Paul no longer got John’s help.<\/p>\n
Still, there was a way Paul could emote that rivaled John.\u00c2\u00a0 John exuded pain,
Paul exuded pleasure.\u00c2\u00a0 John was about sitting around, getting high, revealing
truth.\u00c2\u00a0 Paul was about SKYDIVING!\u00c2\u00a0 It was an instant ADVENTURE!<\/p>\n
And that’s the kind of vocal we’ve got here.\u00c2\u00a0 Oh, it starts off sweet.\u00c2\u00a0 But
then Paul’s INTO IT!\u00c2\u00a0 He’s RAVING!\u00c2\u00a0 With just one message, to BEWARE MY LOVE!<\/p>\n
God, I live my whole life on guard, my m.o. is to beware of everybody and
everything!\u00c2\u00a0 I’ve had too much bad happen.\u00c2\u00a0 I’ve lived on the bottom.\u00c2\u00a0 I’ve
found, sorry to say, you can’t count on anybody.\u00c2\u00a0 Well, that’s the way I felt,
that’s why I go to psychotherapy.\u00c2\u00a0 I’m learning that there ARE people who’ll be
there for you.\u00c2\u00a0 Not necessarily the ones you think, the ones with the great
repartee, the ones you THINK you’re connecting with, rather it’ll be other people,
ones whose rap might not be quite as good, but their souls dictate they do
the right thing, they’ll stop their lives to pick you up, to give you a hand, if
only you’ll let them, if only you’ll give them a chance.<\/p>\n
It’s been a VERY long transition.\u00c2\u00a0 And what helped me through was these
tunes, they didn’t change, they were there for me.<\/p>\n
That drive cross-country was not fun.\u00c2\u00a0 Alone in my car before the days of
cell phones and satellite radios.\u00c2\u00a0 Spending ten hours on the Interstate, pedal to
the metal, since my car didn’t have cruise control.<\/p>\n
In order to make it through, if a tape was resonating, I’d leave it on.\u00c2\u00a0
Sometimes playing it two or three times in a row.<\/p>\n
And I’ll tell you the one song I truly remember from that trip is Steely
Dan’s "Don’t Take Me Alive".\u00c2\u00a0 It came clear at a gas station, in Missouri I think,
I’d played "The Royal Scam" so many times I finally got it.\u00c2\u00a0 I wobbled out of
the car, I had road fever, I should have stopped, rested, but other than this
gas station, there was nothing around, I kept going.<\/p>\n
I remember switching tapes.\u00c2\u00a0 The slightest break gets you out of\u00c2\u00a0 the mood.\u00c2\u00a0
I don’t know if I inserted "At The Speed Of Sound" into the deck.\u00c2\u00a0 But I
played that cassette so many times that even though I can probably count on one
hand the number of times I’ve played the album since, it’s imprinted on my DNA.<\/p>\n
So I don’t know why, here in 2005, I woke up with "Beware My Love" on an
endless loop in my brain, hearing the chorus over and over again, telling me to
beware.\u00c2\u00a0 Maybe the message was to beware of slipping back into an old life, an
old mind-set, believing what came before was better than what I have now.\u00c2\u00a0 For
people never match your memories from the past.\u00c2\u00a0 But music does. <\/p>\n
<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I woke up singing "Beware My Love". Well, actually, it wasn’t like a musical.\u00c2\u00a0 I didn’t sit up and burst into song.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s just that when my eyes opened, when I finally realized I wasn’t going to sleep anymore, I started to hear "Beware My Love" in my brain. I’m not sure where this came […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-55","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-music"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p96vPs-T","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=55"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}