(Seriously. This man made me, and he has now too broken me.)

There have been a couple brief moments where I have tried to make music with other people whom I admired.  They were always incredible both technically and intellectually and I was always crippled by my own embarrassingly inept attempts to contribute.  Unfortunately, I may have a mush mouth, but I could never manage keep it shut despite knowing nothing more about music than that I like it; there were two songs I loved so much, I got real ornery about covering them no matter how ill the tribute turned out.  The songs were so excruciatingly true and raw, even the most unmusical asshole couldn’t mangle them too bad.  One was Shellac’s ‘Prayer to God,’ and the other was a Townes Van Zandt track.

I just now read somewhere it was his favorite, which I cannot help but feel like a silly validated little goose.

But like I was saying, Townes.  It’s been almost 4 years since I could even take in one of his records the whole way through.  It makes me laugh at myself and the way I can so neurotically squirrel away anything I write or make out of shame when the only thing that’s ever mattered to me in art is truth, earnestness, urgency, compulsion–in a way, a real ugliness.

I feel no connection to slick or neat or hidden or any deliberate sensibility of control.  Ugliness, being the antithesis of what’s exalted, has always felt to me too grossly human for glamour. For that reason, this song feels like a knife in the gut.

Deal with it.

But who gets to sit down and just listen to records anymore?

Anyway, sometimes a man becomes a cartoon. It’s hard to listen to anything a cartoon says with any great earnestness because he’s a fucking cartoon. Cartoons are not austere and do not speak with authority, they make a scrobbly clattering sounds when they run.

Aaron Neville–let’s not mince words–at some point turned himself into a cartoon. It’s hard to remember sometimes that cartoon as like, the left ventricle of the heart of deep soul.

Aside from the obviously singular and iconic vocals, the songwriting is just so…unexpectedly tender and personal. There are details decorating the story he’s telling at perfect intervals, so you know this is his, but never does it manage to make the emotional space in the song feel small or like you’re a tourist of heartache. Whereas lots of Detroit soul in partic, but 60′s and 70′s era soul in general, feels powerful but admittedly uncommitted (unless we’re talking about an Ike Turner production, says me), Aaron Neville is like shaking his head at you with two light beers in honor of your commiseration and before you know it it’s 4am and you guys are leaning up against each other swaying, palms on foreheads, turning to each other every two minutes and saying, “I just don’t know what the fuck happened, man.”

Listen to the way he says “sip of your own medicine.” It’s just so good.

When I was little I’d make movies in my head about the life I assumed I’d be leading after gritting my teeth long enough through the hassle of childhood.  This was the song I imagined playing at my wedding.  I probably haven’t fancied myself a bride since I started bleeding, but this song still sounds to me exactly like being in love feels.

Maybe nothing in the world can ever sound as good to you as that first soul record will.

Ice Cream Song by the Dynamics

The contrast between a seasoned Lindsay and a somewhat eerily paralyzed Nicks will remind us all that people who make beautiful art give no promise of being even intrinsically TOLERABLE human beings.  It’s about as comfortable as I imagine sitting through a ten minute cut of Woody Allen getting self-righteous on behalf of Roman Polanski or something.  All I’m saying is, might take you a while to fully recover your affections.

In the Studio with Fleetwood Mac

Here’s a ghoulish exercise: imagine if Stevie Nicks was your MOM.  She’d be like driving you to school when you missed the bus one morning and the two of you would sit in the parking lot fogging up the windows a bunch while she made you slog through her ninety six minute demo “edit” of some unicorn epic about being a magical and unknowable force much akin to the moon, which might have made you inwardly laugh if you had known at the time that they’d be blowing it up pretty soon cuz scientists are pretty sure its just an old bloated bag that we keep around for posterity.  But still you’d be like sitting there in the parking lot watching Stevie Nicks’ entitled mouth push out all these self-congratulatory puffs of meaningless shit and you’d have to nod like you’re listening because she’s your mom and nobody really likes making their mom cry, but at the same time privately you’d be like, Fuck, I bet somebody’s asking some super fucked up question about their pussy in health class right this very moment and I’m gonna catch such shit at lunch for not being there.  I’m never living this one down.

And in case there was any doubt to with whom the magic truly did lie, from his most recent solo album that gives me great hope of getting older without getting boring:

shut us down by lindsey buckingham

When I was a kid, my mother used to use an epilady to de-fur herself. I would sit next to her on the bed in solidarity and run a small matchbox train up and down the length of my shins. Pain is beauty, I guess. Beauty is pain? Whichever.

03- Pretty Baby (1951)