"Hell is other people"- Jean-Paul Sartre

I was shocked to see, er actually, to read about his death. Isn’t death a time to reflect, yes? Well, not even The Methuselah Enzyme will help a once ally of ours out, no. And now that rock music is popular for funerals, I wonder what is going to be played at his. And since I know squat of Middle Eastern music, I find it better to relay what I want played at my wake:

“Cold Rain” by the Screaming Trees. “Everywhere I have to go is so very far away” For some reason, unbeknownst to me, that line is steadfast, with a mantra-like persistence in my mind. I don’t particularly like the rain, so the title means diddly, but it is a mood setter, and a proper song to a (hopefully) somber situation.

“Dry the Rain” by the Beta Band. Duh! Who doesn’t want this played at their funeral/cremation/wake/whatever? “Choking on the vitamin tablet the doctor gave in the hope of saving me” What fun lyrics about a haunting scene. Kind of a sad start to a song that finishes with a wonderfully positive ending “it’ll be alright” and what I thought was simply I’ll Be Alright, but is actually “I will be your light”. I like my verse better, and if I were haunting the drunken wake by appearing under a beer-stained shroud, I would make sure to emphasize my mistaken lyrics during the chorus. Problem fixed, problem solved.

“Slug Song” by The Clean. “Don’t ever go and rearrange your mind, don’t ever change” This is a quick song, but a driving one at that. You can hear David Kilgour singing with an earnest, if necessary need for approval from, and to which this song is about. It reminds me of Joe Strummers’ take on (White Man) In Hammersmith Palais. That conviction of assured strength in the vocals makes the song better than if anybody else in the entire world, ever, were to attempt the slightest degree of this tonal perfection.

“Cosmic Rays” by Helium. This song name checks Saint Christopher and says, “I really don't care about this song”. That confidence alone is something worth striving for, even in death.

“Isolation” by Joy Division. “This is my one consolation, this is my one lucky prize” from the live version on Still. I just think it would be interesting if people started dancing to this sad, sad song. It wouldn’t happen, but I won’t be there to not witness it, huh?

“Teardrop” by Massive Attack. “Gentle impulsion, Shakes me, makes me lighter” I will weep from no matter where, always when this song is played. Christ, even the YouTube cover versions here and here just put my ears in a shameful orgy of not taking up guitar playing and dating a woman who can sing so well. Even before I die, this song rocks my little world. It is a good song for sex, for death, for graduations, for cruising to any destination, for eating toast, for watching TV with the sound turned low, and for writing a blog for this song started my list and randomly played on shuffle. (I'm looking over my shoulder right now for a ghost, but there are only a bunch of books.) This is what song writers should listen to before they write anything new. It would humble Mozart, guaranteed.

And by now, my friends and relatives would be piss-drunk and ready to go. I’ll bet half wouldn’t have sat through more than the first song anyway. To be tasteless, I would tack on Bob Dylan’s “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” after a seventeen minute silence just for a last laugh.

How to silence my cousin.

So, I was giving my cousin a ride to 7-11 for some badly needed ice that our family Xmas required. On our journey, my iPod played a song by Young Marble Giants, “Man Amplifier”.
“Who is this?” asked my cousin. I looked at her with an inappropriate astonished look.
“It’s the Young Marble Giants,” I said shaking my head to further my bewildered belief that she didn't know who in the hell the Young Marble Giants are. My cousin is about three years younger than I, not much distance between us, but I always forget that I know too, too much about music and I went on a long rant about the group. After I finished spewing information and finally took in a breath, I felt ashamed. I don’t know what good it does me to know this much about any musical group, and I don’t know why I am inclined to tell people what I know. This is what I told her, roughly…

“The Young Marble Giants are one of the coolest bands (I call every band I know a lot about--One of the Coolest Bands--because it sounds energetic and therefore makes what I have to say more compelling. Julian Cope suffers this bit of misinformation also, as indicated in his book, Krautrock Sampler, when he calls every album, The Greatest Album. People do it all the time. I’m a person.) of all time. They released just one album that has influenced so many people and so many, many bands. Are you serious, you haven’t heard of them? Shit… you know who Courtney Love is, right? Her band, Hole covered their song "Salad Days" and do you know who Beat Happening is? No, are you kidding? You know who Kurt Cobain is? Yeah? Well he has a tattoo on his right arm of the K records shield logo, and Calvin Johnson is the lead singer of Beat Happening and the founder of K records and Stuart Moxham, the guitarist and songwriter of Young Marble Giants, produced some songs on Beat Happening’s last album, You Turn Me On, before he went on to animate Who Framed Roger Rabbit. You didn’t know all that?”

My cousin didn’t say anything. I copied her silence.