Random Stuff
Check out this Ian Moore video for a second. Well, at least try to get to the chorus.
If you don’t know who Ian Moore is he happens to be one of my musical heros. At the beginning of his career he was one of these impossibly-good-looking-Texas-blues-guitar-player-stud types. He also happens to have one of the most awesome singing voices I’ve ever heard. The Drew Johnson Band opened for him a number of years ago and I got to hang out with him after the show and pick his brain quite a lot. Definitely one of the highlights of my musical “career”. But that’s not the point of this post. The point of this post is that he’s wearing a ton of glammy makeup in this video. I was shocked when I saw this being that it seemed so incredibly out of character for him.
That got me thinking about something that I’ve considered many times before: how does a band make the decision to wear makeup? There have been a few bands around town that I’ve known and gigged with who have worn makeup and I always wanted to ask whose idea it was. I always imagined a band rehearsal where one guy finally works up the courage to say “Hey dudes, what are your thoughts on lipstick? Because, I like, totally think it’s right for us.” Maybe that’s not how it works. I don’t know. I just think of the severe beating I would have gotten had I suggested such a thing to any of the bands I’ve played in.
Next thought.
Here’s a video I found of Fiona Apple, Jon Brion, and Nickle Creek singing “Tonight, You Belong To Me.” I love this song and I happen to think that this song provides the most touching moment in The Jerk. I wish I could write songs like this.
Next thought.
A bizarre string of Internet searches this weekend led me to a picture of the store Angel and I worked at in Nashville. It was the Sam Goody at Harding Mall. It was this very store where Angel first cast her gaze upon me and my long, golden locks. She was walking by the store (this was before she worked there) with one of her friends and saw me standing behind the counter and said to her friend “That’s the guy I’m going to marry.” That is the honest truth. So she picked up an application and the rest is history.
Here is a link to the picture. It’s the second store on the left with the pink neon sign.
Next thought.
Angel had a wonderful opportunity this weekend to show just how much she really loves me. This story is rather gross so I’ll try to be as Christ-like as I can in the telling.
We were watching TV Friday night and I got this really bad itch on my left cheek…and not the one on my face. I didn’t think much of it because I happen to be a bit of a bug bite collector. But this itch was pretty intense and there was quite a lump to boot. Angel and I went in the bathroom and closed the door so she could take a look; possibly the most un-flattering moment of my life. She said “There’s a big black spot right in the middle of it.” I told her it might be a tick. I’ve never had a tick before but the thought just jumped in my head.
I’d always heard that tick-removal involves heating up a needle over an open flame and then using in to politely encourage the tick to step away from your skin. We didn’t have a needle handy but Angel grabbed some tweezers and got them red hot. At this point she was pretty sure it wasn’t any kind of creature, she just thought it was the head of the bite. When she touched the tweezers to the thing she immediately became convinced otherwise. I could tell by her repeated screems. “It’s legs just moved!!!” Ok well now we both agree that it is in fact a tick.
The digging and grimacing went on for about five minutes. Ticks have quite the little grip.
She was finally able to remove the thing from my rear. My first point of business was to make sure she still loved me after such an incident. She did…a smidge.
After some Internet research she informed me that the particular type of tick that had violated me didn’t really pose much of a threat as far as diseases go. The Internet said that it would continue to itch for about twenty-four hours and then everything would be fine. That has not been the case. Now the skin around the point of entry is all hard and irritated and it itches like nobody’s business. I’ll be going to the doctor tomorrow since I not only collect bug bites, I also collect humiliating incidents in the presence of women.
sounds like a case of somebody not sleeping tight and letting the bedbugs bite….lol…wow that’s a real pain in the patutie
A couple of random thoughts:
1. Ian Moore is a beautiful woman.
2. That Fiona Apple/Jon Brion video from Largo is awesome. Did you notice that was Benmont Tench from the Heartbreakers on piano?
3. I’m glad you got the tick off your ass. Alcohol will make them let go as well. Pulling a tick off someone’s ass means you really love them.
!. Yeah, I don’t remember Ian Moore looking anything like that at the Side Door. I’ll bet you five bucks, though, that, in this instance, the video director got a hold of the song and decided it sounded like some badass, acid-rock thing (which it does) and then decided to give Ian the creepy, Alice Cooper treatment. And it might have been that Ian agreed because, let’s face it, no other marketing strategy he’s used up to now has really gotten him much of anywhere. I mean, I know he’s respected for his talent and all, but he never really broke like he should have, did he?- so why not try see if he can’t draw in the Marilyn Manson kids or something. Who knows. The song, frankly, sounds like he lifted it from the early DJB set if you ask me. Maybe you need to contact a lawyer.
As to bands with make-up… Being a former 80′s androgynous rockstar (you’ve seen the pix), I should be able to speak with some authority but I was at The Pageant the other week (to see the Incurables) and there was this young band, Troubadour Dali, and they all had the make-up thing going… and I can remember Ocean Six doing this, too (and Tripstar, too, of course)… and I must say I find it rather ill-advised. It feels like they’re a little too desperate for attention. On the other hand, it’s fun to dress up weird and go out there and, the level these local bands are at, you may as well just have fun ’cause it’s not like you’re making much money or playing for the A&R guy from Interscope.
2. I’d seen that Fiona video somewhere before and, yeah, that song’s a gem. Used, also, to great effect in that movie Angel Heart with Mickey Roark and Robert DeNiro. You remember that? Very creepy. And as a point of interest, I was the first, or one of the first, artists to show there at the Cafe Largo in, oh, must’ve been ’87 or ’88 with Lynn Stadum, Wendy Maharry and someone else I can’t remember. The good ol’ days or whatever.
3. Boy, yeah, I worked at a record store in a mall, too, once. Mine was The Wherehouse in the Paradise Valley Mall. My friend Cary Collison got me the job. We never married.
4. You had a tick on yer ass, huh? That’s gross and not that I’m asking, but you make no mention of what it feels like to have a hot tweezers applied to your buttock. That couldn’t have been pleasant for either of you.
And then there’s the obligatory, “Did you fart? I woulda totally farted in her eye!”
See? A perfectly respectable comment ruined in its final sentence. Shame, shame.
I actually thought that the director was trying to make a connection to the idea of putting lipstick on a pig and setting it up to perform. All of the watching action was the peep show idea and it sort of worked backwards to what we saw at the beginning…there’s a ton of BAD things out there…a lot of bad people doing very bad things. I think overall the song is about a stripper and how he can relate. I don’t think “he” was going for a look. I think he was playing a character in the video. LLLLLLLLLLLLLLove that song. Never saw the video. Thanks for adding, but don’t watch it just before bedtime! Creeeeepppppy.