Cultural Sponge - The Joe Pagetta Blog

(Today marks the 25th Anniversary of Live Aid. A recollection from a Queen fan’s perspective)

I discovered the rock band Queen when I was nine years-old. I came to them younger than most, but at the same time, later than those who knew better. Freddie Mercury, Brian May, Roger Taylor and John Deacon came to me through the airways of WNEW on a summer afternoon in 1980, while hanging out with my sister Mary in my brother Nick’s room. I say I came to them late because in 1980, Queen had just released their album, The Game. “Another One Bites the Dust” was the single that I heard on the radio, and it was my first introduction to the band. While the song remains one of their biggest and most recognizable hits, anyone who knew anything about rock music at the time knew that the band’s work on 1975’s A Night at the Opera, or ’74’s Sheer Heart Attack or even 1978’s Jazz was far superior. By the time I discovered them, they had already released a live record, 1979’s Live Killers, a sure sign that a band had been around awhile.

When I heard “Another One Bites the Dust,” I jumped up on my brother’s bed and started dancing.

“Who is that?” I shouted over the funky bass line to my sister.

“It’s Queen,” she coolly replied.

“I LOVE IT,” I shouted back.

“Nicky has their album,” she said and pulled the eight-track from my brother’s shelf.

And that was it. The combination of Mercury’s soaring vocals and May’s guitar solos were unlike anything I had ever heard before. I was a Queen fan. I lived and breathed the band from that point on, and had plenty of work to do. Once I absorbed The Game, down to knowing exactly when the eight-track would cut off mid-song, I had to track down everything else they had ever recorded.

There was a record store in the same mall in Jersey City where my Dad managed a men’s clothing store and did tailoring work. So on the days I’d go to the store to help him out, I’d take my breaks at WOW Records in search of Queen music. Right off the bat, I discovered 1974’s Queen II, a drastically different sounding record than The Game. While on The Game, the band looked tough and cool in black leather framed by a blue-silver border, Queen II had their four faces on the cover. Their hair was longer and it looked like they were wearing make-up. The inside picture had them sitting together, very close to one another, dressed all in white. Was this the same band? The music offered further complications, as the songs were full of massive choral harmonies and epic song-structures, with lyrics that referenced ogres and white queens and the seven seas of Rhye. What the hell were the seven seas of Rhye? Had the liner notes not stated the names of the band members, there was no way you could have convinced me this was the same band.

Despite the confusion, I loved the songs on Queen II just as much as The Game. More discovery came soon after. I bought A Night at the Opera on cassette, Sheer Heart Attack and News of the World on vinyl. For Christmas I asked for Queen’s Jazz record, and freaked my family out by blasting the hymn “Mustapha” throughout the house. If that wasn’t enough to disturb my parents, Jazz came with a poster featuring hundreds of naked women riding bicycles. At the same time that I was trying to make sense of the progression of this band that I had just become the biggest fan of, my mom and dad were surely trying to make sense of what was happening to their son. It was quite clear, though. Their son had discovered rock n roll.

It wasn’t easy being a Queen fan in the early 80’s, especially in the Jersey City Heights neighborhood where I grew up. I quickly learned that among my friends who were also devouring rock n roll, Queen didn’t demand much respect.

“Whadda’ya a fag?” my friend Jamie asked me once.

“No,” I replied. “Why?”

“Freddie’s a fuckin’ flamer”

“No, he’s not.”

“Whadda’ya kiddin’ me? Look at him. He’s a fuckin’ fag.”

“So what?! He’s da best singer in da world. Who’s betta’?”

“David Lee Roth’s a dousan’ times betta’ den Queen. AC/DC…Black Sabbath…the Stones…why don’t ya’ listen ta some real music ya’ fuckin’ fag?”

It’s true, of course, that Freddie Mercury was gay. I knew it and everyone else knew it. But I didn’t care. If my friends couldn’t get past it, that was their problem. They were MY band. And while they weren’t as cool of a band as AC/DC or Van Halen or The Who in those peoples’ eyes, I was certain they were better than all those bands combined.

But the hardest thing about being a Queen fan in the early 80’s wasn’t even the criticism from my friends, it was the lack of memorabilia with which to outwardly express my allegiance. There were no Queen T-shirts, or posters or hats to wear and tell the world I was z Queen fan. At the local bazaar at St. Nicholas Church, there was a booth where you could win T-shirts, and there were plenty of Iron Maiden, or Van Halen or Rolling Stone shirts, but nothing with Queen on it. I had to resort to getting a T-shirt made at an airbrush painting booth on the Jersey Shore. Call it homemade fan appreciation. I was sad.

(more…)

When I was 18 years-old and in my first band, I’d often find myself up late at night, confused and desperate, and although I didn’t know it at the time, depressed. Different thoughts would keep me up, and if reading or listening to music didn’t help me through the night, I’d write. Songs, poems, thoughts.

On one particular night, my depression had a rare side-effect: a call to action. A way out. I would write a letter to a local music reporter and tell her about my band. It was a rash decision, done without much thought. I figured if I could tell someone about me, and about my band, I could break free. Of what, exactly, I wasn’t sure. Maybe my bedroom. Maybe myself.

We were a good band that worked hard. We practiced five nights a week, played a lot of local shows, and took ourselves more seriously than 18 year-olds ever should. We had a live demo that kicked ass and was surely better than anything coming out of Hudson County in those days. Better yet, at the beginning of the 1990’s, Horror Time was easily the best band in northeast New Jersey. We knew it. The only problem was that no one else did. Know one knew we even existed. That meant, of course, that no one knew I existed.

So, late on this night, I sat down and wrote Cathie Coleman at the East Coast Rocker a long drawn-out letter introducing myself and my band and explaining how we could really use some press. It was that simple. We weren’t getting anywhere and weren’t really sure where we were trying to go. We didn’t fit in with Bon Jovi or Skid Row or God forbid, any of the hair metal bands popular on the radio and in the area. We weren’t heavy enough to run with the hardcore bands selling out matinees in New York or speaking for the angst of the kids in the suburbs of New Jersey. But then again, we weren’t just a Jersey rock band like the E Street Band or the Asbury Jukes, either. We kind of thought of ourselves as a thing and style all our own. We were an attitude and a philosophy. Four 18-year-old kids (three Italian-Americans and one Eastern Indian-American) on a mission to take over the world with six-to-seven minute songs (at least!) and a heavy dose of influence from the likes of the Misfits, the Ramones, the Gorilla Biscuits, Supertouch, Vision, Metallica and early U2. A strange mix of bands you’ve heard of and some you haven’t. You were going to hear about us.

First, we had to get out of Jersey City.

I took our live demo, my letter, a bio a friend had written, and a grainy photo taken by that same friend, and put it in a golden padded envelope. The next morning, I walked the ten or so blocks up to the post office on Central Ave near Grand Street.

I didn’t know anything about follow-up calls, so I wouldn’t be sure if Cathie Coleman ever got the package. There was no e-mail to do a follow-up e-mail, and no internet, where I might have been able to check the magazine’s web site. I would just have to pick up the East Coast Rocker every Thursday and see if we were in there.

My hopes weren’t high, because as far as I knew, bands didn’t get written about because band members wrote letters to music writers. There was some mystery involved in the whole process, I was sure. I used to make frequent trips up to Garden State News on the corner of Bauer Street and Central Avenue, not far from the post office, to pick up copies of Creem and Hit Parader. All the bands; all the stories. The magazines must have just known about these people and sought them out for interviews and features. When you’re great, I figured, magazines knew who you were.

In the weeks that followed my gutsy mailing maneuver, it was back to the routine. School, work, late night band practice, and fighting depression in my bedroom on the appropriately named Booraem (pronounced bore-em) Avenue in Jersey City Heights.

It was a dark bedroom. Enclosed by dusty gray paneling and anchored by forest-green wall-to-wall carpeting, it had one window that faced the alleyway between our house and Angelo and Hazel’s house next door. No natural light filtered into the room. What did, however, enter the room, was the occasional smell of cat urine that wafted over from Angelo and Hazel’s, who shared their house with at least 17 cats. Exactly how many cats they had was hard to calculate. Your best shot was to keep track of which ones were sitting in their front window and make a mental note of which ones you hadn’t seen before.

The bedroom held an additional darkness as well. I moved into it about a year earlier, after my family had moved from the second floor apartment of the house to the first floor apartment. The first floor was most recently occupied by my grandmother, and before that, by both my grandmother and grandfather, and before that by my grandmother, grandfather, my mother, and her two brothers, Joe and Vinnie. There was a lot of history in that apartment. My grandmother had been living in the apartment by herself for the last nine years, after the death of my grandfather in December of 1980, ten days after John Lennon was shot and killed by an obsessed fan outside the Dakota in Manhattan, just across the Hudson River from where we lived. When my grandmother succumbed to brain cancer in 1989, it was after only a few days of her being placed in a nursing home. For the many months before that, she’d laid in a hospital bed that had been placed in her living room. My mother, with the occasional help from me and my sister Mary and brother Nick, cared for her, emptying her bed pan, rolling her over to prevent bed sores, and giving her sponge baths. After her death, my parents decided it was best for us to move down to the first floor and rent out the second. My parents took the master bedroom, Mary took my Uncle Vinnie’s old room closest to the kitchen, and I took my Uncle Joe’s old room off the living room, the same living room my grandmother had floated toward death in only months before. Nick took the basement as his room, which meant the rest of us lost unrestricted access to it. We now needed his approval to wash our clothes.

It took a little over a month of trips to the newsstand on Central Avenue before I finally found out if Cathie Coleman ever got my letter and package. She did. There in her “New Jersey Newsbeat” column was Horror Time, looking tougher and more rock ‘n’ roll then we’d ever looked. We were the second item. She wrote a few paragraphs about us, telling folks that we were a band to look out for. She even quoted a few lines from our bio, and made a point to mention how young we were, even referring to us as a “baby band” in line with early 90s hitmakers, and coincidentally Jersey-based, Trixter.

The band was ecstatic. We were on the map. People knew who Horror Time was. It seemed like everyone saw the article, and for those who didn’t, there was sure to be a copy in each band member’s back pocket if necessary. I realized quickly that press could breed more press. And now that I knew you could be directly responsible for getting your band in the papers, I jumped on the opportunity to get us more. I was able to garner listings mentions, reviews and show previews in some of the other local newspapers, like the Jersey Journal and The Hudson Current. When Horror Time put out its first proper demo, I sent Cathie Coleman a copy and she wrote about us in her column again, and this time, we were the lead item.

One of the things I remember most about that time were many of the band’s friends and contemporaries asking us, “How’d you get that?” when reading stories about us. My answer was always the same: “I sent them some stuff.”

I realized that most people thought getting press was as mysterious as I once did. But now I knew it wasn’t. You had to let the press know about you. In the years that followed, through Horror Time’s demise and the building of my own singer-songwriter career, I gathered a decent collection of press clippings about my music in both regional and national publications. I learned how to write a professional press release and bio, how to write cover letters, and how to get professional promo photos taken. I built press and contact lists, and learned about something I didn’t know existed when I was 18 and in my first band: the follow-up.

I never again wrote a late-night, depression-fueled plea to a music writer to tell him or her about my band, although I sometimes wish I was still innocent enough to think doing so is appropriate.

It wasn’t long after that first bit of press that my family moved from Booraem Ave., forced out by uncles who wouldn’t accept my parents’ offer to buy out their share of my grandmother’s estate. At the same time we were preparing to find another place to live, my mother decided she wanted a divorce from my father after 25-years of marriage. Dealing with the illness and death of my grandmother, and the realization that her two brothers would just as soon as put her out on the street, had taken its toll on her. My father’s gambling and bitterness — something my mother had ridden the wave of their entire marriage — became magnified by the circumstances and grew to an intensity impossible for her to handle. It would break the future like it was breaking her. If there was ever a time to start fresh, that was it.

I couldn’t afford to live on my own at the time, so I popped back and forth. I lived a few months with my mother, then after she got tired of me, a few months with my father. It was a vagabond, pack-light existence, where I frequently slept at my girlfriend’s house, and on one occasion when both of her parents were drunk and vicious, in my car, parked in the covered garage under my father’s apartment building. None of that mattered, though. I was out of that dark and depressing bedroom off the living room. And I was on my way. More shows. More press. More existence outside of myself.

One day, during one of the brief stints I lived with my father on Sherman Avenue in Jersey City, the Jersey Journal sent over a photographer to take a few photos of me. I had won a singer-songwriter competition at the Village Gate in Greenwich Village, and in addition to the fifty dollars I received, I was given a showcase of my own at the club. I tipped the Journal off about the competition and show, and it decided to do a little piece on me, with an accompanying photo. The photographer took a few shots, and the paper ran the one of me sitting with my guitar propped up in front of me — the standard “musician who plays guitar” shot.  But there was another photo taken, that the photographer gave me later, which I’ve always felt captured that time in my life quite accurately. It was me, holding a lit cigarette and standing by the window, looking outside myself and my father’s apartment, toward a world that was beginning to know I existed. I had the photo and the story in the paper to prove it.

I came home from vacation yesterday to a pile of junk mail, bills, magazines and, in an envelope that could have easily been mistaken for a subscription renewal request, a letter from Performing Songwriter magazine editor Lydia Hutchinson. After 16 years, the magazine is ceasing publication.

The end of the magazine isn’t a complete surprise. The issues had been getting frighteningly thin as of late, and while more people than ever may be making music, the industry within which that music goes from art to business is collapsing.  On top of that, print publications are folding as advertising money dries up and readers head to the web for information.  All things considered, it’s amazing the magazine lasted as long as it did.

But I’m not writing to lament its death. Things, and times, change. Rather, I feel the need to offer a quick eulogy for the magazine and the stellar and inspiring work that Lydia and her staff did over the last decade and half.

I became a singer songwriter in the early-to-mid 90s. Before that, I was merely a singer, guitar player and songwriter in a rock band in New Jersey.  Performing Songwriter magazine began publishing soon after I started taking songwriting — and performing — truly seriously. It was there that I read about, and discovered, many of the artists I came to admire at that time in my life.  There were the Bob Dylans and Bruce Springsteens and Cat Stevens and Leonard Cohens to admire, of course, but I needed something a little more tangible to guide me.  Performing Songwriter brought me John Gorka and Cliff Eberhardt. I learned about Dar Williams and Richard Shindell and Pierce Pettis. There was a contemporary folk resurgence in the Northeast, and Performing Songwriter gave these artists some serious ink. They were not superstars, but I didn’t want to be superstar. To write like Gorka, or play guitar like Eberhardt, was no short order, and enough to aspire to.  In Performing Songwriter, I learned not only what kind of guitar (and capo!) the current crop of contemporary folk artists were using, but also where their inspiration came from and how they developed their performing style. I learned, most importantly, that there was something called a “performing songwriter.” It carried a bit more weight than “singer songwriter.” It sounded more active. It was something I could identify with.

The magazine had its critics in the early years, who suggested that it focused too heavily on the kind of aforementioned contemporary folk songwriters, and didn’t cover other genres like rock and R&B. Was Prince, technically, not also a performing songwriter? Or Paul Westerberg? Haven’t we heard enough about Ani DiFranco? The criticism may have been justified, but I think the magazine quickly made amends, and gave us years of engaging interviews and profiles with artists of all genres. The gear reviews and advice columns were indispensable.

The magazine also included a  DIY section, where it reviewed releases by independent artists. For any indie performing songwriter with a self-released CD, it was the place to be, not because it helped your career in any tangible way — I know several artists who claimed no jumped in CD sales, not even one disc, as a result of the review — but because it was a review written by your peers and read by your peers.  It was a nice badge of honor, and looked great in your press kit and on your web site.  For me, it took four releases before I finally got my review. My EP Other People’s News was reviewed in January 2008. It felt great (even if Don Henley was on the cover). Nothing much happened after that. But I had finally gotten my PS review.

I was a subscriber on and off over the life of the magazine, and after lapsing for several years, recently subscribed again, hoping a reminder in my mailbox every month might resuscitate the lapsed performing songwriter in me. I’ll have to find that jump-start elsewhere. And that’s as it should be. A magazine isn’t going to get me to pick up my guitar any more than it’s going to get me to ride my bike more. But it does create a sense of community, and a feeling that there are others like you, doing a similar thing, who might be reading the same thing and looking for that same inspiration.

“One of my friends said that Performing Songwriter has never been just a magazine. It’s the community that formed around it and supported it, and it just wore the clothes of a publication,” writes Lydia in her letter. “The community is still there, steadfast and strong; it’s simply time to change clothes. I don’t know exactly what the outfit’s going to look like, but that wonder is part of the joy.”

I agree. Who’s ready to go shopping?

As the Italians say, “allora.” Congratulations Lydia, and the PS staff, on what you accomplished over the last 16 years. And thank you, for the inspiration, identity and community. Oh, and the review.

I was given a wonderful book for my birthday last week by my dear friends Pouria and Jenna Montazeri. Love’s Alchemy: Poems from the Sufi Tradition, translated by David and Sabrineh Fideler,  is “a comprehensive Collection of Sufi poems  by Rumi, Hafiz, and many others.”

Finding myself unable to sleep tonight, as is often the case in the weeks leading up to the Nashville Film Festival, I decided to take some of the book’s poems in, and was immediately impacted by their simplicity, beauty and timelessness.

The third poem in the book is the great Rumi’s poem “The Same Language,” with its wonderful line:

The universal language is authentic insight.

To be one in heart is surely superior
to only speaking the same words.

I wish I had that poem several months ago when Nashville was in the throes of an “English-only” debate, but that would have only wrongly commandeered a poem that speaks of so much more. It’s just as appropriate in the confines of the home as it is within the Turkish border.

I realize quickly these are not poems to be paged through quickly, but savored slowly.  A few pages later, I’m slowed to a crawl by the Hafiz poem, “The Glow of Your Presence.” It’s a short one, so I hope David and Sabrineh Fideler don’t mind me quoting it in its entirety.

Where have you taken your sweet song?
Come back and play me a tune.

I never really cared for the things of the world.
It was the glow of your presence
that filled it with beauty.

It’s how I’ve always felt about the music I create, and expresses the words I’ve been searching for to explain where that music has gone for the last couple of years. I really haven’t truly written and performed for a couple of years now. Perhaps this is my new prayer.

So when it’s late at night, and you’re reading poetry, and you come across something like that, what do you do? You need to tell somebody, and there’s no one to call. So you post a blog, which among its many uses, is still good for doing what it did originally — providing a place to share your thoughts.

So last night, in anticipation of seeing the film THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON, I reread the short story of the same name by F. Scott Fitzgerald, on which the film is based. It’s not very long, and after finishing it, I flipped through the rest of the pages of The Short Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald to see if there was something else I wanted to get into that I either hadn’t read or hadn’t read in awhile.

There, at the beginning of the short story “Dice, Brassknuckles & Guitar,” was the most perfect little paragraph about New Jersey:

Parts of New Jersey, as you know, are under water, and other parts are under continual surveillance by the authorities. But here and there lie patches of garden country dotted with old-fashioned frame mansions, which have wide shady porches and a red swing on the lawn. And perhaps, on the widest and shadiest of the porches there is even a hammock left over from the hammock days, stirring gently in a mid-Victorian wind.

To someone not from there, it can often be hard to explain the many paradoxes that make up the Garden State.  I think this paragraph sums it up quite well.

I read somewhere once that after you turn 30, records are not supposed to change your life. I guess there’s some truth to that. At a certain age, records don’t change your life, at least not in the way they did when you were 16, but I think it’s perfectly acceptable to discover records at any age that move and inspire you. In fact, it’s recommended. It’s good for you and keeps you young. Same thing with books and films. The other thing with records (or books and films for that matter) is that they often take on associations that are sometimes beyond your control, becoming soundtracks for moments in your life and reminders of people, places and things. Nick Hornby went out of his way to not be influenced by those associations in his excellent collection of essays on some of his favorite songs, Songbook.

In 2007, I discovered artist Nicole Atkins and her record Neptune City. The record didn’t change my life (I’m over 30), but I certainly loved it and couldn’t stop listening to it. It had no association other than the joy it gave me. Then my father got sick.

There were two records I had placed on my iPod shortly before I headed up to New Jersey to be with my sister and father. One was Neptune City, the other was Bruce Springsteen’s Magic. In the evenings when I’d take breaks from being with my father, or drive back to my sister’s house in Hazlet from the hospital in Red Bank, I’d listen to those two records. I’m sure the fact that both artists are from New Jersey had something to do with it,  but mostly, they gave me comfort — the title song from Atkins’ album, especially. I won’t try and describe the song, I’ll just say that “Neptune City” is beautiful and haunting at the same time, and reminds me a little, in the narrator’s perspective, of watching Wim Wenders‘ film Wings of Desire.

My father’s fight with lung cancer didn’t last long. Barely a month passed between his official diagnosis and his death on November 5, 2007.

It was hard, of course, to listen to “Neptune City” and not think about those days. I would still put it on, but that’s where my mind would go.

I was back up in New Jersey — at my sister’s house and in my father’s old room — for the first time last week, just over a year since my father had passed away. The occasion was my nephew’s confirmation. He asked me to be his sponsor and I was honored and excited to be a part of it. I knew I’d have to go through some of my Dad’s stuff, and deal with some tough emotions, but was looking forward to most of the trip.  My wife and mother (who lives in Nashville now) were coming with me, so it would be a fine reunion of the family.  Plus, my wife and I decided we would take most of Friday and Saturday to ourselves and spend some time in New York City. I checked the entertainment listings to see what was happening on Friday night, and to my delight, who should be playing the Bowery Ballroom? Nicole Atkins, of course.

(more…)

Lyrics  to a song called “The Year of Leaving,” to be performed “in the style of The Hold Steady.” The title comes from a line in Janis Ian’s autobiography Society’s Child.

The Year of Leaving

I was walking in DC
Listening to the Hold Steady
And trying to stay positive
I was jealous of all the people on bicycles
I considered taking up smoking again

This is the end of the year of leaving
I’ve gone too far
This is the end of the year of leaving
I’m staying home from now on

I was driving in New Jersey
Trying to make a left turn
To get to the Dunkin’ Donuts
The median was all fence and barbed wire
I resolved to start drinking more water

This is the end of the year of leaving
I’ve gone too far
This is the end of the year of leaving
I’m staying home from now on

I’m tired of saying goodbye
To everyone and everything
There was a time
When everyone meant everything

I was moving around the kitchen
Looking for a bottle opener
To punch a hole in a can of fruit punch
After awhile I gave up on the endeavor
And remembered I was gonna start drinking more water

This is the end of the year of leaving
I’ve gone too far
This is the end of the year of leaving
I’m staying home from now on

Galleycat was there at Madison Square Park in NYC last week when writer William Maxwell — among many things, author of the novel I wrote about here in march,  So Long, See You Tomorrow – was remembered by the National Book Foundation. Those honoring Maxwell on the eighth anniversary of his death included Christopher Carduff, editor of a two-volume collection of Maxwell’s fiction for the Library of America, Dan Menaker, the former Random House editor,  Edward Hirsch, poet, Ben Cheever, novelist, and Stewart O’Nan, author of Snow Angels.

O’Nan, according to Galleycat,  “attributed his own literary career to discovering a copy of So Long, See You Tomorrow in a used bookstore more than twenty years ago … (and) still recommends So Long to people to this day: ‘It’s 135 pages and there’s a lot of white space on those pages,” he observed. “You could read this entire book instead of watching that crappy movie on Starz tonight.’ ”

I couldn’t agree more.

I’ve been doing some blogging on the PBS blog, Remotely Connected. Check out pieces on American Experience: Walt Whitman and American Masters: Marvin Gaye.

In no particular order, and for no particular reason, here are a few of my favorite things from the world of art and culture in 2007. By no means is it comprehensive. I’ve also kept it to things readily accessible nationally:

(Music) Bruce Springsteen - Magic: Contrary to popular belief, I don’t love everything Bruce does. Magic, however, is indeed extraordinary. The album lifts my spirits every time I listen to it. I’m nowhere near old, and it makes me feel young again.

(Music) Nicole Atkins - Neptune City: I discovered this artist on The Yellow Stereo blog and was immediately in love with her voice and her songs, and that was before I knew she hailed from New Jersey. The title track is haunting and beautiful at the same time. Her performance of “The Way it Is” on Letterman — available several places on You Tube — is jaw-dropping.

(Music) Stax 50th Anniversary Celebration: All the great stuff in a handy 2-disc set. The included booklet (which doubles as a flip book) explores the history of the Memphis label.

(Film) Respect Yourself: The History of Stax Records: Morgan Neville and Robert Gordon’s film gathers historic footage and new interviews in one of the best music documentaries in recent history.

(Music) The Hold Steady - Boys and Girls in America: It came out late in ‘06, so I only came around to it in ‘07. You know it’s going to be a good ride when the opening track quotes Kerouac.

(Music) Queen - Rock Montreal: Remixed and mastered, the band sounds incredible in this live concert from ‘81. They were in peak form here coming off the success of The Game. “Somebody to Love” sounds truly inspired.

(Film) Atonement: I’ve written here before of my affection for the novel, and the film adaptation, even with the twist at the end, is more than faithful. You’ll stop breathing for awhile during both the scene in the library and on the beach. Perhaps I have a haunting and beautiful theme going in this list. Everyone in it is outstanding, and man is that James McAvoy good.

(Book) Joshua Ferris - Then We Came to the End: The book is showing up on plenty of year-end lists, but why don’t I know more people that have read it? It’s a book for us and who we are now, with the emphasis on the we, even if we’ve never worked in an office. We have.

(Book) Michael Chabon - The Yiddish Policemen’s Union: Chabon’s The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay is one of my favorite books. Here, he takes on a completely different voice, hard-boiled and snappy, but with occasional moments of such overarching grandeur you need to stop and take a breath, as if you yourself were in Alaska trying to suck some oxygen out of the frigid air. All the while, we contemplate time and place and what it means when neither is certain.

(Film) I’m Not There: I think this was one of my favorite things of 2007, but my head hurts thinking about it. I’ll get it on DVD in ‘08, watch it a few more times and get back with you.

(Book) Jack Kerouac - On The Road: The Original Scroll: I got it for Christmas and haven’t finished it yet. I’m about halfway through and every moment is thrilling, especially trying to find my place every time I put it down. Published in honor of the novel’s 50th anniversary, it makes public with very little editing what Kerouac’s original version read like, without paragraph breaks or any of the names changed. It’s like taking the road trip all over again, only faster.

(Film) Once: I missed the opportunity to catch this in the theater during the brief window of opportunity I had, but the DVD was released just in time for an ‘07 viewing. A beautiful and precious film with big, immediately engaging original music. I loved it. Someone I watched it with said you can make up your own ending, and he liked that.

Happy New Year.