The letter below, addressed to my friends Greg and Tresca, is concerned primarily with the necessity of new music, pursuing new sounds. My wife and I often acted as hosts, and one my principal duties was as disc jockey. I liked to have the latest "leader of the pack," whether at the time it was Sonic Youth, or The Pogues or The Pixies, and then embed that in a foundation of Bob Dylan, Neil Young and The Velvet Underground.
I was reminded of the importance of fresh sounds this morning on a run around Lake Union. A couple years back I downloaded a free 2011 Merge Records sampler, on which appears a song, "Civilian" by Wye Oak. It shuffled on my iPod while I was working down the parking lots that line the lake just east of Westlake Avenue:
I close the letter with an expression of love. Greg and Tresca were important to me because they seemed to be doing their own thing. They were refuseniks. They worked but didn't believe that it would amount to anything. They drank. Greg was a tremendous athlete. A big guy at 6'3" or 6'4" and over 210 lbs. Drinking was what they did, drinking and listening to music.
Winter 1989
I finally shelled for some new music. It happened last Monday, down on Broadway and West 4th Street. It was a Monday, but I wasn't working; and the snow was sure snowing. But I braved it all -- the avoidance of worklife and the sloshing in West Village snow streets (like the cover of The Free Wheelin' Bob Dylan, Levi's feeling much too thin) -- so I could get some new music in my life, or at least some music that I hadn't heard for quite a while.
Too many times in the near past I have found myself overcome, forlorn, because none of the stuff I have does the trick anymore. You know, people come over, bring a few bottles of wine or some quarts of beer (some of Ashley's med-school chums -- though, sadly, not very often; it's usually I who does most of the bringing) and you want to put something on that sparks, that inspires, that captures the mood, but you don't have anything. Sure, you have the old standards, the solid-and-always-reliable: the B.Dylan and N.Young and L.Reed and J.Rotten (everybody knows 'em and everybody loves 'em). But as your're fingering through the pile, you realize/know that they don't cut it, not when you're trying to get people up. People feel too secure around them, too normal and historical, like a high school yearbook; they've got too many memories, too many stories and sorrows attached to each tune you put on the turntable. It's like trying to get people to beer bong and dance, shoot a tequila shot and smoke a joint, all while eating Christmas dinner in the parents' living room and wishing mother a happy birthday, the bright light shooting off the freshly painted white walls down to your white china platter with the slice of white breast meat and the sliver of dark, the patch of stuffing and mash potatoes pig-penned in turkey-neck gravy, the cranberry sauce breeding on the perimeter.
Music, I hope, isn't supposed supposed to be so comforting and tight-in-the-loins and unthinking as that. I would hope, and do think, that music -- and this is what makes looking for new music (or music you haven't heard before) necessary -- that music is something very outwardly social, energetic and revolutionary.
We, Greg and I, would drive out to San Ramon drinking 12-ounce coffees in paper cups. One morning he put on R.E.M., and I was just getting high from the caffeine. It was Green, and I hadn't heard it before. -- Because of my situation (staying over in S.F.), I was always drunk in the morning (as I know you guys were too). So the coffee would hit me hard -- but friendly -- and so would the sun (we were driving due East in the morning).
Without being hokey, because I'm good and drunk in one night, I love you two. You're important to me.
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