So young with such good taste in music

Little Tyler from upstairs, the singer guitarist songwriter all of twelve years old, comes downstairs to my apt go through my CD collection to get another stack to add to his ipod. This is his ritual every weekend. He gets a chance to get any album ever made for free and I get a chance to see the older cds in my CD collection. Though I told him this time, ‘listen man there's a price today: you have to find two cds that I want to bring to the studio next week. you’ve got about ten thousand cds there and you're looking for two. Anything by the mamas and papas and anything by the beach boys. I need inspiration for vocal arrangements.’ ‘you expect me to find those two cds in all those crates?! In one day?!’ he's screaming like a twelve year old totally exaggerating. ‘if you want to do your usual search and seize, yes. don't worry it won't be that hard. Besides, if you don't find these cds, then I'm going to have to go buy them and I don't feel like buying albums I already own.’ ‘you already have doubles of cds.’ ‘exactly. so that's why you have to find these. Cause I need them.’ ‘what if I don't find them? it's going to be impossible!’ ‘don't worry. I know they're in there. you’ll find them. But you may have to look through all the boxes and crates. Take all day. It’ll be fun.’

So all day he's in my apartment. I come and go throughout the day and he's still in there searching for these two cds amongst thousands and thousands and along the way he's built this stack of hundreds of cds that he wants to take upstairs with him to put into his ipod. I'm telling you, I have never seen someone so young with such good taste in music. he never takes the shit. he only takes the good stuff. Dylan Beatles springsteen u2 t. rex. In fact, what is really disturbing is that he isn't attracted to any of the newer stuff and I own every album that's cracked the top one thousand in the last five hundred years, but he doesn’t go for the newer stuff as much as the old classics.... Its eerie. How does he know already when his generation is listening to such mediocre stuff... he has a led zeppelin ringtone on his phone for gods sake and the kid is twelve. Crazy.

Every now and then I'll walk by and check on him, see if he found the cds I need and peer down at his pile checking out what he instinctively has picked out for himself. He's got some green day and blink 182 and nirvana in there. that's good. its not all classic rock. He needs to hear the modern stuff too. I play him the new mars volta and tell him this is the future of rock. It goes over his head. Not melodic enough for his twelve year old ears. Too heavy. But hopefully he soaks it in.

I watch him and notice some of the cds he puts back. ‘bro what the hell are you doing? That's one of the best albums of all time!’ I say about prince’s under the cherry moon. He looks at it and likes the cover. Trust me man, if we ever make an album like that we can retire. It’s a masterpiece.’ He puts down magnolia because he didn't like the movie. ‘Tyler that's a masterpiece. Its one of the best ever. Forget about the movie. The songs are unbelievable. For songwriting its really good. he holds up the stranger by Billy Joel. ‘this is one of the best albums of all time!’ he says. I agree. ‘are you sure you have all of his cds in here?’ ‘yeah. I'm pretty sure I have every CD ever made bro.’ ‘why do you have so many genesis cds?’ ‘bro every album ever made is in this room. Good or bad. Remember, music is not just about enjoyment, as an artist, music is research too. its not just about music you like. See that missy Elliot CD that you put away and are not taking?’ ‘yeah, I'm not into her. you like her?’ ‘ I do like her, even though she's gross and vulgar, but that's not the point. You want to be a million selling recoding artist right?’ he smiles sheepishly. ‘yes.’ ‘well that's a really fucking creative album. It may not be our type of thing, but check it out. learn from it. its good.’ I force him to take darkness on the edge of town. he doesn’t want to because he doesn’t recognize any of the songs. Again I remind him, ‘do you remember when I made you take greetings from asbury park and you didn't recognize any of the songs on there? but then for a while it was your favorite album of all time?’ ‘yeah! spirit in the night alright!’ ‘o.k. same thing here but better. This is bruces big comeback after born to run. this is some dark shit. it’s a masterpiece.’ I give him another side of bob Dylan. He notices that he's counted three of those so far. ‘you can never have enough copies of that album. Remember that. it’s a masterpiece.’ He puts away battle of los Angeles. ‘dude you have to take it. its one of their best.’ he holds up phoenix united. ‘oh my God that is such a good album bro....’ ‘let me guess, the best album of all time.’ ‘yeah totally.’ He takes some nick drake. ‘yeah he's good really good. but he killed himself.... its sad. His music is sad but its great.’ ‘like Kurt cobain or Jeff Buckley...’ ‘well Jeff didn't kill himself bro. he drowned.’ Take this, I hand him rem’s monster. Amazing guitar sounds on this album. That was one of Peter’s best guitar albums.’

He finds, holds up, and then passes up the first Rufus album. ‘bro! stop right there. that's it.’ I say seriously. ‘this isn't mamas and papas.’ ‘I know its not. but it’s the best album ever made.’ ‘like every one..’ ‘no I’m serious.’ The room goes quiet. ‘listen. Tyler you might be too young for this, it might make you quit music making forever. its that good. you're going to get really insecure from listening to this. his songwriting and his vocals are so good that it sucks if you're a singer songwriter. its that good. but you might as well know now what's possible, at your age, and what you're up against. Its better than everything else we've seen so far.’ ‘he's better than you?’ he asks wide-eyed. I laugh. ‘bro I'm not even in the same league.’ ‘he’s better than the Beatles?!’ ‘lets put it this way bro, we’re about to hear the voice of God sing through this guy. its fucking sick. You're going to love to hate him and hate to love him.’ ‘don't play it for me,’ he says. But I do anyway. I put on the song art teacher from the new want two album. A minute into it he is screaming ‘turn it off! Turn it off! I'm serious! He's too good. I hate him! I'll never sing like that...’ he's depressed... ‘look man I told you. we’re never going to be as good as Rufus. No one is. that's just the way it is. but we can be inspired by him. just face it. some guys are just fucking great like that. Rufus is like Paul was in the sixties and seventies. He's unstoppable. BUT he writes much better lyrics than Paul ever has so in a way he's even better.’ ‘do you think he writes as good of lyrics as Billy Joel or Dylan or Springsteen?’ he asks me. ‘he's close. Probably not. but he's just as good in his own way.’

He finds and makes fun of vanilla ice... but I warn him, ‘don't make fun of him or any other artist. he believed in what he was doing, so you can’t blame an artist for that. you don't want people thinking that about you, you know?’ so he takes the vanilla ice CD. its ten pm; he's found three beach boys cds but he still hasn’t found the mamas and papas. Man I hope I didn't loan them all out...


July 18th again. this date was repeated because of a strange flux in the space-time continuum believe it or not. this was the first time in history that this occurred though the mainstream media barely made mention of it.

Still doing more of this Avatar integrity rundown. First ran it on the last ten years focusing mostly on Cleopatra and our businesses and relationship. Then ran it on the college years and high school years. now running it a third time focusing on a little bit of all the different times, just anything that comes up. you cannot believe once you begin this how many things you think of throughout your life that you did and still feel bad about. even things when you were really young find a way to kind of sit there in your subconscious... the key is discovering them, acknowledging them, making amends if you have to and then letting them go. today I apologized to my little brother for how I took advantage of being older and bigger and just abusing the shit out of him when we were kids. Things like that. I think the acknowledgement of it made us both feel better. I'll keep you posted. This is some intense therapy. I'm going back in for more.




The cool thing about that mamas and papas documentary was that it broke down that song creque alley by the lyrics and showed who each person mentioned in the song was. all the old folk singers from that era were mentioned who then went on to become rock stars. Very cool.

I was thinking how lucky I was to be raised by my mom because growing up a huge music fan, she bought every album that came out when she was a kid and then bought all the ones from the earlier eras as she got older, and kept on buying music all throughout my childhood so from the age of I month old onward I had access to every classic album that had ever been released. I would just sit in this big pile of old vinyl and stare at the pictures on the covers and spin these discs, each time discovering something fresh and new and exciting. she had every hit album from the fifties sixties and seventies from when she was growing up, and then all the classics from the forties and thirties and twenties, and of course all the Broadway stuff and all the classical music as well. [when my friends make fun of me for writing and signing stuff like the tomorrow intro or if your baby could, its just that that kind of music is just as ingrained in me as rock and pop is. its in my blood, that show tune type of stuff. I like my fair lady or sound of music just as much as I like zeppelin four or the white album. You know.]

My earliest music memories, speaking of mom and her influence on me musically, would be these... the soundtrack to Oliver, sound of music an my fair lady as I said above, the king and I, things like that. show tunes, HUGE influences. I think it was because that by the time I was born my mom was getting out of the rock stuff and mellowing out. unfortunately she listened to a lot of burt Bacharach. I don't care how cool people try to make that shit and yes I'm a HUGE Elvis Costello fan and I know he tried to bring burt out of the closet a bit recently but I never did and never will dig his shit. she also listened to tons of Streisand. Beav and I were singing that song People and Memories and the way we were before we could speak.

Soon I was old enough to start digging through moms record collection and it was fucking mammoth. She had shelves of albums. and beyond that she had boxes that weren't shelved. Everything she had collected since she was a girl. So of course I had immediate access to all the cool fifties music, all the old Phil spector stuff and doo wop stuff, and Elvis Presley and little Richard and all that. but she also had a sick collection of sixties stuff and this is where for whatever reason my heart really went when I was on my own in that collection of hers.

I will never forget the first time I heard the songs the times they are changing, just because I thought Dylan looked cool on the cover. Or the first time I heard dedicated to the one I love because I thought the m&p looked cool or daydream believer by the monkees or sounds of silence or good day sunshine. That feeling of goosebumps, that feeling that you are hearing something that is fantastic and life changing to you... makes you dream and smile and makes your heart feel like its soaring... and its not because it was being played for me. my mom was already way over that stuff. she was digging into her own thing by that time. this was just the stuff that I would find in her collection and really feel an affinity for. I would play those songs over and over and over again...

most of my friends didn't get this. they only had access to the songs that were currently popular on the radio during our time which was the eighties. So they didn't get turned on to any of that music from the prior generations. My friends at the time thought that popular music began with kajagoogoo and duran duran and flock of seagulls and the bee gees and all that. they had no clue what came before. in this respect, and I guess in a lot of other ways, I was a complete outcast because of this. people in school thought the human league or missing persons were the shit, and I was thinking Dylan or Hendrix or the stones satanic majesties request were the shit. I was just totally out there away from the other kids.

Luckily by the time high school had arrived, the cooler kids had also discovered the cool music from the sixties and seventies, so being into the doors and zeppelin and the who was actually cool thank God. and because I played the guitar and could actually play some of that stuff, though not well, I actually survived high school. Barely. But I made it. thanks to moms record collection. And also to the fact that when I was eleven she bought me a guitar and an amp and got me lessons. Which in all honesty certainly saved my life. if it weren't for making music and listening to music I would have been in jail or dead by high school. I was headed for those dark places from such an early age. But music pulled me through. gave me something to live for and to live through. and still today.... well... it’s the same thing really.

I was very lucky. I'm going to call my mom and thank her for this silly little thing.

Since I'm giving props I also want to thank my uncle, the beast. Who is spoken of a lot in the diaries. both a hero and a villain to be sure. He was a real monster when I was growing up. I won't deny that. but he tried to make up for it by always turning me onto lots of cool music. when I was twelve I had my tonsils out and he came over and brought me a stack of albums to listen to. I remember every single one of them still. the Beatles white album. Pink Floyd the wall. Inagaadavida by iron butterfly. Deep purple machine head. David bowie space oddity. And a few others. obviously this shit changed my life. this was shit that mom didn't even have. too heavy for her. he was turning me onto the darker heavier stuff. he eventually sat me down and turned me onto John Lennon’s plastic ono band album, which among others could arguably still be said to really be one of the best albums ever recorded. I will never forget hearing that album for the first time. I thought I was hearing God. or something God-like. I just had never heard anything like that before, except maybe in Dylan’s late sixties, early seventies records. And still today... really.

So I love that I'm now doing the same thing for little Tyler from upstairs. The other day I was leaving the house in the morning, o.k. well my morning, I think it was about one PM, and I could hear t. rex’s child star playing upstairs from his apartment, from an album he recently borrowed. At twelve years old! NOW! in the two-thousands! that is just so awesome. he is getting the real deal. He may be an outcast for a while because he doesn’t think avril lavigne and green day and the killers are the only thing happening in music, but in the long run he is going to come to understand that bigger picture of music. way more than all the other kids his age. So awesome.


Last screening: the elegant universe. Physicist Brian green from clumbia univ discusses quantum mechanics and string theory. A fascinating topic. Perhaps the MOST important one going. But a bit too much goofy graphics for my taste and not enough meat in the math department. But a must see if you like this subject. A good primer on string theory and the mechanics of the forces of the universe. The amazing part is how far still humankind is from discovering what the hell is going on in the world we live in...


Brings up other dimensions, newer theories according to string theory that there are more than the assumed and accepted four dimensions, three of space, and one of time, that we normally think there are. that there actually may be, and in fact HAVE TO BE if string theory is correct, ELEVEN DIMENSIONS to time/space, or to the universe.

O.k. so imagine the possibilities of THAT. good stuff. you see, the cool thing is that hundreds of years the metaphysical crowd has already been talking about these other dimensions... it just took scientists a while to catch up. so eventually I think the two fields are going to catch up to each other and we are going to realize that life is much deeper, much more profound, much more mysterious, with a lot more potential than we ever imagined.


Current spin: animal collective and vashti bunyan, prospect hummer. Mello spacey art music. also Architecture in Helsinki, in case we die. more art music. this is some really silly poppy music that I am not sure I get yet. also Caribou, the milk of human kindness. Totally different. Sounds like soundtrack music. not rock. What is it? why is it?