Describing "The Perfect Girl" (a new LP from Liz Painter)

Phil Collins: Not Dead Yet! Genesis reunites

What do you know?
Phil Collins is coming back.
Detailed here at length on this blog in 2010, the Genesis drummer, vocalist, and 80's super star solo artist
retired in great pain, unable to sing or to drum anymore.

(Update, 11/10: Genesis is now back together to tour, too. http://societyofrock.com/phil-collins-announces-he-and-genesis-members-will-reunite-for-epic-comeback-tour/ Gubriel's working on his own thing at the moment, but hasn't ruled out working with Banks, Rutherford, and Collins again.

There was a time in the Deep South when Phil was one of the few rock artists with music "soft" enough, pop enough,
for me to openly listen to him in my home, where Mom and Dad took the church's staunch anti-rock music stance. I slipped him in along with some saxophone jazz like Dave Sanborn (and ha, Kenny G, my hair twin) and probably let my folks hear him cover "You CAn't Hurry Love," as Motown was maybe a bit less "evil."

I stuck with his tunes through my teens; his Ubiquitous Tour was my first ever rock concert. When I was 15, 16, Phil was high on my listening list. I particularly liked the first solo album. Reflections of my own luck in love, I think.

"One More Night" was my sophomore saxophone solo act in the talent show. Next year, we came back with "I Wish It Would Rain Down," this time with Matti Muench and Willis Woods as my rhythm section. I already had performing in my blood. Model Revue was a personal slice of the Divine for a formerly-painfully shy nerd. (Think I'm getting the years right.)

And now, he's back...to let YOU know...he can really shake'em down.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjiq0DoSQD8&feature=share Honestly, as much as it looks like it may've kicked his bum, Phil sold "In The Air Tonight" like a case of Girl Scout Cookies. He commits. He simply blows it away. Questlove grins his cheeks off, playing the most famous drum roll in rock.

Phil's got an autobiography coming out, too. Here: http://philcollins.com/ It's called Not Dead Yet.

http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-37676505

“Do you like Phil Collins? I’ve been a big Genesis fan ever since the release of their 1980 album, Duke. Before that, I really didn’t understand any of their work. Too artsy, too intellectual. It was on Duke where Phil Collins’ presence became more apparent. I think Invisible Touch is the group’s undisputed masterpiece. It’s an epic meditation on intangibility. At the same time, it deepens and enriches the meaning of the preceding three albums. Christy, take off your robe.” - Patrick Bateman, "American Psycho"

So, hey: Phil's schtick was, he never was all that cool (though R&B artists like Phil Bailey just might disagree, and possibly some of the people who snapped up a whopping 100Million-Plus record sales), an artist for your folks who don't dance well, a comedian in his videos. It was very popular to hate on Phil Collins by the time he retired, but his career gave me nothing but happiness. Well, maybe not the Adult Contemporary-oriented phase...and I was too old and too young to get hooked on his Tarzan soundtrack stuff, but...why wouldn't I wish him the best?

I particularly like "Follow You, Follow Me," "ABACAB" "Turn It ON Again" and various other Genesis performances, often with him drumming behind Peter Gabriel- their approach took me a while to warm up to, but the time came! "Driving The Last Spike" and "Dreaming While You Sleep" were my last favorites from them. There was once a time when Invisible Touch was as good as it got for me. What can I say?

I am all about "Easy Lover" (with Phillip Bailey of EArth, Wind and Fire), "In The Air Tonight," and that whole first solo record, but I learned to play and sing quite a few of Phil's tunes- ironically, about the time he announced his retirement, I picked up his stuff on guitar. As I said to my new pal Peter Colp of "Air": Yep, the original pop music crime thriller! (And definitely all the better for originating as a true piece of rock music art that just happened to become an immortal single.)

And it's sorta funny, from the outside, if he had a fourteen-year feud with Sir Paul McCartney. Not really a "feud" I'd say- that's more like Roger Waters Vs. the rest of Pink Floyd sort of territory- just a meeting that went funky.
Too bad, but sometimes things happen and it's easier to not quite let it go and keep making zingers at the other person's expense. I know someone doing that right now.

My life's been plenty cool enough for me not to fear being found out as a Phil Collins fan.

So, as they'll see live in Europe next June...He's Not Dead Yet. :-D

Go PHil.

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Jolie lover crashes plane into Depp home out of jealousy

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One thing! Branjelina broke up recently, and Anj just read the account of some fight between a drunken Pitt and the boys on a plane. Ouch. 52, world’s his oyster, something’s not quite right though.

Maybe some nihilsm lurking beneath all this activity in which we seek meaning.

But we got a laugh away in the end; she’d been talking about why Depp’s last two loves didn’t work out. I said, “what if you woke up in the morning and found out I was living with Angelina Jolie?”
She said “well bring me aboard as the Nanny!”
I said, “naw, after I swooped in like that, you moved in with Johnny Depp!"
I have her laughing good now, but I'm on a roll so:

"And I go insane with jealousy, so I paint ‘rage’ onto a private plane "--
"Flying in a rage, are you?"

"...and fly it into his mansion! And when I flew “in a rage” the propeller beheaded Alice Cooper, but for real this time. What a tragedy. After all this time pretending to be decapitated on stage."

It's not that these terrible things people go through aren't sad.
It's that, the world asks us to remember its inherent absurdity.

You can't really envy anyone.

You can only enjoy what you have. And laugh some, be alive.


Be Chill,

Cease ill

Let love win : keeping quarrels from running the show in your relationship

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Mama Vick would come home tired from work. Pops would be grousing about some general flaw of society or some specific pissy detail, and she would light into him, and sometimes, away they'd go. But you know what? They made it forty five and a half years, and filled far more of those moments with love and companionship. Heck, even ill companionship is company, when you get down to it. And when people get hungry AND sore, all bets are off!

I might've thought of trying to referee a couple of times, but wisdom suggested (let's face it, my wife) that they had been at this since they were teenagers. It was unpleasant...but things never failed to blow over. Before long, her laughter would come sailing down the hallway. I miss that laugh. It was a good belly laugh that told you she, for the moment, had not a care in the world. He used to enjoy riling her up in their younger days: it was his sense of humor. But he made her smile for a lifetime, and she, him.

Relationships. People spend so much time building them, but they can tear one apart, so quickly, it seems.
Yet...stormy pronouncements and terse words are only a stress reaction. Where do they fit in the greater context? That's the contingency against which all good times are had, the storehouse in which all survival and sanity build the attractions that make our trust worthy relationships last.

Listen, your body may not yield you a greater bounty of patience to fill your cohort of wisdom, even if you
try your best to take care of your self. Sometimes, the overload on the next available nervous system will
cause a circuit of irritation. When people feel tired and sick, they will use a fight to stimulate energy.

The reactions people make out of compounded ill feelings and resentment can expand the space between two people. Let me say from experience, I've never stormed out for a walk where I didn't end up missing my wife, no matter how wronged I felt. Maybe you go home and pick up the fight, maybe the need for the last word vanishes. But if you want things to last, never go out on an extended tour of duty, reacting to your frustrations. Someone has to say no to that.

Someone has to give up on the chance for mutual happiness to ever wear the other one out. A show of mutual respect and good humor- not overloading on snark, here, I mean, laughs you can both have, even over each one's silly foibles- is a daily investment towards building the reservoir of good will on both sides.

Extended grudges and a lack of affection every time you meet up erode any relationship. So here's my take
on what actually happens every time the ill meets the grill!


Honestly, two people can put an end to almost any blow-up in under 20 minutes, 95% of the time, I'd say from experience. You don't really want to put the other person through that- empathy can be a powder keg, but the whole time, the sane part of both people is saying "we don't really want to do this..." and you just try to get the nerves to stop reacting, you know?

Mama Vick came up with this saying she passed to her children. "I'd rather be with your daddy in bad times than with anyone else in good times." She was known for her truthfulnesss.

No one wants memories like that..so hey...be sweet every day, y'all.

A Day Fit For A Queen (for Momma Vick)

In honor of our great friend today, let her name be Victoria. She told several of us, she always wished she had been named Victoria; it was her mother’s original intention! It was her helpful big sis, Debra, who supplied the name “Vickie Jane,” as humble as could be imagined. But she would tell you, she was no plain ol’ Jane. In glory, she radiates like the queen she is. “Victoria” if you please.

That spry little tom boy of old still lived on in her eyes, to the summer solstice day she peacefully closed them last. She told me stories of Raiford, Mildred, Debra, Randy, Barry, Ronald and all the grandparents and all the brothers and sisters, that made me her family, too. But her heart, full of all those beautiful ideals that seem so unpopular to the cynics of late, made many, many people part of her family, and if you were really her friend, too, you know they were her diverse and moving work of art.