 QUOTE OF THE WEEK: “You got to have a Jones for this, a Jones for that ... this runnin’ with the Jones’s just ain’t where it’s at ..." – Boz Scaggs
SONG OF THE WEEK: “The Shape I’m In” – The Band
by TOM HALLETT
It just hit me the other night that after several decades of exclaiming, “What a looney bin!” in reference to everything from the state of my own living room to the dance floor at the Turf Club, I am, in fact, now living right next door to a real mental health facility. It’s not an institution, there are no gray walls or locked gates—this place is a former duplex apartment-turned-office space that caters to the various psychological needs of a very small group of what the late Syd Barrett’s sister would refer to as “lost souls.”
Not that I’m playing the part of snoopy “Bewitched” neighbor Gladys Kravitz here (“Quick! Abner! Look! She’s FLYING again!” Poor Gladys—I bet if she’d shouted, “Hey Abner! Samantha’s NAKED again!” he’d have tore outta that armchair and finally been able to back her claims of witchcraft up once and for all ...), it’s just that I’m a smoker and I live in a non-smoking house. Turns out the facility is about 10 feet from my back porch, and as I puff away precious lung tissue and moments of my life, I’m privy to a constant barrage of tiny passion plays, some I’d be happy to tellya about over a cold one and some I’d rather pretend I hadn’t observed.
 Point
is, over the past few weeks it’s been rainin’ like hell here in
Homer, Alaska, and I’ve seen and heard a lot more daily hoo-ha than usual
as both the staff and wards of the facility have hung out on their own stoop
to escape the drizzles and drips. And I’ve come to the unequivocal conclusion
that the old adage, “The patients are running the asylum” is absolutely
and undeniably true. The patients (if that’s what ya can call ‘em—as
far as I can tell they’re all voluntary participants in their respective
programs and are allowed to come and go freely during the week and to leave
entirely on the weekends) at this little neighborhood oddity seem to know exactly
where they’re going and what they want each day. The doctors, nurses and
orderlies, however, tend to display manic and confused behavior on a regular
basis.
Days you can find what surely must be the chief of staff (he looks exactly like
the doc from the “Halloween” horror movie series—but then,
don’t most male psych docs look exactly like that?) either engaging in
minor carpentry projects on sawhorses behind his minivan or languishing in a
tipped-back chair on the office porch. The various and sundry staff members
resemble nothing less than a colony of ants in a magic mushroom patch—tearing
willy-nilly outta their own offices and across the street to the facility’s
annex, back and forth, back and forth at least 20 times a day. Their faces are
almost always set the same—glazed eyes glaring forward, chins jutting
out as if to say hey, hey, get the fuck outta my way, lips turned down and stern.
What’s the doc building? Why does he never seem to finish whatever it
is? And why do the workers’ faces never change expression?
The patients, on the other hand, display an almost easy charm, grinning and
waving at neighbors from their comfy perches on the porch as they race to and
fro on their daily errands or meander lazily in the late-afternoon sun. Their
conversations (once again, I’m not TRYING to overhear, but hey, it’s
a quiet town) range from the ordinary (“Hey, Bob, didja see the news last
night?”) to the mildly interesting (“... an’ so I sez, if
she woulda been usin’ BIRTH CONTROL she wouldn’t be in this pickle
now, I sez ...”) to the fairly entertaining (“Turns out Carl didn’t
even know the bastard. I mean, he SAID he was with the company, but when Carl
called them they’d never heard of him ... no, no ... I’m still in
deep cover ...”). I don’t really want to know any more about any
of it, but I do know that the patients are definitely happier and seem considerably
less maladjusted than their caretakers.
Which all brings me, in my long and rambling way, to explaining that I’ve
been “serenading” my jolly neighbors of late with endless hours
of musical offerings, from the dulcet strains of Ozzy’s “Crazy Train”
(I just wanted to see what would happen—answer: nothing. The guys on the
porch tapped their fingers on the railing as Ozzy went off the rails) to madcap
phrase-turners like Mr. Barrett and Nick Drake. The result of my little social
experiment? For me, people watching still beats the hell outta TV, plus I can
still crank my tunes. For my new neighbors, well, just like anybody else, sometimes
they probably wish I’d turn the shit off and go to bed, while other times
they tap their fingers and toes and sing along. The patients, that is—the
staff resolutely play deaf and carry on as if lines like “... mental wounds
not healing / driving me insane ...” aren’t really tearing through
the quiet, small-town atmosphere on wings of guitar-driven madness. Ah, who
cares? I know who the sane ones are. As a good friend of mine likes to say,
“I’m not crazy, I’m just a little unwell ...” Oh, and
here’s another one for the team, coach ...
 Lloyd
Cole
Antidepressant
2006
One Little Indian
On Antidepressant, English cult singer/songwriter Lloyd
Cole’s fourth album for indie label One Little Indian, the suave,
smooth tunesmith shucks off his velvet smoking jacket, pops a pill or two, and
lets down his pompadour. Though there’s nothing here that strikes a listener
quite as immediately and succinctly as Cole’s 1995 bubble-under pop hit
“Like Lovers Do,” a few spins reveal another gem in the crown of
this smart, funny, self-deprecating troubadour.
Album opener “The Young Idealists” sets the pace for this record,
yawning keyboard riffs and easy acoustic strumming chiming in comfortably alongside
needling lines like “... make believe the world was really ours / Still
supposing we could make a difference ...” “Woman In A Bar”
is a Billy-Joel-meets-Ben-Folds in an Uptown dive kinda ditty, Cole expertly
capturing both the undeniable thrill of the mating ritual and the inevitable
let-downs inherent in its logical conclusion: “... a few moving parts
need to be replaced / My engine starts, but only on Tuesdays ...”
“NYC Sunshine” is a pretty, languid slice of afternoon delight nestled
amongst these otherwise mostly dim, smoky vignettes, the aural equivalent of
finding a bright spot of solar energy splattered all over a shadowy hardwood
floor, while “I Didn’t See It Coming” tumbles in like a lazy
lover late to bed, a syrupy, narcotic half-dream that simultaneously recalls
the finer solo work of Lou Reed (“... you stopped singing along with that
rock ’n’ roll song on your New York station / I didn’t see
it coming ... uh-oh ...”) and the airy, breathable later efforts of his
erstwhile bandmate John Cale.
 Other
standouts here include the bouncy, countrified lope of “Everysong,”
which does a fine job showcasing Cole’s wonderful knack for tossing off
easy double-entendres and snappy pop hooks, as evidenced in this line from a
character who knows he’s in the song: “So don’t get so excited
/ He’s not that kind of writer / Chances are we’ll wind up in some
Godforsaken cul-de-sac / Not mine / No use to get sad about it, you can’t
love everysong ...” and a drop-dead gorgeous cover of Moby Grape’s
“I Am Not Willing.”
The tone and final message of Antidepressant is best presented in the
title cut and album centerpiece, as Lloyd shrugs and lays bare his chemical-laden,
scarred ol’ heart with a sloppy, sideways grin: “With my medication
I will be fine ... I said I’m tryin’ to write my novel / She said,
neither am I / By the way, I saw you reading No Depression / You’re doing
nothin’, I’ll come over we’ll watch Six Feet Under / And then
we’ll maybe get around to your condition ...” A smartly understated,
delightfully teasing nugget that really does get better with every spin. Highly
(sorry) recommended. Check it out at onelittleindian-us.com and note that the
record will be out October 10, so mark your calendars.
That’s it for this week, ya monkeys. Tune in again next time ’round
for more, more, more. Until we meet again—make yer own damn news.
If you have local music news/gigs/CDs you’d like to see mentioned in
this space, or you’d just like to share your outdated antidepressants,
send replies to: Tmygunn77764@yahoo.com.
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