beat out this song for the number one spot on the US charts:

Weird that I’d never actually heard either tune. Not weird that John Lennon will remain my favorite Beatle.

That girl is so dangerous. That girl is so dangerous. That girl is a bad girl. I’ve seen her type before.

My nephew, inquiring with surprising innocence:

I don’t get it, Mom. What could be so dangerous about the way she types?

According to my nephew, what’s truly funny about this pronouncement is that he can’t tell if his grandpa is joking.

In other tangentially guitar-hero related news, my 7-year-old niece is working on a re-write of Survivor’s “Eye of the Tiger.” The little I’ve heard so far sounds promising: “He’s smelling us all with the nose …… of the Tiger!”

went into our ears as

After listening to them again, I’ve ended up suspecting that what they have in common is precisely that which makes them hold up so well.

(1) William Blake’s poems are meant to be sung. Ginsberg performed some of Blake’s “Songs of Innocence and Experience” with a slightly slobbery awkwardly energy I would never forget. (I had yet to hear these.)

(2) When a 69-year-old gay elder statesmen of  beat poetry asks a fairly innocent 20-year-old man from Ohio at 9pm if he’d like to join him for “breakfast,” he’s neglecting to mention that breakfast would lie at the end of an unspoken chain of hoped-for events, implied by the shaky but confident placing of the former’s wrinkly hand on the latter’s corduroyed knee. Although flattered, I declined. No hash browns were had, but I made the most of my bragging rights.

This time it was at the Crystal Corner, when The Talking Heads’ “This Must Be The Place (Naive Melody)” started playing on the jukebox. I can’t take credit for dropping the dollars to make it play, but it really is the perfect jukebox selection. It’s sufficiently chill for the hipsters, but friendly enough not to drive anyone from the bar. It’s a gentle tune, perfect for sitting and tapping a coaster to the beat, while also easy to dance to.

I was in the coaster-tapping mood, and began to zone out to the familiar groove, which, never really going anywhere, makes for easy mind-wandering. Noticing my thoughts had left the building, my friend on the next bar stool began to sing at me, miming some Byrne-like gestures: “Home is where I want to be, but I guess I’m already there.”

“Huh?” I asked. “I didn’t hear ya.”

I drifted away again, but snapped back when I noticed he was still singing: “Out of all those kinds of people, you got a face with a view.”

“What?” I asked again. He kept singing, and then it hit me like it always does. I had no idea what the hell the words to this song were. I’ve heard heard it a hundred times, but I just don’t hear music that way — especially , it seems, when it’s such a “naive melody.”

From an academic music theoretical perspective, ignoring the words isn’t something I condone. There’s a lot of political baggage stowed away in the overhead compartments above people who routinely privilege music over words (or, to be fair, vice versa), and the most enriching criticism of a song will usually explore the interplay between text and sound. Nevertheless, I won’t lie: when I listen to music, the text doesn’t distinguish itself from the rest of the sonic fabric. There are exceptions, of course, but they prove the rule, and perhaps shed light on why I’m particularly drawn to certain music.

Stay tuned for Parts 2-4.

wayneandwax.com � Modern Ancient African Music: “Noting, for example, that Baaba Maal’s Firin in Fouta (1994) was received ambivalently by the “world music” market because of its incorporation of funk, reggae, hip-hop, “techno” (don’t know why Monson and Eyre call it that — sounds much more like house to me)”

Such comfortably dropped off-the-cuff declarations (I can’t be too redundant here) are no small part of why Wayneandwax is so fun to read.