On 'Toys,' Robin Williams and the birth of a cinephile

1993 was the year I decided to become a cinephile. I’d always loved watching movies with my family like any kid, but now I was a teenager and a regular reader of Roger Ebert’s column in the Thursday newspaper. I made up my mind that I was going to start seeking out movies that challenged me and gave me insights into truly appreciating film. That wasn’t the easiest thing to do in Sparta, Wisconsin in the mid-‘90s. We had three decent video shops and the usual array of gas station and supermarket video sections, but classics and under-the-radar titles were hard to come by. In lieu of critic-approved, capital-A “Art Films,” I made do with whatever offbeat or indie flicks (Miramax productions, mainly) made it to my local shelves. Early in high school I claimed Spike Lee’s Crooklyn as my favorite film. I’d go to bat for Mixed Nuts as the most underrated film in the Steve Martin canon. I was almost certainly the only 15-year-old boy in Wisconsin who went to sleep beneath a poster of the Ted Danson coming-of-age dramedy Pontiac Moon every night.

But before any of that, there was Toys. Toys wasn’t an indie movie by any means. It was intended to be a holiday blockbuster for the whole family. In that regard it was every bit the failure it was always doomed to be. It’s just too damn weird an endeavor to have been embraced by the public at large. It’s borderline unthinkable that a day-glo story of a manic man-child and his cognitively disabled sister fighting to save a toy factory from a military takeover would even make it past a table read, let alone be granted the budget to realize a litany of massive, surrealist sets and a cast of top-tier stars, but such was the power of Barry Levinson in the early ‘90s. The result was a ludicrous mélange of lunatic designs and ideas with the unhinged energy of Terry Gilliam, the unlimited budget of Steven Spielberg and the unfortunate sentimentality of Chris Columbus.

It also had LL Cool J disguised as a sofa.

I first saw Toys at my pal Nathan’s house, viewed on his parents' dying VCR. The tracking was shot and the color faded in and out, no way at all to watch a movie that depends so heavily on a striking color palette. Nonetheless, I was mesmerized. It felt like something that shouldn’t exist, and I was delighted that it did. I watched it again with my own family at my first opportunity and was again enthralled with the churning, multicolored gears; the indoor roller coaster hallways; the life-sized dollhouses and mechanical duck crossings and endless, billowing fields of grass. It wasn’t like anything else, and where I came from anything that wasn’t like anything else was something worth loving.

And the cast. The cast of Toys is something else. Michael Gambon. Joan Cusack. (Never better – I had such a pubescent crush on her in this movie.) LL Cool J. Donald O’Connor. Jack Warden. Robin Wright. Yeardley Smith. Debi Mazar. (Remember Debi Mazar?) Shelley Desai. Jamie Foxx. Wendy from Wendy and Lisa. And of course, at the core of it, Robin Williams. How could the motor-mouthed man-child heir to the world’s most whimsical toy company have been played by anyone but Robin Williams?

Late 1992 was pretty close to peak Robin Williams. He’d redefined Disney movies earlier that year with Aladdin and had already cemented himself as a dramatic actor with Dead Poets Society and The Fisher King. He’d anchored a high-profile flop with Hook, sure, but he was only a year away from the zeitgeist-smasher of Mrs. Doubtfire. America was on the back end of a solid 10-year stretch wherein Robin Williams was comedy. I was a little too young to have memories of his coke-fueled standup heyday but I’d grown up loving him as a movie star. It was the early ‘90s. Who hadn’t? For as out-there as the movie is conceptually, Toys finds him giving a quintessentially Robin Williams performance, all funny voices and rapid-fire babble sprinkled with earnest monologues. Somehow Williams never overpowers the movie the way he could at his most unfettered (although he does cross over into irritation at times - when he manages to wedge in both his Michael Jackson and his Gandhi impressions, for instance). Maybe it’s because Levinson is throwing just as much brain candy at the walls as Williams is and the two creative forces balance each other out. Any which way, I count Toys as one of the best uses of Robin Williams ever.

For whatever reason I’d always glommed onto Williams’ least-loved roles. If you’d asked me in 1993 to name my three favorite Robin Williams movies, I’d have told you Toys, Popeye and The Survivors. It’s probably been 20 years since I’ve seen The Survivors so I can’t tell you if that one holds up – although it’s hard for me to imagine that Robin Williams and Walter Matthau as hapless survivalists circa 1983 would be anything but funny – but the other two are still at the top of my list. Robert Altman’s Popeye has undergone a critical redemption in recent years and finally gets some of the praise it so richly deserves – seriously, Williams as Popeye is some of the finest casting in Hollywood history. Poor Toys, on the other hand, is remembered primarily as Barry Levinson’s greatest folly, to the extent that it’s remembered at all.

Watching it again two decades later, on the day that Robin Williams died, I can understand some of the animosity. It’s sometimes mawkish, sometimes heavy-handed, sometimes outright annoying. The blending of childlike wonder and adult themes is uneasy and occasionally a little creepy. But by god, it’s just as weird a beast as it was in 1993. There’s nothing safe about it. It’s visually creative and stimulating to an insane degree, especially for a pre-CGI movie. The story goes surprisingly dark but never sacrifices a genuine spirit of whimsy. The sets are astonishing. Joan Cusack is still a revelation. And Robin Williams is a force of nature, bouncing off the walls both figuratively and literally in a performance that seriously could not have been given by any other human. It’s a movie that failed at so many of the things it set out to do but succeeded in teaching me the power of a beautiful failure. For all its flaws, Toys was essential in making me a lover of cinema.

Plus the soundtrack features a pretty cool Thomas Dolby song. 

Putting Weird Al's "Word Crimes" on trial

Weird Al Yankovic clearly struck a chord with the nation's English majors when he released his "Blurred Lines" parody video "Word Crimes" earlier this month. The deftly worded excoriation of people who use poor grammar and punctuation on the internet racked up nearly five million YouTube views in its first two days and was disseminated by high-profile sites from Pitchfork to the Washington Post. A lot of the song's leverage also came from self-proclaimed "grammar nerds" sharing it in their Facebook and Twitter feeds, often (in my experience, at least) accompanied by a comment about the poster's own frustration with dimbulbs who don't know when to add an apostrophe to "its."

Decrying the decline of spelling and grammar is a refrain as old as the internet, or at least the social components thereof. Online defense of the King's English is swift and frequently vicious. Any slight typo that slips into a publication is met with a flurry of "Don't you people employ a copy editor?" comments. A simple "there/their" mix-up is grounds for dismissing a poster's entire thesis, however cogent it may otherwise be. Even in a character-restrained environment like Twitter, using texting-inspired space-savers like "ur" or "thx" can be enough to earn a block from certain folks.

The disciples of "Word Crimes" no doubt see themselves as important gatekeepers, a bulwark against the dumbing down of our collective discourse. But are online displays of bad grammar really symptoms of creeping stupidity? Or is it just that everybody has a different skill set? Sure, there are plenty of lazy or willfully ignorant writers on the internet, but there are also scads of legitimate excuses for having poor grammar, including reading disorders, English as a secondary language, lack of access to quality writing instruction, or just plain not having a knack for words. 

Given the choice, a lot of those people probably wouldn't put their writing on public display, but in the social age that's often the only viable way for them to stay connected to their friends and family. It isn't necessarily that language skills have declined so drastically in recent years. It's just that we're seeing more language from people who used to have the option of keeping that particular shortcoming to themselves. I personally know a number of very intelligent but grammar-challenged people who are reluctant to post anything online for fear of the mockery that will inevitably come the first time they confuse their plural and possessive forms.

If Weird Al had made a video shaming folks who don't get trigonometry or who have a poor understanding of personal finance, would it have gone as smugly viral as "Word Crimes"? If so, an awful lot of grammar nerds would find themselves on the receiving end of the same condescension now being heaped on people who struggle with the rules of writing. I count myself among the fortunate folks who have a natural aptitude for the written word, but I'm the first to admit that I have grievous failings in plenty of other areas of scholarship and communication. That doesn't make me stupid, and the same goes for people who don't grasp the function of quotation marks.

I don't want to bag on Weird Al too hard here. "Word Crimes" seems generally good-natured and spotlights some of the sharpest wordplay of Mr. Yankovic's career. What's more concerning is how the song has validated and brought to the forefront a mean-spirited strain of privilege-dripping pedantry. Sure, there's some merit to the grammarians' hullabaloo - it's hard to think of a valid reason to use textspeak outside the confines of texting or Twitter, for instance - but for the most part it's an argument that places form above function. Heck, I've known storytellers who can bring a room to tears with a piece that barely resembles English on paper, and I've edited essays by award-winning authors who still begin every paragraph with a superfluous "So." I've also edited more than a few technically perfect pieces that wound up being too godawful dull to publish. If writing can be both imperfect and effective, what's the benefit in punishing every minor infraction?

Besides, do those of us who excel at writing really want everybody else climbing into the same boat? We're lucky enough to have a fairly rare skill that gives us an edge in many facets of life. Why not take pride in that rather than scorning those who don't? When I go out to a nice restaurant, the chef doesn't come to my table and belittle me for not being able to cook as well as he does, nor does he follow me home to mock my meager attempts at preparing my own dinner. There's a silent contract in place that I appreciate his artistry on its own terms and he respects that I'll do the best I can with what I've got. Nobody needs to accuse anybody of food crimes (which, come to think of it, sounds like it should be a Weird Al song title).

Let's all lay off the grammar-shaming and appreciate "Word Crimes" as Weird Al's cleverly written poke at an eminently pokable Robin Thicke song, not some sort of manifesto for folks who know their plurals from their possessives. Or better still we could skip ahead to "Foil." Mocking conspiracy theorists via a Lorde parody is the kind of shaming everybody can get behind.

The mistrial of Lou Reed's "The Original Wrapper"

No one can say Lou Reed didn’t provide his critics with plenty of easy targets. I’m the kind of fanboy who can give you at least a half-hearted defense for every punching bag from Metal Machine Music to Lulu (although I’d have to strain myself a bit to rally for Hudson River Wind Meditations). One point where I’ve always rolled over and admitted defeat, though, is the much-maligned “The Original Wrapper” from the equally spurned Mistrial album.

If you don’t know “The Original Wrapper” by title you might know it as “that Lou Reed rap song.” That’s an accurate description on the surface. It was 1986, and hip-hop had the zeitgeist by the throat, especially in Lou’s New York. America was starting to see the first wave of weird and cynical rap cash-ins: advertisements playing on the inherent “hilarity” of unhip white people trying to rap, Super Bowl champions gleefully looking like hip-hop dweebs, whatever the hell Dee Dee Ramone thought he was doing. In that context, Lou Reed jumping onto the rap bandwagon makes a certain amount of sense.

But I don’t think that’s quite what Lou was doing. Sure, taken at face value, “The Original Wrapper” looks like an unwieldy attempt by a middle-aged white guy to either ride the latest trend or mock it. The Guardian called it “a gob-smacking misfire from a man occasionally seen to be the epitome of art-rock cool.” A Dangerous Minds blog takes it as Lou laughably and semi-defensively laying claim to the title of “one of music’s original rappers.” The AV Club’s Jason Heller hyperbolically calls it a "complete annulment of everything that ever made [Lou] cool" and accuses him of "making fun of rap while he's trying to ride on its coattails." Even a comparatively charitable observer like City Pages' Nate Patrin calls out Lou’s "half-assed rhyming" and "a beat that sounds like public-domain music you'd hear at the beginning of an infomercial for exercise equipment." No less a cultural titan than myself once mildly lambasted the song in print, griping that "Reed delivers a monotone ramble on AIDS, yuppies, Jerry Falwell and other hot-button issues of 1986, all the while employing waffle-making as some sort of inscrutable metaphor."

Now, though, I think all of us were selling “The Original Wrapper” short. There’s simply no precedent for presuming that an artist as savvy and iconoclastic as Lou Reed was just surfing trends, selling out or being generally clueless. Show me even one other example from the man’s artistic career of that happening and I’ll concede your point. (His weirdly infamous Honda commercial would only count if he’d written an original song for it.) On the other hand, there is plenty of precedent for Lou mocking the state of the arts via expert – and often misinterpreted – mimickery. Look at his notorious “I Wanna Be Black,” a scathing satire of the type of white “fucked-up middle-class college student” who idolized black culture yet limited his view of it to what he saw in Blaxploitation films and heard on R&B records. Lord knows that profile could fit plenty of Lou’s musical contemporaries, particularly the British blues kids who mined a romanticized culture for derivative sounds. That song makes a lot of listeners uneasy because the satire cuts so cleanly that it’s hard to hear that Lou is mocking the commodification and media packaging of black culture, not the culture itself. He does the same thing more subtly with the iconic “Colored Girls” of “Walk on the Wild Side.” I’d say that their inclusion, and especially Lou calling attention to their race, is a dig at bands like the Rolling Stones trying to pump up their soul cred by occasionally employing Bona-Fide Black People.

Maybe the most direct parallel with “The Original Wrapper” is “Disco Mystic” from The Bells. It’s a fairly straightforward disco track, although decidedly darker-toned than most of the genre. For more than four minutes, Lou’s band throws together saccharine string riffs and an almost sarcastic guitar, with Lou occasionally jumping in to grumble, “Disco…Disco mystic.” I’ve heard people dismiss it as a weird attempt at making an actual disco-punk track, which makes zero sense in the context of the wildly non-commercial environs of The Bells. For me, this is Lou commenting on the creative bankruptcy and numbing repetitiveness of the current trend, all while cockily showing everybody that he could do it too if he ever wanted to.

There’s some of that in play in “The Original Wrapper,” but the target is different. Rather than rap music itself, Lou is mocking the eagerness of the media to co-opt this hip new trend. The lyrics are layered with the hypocrisies and evil banalities of politicians and media types who see hip-hop as a way to raise some revenue or score political points. As I see it, the song’s title and refrain (“Hey pitcher, better check that batter / Make sure the candy’s in the original wrapper”) make for a conveniently punny warning not to be sucked in by corporate repackaging of hip-hop culture.

As for the content, this isn’t exactly Public Enemy, but it’s an overtly political song that presages the social commentary of Lou’s universally heralded New York. It’s not a coincidence that Lou released this song as a single alongside “Video Violence.” Both songs condemn the crass packaging and marketing of violence by Reagan-era greedheads who simultaneously painted themselves as moral guardians (“Classic, original, the same old story / The politics of hate in a new surrounding”) and skewer the supposed high ground taken by religious conservatives (“Reagan says abortion’s murder / while he’s looking at Cardinal O’Connor / Look at Jerry Falwell, Louis Farrakhan / Both talk religion and the brotherhood of man / They both sound like they belong in Tehran”). The rhymes are clunky and the message preachy, sure, but I could point you to half a dozen KRS-ONE songs from the era that fit the same bill.

Also like KRS, Lou challenges the critics who’d class hip-hop as lowest common denominator vulgarity and overstuffs some verses with polysyllabic verbosity. “Don't mean to come on sanctimonious / But life's got me nervous and little pugnacious / Lugubrious, so I give a salutation / And rock on out to a beat really stupid” doesn’t really roll off the tongue, nor is it especially solid rhyming, but it serves its tongue-in-cheek purpose.

The production on the single version really is as bad as its reputation, a dorky, cheap-sounding collision of tinny beats and amateurish scratching. It's interesting, though, that the song improves markedly in most of its other incarnations, including the rockier version featured on the Mistrial album. Take a listen to that or to any of the live renditions I've linked here. Different production doesn't transform "The Original Wrapper" into a great song, but it at least elevates it to mediocrity. Heck, the 10-minute live version above turns into a pretty sweet jam that one could almost call Velvet Underground-esque.

I’m not going to pretend that "The Original Wrapper" is some kind of unfairly slighted masterpiece. It’s too broad and goofy to be especially effective satire. I’m not sure I’d even know it was aiming for hip-hop if not for the title. The production is hopelessly dated in a uniquely ‘80s way and the lyrics sometimes dissolve into gibberish. It’s probably best described as a not particularly successful experiment that’s very much of its era. Yet still I feel compelled to defend it, because it’s neither the colossal misstep nor the tone-deaf trend-hopping it’s made out to be. It’s a weird, misunderstood song that happens to be not that great but at least takes a stab at doing something interesting. As with most things in the Lou Reed canon, that’s more than enough for me.

How to mourn a celebrity death correctly

If you've been a resident of the internet for any amount of time, you know the standard social media routine for a celebrity death:

1. The news breaks.
2. Commenters express shock and hold out hope that it's a hoax
3. The news is confirmed
4. Commenters begin expressing grief and sharing memories
5. Second wave of commenters begins scolding the first wave for mourning incorrectly

What interests me most is step number five. Try as I might, I can't understand the mindset of someone who feels a need to chasten others for the way they're affected by a death. I figure it might help me sort it out if I address the most common complaints I see pop up on comment boards and Twitter feeds.

You didn't know the deceased personally, so it's stupid to be sad about it.

Whenever I see this line of argument, I pity the person making it. How sad it must be to go through life with so little connection to art that the deaths of the artists* who make it don't feel like a personal blow. I don't think anyone would make the case that the death of a favorite actor or songwriter evokes exactly the same sense of loss that the death of a friend or loved one does, but it's still a genuinely painful experience. How can you not be shaken when a font of art that has nourished you for years suddenly goes dry? Maybe I'm just more fragile about my creative icons than most, but it still makes my heart ache when I think I'll never hear another new Warren Zevon album, and Warren's been dead for more than a decade. Which brings me to the next complaint...

You're making this death all about yourself.

Well, yeah. That's how art works. It's a subjective experience that affects each of its patrons differently. That's a beautiful thing. When an artist dies, it's only natural that people who loved his or her art will want to share what it meant to them. This is in no way a dishonor to the deceased. On the contrary, it's exactly what any artist would want. What greater honor could a creative person hope for than to have a chorus of strangers give testimony about how his or her creations made an impact on their lives? Heck, I've had musician friends geek out because I included their songs on a party mix. How much cooler to have a stranger from Australia telling the world that your song was the soundtrack to her first kiss?

And really, if each of us is to some degree the sum of his or her greatest influences, then the death of one of those influences is about us. I may not have figured in the narrative of Lou Reed's life, but he sure as hell figured in the narrative of mine. Understanding and articulating my relationship to the art that's molded me is a huge element of my own artistic purview. For me not to have eulogized Lou as visibly as possible would have been a betrayal of both my art and my identity. His story is part of my story and I see no point in pretending otherwise.

What makes this famous person more worthy of mourning than the homeless guy who just froze to death in my neighborhood or a kid killed in a drone strike in Pakistan?

Nothing, obviously. If anything, those deaths are far worthier of media coverage than that of even the world's greatest novelist or director. But it's also an apples and oranges situation. While I don't have the sociopolitical expertise to lay out the particulars, I think it's plain that the death of a public figure with a familiar body of work has a fundamentally different impact on the public than the death of a person who, however unfairly, is most recognizable as a symbol of systemic failure.

I'll admit I'm a bit conflicted on this point. There's no question that the media have always ignored matters of dire import in favor of celebrity-gawking. There are certainly some misplaced priorities here, but it's also silly to claim that the horrors of daily existence should preclude us from commemorating people who helped to shape the culture we all share. Celebrity culture is bloated and gross, but at its heart it's largely rooted in a celebration of the arts, and that's something to cherish.

I didn't think the deceased's work was all that great and I'm annoyed that other people are making a big deal about it.

Hey, good for you, sunshine. Now shut up and sit this one out. Let other people grieve how they grieve and we'll do the same for you when someone you do like dies.


* Someone pointed out that celebrity extends beyond art, which is true, obviously. I travel mostly in artistic circles, so that's where my head tends to go, but I think the same points hold true for the deaths of politicians, athletes, business leaders, etc.

Examining 10 covers of "Abraham, Martin and John"

1968's "Abraham, Martin and John" was a departure for Dion DiMucci. The faded doo-wop superstar was the king of a passé genre and in need of a career shakeup. The unlikely solution came in the form of a mournful look at America's assassination culture penned by Dick Holler, the guy who wrote "Snoopy vs. The Red Baron" for the Royal Guardsmen. The song's weary simplicity paired well with Dion's earnest, emotional delivery and made it a major hit. Today the whole thing sounds a bit sentimental and maybe even a little goulish, but according to my mom it was pretty striking to an audience still shaken by the Kennedy and King shootings. (At the very least, it's aged better than Tommy Cash's similarly themed country hit "Six White Horses.")

"Abraham, Martin and John" also spawned a multitude of covers. In an era of loose copyrights where pop songs were routinely cannibalized as soon as they hit the AM waves, zeitgeist-bait like Dion's track was guaranteed to make the rounds. I've spent a fair bit of time digging through as many covers as the internet has to offer. Many are bad, most are bland and a few are kind of nuts. I've picked out a few of the more notable renditions for an exercise in contrasts.

Moms Mabley

I have no idea how a conventionally arranged rendition of "Abraham, Martin and John" sung by a gravel-voiced, 75-year-old comedienne cracked the U.S. Top 40 in 1969, but it's pretty neat that it did. As a black, openly gay, defiantly vulgar woman born in 1895, Moms Mabley had borne witness to just about every form of prejudice the Civil Rights movement sought to combat. Hearing Moms croak out Holler's ode to some of the movement's lost leaders is simply a more poignant experience than hearing the same words crooned by a good-looking Italian guy from the Bronx - no disrespect to Dion. (For added coolness, Moms is still the oldest Top 40 artist ever.)

Kenny Rogers

Sincerity is key to pulling off a song like "Abraham, Martin and John." Kenny Rogers is well known as one of the ten least sincere humans ever to set foot in a recording studio. You don't need to listen to this cover to know that it's a heaping mound of Nutri-Sweet brimming with oversung verses, tinkling chimes and forced sentiment. Kenny even wraps up the track with a sing-along refrain of "Precious Memories," which isn't a descriptor most sane folks would apply to a string of political assassinations.

Andy Williams

It's a bit ironic that Andy Williams, a man nearly synonymous with schmaltz, delivered one of the most genuinely affecting renditions of "Abraham, Martin and John." Williams was apparently a close friend of Robert Kennedy's, which adds another layer of sadness to what's obviously a sad song no matter how you look at it. The arrangement is appropriately sparse, just Williams' voice accompanied by quiet acoustic strumming. When he hits the bridge, though, the guitar breaks into a nervous skitttering that captures the aching uncertainty of Holler's lyrics and invests Williams' haunted vocal with a visceral sense of loss. The guitar drops out entirely just as Williams sings the word "Bobby" with heartbreaking clarity. It's a performance as personal as it is universal, and it might just be the best treatment the song ever received.

Marvin Gaye

If Marvin Gaye had recorded this cover even a year later, I suspect it would have been a masterpiece. As it is, this track catches him in his transition between the swinging party-soul of his early work and the darker reflection of his post What's Going On career. It's a cool tune, smooth and string-filled, sad but hopeful, tied together by Marvin's inimitable voice, but it's a little too in line with the Motown house sound for it to stand with his classics. That may also have something to do with Holler's lyrics, which just don't pack the ragged emotion of Marvin's best social commentary.

Tom Clay

This is just weird. Tom Clay, a journeyman radio DJ and scandal magnet (he lost jobs for accepting payola and bilking kids with a fraudulent Beatles fan club, among other things) mashed up "Abraham, Martin and John" and Burt Bacharach's "What the World Needs Now" as sung by The Blackberries with audio samples of speeches by Martin Luther King and the Kennedys and news broadcasts of their assassinations. If that wasn't pandering enough, the track is bookended by obviously scripted clips of an interviewer asking children questions about prejudice and hatred and receiving blissfully oblivious responses complete with adorable mispronunciations. While the sampled content itself is undeniably compelling – I can't hear Andrew West exhorting Bobby Kennedy's entourage to "take a hold of [Sirhan Sirhan's] thumb and break it if you have to" without getting chills – presented like this it's more than a little gross, especially in the context of Clay's career of cynical cash-ins. Still, this was somehow a major hit that sold more than a million records. So it goes.

Smokey Robinson & The Miracles

This is easily the most fun version of "Abraham, Martin and John" that I've heard. I'm not sure if that's a good thing. On the one hand, investing the song with some actual rhythm and energy is far preferable to putting it through the paces of over-earnest pathos yet again. On the other hand, it's sort of odd to hear a dirge for the Civil Rights era transformed into a dance track. Either way, Smokey's in fine vocal form and it's a pretty happening tune.

The Denison Hilltoppers

Here's a college acapella group that mashes up "Abraham, Martin and John" with snippets of military-themed fight songs like "Anchors Aweigh" and "The Halls of Montezuma." I'm not sure what to make of that.

Leonard Nimoy

I came into this cover expecting it to be a standout of bad taste, but I'm guilty of painting my Star Trekkers with too broad a brush. Although he tends to get bundled in with William Shatner's famously flamboyant crimes against music, '70s Nimoy actually had a pleasant singing voice and solid production. This rendition is just fine, which is weirdly disappointing.

Wilson Pickett

Pickett opens his semi-cover of "Abraham, Martin and John" with a tribute to Moms Mabley's rendition. It's noteworthy that he doesn't extend the same recognition to Dick Holler, as Pickett jettisons Holler's lyrics all together and turns the song into a tribute to "Cole, Cooke and Redding." (That'd be Nat King, Sam and Otis, if you somehow couldn't figure that out.) In this incarnation, it's a moving, deeply personal song about departed friends. Pickett even includes a verse looking ahead to the day when he'll join his comrades in the beyond. Still, something feels off about substituting singers, no matter how legendary, for some of the most towering figures in the country's struggle for equal rights. Factor in that the original honorees were all felled by assassin's bullets while Pickett's buddies were lost to lung cancer, a plane crash and a sketchy flophouse homicide, and this take seems perilously close to trivialization.

Bon Jovi

Exactly as inventive, entertaining and necessary as you'd expect.

A Lou Reed tribute album: My best-case scenario

The Lou Reed tribute albums are coming. I know it, and I have mixed feelings about it. On the one hand, I actually tend to like tribute albums. I'm fond of cover songs and watching artists put their own unique spins on other artists' work. Heck, I've even curated a lengthy playlist of existing Lou Reed cover songs on Grooveshark, and it gets fairly regular play. On the other hand, the post-mortem tribute album tends to be tacky and hacky, full of overly reverent renditions by artists who simply aren't suited to the songs they're covering.

That got me thinking idly about who I'd put on my personal dream tribute to Lou Reed, which as usual led to me thinking obsessively about it, which led to me writing it all down and foisting it on you. I know full well that there's no way anyone would ever be able to pull together a lineup this expansive, but that's why I call it a dream. This is my money-is-no-object list. The only real requirement is being alive at the time of writing. (I know a few of the groups I included are on hiatus, but it's not unheard of for bands to reunite for a good cause.)

I selected artists who either had a connection to Lou or who I just think would sound great. Most importantly, I picked artists who I thought were specifically suited to each song. I didn't include all of my favorite Lou Reed songs. As much as I love, say, "Like a Possum" or "Street Hassle," I couldn't imagine anyone doing a cover of either that would trump any of the songs that made the cut. I did include some songs that aren't among my favorites, either because they're especially significant in the Lou Reed canon ("Perfect Day") or because I thought of a way to cover them that I felt was especially kick-ass ("What Becomes a Legend Most"). Like I said, I've put way too much thought into this.

For those who are already wondering why they've read this far, I'll plug in the list of songs and artists. (I've arranged this as a double-CD, because I came up in the '90s and that's how we rolled.) Those who aren't bored or annoyed after that can keep on reading for my reasoning behind each pick. Just keep in mind that this album will never exist, though lord knows I'm dying to hear it.

Something Flickered for a Minute: A Tribute to Lou Reed

Disc 1

1.      Romeo Had Juliette – Patti Smith

2.      Rock & Roll – Prince

3.      Sally Can't Dance – Of Montreal

4.      Caroline Says Part II & Part I – Cat Power

5.      Who Am I? – David Bowie

6.      Perfect Day – Blind Boys of Alabama

7.      Don't Talk to Me About Work – Mo Tucker

8.      Waves of Fear – Antony & Metallica

9.      Men of Good Fortune  - Merle Haggard

10.  Doin' the Things That We Want To – Fear

11.  Paranoia Key of E – The Hold Steady

12.  Walk on the Wild Side – Outkast, Goodie Mob and RZA

13.  What Becomes a Legend Most? – Sutton Foster

14.  My Name is Mok – Iggy Pop

15.  Sister Ray – Janelle Monae

16.  Magic and Loss – John Cale

Disc 2

1.      All Tomorrow's Parties – Björk

2.      Why Can't I Be Good? – Eels

3.      Stupid Man – Mark Mallman

4.      How Do You Speak to an Angel? – Joanna Newsom

5.      Wild Child – Jonathan Richman

6.      How Do You Think It Feels? – Beck

7.      NYC Man – They Might Be Giants

8.      Lady Godiva's Operation – Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers

9.      I'm Waiting for the Man – Gorillaz

10.  The Chooser and the Chosen One – Mike Rathke, Fernando Saunders and Tony Smith featuring Ornette Coleman

11.  The Original Wrapper – Beastie Boys feat. Biz Markie

12.  Women – Shane MacGowan

13.  Sword of Damocles – TV On The Radio

14.  Teach the Gifted Children – Victoria Williams

15.  Sweet Jane – Bruce Springsteen

16.  I Love You – Laurie Anderson

Something Flickered for a Minute: A Tribute to Lou Reed
DISC ONE

Romeo Had Juliette – Patti Smith

Any Lou Reed tribute has to lead off with the opening track from New York, my pick for the peak of Lou's lyrical career. Likewise, any Lou Reed tribute requires the participation of fellow New York rock poet Patti Smith. They were friends and cohorts who lived their art the way few people have the talent or privilege to. I can think of plenty of people who could sing "Romeo Had Juliette" and nail it, but I don't believe there's anyone who could embody and understand Lou's bittersweet story of love and squalor in the pre-Giuliani Big Apple better than Patti.

Rock & Roll – Prince

If there's one human alive who can sell the story of Jeannie and her life-saving discovery of rock & roll as well as Lou himself, it's Prince. He could take it the funk route, but I'd rather hear him in full-on jam mode with his rocked-out 3rdEyeGirl backing band. I can't imagine a better embodiment of the transformative power of rock music than hearing this song fade out behind a blistering Prince guitar solo.

Sally Can't Dance – Of Montreal

Maybe Kevin Barnes would exist without Lou Reed, but I doubt he'd be quite the same Kevin Barnes. They exude such a similar combination of sleaze, sexuality and intellect that Of Montreal has to be included here. "Sally Can't Dance" also incorporates a campy sheen that plays directly to Barnes' strengths. The guy was born to sneer "She danced with Picasso's illegitimate mistress and wore Kenneth Lane jewelry."

Caroline Says II & I – Cat Power

The two sides of Chan Marshall mesh nicely with the two sides of Caroline (well, to the extent that anything related to Berlin happens "nicely"). Transpose parts one and two and the songs make a perfect medley, moving from the haunting whisper of early Cat Power to her bolder, more boisterous current sound. I don't think anything would be lost by switching the songs' order – Caroline's tale is a pretty bleak one no matter the sequence.

Who Am I? – David Bowie

Lou and Bowie are forever intertwined in the public perception, so it might make sense to pair the latter up with one of the former's best-known songs. Twenty or even ten years ago I'd have thought the same thing, but this soft-spoken, self-explorative cut from The Raven could scarcely be a better fit for Bowie's current sensibilities. This cover wouldn't feel out of place on Bowie's excellent The Next Day. Both that album and this song find renowned artists taking a long, not always uplifting, look at their lives and what they'll mean to the world.

Perfect Day – Blind Boys of Alabama

To be honest, I'm kinda sick of "Perfect Day." Ever since it was used so brilliantly in Trainspotting, its cultural presence has been slowly swelling, until now it's arguably eclipsed "Walk on the Wild Side" as Lou's signature song for casual appreciators. (I saw at least one headline announcing the death of "Perfect Day Singer Lou Reed.") It's cropping up in new commercials every few months and getting covered by all sorts of folks who I'd rather hadn't. Still, it would be unforgivable to exclude it here. Of course it's still a beautiful, brilliant song at heart. It just needs some experienced hands to steer it in the right direction. There are few musical hands more weathered than the Blind Boys of Alabama's. The venerable haunted-gospel group backed Lou on one of The Raven's best tracks, and I reckon they'd know how to steal the soul of "Perfect Day" back from the Susan Boyles of the world.

Don't Talk to Me About Work – Mo Tucker

Mo retired from music for the second time more than a decade ago and shows no inclination toward picking it up again. But if anything is going to get her back in a studio, if not behind a drum kit, it's a tribute to Lou Reed. This track from Legendary Hearts is right in line with the choppy rhythms and blue collar themes of her criminally underrated solo albums. Mo's weirdly evocative monotone yap would mesh marvelously with this playful paean to creative ennui.

Waves of Fear – Antony & Metallica

I'm pretty sure that for the last decade or so Antony just traveled everywhere as a piece of Lou's luggage. He's guested on all sorts of live Lou performances and contributed eerie, countertenor interpretations of a number of Lou's classic songs. In keeping with his vocal stylings, most of those are slow and somber numbers like "Perfect Day" and "Candy Says." I'd like to see what Antony could do with something as rough and muscular as "Waves of Fear." Metallica, of course, is inextricably linked to Lou Reed due to Lulu. They'd be ideal for infusing even more metal into what's already one of the heaviest slabs of rock in the Lou Reed canon.  Keep the towering guitars and throat-grabbing drumbeats of the original in place and I think you'd have an ethereal delight.

Men of Good Fortune  - Merle Haggard

This bitter screed from the have-not protagonist of Berlin could translate pretty easily into a stripped-down country ballad. It's not the type of thing you want in the hands of an amateur, though, so I'm giving it to one of the most inveterate veterans in the country game. Waylon Jennings would be my first pick, as I think his voice matches these lyrics incredibly well, but he was discourteous enough to die. So Merle it is!

Doin' the Things That We Want To – Fear

Given Lou's standing as a godfather of punk rock, this album has to feature at least one good hardcore track. I feel a little bad not working in someone from the New York scene, but Lee Ving's raging cover of "Hoochie Coochie Man" in the marvelous rock show movie Get Crazy (co-starring, not coincidentally, Lou Reed) convinces me that he's just the guy to trash up Lou's stirring salute to Martin Scorcese, Sam Shepard and the other film and theater artists who made him smile and think.

Paranoia Key of E – The Hold Steady 

Craig Finn covering Lou Reed just sounds right, doesn't it? This sleazily literate account of infidelity and finger-pointing from Ecstasy should be right in his wheelhouse.

Walk on the Wild Side – Outkast, Goodie Mob and RZA

As probably Lou's best known song, this one demands a unique treatment. I think it has to be hip-hop, not just because the rhyme scheme lends itself to that form, but also to wash out the taste of that awful Marky Mark treatment. RZA strikes me as just the right producer to chop up the original Transformer mix and coat that famous bass line with grime. With RZA at the controls, it would make sense to put the Wu-Tang Clan on MC duties. I probably would do just that if Ol' Dirty Bastard was alive, but imagine Andre 3000 and Cee-Lo trading verses about Warhol's Factory crew? (Plus Big Boi, Cool Breeze and the other Dirty Southers, of course.) I'm not entirely sure how to handle the "colored girls" on the chorus, but I imagine these guys could swing something intriguing.

What Becomes a Legend Most? – Sutton Foster

I can't imagine much more dreadful than seeing Lou Reed's body of work turned into one of those posthumous stage musicals the folks on Broadway love to crank out. That said, Lou did dig a good musical, as evidenced by his Time Rocker collaboration with Robert Wilson and his contributions to two different Kurt Weill tributes. I think this semi-sequel to the Velvets' "New Age" cries out to be reborn as a show tune. It's got a Norma Desmond-esque faded star, a singalong chorus and plenty of showy flourishes. I'm not up on my Broadway stars, so maybe there are song-and-dance folks who could handle this better than Sutton Foster. I'm giving it to her anyway because I really miss Bunheads.

My Name is Mok – Iggy Pop

Lou's '70s glam persona positioned him somewhere between the slick shimmer of David Bowie and the feral ferocity of Iggy Pop. Let's embrace the latter and let Iggy snarl his way through this kick-ass obscurity. This was originally the theme song of a sexy, dog-faced, Mick Jagger-inspired super villain in an animated headache called Rock & Rule. That movie also featured the briefest snippet of an Iggy Pop song, so there's your tie-in if for some reason you need one.

Sister Ray – Janelle Monae

It struck me recently that "Sister Ray" would sound amazing with its original instrumentation and a genuine R&B singer on vocals – think Ben E. King, Otis Redding, Wilson Pickett. Unfortunately, two of those guys are dead and I'm dubious about Ben at 75 being willing or able to sustain his youthful energy for a 17-minute lyrical orgy of sex and violence. That brings us to the current Funkiest Being on Earth, Janelle Monae. Janelle could slaughter "Sister Ray." There's no question that she could keep the electricity flowing for the duration. I would expect this track to be the highlight of this tribute album. It actually upsets me that I'm not listening to Janelle croon about Cecil and his new piece right this second.

Magic and Loss – John Cale

Lou's most overt exploration of the meaning of death is also one of his greatest artistic achievements. Not only was John Cale Lou's longest-tenured collaborator, he's also exactly the right kind of performer to do this song justice. Set to a gentle piano arrangement, his broken-hearted baritone and gentle Welsh accent would make a beautiful evocation of Lou's passing through fire.

DISC TWO

All Tomorrow's Parties – Bjork

I swear I'm not giving this to Björk just because I know how great Lou's lyrics sound coming from a strong-voiced woman with a European accent. But sure, the Nico factor is in play here. Beyond that, imagine the orchestration and sheer power Björk would invest in this. If she could re-access the towering eccentricity of the Post era, this could be a classic.

Why Can't I Be Good? – Eels

Mark Oliver Everett is another artist whose existence seems unlikely without Lou Reed. His witty cynicism and engrossing explorations of how death reflects life are right in concert with Lou's defining themes. Also, he knows how to rock. He'd be able to mine all the self-deprecatory cleverness from this inexplicably obscure gem, Lou's contribution to Wim Wenders' Far Away, So Close soundtrack.

Stupid Man – Mark Mallman

The least-known name on this list, Minnesotan art-glam icon Mark Mallman deserves to be way more famous. I have to believe that the aching intensity he'd bring to the piano-driven opener from The Bells would help prove that to the world.

How Do You Speak to an Angel? – Joanna Newsom

OK, I'll admit I like the cheesiness of pairing an artist known for her harp-playing with a song about an angel. But my main reason for giving this defiantly wordy, self-satirizing song to Joanna is her penchant for multisyllabic lyrical verbosity. I'd love to hear her distinctive warble deliver a line like "What do you do with your pragmatic passions / With your classically neurotic style / What do you do with your vague self-comprehension / What can you say when they lie?"

Wild Child – Jonathan Richman

Legend has it that Richman was a Velvet Underground fanatic right from the start, going back to the band's infamous club gigs. The early Modern Lovers sound would seem to bear out that influence. He'd be great tapping into the amphetamine-fueled craziness of this raucous run-through of Lou's rogue's gallery.

How Do You Think It Feels? – Beck

It wouldn't have occurred to me that Beck's a big Lou Reed fan, but it makes sense. I couldn't decide whether to let him pull off one of his insane rave-ups or keep him in mournful Sea Change mode (the latter being my personal Beck preference). Here's a song that allows him to indulge both sides, a phenomenal, bitter slow-burner from Berlin.

NYC Man – They Might Be Giants

While far too many people dismiss TMBG as a novelty act, those in the know understand that the two Johns are brilliant songsmiths with real versatility. Rather than hand them one of Lou's more out-there numbers, I'd love to see them sink their teeth into this heartfelt exploration of manhood and the city that they and Lou all loved so dearly.

Lady Godiva's Operation – Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers

I'll admit I'm toeing the novelty line here, but I genuinely think the Velvets' deeply creepy duet would sound amazing as a haunted bluegrass tune. You can decide for yourself whether she'd be game for tackling a nightmare story of surgery gone wrong, but there's no denying that when Dolly goes dark she can be spooky as hell. Putting her on the John Cale parts and her old "Islands in the Stream" mate Kenny on the intentionally discordant Lou lines would be amusing on the first listen and increasingly unsettling with every subsequent spin.

I'm Waiting for the Man – Gorillaz

The Gorillaz/Lou Reed collaboration "Some Kind of Nature" was a neat surprise, a smooth melding of sensibilities that somehow made both acts sound even hipper. "I'm Waiting for the Man" is another Lou song that's been covered to death, but I think Gorillaz dark-but-bouncy electronic sensibilities could shine a new light on things. A breathy Damon Albarn vocal is never a bad thing either.

The Chooser and the Chosen One – Mike Rathke, Fernando Saunders and Tony Smith featuring Ornette Coleman

Lou's band members were the unsung heroes of his recent output, although they weren't unsung by Lou himself. His always made sure to give them their props during live gigs, even including a solo song by bassist Fernando Saunders on the Animal Serenade CD. Saunders, guitarist Mike Rathke and drummer Tony Smith backed Lou for the better part of two decades, so it seems only fitting to give them their due with a cover of this instrumental deep cut from Rock & Roll Heart. Free jazz legend Ornette Coleman collaborated with Lou a number of times, so let's put him on sax and see how weird we can get with it.

The Original Wrapper – Beastie Boys feat. Biz Markie

One of the most widely derided songs Lou ever recorded, this deeply odd ode to hip-hop takes a lot of flak for its dorky rhymes and curiously waffle-centric imagery. Y'know who else likes rapping about non-sequiturs and food? Yes, yes, Weird Al, but y'know who else? The Beastie Boys, that's who. What's more, they're fellow New York icons with roots in punk rock. Get longtime Beastie collaborator Biz Markie to sit in for the dearly departed MCA and we might just have a reassessment of Lou's hip-hop prowess.

Women – Shane MacGowan

This isn't one of the best songs in Lou's repertoire – its goofy satire of masculinity borders on annoying – but Shane MacGowan's whiskey-strangled slur would breathe new, sleazy life into it. It'd be worth it just to hear him rasp out "I... love... WOMEN!" as the music swells.

Sword of Damocles – TV On The Radio

As far as I know TV On The Radio has no direct connection to Lou Reed, but they're a band who can do no wrong in my book. Their powerful, flawlessly produced sound manages to be both expansive and introspective, which makes them an ideal fit for this sad, sweeping rumination on the inevitability of death.

Teach the Gifted Children – Victoria Williams

Lou's fondness for Victoria Williams always warmed my heart. Stylistically they're miles apart, but they complemented each other surprisingly well. Lou's rendition of "Tarbelly and Featherfoot" is one of the peaks of Sweet Relief, the benefit covers album that brought Victoria to the attention of the alt-rock world in the early '90s, and he contributed guitar and backing vocals to her "Crazy Mary" on a number of live appearances. Victoria opened for Lou the one time I saw him play live, and she just about stole the show, her sweetness and light playing as a welcome contrast to Lou's grumpy stoicism. Of all the songs in Lou's catalog, the hopeful, gospel-tinged "Teach the Gifted Children" sounds most like it could've been written by Victoria Williams. I'm not sure where Victoria's battle with MS stands – the dearth of new music over the last decade makes me fear it's not going well – but if she was up to singing it, think she'd nail this one with trademark steely sweet folkitude.

Sweet Jane – Bruce Springsteen

I'm almost tempted to have Bruce do "Street Hassle" just for the novelty of him reprising his cameo on the original recording, but when it comes down to it I can't think of another performer better suited to mine the joy and sheer rockingness out of this song. It's been over-covered and redefined so many times over (as lovely as that Cowboy Junkies version is, it bugs me that it's  eclipsed the original for a lot of people (also that the Junkies get too much credit for their "re-imagining," as they're pretty closely covering a live arrangement from late-period Velvet Underground concerts)), it would be beautiful to hear Springsteen belt it back to its former glory. It makes a perfect almost-closing track to be capped off by a sweet little coda.

I Love You – Laurie Anderson

Tell me you wouldn't cry. Heck, I'm tearing up just thinking about it.

Some loss to even things out: Goodbye, Lou Reed

Magic and Loss and me.

From the start, my relationship with Lou Reed was linked to death. I bought my first Lou Reed album on March 2, 1994. It was something of an impulse buy. I spotted Lou Reed Live in the $3 cassette bin at my local Pamida discount store, and I happened to know that March 2 was Lou Reed’s birthday thanks to my obsessive re-reading of my high school library’s copy of The Encyclopedia of Rock. That was serendipitous enough to merit a purchase. I knew “Walk on the Wild Side” from oldies radio, and my pal Nathan had recently introduced me to The Velvet Underground and Nico, so it didn’t seem like much of a gamble.

When I got home that night I started upstairs for my usual new-album ritual of sprawling out on my parents’ bed and listening intently as the music unspooled on the little black boombox that was our family’s only stereo system at the time. This evening, though, my ascent was interrupted by an overheard snippet from the evening news: an as-yet unidentified teenager from my small town had been shot dead. Details were still hazy and no names of anyone involved had been released, so there wasn’t much for me to do but go listen to my Lou Reed tape and fret. My head was swimming as I slid the cassette into the “A” deck and pressed play. Was the kid who’d died one of my friends? How could someone my age possibly die? What was school going to be like the next day?

And then the opening guitar licks of “Vicious” kicked in and I was blessedly distracted by the surly bravado of Lou Reed’s voice and lyrics and the muscular churn of his glam-metal backing band. The songs on Lou Reed Live were a revelation, sardonic screeds filled with bile and bitterness that tapped into previously unexplored crannies of my still-gestating teenage psyche. It was grim stuff, by and large, but gleefully so. It was exactly what I needed to temper my fear with the semi-reassurance that this was such a weird, senseless, horrible world that the only way to face it was with a steely smirk.

As it turned out, I didn’t know the boy who’d died– it was an accidental shooting involving two kids a grade younger than me – but a lot of my friends did. Regardless of our relationship to him, that day marked a major milestone for my peers and me, a shattering of innocence and the illusion of safety. And it was another kind of milestone for me personally, the launching point of the most intense, involved and long-lasting relationship I’ve ever had with an artist.

I’ve written at length about what Lou Reed has meant to me, on this blog and elsewhere. I don’t think I need to rehash all of it now, but suffice it to say Lou Reed has been an influence on and an inspiration to just about everything I’ve done artistically in my life. Sometimes that influence has even spilled beyond the artistic arena. Most notably, Lou Reed has played a big role in helping me deal with death. I don’t know if there’s another songwriter with such a profound understanding of death and its impact on the living. It’s a topic Lou revisited many times throughout his career, especially in his latter years: the ambitious Andy Warhol tribute Songs for Drella, the wistful AIDS reaction of “Halloween Parade,” the fatalist acceptance of “Fly Into the Sun.” For me, he never got death more right than he did with Magic and Loss.

Magic and Loss is an extremely undervalued entry in Lou’s canon. It’s an album-length meditation on death, particularly the death of Lou’s friend, fabled songwriter Doc Pomus. The album masterfully explores mourning from all angles, from the anger of “Warrior King” to the painful dread of “Sword of Damocles” to the introspective acceptance of “Magic and Loss.” It’s both deeply personal and beautifully universal in its sentiments. Ever since I was a teenager, this album has been a vital part of my grieving process. Whenever someone I love dies, I make sure to set aside some time within the following days to sit by myself and listen to Magic and Loss. They’re all songs I know by heart, but every death transforms them into new entities. Lou’s lyrics reflect differently off of each person who passes, imbuing themselves with new meaning as I alter their shapes to fit the faces and ways of the people I miss most. I’ve cried along with Lou, raged along with him, laughed along with him. He’s always been there for me when I needed him most.

So now it’s finally time to break out Magic and Loss for the man who made it. I’ve been preparing myself for this for a long time, but I’ve always managed to half-convince myself that it wasn’t really going to happen, that Lou would somehow go on in perpetuity. At the least, I had hoped he’d live long enough to put out one more really good, really Lou album. Still, as frustrating as his work could be over the past decade or so, it makes me happy to know that Lou spent the last years of his life making his art on his own terms. He dug photography, so he put out a photography book and booked a bunch of gallery shows. He wanted to be represented on the legitimate stage, so he worked on a musical and adapted some of his classic albums for orchestral audiences. He was a fan of Edgar Allan Poe, t’ai chi and Metallica, so he used his rare time in the recording studio to pay tribute to all of them. He basically closed out his artistic years doing an extended piece called “Lou Does Whatever the Hell Lou Feels Like Doing (Feat. Laurie Anderson).”

I suppose I oughtn’t feel too bad about the passing of an artist who spent so much of his youth on the edge yet still lived to be a septuagenarian with a prolific and celebrated oeuvre. But I do. Tomorrow morning I’ll wake up for the first time in a world without Lou Reed. That’s a world I don’t know how to deal with. But it’s the only world we have now, and I guess we have to make the most of it. Hundreds of tributes from artists of all stripes will roll in over the next few days. Some will be moving, some will be annoying, some will make me wonder why they bothered. Heck, I’m already cringing imagining the grotesque tribute the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame ghouls will whip up for their next induction ceremony. For my part, I’ll do my best to focus on Lou’s own lessons about life and death, and to always keep the thesis statement of Magic and Loss close at mind:

When you pass through humble
When you pass through sickly
When you pass through
“I'm better than you all”
When you pass through
anger and self-deprecation
and have the strength to acknowledge it all
When the past makes you laugh
and you can savor the magic
that let you survive your own war
You find that that fire is passion
and there's a door up ahead not a wall

As you pass through fire, as you pass through fire
trying to remember its name
When you pass through fire licking at your lips
you cannot remain the same
And if the building's burning
move towards that door
but don't put the flames out
There's a bit of magic in everything
and then some loss to even things out

Goodbye, Lou. Thanks for all you gave me.