The record doesn’t make you sing like the records you’ve loved so far. It actually kind of makes you uncomfortable. But it also makes you want to flap your arms like wings. And it makes you want to hear more music that’s so oblique.

Once you start to delve into music like that, you can’t stop.

Pere Shae gave me that record. And I owe so much to him for that gesture. Nearly everything, in fact.

* He was “Pere Shae” long before he was the Deadheads’ “Poohshae”. And I’ll remember him as father, rather than bear.

“I’d hate to see Berlin smoothed over, with no critical voices left, the way the alternative art scene has been sanitized away in New York,” said Felicitas Adler, 54, clad in a trash-art sculpture she made out of cardboard and empty plastic bottles painted black at a recent demonstration to save Tacheles.

Ms Adler, please contact me before your next visit, and I’ll show you a thriving “alternative art scene”. In Brooklyn. Which is still, last I checked, part of New York.

Ninteen-fifty, ninteen-fifty
One-to-zip, one-to-zip
You are going home now, you are going home now
Have a nice trip! Have a nice trip!

Bonus annoyance points for Americanism “one-to-zip” sted “one-nil”.

Seriously — the man who turned two Alex Chilton records * into masterpieces died, and I didn’t even know.

“Everybody goes as far as they can, they don’t just care/
You’re a wasted face, you’re a sad-eyed laugh, you’re a holocaust”

Goddamn, Jim — rest in peace.

[UPDATE (and the asterisk ***): Plus he produced yet another masterpiece, the one that led me to the Big Star and Chilton stuff.]

From: REDACTED
Sent: Mon 6/29/2009 4:06 PM
To: Karr, Rick
Subject: The anti-MJ tribute commentary

A very much opposing view of the Michael Jackson tributes….from Republican strategist Jack Burkman…to schedule please use media contacts below:

1. The celebration of Jackson’s death — which is what the cable shows are doing — is a shocking indictment of American culture. Jackson was a drug addict, a nut, a person who tried through plastic surgery to turn himself into a transvestite, and a cross dresser. This, of course, leaves aside charges of child molestation but he was found innocent.

A transvestite … AND a crossdresser!

2. Jackson is the last person in the world who should be thought of as a role model for anyone but for bizarre reasons. The cable channels, though, are determined to present him as a role model. Everyone is heroic these days when they die but this case is strange and excessive even for news in 2009.

3. Worse yet, cable doesn’t offer the other view: how about those who would say “Good riddance to bad rubbish!” Why is it immoral to criticize the dead when they deserve it?

Burkman is available for live or taped interviews to share his opinion and debate the issue.

… and if you don’t call, he’ll be crashing funerals nationwide to shout, “Neener! Neener!” and blow loud raspberries.

Media contacts redacted to spare them any more shame. Hey, they’re just doing their jobs.

Long story short, while I approved of their goals, I disdained their approach, which lacked charity and empathy. Attacking their neighbors, I thought, gained nothing. Worse, it lost the all-important sympathy of those neighbors, some of whom are pretty darned cool and enlightened. The environmentalists disagreed.

All along, I’d thought that their beef wasn’t with their neighbors, many of whom had agreed to sell drilling rights on their land to gas prospectors who were going to use a dangerous technique, but rather with federal regulators (a.k.a. the Bush Administration) who’d agreed to allow said technique to go unregulated.

Finally, some lawmakers are about to introduce legislation that would regulate the technique — which is what should have happened in the first place. Here’s hoping that the bill passes, and that my environmentalist acquaintances can repair the damage they’ve done by implying that their neighbors are mendacious idiots.

Haven’t we moved on to another mortal foe?