Shouting Street

I cannot hide my face from you
No matter where I look or what I see
You can always see me
They may look in my eyes
But they don’t know what is there
With them I can hide
And shield everything about myself

When you look at me you see all there is to see
You know who I am when I am quiet
You know who I am when I am loud
No matter what I do
I cannot hide my face from you.

Monk’s comment on my Paul Simon entry made me think of the Bosstones. I have pretty good recall of when and where I bought albums. Particularly albums that mean a lot of to me. The Bosstones are the rare band I can remember the first time I ever heard them.

I was in my Brothers dorm room at UMass. Well technically I was in the lounge of his suite and he was in his corner room. It was his freshman year. I asked him what that noise was an commented on how awful it was. At the time I was still a pretty straight rock and roll guy. The Bosstones changed everything for me in a fairly short time. Well, he was playing this awful racket. It was their first album ‘Devil’s Night Out’. He played it a couple of times that weekend. I imagine I was pretty snarky about it, because I used to be even more snarky then than I am now (Not one of my more wonderful or endearing qualities). Well it got in my head and next time he came down I asked him to make a tape of it for me. I remember the tape because the sides were reversed. I still tend to think of ‘Little Bit Ugly’ as the last song of side one, rather than the closing song of the album.

I got their second album ‘More Noise and Other Disturbances’ and their EP ‘Ska-Core, The Devil, And More!’ on the same day that my brother got the EP in a little record shop in Norwalk, CT. We had to go their because the big chains around us didn’t carry their albums. It was right around then that we saw them for the first time at UMass. It was an amazing show. They were performing songs from their upcoming album as well as stuff from their first two. We got the ‘Sweet Emotion’ ep in the same place. Or at least I did.

I got ‘Don’t Know How to Party’ the same day as my PSAT’s. I was anxiously awaiting it’s release, so you can imagine what my priority was that day! My friend Matt and I walked home from school, which was a long walk at that point, and my Mom drove us down to the Coconuts records on High Ridge Road. We came back to my place and played video games while listening to the album.

The little record store across the road from the College of General Studies building in Boston sold me my copy of ‘Question the Answers’. I went to my friend Bernie’s place and listened to it their because he and I were doing something that night and I didn’t want to go all the way back to my apartment. I took immediate shine to the song ‘Pictures to Prove It’.

My copy of ‘Let’s Face It’ came into my possession a few days before the actual release. I bought it St. Marks Records on St. Mark’s St. in the village in New York City. My friend Leon and I had gone into the city that day and I found a promo copy for sale in the Bosstones section. I remember spending the rest of that day waiting to get home and listen to it. We took the train back and put it on and drove around listening to it in his Thunderbird because it had the best sound system. Leon and I had seen them in NYC a few months earlier and they had played a few of the songs from the upcoming album. I remember we listened to ‘1-2-8′ first because that one had caught our attention at the show.

‘Live From the Middle East’ I got on Main St. in Newark from Bert’s Music. I went into Rainbow to get it and found out they weren’t carrying the album. It was the last time I ever went in there. I was pretty indignant about it. I got ‘Pay Attention’ from the same place. In fact they put a promo copy on the store system a few weeks prior for me to listen to.

Their last album Jen bought for me making it all the more special.

“The privacy of all Americans is fiercely protected in all our activities,” Bush said Saturday in his weekly radio address. “The government does not listen to domestic phone calls without court approval. We are not trolling through the personal lives of millions of innocent Americans.”

I love getting to know a new album. There have been very few albums that I completely fell in love with the first time through (Streetcore by Joe Strummer and the Mescaleros, U2’s Rattle and Hum to name a couple). Most of my favorite albums took a little while to grow on my. My favorite Mighty Mighty Bosstones album, Don’t Know How to Party, only had one song that grabbed me the first time through (Last Dead Mouse). Heck, first time I heard the Bosstones I didn’t like them. There is usually an inkling that an album will be special though. Sometimes this is a single that has been released (Although often that single is more of a trap than a sign of things to come). For me it tends to be a chorus or bit of music that gets in my head and stays there after the first listening.

I don’t always give myself a lot of time to just sit down and listen to an album. Usually I listen in the shower, or while I’m cooking, or at work. Sometimes I find myself in a position where I can just listen to the music and enjoy it. Last night I volunteered to stuff envelopes at work so I could turn my brain off and get to know the new Paul Simon Album, ‘Surprise’. Really glad I did. I was enjoying the album before and after giving it a good solid listen I would say I am in love. I’m a long time Paul Simon fan and this one another success. It is very similar to his last album ‘You’re the one’ lyrically. Soniclly it is very different. ‘You’re the One’ had a very thin, almost whispery, sound to it. This one has ’sonic landscapes’ done by Brian Eno and it is noticeably different. It has a very full, rich, and deep sound. It takes a little getting used to because outside of ‘Graceland’ and ‘Rhythm of the Saints’ I am used to a much more minimal music sound from Simon. The album’s title of ‘Surprise’ is particularly accurate. I’ve been listening to a lot of Who and Beatles lately, and sixties covers from Mathew Sweet and Susanna Hoffs, so it is odd that the most modern sound I’ve had around lately is Paul Simon.