Fire & Roses

"Soak," by Mimi, came out in 1998 when I was working at Rizzoli. We used to play music when the store was open (and closed..., I'm not sure why I made that distinction but it's too late now), and we carried a medium-sized amount of CDs of various musical styles. Anything from Yo Yo Ma to Shelby Lynne to Gypsy Kings to... Mimi. The staff would go through the CDs and we learned pretty quick which tracks were suitable for the store, and which ones weren't. Or corporate would make suggestions (the guy in charge of music was a dude named Gary McElroy. I talked to him almost weekly on the telephone; he was in New York. I had a huge crush on him because that guy had one sexy voice. I never saw him in person, but me and Bo once called him from the beach in Santa Monica, and talked with him for about 20 minutes. He was jealous that we were at the beach; we told him to quit work early and go to the track. It was funny, at the time. He was kind of a celebrity for us, if you can imagine it. Oh, hell, don't try to imagine it, it sounds silly now when I've written it down). Eventually we'd get sick of the tunes people chose and start experimenting with other ones.

I'm sorry, I'm tired, and I'm getting a bit dull and repetitious right now (there was an English guy on TV the other day who said "repetitive." Speaking of sexy voices, if you want a thrill, ask an Englishman to say "repetitive." I'm telling you, it was awesome. I know a guy named Barry from Ireland [yes, I know the difference between England and Ireland; Barry has a pretty nice voice either way], and the next time I see him, that guy is saying "repetitive" for me. Over and over again).

OK, so anyway, this album came out in '98, and I was working at Rizzoli, and I may have been the only one on staff who liked it. There are three tracks in particular that I recommend, and those are:

Fire & Roses
I Spy
Black Hole Sun

"Black Hole Sun" is a cover, of course, of a Soundgarden song. I wasn't a huge Soundgarden fan (especially after Chris Cornell cut his hair, and don't ask me what that has to do with anything), though I did of course have the album from which this song originally came. I also had their album "Louder Than Love," which has my favorite love song, "Big Dumb Sex" on it. Sing that next time you need a little romantic ditty to hum in somebody's ear.

Lookit, I've gotten distracted. What I was thinking about was 1998, being 26, working in a bookstore in Santa Monica, going through all the weird shit 26 year olds go through (and if you didn't go through weird shit at 26 well, it'll catch up with you eventually, I'm sure). And playing that song, "Fire and Roses," usually at night when nobody was in there. I can't find a page with the lyrics, but there's a line in there somewhere about a thousand second thoughts, and man, if that was the year for second thoughts, I don't know what was.

Anyway, I was listening to it in the car on the way home from flute choir tonight, and sort of trying to stay awake (I'm very tired today, did I mention that?) and thinking about the mood I was in when I first heard this song, and I'm doing a crappy job of explaining it to you. She goes, "It's raining," at some point in the song, and just the way she says it makes me want to cry.

But that's not what I mean to tell you. I mean, it's just a gorgeous song. And to cry or not to cry is not what I mean.

Oh, fuck.

I'm going to bed.