Category Archives: Music

Once upon a time I was anal and adamant about definitive dates when it came to things like the start of summer. Over the past few years, I’ve softened and become much more flexible, and the ease of summer has taught me that. This song kicks off our unofficial summer season here at ALANILAGAN.com, and I absolutely love its easy-going vibe.

Sometimes you feel like you’re the only one
To hold on for better days to come
And when it seems like all is said and done
Just hold on for better days to come

Along with the easing of strict delineation comes an easing of the posting schedule, as well as the content of the posts themselves. I just don’t want to stay behind a computer screen when the outside calls. These are the better days. 

It was Easter week 1993, and somehow Suzie and I found ourselves on a train from New York to Florida for a questionable visit to Disneyworld. That two teenagers at the height of their cynicism and moodiness should be taking an overnight train ride to Florida, and the purported happiest place on earth, is the height of improbability, if not downright foolishness, but there we were. 

Sweetheart
The sun has set
All red and primitive above our heads
Blood stained on an ageless sky
Wipe your tears and let the salt stains dry
Let them all run dry
All run dry

Suzie is the ideal traveling companion for me, as she and I know each other very well. Most importantly, we know when to leave the other alone, which is really the key to any successful relationship or friendship. Thankfully there would be just one or two moments when we needed that alone time – the rest of the time we were helping each other though such a trip at that particular point in our teenage lives. Nowhere was that more evident than on the long-ass train ride, which forms the memory of this post. The aural backdrop playing on my headphones was Annie Lennox’s brilliant ‘Diva’ album (which just celebrated its 30th anniversary, so that’s how far back we are going here). The track ‘Primitive’ soothed the gentle rumble of the train as the middle of the night arrived and our car flickered with only an occasional night-light. Outside, the amber lights of the tracks whizzed by overhead. It was a moment in time stilled by this song. 

Sweetheart
Take me to bed
That’s where all our prayers are said
Whispered silent in the night
That’s how all our dreams take flight
Let them all go by
All go by

For time will catch us in both hands
To blow away like grains of sand
Ashes to ashes rust to rust
This is what becomes of us

Sweetheart
Send me to sleep
Pray to God our hopes to keep
Take our fears and make us strong
Lead us to where we belong
And let it all go by
All go by

Post-Valentine’s blues got you down? 

Pre-Valentine’s blues got you down?

General Valentine’s blues got you down?

Come ride with this giddy bit of musical villainy by Billie Eilish. If it’s good enough to be used in a figure skating routine, it’s good enough to use here. And it is by all accounts and measures good enough. 

White shirt now red, my bloody nose
Sleepin’, you’re on your tippy toes
Creepin’ around like no one knows
Think you’re so criminal
Bruises on both my knees for you
Don’t say thank you or please
I do what I want when I’m wanting to
My soul? So cynical

Boy versus girl in the World Series of love, and boy versus boy in the Super Bowl of Glory. 

We were all these things, we were all these people, we were all the devil in disguise. 

And at the end of every day, we washed all the dirty off. 

Or did we?

So you’re a tough guy
Like it really rough guy
Just can’t get enough guy
Chest always so puffed guy
I’m that bad type
Make your mama sad type
Make your girlfriend mad tight
Might seduce your dad type
I’m the bad guy
Duh

Some songs are simply diabolical, bringing out the best of the beast inside of us. They make us lose our sense of… sense. When coupled with the madness of men, what chance did any vestige of innocence ever stand? A slinky baseline, more slinky than any dress you’ve worn, and tighter than any anatomically-contoured crotch-pouch that Andrew Christian could ever come up with… defying you not to move. 

I like it when you take control
Even if you know that you don’t
Own me, I’ll let you play the role
I’ll be your animal
My mommy likes to sing along with me
But she won’t sing this song
If she reads all the lyrics
She’ll pity the men I know

Ghosts appear in the dim night shower. 

Ghosts of the men I used to be.

Ghosts that creep up behind me

…to thrill, to chill, to kill…

It’s what we used to do. Slaying before it was ever a thing on a Friday night drag show on VH-Fucking-1. Ghosting in a way more real and visceral than your sad cel habits could even approach. You don’t even know what it’s like to want, your little whines will only approximate and echo our feverish desperation. It was literally life or death then. 

So you’re a tough guy
Like it really rough guy
Just can’t get enough guy
Chest always so puffed guy
I’m that bad type
Make your mama sad type
Make your girlfriend mad tight
Might seduce your dad type
I’m the bad guy
Duh

A blue-lit shower backed by Billie Eilish, music both mysterious and monstrous, perfect for bending over and getting fucked by memories of nights so dark no starlight could reach them. Not then, not now, not ever. So impenetrably black you cannot see, and what you think your eyes detect is but a tease, a bubble on the tongue.

I like when you get mad
I guess I’m pretty glad that you’re alone
You said she’s scared of me?
I mean, I don’t see what she sees
But maybe it’s ’cause I’m wearing your cologne

Haunted.

And haunting.

Don’t think we cannot thrill anymore, don’t even.

I will take your pop anthems and turn them into trifling playthings, like this post. 

Captured. Entranced. Held all the way down, all the way to the end.

The End.

Artistic alchemy, when it hits right, can astonish and astound, and sometimes it does so in quiet, poetic, and somber form. When that happens, something like a song and accompanying video transcend their physical boundaries and touch people in a way that proves the necessity of art in a world gone mad with so many other things. 

Such is the beautiful experience that results from the recent collaboration between composer and producer Karel Barnoski and director and performer Summer Shapiro. Barnoski’s latest piece ‘November Moon’ stands alone for the wondrous way it pulls emotions and yearning from the inspiring journey of a November moon – but taken with Shapiro’s visual treatise on our pandemic existence, it takes on new import and expression. 

Inspired by a moment of solitude in November of 2020, the music begins and ends in somber contemplation, and even at the midpoint in a release of gorgeous cascading arpeggios there is a sense of resignation and resolution in simply existing in the moment. Coupled with an extraordinary performance piece by Shapiro, in which her character all but goes through the entire emotional embodiment of what living during a pandemic can feel like, this project is one of those works of art that resonates because it’s so singular and yet so relatable.  

The moon plays a role here in the title, as well as in the creative process (the video was shot during the full moon of November 2021, which was also the date of the longest lunar eclipse since ether 15th century). Seen, worshipped and adored by millions, the moon has only ever been alone – solitary orbiter of the earth – peeking at and reflecting the brilliance of the sun – and such solitude has lent her power, grace, magic, and solemnity. Those themes find creative expression in this music and the accompanying visuals, where the tension of creating art in the midst of being alone – particularly art that reaches out to the very heartstrings some of us are most afraid to pluck – results in an eerie state of release and hesitant exultation. Even in the final minute of the video, when the protagonist finds freedom and escape on a timeless seashore in a brilliant azure dress, she is utterly and supremely alone. Just like the moon.

{Karel Barnoski’s new single ‘ November Moon’ is available here.}

The post-holidays blues are about to hit some of us very hard, with the most depressing day of the year supposedly just around the corner (I thought it was January 6 for some reason, but my memory is not what is used to be.) For such times, it is good to find comfort in whatever makes you happy, and music has been one such source of joy for me. Here is one of those calming songs that acknowledges how rough it can be, and how crazy we can get, while delivering it in sweet and easygoing melodic fashion. It becomes a balm for all the agitated self-examination that we occasionally inflict upon ourselves. In the winter, the stillness and silence breed such reflection, and it’s not always a bad thing. 

Sometimes I feel like I’m drunk behind the wheel
The wheel of possibility
However it may roll, give it a spin
See if you can somehow factor in
You know there’s always more than one way
To say exactly what you mean to say

A good song has some element of ambiguity to it, and a few escape clauses to allow the listener to imbue it with various meanings. This is a sterling example of that, pristine in its many layers of possibility and intent, and with only a few lines. All the while, the music gently sways and pushes us along, keeping us moving through the woes of winter, reminding that there are others like us, going through the same hurt and trouble, and making the burden slightly lighter for that.  It’s perfect driving music, when the dirty snow and gray salt are wrecking the car, the pools of exhaust occasionally filtering in through the heater, and it’s both freezing and unbearably hot at the same time. 

Was I out of my head or was I out of my mind?
How could I have ever been so blind?
I was waiting for an indication, it was hard to find
Don’t matter what I say, only what I do
I never mean to do bad things to you
So quiet but I finally woke up
If you’re sad then it’s time you spoke up too

I must’ve dreamed a thousand dreams
Been haunted by a million screams
But I can hear the marching feet
They’re moving into the street
Now did you read the news today?
They say the danger’s gone away
But I can see the fires still alight
They’re burning into the night

Pulling my mask a bit tighter against my face, I shuffle to the entrance of the Loudonville Price Chopper. Some guy from a dirty truck with a Trump sticker is right behind me, maskless – as he will remain (literally the only idiot not wearing a mask in the entire store) and I only wish my eyes are conveying the scowl and disgust that must remain hidden behind my own mask. Shrugging it off, because what else is there to do anymore, I listen to the song playing on the sound system, which is vaguely familiar and suddenly harkening to a childhood memory. Well, not so much a specific memory as a feeling and a place – my childhood home, a day in winter, and the flashing movements of a puppet-fueled video. It strikes some terror in my heart too, so it may have been right before we had to give a speech in sixth grade – so brutally terrifying was the notion of being in front of a group of people, even then. This is ‘Land of Confusion’ by Genesis – one of the follow-up tracks to the far superior ‘Invisible Touch’ which had informed the previous summer. (Pop music always lands better in the memory bank during the summer – I don’t know why.)

There’s too many men, too many people
Making too many problems
And not much love to go ’round
Can’t you see this is a land of confusion?

This is the world we live in (oh, oh, oh)
And these are the hands we’re given (oh, oh, oh)
Use them and let’s start trying (oh, oh, oh)
To make it a place worth living in…

The confusion of being in sixth grade – where elementary school ended and with it so much of the innocence of childhood – left me both aching to escape and longing to go back. Nobody explains adolescence to you in any effective way, and I’m not sure how we would even do that now. Happily bereft of children, I find that it’s not something that has crossed my radar. As for how I navigated through my own youth, it was a series of trials and tribulations, learning from mistakes and staying so low-key so as not to astonish or arouse suspicion. That’s strange for someone whose very characteristics set him apart from the majority of the pack. A lone wolf struggles and suffers, but if they survive they are all the stronger for it. Survival in such cases is too often a tremulous ‘if’, and I’m sorry that it had to be so.

Oh, Superman, where are you now
When everything’s gone wrong somehow?
The men of steel, the men of power
Are losing control by the hour

This is the time, this is the place
So we look for the future
But there’s not much love to go ’round
Tell me why this is a land of confusion

I didn’t really like this song, but the chorus was catchy enough to get caught in my head (damn the hook!) The video was also on constant rotation, at a time when MTV actually played music videos. Whirling and swirling, I felt the mayhem of the lyrics and the tumult of the musical cadences, all conspiring to define a moment of contained chaos.

This is the world we live in (oh, oh, oh)
And these are the hands we’re given (oh, oh, oh)
Use them and let’s start trying (oh, oh, oh)
To make it a place worth living in

I remember long ago
Oh, when the sun was shining
Yes, and the stars were bright all through the night
And the sound of your laughter as I held you tight
So long ago…

It’s not that far from where we are today, only now I’m an adult, and should be equipped for dealing with it better. Of course I’m not – the fallacy of adulthood being that children are in so many ways wiser and more reasonable. The fears I had then were only replaced by the fears I have now, and adult fears are often worse because they are of actual events rather than the made-up fantasy of imagination and what-if. Dragons are easily defeated; death not so much.

I won’t be coming home tonight
My generation will put it right
We’re not just making promises
That we know we’ll never keep

Too many men, there’s too many people
Making too many problems
And not much love to go ’round
Can’t you see this is a land of confusion?

I’m not sure what comfort or solace or resolution comes from merely pointing out the problems and identifying the existence of confusion and angst, but here it is in the hopes that something good results. Or at least nothing bad. The mere absence of awful events – the stagnant notion of nothing happening – is underrated these days. Let’s bring that back in vogue.

Now this is the world we live in (oh, oh, oh)
And these are the hands we’re given (oh, oh, oh)
Use them and let’s start trying (oh, oh, oh)
To make it a place worth fighting for

This is the world we live in (oh, oh, oh)
And these are the names we’re given (oh, oh, oh)
Stand up and let’s start showing (oh, oh, oh)
Just where our lives are going to…

The somewhat-misnomered title of this post references the actual title of the song featured below, which is ‘One Winter’s Night’ – a beautiful and calm reflection on a night in winter. This early into the season it is something to be celebrated and revered, and I only hope I can keep this attitude for the remaining three months. 

There is a stark simplicity to winter, exemplified by the barren branches and bare bones of the garden. A coating of snow obscures this for only so long. We forget how much space leaves and flowers and life take up until they’re gone. 

Now, the colors come from the sky – reflected in the clouds and carried on any snowfall. Fleeting and ephemeral, they exist only in ungraspable form – elusive and furtive, and tempestuous as a winter wind. You cannot hold or capture them – merely acknowledge and marvel at their wonder. Just like winter.