A Sort Of Homecoming

In the book I'm writing, Something Solid, different characters emerge, with different degrees of distinctness. Chris (DeFranco), a childhood friend of mine, has emerged as one of the less distinct characters. There were things about Chris, it is true, that could be considered generic. His main cultural pursuit was sports, and sports betting. He was a betting ring kind of dude. On the other hand, it was quirky about Chris that he had an odd, unexpected sympathy with art and creativity, and often attracted unexpected friends, like myself. His extensive connections to Abington in the Nineties became mine, too. Cheltenham to Abington then was Nineties revolution, all over again. Chris was a diehard U2 guy, as well. We went to see the Zoo TV show at Veterans Stadium in '92— incidentally, still the best rock show I've ever seen. Even if Bono speaking at my Penn graduation resembled Tom Waits himself covering Jeff Buckley. As per New Year's Eve, the one in question is '97 into '98. Most of the piece is reportage. The house I return to here is on Lindley Road, in Glenside, which followed on the heels of Upper Merion. When I returned to State College, I bought a Celtic Cross, black leather pants, and occupied a bedsit in North Halls. As of April, I would finally crack the code towards emerging as the writer I wanted to be. Manhattan would lay in wait, in the distance. Sublets would be themselves. And 1998 would become a year I would remember very fondly indeed. The last year I saw or heard from Chris with frequency. 

Lover, You Should've Come Over

Did half of Manhattan, at one point, decide that I was Jeff Buckley? In the Nineties, my resemblance to Mr. Buckley was widely noted. I hung out with scenesters who had been his friends and bandmates, too. So: this one's about Jeremy, but I've decided it would be too boring just to do The Smiths or Morrissey again, as usual. The twist is that this piece takes place in the autumn of 1997, in Manayunk. Some the action happens at the La Tazza Coffee-house, a base of operations for Jeremy, 'd' magazine, and the entire Villanova-Manayunk Nineties revolution crowd. The rumor in Manayunk at that time, related to me by an authority, is that, a few months before his untimely death in May 1997, Jeff Buckley showed up at precisely La Tazza to play, unaccompanied, for a few hours. Buckley died in Memphis. Hmm. The whole thing was even more el bizarro because, again on semester break, I myself had shown up at La Tazza to play unaccompanied, in about March 1997. Play I did. Was the whole Jeff Buckley Manayunk thing an urban legend? In any case, the night in question in the piece, Chris and I probably played some of Grace while we were car-bound. Grace, and Jeff Buckley, did take off in the world once Jeff passed. Whether La Tazza really had Jeff there, co-terminous with myself, thirty-odd years later, we may never know. Or whether people in Manhattan called me "Jeff" behind my back. Thank you, Briana and Gina... 

Man Called Aerodynamics

Both Voodoo, as it showed up in Otoliths in 2017, and the revised Emily's Voodoo and where it sits now, are an attempt to come to terms with Central Pennsylvania in the Nineties: what it meant and what it was like. Central Pa has built into it a certain amount of randomness, and also of obscurity: it's not that much of a national spotlight kind of locale. Penn State means football to most of the public. Yet, to people who love the place, and went through paces there that marked the hell out of them, the center of Philadelphia's state, Pennsylvania, will always have a sense of enchantment about it. As will Emily, who could also be called Maria, for germane, if skewered, reasons. And Guided By Voices, in Nineties State College, were knowable to the kids working the indie circuit, and became household gods as such. You can deduce from this that, yes, there was an indie rock scene in State College in the Nineties. The translation from GBV and Robyn Hitchcock disciples into world, or at least national, acclaim never happened. Small town life chewed up the State College indie scene and spit it out. I never myself got worked up about Bob Pollard and GBV that much. Neither did Emily. But that State College was ever that bum-fuck— not what I saw. And, as is in the piece, townies could be licentious in an unrepressed way. Central Pennsylvania breeds libertines, along with the sense that, if you keep the noise down, you can get away with murder. Licentious murder. Amidst the earth magic of the green stuff that lives & breathes. 

Drivin'

Drivin', indeed. Drivin' in a taxi cab from Dirty Frank's at 13th and Pine, all the way into the heart of Upper Darby. Paying $35 dollars for the ride, still a lot in 2026. Yup, folks, that's who I was in 2004: always assiduous about trying to do the things I deemed worthy to do. Dawn Ananda Hulton not only lived in Upper Darby, she bothered to live in what had been Todd Rundgren's house. So that, now that I've finally kicked For Dawn into shape, we can all start talking about rock music in Philadelphia without laughing or reaching for aspirin. Dawn Ananda was a musician, with a band called The Nooses. She also had a fetish for The Kinks and Arthur. Drunken, skittish, with a rich mother. Jane Fonda look-a-like: "What's your bag, Klute?" And on that drive, I had no idea I'd be sleeping on her living room couch, hiding beneath a blanket so her mother couldn't see who I was. The footsteps stopped, briefly, near the couch, then wandered away. In 2004, such incidents and situations revealed the primary laws of my nature. The infinite complexity of pain and pleasure. The Bean Cafe on South Street, where I wrote For Dawn, was also The Ween Cafe. The proprietor was Dean and Gene Ween's sister. So, randomly, this one has a rock insignia all over it. And a Philadelphia one. So there. 

Miracles

The intense craziness of my relationship with Jennifer Strawser, as is documented in Silly Putty, took much of its velocity from our being young, but also sprung from culture-shock, hot-wired into opposites attracting, then shaken and re-stirred without either of us being aware it was happening. Jen was clearly out to impress everyone in State College, especially the Daily Collegian crew, that she was from a solid lower middle-class background. She was not. Yet the headlong lunge into hard-core mattress-thumping calisthenics took Jen and I into a slanted, enchanted la la land where I hadn't bothered to venture with Kelly or Mandee. In the middle of our antics, Jen and I might as well have looked like Yellow Submarine cartoon versions of ourselves. Jefferson Starship catches Jennifer Strawser and I red-handed with what it means to, y'know, be able to handle things. We got lost. If Jen felt she had no choice but to lie, it all got busted when I visited Liverpool that summer of '96. At that point, I was occupying more than one la la land, owing to a dose fit for a Piper. Intense craziness. But the intensity is something, in retrospect, that I like. There was nothing tepid, bland, or insipid about who we were then, or what we did. The Marty Balin character in Miracles is about as pixilated as we were. And as horny. Jen visited Upper Merion, then, too, where I was stationed on semester breaks. We did a real roundelay routine. If I had trouble tying my own shoes at that particular juncture, so be it. Jen could tie them for me. 

Linger

I was in State College for the summer of '94, living in South Halls. It turned out to be uneventful. My first real semester was the Fall 1994 semester. I found myself living in North Halls, which, as a dormitory set, in the Nineties, was about artists and misfits. What is detailed about Kelly McCabe in Elegy's Ends is detailed with a great deal of affection. Mary and Abby were creative girls who could also come across as standoffish and pompous at any minute; Jen was amiable, usually, but displayed the hauteur of the beauty queen much of the time, too. Lo and behold: Kelly McCabe was not only genuine, she was what they call a nice person. She was good-natured, in a way that Mary, Abby, and Jen were not, exactly, or always. Kelly was also a gifted photographer, which would've received scoffs from Mary and Abby, but there it is. It remains strange that Linger, here, is such a plaintive song, because my memories of it, and of the fall of 1994, are so sanguine. Kelly was a Cranberries-head; not in least because Dolores O. seems to have lived for a while on her block in Lansdale. That feeling always happens when I hear The Cranberries: of the world opening up, of a bright new horizon set out before me, or a new expansive vista making itself known. Why I didn't stay with Kelly is that she only did one full semester at PSU, before disappearing into the mist. Her impact was, proved to be, indelible, as someone who, for me, was mostly about joy. 

Subterranean Homesick Alien

I always say that for the time I spent in State College in the Nineties, Smashing Pumpkins were the Chairmans of the Board for me and most of the people I knew, rock-wise. Radiohead were second in command. Yet when I look back at my time in Central Pennsylvania, it occurs to me that, towards the end, which for me was 1998, Radiohead had taken a lead over Corgan & Co. When OK Computer was released in the summer of 1997, it pushed Radiohead onto a new, lofty plateau. I cared enough to buy OK Computer the day it came out. This is a tune that illuminates my final year in State College. The environs of and around State College are full of country lanes. I also did have a way, first in '96 and then again in '97, of being abducted by aliens in State College. An uptight, hallucinatory scenario, indeed. This is a tune, also, that brings me back to one night, in the summer of '98, I stayed up all night with a friend of mine, doing random, meaningless tasks, as one might do in a small town in summertime. We wound up on the roof of the Weaver Building. At dawn, we got free donuts from a bakery where another one of our friends worked. Then I went back to my South Atherton Street sublet and crashed. Were aliens watching, and taking notes? Small town life sometimes does feel like living on the moon, or on another planet. Yet that's where I earned my stripes towards being the writer I am today, for whatever that's worth or not worth. What are all of these words worth? To small towns, aliens, donuts, and the Nineties. Peace.