Yahrzeit la tengo

21 fun salute in song for Señora Mz Layne on her year's passing

Imagine a soundtrack to Layne's life. 95 minutes, the pace of a blessedly brisk, well-edited film's score, or a double LP with a gatefold cover. If in her case, perhaps with seeds or stems in the inner gutter. (If you’re late tuning in, she died a year ago tonight.)

These songs arc. Many titles "based on a true story" as tiresome taglines pitch today’s focus-group tested product. Uneasy with total flights of fantasy. Which judging by 90% of fiction peddled now, is no longer true; L. opted for New Yorker-NPR-Big Five press sensitivity-reader affirming life lessons of/for/by a certain age, when “general educated reader” media literacy didn't imagine dragons; from which dreams’d neither be repeated, even by said spouse solo--as mine were verboten aloud she claimed, nearly never to lapse into such--nor ever recovered as backstories, dodges, disclosures, plot exposition, chemically eu- or dysphorian entertainment or edification, morality tales or stoned giggles. For drug scenes rarely succeed on screen or in print, in her estimation, jaded comedowns from/ of eight-mile high transports. N.B. Not all lyrics (e.g., "Two Trains") correspond; albeit "inspired by true events” as #4 discloses below.

For the uninitiated I typically allude to a doubled pun. Yahrzeit is Yiddish for the “year-time” memorial of the death of a loved intimate relative, a parent or G-d forbid a child, as survivors will mourn as Kaddish on each anniversary of a passing. For L., who left this sublunar realm sometime past midnight, so as early on the morning of March 13th, the commemoration is recited the evening before, when Hebraic "dates" begin.

And one of her two favorite bands, Yo La Tengo, from the baseball player's "I've got it" in Spanish, thusly. Ira Kaplan’s New York (well, more like Rochelle) sharp ear-wit.

Her other, even more favored, is The Replacements aka the Mats, from Mpls. Singer-songwriter-guitarist (s-s-g) Paul Westerberg led what began in the early Eighties as a shambolic punk outfit, acerbic and self-deprecating lyricist (sorry, can't bear to induct Craig Finn/ The Hold Steady who occupied in her next gen a similarly sized niche on her short shelf) who slipped into their polished pop-rock stage before inevitable dissolution and imho rather lackluster solo projects before inevitable reformation to which she and Son #1 Leo went. Flew up to Red Rocks in Colorado to see rehabbed (?) remnants of lineup cavort in dresses 2013, before that became a Bud Light Super Bowl ad. Think instead of Stones' Some Girls original sleeve, which Son #1 better have kept.

Side One: Saddling Up: September 24th 1988-June 1991

I offer background for the first set, surmising before we met with slight poetic license.

1. Alex Chilton celebrates Mats' 1985 serendipity of hearing one's punchy pet sound come on. Little known, but he's my equivalent of far-less-remembered NorCal’s Scott Miller (Game Theory, The Loud Family, nearly my exact contemporary in hair and age) as s-s-g. When Our Mutual Friend (as Dickens titled it) Broderick compiled a mixtape for Xmas when our kids populated his Silverlake Children's Theater Group, we hipper (if largely already well into boomerism beyond L. and me) breeders suggested holiday inclusions. Our sonic youth's diversity (despite lockstep blue-state reflexes in the voting booth same as it ever was) equalled our equitable affection for a lost art of tuning in once upon a transistor time as us kids as OG’s of "classic" rawk. Since neither L. or myself hearken to any Yuletide cheer, and I remain allergic to novelty or “flimsical” (did I coin this?) marketing for any seasonal outbreak of enforced fun, I chose "Radio Free Europe" by R.E.M. (cf. #18) We confessed to shoving Radio Shack recorders close to speaker to catch "it" within lost seconds for thin-tape 90m cassettes in our impressionable and formative stages, over which we forged ties, or teasing tiffs.

2. Stoned and Starving while out of chronological order, as it's by an ensemble, Parquet Courts (I had to ask my daughter-in-law what parkour even was, akin with kombucha to increasingly eremitical me) straight outta Brooklyn in the 20-13-teens, and whereas to my knowledge L. never traipsed pre-gentrified or post- Ridgewood, Queens, she damn well inhaled and positively whatever-street would have nibbled sweet Swedish Fish or a similarly repulsive gummy, ideally from Economy Candy Store on the Lower East Side near the hedonic Russ + Daughters fishmongerers, two places she rushed, every trip to see Son #2 in a Yiddishkeit New York Stadt of Mein.

I'd always meant to cue her this 2017 ditty. She enjoyed them on her Spotify stream, and I grew to overcome my suspicion of their aping Pavement's cover art and sound; for after all, SM and comrades did the same for their pilfering the collages of Mark E. Smith of my own cult artistes The Fall, unlistenable to all I know but yours truly, I bet.

3. A Case of You, by s-s-g Canadian-Laurel Canyon emigre evoked as "Joni" by L's stalwart confidante Kris with hushed reverence, had to follow. K. and L. lit up my life only in my later twenties; rumor dogged them and a small circle of conspirators that before I stumbled in a broken late twenty-something grad school stride to find solace at Morton Walk's sunroom, they'd collectively proven "more fun" via chemicals for heightened living. Not to cast aspersions; I respect any 12-steppers. L. deemed herself with insouciant regularity "a cheap date" for her inability to dance marathons with Demon Drink, but I figured it suitably matches 1971 track #2 in a lighthearted aside.

Even punkish pre-L. me bought Blue as my then-sort-of LMU girlfriend convinced me of its sway. Ditto with Court and Spark, and one of the very few live LPs (see #13) I ever got (after we broke up), Miles of Aisles. Yet we concur Joni could be a royal rear’s pain.

4. Two Trains, speaking of Valley Girls as K., L., and sort-of g-f all hailed from its drab reservations, is a bit of an homage to that entity as Hollywood-adjacent, which'd feature as a title in L's own memoirs; s-s-g Lowell George hails from a family "in the film industry," as does L's, while K's was connected via being a cinematic prof-buff as would I turn in turn. Warner Bros. Records in the early 70s (cf. Barney Hoskyns' book Waiting for the Sun) evokes, as does Little Feat's humble, eponymous debut (sold 11k copies) the era I associate with my own (pre-)adolescence. Schlagers $2.99 bargain-bin compilations of WB wax-trax, palm tree labels on vinyl, coke-head art, session men (two of whom at least as Porcaro Bros classmates of L. and K. at Grant H.S.), the El Lay ambiance (Don Henley's among skillful practitioners credited, even if we all hated The Eagles; the only person I ever met who didn't was a classmate from jr. high). So, a Valley-via-Cahuenga-off-the-101 diversion to our formative years spent headphoned.

Kick-ass turn-it-up FM AoR deep cut. No blues-guy me; but I dig steel guitar. Funky-moniker would not be a go-to f-word my spouse'd ever call me maybe. Another sly nudge. L. dispensed at Sunset Blvd. methadone clinic. ‘73 indeed: Bonnie Bramlett sings backup (alongside inter al. B. Raitt, also H'wd royalty sec-gen); her partner was L's client, amongst too many succumbed to +1 toke over the line, deep-cut mainline.

Finally, L. and I first met tête-à-tête, at Terminal Annex Post Office across from iconic 1939 Union Station, which would've graced a Neon Park airbrushed LF LP, or WB's Bugs-less logo. One of our first bonds: Depression-FDR L.A., WPA P.O. murals, gents wore hats (she refused) and ladies dressed in such; not slacks unless WACs or WAVEs, when Sullivan's Travels, her favorite film, sent us/U.S. a message. By the literal time I’d look up at the clock tower, commuting on grimy light rail and grim subway to/from Long Beach, downtown and beyond, that mechanism’d long done broke down. Now I pass it as a partial terminus, reminding me on my shuttle buses to LAX of countless adventures we’d had as family and pair, although it’s only carry-on me now.

5. She's the One. Same Reagan term one I got Blue, toiling in Package Pick-Up at Arcadia's catalogue counter of J.C. Penney's. On minimum wage, something like $2.47, I saved, with a 15% employee discount, for the Boss's The River, just out, and then Born to Run. Never blown away by Broooce, but tripp{l}y Phil Spector production lavished by svengali Jon Landau, boosted by Bob Christgau in the Village Voice, caught my critical acclaim snob's attention span. When I moved in Morton Walk, there'd be a perennial coffee-table tome, albeit by the front door Pier One set-up tiny style, precariously perched a few pens in a basket above said volume celebrating Asbury Park's greeted bard. Strut your stuff before a date. This Bo Diddley'ing thuggish chug, for me by the numbers if catchy, entry from his 1975 breakthrough (although I recall L. would have played the preceding two albums instead) nods to her enthusiasm. Sorry “Big Man” Clarence Clemons, but with rare bows to its swanky cameo on a few tunes by send-up peers Roxy Music or Steely Dan, I'm allergic to soul'd sax. Same w/jazz.

6. Color Me Impressed. Every Hanukkah, YLT plays eight nights of benefits at Maxwell's in Hoboken for the bridge-and-tunnel set in cooler-than-thou suburb’d- dom. L's bucket list hope was to attend some of these slots; I believe they're so in demand that they go by lottery; the fanbase for eminent hipsters spans deep. I don't know if Paul Westerberg (seated above) ever gigged with Ira, Georgia, and James, but he's fronts the Mats in '86 Jersey belting this '83er out. I bet given Messrs Kaplan & McNew and Ms Hubley's crate-digging and roadside-eats twinned obsessions (good pair for a band who's been 2/3 together since circa my Loyola undergrad graduation the year this was penned), they've crossed paths in respective Econolines. Still pissed about L. tossing my Minutemen t-shirt from a UCLA '84-ish concert with "We Jam Econo"; before them SST labelmates crummy Saccharine Trust and SFA, after, Meat Puppets and Hüsker Du, who stomped off Ackerman Ballroom's stage all miffed after some punter tossed a bottle at Bob Mould. Student rate of $5 for ticket, $5 merch.

7. China Cat Sunflower/ I Know My Rider. Doing double-duty neat. L's not as demented a Deadhead as some who may peruse this (all in fun, those who know, known and thanked as four potential devotees joined us w/Son #2) at what I'd hoped, more fool me, the final show at H'wd Bowl in 2021 of Dead & Co, when B.+C.’s gift for our 30th anniversary enabled me to behold remnants of the institution in person, as I'd promised my helpmeet I'd do; granted I'd ducked out a previous midsummer when L.A. mercury hit 115 at Dodger Stadium. I wisely decided to demur, as I suffer from birth my anti-social behavior, matched with an aversion to heat, and an inability since my first "real" fan experience at Santa Monica Civic with the Clash on their Give 'Em Enough Rope circuit--boy howdy that soph "effort" flopped--to endure amplification.

Half the quartet alluded to follow Stephen Malkmus who to my paternal popstar pride commented after Amoeba Records in-store performance, when spawn donned a Black Flag "Nervous Breakdown" t-shirt, opined Stockton-native, U of Va history major grad, current near-neighbor in Son #1's adopted (and as of this writing, news flash, I have booked flights for a Beaver State relocation as fleeing, another hated Californian too long cooped-up in his Angeleno native cage, too dusty, dirty, and dingy for my nerves after self-enforced Ecuadorian visa-pet sitting widowed quarantine) PDX, that Raymond Pettibon's artwork was "problematic" with tongue-planted-in-cheek surely, covered Dead. As with his side line gig leading the Jicks. Said to have moved to City of Roses for pot. AKA City of Books. A recovering addict, I fear a backslide to latter.

As to L., I learned in prepping this that "Morning Dew" which I first heard Rod Stewart channel on one of Jeff Beck Group's now-nearly-forgotten two wonderful LPs from the late Sixties, turned out a post-doomsday lament from two survivors “on the beach” of the nuclear winter, so I had to dump that haunting, lovely, forlorn, fogged chant. Not being a Dead student I lack the wherewithal to parse an appropriate '69 original from their live archive ad infinitum. When L. got to know me, she had five felines. Sunflowers and hollyhocks in vases in her colorful Echo Park flat, catty charm.

8. Downtown Lights. Alongside as a dutifully compliant suitor, one must accompany one's sweetheart to whichever events said partner deems a must. The Wadsworth Theatre next to the VA Hospital near UCLA provided the setting for this Scots trio, who as gear-heads may dimly recollect, for Linn speakers engineered their sponsored craft. The Blue Nile's sterile, "is it live or Memorex?" from the flanged and synth'd late Eighties-early Nineties (and those processed big drums of that period during and preceding): thanks no thanks to Stewart Copeland's clattering thumps for the Police engendering New Wave, dance-schlock, MTV. Peter Gabriel bettered this genre if I have to choose. Or Talking Heads; who I gave up on after Roxy vet Eno "left." By the way, at Penney’s his Another Green World intrigued from the rack; I never snapped it up on tiny budget, unsure if he/it was (in) Japanese, art-rock unsold at the 1980 mall.

Accurate tally, I enter what's less annoying than "Tinseltown in the Rain." L. had an irksome habit of playing the same few tapes repeatedly in car; when Spotify came along, at home, an A.I.-generated playlist of about two-dozen tracks whose repetition (I have interspersed for mood across three main lists nearing three thousand entries on mine) drove me batty. She didn't mind. "Tinsel" '89's tune too twee-twinkly, I opted for what I could contemplate enduring, say, once a year or so. It’s a year now anyhow.

9. And a Bang on the Ear. Again, fidelity high, this wouldn’t be my pick to click, but on my Celtic electric-folk-rock and trad Irish bents, L. and I didn’t align. While her prediction that age’d bring me into the realm of jazz vocals never panned out, my tin ear and odd inclination towards drones increasing as I dabbled in bass by 2020 at last, this Waterboys extended version—they stayed in Connemara at Spiddal—does capture a lilt that reminds me of L.’s and my stint on the other side—summer after this was caught on tape in ‘88—of County Galway. Oughterard, Sweeney’s Lodge by the river whose flow colored a bath mossy brown; resident parlor behemoth mutt Leo indifferently traipsing about after mud, it being Éire, amidst der Germanisch visitor, elderly, bellowing, accented. “Get out! It schmmells! He schtinkks.” Mix pronouns as I won’t mind misgendering said beast(s). That’s the Hebrew of this water-borne b-word.

10. Anything, Anything. L. wanted this ‘85 singalong in her party-planning mind at least made for her own shindig, one of many, at our June bloom wedding, at Alvarado Terrace, a turn-of-at-least-the-last-century by a magnate of enterprise. Dramarama. Like so many in L.A., Jersey transplants crowding freeways, raising rents, ranting. Likely not known beyond a coterie tuned in KROQ’s Rodney on the ‘Roq, 106.7 FM.

Side Two: Post-Hitched: June 23rd 1991-March 13th 2024

These elicit briefer elucidation; it’s a strain to chirp as mood-tunes de-fret half down.

11. Take the Bit Between Your Teeth. Electrelane vamps, undeservedly underplayed, diligently driven quartet from England’s Brighton pier’s fair-fun. (2004, “recorded” by the late Steve Albini, another exact peer. A jerk, but whip-smart.) Contrarian I, but if contrary to assumed spousal statement, I did play “chicks” once in a while, and read a few of their novels too. My Krautrock-motorikbeat meets her emotional rescue, rarity.

12. Stockholm Syndrome. YLT’s ‘97 homage to domestic tranquility. Or whatever that evolves into. As Ira + Georgia have been a couple at least five years before we were. L. opined that those conjugally entwined reveal that in their music, unavoidably, deeply.

13. Like Spinning Plates. Son #1’s not named after the dog in #9. But he inherited his parents’ ears, and his first purchase with his own cash, Amnesiac by Radiohead, at not a mall but near enough, Borders in Glendale near its Galleria and its Americana to boot, at the age of nine, marks a fond recollection of our mishpochah driving around Joshua Tree as In Rainbows appeared and both siblings and their progenitors grokked. The original appeared on 2001’s Amnesiac. I prefer the rearranged concert. I am not sure what Thom Yorke’s whinging on about, and it’s extremely uncommon for me to opt for a live recording of anything, but I Might Be Wrong’s fantastic. Not a stone fanatic of the group, but they hold up durably and I applaud their inventions. And given L.’s and lads’ genetic predisposition to cookery, serving this a deep-dish slice.

14. Serpientes. Before L. and I left for Ecuador two years ago for what we thought was for good, we started, naturally, watching a lot of Netflix in Spanish. Including a Rock en Español series which enchanted her. As for me, I heard far too many imitators of the Police and that processed drum-sound of the early Eighties (see #8). Still, I scored a crossover as this Chilean neo-psych outfit caught her attention on the scant handful of occasions I got to control the remote and thus Spotify en suite or en la Casa Quinde.

Neither of us tolerate snakes. Yet 2013’s cut bites deeper, hissing of grinding melodies incorporating a bite of the native influences, and while the band’s better at beats and grooves than songwriting structure (even this falters 2/3 in of five minutes), it stands for the kinds of sounds filling our Imbabura place during her happiest if final lifespan.

Ask any Spanish-speaking amigo the dizzy meaning of «Vuelveteloca». Clever, que no?

15. Rin del Angelito. Inti-Illimani were exiles from 1970s Chile in the aftermath of the crumple of Allende and the march of Pinochet. Their indigenous tunes portended “El Condor Pasa” peeped by countless pan-pipers in Parisian metros and by poncho-clad buskers peddling in megapoli across the then-First World. But it’s a sweet evocation of the Andes, which tower over me as I type, upon which she’d gaze from this patio.

16. Return to Zion. YLT’s Garden State neighbors in Haledon convened mainly as the Feelies (whom we saw the night before we married, at the Pantages in Hollywood), an institution predating even Kaplan, Hubley, McNew. Yung Wu’s ‘80s Feelies #1 side-project featured their percussionist (as with Pavement, the guy didn’t seem to have much to do, akin to a triangle in an orchestra), Dave Weckerman. In this post-October 7th 2023 climate of intolerance against All Things Eretz Israel, and despite or doing justice to L.’s ambivalence about the/her “faith” this tune expresses, verses upon closer inspection betray an eerie loss of one’s identity and the blurring of self as fulfillment.

17. It's a Paradise. I hear dimly your bluestocking plaints. Where’s the singers like Joni? Why does all this indie-slop slog on with such sub-par s(l)ingers pretending that a vocal delivers a song, however amateur hour with (#7?) Palo Alto’s Mother McCree’s Uptown Jug Band? Well, Michael Stipe’s on deck; no doubt divisive among your ranks. Meanwhile, the second Jersey in-shore a few miles from the Hudson Feelies’ manques.

L.’d correspond on FB with Speed the Plough, and their singer while bless her earnest heart remained limited even by my standards low enough to admit Mark E. Smith of The Fall, she manages to express sentiments which jibed with those of L., and as this chronicles a move from one realm of existence into our second biblical expanse, amen.

18. Find the River. As I documented, ahem, about R.E.M. in #1, I knew this’d slip in as an eventual inclusion, or “Nightswimming” from the elegiac Automatic for the People. An album spooked by death, as its title reverberates. I think I only played it once with L. in the room, along with Fairport Convention’s 1968 debut which she despised (even if the latter covered “Chelsea Morning”), at Casa Murphy Glenalbyn, bought the year this came out, ‘92, where we spent over thirty years raising our boys and lifting ourselves up amidst a grind, two jobs each, wearing grooves into wooden floors, our faces as they wrinkled, our albums until they morphed into CDs and digital media.

19. California. This and 2013 companion #20 despite my efforts to limit artists outside of Westerberg to a single nod, earned the sneak. When Mazzy Star’s final batch came in, this haunted me as if a lost demo from Led Zeppelin III. (N.B. as aside: John Paul Jones did the strings on #18’s arrangements.) Hope Sandoval’s voice, reminiscent to me in range of Sandy Denny (Joe Boyd recorded her in/ out of Fairport; R.E.M. too), in its longing for a state she’d wind up flying back to from whatever wonderland had enticed her far beyond its golden tarnished grit. As did L. if perhaps once too many flights in reality, as I guesstimate that did her in so suddenly twelve months this date.

20. Sparrow. Without worthy words left or right. Simply listen to flight’s own fragility.

21. Skyway. I recited this, her second-favorite ‘Mats, at her memorial (z’l) last May 18th in L.A., her birthplace and mine, at Griffith Park. As covered by those who loved.

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