What’s up, Darling Ones?

In honor of the 31st anniversary of Paul Westerberg’s first solo record, “14 Songs,” I decided to rank his solo efforts based on whim and my current mood.

I included some of the Grandpaboy stuff, but kept out all the basement recordings.

1. Suicaine Gratifaction

This should come as no surprise. This is my favorite solo Westerberg album and of course I would only like the best. I love art that guts me and eves me a heaving pile of goo. Suicaine does that to me.

2. Mono

Since this is my website, we play my rules and I’m treating “Stereo/Mono” as two distinct records. Some Westernerds will find that controversial and all I have to say to that is, #TeamFingernails.

“Mono” is vastly superior. I’d like to argue that “Eyes Like Sparks” and “Kickin’ the Stall” are better than anything on “Stereo,” but “Only Lie Worth Telling” might be the best song on both albums.

Anyway, Sparks & Stall are probably Paulie’s sexiest songs, which is saying a lot because his music is mostly romantic and not sexy.

3. Come Feel Me Tremble

I have a real soft spot for this one. Probably because of the dueling “Crackle & Drags,” but I also love “Wild & Lethal” too. And it’s true love because I’m not really a fan of 5-minute songs. Plus, the cover of “These Days.” I dunno if anything Westerberg has done can be called underrated at this point, but if so, this one is it.

4. Stereo

This record is solid. It’s fine. It’s Westerberg and that’s not too shabby. What slots this one at #4 is its lack of songs with lyrics that actively make me cringe.

5. 14 Songs

Thus begins the cringe. There are some beauties on here. I’m partial to “Things” and “Black Eyed Susan.” And his laugh when he sings “my little Frankenstein” on “Mannequin Shop” is the only redeeming thing about that song.

But “Someone I Once Knew” is just…

When I was super amped to see Westerberg for the first time in 02, my co-worker PromoJoe would walk past singing this song to remind me that Westerberg was a fallible human. Those reminders probably kept me from spontaneously combusting in excitement.

6. Dead Man Shake

Nothing actively embarrassing on this one. It’s just mostly forgettable. The “Souvenirs” cover is decent. I always remember this one because Wolfdogg had a real “Vampires & Failure” thing for awhile. Westerberg played it in Milwaukee when we saw him in 04 (?).

7. Eventually

“Good Day” saves this from the last place. I’m not completely cold-hearted. That “hold my life one last time” KILLS me.

But “Trumpet Clip” is the absolute worst. And a lot of rest of it ain’t that great.

8. Folker

That sweet song about his dad is probably the only redeeming thing about this record. Oh, and “Lookin’ Up in Heaven” is good. I listened to the shit out of this when it first came out and now I can’t even remember how a lot of the songs go. I will never forget, however, how bad “Jingle” is.

And to be fair, even bad Westerberg is better than some artist’s best.

Love from my little rock & roll ass to yours,
Jodi

The post Paul Westerberg’s Solo Albums Ranked: A 14 Songs’ 31st Anniversary Tribute appeared first on I Will Dare.

Hi Darling Ones,

Back in the early times of blogging I would spend entire weekends headphones on, nose inches from the computer monitor, sucking down cigarettes and Diet Coke while “redesigning” my blog. This was in the time before themes and WordPress and even blogspot. If you wanted to have a fresh new look you had to hand code that shit.

When I say “hand code” I mean you had to right-click & view source on some blog that was sexier than yours, find the bit of code you wanted, copy & paste it into your code, edit the shizz to do exactly what you want, save, and then refresh.

It was exhausting.

I only read four chapters in HTML for Dummies despite being an entire dummy about code. I had to figure out what CSS element corresponded to what thing on my site, design the header, and update the blogroll. All this only happened after agonizing over what my new idea was gonna be. I have no idea how long it took me to come up with the sexy number from August 2002 pictured here.

It was kind of exhilarating too. Once I had everything looking and performing how I wanted I’d be so proud. Probably shouted “I AM A SUPERGENIUS” more than once or twice.

I recaptured the feeling yesterday in a fit of nostalgia fueled by the recent Stereo/Mono purchase and a blip in an RSS Feed that served up new posts despite there being no new posts.

Darling Ones, I spent alllllllllllll day redesigning & updating Paul Westerberg.net, and I can say without a doubt it was the best time I’ve had so far this year.*

I strapped on those headphones and listened to Tegan & Sara’s “Still Jealous,” that new riff they’ve done on “So Jealous.” It felt just like the early-aughts here except I traded the smokes & Diet Coke for a handful of M&Ms (maybe two handfuls) and the cinnamon tea I’m in love with. I also listened to Anaïs Mitchel’s new eponymous record, the Bittersweetheart Valentine’s Mix I’m making, and also a metric crapton of Westerberg & The Replacements.

This was exactly the kind of semi-mindless, tedious, not really but feels like productive work I needed. I was not bored for one single second. I was frequently annoyed, mostly with myself and some of the decisions I made when I started the site back in 2005? 2006? I was filled with glowy nostalgia for all my ol’ Westernerd pals back when we were so excited that Westerberg was farting out a bunch of noise we could download for 50¢. And I was a little bummed to see a few of the ol’ Replacements/Westerberg fansites were no more (and then annoyed again because now I got a bunch of links that got to 404 pages).

Much like I Will Dare dot com, PaulWesterberg.net exists mostly for my own amusement. A lot of it cracks me up because I think I’m hilarious.

There’s not so much activity there for obvious reasons, but when I was fixing each item in the discography on the home page I kept thinking how much I would have loved stumbling on the site when I was a newbie fangirl back in 1996.

Cramming my dreams with computer chips, but I want tambourines & shaking hips,
Jodi

 
*Do recall that I spent the first three weeks of the year down with the COVID and then my BFK’s restaurant caught on fire. So the bar for good times is as low as it gets right now.

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Hi Darling Ones,

My Valentine’s Day gift arrived yesterday. It’s so perfect and thoughtful I got the heart-eyes. Someone is totally getting lucky this weekend.

It’s me! I bought myself my second favorite Paul Westerberg album and, my very favorite Grandpaboy record I suppose. It’s a double LP of “Stereo/Mono” which came out in 2002 (ugh, 20 years ago), but didn’t come out on vinyl until 2019. It was a Record Store Day release, I believe.

I forgot how much I love this record (I’m talking about “Mono” specifically here, though I also love “Stereo”). I cannot remember the last time I listened to it, before today. It’s simple, flawed, and brilliant. My heart started zooming the second “High Time” kicked. I still know every word to every song.

Even though I haven’t listened to the entire record in a long time, I’ve been thinking about the song “Eyes Like Sparks” for about a year now.

This is a saucy little song I’ve been trying to untangle since April 2021. That’s when I typed out all the lyrics and figured out the song only has eighteen different words in it and he just repeats them to great effect. I still can’t figure out why this works. It must be magic.

I could give you a break down of my thoughts on a song by song basis. Or I could point out all the times in the early years of this blog I stole lyrics from these songs for titles. I’m not gonna because I don’t have it in me at the moment.

Hard fact time: I’ve been struggling creatively for a few weeks now. Words are not coming very easily. Everything I write feels superfluous and like it’s trying too hard. This ickiness is giving me a constant feeling of low-level crankiness. Basically, it’s gross and sticky inside of me, like caramel covered in cat hair. I keep telling myself to work through it to push and push and push. My soul read what I said about paying the mortgage and now it’s all, “kiss your creativity goodbye, bitch.”

It sucks and I’m unhappy about it.

Enter St. Paul Westerberg and this record I haven’t listened to for I don’t know how long. You can see the liner note from the Grandpaboy portion up above. This sentence feels like the very definition of I Will Dare, the website.

This is rock & roll recorded poorly, played in a hurry, with sweaty hands, and unsure reason.

Except this isn’t rock & roll, what I’m doing. It’s more like the literary equivalent of rock & roll. But the rest of it fits.
Recorded poorly? CHECK
Written in a hurry? CHECK
Sweaty hands? CHECK
Unsure reason? 88,888 CHECKS

I love this liner note. I love the whole thing about it feeling right and this is my blood. This is going to be the boost I need to get all that hairy caramel out of my system.

I hope.

ugh, this was so painful.

Subtle as a battering ram,
Jodi

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Dear Darling Ones,

When I say I am obsessed with the Sylvia Plath biography Red Comet I’m not using hyperbole for comic effect. This book is all I’ve done and thought about for at least a week. It’s been my constant companion. I read it while eating and drinking coffee and before zoom meetings and while I waited for dinner to cook and before going to sleep and first thing when I woke up.

This book has made me a poor listener because instead of really listening to the people who are talking to me my brain is kind of trying to figure out how to work Sylvia Plath into the conversation.

Today I had a chance to chat with a new colleague while we waited for a client to show up for our zoom meeting. The entire time we were talking about Wilco and Jeff Tweedy’s memoir, I was secretly trying to wedge Sylvia Plath in there. It’s like Six Degrees of Sylvia in my head. I almost did it too! Jeff Tweedy memoir > He writes about his first time seeing The Replacements > Paul Westerberg, lead singer of The Replacements sings a song called “Crackle & Drag” which is about Plath’s suicide. BINGO!

However, I restrained myself. Barely.

What I love so much about reading this book is that it’s all consuming. It reminds me of how I was about books when I was a kid and just couldn’t get the stories inside of me fast enough.

Before I started reading Red Comet, I had the cursory knowledge of Plath and Ted Hughes that comes with being a booknerd and pop culture junkie. I’ve read The Bell Jar three or four times to make sure I still don’t like it. We read “Daddy” and “Ariel” in my Women’s Lit class.

Still, I had no idea about her. She was so ambitious and the desire to create burned so hotly inside of her. I love how she’s presented not as a tragic waif or a heartless art monster but a complicated, fully-realized woman. But aside from all the Plathness of the biography what I love the most is how much context it gives me.

I’m the first to admit I’m a poetry dumdum. I don’t know tons of about it. I cannot write it to save my life, despite taking poetry writing classes as an adult. I have a bunch of poems memorized because I do really try.

Now, thanks to this book, I’m infinitesimally less of a dumdum because now I have some chronological context. Like, did you know that T.S. Eliot and Sylvia Plath were alive at the same time and knew each other? W.H. Auden too! Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath took a creative writing class together taught by Robert Lowell! (I think I might have already mentioned this).

Up until this week I thought all poets were like Old Timey Walt Whitman era or Sylvia Plath & The Beats. I realized once I said that out loud to EM last night how stupid it is, but I thought it.

Damn, I’m loving this book and what it’s doing to me so much. My brain feels like it’s on fire with so many thoughts about art and marriage and love and writing. And that doesn’t even get into the stuff I relate to on a personal level, mostly about the different facades she used in her journal vs her letters to friends/family vs what she said when with friends/family. It’s a lot to contemplate.

I actually finished it this afternoon, but there’s a few parts I need to go back and read again before I give it back to the library.

Can’t promise this is the last about this book,
Jodi

*I recognize the lyric is “you’ll never repair, the lady’s cursed with insight” because Westerberg is talking about Plath specifically. We’re gonna call this artistic license, okay?

P.P.S While I don’t have a lot of time or mental capacity to get into this now, there’s something about Westerberg writing about Plath and Carson McCullers (though he only namechecks her).

The post The COVID Diaries: Ladies Cursed With Insight* appeared first on I Will Dare.

Howdy Darling Ones,

After thirty-two days of solitude I spent time with some humans yesterday. I’m fucking exhausted about it too, not just because I’m an introvert who is out of practice being around people, but because my smoke alarms started screaming at 5:18 a.m. Sunday morning and that interrupted my sleep.

I never did figure out why the smoke alarms kept going off each time the heat kicked off for like two hours, but eventually it stopped. I spent a lot of time pressing random buttons on various smoke detectors. At some point I’m sure I won’t tense up whenever my furnace stops blowing.

After that panicky excitement I spent the day cooking and moving the Sadness Garden off the dining room table. In case you’re curious the menu was: beef enchiladas with red sauce, cream cheese chicken enchiladas with green sauce, chicken tinga, and esquites. For dessert I threw a package of those French toast Girl Scout Cookies at them, because baking is for chumps.

Another thing that happened after thirty-two days, my nephew, Maxwell, hung my Joan Jett poster on the wall. So after living here for nearly sixteen-years, Supergenius HQ has her official patron saints: St. Paul Westerberg and St. Joan Jett.

As he stood back to view his handy work Max said, “I like how they compliment each other. They both got the denim thing going.”

And then I launched into a mini-lecture. “That’s not even half of it,” I said. “He’s holding a book, she’s on a bookcover. Plus, they love each other.”

Max cocked his head at me. “Really?”

“Not like that,” I said. “They’re friends. She covered “Androgynous.” They’ve done some songs together. They did “Let’s Do It” from Tank Girl movie in the 90s. He mentioned her at RiotFest!”

Then it was Sonya’s turn to tell us about how much she liked the Tankgirl books. I didn’t get a chance to tell them about how Joan Jett was my first favorite singer when I was like ten because of “Crimson & Clover” and I thought she was Leather Tuscadero (sorry, Suzi Quatro). Or that Paul Westerberg music is so much a part of who I am as a person that instead of bone marrow I’m filled with his song lyrics.

I love that whenever I look up from my laptop this is what I see. It makes me so happy.

Just about the only thing I got going for me in this pandemic loneliness hellscape is that I really, really, really love my house, even with its annoying malfunctioning smoke alarms and lack of a linen closet and nasty-ass carpets I cannot wait to get rid of this summer and my stupid bathroom with the toilet next to the closet.

Supergenius HQ is my absolute favorite place on Earth. I’ve worked so hard to keep this roof over my head. All by myself. While being a self-employed freelancer. I love it here. It’s the only place I truly fit and feel wholly myself.

Next to I Will Dare dot com making this home for myself is my proudest achievement, and I will Dare only gets first place because I’ve been doing this for nearly twenty-one years and have only lived in Supergenius HQ for sixteen.

Ok, I gotta go eat some leftovers because I’m starting to get super schmoopy and that makes me wanna barf.

Jodi

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