If Debbie Harry had grown up today, she’d totally be that girl who creates a fake Facebook page so she can stalk her exes. You know she would. Practically every other Blondie song is about stalking someone. Even if it begins all romantic and gushy, she always veers off into weird and creepy – “Watch out if I see you, ’cause if you say hello it’ll mean you wanna see me…” I’m sure it’s partially ironic, Debbie’s twisted take on the conventions of sixties girl-group music. If you haven’t been studying up on it, a lot of those girl-group classics from the likes of The Supremes, The Crystals, The Ronettes and many others, were all about pre-liberated feminine pursuits such as pining for a man, passively waiting for your man to come back, actively begging your man to come back, loving your man even though he treats you like total shit, swearing everlasting loyalty to your cheating piece-of-shit man, and even sometimes taking a beating from your man, all in the name of love. Great music and fantastic hair, but not terribly empowering. I think a lot of Blondie’s creepy stalker songs are a humorous jape on that tradition. On the other hand, given how frequently this theme comes up – all the time – I suspect that it’s not entirely satirical. Perhaps it’s something the singer honestly relates to, even as she makes a joke of it. If you have to ask yourself “Why would anybody as totally fantastic as Deborah Harry constantly fantasize about stalking disinterested love objects?” – Well, because we all do. It’s universal. And even if to most of the world’s eyes you’re Debbie freakin’ Harry, there’s always that one guy who just sees you as that weird rat-haired loser in the next apartment or wherever, and of course that’s always the one you want, so you follow his bus downtown.

“I will not run, I will not turn, I will not hide”

And so, a small lesson from Suzanne Vega on being fearless. I’ve always found this song tremendously inspiring, or empowering as the lingo goes now. Vega has never been the angry activist type, but in her unassuming way she’s been a great role model for growing up feminist. It’s her quiet intelligence and level-headed stance on delicate emotional doings – she’s just the exact sort of intellectual, self contained, artistic, non-crazy person anyone would want to be. And this song of course – an acknowledgement that we live, as women, in the constant shadow of violence and the possibility of being killed at any time, and yet we can live without fear and stand up without blinking to those who would do us harm. I don’t know if that’s what the singer meant, but that’s what I get from it. That being vulnerable doesn’t equal being afraid, and courage is a great, great strength.

Meg White is very sexy in an arctic sort of way. She likes to hide behind her drums and she doesn’t always photograph well, but there’s something about her. Maybe it’s her veneer of mystery. She’s compelling and interesting precisely because she never says anything, so you have to suspect that she’s got all kinds of amazing stories and secrets that she’s just not telling. Or it could be that’s she’s simply a very shy person. Anyway, this is an incredibly sexy song both on its own and as a rare clue on Meg. Imagining it as a personal statement would be a stretch too far, because she’s obviously not the kind of person who’d put a personal statement in a song, but it does completely suit her persona. It’s a taciturn person’s declaration of desire, a love note from someone who occupies a lonely home in the tundra, either literal or figurative. You can easily imagine a shadowy Meg White, swathed in polar bear fur, mooning about in a creaky old isba somewhere in Siberia, feeding her reindeer and keeping a candle in the window for her lover. A glamorous image, but most likely another one of tricksy Jack’s acts of mythmaking. The real Meg White resides in Los Angeles.

Brian Eno and John Cale enjoy a cup of tea and tune in to each other’s brainwaves. From whence presumably sprang Wrong Way Up. Eno and Cale had revolved in some of the same circles (the ones with Nico in them) for a long time and the only surprise was that they waited until 1990 to really pool their resources. Brian Eno is famous for making everyone else’s records sound better, but he benefits from a good collaborator as much as anyone. His tendency towards quiet elegance – or ambient dullness, whathaveyou –  needs a balancing chaotic force. He seems to produce special brilliance when teamed up with neurotic crazy people; Nico, Bowie, Byrne, Cale. Opposites attract, obviously. Cale’s creeping sense of doom only needed Eno’s refinement to become the perfect electronic chillout.

I have no idea what this is all about, because Hebrew. Or maybe not Hebrew but some other language I have zero grasp of. I’m too burned out from a very long vacation to think too hard about anything right now, but if you want your spirits lifted a bit, you could do worse than Israeli dancehall queen Ofra Haza.

Just taking some time in the middle of my vacation to let you know I’m still alive. And of course nothing says ‘summer vacation funtimes’ like the irony of a girl still in her teens performing a plaintive ballad better suited for an embittered 45 year old. Marianne Faithfull would soon enough grow into the seen and done it all grande dame of decadence she is today, but she had already affected that particular persona as a 17 year old virgin. She just had to do all the things to fit the image she wanted, that’s all. She would be the last to deny that she was a little bit of a pretentious young thing in her day. It’s both radically inspiring and slightly idiotic of her to be so willing to make any sacrifice to become the tragic heroine she imagined herself to be. It was all well and good when Faithfull’s romantic interest in tragic heroines dovetailed with the public taste for beautiful pouty waifs, but as soon as she started doing unbeautiful controversial things, off the pedestal she went, with elegance. This is a very nice song we have here, but it’s definitely one of those works that gains its value in part from the understanding of its personal context. Faithfull’s work, most especially the early years, is best understood as the artistic record of an altogether radical act of identity creation.

Praise Jah! I don’t know very much about the Rastafarian religion, honestly, so it’s hard to judge, but it seems like a pretty fun one.   If nothing else, its music has been outstanding. I presume that most faiths come with their own musical heritage, but the phenomenon of reggae is unique. Reggae is not exclusively religious music the way gospel is, but it’s deeply entwined with faith and with political belief. Whatever an artist like Peter Tosh chooses to sing about – love, justice, good times, bad times – it’s implicitly from the perspective of a devoted Rasta, a man of faith. Are there any celebrated reggae artists for whom their Rasta identity is not a central part of their message? I don’t know of any, and no, Matisyahu does not count. It is indeed unique that reggae, a musical style inexorably linked to a very specific and to most of us exotic cultural identity, has such widespread appeal. What sounds on paper like it should be a niche genre at best has gained popularity around the world and made superstars of Tosh, Bob Marley, Jimmy Cliff, Sly & Robbie and many others. Part of the thanks for that can be put on the enormous talent and charisma of Peter Tosh and Bob Marley. I also think that it’s the very spiritual nature of reggae music that makes it appealing, along with positive messages of love, social justice and equality.

I’ve been publicly wishing on here that my favorite poets would sit down and write real books, but then I remind myself to be careful what I wish for. Leonard Cohen is one of the greatest living poets, and his books are boring and incoherent to the point of complete unreadability. How surprising to find that some things are better in small, heady doses of five minutes or less.

“In My Secret Life”

I saw you this morning.
You were moving so fast.
Can’t seem to loosen my grip
On the past.
And I miss you so much.
There’s no one in sight.
And we’re still making love
In My Secret Life.

I smile when I’m angry.
I cheat and I lie.
I do what I have to do
To get by.
But I know what is wrong,
And I know what is right.
And I’d die for the truth
In My Secret Life.

Hold on, hold on, my brother.
My sister, hold on tight.
I finally got my orders.
I’ll be marching through the morning,
Marching through the night,
Moving cross the borders
Of My Secret Life.

Looked through the paper.
Makes you want to cry.
Nobody cares if the people
Live or die.
And the dealer wants you thinking
That it’s either black or white.
Thank G-d it’s not that simple
In My Secret Life.

I bite my lip.
I buy what I’m told:
From the latest hit,
To the wisdom of old.
But I’m always alone.
And my heart is like ice.
And it’s crowded and cold
In My Secret Life.

Suzanne Vega has a very literary imagination. Meaning that she writes lyrics that look good on paper and make sense without the support of music. If she should decide to write a book, I would be supremely excited. A lot of stars write books, mainly about themselves and the times they’ve lived through, and some of those have strong merit but most don’t. A Suzanne Vega memoir, if there isn’t out there already that I don’t know about, would be a thing of beauty. I also think she could even tackle real writing, like a book of poetry or fiction, if she isn’t doing that already. This song is about imagining movies, a common pastime. Which couldn’t be more literary of itself, it’s one form of entertainment mirroring another in an endless cycle.

What an appropriate coincidence, a Beatles song on the night of the big Paul McCartney show. Except for the fact that it’s a John Lennon song, that is. Not that I would put it past Sir Paul to whip this one out in tribute to John. Which would be magical. If any song has become a sort of de facto eulogy to all things Beatles, it’s this one. It’s almost been hammered into corny nostalgia oblivion, but for the saving grace of being genuinely brilliant. I’ve read that Lennon wrote the song with two people in mind – “Some are dead and some are living”. The dead one being founding Beatle Stuart Sutcliffe, who died tragically young and the living one John’s childhood friend Pete Shotton, author of the uproarious memoir John Lennon In My Life.