Calvary crossed wires

I am back.

I am not sure about any of the caricature or irony business described in the previous post but did have a good time nonetheless.

Speaking of irony, I've noticed that poor Alanis Morisette gets a very tough time on this subject from all the hipsters (unfortunately for Alanis, grammar hipsters and music hipsters are often one and the same).

But how come people are always lashing Alanis for not knowing the meaning of irony in her song Ironic but nobody ever gives Ice Cube shit for similarly misusing it in his classic It was a good day?

The song is mainly about fucking bitches and also about basketball, there's a confluence of these topics when Ice pays a visit to one of his hooches and remarks: ''It's ironic, I had the brew, she had the chronic, the Lakers beat the Supersonics.''

This is not nearly even ironic. She's a fucking HOOCH. As if she would not have a stash of the chronic virtually all of the time. Anyway, I sort of sympathise with Alanis, is all.

Speaking of basketball, as part of my iconic adventures in post-ironic Americana or some shit I did manage to buy Knicks tickets on Monday night for $30 from a scalper outside Madison Square Garden. This after being told at the ticket window that the cheapest available seats were $245.

The sweetest part of it was probably watching Mrs Silky-D - who is quite straight and risk-averse when it comes to such matters -- nearly have kittens as I transacted that shit.

I also took a day trip to Philadelphia to check out some of the key sites associated with my new quasi-obsession: the founding fathers. I saw Franklin's house, and his grave, and the room where Jefferson penned the declaration of independence and also the steps that Rocky runs up in the movie Rocky.

On the way back to NYC my train broke down and I was stranded in rural New Jersey for five hours, I shared a couple of beers with the guy next to me who turned out to be a semi-famous jazz drummer who had played with many of the greats etc. He had been to Australia but the only place he saw was Wangaratta. Imagine such a thing.

Anyway, I am back. I picked up my guitar last night for the first time in ages. I couldn't really remember any Squid Ink songs ( little has changed there, obviously) so I just strummed a few random chords and accidentally hit on the progression for Mr Big's 1989 smash hit To be with you. I've been singing it ever since.

I always hated this song, at the time my sister liked it a lot and bought the album. I'm sure that she would loathe it now but I find that I quite like it.

Isn't that ironic? Or something?

I think I had the song in the back of my mind because while in New York I took in a show - Rock of ages - which was a "jukebox musical" about Sunset Strip hair metal bands in the early to mid 80s. It starred one of my favourite American Idol alumni, Constantin Maroulis and was both better and worse than what you would imagine from this brief explanation. Anyway, To be with you featured briefly in the soundtrack and must have lodged in my head.

I also went to see Richard Thompson play an all-request set, as I have previously mentioned elsewhere. Audience members wrote the songs they wished to hear on slips of paper and they went into a hat, to be drawn and played by Thommo onstage. One of the more fun ones was a reprise of his cover of the early Beatles ditty It won't be long which was great because the entire audience sang the backing vocals and it was quite a nice, warm, collaborative moment.

Anyway, like Mr Big, I have left New York and sort of wish I had not. In their case it was because hair metal went out of vogue and they had to pursue the japanese market, where they went on to have several multi-platinum hit records throughout the 90's, even as the rest of the world was all busy being still just a rat in a cage despite all its rage. They even released a live at Budokan album, which seems like a bit of a travesty. In my case it's because I ran out of money and the fence in the front garden need painting before I go back to work.

So it turns out Mr Big have just reformed and a new album is on the way. Like Unrelenting Tedium they have been busy writing. Like Thommo they are doffing their caps to the Fab Four by including a Beatles cover. It's for you. Weirdly it's a song that John and Paul wrote around Revolver time but never recorded, instead they gave it to Cilla Black.

Covers are ace, we should get some new covers. Mr Big cover the Beatles and so does Richard Thompson. Dinosaur Jr covered Richard Thompson but never, to my knowledge Mr Big. But they did release an album called Green Mind -- which I didn't really like much but UT will probably now tell me is his favourite or something, thus beginning some new argument. Green Mind sounds a lot like Green Tinted Sixties Mind, which is the second best known song ever recorded by Mr Big (trailing the first by some fair margin).

Thommo covered Britney Spears' Oops I did it again, which is only my third favourite Britney song (I would like to have heard his take on Toxic). Britney, like the Beatles before her, is one of the most covered artists of all time. Check it out on the internet, EVERYBODY does Britney covers, It's a must.

Britney herself basically never does covers, though, which I guess is kind of, maybe, not really ironic. (You could, though, mount an argument that all of her songs are covers since she sure as hell isn't writing them). She has covered Prince, though -- as has Thommo himself. The other famous Britney cover is of You Oughta Know by Alanis Morisette. This was longer than I expected it would be and a lot more rambling. I think I have my wires a little crossed. Fucking jetlag.