ALICE NOT JOHN Episode 2: A Fictional Radio Transmission Guest: Byron Coley (Feeding Tube)
ALICE NOT JOHN
Episode 2: A Fictional Radio Transmission
Guest: Byron Coley (Feeding Tube)
Host: Joeri Bruyninckx
A conversation I overheard in a record store:
Customer: “Do you have Coltrane?”
Record shop owner: “In the jazz section.”
Customer: “I mean Alice, not John.”
Record shop owner: “In the jazz section.”
ALICE NOT JOHN is the name of a fictional radio show. The idea is this: for every episode, I ask a musician the same 12 questions. The answers I receive are the “playlist” of my fictional radio show. The questions are these:
1) Which song always brings you back to your childhood?
Byron Coley: ‘Hey Little Cobra’ by the Rip Chords. It was the favorite song of my favorite babysitter. It was also the first album I ever bought, with money I got as a present for Easter in 1964. I got it down at Post Electronics in Butler, NJ, and paid the extra buck to get it in stereo, as one did in those days.
2) Which is your favorite shower sing-along song?
Pretty much anything except ‘We Will Fall’ and ‘Ann’ off the first Stooges LP. ‘Real Cool Time’ and ‘Little Doll’ are particular faves — pure genius moves of teenage dead-ender poetics.
3) What was your favorite song as a teenager?
Depends what era, I guess, but ‘The Blimp’ by Captain Beefheart was a “song” I memorized in ’69 or ’70 and would chant aloud at the slightest instigation. But there were so many songs that slayed me in so many ways, the true answer is probably a hundred-way tie.
4) What is your favorite air-guitar song?
I really try to avoid air guitar, since it always looks to me like the basis for all idiotic male pattern dances, but I have a hard time restraining myself when Dave Davies downstrokes those heavy riffs in many of those early Kinks singles. It’s tempting to think it’d be the incomparable work of Ron Asheton, but that’s more about air pedal.
5) Which song do you associate with your 20s?
‘Rats’ by Syd Barrett. It was my fave song to listen to while tripping (along with Yoko Ono’s ‘Why’). Alice Cooper’s ‘The Ballad of Dwight Frye’ and Gong’s ‘General Flash of United Hallucinations’ from Greasy Truckers ‘Live at Dingwalls Dance Hall’ — and I was tripping a lot in my 20s.
6) From which song do you know the lyrics by heart?
‘The Anaheim, Azusa & Cucamonga Sewing Circle, Book Review & Timing Association’ by Jan & Dean.
7) Which song gives you consolation when you feel sad?
Anne Briggs’ ‘Go Your Way My Love,’ although I first heard the version by Bert Jansch, which is also excellent.
8) Tell me about a song you think people wouldn’t expect you to like.
Simon & Garfunkel’s ‘America,’ although sappy, is a near-perfect blend of melody and story. Simon’s lyrical details never fail to suck me onto their web, and the line “Michigan seems like a dream to me now,” as well as the way it’s sung, is a unique slice of mystical banality.
9) Which song do you recommend to people if you think they don’t know it?
Tim Buckley’s ‘Song For The Siren’ comes to mind easily, but it depends on who I’m with. When I go to visit Gary Panter, we’ll sit around for hours with the laptop open, and I’ll play him endless streams of weird prog and psych stuff from YouTube, which he’s really into hearing. But I often find that people get overloaded from too much new stuff. When I DJ, I always try to slip in a tune people might know every third tune or so, because listeners need some grounding to really appreciate new stuff. Too much unfamiliar material can make people blank out.
10) ‘Wonderful Tonight’ by Eric Clapton is a break-up song (about a couple who decide not to tell their friends they just broke up because they don’t want to spoil a party they’re planning to go to). Strangely enough, this song often gets played as the opening song at weddings. Tell me about a song you misunderstood when you first heard it.
The early Stones singles were notoriously hard to figure out. When I was in grade school, we would argue constantly about the lyrics of songs like ‘Satisfaction.’ If you went and looked at the sheet music at an instrument store, it was always a letdown from your imagination’s version.
11) Which song always makes you do silly dance moves?
The Adverts’ ‘One Chord Wonders’ or the Avengers’ ‘We Are the One’ really make me spazz out, although I’d like to do a dance-off against Dennis Tyfus to Carl Douglas’s ‘Kung Fu Fighting.’
12) Which song do you quote most often? Which line?
The Suicide Commando’s ‘Match/Mismatch.’ The line: “Waiter? My check.”
Headline photo: Byron Coley (Credit: William Dwight)
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