Top Ten Dulli Songs

Indulge me. For those readers who simply dislike his music or have no interest in it -- I invite you to stop reading this post now. Otherwise, treat yourselves to my personal list of top ten favorite Greg Dulli - penned hits. Frontman of the band that consoled me through numerous lonely nights and heartbreaks, The Afghan Whigs (and later on The Twilight Singers and Gutter Twins), Dulli has voiced my both id and ego for my adolescence and the adolescent-esque adulthood. More than any other songwriter I've been a fan of (this includes Tom Waits, Springsteen, Dylan and Bono), Dulli has remained consistent -- true to himself in his brooding over the darkest end of our emotional spectrum, his celebration of the lost weekends (weeks, years) that we should feel guilty about as we climb out of our hangovers and his overwhelming love of the mash-up between crunching power chords, seductive slide, badass-motherfucker wawa, funkdified organ and soul-laced back-up vocals (in short, baby making music).

And the performances... oh the performances -- in the '90s, these were the only concerts where you could catch this would-be hipster dancing his ass off. It was okay to let it all hang out -- to not be offended if a stranger grinded up against you (or vice versa). These were like religious experiences -- going to the stadium to see Jerry Falwell for the faithful pilgrims -- albeit an NC-17 version with Dulli at the pulpit. I saw him when he was chainsmoking in a black suit, when he bloated up and was coked out of his mind (and crowd surfed at Boston's Paradise on Valentine's Day while slaughtering Pearl Jam's Alive) and when he sobered up to start writing the best rock of his life.

So here it is -- my personal top ten - and one should note that no covers have been included as that would need a top ten of its own (which is and should be contested as I'm sure I'll name you ten different songs next week):

1. When We Two Parted (Gentleman)


2. Bonnie Brae (Powder Burns)


3. Crime Scene, Part One (Black Love)


4. Faded (Black Love)


5. Miles Iz Dead (Congregation)


6. Teenage Wristband (Blackberry Belle)


7. Debonair (Gentleman)


8. Going to Town (Black Love)


9. I'm Ready (Powder Burns)


10. My Curse (Gentleman)


BONUS -- cause these guys are back and look and sound better than ever!

Used Car History

When I got my driver's license, I found a job working at the local movie theatre. A number of friends before me had worked there briefly and after interviewing with Ms. L, a soon-to-be-pregnant 20-something, I became Cineplex Odeon's usher. Among my duties was tearing tickets and showing patrons which of the six screens their movies were screening, hopping behind the counter and working the register or making batches of popcorn and filling sodas.

My dad soon after decided that he better go ahead and buy me a car so that my parents wouldn't have to pick me up late at night. The first car ever gifted to me was a 1980 Honda Accord. It was a fine specimen. The car was about $600 and had been parked behind an Annandale gas station. My dad was real proud of it. He said he needed some time with it to figure out why it wouldn't start unless you hold down the gas pedal for a minute. I drove this car down to Richmond eventually. No air conditioning but upgraded with a at-that-time new Blaupunkt sound system. When I went to college, my sister got in a car accident in this Honda Accord. We never got to say good-bye (the car, not my sister - she's doing fine).

The next one was a silver 1978 manual transmission Volvo. I can say for certain that this car was absolutely no fun... because I never got to drive it. It was driven to my house and never driven again. The power windows stopped working and soon it disappeared.

The whole time I was cheating on these two vehicles with a 1990 Honda Civic hatchback. I loved this little car. It was already putting in some serious miles with my dad's paper route, but I certainly ground it down to the nub. Some of those turns I used to take and the numerous joggers I almost ran over... quite the driver I was. But I know friends of mine who've seen their car burn or fly off a road, so I'm not complaining. It's just that it put up with lots of abuse - tires deflating on their way to amusement parks, round trip commutes between a photo-processing hut on Maine Avenue and the dock in Old Town where I used to snap photos of couples getting on the Dandy. One summer on 66, the hood of the car flipped backwards onto my windshield. I pulled over and waited for the police to show up. Eventually, this car stopped turning over and lived on my parents' driveway for the better part of a decade. To this day, my dad still insists that had we invested a little bit of money, it would be an amazing car to drive. My dad is a Republican, too.

When I lived at home following my escape from New York, I drove a 1998 Toyota Celica. It was fine. Almost fine. I took it to New York. But I think it had digested some bad fluids because it started smoking and overheating every half hour or so. Eventually, we got rid of that. But it's the car I dated my wife in and it played my CD's beautifully (which came in handy when you're standing on the side of a road wishing you had a gallon of water in the trunk). For all this, I'm certain she loves me.

I then drove a Ford station wagon. It was a piece of crap. It was first given to my brother, who rejected it cause he said the wheel sounded like it was going to fall off. I laughed at that notion and claimed it. Eventually, it did lose its wheel. On Route 66 of all places. It sat on my lawn for a month before being given over to a non-profit.

A Frenchman who worked with me at the wine shop suggested I purchase his wife's car - Mazda Protege. Can't recall the miles, but it came with the check engine light on (and scribbled stations up and down the East Coast where one could listen to Rush Limbaugh). This was no fun to have to pay for the repairs at the beginning of a used car relationship. But the car did pretty well for me. It got me around and I secured a number of important jobs during that era.

Soon enough, the necessary costs to maintain the car in working condition outweighed its actual costs. I traded it in for the wonderful Subaru "Obamobile" Forester. It had been well oiled and maintained by one single owner, but the car was also old and its odometer showed its age. But it's taken me further than any car before it. And only recently can I admit that I've been looking at newer models. Please know that it has nothing to do with not loving what you got. Obamobile's got tens of thousands of miles left in it -- another trip to Boston or first time to Florida... Chicago. Some serious breakdowns and renewals. But damn... aren't those new Ford Mustangs sexy?

Inside Minh

My start in theatre was like most things of my youth -- embarassing, risky and foolish. But one could argue that those are also the ingredients for success in the creative and performing arts. Like most theatre freaks, I started in high school. I had started making movies at the age of 12 - not home movies, mind you -- the kind where you document family get-togethers and birthday parties -- but full-on action flicks involving guns, explosions and motorbikes that in the pre-Final Cut Pro days were edited down using two VCR's, a boombox and several sets of coaxial cables. And I somehow had the precocious notion that to direct actors, one needed to know how to act in the first place.

Theatre One was what you remember it to be: a motley crew of misfits, loners, prima donnas, jocks who didn't know any better, hippies and tools who were looking for an easy A. At the helm of this ship was the quintessential drama teacher, Miss B. She wore dreamcatcher earrings, chain smoked and had a big silver ring on her finger that you could scoop ice cream with. And she had the personality to go with the garb. But damn, if she didn't understand how to mold young impressionable minds and help them realize their creative potential. And with such ease and a genuine sense that she not only understood you, but cared about you. Nobody -- not even my parents -- could coax me to deliver on that potential.

Given this spiritual awakening, I thought it only natural to audition for the fall one-act festival. The previous year, my high school had won the state-wide competition and was therefore invited to present a showcase production for the current festival. The requirements for the audition were simple -- pitch a concept for the one-act and perform a two-minute monologue. Nevermind that I had nothing prepared and didn't know what a monologue was (laugh all you want, but I was only a month into my freshman year) -- I strode into that blackbox theatre, proud and ready... until I surveyed the room and noticed that the people in there weren't the same people from my class. Nobody had yet warned me that the one-acts were haven to veteran theatre freaks -- the upper-classmen who grew facial hair, wore overalls, rode mopeds, smoked pot and played acoustic guitar in the parking lot. But it was too late. I was already in the room and they already saw me come in. The only thing worse than my invasion of their secret club was to back out of it, tail between my legs. So I sat down and calmly awaited my turn to take the stage. Yes -- it was a practice in Miss B's theatre program to audition before your peers. Looking back at this, I am still searching for the pedagogical reasoning for such public scrutiny and humiliation.

After watching most of the room audition -- and damn, some of them were remarkably good -- I had run out of seniors and juniors to hide behind. Miss B invited me to take the stage and I did. I couldn't feel anything. All senses going. Even in that small blackbox, the lights could still blind you. And you knew the entire time that in the blackness -- the jury was staring at you, waiting for you to crash and burn.

"So... so... um... my idea... my idea for the play... is about... this Vietnamese kid. His name is Minh and... he has no friends... and..."

The silence was deafening. There was no stopping now.

"The whole thing takes place in his head... how he's always made fun of... we see his perspective... and... there's this one person who finally gets him... and then he finally makes friends and finds his... you know, family... not really his family cause he's got his parents... but you know... and yeah, that's my idea."

A beat. They were waiting for my monologue.

"My monologue... um... my monologue is the Pledge of Allegiance."

And no joke, I put my right hand to my heart and annunciated every word of the Pledge with conviction and pride sans an ounce of irony. At the end, a long beat followed. Then the room broke out in loud, but polite applause as if to say, "Kudos for the effort." I picked up my bag and left the room, avoiding any eye contact.

Needless to say, I didn't make the cast. The folks that did had the opportunity to write their own one-act and from all accounts, it was a beautiful showcase. But the event didn't scar me. I continued on with Theatre One and soaked up everything B spooned me. And the following year, I stepped up on the stage and tried out again -- telling three stories in rapid-fire succession, leaving the room in stitches and me sweating (hey, fat kids sweat bucketloads in seconds flat). Not only did I make the cast, but it was another cast-authored show. I wrote a monologue about my father and how he got shot as a student in Vietnam.

The festival was held in a hotel and after the performance, I was riding the elevator back to my room. Riding in the elevator with me were two girls about my age and they kept staring at me. After a couple of whispered exchanges between the two of them, they said, "You performed with Woodson High School, right?" I nodded, bracing myself for whatever ridicule was in store. "You made us cry."

The show went on to take second place that year and I received an All-Star Cast Award. Not too shabby for a fat kid who bombed his first audition. That first time around, I had pitched an idea about a lost and lonely kid. I was lucky. It only took a year to find my family.

Life Soundtrack: Dischord

If you grew up in the DC suburbs in the '90's, you were most likely an indie-rock fan. At least in my case, I really couldn't help it. Despite my devotion to major label bands like The Cure and U2, I couldn't escape the weekend pilgrimages to Black Cat or the old 9:30 Club (located at 930 F Street NW, it was an amazing hole of a space -- the likes of which DC may never see again) where we would see bands that hand me scratching my head for years afterwards. I remember one evening when I tagged along for a Shudder to Think show. About three songs in, I was thoroughly confused by what I was listening to and decided I'd make more sense of the merchandise booth located in the caverns below the stage. I hid in the phone booth (the same one that was relocated to its new location) for some time before someone needed to actually use it. I then found refuge on a couch whose sole illumination came from a pipe of black lighting hanging above it. This worked until two punk girls sat on either side of me and started making chit chat. I quickly got up and rejoined the masses upstairs, nodding along to the odd melodies of Craig Wedren and company.

To this day, I still can't explain my urge to disappear, but I quickly grew up and started to embrace the wealth of DC's homegrown punk and indie-rock. At our beloved Dharma Coffeehouse, I would catch local heroes, The Dismemberment Plan or Vehicle Birth, over steaming cups of sumatra and Marlboro Mediums. And when I was really lucky, I'd trek into the city and catch the greatest band DC has ever given us -- and for free, to boot (unless they were performing a benefit show in which case they'd ask for no more than a five spot). Fugazi was a band that demanded attention. They never took a dime from major labels and never made a T-shirt. They drove their own tour van and did their own taxes. On recordings, they were fierce, aggressive and yes, angry. But there was no sense of artificiality in their sound. And when you saw them live, it was like watching four people become one living organism -- no set-list --- just feeling their way through what already hung there in the air, somewhere between them and the audience -- packed into a church basement in Columbia Heights. Each time I saw Fugazi live, I left a different person -- more connected, more energized, more inspired, less apathetic and yes, angrier. But Fugazi taught me that anger need not be a force for negativity -- that when turned into action, it could rectify wrongs and move mountains.

Below I offer two musical souvenirs of my youth growing up in the DC suburbs, two sides of a Dischord 45: one that marks my invisibility and another that lit the fuse.

Red House by Shudder to Think


Smallpox Champion by Fugazi

Vagabond House Picture Show: Sweet Revenge

Ah, vengeance... an often employed motivation for movie characters. You can slap themes of honor and heroism on top of it (as they do in countless chop-socky flicks in which dubbed martial artists scream "why did you kill my master?!" as they unleash a fury of punches that destroys their foe's internal organs) -- but ultimately, it's about redeeming yourself, no? Getting your name cleared, setting the record straight, righting wrongs and getting even. The two films below are sick, twisted explorations on this theme of revenge -- one is a Western that gives you a protagonist who despite being portrayed by Clint Eastwood gives plenty of reasons to distrust him in the first fifteen minutes. The other is a Korean film (part of a vengeance trilogy) with a large cult following -- a stylish modern noir with an incredibly smart and brutal fight sequence involving a hammer orchestrated in one long, uncut shot and a twisted third act that will leave you speechless.

High Plains Drifter

Old Boy

Vagabond House Picture Show: Newsmakers

It has always been a dream of mine to work in the movies. Specifically, I wanted to make them. When I was really young, I wanted to be an actor. But years of parental reminders that they were only interested in having a doctor or lawyer son wore me down. I instead chose to go into writing and directing. Nothing close to medicine or law, but the parents liked the idea that they bent me in some way. Fast forward past the four years of respectable schooling, thousands in student loans, several edited shorts shot in black and white 16mm and still, the most experience I've had in the film business has been with moviehouses.

I no longer dream of red carpet premieres, feature stories in Entertainment Weekly and an appearance on Actor's Studio. But I do think of how I might program screenings at my own moviehouse. Inspired by my college days spent at Coolidge Corner and Brattle Theatre -- moviehouses that taught you something through the way they presented movies. Double features would come with a theme -- Paul Newman night would be something like "The Hustler" and "Somebody Up There Likes Me." They would play homage to a filmmaker and show all of the rarities. Sometimes, the program could resemble something like the Barnes Foundation (show a Buster Keaton movie followed by Jackie Chan's "Project A" to see the relationship between the two seemingly unconnected movies and genres). And because it was in Cambridge, the house would be packed for a Samuel Fuller night. Nowhere else could "Shock Corridor" and "The Naked Kiss" pull in the same size audience. The audience was challenged constantly, and more often than not, entertained.

So in the series, Vagabond House Picture Show, I'll attempt to serve up something of the same: clips of some kick-ass movies -- some popular, others obscure. And hopefully, they'll help to inform, provoke, question, amuse and entertain.

Newsmakers
How far would you go to sell a story?

Ace in the Hole
w. Kirk Douglas
dir. by Billy Wilder

Sweet Smell of Success
w. Burt Lancaster and Tony Curtis
dir. by Alexander Mackendrick

Life Soundtrack: West Bay Invitational

As you may have guessed, I was even more sensitive as an early 20-something than I am now. There was no shortage of reasons for me to brood and write. On many a Friday night when others were clubbing at Axis and Avalon on Landsdowne Street, I secured a spot at the end of the counter at my beloved Deli Haus. There, the punk rock servers took pity on me and neglected the minimum purchase rule and supplied me with a bottomless cup of Sumatra and emptied my overfilling ashtray. I would scratch away in my composition book -- notes from a broken-hearted good for nothing. Oh, how I wish I could go back in time and slap some sense into me --- "Get your ass to Avalon and get some!!!"

I was lonely, I was hungry and I was in a perpetual state of lovesickness. I laugh at it now, but hormones and malnutrition can really warp reality. While I eventually found friends and way down the road found real love that rendered everything before it silly, in those days, my only comfort came from one of two activities -- going to the movies or going to the Middle East or T.T. the Bear's to see my favorite indie bands (accompanied of course by a PBR allowance and a pack of rolling tobacco). And no band was more reflective of my angst than Jawbreaker, a three piece outfit out of the Bay Area -- the one not called Green Day. I remember seeing them before I ever heard them -- but the experience was life-changing. An overcrowded, sold-out house full of spiked hair, studs, chain wallets, Doc Martens and fishnet -- pogo-ing and screaming lyrics in unison as Blake belted out from the mainstage. Brisk two and three-minute songs supporting some hard-truth poetry. Tales of manic loneliness, bitter break-ups and celebratory hook-ups -- a mash-up of power chords and Beat literature. Many an evening, I would meet up with my fellow hometown friends, Bert and Leigh, to share a jug of Carlo Rossi, eat a giant slice from Little Steve's and listen to their vinyl copies of Bivouc and Dear You. Songs such as "Ache," "Jinx Removing," "Chesterfield King," "Kiss the Bottle" and "Sluttering" were sung out in terrible chorus renditions as we got progressively drunker. And I could not have been happier... in misery.

It could have been any song off of Jawbreaker's 24 Hour Revenge Therapy -- but I'm selecting this one to exemplify the soundtrack of my heartbreaking college years. While some embraced Morissey's self-loathing crooning, I took to screaming out angry West Coast punk rock in the company of other lost souls smoking too much and kissing one too many shots of Kentucky straight.

Rough Cut

I miss talking movies. There was a time in my life when I lived and devoured cinema. When I wasn't watching movies, I was planning to make them. When I wasn't making them, I was talking them. And I was fortunate enough to be surrounded by some equally sad and insane people who lived on the same steady diet. I didn't have much money in college -- but what little I had I spent on movies. I watched an average of twenty movies a week and that's not counting the favorites which I owned on VHS. These films I watched on a weekly basis the same way folks went to church. They reminded me of why I did what I did -- what my dreams were - my ambitions, my beliefs, my values, my fears.

So here's my top ten of all time... for now. Cause like my memories, this list will change as I continue to change (as evidenced by my embrace of television and pop music). I don't claim that these films are the best movies of all time -- that would be incredibly pompous. No -- these are films that have changed me in some way -- films that continue to resonate with me year after year -- that somehow inform my experience of being a human being.

1. It's a Wonderful Life

My list bookends with two incredibly sensitive stories about men who grew up in a town that they felt was too small for them. This one hits me emotionally every time I see it and continues to inform me of who I am. But with each viewing, I am moved by a different scene, a different part. Sometimes I cry when I see Old Man Gower hit young George Bailey in his bad ear before discovering it was, indeed, poison in those capsules. Other times, it's when Mary gives up the money that she and George saved up to spend on their well-deserved honeymoon. And every time I see it, I yell at Uncle Billy when he forgets that the money is wrapped up in the newspaper he gave to Potter. And in that way, this movie does what few others can do -- it evolves.

2. Annie Hall

It takes a genius to make people laugh, said Chaplin. Well, what about making you cry and laugh all in one moment. Annie Hall exposes everything that is embarrassing to me -- my self-righteousness, my mishandling of all things romantic, my neediness, my selfishness. And because it's not me - because it's Woody Allen as Alvy Singer -- I can laugh at it. But I know that I'm really laughing at myself. And what a Valentine to NYC (well, up until Woody Allen's Manhattan, of course). This flick plays at a sparse 90 minutes, but wow - is it dense with true-to-life moments. Was Diane Keaton a looker or what?

3. Taxi Driver

Okay -- psychotic confession of the week: I watched this movie weekly as a college student. The more and more I saw it, the more I sympathized with Travis Bickle. This guy was out of his mind -- but I identified with his loneliness. That loneliness that drives homeless people to talk to themselves with little care about what others think. That loneliness that redefines the rules that govern society and your conduct and participation in it. And wow -- Scorsese really wasn't pulling punches. He was a young coked-out director when he made this and it's mean, rough and aggressive -- and just shy of arrogant thanks to it originality and sincerity. The camera sticks with Travis, pulling you into the taxi cab and giving you a protagonist that you have no choice but to ride along with.

4. Hud

I love so much about this movie - but two things stick out for me: Paul Newman's unapologetic performance as the SOB who just doesn't care for nobody and James Wong Howe's cinematography (one of two JWH photographed flicks on this list). The supporting cast is phenomenal in this story that is constantly misread. Heck, I know who I'm not supposed to like, but Hud seduces me each and every time. The ultimate in bad boy, cowboy sexy. And incredibly timely when seen now against the backdrop of corporate greed.

5. Sweet Smell of Success

Tabloid news and the men who both create it and sling it. The writing in this movie is something to behold. Even more impressive is the ability showcased by Tony Curtis and Burt Lancaster to embrace and sell it like it was everyday English. The camerawork by Howe is so very intentional -- you can tell there's a hand behind that camera which captures NYC in an era that is so far gone. And the storytelling moves like one long bebop, improv jazz set.

6. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

It's so rare to see a piece take the figurative and the literal and marry it in such a way to create both reality and magic. This Charlie Kaufman-spun story directed by Michel Gondry of the power of memory to define who you are is so sharply executed from performance to special effects. Incredibly moving and provocative, beautiful and illuminating. One of the best works of film art to come into existence in the last decade.

7. Happy Together

Wong Kar Wai changed my life. Probably in the same way Godard must have rocked cinema back in the day. All of my college films were homages to his work (at their best) and pale, sad imitations (at their worst). Most folks see his films as non-linear, stylistic art pieces. I think that there is a logic to his narratives -- it's linear in the same fashion our dreams and memories are linear -- much like Renoir's Last Year at Marienbad -- which cuts from thought to thought - emotion to emotion. In this piece about a the distancing between two gay lovers in Argentina -- the story unfolds through flashes, vignettes, musical passages and voice-over. And the overall effect is mesmerizing - visually, emotionally, completely.

8. Sideways

Alexander Payne has made a career on creating sympathetic portraits of bonafide losers -- Election, About Schmidt. But in Sideways, he gives us two lovable ones.And I find myself in both of them -- Miles, the middle-aged high school English teacher with a serious dream deferred and Jack, the has-been actor who still thinks he's still got enough prime to milk. The moments and situations are so real and identifiable -- painfully real. The fact that this tale of love, friendship and that last hurrah takes place in the world of wine places it within my short list of most beloved movies of all time. Scout and I saw it twice during our honeymoon in Amsterdam at the famous Tuschinski Theatre.

9. The Kid

If all movies were this good -- comedy and pathos all in one. Chaplin was undoubtedly a genius and here's proof in a film that he directed, wrote, acted in and composed the music for. The story is simple, the famous Tramp adopts an abandoned child (played by an adorable Jackie Coogan, ages before he eventually played Uncle Fester in Adaam's Family). But this deceivingly simple story is jam-packed with emotion and sentiment -- tremendous energy and heart.

10. Do the Right Thing

This is perhaps Spike Lee's most perfect film -- sharp, aggressive, vibrant, energetic, smart and funny. While it's just as in-your-face as many of Lee's other "joints," this one is a little more saavy. Unfolding over one hot summer day in Bedstuy, Spike's iconic film is a slow burn that provides viewers an unflinching portrait of urban America -- when tensions are running high and people don't have the patience to lie to one another anymore. And unlike his later flicks, this one's message is not apparent until you hear Senior Love Daddy's call for action at the film's conclusion.

And as a bonus, I offer the following clip from Cinema Paradiso -- so much of me is in this movie about a boy who grows up through the movies. Lessons in love, life, class, ambition, roots, exploration -- all of it centered around a moviehouse.