"Whatcha thinking?"
Does every woman ask that question of her man, or just those who wind up with me as a boyfriend?
Considering the amount of time I spent yapping about plans for my next album, or the latest set of demos I was working on, or the Come Down-era Dandy Warhols CD single with the Japan-only non-LP B-sides, the answer should have been clear: "I am thinking about MUSIC."
Was a time when my lady and I could barely leave a pricey sushi restaurant after a nice romantic meal without my car inexplicably winding up at Rolling Stones Records or Wax Trax!.
Once home, she'd slip into something comfortable and coo, "You coming to bed?"
"No," I'd reply, "I'm gonna hit Smart Bar and listen to industrial dance music til three in the morning."
I have planned entire vacations around record stores, recording sessions, and the hunt for prized albums or guitars. Like a thief planning a heist, I would calculate how many cool record stores could be hit in a day whilst on a business trip.
Had I known then what I know now...that you would one day be able to record an entire album on your phone (!), that every room and plate reverb at Abbey Road would be meticulously recreated in digital plug-in form, and that all music would be free...I could have bought a house with all that cash I spent and paid proper attention to the half naked spouse vying for my undivided attention.
“Is it wrong, wanting to be at home with your record collection? It's not like collecting records is like collecting stamps, or beermats, or antique thimbles. There's a whole world in here, a nicer, dirtier, more violent, more peaceful, more colorful, sleazier, more dangerous, more loving world than the world I live in; there is history, and geography, and poetry, and countless other things I should have studied at school, including music.” - Nick Hornby, High Fidelity
Of course, the one love of my life knew how to fight fire with fire.
For every time we detoured to Amoeba Records, where she stood helplessly bored out of her skull, she'd drag me to a fabric store and stick me there for three hours while she went nuts over fabric, thread, bobbins and such.
Turnabout is fair play, after all.
Imagine walking into the legendary Troubadour and having the biggest bouncer you ever did see grab you firmly by the shoulder the same way a cat grabs a wounded mouse and say, "Snookums just called to make sure you got in okay."
“What came first – the music or the misery? Did I listen to the music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to the music?" - Nick Hornby, High Fidelity.
For a solid decade, I couldn't walk into my producer Adam Schmitt's studio without him turning from his producer's chair to let me know to call Snookums to let her know my plane didn't crash.
Walking into his studio for the first time after we broke up and not hearing Adam utter those words was probably the most heartbreaking moment of my life.
It wasn't until that moment that I realized what I'd lost. I was no longer the luckiest guy on earth. No, a was now a man flying without a net, a soul without a host. At that moment, music became secondary to me. This, of course, was incredibly bad timing because I'd just paid Adam every penny I had to lock out the studio for the next two weeks.
Sometimes, like when I drop a grand on a new groovebox or synthesizer, I start to think music is first again, but the truth is that it's all I have left.
“Over the last couple of years, the photos of me when I was a kid... well, they've started to give me a little pang or something - not unhappiness, exactly, but some kind of quiet, deep regret... I keep wanting to apologize to the little guy: "I'm sorry, I've let you down. I was the person who was supposed to look after you, but I blew it: I made wrong decisions at bad times, and I turned you into me.” - Nick Hornby, High Fidelity
As much as a loving girlfriend or wife has been there for me, or wanted me there for her, none have been able or willing to keep my weird hours. Thanks to those records, when 3AM comes and it starts to feel like the entire planet is asleep, the room no longer feels so cold or empty.
There are albums I've had longer than any friend or lover. Some have been with me through times both awesome and awful. You can tell yourself that they're only slabs of cardboard and plastic, yet there are people out there who swear that a song or an album saved their life.
One of my best friends met his wife when they both reached for the last copy of London Calling the day it came out. They struck up a conversation that's still going on to this day and like to joke that the album has saved their marriage more than once. "We can't break up," one says as they gaze lovingly into the other's eyes like a lovesick puppy, "Who would get the album?"
These days, that cherished slab of cardboard and plastic spends most of its time in their daughter's room. She's eight, has her own turntable, and knows the words to every song.
This Christmas, she's asking Santa for a guitar.