Nuts.

Nuts.

I met the guy.  Randomly passed what’s his face leaving the dining room madness.  I’m still processing it.  Jordan didn’t say anything to the guy.  I probably wouldn’t have said anything either…

Except that the first time I saw the guy back in February of 2009 I gave him a copy of my 7” record.  It’s really weird experimental music, pretty trippy homemade stuff I recorded under the name The Screaming Ticket.

Song titles “Curious Ether Jungle” and “Thrilling Gas Fire”.  So I wanted to be very, very careful if I ever met him again what I said… Who knows what I would think if some kid approached me with a fucking noise album he made that sounds creepy and psychedelic and told me since he got a cassette of mine when he was really young that in some way as a music fan with evolving tastes, the record he made was in some way inspired by me… As long as I was cool and saw that the kid wasn’t out to kill me or freak me out, I’d be pretty honored and complimented.

Well yeah.  I was kind of way freaked out when I realized Richard Springdude was right next to me, and I had to either pounce or wait in line for hours like all the other superfans on the boat to get my pic taken with him at the meet and greet.  I was not prepared.  Honestly I kind of never wanted to meet him again.  I think it’s weird to compliment someone so highly when I don’t know them.  You know?

The guy is one of my favorite songwriters.  Honestly.  I wish I could write those exact types of songs.  I am a huge fan of POWER pop songwriting.  The Cars, The Ramones, early CHEAP TRICK (yeah!), NOFX, The Lemonheads, Eugenius, Sloan.  FUCK YEAH I lump Rick Springfield in with those bands.  WANNA FUCKING FIGHT, ASSHOLE??!?!

And that is what I can’t explain to people.  Rick Springfield’s style (listen to Jessie’s Girl again now that I’ve said this), comes from “Until The End of The Day” by The Kinks, “Radio, Radio” by Elvis Costello, “Ever Fallen In Love?” by The Buzzcocks.   If you actually listen to the themes of the songs, it is the same type of gimmick that so much classic hip sacred cow bands use:  “I’m a loner.  I know I’m attractive, but you know I’m not like all the other assholes.  I always lose out because girls like you play me too hard, and you lose out too.  I’m going crazy.  Help a brother out.”

“Jessie’s Girl” is PRECISELY the same story as “Beast Of Burden” by the Stones, but less arrogant.  It’s also a different style.  One that harkens back to Ricky Nelson or Dion & The Bellmonts, innocent but darker.  It’s like the Cars, so much, but the Cars were hip as all holy balls.

Rick Springfield was a fucking pin-up.  He was good looking.  What if he looked like Ocasek?  He’d get top notch poon just like Ocasek, but he wouldn’t have been offered a gay-ass soap opera role.  You know?

So what would you do, if you were the motherfucker?  If you’re mobbed everywhere you go by horny young ladies?  If you’re sold as plastic and treated as plastic?  Any dude who likes The Cars, you think he’s gonna admit he’s a huge fan of a teen idol in 1982?  Bitch please.

Mr. Springfield got a raw deal.  But he played the hand he was dealt like a fucking badass.  I look up to him in that sense.  He worked on his character I think much harder than he worked on his image.  His image just had a life of its own because he’s just… too “dreamy” to be cool.

So whatever.  I’m proud to be an appreciator of the guy.  He is the money as a power-pop artist.

The Lemonheads are an AWESOME AWESOME power pop band and they wrote the exact same types of songs but you know good and goddamn well that the best song Evan Dando ever wrote didn’t hold a candle to even some of Rick Springfield’s shitty nineties comeback songs.  “Victoria’s Secret” and “Will I?” are phenomenally written pop songs in true Rick Springfield fashion but they are watered down and gayly performed.  It’s music meant for women superfans…  Which wasn’t how the first four-ish albums of Springfield’s worked.  “Living In Oz” especially is the “Exile On Main Street” of a guy who never broke out of his little world of superstardom.  The Rolling Stones had it easy.  They had ugly faces and heroin to take the edge off.

To be fair, The Lemonheads wrote such great pop songs, don’t get me wrong, I am crazy about The Lemonheads.  They totally make me happy.  Fucking “It’s A Shame About Ray” and “Creator” are both in the same “I’m a dreamy heartthrob but I can’t get my shit together” songwriting demographic as Rick Springfield, but, like all the great cool kid bands in the 80s, they started out in the punk scene, and later let their guard down once their image was established.

So fuck society.  Society can lick ‘em.  I’ve hated people since I was a kid.  People are the type of people that fuck people over.  People are the type of people that try and rattle your cage when they don’t understand you, just to test your weaknesses, to case you like a fucking jerk.  And once they’ve cased your weak spots, they either leave you alone if they can’t get something out of you, or they keep their ace in their sleeve just unless you turn out to be an evil fuckwad like them and they need to dog-eat-dog your ass.

Icons like Rick really can’t have a normal life.  They’re rich and visible.  If you can work 20 grand out of Rick you probably would.  How weird is that?  If you’re the guy who actually earned the money.  Thieves, you know?

Anyway, I hate people.  And of course I love them too.  Like Jamaicans, we all have something we can’t beat, and we get froggy and lash out to protect ourselves and/or our family.  So you can’t actually hate a person deep down….  If you don’t want to have the same shit thrown back in your face one day too.

And let’s say someone one day does fuck you over in a really rotten way…  Well you kind of got what was coming to you, right?  I mean, can you really say you don’t deserve a beating just because you’re you.  You’ve got a lot of nerve if you do.

Well to not get too mystical on you, but these are the reasons the Rick Springfield’s of the world might be worth giving a fuck about…  because they make it easier for you to fuck people over.

KIDDING.  Because it helps you chill out and laugh at yourself.  You know you deserve a pie in your face sometimes.  So be ready for it, you know?  Open up and say “ah”.

Oh and speaking of Poison, you rotten motherfucker you, at least Rick Springfield didn’t go the hair metal route.  He could have easily followed that trend into the ground too.  Listen to Poison’s “Fallen Angel” and “You Gotta Love Somebody” back to back sometime.  Both catchy power pop songs of almost the same type of energy.

Eh, it would have helped Rick Springfield out in so many ways I think if he’d have gotten a huge scar on his face after he won his Grammy.  He’d see people turn away from him.  He’d see his image disappear.  But then he’d probably start writing songs just for himself, by himself, and I guarantee you if Rick Springfield had a huge scar on his face, things would seem safer for you, if you wanted to be into the guy.

Meh, meh, meh.  Jealousy.  People either hate The Stones or love them.  And almost always it seems the latter just say they don’t like bloated rock stars or self-indulgent pretty-boys.  Whatever you say, dude.  Jealousy doesn’t have one thing to do with it?  Not an iota?  Okay, man.  Nevermind.

Well if you’re a music nerd like me, sometimes you’ll dislike Tom Waits just because he doesn’t get your goat.  You can acknowledge how amazing a songwriter is, I guess, I do at least, but that gravely shit just isn’t doing it for you.  Yeah it’s beautiful and sad and shit, and full of life and meaning and sadness or whatever, and I agree, but you know, you can also just choose to go your own separate way with the dude, but not insult your buddies who do like the guy.  At least you have a real reason.  Not just because you want to be a dick.

But I'm a dick sometimes too, so whatever.  I won’t listen to Death Cab For Cutie on GENERAL FUCKING PRINCIPLE.  But that’s just me.  Makes me vomit.  I think we all have to draw our lines in the sand, at least to assert we have the capacity for principles.

Meh, meh, meh.  But I’m full of hogwash, man.  When I met The Springs and asked him if he’d heard my record… he perked up and looked surprised to see me, and before I could ask what he thought about it, he smiled and cut me off and said “Yeah.  I played it.  It’s cool.”

“I know it’s weird, but…”

“No.  I liked it.  It was cool.”

“Wow.  Thanks, man!”

“No problem, man.”

Now that’s the type of guy I want to be.

And maybe I just feel proud of myself that back when I was a little kid I picked the right cassette to obsess over.  And that when I grew up and became a music aficionado and came to terms with my feelings about that cassette 20 years later, I realized what I always wanted to believe.  Rick Springfield is the coolest human being I have ever met, for how I define it.

And yes, I’m here to report, I was nervous and freaked out and fanboy about talking to Rick Springfield.  Don’t tell anybody I told you that.  I’m trying to salvage whatever indie cred I might have left after this fucking debacle.