Norman, Daryl, And A Brother Named Daryl

Though Kevin Costner has provided me with a wealth of knowledge when it comes to surviving apocalyptic scenarios involving water and lack of mail delivery in Waterworld and The Postman, respectively, he’s offered no cinematic advice for dealing with the undead.

Fortunately, Norman Reedus has become a fine role model to me for how best to navigate a zombie apocalypse through his portrayel of the crossbow-wielding, squirrel-gutting, walker-slaying, Southern redneck anti-hero Daryl Dixon in The Walking Dead.

(and he’s Zen)

Norman Reedus is new to me. His lengthy list of credits contains nothing with which I am familiar, though apparently he’s pretty stellar in the vigilante flick The Boondock Saints.

This unfamiliarity with the actor makes it believable to me that Daryl truly is some mountain hillbilly, plucked from rural Georgia and put in some television show.

(if Daryl was a real person, he would summarily put an end to Chuck Norris, gut him, use his ears as a necklace, and, then, deadpan a line revealing someone quite self-aware)

But Norman Reedus is apparently a real person and, based on his Wikipedia bio, seems like a fairly interesting cat in his own right, having left home at twelve and lived in England, Spain, and Japan.

He also had a kid with Helena Christensen, who broke Chris Isaak to the mainstream with the video for Wicked Game.

If you’re hooking up with supermodels, you must have some kind of mojo.

Of course, the two apparently named their kid Mingus which, if true, is either genuinely cool or pretentitious, hipster silliness.

As for Norman, I don’t recall that name having much cachet during my lifetime, being neither plentiful nor iconic.

(I can’t think of knowing a Norman and – thanks to Three’s Company - the first one that comes to mind is Norman Fell)

I did know a Daryl as a kid, the brother of a good buddy and neighbor.

Daryl was six or seven years older and out of high school when Will and I were still in junior high. I think he worked in construction.

A tall, lanky kid, Daryl had sideburns and shoulder-length hair, and his usual attire would have gained him admittance to any biker bar (there being a few in the area).

He might not have been killing zombies – though he did hunt, on occasion, with a crossbow – but we considered him to be pretty badass.

And when Daryl screamed out of their driveway in his beat-up Camaro on Saturday night, gravel becoming tiny, lethal projectiles, he might well have ended up at some watering hole that would have been frequented by his Walking Dead namesake.

Here are four songs that might have been blaring from the eight-track player in his Camaro…

Nazareth – Hair Of The Dog
from Hair Of The Dog (1975)

One eight-track that I know resided in Daryl’s Camaro was Nazareth’s Hair Of The Dog. Every now and the, Daryl would give me and Will a ride somewhere and the language of the album’s ferocious title track made us feel like we were on the highway to hell with a true outlaw.

Blue Öyster Cult – (Don’t Fear) The Reaper
from Agents of Fortune (1976)

There will be no cowbell joke here. The mighty Blue Öyster Cult deserves more respect than that and, to quote The Smiths (to Paloma’s delight), that joke isn’t funny anymore.

Lynyrd Skynyrd – Tuesday’s Gone
from Pronounced ‘Lĕh-’nérd ‘Skin-’nérd (1973)

Like Blue Öyster Cult, Skynyrd has been reduced to many to one tired joke. And, classic rock radio has so burned me out on the Southern rock band to the point of disinterest.

Then, I hear something like the wistful Tuesday’s Gone and make a mental note that a personal reassesment of Skynyrd might be in order.

Alice Cooper – School’s Out
from School’s Out (1972)

My all-time greatest arch-enemy might have been a third-grade teacher who, on more days than not, I was at odds. She was an Alice Cooper fan, so I’m not sure if that was why I never bothered with the music or rather because during the ’80s – my musically formative years – he wasn’t on top of his game.

But I’ve gained a greater appreciation for Cooper’s catalog in recent years and, even as a third-grader in the late ’70s, had an appreciation for the sentiments of the stomping School’s Out.

Today, My Best Friend…Tomorrow, Who Knows?

Sometime last week, during the spate of coverage on the demise of Osama bin Laden, I happened upon a program on the life of the iconic terrorist.

One of the people interviewed was described as bin Laden’s best friend as a teenager.

It must make a pretzel of the mind to have such a notorious character as a former best friend.

The first best friend that I can remember having was a kid named George. There’s little else I recall aside from his name and I have no recollection as to what earned him status as numero uno amigo.

I do recall that I stripped him of the title and I slotted another classmate into the position.

I wanted John as my best friend because he was tall, a head taller than everyone else.

(people have been placed in high office using such logic, but I was five)

I’ve had no contact with either of these kids in almost forty years, but it seems as though George is a DJ in the upper Midwest, so perhaps I was being prescient about the interest I’d someday have in music.

By the time I reached high school, I was in a transitional period with friendships. The concept of best friend had evolved into a group of eight or nine of us who would end up together in different permutations and numbers.

One of these buddies was a bit of a fire enthusiast and devotee of things that go kaboom.

During senior year, Kirk The Pyro went to California with another of our friends for spring break.

(most of us settled for wandering the malls in Cincinnati)

This dynamic duo returned to the grimness of March in the Midwest with tans and dynamite.

“Where did you get dynamite?”

“Tijuana”

“So, you brought dynamite from Tijuana on your flight home from California?”

It was a simpler world and a time when – relative to today – the airlines essentially had a don’t ask/don’t tell policy.

The interviewee on the television screen had described bin Laden as quiet and polite, their friendship rooted in a shared love for soccer.

I could only describe Kirk The Pyro as like Woody Woodpecker in human form and our bond forged by a common appreciation for antics, hijinks, and shenanigans.

And though I haven’t had contact with him since college, I also haven’t seen him become the target of a global manhunt.

Here are four friend songs…

Clarence Clemons And Jackson Browne – You’re A Friend Of Mine
from Hero

Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band were probably as big as any act in my lifetime. During the mid-’80s. Born In The USA sold ten million copies and pretty much every song on the record got extensive airplay on the radio. The group’s success was so massive and demand for more music so great that b-sides like Pink Cadillac and Stand On It got played heavily.

E Street Band saxophonist Clarence Clemons even had a solo hit during the winter of ’85 when he duetted with Jackson Browne on the upbeat and catchy You’re A Friend Of Mine.

The Rolling Stones – Waiting On A Friend
from Tattoo You

Personally, I’ve always thought that Waiting On A Friend was one of the Stones’ finest post-’70s moments. The song is so casual and the vibe so laid-back that it’s always welcome when it pops up on shuffle.

Apparently it was the first video by the Stones played on MTV (with reggae great Peter Tosh hanging out on the steps).

Grateful Dead – Friend Of The Devil
from Skeletons From The Closet: The Best Of Grateful Dead

Grateful Dead got discovered my generation while I was in college when A Touch Of Gray put the venerable band all over MTV. I liked the song and I even liked a lot of its parent album, In The Dark, which was played often in the record store where I worked.

I’ve also enjoyed stuff from their catalog as I’ve been introduced to it here and there, but I’ve never felt the rabid passion for The Dead that they inspired in a lot of my peers.

Jellyfish – He’s My Best Friend
from Spilt Milk

I discovered Jellyfish when the record store where I worked received a promo copy of the band’s debut, Bellybutton, in 1990. The psychedelic album cover was eye-catching and the music earned the group from San Francisco comparisons to greats like Queen, The Beach Boys, The Beatles, XTC, and Cheap Trick.

Despite plenty of swooning by critics, Jellyfish was unable to find mainstream success and would split up after just one more album, 1993′s Spilt Milk, but the group has continued to loom large in the hearts of power pop devotees for the past two decades.

Thanks Reality Television For Ruining Meat Loaf For Me

Here and there – for what seems has been weeks now – I’ve seen a commercial for that reality show with Donald Trump and celebrities.

In the clip that’s caught my attention, Meat Loaf is threatening to go Fight Club on Gary Busey. It makes me uncomfortable to see Meat Loaf so worked up.

By the time I started purchasing music in ’81 or so, Meat Loaf’s career had bottomed out.

I don’t remember hearing anything on the radio from his second album, Dead Ringer in ’81. I didn’t hear anything from Midnight At The Lost And Found, album number three, either, but I do remember reading a review in the Sunday newspaper that was fairly positive.

Even as that album was being ignored in 1983, I was still hearing Meat Loaf on the radio as songs from the singer’s 1977 debut Bat Out Of Hell were part of the playlists on several of the stations to which I was listening.

Though I don’t remember any of my friends or classmates mentioning Meat Loaf in our conversations about music, I know that a lot of us had a copy of Bat Out Of Hell, some of them inherited from older siblings.

I had a cassette of the album that I’d dubbed from a friend.

Of course, that was it for the hefty fellow for fifteen years until his reunion with Bat Out Of Hell co-conspirator Jim Steinman for the sequel which sold millions of copies.

I vividly recall our jazz buyer picking up a copy of Bat Out Of Hell II: Back Into Hell in our stockroom, looking at the over-the-top cover, and – in his best crotchety old man voice – gruffly barking, “You kids get this damned bat off my building!”

Though the album didn’t really resonate with me, it was hard to begrudge Meat Loaf’s unexpected comeback and success.

He seemed like an affable fellow. Maybe it’s his size but I’ve always pictured Meat Loaf as a jolly fellow.

Maybe it’s because I’d read somewhere that Meat Loaf was a big baseball fan and could imagine the big guy taking me to a ball game.

Now the steroids, greed, and the disparity in spending amongst teams has essentially driven me from following baseball and Meat Loaf is screaming maniacally at Gary Busey on my television screen.

Maybe it’s a sign that there is peril ahead in 2012.

Of course, The Busey strikes me as the kind of fellow that could drive even the most zen being to a state of homicidal rage. Personally, I have expressed legitimate concerns that I might awake one morning to find that Gary Busey has been secretly living in our attic.

Whatever the case, my world has been turned upside down by the sight of an irate Meat Loaf screaming at Gary Busey. Here’s four songs from the ruffled-shirted fellow from happier times…

Meat Loaf – Two Out Of Three Ain’t Bad
from Hits Out Of Hell

Meat Loaf – You Took The Words Right Out Of My Mouth (Hot Summer Night)
from Hits Out Of Hell

These first two tracks are, of course, from Bat Out Of Hell which currently ranks as one of the ten best-selling albums in the history of mankind. Though a mere seven songs, none of them are less than epic, so massive each that they are a capable of making women and children cry and grown men shudder.

As I was hearing Two Out Of Three Ain’t Bad regularly on the radio during my musical formative years – even though the song had been a hit five or six years earlier – I had no idea that the folks that had been involved in constructing Bat Out Of Hell would soon be found on other albums I’d soon own including Todd Rundgren, members of Utopia, E-Street Band mates Roy Bittan and Max Weinberg as well as the underappreciated Ellen Foley.

As for You Took The Words Right Out Of My Mouth (Hot Summer Night), the crazy opening dialogue always makes me go, “Huh?” but, like everything else on the album, it’s impossible to not get drawn in (and I dig the handclaps).

Meat Loaf – Dead Ringer For Love
from Hits Out Of Hell

Meat Loaf – Read ‘Em And Weep
from Hits Out Of Hell

It’s been well chronicled of the problems Meat Loaf had in putting together a follow-up to Bat Out Of Hell and those difficulties didn’t even include Gary Busey. Dead Ringer didn’t arrive until four years after Bat Out Of Hell which was an eternity in that era.

Though Jim Steinman, the maestro behind the debut, penned the songs for the follow-up his involvemenr in Dead Ringer was far less than it had been on Bat Out Of Hell. There was still a stellar cast of musicians – Elton John guitarist Davey Johnstone, the great Mick Ronson, the legendary Nicky Hopkins – but I don’t think I heard a single track on radio.

(I was hearing Rock And Roll Dreams Come Through from Steinman’s solo effort Bad For Good which would later appear on Bat Out Of Hell II)

I suppose it would be difficult to recapture the initial surprise of Meat Loaf’s debut, but the singer’s duet on the near title track with Cher and the break-up ballad Read ‘Em And Weep - a hit for Barry Manilow a couple years later – wouldn’t have sounded out of place in the slightest beside the songs on Bat Out Of Hell.