Nerve

'You and your tiny song'

I have a habit of writing songs about real people.

Real people I've never met, mind you.

A Metroland columnist. ('Disconnect,' from Wafers and Wine.)

A certain music journalist. ('Interview,' from Radio Plastic Jennifer.)

A legendary filmmaker. ('Digital,' from Ones and Zeroes.)

Incorporating real people into your art without their permission is a sketchy business.

And okay - so I did actually meet the music journalist. But in the end, that made it even sketchier business.

And speaking of sketches:

You could probably trace it as far back as an event in high school. A flyer for a party my high school band was playing. Wouldn't it be funny if we could get endorsements from the faculty? So I made up two flyers, containing a total of about a dozen caricatures of teachers, each with a little cartoon balloon comment about our band. Never bothered to get actual endorsements, seemed funnier to just make them up.

I don't think they'd been up for a full hour before I got called to the principal's office.

Let just say that it didn't go over so well.

Fourth wall fourth estater

I always feel a little dirty when I'm using real people when I create, even though I'm not really thinking through consequences, the way it might be interpreted. The muse hits, I write, I worry what other people are going to think later.

Which is unusual for me: I'm all about reading people, anticipating reaction. Second guessing. And triple and quadruple guessing.

The 'Interview' song really got me in trouble. I totally misread it: I thought it made much more fun of me than of that certain music journalist. The whole point of the song was the hubris of thinking someone like that would be into me.

Not that I ever did think that someone like that would be into me.

But that's the joke. Get it?

Several months after that brief, fateful encounter in the elevator in the Viacom building, I'm at home watching the MTV Music Awards pre-show thing. And there she is. Interviewing No Doubt.

And I'm struck with the reality that I'll never, ever, be interviewed at an MTV Music Awards pre-show post-show anything.

And I just happened to have a guitar in my hand and a riff that needed some lyrics.

So I wrote the song. And put up a web page about the song's origins, as I was want to do back in the day.

Called it the "Cliffs Notes."

Hilarious!

Got a phone call shortly thereafter from an acquaintance of mine at the MTV.

Let just say that it didn't go over so well.

To add insult to injury, I got a cease and desist letter from the fine people at Cliffs Notes for abusing their good name. Or rather, from some law firm with an intern and a search engine trying to justify their retainer from Cliffs Notes. Legally, I think my satire of Big Cliff was fair game, but who wants to spend even a dime on that kind of bullshit? I took it all down.

Cuz they suck.

(Cease and desist that, y'all.)

Only by changing her name and a few tell-tale references did I feel okay about including the song 'Interview' on Radio Plastic Jennifer.

And even then, I still felt a little dirty.

Dear Jean-Luc

Fast forward to Fall of 2000.

After months of vowing never again to release another record for the indie self-indulgence of it all, I've got some songs and ideas in my head. A new guitar will do that to you. And while in the middle of a month-long investigation of digital workstations for recording, I stumble on a profile of Jean Luc Godard in the New Yorker.

His commentary is brilliant and fascinating - especially his commentary on making movies in digital. That so much of the art is in the decision making of the editing, and that's robbed with digital because the process becomes so easy, so compressed. With digital, there is no space to digest what you're doing.

No time.

No rewind.

No consequences or finality of decision-making, thanks to the magic of 'undo.'

So I responded. In song. In so many words:

Dear Jean-Luc: Don't worry about the medium. The art is still the thing.

Don't be afraid.

It's just digital.

And then, in so many more words, I proceeded to reference his work, and the New Yorker article, and the references to his commentary on his works in the New Yorker article. Breathless. Lear. One Plus One/Sympathy for the Devil.

Everything is cinema.

Many moons later - long after the workstation was purchased, and the song was recorded, and Ones and Zeros was released - I did one day wonder what Mr. Godard would think if he ever happened across the song.

In my head, I wrote it as an e-mail first. Eventually I posted it on the site, as if it had really come from him:

Date: 1/23/2003 22:37:25 -0500
From: "JLGodard" <jeanluc1959@aol.com>
To: <punkass@bryanthomas.com>
Subject: The Nerve!

Dear Bryan: Be very afraid, mon ami. You have some nerve! You and your tiny little song. I am afraid of nothing! Or in the vernacular of your beloved Américain-Africain: I ain't afraid of shit. Merde! You can not dream enough digits to hold all that I have to offer the world. I am cinema! The only epiphany I will ever skip will be skipped across your considerable backside! Votre grande noir derrière, mon ami. Regards, Jean-Luc. PS: When art is done the right way it is EXACTLY like heroin. Mais oui!

Plus: he beat me to the punch. He had since filmed "In Praise of Love" in digital and brilliantly turned the limitations of the medium inside out.

(NOTE: I'm using the word 'limitations' here, but that's really Godard's perspective on what is commonly perceived as advantages of digital - ease, convenience, fidelity, undo.)

So in my small mind, I wasn't done: I had to put that e-mail in song, a response to the "Dear Jean-Luc" of Digital, from Mr. Godard's point of view.

Editing that e-mail down to a couple lines of the first verse was a painful thing.

But I had to make room for more responses: from Jennifer (obviously, referencing the song Jennifer).

And the big punch line in the final verse from Jesus Himself (referencing the song Holy).

A song that I always felt was about doing the wrong thing for the right reasons.

Or vice versa.

Which Jesus calls me on in the song.

I ain't about that!

And the music? Started with the main riff and almost immediately came up with the guitar solo - this while watching a documentary on Capital Region houses of worship. Originally in drop D tuning, moved to the key of G to accommodate the melody. And my throat.

In the end: it takes a lot of nerve to write a song about real people from the point of view of those real people telling you how much nerve you have.

And yes, I do feel a little dirty doing it.

Who's that girl?

By the way: are you wondering who this Radio Plastic Jennifer lady really is? The whole origin thing?

She's not a real person anymore. She's much bigger than that now. She's my muse. She's me.

But she certainly started out as a real person.

And her name is hidden somewhere on this web site.

Somewhere in the Radio Plastic Jennifer section. In a song. And then some. That's all I'm saying, cuz you really don't want to know.

Trust me.

When people ask me who's the model on the cover of 'Ones and Zeroes,' I say:

"The longer you don't know, the funnier it'll be when you find out." And I don't say anything else.

When people ask where the name Jennifer came from, I say:

"It would be a tragedy for you to ever find out. It's much better not knowing at all."

Trust me.

The human beat box

Listen closely to the first few measures, when the band kicks in. Right before the vocal starts.

Use headphones, if you got 'em.

Can you hear that humming?

It's Matt.

Keeping the beat with his mouth.