Taken from Chapter 6: Rediscovering Rock and Roll
A book by Paul Williams, 1988

There are moments on this rock journey when I feel totally overwhelmed by information. It’s exhausting. The I Ching says, “Unlimited possibilities are not suited to man; if they existed, this life would only dissolve in the boundless.” I think the person who wrote that had just come back from a visit to Tower Records.

“Harlem Shuffle” still hasn’t gotten past the “promising” stage after a week on my turntable, and that’s not good. I like the sound and I like the beat, and that counts for a lot—it clears the way for greatness, as it were. But it’s like the door is open and nothing’s walking through. I keep waiting for that moment, as with “Honky Tonk Women” and “Jumping Jack Flash” and “Satisfaction” and even “Tumbling Dice”, when the song will suddenly seem to sum up everything that’s happening in my life right now, when some dumb line from the lyrics like “you’ve got to roll me” or “I just can’t seem to drink up my mind” (it helps to mishear the lyrics sometimes) will transform itself, with the help of the beat and the mood and the great sound wrapped all around it, into a shimmering revelation with at least a dozen different meanings, some funny, some sexy, some deeply profound, all clearly aimed directly at me like the guys were reading my mind, like they get the full awesomeness and can speak the unspeakableness of everything I’m going through. Expectations are traps, but anyway that’s the truth about how I feel about this Stones single, it’s good enough to remind me how great they can be and to suggest they could still do it if they cared at all; good enough to be played again and again, nice sound and hope springs eternal. But you know there’s something unsatisfying about sitting here with the door wide open and nothing coming in. Is it me? Am I stuck in the past? Am I asking too much of this group? Naw, they’re just wankers who still know how to turn a guy’s head, but are too wasted and cynical and (secretly) unsure of themselves to know what to do once they’ve got his attention. Damn it, I’ve been suckered again. (But maybe if I listen just a few more times…)

There’s a Grateful Dead lyric that says, “I need a miracle every day,” and that’s absolutely my relationship with rock ‘n’ roll. I saw Translator Sunday night and they put on a good show. What a disappointment. Don’t do no good show for me, guys—if you’re not willing to be fantastic, you may as well just kick it over and be terrible, at least that way maybe something unexpected will occur.

So I’m searching through Tower Records looking for a miracle, and I think maybe I found it: Psychocandy, by the Jesus and Mary Chain. I’m listening to side one now for the second time in a row and I’m TURNED ON. But before I settled on my purchases (also got Tramaine’s album, which is finally out, and King of America by Elvis Costello, plus new copies of Spin and Rolling Stone—gak, information overload, I got a stack of these things on the shelf behind me that’s gonna fall over and crush me when the earthquake hits), I wandered the aisles confronted by my own confusion and mixed emotions and all my bloody ATTITUDES.

I’ll give you an example. Sunday’s paper just announced a John Cougar Mellencamp concert here next month, and I easily decide I want to go, I’m curious about performer and audience both and it’ll be real appropriate to my journey. So I’m standing at the bin, holding this album which is on sale, $2 off normal price, thinking, hell, if I’m going to go see him, why not expose myself to his album first? Makes a lot of sense, and after all this is the only record on the critics’ top five in the year-end Rolling Stone that I don’t own. And I’m staring at the record, it’s only six dollars, and I finally put it down again, I just can’t do it. Maybe it’s the guy’s face. The lyrics are on the back and I look at them and that doesn’t help. None of the songs from the album I’ve heard on the radio do much for me. I don’t know. What it really is, I think, is that I hate to buy an album that I end up feeling lukewarm about, that sits around my house, one of two million copies sold so far, and doesn’t get played. What I buy, what I own, says something about me. Self-image. I think I want to be the kind of guy who’d give John Cougar Mellancamp a fair chance, but I just can’t make myself do it.

So that’s me up against my attitudes. I don’t feel I made the wrong decision, necessarily—this book would get real tedious if I were writing it in the mood of someone who’s forced himself to listen to everything everyone else likes, Mr. Fairness—but I don’t enjoy going through the record store experiencing these little confrontations, thank you. Then on the information overload level, it’s like: the Meat Puppets. I’ve seen a number of good mentions of the Meat Puppets. And they’ll be in town next week. But I don’t know. And anyway, which record? Exactly the same story with Robyn Hitchcock. He sounds very interesting, I think I want to see him, but would I like his records? Echo & the Bunnymen, same story. Here’s the new Violent Femmes, produced by Jerry Harrison of Talking Heads. Never heard this group either, but hear of ‘em a lot. I’ll get it someday, but not today, I decide. (Since then I see them compared to two of my favorites, Velvets and Modern Lovers; comparisons are odious, but the Femmes are creeping up my list and will probably get bought on the next expedition.) And so forth and so on. Elvis Costello’s new record, produced by T-Bone Burnett, seems a natural, but my problem there is my idiot stuff—somehow I’ve gotten to be 37 years old without ever listening to Elvis Costello, except the first time he was on Saturday Night Live, and once I saw a video of one of his songs. Where’ve I been?? It’s embarrassing. So do I dare start listening now, 12 albums too late to be hip or even know what’s going on, maybe? Well, I picked up late on Talking Heads (everybody tried to get me to listen to ‘em from ’75 on, but I wasn’t going for it, just dug in my heels, I don’t even know why, didn’t break down till 1983), and that worked out. I pick up the Costello record. I’m looking for Green on Red but the album I want is sold out. I consider a Hendrix compact disc but it doesn’t have quite the right songs on it. I consider Big Audio Dynamite again—no, to hell with it, I’ve got to get out of here…