No dream. I have been broadening Quandary's horizons. I have started listening to
New Wave -- not to be confused with New Age, which is merely elevator music for the
upwardly mobile. I frequent Charlotte Russe's only record store, rubbing leather shoulders
easily with punks and New Romantics, Gothics and casuals. Dressed in fashions that
disappeared five years ago, we pick through albums by bands who broke up before their
music ever appeared in Charlotte Russe. It was the names of the bands that first intrigued
me. Dead Kennedy's. Primal Scream. The Vaselines. Ten Thousand Maniacs. Wet Wet
Wet. The Slits. Butthole Surfers. (Who, in truth, have little apart from their name to
distinguish them.) Names have come a long way since Quandary's youth, when Gerry and
the Pacemakers or Herman and the Hermits were the dernier cri. Despite the attractive
iconoclasm implicit in the names of today's louder bands, I must admit that it is the more
lyrical and reflective music that attracts me -- The Blue Nile, Everything But The Girl --
songs of irrevocable harsh words and obsessions with past lovers. The more pain the better.
I can suck melancholy from a song as a weasel sucks eggs. At first this lyrical tendency
worried me, but it would be a mistake to expect everything in my life to be dark and
forceful. Nevertheless, I make it a point to play only the Sex Pistols and the Dead
Kennedy's when I am in my office. And loudly.
