pretender to the coat

Near Lathrup Village, about a mile from where Sweatshirt and I used to play two-square, there was a small music store called Off the Record, a mom-and-popper that fed and nurtured my early album collection. It was here I bought a used copy of Whipsmart, which I still listen to every couple months; it was here I sold Girls, Girls, Girls, a decision I now regret.

One day I visited this store with my then-friend D., and for around a dollar I bought a used tape, The Grateful Dead's Skull & Roses album. I was maybe 13-years-old, and my expectations were high. The album art, the band's name, the T-shirts I'd seen on certain neighborhood punks--all foretold greatness, all pointed to Marlboros and leather and amphetamines. I was ready for heavy metal: I was looking for an older and scarier Guns n' Roses.

My disappointment, then, was severe and enduring. 15 years later the band still disgusts me, and while a few of my grievances may have some basis in legitimacy, most I suspect probably crystallized in that initial, preposterous letdown.

Since college, however, I've carried this dirty secret: for all my tirades, (and despite the trauma of buying and not liking a one-dollar used tape), I've always enjoyed the song "Ripple." It's smooth and sweet and relaxing: it does for me, I suppose, what American Beauty did for Lindsay Weir in the final episode of Freaks and Geeks.

For years my affair with "Ripple" festered. Questions haunted me, and I wept over them in dark rooms and with strange women: how could the Dead have written this song? How could I like it and still respect myself? Was there something wrong with me--should I pop a peyote button and be done with it? Perhaps "Ripple" reminded me of another song, one with strong positive associations, one I liked for reasons extra-musical? Or perhaps--hope upon spite--"Ripple" was composed by someone else, a man or woman of actual talent, someone such as--I don't know--Andrew Lloyd Weber?

You be the judge. Listen to "Ripple," then to "Any Dream Will Do," written at least two years earlier.

Poor, poor Joseph. First they nicked his coat. Then they took his song.