20. The Silos, “Let’s Go Get Some Drugs and Drive Around”(1990).
21. The Feelies, “Sooner or Later”(1991).
Cassette Eight
(A)
1. Sonic Youth, “Teenage Riot”(1988).
2. Ciccone Youth, untitled instrumental from The Whitey Album(1988).
3. The Pixies, “Here Comes Your Man”(1990).
4. Jane’s Addiction, “Stop”(1991).
5. Sugar, “That’s a Good Idea”(1992).
6. Pavement, “Summer Babe (Winter Version)”(1992).
7. Syd Barrett, “Golden Hair”(1972).
8. Sebadoh, “Brand New Love”(1992).
9. Television, “Rhyme”(1992).
10. Slint, “Nosferatu Man”(1988).
(B)
“In 1991, I was living in the basement at home. I’d take out the trash for my mom. I had an idea for a screenplay. I was going to get a broker’s license.”
11. Nirvana, “Smells Like Teen Spirit”(1991).
12. My Bloody Valentine, “Glider”(1991).
13. Pearl Jam, “Jeremy”(1991).
14. The Pixies, “U.Mass”(1992).
15. P. J. Harvey “Rub Till It Bleeds”(1992).
16. Liz Phair, “Fuck and Run”(1993).
17. Sebadoh, “Spoiled”(1993).
18. Morphine, “In Spite of Me”(1993).
19. Vic Chestnutt, “West of Rome”(1994).
20. Dog Bowl, “Love Bomb”(1992).
21. Nine Inch Nails, “Head Like a Hole”(1992).
Cassette Nine
(A)
1. Nirvana, “Heart-Shaped Box”(1993).
2. Hole, “Doll Parts”(1994).
3. The Breeders, “Cannonball”(1993).
4. Offspring, “Genocide”(1994).
5. Half Japanese, “Roman Candle”(1989).
6. G. Love and Special Sauce, “Blues Music”(1995).
7. Beck, “Loser”(1995).
8. Guided by Voices, “Goldheart Mountaintop Queen Directory”and “Hot Freaks”(1994).
9. The Shaggs, “Philosophy of the World”(1972).
10. Fly Ashtray, “Barry’s Time Machine”(1995).
11. Smashing Pumpkins, “Today”(1995).
12. Stereolab, “Lock Groove Lullaby”(1994).
(B)
13. Soul Coughing, “Screenwriter’s Blues”(1994).
14. Bad Religion, “Television”(1995).
15. Rancid, “Roots, Rockers, Radicals”(1995).
16. The Sixths, “San Diego Zoo”(1995).
17. Boss Hog, “Nothing to Lose”(1995).
18. The Innocence Mission, “Happy. The End”(1995).
19. Neil Young, “The Ocean”(1995).
20. Guided By Voices, “Atom Eyes”(1996).
21. Steve Earle, “Ellis Unit One”(1996).
22. Rage Against the Machine, “Bulls on Parade”(1996).
23. White Zombie, “More Human Than Human”(1994).
Cassette Ten
(A)
1. John Cage, “In a Landscape”(1948).
2. Frederic Chopin, “Nocturne #1”(1839).
3. U. Srinivas, “Saranambhava Karuna”(1994).
4. Frank Zappa, “Get Whitey”(1995).
5. David Lang, “Face So Pale”(1993).
6. Thurston Moore, from the soundtrack to HEAVY (1996).
(B)
7. Brian Eno, “Ikebura”(1993).
8. J. S. Bach, “Contrapunctus XIV,”from DIE KUNST DER FUGUE (1750).
9. John Coltrane, “Stellar Regions”(1965).
10. Carl Stone, “Banteay Srey” (1992).
1l.Aphex Twin, “1”(1994).
Production, Remastering, and Sequencing at Bankruptcy studios by Mike Hubbard. A&R by Jules Hathaway. Liner Notes by Rick Moody. Special thanks to Wilkie Fahnstock, and the Fahnstocks of Mamaroneck, NY, and Marble-head, MA. http://www.chapter1l.com
Boys
Boys enter the house, boys enter the house. Boys, and with them the ideas of boys (ideas leaden, reductive, inflexible), enter the house. Boys, two of them, wound into hospital packaging, boys with infant pattern baldness, slung in the arms of parents, boys dreaming of breasts, enter the house. Twin boys, kettles on the boil, boys in hideous vinyl knapsacks that young couples from Edison, NJ, wear on their shirt fronts, knapsacks coated with baby saliva and staphylococcus and milk vomit, enter the house. Two boys, one striking the other with a rubberized hot dog, enter the house. Two boys, one of them striking the other with a willow switch about the head and shoulders, the other crying, enter the house. Boys enter the house, speaking nonsense. Boys enter the house, calling for Mother. On a Sunday, in May, a day one might nearly describe as perfect, an ice cream truck comes slowly down the lane, chimes inducing salivation, and children run after it, not long after which boys dig a hole in the backyard and bury their younger sister’s dolls two feet down, so that she will never find these dolls and these dolls will rot in hell, after which boys enter the house. Boys, trailing after their father like he is the Second Goddamned Coming of Christ Goddamned Almighty enter the house, repair to the basement to watch baseball. Boys enter the house, site of devastation, and repair immediately to the kitchen, where they mix lighter fluid, vanilla pudding, drain-opening lye, balsamic vinegar, blue food coloring, calamine lotion, cottage cheese, ants, a plastic lizard that one of them received in his Xmas stocking, tacks, leftover mashed potatoes, Spam, frozen lima beans, and chocolate syrup in a medium-sized saucepan and heat over a low flame until thick, afterwards transferring the contents of this saucepan into a Pyrex lasagna dish, baking the Pyrex lasagna dish in the oven for nineteen minutes before attempting to persuade their sister that she should eat the mixture; later they smash three family heirlooms (the last, a glass egg, intentionally) in a two-and-a-half hour stretch, whereupon they are sent to their bedroom, until freed, in each case thirteen minutes after. Boys enter the house, starchy in pressed shirts and flannel pants that itch so bad, fresh from Sunday School instruction, blond and brown locks (respectively) plastered down, but even so with a number of cowlicks protruding at odd angles, disconsolate and humbled, uncertain if boyish things — such as shooting at the neighbor’s dog with a pump action bb gun and gagging the fat boy up the street with a bandanna and showing their shriveled boy-penises to their younger sister — are exempted from the commandment to Love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul, and with all thy might, andthy neighbor as thyself. Boys enter the house in baseball gear (only one of the boys can hit): in their spikes, in mismatched tube socks that smell like Stilton cheese. Boys enter the house in soccer gear. Boys enter the house carrying skates. Boys enter the house with lacrosse sticks, and, soon after, tossing a lacrosse ball lightly in the living room they destroy a lamp. One boy enters the house sporting basketball clothes, the other wearing jeans and a sweatshirt. One boy enters the house bleeding profusely and is taken out to get stitches, the other watches. Boys enter the house at the end of term carrying report cards, sneak around the house like spies of foreign nationality, looking for a place to hide the report cards for the time being (under the toaster? in a medicine cabinet?). One boy with a black eye enters the house, one boy without. Boys with acne enter the house and squeeze and prod large skin blemishes in front of their sister. Boys with acne treatment products hidden about their persons enter the house. Boys, standing just up the street, sneak cigarettes behind a willow in the Elys’ yard, wave smoke away from their natural fibers, hack terribly, experience nausea, then enter the house. Boys call each other