Wings For Wheels

Thanks to Matt, I learned today that Polydor has given the Deluxe Edition treatment to Rattlesnakes, the fantastic 1984 debut by Lloyd Cole and the Commotions. Although I don’t know if the second disc of demos, B-sides, and live cuts justifies the price, I was glad to see this because you never hear Cole’s music anymore. In college, he was loved by the girls who dressed in black and were too busy reading poetry to notice me staring at them longingly, and it’s not hard to understand why. His arrangements contained lush synths while his lyrics contained just enough cinematic and literary references to help them with their term papers, as evidenced by the title cut (stupid Universal and their embedding-disabling).

She looks like Eva Marie Saint in On The Waterfront
As she reads Simone de Beauvoir in her American circumstance
Her heart, heart’s like crazy paving
Upside down and back to front
She says “Ooh, it’s so hard to love when love was your great disappointment”

And because I wasn’t into anything with synthesizers at the time, I didn’t get into Cole until 1991, when She’s A Girl And I’m A Man became a radio hit in 1991. Here he is performing the song on Letterman (and the more said about Will Lee’s 8-ball hoodie, the better. “Do I look like a tool?” “All signs point to yes!”).

But it was my friend Sean who turned me on to his earlier work when we met in 1994. I remember he referred to Mr. Malcontent as his theme song, but I think it suits me better.

Still, the two of us saw Cole in concert in late-1995, which was also the last time I was in the old 9:30 club in Washington, DC before they moved to the current location on V Street.

Strangely enough, Cole became the subject of a minor hit in 2006, an answer to the final cut on Rattlesnakes. Here’s Cole’s original, Are You Ready To Be Heartbroken?

And Camera Obscura’s response, Lloyd, I’m Ready To Be Heartbroken