Jobriath Creatures of the Street. I will admit to only listening to this because Morrissey listed it as one of his most favorite records. He has also curated a reissue. Morrissey's influence in my life is still supreme. This may need remedying. I do not think for myself. I should. I don't need a mad monk making my life more of a mockery than it is, next he will be pushing beets and criticize my stomach and not my thinking. First track is Heartbeat, a bit of an introduction, on the piano He was a piano prodigy. In line with Graeme Humphreys. In King of Prussia, Pennsylvania piano prodigies may not proliferate. But in King of Prussia there is the canvas to create a persona to last. Interesting people are not born in interesting places. Ah but what of Maria Callas, Whitey Ford, Gouverneur Morris? The exceptions. They were born in New York. I think. New York is more interesting than Denver. Slightly. But they have the rule as well, see Anne Hathaway. She's not interesting. if you are surrounded by fascinating things and exciting moments bloom each and every day then you don't feel compelled to create yourself in antagonism to your environment. I often long for a persona of my own. I needn't wear fairy wings and glittered platform shoes but I need a gay personality. I have a persona. My existence in pixels and lines of resolution is far more riveting than my existence among the bees and the beavers. Ohh La La, now, fueled by people on authentic cocaine, a singer proud to be hairless, guitars made from trees imported from Nepal. What were Jobriath's inhibitions? Did he leave behind a catalog? I would like to know. He seems fearlessly unconcerned about the existence of everyone else on this planet and I marvel at it. i think very little of my fellow earthlings but it isn't because I celebrate myself but rather because I do not celebrate them and their omnipresent mediocrity. This is genius. In fact, the songs are tagged in Itunes with "genius". Brilliant. I bet Thom Yorke would like a persona. He's just a guy with a superfluous consonant. He's dull. Truly. he wasn't born in King of Prussia. I would imagine he was born middle class, how else to explain all of that guilt that strangles? Next track Scumbag. Stuff about formerly famous actors behaving rudely. It's a lark, it's a bit of vaudevillia juvenilia and we love it. The pianos are delicately tricked into subservience. His hairless arms shaken from the cold of indifference. I don't much like anyone on I Love music, I am being very negative, sorry, but one of the oddest things in the world is to display for all of the world your visceral dislike of an unknown glam singer from King of Prussia, Pennsylvania. But the following misguided sentiments were posted in search of personal vanity--

"Is he Bowie like ?
If your definition of Bowie is: very gay man who made albums that were supposed to be glamorous and arty rock but which were stubbornly tuneless and did everything but rock."
"This thread is subtitled: Respect not the dead, let's bag on Jobriath."
"His music sort of sucks and is inadvertantly hysterical
I also have to admit I haven't been able to listen to the entire album.

Perfect. An ideal reissue of Jobriath would have included recommendations like these. They would potentially bring in an entirely different audience, like people who always slow down and form a traffic jam on the highway because they want to see the remnants of a multiple car crash."

I used to be almost capable of that sort of vitriol. But it is more brilliant to love. I was listening to the radio yesterday and there was a man who was 31 and had already been the recipient of two heart transplants and now he was ready to join the PGA tour and conquer the world one putt at a time. It was inspiring. I am not much for golf. But he was only slightly more interesting than Thom Yorke. This is Ecubyan and it is marvelous. His pianos out of phase, his voice from a distant galaxy, yes yes he wishes he was a spider from mars. Strings and delicacy, it's very short, most of the songs are very short. I've recently discovered that i should have loved Suede from the beginning. There is a bit of Jobriath in Suede. Good Time. Very good. It's a bit of a glam stomp rocker. Which are the great Glam bands that deservedly received the attention they received while Jobriath ended up on the streets hawking his hairlessness to sustain various illicit habits? Slade? No, they were horrible! Alvin Stardust? No. Heavy Metal Kids? No. Jobriath was the greatest of them all. Or not. probably not, but this album is wonderful. His first is rather good as well. But this has the indulgence he hadn't yet earned but which he expelled furiously in the face of public apathy. Everything on here seems committed and dramatic and intense. Natalie Merchant should listen. You can't turn everythign in life into a glam stomp rocker but it would be more fun if you tried. Walk into a payless shoestore with an elephant trunk hanging from your left nipple and a saxophone slung across your back and ask for a pair of shoes three sizes too small for your feet and then go home and sit at the piano and write a bouncy little ditty about it and sing it as if it is the most important thing in the world ever. Do it, now! And really is New York that interesting? People make places and Denver is uninteresting because the people here are unsure of what it means to be a person in Denver whereas in New York I think the atmosphere of zeitgeist overwhelms most and it is this patina that New Yorkers wear that is only visible to those outside of their little bubble covered metropolis and like the remnants of the brown clouds that hover ovr Denver it causes asthma and cooties to non-natives. What a Pretty just finished, a glamourous fairy tale, a pean to style of substance. It was a very short pean. Liten Up, the ode to Thom Yorke. When he played Glastonbury did he feel the collective exhortation to action? while half of his audience was texting their friends, or twittering strangers, or uploading photos to facebook to advertise the fact that they are being condescended to by Mr Thom Yorke. collectivists trust crowds. They haven't read Wilfred Trotter. In Boulder the collectivists are banning sugary snacks from city owned vending machines. This is done to save you from yourself. The difficulty in collectivism is of course aligning the interests of the group with the majority of individuals. It is why collectivism so often turns into totalitarianism. You need to force consensus at the end of a barrel. But anyhow, Jobriath was surely a collectivist. He hasn't read Lysander Spooner. But his music is individualist. His music is odd and expansive and I love it and I forgive and Thom Yorke for wanting to save me. Next track, Gone Tomorrow. I saw the other piano prodigy of my record collection Graeme Humphreys once play a set of torch songs while inebriated to people who were lucky enough to have avoided the Dead C in Dunedin. It was pianos and laughs and people whispering in my ears all of the secrets to Richard Feynman's hearts desires. And invites to skipping pebbles on a beach and it was dreamy and romantic. And with military attache bags filled with those same pebbles that disappeared along with shoreside remnants from two other continents and there was a leak from my being, a discharge to rudimentary existence and now that I've listened to the golfer with three hearts and Jobriath and Bachelorette and thrilling electrical storms outside my window I am changed. I am singing along to Jobriath, with his well coiffured backup singers and the tingling guitars and 2001:A Space Odyssey effects and the world is at our feet. Last track, a reprise, a summation of all of the highlights, by rights it is about 28 minutes too short at 2:53 but when we move to King of Prussia because ethanol subsidies have led to global armageddon and Des Moines is the most powerful enclave in a desolate post apocalyptic wasteland we'll search for the foot prints in history and see if our soles can endure.