How To Write A PERFECT Mountain Goats Song!

Let’s write a Mountain Goats Song!

let's write a mountain goats song

What will we need to write a Mountain Goats song?

Names of Small Towns 
The Pride of the Outsider 
Motorcycles
Trains
Childhood Memories
Broken Things
Drugs
A Moment Where You Escaped The Boot On Your Neck And Experienced Real Freedom In A Way Rich Kids Never Will 
Wrestling
Magic the Gathering/D&D
Dysfunctional Family Relationships We Never Dealt With 
Driving
Wolves
Dogged Optimism Even Though You Know It’ll All Fall Apart
Glamorized Alcoholism
A-minor Chord
Names of Ancient Gods
Regionally Specific Trees
Lo-Fi Recording
Descriptions of How A Girl’s Hair Looks In The Sunset
Nostalgia for Things That Went Badly
Names of Interstates 
Not just acoustic guitar- Acoustic AF guitar

And we’re ready to go! We can also write a Tom Waits song, a Nick Cave song, or a Robyn Hitchcock song

The Amazing Pasadena Daydream Festival: Gothchella

robert smith of the cure at pasadena daydream festival

This August, The Cure threw an end-of-Summer celebration at the Rose Bowl grounds called the Pasadena Daydream Festival. Who hates Summer more than Goths? Nobody.

I love the Cure, I love the Pixies, and I have never EVER seen Throwing Muses and was absolutely DYING to. Since the ticket was expensive, I steeled myself to going alone, but my friend Johnny Skourtis posted a self-pitying story on Instagram the morning of the show saying he was going alone, so I had a festival buddy!

The Day Of:

It was hot as shit. 30,000 goths were sweating and drinking. They sold out of Donut Friend brand vegan donuts. But: everything else was great. Throwing Muses, also known as Some Dudes and Kristin Hersh, were tight and AGGRESSIVE and wonderful. Pixies and their rotating Kim Deal impersonator were good, and The Cure have only gotten better at being the Cure. You want pedals? Layered guitar? Drone? You got it. The band has gotten famous 40 years into their career, and Robert is wearing it well, and seems much happier than he was when he was 30.

Meeting New Friends:

I was wearing an ancient Cure t-shirt that my sister has been begging me to throw out, and instead of throwing it out, I had repaired the holes with lace scraps, and a twenty something came to compliment me on it. He claimed that he was “the world’s biggest Cure fan” and that he had seen his first show in 2009. I told him I had seen my first show in 1986 at the Bronco Bowl, for Head on the Door, and he protested, I wasn’t even BORN then. That can’t be my problem, man!

Here’s the Cure’s playlist, including Just One Kiss, which was never played in the US before, but which I really like.

  • Plainsong
  • Pictures of You
  • High
  • A Night Like This
  • Just One Kiss(first time live in the US)
  • Lovesong
  • Last Dance
  • Burn
  • Fascination Street
  • Never Enough
  • Push
  • In Between Days
  • Just Like Heaven
  • From the Edge of the Deep Green Sea
  • Play for Today
  • A Forest
  • Primary
  • Shake Dog Shake
  • 39 (Altered lyric from “half my )
  • Disintegration
  • Encore:
  • Lullaby
  • The Caterpillar
  • The Walk
  • Friday I’m in Love (with “Where Is My Mind”… )
  • Close to Me
  • Why Can’t I Be You?
  • Boys Don’t Cry

The Morning After:

The morning after, I was complaining to Johnny that although we had been drinking all day, it was so spaced out that I was never really drunk, but that I had a hangover, and then he sent me a video of myself singing to the Pixies that he believed disproved my theory. Anyway, it was nice having a friend for one day. Thanks, Pasadena Daydream Festival!

Postscript: Looks like everyone is searching for an actual festival called Gothchella, and I can’t help you there, but if you want to dress like a hot weather witch, a big floppy hat and a black slip is a great place to start!

A Bold New Meditation On Death And The Starbucks Frappuccino

a fun meditation on death gold skull

I am writing my morning pages and find myself in a meditation on death.

Looking at the date, I realize it’s my Dad, John Ryan’s, birthday, or- it was his birthday when he was alive.  I don’t think you have a birthday after you die- the date stops being relevant to you.  It is, perhaps, the anniversary of your birth- but Mozart doesn’t have a 263rd birthday.

Where We Came From

My father was born Sept 9, 1948, to his mother, Ruth Ryan, who is now dead.  His father, Robert Sloan Ryan, was present at the birth, and is also dead.  The doctor and the nurses who attended the birth are all dead.  The maintenance workers at the hospital are dead, the policemen walking the streets of Houston, TX the day my Dad was born are dead, the mothers and fathers of the other babies born that day are all dead, some of the babies born that day are also dead. 

  Every singer who was on the radio that day is dead.  The number one hit song that day was the 12th Street Rag, by Pee Wee Hunt and his Orchestra.  Pee Wee Hunt is dead and all the members of the orchestra are dead. 

  The Oscar winner for Best Picture that year was Laurence Olivier’s Hamlet.  All the actors in the film are dead, the most recent being Jean Simmons, who died in 2010, three years before my Dad. 

  The stars of the most popular TV shows of the day, Ed Sullivan, Howdy Doody, and Candid Camera are all dead.  Most of the people who watched those shows are dead.  Everyone who worked writing or shooting those shows is dead.

Where We Are Going

  One day, Beyonce and Kim Kardashian and PewDiePie and Shane Gillis and David Duchovny and Taylor Swift and Lin-Manuel Miranda will all be dead, and everyone you’ve ever known or looked up to or hated or had a crush on or wronged or bought dinner for will be dead.

 It’ll happen so quickly you won’t believe it, sweeping unapologetically through the population and leaving you wondering what it was all for, all the striving and the cutting each other down and the aspirations and the heartbreak and denying ourselves frosty Frappuccinos in the Summer.  

Nobody will remember your failed Etsy business, the time you threw up at Homecoming, or the time Patton Oswalt retweeted you. If you’re lucky, 100 years after your death your descendants will remember your name. So, yes.  I am having another Frappuccino.

The Incredibly Stupid Story About My Tattoo

octopus tattoo design by Amy Nicoletto

virginia jones octopus tattoo by amy nicoletto

The Origin Story 

Having survived a questionable adolescence and young adulthood without a tattoo,  I thought, maybe my thing is to be weird WITHOUT a tattoo.   My dumb hot goth boyfriend had BAD RELIGOIN tattooed on him at a party.  Later, it was covered with a demon, and probably also dirt because I think that guy’s dead now.

 Being of a somewhat perverse personality, I find if there’s something everyone else loves, I hate it.  I’ve never seen Titanic or worn acid wash jeans.  

   When I left school, I found that every punk, every goth, every coffeeshop-clogging creative was heavily inked.  How cool could it be?  I worried that a tattoo had to mean something deep.  Something eternal.  What if I got something that would later be dumb?  My friend Bryan had a Stray Cats tattoo from the 80’s that I watched go out, and in, and back out of fashion.  

Joker’s Comedy Club

   One time I was doing comedy in Tri-Cities, Washington.  That’s right.  Three small towns: Kennewick, Richmond, and Yakima, gather their low-self-esteem populations together and call themselves the Tri-Cities in an attempt to matter. 

The Thursday night show had a promo table with a local tattoo shop, and they were giving away a tattoo to the prettiest girl in attendance who didn’t have a tattoo.  This really brought my two worst personality traits into the foreground: I am cheap and vain.  The nice tattoo lady said I was cute, I should put in to win the contest.  I laughed and said OK. 

   I had a really good set, I blew my headliner off the stage.  He was murky and resentful.  The next night, he melted down and was dismissed for he rest of the weekend. 

While drinking for free, I checked in with the tattoo lady.  She said I was still the winner by a mile.  I was feeling small-town famous.

Brianna

  I started thinking about what kind of tattoo I wanted.  I decided on an octopus.  Like on the Kraken rum bottle, although that is a Kraken, which is not real.   We got ready to line up for a vote.  I was confident.  I was ready.  But at the 11th hour,  she showed up: Brianna.  Brianna was 24 and had blonde hair piled up on top of her head, and was somehow wearing a pink baseball hat perched on top of that.  She had dimples.  I lost, and lost badly.

  Brianna got a dynamic ribbon reading “ALWAYS RESILIENT” tattooed on her ribcage, which I am told is a very painful spot, and that was a comfort to me.  It was executed right there, on a rickety massage table in a dark corner of a nightclub.  I started to think maybe I was glad I didn’t win.

  I woke up surly and resentful that I didn’t have an octopus tattoo.  Complaining to my friend Richie, he told me: believe, there is nothing more expensive than a free tattoo.  You’re glad you didn’t get inked in the tri-shitties. 

When I got home to Los Angeles, I got a birthday gift from my baby sister so I could get a tattoo at a fancy shop, from the lovely @amynicolettotattoo, and I don’t think I could love it any more.  It looks good with dresses, it looks good with t-shirts, it’s an accessory that I have on all the time, and it doesn’t mean shit.

Wisdom Of The Ages

 Looking back, I realize that if I had gotten a tattoo in my 20’s it would have been for The Cure, and if I’d gotten one in my 30’s, it would have been for Nick Cave, and they’d still be great today.  This is an often-overlooked plus to being someone who maxed out their taste and personal growth at 17, and will always be the same asshole, and who is also cheap, and also vain.

My Utterly Complete Shit List

This is a list of reasons I am not speaking to other comics, it’s a funny meditation on the things we allow to divide us even though we’re all gonna be dead someday.

People I am Not Speaking To For Sexual Misconduct Reasons


People Who Defended Other Comics To Me, I.E. How Do You Like Your Cosby Now? 


I Unfriended You Because Another Comic Asked Me To And They Are Back To Being Your Friend, So Fuck Me 


I Am Scared To Speak To You Because I Might Have You Confused With Another Comic 


I Refuse To Speak To You Because You Hurt My Feelings For Something I Don’t Remember What It Is

You Bought A Car From Me And Never Registered It And Never Paid Me For It (Specific)


I Basically Like You But Had To Turn Off Your Thirst Trap Feed


You Never Found A Spot For Me On A Show You Stopped Booking Years Ago


I Have A Crush On You And Am Embarrassed About It 


I Understand That You Do Comedy But Not Why 


I Understand That Other People Find You Funny But I Don’t 


I Envy Your Career But You Close On A Poop Joke 


Comics Who I Am Scared To Speak To Because I Think They’re Mad At Me For Something


You Are Too Extra For Me To Personally Cope With And I Feel Guilty But There It Is

You Have Never, Not Once In Your Life, Stayed To Support A Show After Your Set
*or* 
General Shit List

Jordan, Jesse, Go!

I’m always glad to pop in on my two favorite dorks and talk about draculas, Bad Venom, Godzilla, and Halloween! Listen here!

GHOST ROAST of DAVID BOWIE!

Yes, comedy fans, Bowie fans, all humanity- start making your plans for Saturday nights roast of David Bowie, where the ghost of David Bowie will be played by me, Virginia Jones!

(This is what Ghost Bowie looked like, in case anyone is curious)