Fellow armchair warriors, musical comrades, any and all in need of screaming relief:
Having spent the past two weeks devoted to very personal playlist pursuits — my admiration of the late producer (and covid victim) Hal Willner, followed by a subjective 5th-anniversary reconstruction of the Coachella at which Jessica and I met — I have amassed a stockpile of two highly volatile things: my fury over (parts of) our government’s stupefyingly inept response to this ongoing nightmare, and songs that express it.
Thus, I have put a soundtrack called Chaos & Disorder to that Charlie Brown version of Edvard Munch’s “The Scream,” a T-shirt parody I once identified with enough to make my Facebook profile when I (mostly) abandoned that platform a presidential cycle ago.
The White Stripes
Bessichella, Parts 1 & 2
Five years ago, on this exact date, at the very minute this latest LCKDWN playlist and accompanying explanation are set to appear, one exceedingly nervous Benjamin A. Wener approached one quite bewildered Jessica A. Lanska and spoke to her for the first time. He had noticed her walking toward the Mojave Tent to check out a then-new L.A. band, Bad Suns, while he was headed in the opposite direction to maybe take in a few tunes from Bad Religion on the main stage. Jessica, with all but her legs clad in black — billowy black t-shirt dress, black Vans, black shades, big floppy black hat — turned Ben’s hazy head as if it were made of steel and Jessica were the only magnet in the Western hemisphere, her giant chapeau amplifying the adhesive allure of whatever lurked underneath it. Instantaneously, involuntarily, Ben turned and followed her, tracing her steps until he was standing just to the right and a step behind her. He waited for two songs to pass, maybe three, practicing potential opening lines in his mind.
Then he piped up.