Lloyd Cole

"You were an innocent child
before I laid my hands on you
and all the pain that you had inside
was just waitin' to bloom
in a darkened room"

"You were an innocent child before I laid my hands on you and all the pain that you had inside was just waitin' to bloom in a darkened room" Those lines are from Lloyd Cole's Don't Get Weird on me, Babe, the greatest breakup album of all time . Lloyd Cole is Scottish. It's the rain and short days maybe. Gloom is the appropriate status quo. When I was a Junior in college...I broke up with my boyfriend of all of 11 months, (ever since the beginning of Sophomore year, she weeps, that's like forever ago, I gave him the best year of my life!) I couldn't eat, I couldn't sleep, for two weeks I wouldn't get out of bed -- -- OK that part is a lie. I could get out of bed, and I did get out of bed, exactly 20 minutes before my shift started at Amy's, the bar where I was working that summer. But I made sure to bring my pain with me, the pain I shared by playing and I played Don't Get Wierd On Me Babe all day, every day, from the the minute my shift started until the minute in ended -- for the entire length of a 95 degree Wisconsin August. Always in order from start to finish. Occasionally a customer would make the mistake of asking me to put on some other music. But it's not a mistake they'd make twice. I don't know where to start talking how good this guy was at Bad Love...That certain kind of self conscious bad love that seems to happen right before you hit your twenties, sort of as your adolescent angst's last laugh before real life slaps you... ... the kind of Bad Love that should come with an accessories kit: blank notebook, carton of Marlboro's, Leonard Cohen complete boxed set, Van Gogh's ear -- and finally when it's time to enjoy the bitter after taste -- Lloyd Cole. He was so hot too,-- moody, tall, well tailored... with dark hair and a soft boyish face. And his voice could zip from bass to tenor no problem, from sorrow to snark "Bet you really got some kinda way with words/maybe you could be a writer -- you could do worse"... Like all quoted lyrics, this one works way better on stereo than on paper.... Because of the way his voice sneers on the word writer, like Joe Strummer in London Calling or Bob Dylan in Positively Fourth Street, only without all the distracting politics. (Lloyd Cole 2009 is a little chubby and rumpled. He was way better in the 90's but then hey weren't we all?) His albums with the Commotions rock as well -- all of them. And the first solo album, which was just called Lloyd Cole, was good too. But it was overeducated young angst, and I never felt like he grew into grown-up problems that well, so I stopped buying his music after Love Story. And plus -- Jill Sobule? Ew. Still I don't think I've ever made a mixtape, burned a CD, or built a playlist without putting him on it. OTHER LYRICS: I got a piece of paper with your name written on it Got a head full of attitude and nowhere to put it And you lie there without sleeping And you stare at your wall And you realize youre not weeping You dont need her anymore Remember when I first saw you babe you were looking pretty good Said you were looking for love, well then why didn't you You just sat there taking everything you could get Never thought one day you might have to pay for it now the world's spinnin' round too fast Lord won't you leave me off at the corner You know a man can take to sinnin' all he need's a little push in -- that direction. I'm still wearin' scars I got from bein' your fool You messed me up pretty good babe I didn't mean to rule you. I used to wake up early I used to try to believe But life seems neverending when you're young i'm lyin' here babe, on your side of the bed, i've got unclean thoughts runnin' through my head i'm thinkin' about love and i'm thinkin' about pain and i'm thinkin' about some way that i might feel good again And he's European so he gets to rhyme "again" with "pain" The sexiness of all his sex -- and there was a lot of good sex in his Bad Love Like Stephen King warning that you should never show the monster, Cole knew that you don't need to tell us what's in the unclean thoughts. She said I wasn't there for her I never would have been there, if not for her. I don't need an alibi I need a fire escape and an open window. She's got cheekbones like geometry and eyes like sin And she's sexually enlightened by Cosmopolitan I was looking for a rhyme in the New York Times When I could sense I was not alone She said how do you spell "audaciously" and I knew I was in love Forever she said, yes forever she said But we change with the weather, and this is the rain. It's funny because when I look over that list of lines I realize that there aren't that many from my favorite album -- maybe because part of what makes DGWOMB so good is the music. Rock on the first half, lush orchestral strings on the second. He was Burt Bacharach for hipsters -- before Burt Bacharach himself was resurrected by hipsters.