The Contrarian

Sometimes, when in the shower, I am struck by a barrage of ideas for songs, albums, odd musical projects, etc. Here are a handful that I will likely never find time for:

• A Latino death metal band called Sotomayor (after the first Latina Supreme Court justice, natch). The set list is ever-evolving, but most of the titles are either legal terms of art or goofy political memes. Examples: “Endless Liability,” “Blood of the Tyrants,” “Death Panel,” “Goin’ Rogue,” “Constitutionally Flawed Tribunal,” “Tiny Starbursts,” and so on. Some of them are already dated, but there are more every day. My friend Shayne is in law school and she gives me some awesome fodder for songs. My goal is to have Sotomayor featured on the Al Jazeera music program, “Behead the Music.”

• Remember the other fake band from This is Spinal Tap? They were called Duke Fame, but you never actually got to hear them play. I imagine them to be the hair metal equivalent of Morris Day’s The Time in Purple Rain. I bet I could record their album in a weekend. Alas, I likely never will.

• This morning, I was singing a made-up song called “Is This Your Homework, Larry?” in my best Peter Murphy voice while banging out industrial beats on the shower walls. It was at that moment I decided that I needed to record an album called The Goth Lebowski. I imagine it to be like this classic Silence of the Lambs-inspired ditty, “It Rubs the Lotion On its Skin”:

• Speaking of goth, I’ve always wanted to reunite Skathedral — a joke supergroup that a bunch of us Burlington rock stars formed in the 1990s. We played live, but never recorded an album. I’d love to correct this tragic wrong, but it’s extraordinarily unlikely.

• I’d also like to perform and conduct a live reading of the Beach Boys‘ Love You album, which is possibly the most fucked-up record in the universe. If you haven’t heard it, do yourself a favor and track down a copy. I picture this to be my final show (I actually retired from performance years ago, but I think a gig like this should culminate in onstage self-immolation, just to seal the deal).

• There’s a song called “Goin’ for a Ride (On the Wild Side)” from a porn movie I saw in the 1980s. The tune is INCREDIBLE, but I’ve never been able to track down a copy. Still, it plays in my head every day, so I’m confident that I could accurately record it. But I probably never will.

• Another tune that gets stuck in my head a lot is this funky Boy Scouts anthem, “Be Prepared,” which used to run nonstop on Boston’s Channel 56 in the 1970s. I’d love to record it, but I’d need a horn section:

• There’s a song in the original Mad Max called “Licorice Ride” that blows my mind. I’d get a sex change to record this:

I’m sure I’m forgetting something. . .