Nothing Compares To You

 I don't know if you've heard the Chris Cornel cover of Nothing Compares To You.

But you should.

During my half-hour drive to take my eldest (now 10) son to swim, the song came on.

Tis a powerful rendition laddy. 

And me being the emotional sensitive guy I am, well you know, I had them feels.

The lyrics and the rendition brought back some pretty powerful memories of a break-up in my oh so sensitive twenties. One hard part was the realization of being rejected.

Now here's the thing, this ten year-old reading in the back is oh so sensitive, like his old man. And my job is to help him along in this world.

How does one teach about rejection? Minimize it by giving it context?: everyone will experience it; take the long view. Explain it away? Rationalize it? Embrace it some sort of Leibnizian best of all possible worlds/what doesn't kill us makes us stronger sort of way?

I cannot save him from rejection, even though I know his sensitivity will make it so damn powerful. I know he will look inside and...take it to heart.

I know this.
I feel this.

But dem feels, so powerful; so alive; so sensitive to the rejection but also the love.

Sensitive through and through.

"I can eat my dinner in a fancy restaurant..."

David Lee Roth - Breaking Down Walls, 4th Walls

 All three, count 'em three, kiddos in the car. Mass hysteria, as usual. I forget where we were going, because, it's mass hysteria with three kids in the car.

Anyhoo, Van Halen's Unchained comes on the Sirius XM Radio and because it's Van Halen, I dig it.

Now I've written about Eddy on this hear blogarooski, but I can't remember if I've written about Diamond Dave.

Till now.

If you don't know Unchained, give it a listen:

Just killer isn't it. 1981 Killer stuff.

Three kids in the car but fourth walls being broken down.

What is the fourth wall?

Per your pals at wiki, it's: 

a performance convention in which an invisible, imagined wall separates actors from the audience. While the audience can see through this "wall", the convention assumes the actors act as if they cannot.

My first experience with this was, of course, one of my favorite movies: Airplane.

Ted Striker breaks down that fourth wall, looks at me, yeah me, and says, "What a pisser."

God I love Airplane. Airplane II too. 22.

What's all this got to do with Diamond Dave?

Well, Dave loved his little talky talk during Van Halen tunes: "What the fuck, I'll pay you for it; What do you think the teacher's gonna look like this year; Reach down between my legs and ease the seat back."

You remember.

But on Unchained, Dave ropes in Producer Ted Templeman. 

That's Ted, top left.

"C'mon Dave...gimme a break."

It comes into the music from the outside. From outside the studio, into the mix. 

Ted told me, "What a pisser," and broke down a wall, and per Dave, Ted Templeman told me, after a wall came down, that he wanted Dave to give him a break.

By instinct or creative genius (or a mix), Dave broke down a wall.

You may not think, behind all that flash and 80's schtick and the teased hair and groupies that Dave is an artist, but you'd be wrong.

He is...an artist. The myth is that one can't fun and be an artist. An artist is serious and concentrated and thoughtful and committed.

Maybe, definitely, behind the hair and the "outfits", Dave is all those things...and fun.

It's a forced dichotomy you doofus. I know it's hard to believe. 

But the record(s) speaks for its self.