Hello It’s Me
Last month on a rainy day in New York City awaiting my 5th PCR I curled up on the sofa with some popcorn and a chamomile and finally pressed play to see the show that so many of my gal pals were yapping about: And Just Like That the revival of the television series Sex and the City. Bring it HBO.
In an opening scene Carrie and Big are cooking dinner, drinking wine in fine stemware in a state-of-the-art kitchen in a penthouse Apt in NYC. You know. Like we all do.
They have this ritual where they choose a record from their old vinyl collection and get all sentimental as they coo and twirl and prep their meal.
Tonight the needle goes down on “Hello It’s Me” from Todd Rundgren’s iconic album Something/Anything? which turns 50 this month. Yikes. “Hello It’s Me” — those 3 words you used to say to identify yourselves back when we didn’t know in advance who was calling.
If a millennial wasn’t aware of the song a few months ago, they may know it now if they’ve been watching the show (with their mother) or if they follow contemporary music, as “H.I.M.” happens to be (at time of typing this) #18 on the iTunes Top 100 singles charts. And it’s on the charts BECAUSE of this prominent placement. Way for a synch use to resurrect, repurpose, remember one of the greats.
Back in the kitchen “Hello It’s Me” transports Carrie and Big to Sex In The City days when Big was in and out of her life on a pretty steady basis (“I’ll come around to see you once on a while”) …he couldn’t commit…although, as it turns out in the end, they couldn’t live without each other.
I, the listener, time travel, myself. I begged my mother to take me to the record store the first time I heard it on the radio. That earnest plea…“It’s important to me that you know you are free cuz I’d never want to make you change for me.”
Didn’t we all have that guy or that girl or that they in our lives? Someone who was more than a friend but not quite a lover? Or a sometimes lover but not quite a “love”? Or a mad love who didn’t feel the same about you? They fill some hole. Maybe you sleep together. Maybe you don’t but you want to. You did but don’t anymore. Only Todd knows for sure. But it doesn’t matter what Todd’s inspiration was. What matters is what the song conjures up for US!
I was too young to be sleeping with anyone in 1972 but it was still ubiquitous when all that changed. Songs stuck around. They weren’t here today gone tomorrow.
So there I was paralyzed from nostalgia on the sofa. Popcorn bowl empty. Suddenly I forgot about my pending PCR!
“Maybe I shouldn’t think of you as mine.” OMG. Kill me now. I don’t want to feel this much. I didn’t ask for it. “Hello It’s Me” was and still is like audible crack. It struck a powerful chord.
Next day I do what I often do — sit at the piano and try to figure out chord changes. This one isn’t so easy. Crazy sharps and flats and modulations. Major 7ths…my guilty pleasure. I wish I hadn’t been so safe with my musical boundaries. I wish I had studied theory more diligently when I was coming up as a songwriter.
I’ve heard Todd perform “Hello It’s Me” in 6/8 but it’s as if he’s mocking the song and depriving his audience of the feeling they came for. Why does Todd do that? Someone please tell him to stop!
As for all the rest of the tracks on Something/Anything? I never loved them as much (except for “I Saw The Light” which I reported on a few years ago) and maybe “Marlene.” Oh and “Sweeter Memories” and umm “It Wouldn’t Have Made Any Difference.” And “Torch Song.” “S.L.U.T.…???” not so much.
One of the reason I sat down to tell you all this is because…if you were as into Something/Anything? as I was you may want to check out Someone/Anyone? — just released this week — a collection of all the tracks from Something/Anything? covered by some of my favorite pals — Phil Thornalley (AKA Astral Drive), Kasim Sulton, Louise Goffin, Marshall Crenshaw. The formidable Brent Bourgeois delivers “Hello.” It still holds up. It still breaks me down. It’s just one of those songs. 😳
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PS. And Just Like That is so appropriately named as life does have a way of going happily along on its trajectory until, in the blink of an eye, everything can change…just like that. Sadly Willie Garson, one of my favorite peripheral characters on Sex passed in Sept 2021. Here we are as co-parents manning the student store at our kids’ High School circa 2015. A nicer guy, there wasn’t.
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