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You wanted words, hell i wanted words to but last night when i posted this i was to far gone to write anything of substance, stoned and dethroned as a pair of Glaswegian noiseniks once said and so here i am tonight to hurl my thoughts into the ether about this man, Wayne, cuz you see i've been listening to his band now for over 20 odd years and what's even funnier is that with all the next big thing's that have come and gone and come back again his band has never had a "hit", never sold millions of records, been the fearless freaks they claim to be and are the only band from that alt-rock crush of the early 90's still signed to a major label, i mean shit did you hear their last album? it was bleak as fuck and weird and noisy and yet Warner Bros. still somehow signed off on it...

And if i had not been so lazy i would have named Mr. Coyne here my person of 2013, sorta like Time Magazine named the pope, cuz this was the year that shit fell apart for Wayne. Steven Drozd falls off the wagon, his partner of the last 25 years (Michelle) and him split up, did we really expect a happy record? It's been well documented that his wife was an influential figure in his art, an artist herself who helped drive and push Wayne and encouraged him to try all the crazy shit that popped into his head, remember the Parking Lot Experiments? Zareeika? i mean who the fuck releases four records meant to be played on four different systems at the same time? the gummy skulls and fetus' with zip drives inside of music? so when it all came down Wayne was fucking hurting man and when i saw the band live you could tell he was still hurting, no one just walks away from a 25 year fucking relationship without some sorta baggage and i remember him saying that night sometimes you just gotta write the sad songs cuz you need to fucking cry, just like we need to laugh, sometimes we need to fucking cry...

But this was the year that i began to really study my subject... and what i saw was a guy with a brilliant imagination, a guy who could be an asshole and a sweetheart and a bastard and a genius all in the span of an interview, i've seen him say some absolutely lovely things about the universe and it's horrible beauty, the cat just knows his shit and has persevered through the good and the bad, through losing friends and musical partners and life partners and whatever but he just keeps on doing what he does... the story i love most though is how Wayne started working at Long John Silvers in high school and the second year he worked there they were held up and made to lie on the floor with guns pointed at the back of their heads, he thought he was gonna die and said that was it, no beauty or music or meaning just random bullshit, of course he survived and there is more to the story but i do believe the planet is all the better for it, he also worked that job until 1990, he was damn near 30 when he quit to do music full-time and that right there is an inspiration to all us fuck-ups who consider this art thing part of our genetic make-up, there's no reason to quit, just do what you do and be happy and for that reminder i thank you Wayne, so happy birthday and keep up the good work, there's alot of us out here still listening and we're all a little older and grayer than when we started...

 

 

This one's a fucking heartbreaker.