Killer song.

I persuaded Edmondson to listen to Sufjan Stevens' Illinois earlier this week during a trip to Tower Records. It's a great album, and I recommend it constantly at my bookstore.

He heard it, called it weird and bought it.

Today, he sent me this e-mail:

I'm listening to the Gacy song way too much.

When I listen to that album, I try to avoid listening to the song "John Wayne Gacy"
too much because, even though the song is good, the album has better numbers. The lyrics are not as profound as the songwriter thinks. (A critic for ROLLING STONE, I think, said that the "Gacy" lyrics could've emerged out of a beginner creative writing class.)

The song's just creepy, with lyrics like this.

His father was a drinker
And his mother cried in bed
Folding John Wayne's T-shirts
When the swingset hit his head
The neighbors they adored him
For his humor and his conversation
Look underneath the house there
Find the few living things
Rotting fast in their sleep of the dead
Twenty-seven people, even more
They were boys with their cars, summer jobs
Oh my God

I try to be daring with my music tastes, but I just can't listen over and over to a song that suggests that, in some way, we're all like John Wayne Gacy. I can listen over and over to songs about murderers like "Maxwell's Silver Hammer" or the music from ASSASSINS or SWEENEY TODD. I just don't want Gacy in my head at all.