mary prankster i love you...

Mary, my sweet, sweet, dearest Mary…

We’ve played this game between us for far too long now. We’ve been stepping around each other’s feet in this dance of passion since we’d first ever spoken, and now…well, now you’ve pushed me to the brink. I’m at my wits end. It’s either I speak my mind or fade from yours, and I am as determined as I’ve ever been (about anything!) to ensure that you understand everything that we could become together.

You call your new record Tell Your Friends, and it is a grand title (title’s are something you’ve always been so good at… "Tits and Whiskey"? Come on now, that’s perfect), but my question remains: what do I tell them? Are you urging me to tell them that this new record is utterly perfect rockroll music? That it is done up with as much fury and fun as brains and punk brawn? Do you want me to tell them that you’ve only gotten better and better and better with each record, with each song, with each and every glorious fucking note? Is that what you beseech of me with this record’s title? Are you hoping that I’ll go along and tell people how you’ve taken command of your songwriting craft at this point? Maybe tell them that you are now at a point where it seems that you could shine anytime, anyway, and anyhow you want? Because I’ll go to the highest mountain; I’ll scream from the tallest building; I’ll stand in the middle of rush hour traffic on the busiest highway’s and byway’s and howl your numerous and startlingly brilliant virtues to each and every horrified driver as they go by. I’ll wear your tour t-shirt, or I’ll paint messages on my middling aged flabby body. If you want me to tell my friends that this new record of yours is a fantastic slice of rockroll music, then let it be understood here and now: Mary Prankster’s Tell Your Friends is as good a rockroll record as your likely to hear this year. It’s far better than the new Audioslave record, and it’s pure gold when put up against the new Pearl Jam record, it rivals the Best of Fleetwood Mac compilation for pure bliss, and it tends to make an utterly frivolous joke out of Bruce Springsteen’s The Rising.

But you know all of that. You know that you tore the scabs from my dying rock and roll heart when you came to town and played live. You know that when you did the blood flowed forth filled with passion and rockroll verve. You know that the beat of my heart leapt like the funky groove of my favorite song on the new record (which, for a matter of record, is currently "Tell Your Friends (Part Deux) "Why be a regional hero when you’re a national treasure?!" Indeed! Indeed!

Oh Mary, how I wish it weren’t these things that you wanted me to tell my friends, although I do know it’s true – these are the things you command in those few words: Tell Your Friends. I so wish it were something more, something about us…about you, about me, about rockroll hearts beating as one, about leather jackets and riding together, as one, upon a staid, noble Harley. I weep at my own wishes for these wonderous daydreams to become truth, but alas, I am but a fool. I have your music, and that is more of you than I probably deserve. So I will do as you wish; I will tell my friends. I will tell them that rock and roll spirit, so often decried as having died an anonymous death, is truly alive and well. I will tell them all that this woman, Mary Prankster she is called, has revived the rock and roll form. I will tell my friends that they can still love rock and roll, and that Mary Prankster’s Tell Your Friends is where that love affair can be renewed!

This I do for you Mary, because I owe you. I owe you more than you will ever probably know.

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