Earlier this year I decided that I needed to cut my hair. It was too long, it was driving me crazy. The tangles, the constant in-my-face-ness of it, had to go.
I had a great idea: Adelle would cut the hair, we’d capture the event on our phones, I’d do a cover of Pavement’s Cut Your Hair and then edit it all together for a fun new addition to the Barlow Family General Substack! Me getting my hair cut to my version of the song, brilliant!!
I recorded the song and debuted it on RAW impressions:
The next step would be making the video. We planned to shoot it outside ‘cause getting hair all over the house would be a pain in the ass. But, it was raining the day we wanted to do it and raining the day after that. Then it happened: I didn’t want to cut my hair anymore. Was it my usually hyper-critical 13 year old, out of the blue, complimenting my look? Was it the way strangers greeted me, smiling, arms outstretched, as if I was Jesus? Was I becoming more Christ-like? Adelle confirmed that something had indeed changed, the hair had passed through a difficult phase and now it wasn’t long enough, it was just getting started!
So, there is no video to accompany my take on Pavement’s classic. Recording it has deepened my appreciation for the band though. Back in the day I was jealous of them. When they breezed on to the scene with Summer Babe it was clear, to me, that my overwrought, anxiety-ridden music wasn’t what people wanted to hear. I would not be able to sing ‘doot-doot-doot’ ‘bah-bah-bah’ or make something off-the-cuff feel classy and generous. I was doomed to be either too sincere or too sarcastic, too quiet or too abrasive, too out-there or too traditional. Pavement were a perfect mix, the fans rejoiced, I fretted
Those days of comparing myself to others are, if not totally gone, fading. Since recording Cut Your Hair I’ve played it live a dozen times and it feels great. The audience and myself get a break from me! Here’s my home-recorded, ‘full’ version.