Two Tribes Friday, June 11, 2004

Another thought I forgot...Christ, they look old, don't they? Lech and Maggie and John Paul and Gorby. That moved me too: the sense that these cunning campaigners all survived, that they outlasted the critics. Remember how the cowboy was going to blow up the world, and the Iron Lady was going to starve the working class?

@ 5:52:00 PM, ,

The Last Gentleman

Getaway day, as they say in the big leagues. A fabbo lunch with some great friends from the office--including a three-tiered tower of shellfish that guarantees a prime spot against the wall when the revolution comes. Shook the hands that needed shaking, a couple of hugs, left the office feeling like my head was one big stuffed sinus.

I am the worst kind of sentimentalist: Every choice I make leaves me haunted by alternatives. I'm going to miss my friends in New York terribly. I'm going to miss the rhythm of the commute. I'm going to miss the tense friendships with reporters on deadline. But everything else about it was wrong, as I've taken pains not to say over the past thirteen months. I wish I could be glad to be out, uncomplicatedly, but mais no. Elvis Costello: That's the game that comedy plays/Sometimes it tells you the truth/Sometimes it delays it.

Anyhow, back to old friends and old rhythms. I understand they've taken away our candy machines since I've been gone...

Getaway day for Brother Ray and President Gun as well. Not much to say about Mr. Charles: I dig his stuff but I don't know it well enough to comment. (Except to say that "Georgia on My Mind" was written in my hometown in Queens. In case you didn't know.) I read an account the other day that Mrs. Thatcher curtsied to the president's coffin as it passed; that struck a deep chord. Class, I think: a gesture of simple dignity for a friend and peer. Compare, for example, with Elvis Costello, cited above, who promised to dance on her grave--because she dragged Britain out of a scerlotic nightmare of price controls and constant strikes, and because she had the grit to speak simply about the state of the world. (I just lost the Johnny Rotten vote, I realize.)

To top it off, I saw this picture:



Finally I realized the enormity of what Reagan had accomplished. Here you have a Soviet Bloc dockworker--a nobody; less than nobody--who was able to show up Communism for a lie and become a world leader. All of it because of the inspiration and implicit muscle of a nation that had, just years before, consigned itself to second-class status and a long grey future of appeasement.

When I see that picture I think of St. Peter: an ordinary guy on a pier who changed the world; but also compelling evidence (a signpost, maybe?) of the validity of the message. Your proclamations don't mean much if you can't persuade the Lech Walesas and Simon Peters of the world.

God bless, and goodbye.

@ 5:15:00 PM, ,

The Captain of Her Heart Wednesday, June 09, 2004

An old friend, a Springsteen fan and besieged supply-sider living in Taxachusetts, writes:

Isn't there an ombudsman I can report you to anonymously at the WSJ
concerning your heretical Ronald Reagan views? Where the orthodoxy?
Where's the love?

I'm sorry: I just don't feel it. In retrospect I can muster up respect and maybe some awe at the achievements. I definitely feel the passing of an era, and get a sense of diminuendo about our current leadership. And, after reading his speeches and letters, I can safely call the guy a brilliant operator. But the love just won't come. He deserves it, I know, more than the idiot songwriters I worry about or Spock, for whom I cried. It just ain't there. All my feelings about him come at a remove. Something about him struck me, and still strikes me, as an act--a supremely competent one, and a supremely correct one, but still an act.

Now, back to my music correspondent, who writes in with a strangely apposite comment:

I guess that I would agree with your underlying premise, but am more swayed by emotional impact than the promise of a solution: A song that lays out how we're destroying the earth would probably hit harder than one that evidenced the benefits of recycling.

First off, just to be a heartless prick: We're destroying the Earth? You sure about that?

Second off, I agree completely! I don't want treatises. (PJ Harvey: I can't believe life's so complex/When I just wanna sit here and watch you undress. Boogie on, reggae woman!) At the same time, I'd like the guys who are smart to be smart about everything. Or at least as open-minded as they imagine themselves to be. (Witness the link above, and then ask yourself whether Sting would ever write a song inspired by it.)

My music correspondent goes on to mention 9/11 songs and how they mostly fall flat. I agree, as I wrote in The Daily Worker a while ago. The best, I think, is Becker and Fagen's "The Last Mall"--which avoids all the usual temptations (mawkishness, anger and why can't we be friends?):

Attention all shoppers
It's Cancellation Day
Yes the Big Adios
Is just a few hours away

It's last call
To do your shopping
At the Last Mall

You'll need the tools for survival
And the medicine for the blues
Sweet treats and surprises
For the little buckaroos

It's last call
To do your shopping
At the Last Mall

We've got a sweetheart Sunset Special
On all of the standard stuff
'Cause in the morning --that gospel morning
You'll have to do for yourself when the going gets tough

Roll your cart back up the aisle
Kiss the checkout girls goodbye
Ride the ramp to the freeway
Beneath the blood orange sky

It's last call
To do your shopping
At the Last Mall

Now that's an original take. If we aren't snarky jazzbos, the terrorists have won!

@ 6:10:00 AM, ,

Watergate Does Not Bother Me Tuesday, June 08, 2004

Letters, I get letters. This one from the proprietor of the second-to-last Homely House in Jersey City, N.J. (and a fellow Central European aesthete no less):

Are there any artists who actually meet the protest song criteria you're proposing? If not, why are you holding them to that standard? It seems a little
disingenuous--faulting a genre for the very things that make it a genre.

It's like saying "Y'know, country music would be great if they didn't have all those songs about drinking." Or, perhaps a bit closer to the mark,
"Singer/songwriters would be a lot more fun to listen to if they'd stop singing about love and lighten the fuck up already."

I will grant you that, Phil Ochs and most of early Dylan notwithstanding, protest songs are more of a sub-genre than an actual genre to themselves and as
such are a bit more difficult to avoid; however, there are plenty of pop and rock folks who steer clear of anything resembling controversy--just take a look at the Top Ten albums in this week's Billboard for a sampling.

And "rebelling against daddy?" Not to belittle your argument, but DUH. What is rock 'n' roll for if not to dance, make out, and piss off your folks? Asking for complexity in the context of a 3-minute tune is like asking for Proust in comic book form--sure, it happens, but in general it's not something the general public looks for, expects, or in large measure supports.

Which is not to say that what you're suggesting isn't a worthy goal, but given the political leanings of most musicians and the limitations of the musical
genre itself, I certainly wouldn't be holding my breath.

All of these are spectacularly good points. Let me try my best to answer:

Are there any artists who actually meet the protest song criteria you're proposing?

As I said at some point, I love Phil Ochs's "I Ain't Marchin' Anymore," even if I don't agree with it. Joe Strummer has written some brilliant protest songs that are danceable despite themselves. (Chair-danceable, anyhow.)

In general, though, I like "observation" songs more than "protest" ones. John Prine wrote a lovely song called "The Great Compromise" about Vietnam-era America that's sad, funny and affectionate instead of sloganeering--as usual, he uses a striking, homely metaphor (America as cheatin' girlfriend) and just keeps building on it with image after image. What the hell, here's the song:

I knew a girl who was almost a lady
She had a way with all the men in her life
Every inch of her blossomed in beauty
And she was born on the fourth of July
Well she lived in an aluminum house trailer
And she worked in a juke box saloon
And she spent all the money I give her
Just to see the old man in the moon

Chorus:
I used to sleep at the foot of Old Glory
And awake in the dawn's early light
But much to my surprise
When I opened my eyes
I was a victim of the great compromise

Well we'd go out on Saturday evenings
To the drive-in on Route 41
And it was there that I first suspected
That she was doin' what she'd already done
She said "Johnny won't you get me some popcorn"
And she knew I had to walk pretty far
And as soon as I passed through the moonlight
She hopped into a foreign sports car
(Repeat chorus)

Well you know I could have beat up that fellow
But it was her that had hopped into his car
Many times I'd fought to protect her
But this time she was goin' too far
Now some folks they call me a coward
'Cause I left her at the drive-in that night
But I'd druther have names thrown at me
Than to fight for a thing that ain't right
(Repeat chorus)

Now she writes all the fellows love letters
Saying "Greetings, come and see me real soon"
And they go and line up in the barroom
And spend the night in that sick woman's room
But sometimes I get awful lonesome
And I wish she was my girl instead
But she won't let me live with her
And she makes me live in my head

(Repeat chorus)

That's a hard song to hate, no matter what your politics are. Another great "observation" tune is Martin Sexton's "The American" (imagine this backed by a weird '50s style doo-wop chorus and Calexico guitars):

I will always love you
Uncertainty I love you
Spacious skies I love you
I'll find new ways to love you
All these miles of ghostly west
The Hopis lost to Spain
Now belong to me
I'm the American
I could be a cowboy
Or just a hired hand
Twisters come in April
And rearrange the land
Pick me up and throw me west
A thousand miles from home
Dreaming up my fix
I'm the American
Abilene, old New Mexico
High and dry
Flagstaff Arizone
Cool water
Sipping silver stream
This is my
American dream
I know a squaw in Winslow
Who swears by candlelight
She said she'd leave the back door
Open tonight
Three weeks pay will keep me off
The wrong side of the law
Dreaming up my fix
Getting somewhere quick
I'm the American
And I'll always love you

Ditto David Byrne, before he took a header into the Molasses Swamp of Chomskyism:

Right where you are standing
The dinosaurs did a dance
The Indians told a story
Now it has come to pass
The Indians had a legend
The Spaniards lived for gold
The white man came and killed them
But they haven't really gone
We live in the city of dreams
We drive on the highway of fire
Should we awake
And find it gone
Remember this, our favorite town
From Germany and Europe
And Southern U.S.A.
They made this little town here
That we live in to this day
The children of the white man
Saw Indians on TV
And heard about the legend
How their city was a dream
We live in the city of dreams
We drive on the highway of fire
Should we awake
And find it gone
Remember this, our favorite town
The Civil War is over
And World War One and Two
If we can live together
The dream it might come true
Underneath the concrete
The dream is still alive
A hundred million lifetimes
A world that never dies
We live in the city of dreams
We drive on the highway of fire
Should we awake
And find it gone
Remember this, our favorite town

So that's the kind of stuff I like. I think politics is the enemy of aesthetics. (Or, as Elvis Costello put it in an otherwise dopey political song, Life intimidates art.) A song is a song is a song. I don't want a campaign speech or a treatise.

But, as my correspondent points out:

It seems a little disingenuous--faulting a genre for the very things that make it a genre. ... What is rock 'n' roll for if not to dance, make out, and piss off your folks? Asking for complexity in the context of a 3-minute tune is like asking for Proust in comic book form--sure, it happens, but in general it's not something the general public looks for, expects, or in large measure supports.

Well, here's my concern. I think I share with my correspondent a deep affection for a certain nonindicative sliver of pop music: stuff that's intellectually satisfying (or at least interesting) at the same time that it delivers the Necessities of Rock. (The mysteries of roll!) To my mind, this sub-sub-segment can boast the best lyricists working today: Ron Sexsmith, Joe Henry, Richard Thompson, Robert Forster and Grant McClellan. My correspondent would probably toss in Bob Mould, the Pernice Brothers and Mark Eitzel. These are not just balls-to-you-big-daddy Gene Vincent rock-n-rollers: These are guys and gals doing smart work in a dumbass genre.

This is the music I listen to every day. It's not as refined or as gorgeous as pop standards, but it speaks to my twenty-first-century impatience and need to scream things while I'm sitting in traffic. And it depresses me that none of these smart guys and gals are smart enough to recognize (1) that political songs are fiercely dull (2) that their positions are blinkered and trite. I'm not saying I want Richard Thompson to turn into Toby Keith, whose suckitude can be seen from space. I just want these artists to address politics, if necessary, with the same fabulous talent they use to concoct Crummy Relationship Song #453.

To sum up: I don't think I'm asking the impossible, because I'm not asking rock-n-roll as a whole to change. I just want the subset of rock-n-roll that's already proved its smarts to keep proving them by either steering clear of politics or, if they must enter the clown's mouth, do it with some levity and grace. The very guys who are protesting now have written better protest songs in the past! They can do it again. Again, if they absolutely must.

@ 9:26:00 AM, ,

Just to Be Prurient... Monday, June 07, 2004

This is the Internet, right? From a story in a certain major business daily about how famously uptight city-state Singapore is now sort of allowing chewing gum:

When Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong reproposed the ban on sales of gum to parliament after the incident on the train, "ministers who had studied in America recounted how the underside of lecture theater seats were filthy with chewing gum stuck to them like barnacles," Mr. Lee writes. (It was never illegal to bring come into the country for personal use.)

@ 11:59:00 AM, ,

Everything Gives You Cancer Sunday, June 06, 2004

Time for the make-believe ballroom! Joe Jackson, circa 1986:

Stop everything
I think I hear the President
The Pied Piper of the TV screen
Is gonna make it simple
And he's got it all mapped out
And illustrated with cartoons
Too hard for clever folks to understand
They're more used to words like:
Ideology . . .
They're not talkin' 'bout right and left
They're talkin' 'bout

Right and wrong - do you know the difference
Right and wrong - do you know the difference
'Tween the right and the left and the east and the west
What you know and the things that you'll never see

So what ya think
You like the Yankees or the Mets this year
And what about this latest war of words
And what about the Commies
I saw the news last night
All illustrated with cartoons
So when they come with that opinion poll
They better not use words like
Ideology . . .
Or try to tell me 'bout the issues
Ideology . . .
Whose side are you on
We're talkin' 'bout

Right and wrong - do you know the difference
Right and wrong - do you know the difference
'Tween the right and the left and the east and the west
What you know and the things that you'll never see

Where are we?

Right and wrong - do you know the difference
Right and wrong - do you know the difference
'Tween the right and the left and the east and the west
What you know and the things that you'll never see

Yeah, man! You tell 'em! I vividly remember Jackson going on Johnny Carson in his fuck-you-man outfit: trenchcoat and T-shirt. His song was about Mrs. Thatcher that time--another leader who wasn't as smart as he was, who couldn't see that the real problem wasn't the "enemy" but...er, something else, unspecified of course.

I defy you to read the lyrics above and explain what, precisely, he's complaining about--except that nobody's acknowledging that he's smarter than Reagan (and most of the American people, presumably excluding the ones who bought his records). Which is what rock-and-roll protest songs always come down to: Rebelling against daddy turns into rebelling against an even bigger daddy. There's no acknowledging of alternatives, no nod to context--Johnny B. Goode wants something and daddy's not delivering.

And, note, it's always one's own "daddy"--never the kid across the street. I am not intimately familiar with Joe's catalog from the late 1970s, but I think I can state with some certainty that he never wrote a song about, say, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan or the killing factories of the Khmer Rouge. (Unless there's a subtext to "Is She Really Going Out With Him?" that I missed.)

I'm not saying "don't write protest songs." Nor am I saying the Anglosphere is faultless, nor that it should never be criticized even when there's reasonable disagreement about its faults. What I'm saying is, if you're gonna criticize don't be an ass about it. Think about the context of what you're criticizing, and think about whether there are worse offenses in the world.

I would recommend this also to Elvis Costello, who about the same time as Joe was releasing his opus above wrote a song about how he couldn't wait to dance on Margaret Thatcher's grave. This coming several years after a song ("Shipbuilding") that attempted to turn the Falklands war into an apocalyptic sci-fi scenario. Again...Elvis baby...Great Leap Forward? The Killing Fields? For Chrissakes, Havana? Any of this ring a bell?

Again, I am not some blinkered fan of Ronald Reagan; but his achievements are undeniable. And as for his critics, as I quoted Kingsley Amis writing below:

Ronnie got through the morning with the unwelcome aid of Drugs: the New Dissent and LBJ--Tool of Fascism. The former suggested to him that the penalties for going out of your way to inflict on chaps and unshocked and deeply understanding human document about bloody little fools who took drugs should be in line with the penalties for peddling the stuff; the latter that whatever LBJ might or might be a tool of he hated him slightly less than most of the people the author liked.

@ 11:14:00 AM, ,