* 56 UP (B)
* NOT FADE AWAY (B+)
(Both due on video in April)
* BILLY BRAGG at the KIMO THEATER (B)
Two years ago, I sat in the same pizza joint I have haunted weekly for at least six years. I watched the 20-somethings and 30-somethings come and go -- slacker dudes, casual women, beards, tattoos, knit caps, their damn phones. I was the mutant. As I walked out into the dusk that night, I was overwhelmed with a wave of recognition (if not mutilation): It's not my world anymore. Sure, I'm officially a respected authority figure, but culturally, my analog world of the '60s, '70s and '80s is not only a distant memory, but it's sealed in a time capsule.
I'm experiencing an extended wave of nostalgia lately -- lots of old college connections reconnecting -- and it's signaling a significant new chapter for me, so we're going to do this gauzy flashback in one comprehensive post and then take a great leap forwards. The subjects of this essay were born from 1946 to 1958 (mostly the late '50s, which means they're in their 50s), so they are boomers and my immediate elders, which means I have a thin generational divide to provide me a measure of remove, but I share their pop culture upbringing in enough ways to identify with them.
So what's it like to hit 50, and what was it like getting there?
Every seven years, I get to check in with the Brits who make up the Real World cast of Michael Apted's "7 Up" series, which debuted in 1964 and which this year presents those boys and girls as 56-year-olds entrenched in middle age. "56 Up" doesn't measure up to the last three stellar installments, but that's probably because it tends to be bathed in bittersweet bathos that reflects the growing wariness of the subjects -- with life and with this project -- and their weariness with trying to define themselves. (Apted himself, who assisted on the first program and has directed the rest, is now 72.)
More participants than usual note their hesitance to continue with this episode, and it is wearying for the viewer, as well, at times. With each layer, we get more flashbacks and more information to take in, and as the gang settles into middle age, not much new is happening beyond the arrival of grandchildren. Tough little Tony and forever wistful Suzy still break my heart. Snobby John will always annoy me; but bless his generosity. The other gals are sad. Neil still struggles to keep it together. This time around, his story is most fascinating, as he reveals about as much as any of them ever has -- about his struggles with depression, about his unreported relationships, about the fact that he writes nearly every day (imagine those memoirs!). Otherwise, Paul, Symon, Bruce, Nick and the rest are pretty much just plugging along, having handed things off to the young'uns.
Apted doesn't dig very deep, doesn't push his subjects much. In a refreshing twist, a few of the subjects turn on Apted and challenge him on some of his current and past actions. John, always sensitive about being lumped in with the blue bloods, sorely points out that his father died when John was 9, leaving him and his mother with a financial mess. Tony snaps back when Apted politely suggests that Tony might be racist when discussing the immigrant influx into London's East End. Tony is saved for last, perhaps because he is still the liveliest of the bunch and maybe because he is the only one who truly broke free from his class rank (the original point of this exercise). Apted lingers on Tony and his understanding wife luxuriating on the beach near their vacation home in Spain. And then their tans fade back to black-and-white for the traditional ending -- the flashback to the playground of the early '60s, where some of the children look as sad as they do now.
If "56 Up" is feeling gravity's pull, "Sopranos" creator David Chase, age 67, seems sprightly as he ventures into feature films. And he strolls out of the gate with a lovely period piece about the rise of our rock 'n' roll culture in the 1960s with an autobiographical story of young adults acting like they are changing the world when, in reality, whatever has been unleashed in their capitalist sphere is conniving to bend them to its will.
It would be easy to dismiss "Not Fade Away" as a cliched chronicle of an overexposed era, stuffed with played-out visual tropes. (Here's a spirited such dismantling of the film.) The set-up -- college kid, aggrieved by his gruff postwar dad, pursues rock glory and artsy liberated chicks -- is ripe for ridicule. And, granted, Chase certainly could have resisted the urge, for example, to linger on so many classic album covers. But this is more than a nostalgic, day-glo trip to the wonderful days of garage bands and post-pill women's liberation. At times it reminded me of Steve Tesich's immigrant's saga "Four Friends" (1981, directed by Arthur Penn), with its father-son and boy-pines-for-girl dynamics, though Chase is not nearly as earnest or melodramatic. And "Not Fade Away," while an easy target, is no Cameron Crowe boomer retro love drug or a sappy sentimental workout like "That Thing You Do."
Here's what I think David Chase is doing here:
- Puncturing the pretension of the '60s youth culture. He's not celebrating his own adolescence. In fact, he seems almost embarrassed by the arrogance of his cohort. Their attempts at existential brilliance come off as more silly than sober (though sweet).
- That shallowness of these free spirits is subtly contrasted with those who go off to war. Both father (WWII) and son (Vietnam) are spared from service, and that hole in their record undercuts their flashes of bravado.
- The era wasn't all peace and love and fun. Chase has reportedly battled depression his whole life, especially during his college years, and his young hero here captures the emptiness at the core of American culture at a critical juncture when the elders feared that the old world was unraveling and the youth were christening the enlightened Age of Aquarius.
- Music can seem to be a salvation and can even feel like the very stuff of life, but once you commodify it, it loses its magic power.
- Fawning camera shots of Cuban heels or drum kits don't serve to fetishize the symbols of the era; they're meant to convey that simple, fleeting pleasure such objects give us. It is such random moments that briefly snap us out of our funk.
- Some day, way in the future, all that memorabilia will be gone, and we'll get serious about those big philosophical questions, not just to impress our peers or piss off our parents, but to try to come to terms with the true crisis of self.
Finally, despite the somber overtones throughout, Chase punctuates the proceedings with his trademark stilted humor. Douglas' reaction to his father's third reference to looking like he "just got off the boat" is priceless. The dialogue throughout is understated and sharp.
In the end, Chase isn't interested in nostalgia. He's not wallowing in his reckless, affectless youth. He knows how it all turns out. He knows it was neither mindless fun nor the end of the world. He knows how "63 Up" will go.
I missed that psychedelic garage-band era, but rock 'n' roll has rescued me a few times. There was that Dex and Sara Romweber show amid a bunch of no-nothing planet-stealing 20-somethings in a sweaty Mercury Lounge in New York four years ago. And when I went to see Billy Bragg the other night I had no illusions that Mr. Love & Justice would either enlighten me somehow or reproduce the thrill of his October 1988 show at the Riv in Chicago, when he shared the bill (and a memorable foot-stompin' tune) with poor, confused Michelle Shocked.
Bragg brought a smooth band of young bucks with him to the KiMo Theater, Albuquerque's 1920s Deco-Pueblo landmark. His banter was as slick and witty as ever, though he laid on the liturgy as thick as his accent at times. His new songs were mostly pretty good. He kicked the boys off the stage midway through the night to be alone with his electric guitar for a three-song blast from the past. He got me teary-eyed with "Tank Park Salute" from his last really solid album, which came out three months after my dad died ("You were so tall / How could you fall?"), which is already a generation ago. He finished up his lone encore with "Great Leap Forwards."
The old boy is settling into middle age as well as the next bloke is, I suppose. He's less subtle and snarky than he was as a young man; now his polemics are more direct and thus more preachy. He's getting right to the point, but he's lecturing. And he oversells his connection to dear old Woody Guthrie.
It's a new phase for Billy, like for many of us. He's entering Dylan's traveling troubadour mode. He's punching the clock until retirement. I wouldn't blame him for being a bit cranky. After all, in 1988, he was at the top of his game, and he made the most of it -- musically, politically, and financially.
Twenty-five years later, he's a wise elder, surrounded by young bucks. It's not his world anymore either.
Final Word
For a nice remembrance of a journalist who took rock 'n' roll seriously as early as 1966, here's a fine obit of Paul Williams, founder of Crawdaddy.
Bonus Track
Back to the Future: Power-pop band Local H, which made a brief splash in the post-Nirvana '90s, tore the Launchpad a new one last night (here, from 2004):
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