An occasional feature in which we mark the songs of our relative youth as played over public muzak systems and beyond. Previous entries are here.
The first experience:
Date: 19 September 2021, 8:40 a.m.
Place: Trader Joe's
Song/Artist: "Steppin' Out" by Joe Jackson
Irony Matrix: 2.0 out of 10
Comment: Joe Jackson was a post-punk new-wave brat. He slashed through several
albums in the late '70s and then finally revealed himself as a moody,
flinty jazz aficionado via a collection of old jumpin' jive songs in
1981 and then the elegant Gershwin tribute "Night and Day" in 1982,
followed by a film soundtrack in '83 and some Miles Davis (or Chet Baker?)
cool in '84's "Body and Soul." It was quite a run through genres (he had also toyed with ska on 1980's "Beat Crazy"), and,
along with his snottiness toward fans who dared to make noise at his
concerts, by the mid- to late-'80s he was considered rather a dilettante. Nevertheless, I stuck with him through most of those twists and turns, even if he wasn't rewriting the thrashers "One More Time" or "I'm the Man" for my benefit.
Let's go back to that time. It's a weekend night in Chicago. The details are hazy. I've reached out to friends who were either there or have heard the legend being recounted multiple times, but they are drawing blanks regarding the context and specifics. (It most certainly will not translate as legendary in a modern telling to a broad audience. But here goes.)
The way I remember it, a few guys from our core group were walking late at night through the hoppin' streets, perhaps in the River North area. Jackson's own archives indicate that he played the Chicago Theatre in 1989 -- the first time in the city proper since 1982's gig at the Aragon Ballroom (Brawlroom) -- so let's go with that later downtown locale. (The Chicago Theatre is on State Street, down the road from our late-night diner haunt Tempo, so that makes '89 more likely.)
As I recall, the handful of us had seen another band earlier that night. My hazy memory says it was Firehose, the successor to Minutemen. (Archives also indicate that Firehose played Cabaret Metro in 1989.) OK, so let's go with that.
Let's just say we were full of punk and vinegar that night, Firehose still ringing in our ears, maybe a patty melt and strawberry shake from Tempo roiling in some of our bellies. We pass by the Chicago Theatre and see Joe Jackson's name on the marquee. "Christ," I say, "this guy's career sure went lollipop, didn't it? La-di-da, the Chicago Thee-uh-tah." I could imagine him shushing the crowd while noodling through "Not Here, Not Now," or some other highbrow composition. Other cheesy, mockable pianist-composers from previous generations sprang to mind.
I did an impromptu bit. As we passed in front of the venue, I
imagined myself as a heckler being kicked out of the classy Chicago
Theatre. I twisted my arm behind my back in agonizing pantomime, as if a
bouncer had hold of me and was about to hurl me to the curb. "He's
Marvin Hamlisch!!" I yelled over my shoulder. "He's Marvin Hamlisch!" My tiny audience roared.
And, scene. One of my all-time best mad-libs. It gets retold fondly. Fast-forward 32 years later. I'm a middle-age early-bird shopper on a Sunday morning at, you guessed it, Trader Joe's. Is that Gershwin? Hamlisch? No, it's Joe Jackson, steppin' out. Great song. Graham Maby's bass bouncing along. I always loved this couplet, with its initial internal rhyme and color-matching: "Youuu ... dress in pink and blue, just like a child / and in a yellow taxi turn to me and smile."
It's been a while since I stalked a city with a pack of wild animals.
The second event:
Date: 24 September 2021, 6:50 a.m.
Place: On the road, I-25 somewhere between Truth or Consequences and Hatch, N.M.
Song/Artist: "Anchorage" by Michelle Shocked
Irony Matrix: 1.2 out of 10
Comment: This one I can pinpoint with precision. The archives place the concert in October 1988 at the Riviera Theater. (Bill Wyman, writing in the Chicago Reader, called it a "an extravagant success.") Michelle Shocked, before she unraveled as a fraud and a lunatic, was doing her aw-shucks Lady Dylan troubadour act, opening for Billy Bragg.
It was less than a month before the post-Reagan American election between Bush I and Dukakis, though Bragg saved most of his venomous one-liners for Bush's ridiculous running mate, that memorable idiot Dan Quayle. It had been about 10 days since the "You're no Jack Kennedy" debate between Quayle and Lloyd Bentsen, and Bragg was relentless in his mockery. One line I remember, "Dan Quayle said he was inspired by his grandmother, who told him, 'Son, you can do anything you want in this world. ... And here's a million dollars to go do it.'" Bragg was at the top of his game, touring behind "Workers Playtime" and his new hit that would enter the pantheon, "Waiting for the Great Leap Forwards." (Keep hope alive!)
Michelle Shocked had put out her first proper studio album, "Short Sharp Shocked," and she was the opening act. She was the It Girl of the working-class left, the hope of a folkie revival, and she was cute, to boot. (I was so shallow ... back then.) Thanks to Wyman's piece, history supports my recollection of Bragg joining Shocked for her final song, which they wrote together, called "Waiting for a New Deal Now." I recall it had the line "What we need is some [Jesse] Jackson action!"
It was a heady night -- Bragg with a "Lick Bush" sticker on his guitar; Shocked emerging as a potential superstar with songs like "Hello Hopeville" and "If Love Was a Train." That night, in a swirl of delusion that a nerdy governor from Massachusetts could slay Reaganism, was as much political rally as rock concert. But, while we meant every word and feeling, it all quickly turned out to be illusory. (Welcome to my quarter-life crisis.)
I'm not just referring to the four extended years of Bush-Quayle and the first foray into Iraq, etc. It also was the abrupt unraveling of Shocked in a matter of months. Like Joe Jackson, she decided that her follow-up album would be a melange of outdated styles, like bebop and Dixieland jazz. (It was called "Captain Swing.") Her cleverly crafted back story, like Dylan's, would prove to be mostly fictional. In later years, she would pose in blackface for album art and rant against homosexuality (trashing same-sex marriage at a show in San Francisco, of all places).
Shocked, in retrospect, had been playing a role. Dylan got away with it. She didn't. Them's the breaks. But she did write some pretty good songs there in the '80s. One of them is "Anchorage" -- "anchored down in Anchorage." When you're 25 and full of spit and vinegar and clinging to political pipe dreams, you're vulnerable to a one-two punch like Shocked and Bragg. Decades later, we're still waiting on that new New Deal. So long, Hopeville? I hope not.
My randomized song list played "Anchorage" while I was driving last month from Truth or Consequences to Las Cruces for a breakfast for scholarship participants at New Mexico State University. I'm part of a group that started a scholarship in memory of a former Albuquerque Tribune colleague, and it had been a while since we got face-to-face with NMSU administrators and students. The soundtrack for the one-hour trip alternated between modern stuff (Waxahatchee, Tinariwen, Beyonce) and obscure '60s garage rock, and there in between, from the late '80s, those heady days, was Michelle Shocked bantering in verse with an old friend. I can't embed a link to a version of Shocked's "Anchorage," but here's a link to her butchering it in a video found on Facebook.Whatever happened to that woman?
BONUS TRACK
Here's Firehose (we used to stylize it along with the band as fIREHOSE, but we've moved on) playing Public Enemy's "Sophisticated Bitch" at Metro in '89:
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