Soundtrack of Your Life is an occasional feature in which we mark
the songs of our relative youth as played over public muzak systems.
Thefirst time I heard the full version of John Lennon performing live with Elton John recorded on Thanksgiving 1974, it gave me chills. It was on a 10-inch single released after Lennon died in 1980. It is the introduction of Lennon -- to a stunned, thunderous crowd at Madison Square Garden -- that does itto me. ("Seeing as it's Thanksgiving ...").
Lennon had promised Elton that if the song they collaborated on -- "Whatever Gets You Through the Night" -- went to No. 1, he would join the superstar on stage and sing it with him. The song did, in fact, hit the top of the charts, Elton visited MSG, and Lennon, a bundle of nerves, jumped onstage for three songs. They played Lennon's recent No. 1; Elton's same-year hit cover of the Beatles' "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds"; and an old chestnut (from "an old, estranged fiance of mine, called Paul ... one I never sang"), "I Saw Her Standing There" ("a number to finish up with so that I can get out of here and be sick"). They brought the house down. (That was also the night that Lennon began his reunion with Yoko Ono, who was also invited backstage.)
"Whatever Gets You Through the Night" is not just another peppy track on one of my favorite albums, "Walls & Bridges," released when I was 11. So when I walk into a hardware store and it's spilling from the speakers, I still get that Thanksgiving buzz. (The small-town Ace Hardware was big enough to have two sound systems playing, one in each half of the store. The other side was spinning Chicago's "25 or 6 to 4.")
In 1974, Elton John was approaching the height of his powers and fame. This fluke of a concert appearance would be Lennon's last, which would not become apparent for six years. The live recording -- teased first with the 1975 "Philadelphia Freedom" single, which features "I Saw Her Standing There" on the B-side -- is 14 minutes of pure joy. Imagine having been there that night. (Instead, I went to see Elton with family in 1976 at Chicago Stadium and was treated to Billy Connolly as an opening act singing "The Shitkickers Waltz." But Kiki Dee was there, too, so ...)
Soundtrack of Your Life is an occasional feature in which we mark the songs of our relative youth as played over public muzak systems.
We were at the Albuquerque Sunport, waiting for our Alaska Air flight to Seattle, the start of a working vacation -- a long weekend in Seattle, followed by a midweek mediation in Vancouver, Wash., and an arbitration hearing near Eugene, Ore., before wrapping up with a weekend in Portland that culminated in a concert at McMenamins Edgefield.
The airport playlist was doubling down on the '70s. There was my favorite Gordon Lightfoot song, "Sundown," which we featured five years ago when reviewing the documentary about the Canadian singer-songwriter. But the ringer was "Bad Time," an unabashedly syrupy pop confection by Grand Funk (Railroad), the flinty long-haired power-rock quartet from Flint, Mich., who were partial to covers of '60s lollipop songs. They had hits with Little Eva's "The Loco-Motion" and the Soul Brothers Six's "Some Kind of Wonderful." They put more muscle into their own compositions, such as "We're an American Band" (No. 1 in 1973) and the epic saga "Closer to Home (I'm Your Captain)" (their first Top 40 single, from 1970).
"Bad Time" was written by Mark Farner while he was going through a divorce. It peaked at No. 4 in spring 1975, and it was not out of place alongside similar throwback tunes of the era like "December, 1963 (Oh, What a Night)" by Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons (an ultimate guilty pleasure) or as a counter-balance to "Love Will Keep Us Together," which "Bad Time" was chasing up the charts.
I'm sure all the burnouts who worshiped the band in grungier days were appalled at the band's mid-decade descent into sap. (Producer Jimmy Ienner had worked with the Raspberries and Bay City Rollers.) I have a vivid memory of spinning the song at an '80s party, when it would have been considered the height of hipster retro, and my friend Marcy, a connoisseur of all things bubblegum, positively swooning over it.
(The song comes from the album "All the Girls in the World Beware," which is notable as the only record I ever won in a contest. I figured out a way to game the system for the giveaway by WLS-AM (the big 89). You had to be the first caller when you heard the WLS theme rendered in phone tones. I had a plan. When the station ran a string of commercials, I would get ready by dialing the first six numbers, poised to hit the seventh as soon as I heard the prompt. I still have the vinyl album, with a cut-out notch in the upper right-hand corner of the cover.)
At the tail end of the trip, we spent our last full day in Portland at Edgefield for another round with the Pixies. Opening were Spoon and Fazerdaze, whose show closer, "Bigger," reminds me of John Lennon's "No. 9 Dream":
Fazerdaze (New Zealander Amelia Murray with Dave Rowlands) did not play our favorite single, "Treading Lightly":
Spoon crunched through a set of about 14 power-pop tracks. Talk about '70s throwbacks, I'm partial lately to 2017's "You Got Yr. Cherry Bomb":
A highlight was "Wild":
BONUS TRACKS
The Pixies opened with five or six newer songs before segueing into the classics, like "Wave of Mutilation" (both versions), "Gouge Away" and a meaty "Head On" (their Jesus & Mary Chain cover). Once "Planet of Sound" kicked in, the band was fully in their catatonic state of unrelenting noise rock. They built to the inevitable climax, "Where Is My Mind?," and then tossed in a bonus track. As the stage filled with white smoke, Black Francis ceded the microphone to bassist Emma Richardson for a haunting version of the trippy b-side "Into the White." Here is Kim Deal's original from 1991:
Soundtrack of Your Life is an occasional feature in which we mark the
songs of our relative youth as played over public muzak systems.
Gen X has certainly made its move in completing its takeover of the soundtracks in restaurants and bars. Ex Novo opened last year in Downtown Albuquerque, a descendant of a hipster brew pub that started in Portland, Ore.
Most of the songs during this lunch date with a friend were classics straight out of the Heyday of the Planet of Sound -- the late '80s and early '90s. There were tracks from the Replacements, Sonic Youth, Hole, Fugazi and plenty more. The one that stood out the most was perhaps the original seed planted in 1981, from the debut album by the Replacements, the one that inspired the greats to come, like Nirvana and the Pixies. We marveled at the greatest hits of our 20s as we caught up with an old friend.
Date: February 25, 2025, 1 p.m. hour
Place: Ex Novo in Downtown Albuquerque
Song: "Johnny's Gonna Die"
Artist: The Replacements
Irony Matrix: 4.2 out of 10
Comment: Here is the video that Rhino Records made in 2021 for the 40th anniversary of the album "Sorry, Ma, Forgot to Take Out the Trash":
Here is Fugazi with "Long Division":
BONUS TRACK
Date: March 6, 2025, 5:20 p.m.
Place: Buffalo Bar & Grill in Payson, Ariz.
Song: "I Will Survive"
Artist: Cake
Irony Matrix: 3.8 out of 10
Comment: This one popped up during a dinner break on a road trip to Phoenix. Cake's album "Fashion Nugget" is one of our favorites of all time. With all due respect to Gloria Gaynor, who performs the quintessential version of "I Will Survive," Cake places its Gen X ironic stamp on the product of the disco era. I never tire of any of the 14 tracks on the album, from "Frank Sinatra" to a heartbreaking cover of Willie Nelson. (The matrix glitched a few songs later when the muzak system puked out "Mr. Roboto" by Styx, perhaps the nadir of the previous era.)
Soundtrack of Your Life is an occasional feature in which we mark the
songs of our relative youth as played over public muzak systems.
Date: February 22, 2025, 9 a.m. hour
Place: Chuze Fitness in Uptown Albuquerque
Song: "Beds Are Burning"
Artist: Awolnation ft. Tim McIlrath
Song: "We Didn't Start the Fire"
Artist: Fall Out Boy
Irony Matrix: 1.9 out of 10
Comment: I was on the elliptical at the gym and heard "Beds Are Burning" come on, and it just didn't seem right; it didn't have the oomph that I was used to. That's because it wasn't the 1987 original -- by Midnight Oil -- but instead a cover from a couple of years ago by Awolnation. I don't know what exactly is lacking in the new version, but it never achieves lift-off. Is it merely that the vocals are not by Peter Garrett, the frontman for Midnight Oil? Was there something about the urgency of the Reagan era that doesn't translate to the Trump era? Do I remember the video and a fonder time from my (relative) youth? Is it just a crappier version? The new version has a techno feel to it (and, for some reason, a "Munsters" groove line). There's just no snap to it, however. And the vocals (by Tim McIlrath of Rise Against) feel shouted; so, props to Garrett as the O.G. in this one. Here is the original.
And then there is the infamous 2023 sequel to Billy Joel's much-ribbed 1989 original of "We Didn't Start the Fire." Let's call the original the beginning of the end of the MTV era. It was a list song, churning through Joel's 40 years on earth (he was born in 1949) and hopscotching along the global highlights of the second half of the 20th century, a "This Is Your Life" to all Boomers still stuck on JFK's assassination and the arrival of the Beatles and biding their time until Fox News would come along in the mid '90s.
Joel's song actually reached No. 1 on the charts (he had only three in his career, and the other two are just as forgettable). I didn't have anything against the song -- it's clever in spots -- and I'm a pretty big Billy Joel fan; I just was more interested in Nine Inch Nails at the time. Anyway, Fall Out Boy (!) thought it would be a good idea to carry the torch and draft a whole new version, updating the years from 1989 to 2023. From a simple Google search, I learned that the band has been savagely roasted over it. I'm sure it's not much worse than the original (I haven't listened to it closely), but it's certainly not essential listening. And maybe the point here is that Joel made a lot of things look easy; I'd put him in the songwriting category a notch below the ones at the top -- Paul Simon, Willie Nelson, Bob Dylan, Lennon-McCartney and Robert Pollard. In his prime he was brilliant. I haven't heard anyone say that about Fall Out Boy, but then I'm a little out of touch with the emo kids.
It did remind me that I've been working on a joke forever about taking my own stab at updating "We Didn't Start the Fire." It goes like this. "I see Fall Out Boy did an update of Billy Joel's 'We Didn't Start the Fire' by writing new lyrics that touch on all the crucial people and world-shattering events that have rocked the globe since his song was released, right up to the present day. I worked really hard on it. I think it encapsulates every key moment that led us to where we are at this moment. Like the original, you have to sing it really fast, listing things rapid-fire. And I had to memorize the whole thing. I think I can't do it for you now. (Long pause.) Here goes:
"Kim Kardashian
Donald Trump.
"Thank you."
That's the bit. No need to embed a video of either version, right?
Soundtrack of Your Life is an occasional feature in which we mark the
songs of our relative youth as played over public muzak systems.
That Hulu binge we were on allowed for some TV viewing. We revisited "My So-Called Life" from 1994-95, and I was reminded of how charmed I was back in the day not only by the interactions of the three engaging teens but also by the parents, whose age I was closer to at the time. Claire Danes as, like, the beta emo chick; the endlessly appealing A.J. Langer as the art-punk Rayanne; Wilson Cruz as shy gay Rickie; and, of course, Jared Leto as Jordan Catalano! I picked up on Winnie Holzman's call-backs to "Square Pegs," another short-lived gem from more than a decade earlier.
It's the soundtrack that helps sell the show. The first episode crescendoed with the now-cliche "Everybody Hurts" from R.E.M., and the 19-show playlist includes such early '90s darlings as Juliana Hatfield, the Cranberries, Afghan Whigs, Archers of Loaf, and even a nugget from Daniel Johnston (at least on the soundtrack).
The show premiered in late 1994, coasting on the gasoline fumes of the Heyday of the Planet of Sound, which had ended just months earlier with the death of Kurt Cobain (whose R.I.P. Rolling Stone cover is glimpsed during the Halloween episode). In my car I've been listening to an Apple Music algorithm that has spun off from that era's Wedding Present and Wonderstuff into some deep cuts (James' "Sit Down," for example). I'm reminded that nothing has quite sounded like Inspiral Carpets, either before or after their run three decades ago.
I could go on about "My So-Called Life," but the song that inspired this post appeared in episode 11, spinning, improbably, at the high school dance. It was from those faux hipster-doofuses from the Chicago scene, Urge Overkill. That same year they would break big on the "Pulp Fiction" soundtrack with a Neil Diamond cover (that was originally on their "Stull" EP). When I heard the song last night I needed to Shazam it in order to identify the familiar beat.
Date: November 21, 2023, 7:20 p.m.
Place: Home
Song: "Dropout"
Artist: Urge Overkill
Irony Matrix: 1.5 out of 10
Comment: With the album "Saturation," Urge Overkill went national with ironic power-rock songs like "Sister Havana," "Erica Kane" and "Bottle of Fur." "Dropout" is dripping with angst. "You're too old to cry," they deadpan, "you're too young to die." They name-check Dairy Queen. It fades out with a pleasant shuffle after nearly five minutes. The boys took a lot of crap as poseurs and obnoxious scenesters. They had indie cred on Touch and Go Records, working with star producer/engineers Butch Vig and Steve Albini. With "Saturation" they sold out to Geffen Records, and they would quickly flame out in '95, doomed to the cut-out bins. For a while they held their own with Chicago rivals Smashing Pumpkins, Liz Phair and Veruca Salt. It was a moment.
Albini would infamously turn on Urge Overkill and the others, in a blistering letter to the weekly Chicago Reader titled "Three Pandering Sluts and Their Music-Press Stooge," a literal "fuck you" to rock critic Bill Wyman. Castigating the bands as major-label whores, he refers to UO as "Weiners in suits playing frat party rock, trying to tap a goofy trend that doesn’t even exist." The whole letter is worth a read. (The vivid language still resonates, from "you wave your boob flag proudly" to "you don't know shit from fat meat.") I still laugh at his comparison of Phair to Rickie Lee Jones ("a fucking chore to listen to"). Like I said, it was a moment, and we tended to get a little het up about such things.
I found something to appreciate about Urge Overkill, Smashing Pumpkins ("Siamese Dream" still mostly holds up) and even Phair, who, bless her heart, couldn't sing (every generation gets the Stevie Nicks it deserves), but "Girls! Girls! Girls!" is a great single. Urge Overkill might have, as Albini predicted, blown their promo wads and sunk into obscurity, but their early stuff had some heft to it. We'll always have Guyville.
BONUS TRACK
Episode 12 of "My So-Called Life" promises a live performance by the era's ultimate power trio Buffalo Tom. Let's spin one of our all-time favorites (and my dog Remy's, too, at the time), "Velvet Roof":
Soundtrack of Your Life is an occasional feature in which we mark the
songs of our relative youth as played over public muzak systems.
Date: October 5, 2023, noon
Place: Chuze Fitness in Uptown Albuquerque
Song: "Kiss Them for Me"
Artist: Siouxsie and the Banshees
Irony Matrix: 3.3 out of 10
Comment: It was just faint enough at first and so out of context, that I had to hum it a bit as I did some ab crunches before I recognized the melody, and, caught off-guard, I assumed it was a cover. But no, I checked the monitor, and there was Siouxsie Sioux along with Budgie and the Banshees in the video.
This might have been the band at its acme. Formed in the '70s after a Roxy Music show at the peak of punk, Siouxsie and the boys spent the '80s as a fringe goth outfit, known as much for their covers ("The Passenger," "Dear Prudence") as their originals ("Cities in Dust," "Peek-a-Boo"). They were more of a presence in dance clubs and on "120 Minutes" than they were in my record collection.
But "Kiss Them for Me" was a legitimate top-40 hit, and it led directly into their co-headline billing at the first Lollapalooza in 1991. Siouxsie's mascara was legendary. She was the only woman fronting a band that day, sandwiched between Living Colour and Jane's Addiction. (Miki Berenyi and Lush would have that distinction the following year.) For us, she was the capper. We decided to beat traffic and skip most of Jane's Addiction finale. It was a proper pinnacle for a unique band. "Kiss Them for Me" places them firmly in the pantheon.
At the gym on Thursday, the music selection veered from mainstream pop to the National*. There is was, the new single, "Tropic Morning News." I've been listening to the new album, "The First Two Pages of Frankenstein," and I read the band profile in the New Yorker a few weeks ago, and the new songs haven't clicked yet. After Siri plays the album, she wanders off to some Matt Berninger solo work, and those songs resonate more.
As I emerged from the locker room to start my workout, there was the unmistakable tenor of Berninger's mumble and the familiar new tune. My buddy Ralph had just emailed the other day, name-checking the song that seemed to be bringing him 'round to the band. The National had a run as my favorite band -- saw them live in L.A. at the Greek in 2016 and then at the Santa Fe Opera in 2019. My latest favorite is Waxahatchee, who often sings me to sleep for pre-dinner catnaps. What a little kick to see the National get within earshot of the millennials pumping iron on a Thursday morning in the High Desert
Date: June 29, 2023, 10:40 a.m.
Place: Chuze Fitness in Uptown Albuquerque
Song: "Tropic Morning News"
Artist: The National
Irony Matrix: 2.1 out of 10
* - After writing that, I realized that the National has won a Grammy and have had No. 1 albums, so maybe they've been mainstream for the past decade? Remember, we did hear them at JFK back in 2014.
Soundtrack of Your Life is an occasional feature in which we mark the songs of our relative youth as played over public muzak systems.
* * *
And then it was date night -- Wavves and Cloud Nothings double-billing it at Sister Bar. I assumed that Wavves would open, and we figured we had missed them when we walked in a little after 8 and saw the Cloud Nothings setting up their gear. They would proceed to thrash and burn. While they were setting up, the house PA blared classic New Wave.
Before the show, I had sampled a couple of Wavves songs, and the YouTube algorithm, for some reason, segued into a recent "60 Minutes" profile of David Byrne. I devoted 13 minutes to it and then dared my childhood friend -- who famously claimed to have tossed his Talking Heads vinyl in the garbage in the mid-'80s after declaring the band sellouts -- to make nice with the memory of Byrne, now white-haired and avuncular. While the Cloud Nothings tuned up, "Psycho Killer" played, and I appreciated the inner-workings of the Matrix in that moment.
(YouTube followed the Byrne bit with another recent "60 Minutes" profile, this one of production guru Rick Rubin. It was heartening to see and hear Chuck D as one of the prominent talking heads.)
Cloud Nothings often traded in dystopian distortion, often engaging in death races to the ends of songs. In the middle of songs they would descend into jazz-odyssey noodling, only to re-emerge with the beat to finish a song. Jayson Gerycz is a monster behind his center-stage kit.
We last saw the band just before Covid hit, in February 2020, when they opened for Cursive. Then, too, they deconstructed their songs before reassembling them, sort of their version of Nirvana's fast-slow-fast M.O. This week, though, they seemed miffed or annoyed, maybe because they were the middle band on the bill. The crowd was adoring the noise. There was a mosh pit that was mostly benign. For about two songs it was just young women slamming into each other, but they were friendly and pleasant about it. None of those skinhead skippers.
Wavves were OK, but we left around 10, mainly because there was just no way the headliners was going to match the energy of the bashers from Cleveland.
BONUS TRACKS
The aforementioned National single:
Highlights from the Cloud Nothings set, starting with "Pattern Walks":
And always a favorite, the Replacements homage"I'm Not Part of Me":
An occasional feature in which we mark the songs of our relative youth as played over public muzak systems.
Date: November 8, 2022, 12:12 p.m.
Place: Trader Joe's in Uptown Albuquerque
Song: "Tell Me Something Good"
Artist: Rufus (with Chaka Khan)
Irony Matrix: 3.8 out of 10
Comment: This castoff from the Stevie Wonder songwriting factory reached No. 3 in summer 1974, and it truly takes me back to my actual youth, reveling to Top 40 radio in the suburbs of Chicago. I don't know if I knew that the funk band and Chaka Khan (nee Yvette Marie Stevens) were from Chicago. It's got those Wonder staples -- a rubbery bass line and a jittery clavinet riff -- and infectious backing vocals. It's a pure jolt of joy that still slaps or bangs (as the kids say) five decades later. What fun.
An occasional feature in which we mark the songs of our relative youth as played over public muzak systems.
Date: September 17,2022, 10 a.m.
Place: Marriott Hotel in Uptown Albuquerque
Song: "We Are Nowhere and It's Now"
Artist: Bright Eyes (with Emmylou Harris)
Irony Matrix: 4.1 out of 10
Comment: Hanging out with the nurses, technicians and support staff on a Saturday morning at their annual delegate convention. Not necessarily the go-to spot for grumpy nihilism, wondering out of the gate why someone would drink wine until they're blind. It's our boy Conor Oberst, with his head full of pesticide, the sobbing in his voice leavened by the maternal matter-of-factness of Emmylou Harris' controlled trills, she the stern yellow bird. We didn't stick around in the lobby long enough to sample the rest of this playlist, but god help the day-drinkers who survived this mid-morning kidney punch in a cold shower. We're wide awake, it's morning!
BONUS TRACK
A moving live version of Oberst's "Landlocked Blues" at the 1:08:46 mark:
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:
An occasional feature in which we mark the songs of our relative youth as played over public muzak systems and beyond.
It's been quite a month of reminders that my generation is having its moment in the sun when it comes to easy listening offerings at grocery stores, banks and post offices. It started in early November during an early Sunday stroll through the produce section at Trader Joe's, kicked off by the enigmatic Morrissey at the height of his powers and followed by a couple of '80s college-radio staples.
The first batch:
Date: 8 November 2020, 8:20 a.m.
Place: Trader Joe's
Song/Artist: "Tomorrow" by Morrissey
Song/Artist: "Mexican Radio" Wall of Voodoo
Song/Artist: "Making Plans for Nigel" XTC
Irony Matrix: 3.8 out of 10
Comment: Once again, I find myself performing my consumerist chores before the sun is warm on a Sunday morning. What an '80/early '90s block party that was spun by the virtual DJs who run Trader Joe's marketing division. I imagine Morrissey has endured into the generation of millennial emo hipsters, but Wall of Voodoo and XTC are almost certainly as much a mystery to that cohort as they are to the Boomers and above. This triptych put me in a chipper mood, and I probably bought a few more unnecessary staples than I had intended to when I walked through the door and picked out a $3.99 bouquet of flowers. Mission accomplished, corporate America!
Next:
Date: 12 November 2020, 11:20 a.m.
Place: First Financial Credit Union
Song: "Last Nite"
Artist: The Strokes
Irony Matrix: 4.3 out of 10
Comment: The homeowners insurance on our rental property did not get fully paid by our credit union that holds the mortgage -- zoot, alors! First-world problems, don't'cha know. While we were waiting in the lobby area for Daisy to come down and get to the bottom of it, the sound system pulsed with this turn-of-the-millennial alternative juggernaut. The Strokes appeared on "Saturday Night Live" recently (we are just so in the pocket these days), and the boys seemed a bit bored and low-energy (though they've mostly kept their hair). But on the stereo speakers of Albuquerque's downtown community financial institution, it was the end of the Clinton era all over again. Hey, Daisy, better have IT check for those Y2K bugs!
And, finally:
Date: 28 November 2020, 11:12 a.m.
Place: U.S. Post Office (Airport)
Song: "Whip It"
Artist: Devo
Irony Matrix: 4.7 out of 10
Comment: I received a certified letter in my capacity of president of the Silver Hill Neighborhood Association (how much adulting can a grown man stand in the same month?), and to pick it up I had to visit the airport post office. After standing in line in the exterior lobby and inching forward over the course of about 10 minutes, I finally gained entry to the enclosed window area. As I handed by ticket to the honorable public servant, I noticed this Devo hit at an appreciable volume emanating from the sound system. Now, there was a time 40 years ago, at a similar turn of a decade, when the very idea of Devo was so revolutionary that the band's music could create a spontaneous combustion of an oil fire in Ronald Reagan's hair. Even for us late-teen self-identified punk-adjacent wannabe hipsters, Devo were fucking out there. Now, though, their big underground hit is a beloved mainstay of classic-rock radio rotations. Such radical progress we have achieved in these past four decades.
And, now, on with the countdown:
And we all have heard "Whip It" a thousand times. So let's end with a clip of Second City TV's "Brooke Shields Show," featuring Catherine O'Hara as the bratty teen model, with a snippet of performing her version of the Devo classic:
An occasional feature in which we mark the songs of our relative youth as played over public muzak systems and beyond.
A famous New Yorker profile of Bill Bradley, during his Princeton basketball days, introduced the concept of a self-awareness about one's place in the world at a specific moment of time. Bradley, speaking about court command, referred to it as a "sense of where you are." It would be a better world if more people, more often, had a sense of where they are, in relation to others. And that's not a COVID thing. It's a simple acknowledgment of others.
Sometimes, having that sense of where you are is a mundane wakeup call. That concept is pretty much the essence of this random series, which finds us reminded of our place in pop culture, now and long ago, usually while shopping. It drives home the long and winding road taken by me and by a particular song.
That's a long way of saying that I recently heard two songs of my (relative) youth in two (relatively) embarrassing places: Lowe's on a Sunday morning and Supercuts late on a Tuesday afternoon. That's two middle-age moments. There comes a time when you end up at Lowe's (because you are rehabbing a house) and Supercuts (countering the sticker shock of post-COVID price hikes and staff turnover at local barbershops) in the same week. And the alt-music scene -- aging as quickly as the rest of us -- played in the background.
Just because you have a sense of where you are doesn't mean you have a clue about why, at this particular moment in time, you are there.
An occasional feature in which we mark the songs of our
relative youth as played over public muzak systems and beyond.
I returned from a trip to a lake in northern Vermont, landed at the Albuquerque Sunport, and before quarantining I took a quick, safe detour on the way home to the local grocery store to pick up a few essentials to get me through the start of my hibernation. As I was eyeing the watermelons, R.E.M. burst forth from the store's sound system with "Superman," that yummy pop song from 1986's "Lifes Rich Pageant."
Even though R.E.M. was still relatively cool in 1986, and that album was pretty much perfect (their best? Or "Reckoning"?) -- "Superman," sung by bassist Mike Mills instead of Michael Stipe, from the start felt like almost a guilty pleasure. It was a cover of an obscure release in the late '60s. Its lyrics are pretty juvenile.
But it's catchy. Maybe irresistible. When R.E.M. recorded that song, it was 17 years old, a co-opting of peak baby-boom culture. Now, twice as much time has passed -- 34 years -- and (*flash*) here we are shopping for produce, wearing a medical mask, already a tad jet-lagged and looking forward to sleeping in my own bed for the first time in over a week.
Superman? Well, I had just flown through the air. And I used to be a newspaper reporter. But the guy who kicked away the folding chair at the UIC Pavilion in October 1986 during the R.E.M. concert and danced (a safe distance from the puke puddle) to those fresh, explosive songs from "Lifes Rich Pageant"? He's lost a step. And it may be too late for him to save the world.
COLLATERAL BEAUTY (2016) (D+) - This dumb movie, monitored as background Muzak on HBO, is a goofy rom-com disguised as a "Crash"-like swirl of personal tragedies. The producers thought it would be a good idea to have comic actor Will Smith act morose and have drama queen Helen Mirren try to yuk it up. Smith plays an ad exec mourning the death of a child from two years earlier, rendered mute and prone to creating elaborate domino sculptures (the Big Theme, if you weren't paying attention). His three colleagues, each one grappling with their own personal demons, spy on him and discover that he has written angry letters addressed to Love, Time and Death. So they hire three actors to play his ludicrous game and represent Love, Time and Death.
Everyone will learn a Big Lesson, especially -- shock, surprise -- the three colleagues, one of whom is unlucky at love, another who is racing the clock, and another grappling with the possibility of death. Smith cries a lot. Edward Norton performs with his trademark smirk. Mirren looks embarrassed. Kate Winslet is horribly wasted. Keira Knightley (not Natalie Portman) flails as Love, fending off the creepy Norton character. No one has any chemistry with any other cast member. Alternatively maudlin and goofy, this does not work on any level. The reason the grade is so high is that it does have a fantastic ending. If only it weren't a chore getting to it.
HOT TUB TIME MACHINE (2010) (B) - This makes me laugh, even the second time around. It is a shameless rip-off of "Back to the Future," "Porky's" and a few other slices of '80s cheese, but everyone in it is having so much fun. John Cusack strikes just the right tone as the leader of a band of misfits who travel through time via a mysterious hot tub during a reunion at a ski lodge. Rob Corddry is insane as the loud-mouth member of the bunch. He and Craig Robinson banter well, with the latter a master of incredulity.
A few familiar faces flit across the screen in minor roles: Lizzy Caplan as a love interest for Cusack, Crispin Glover as a staffer perpetually on the brink of losing an arm, and "Mad Men's" Jessica Pare in a lusty romp in the bubbling water. This is a heady brew of lust and laughs. And if you can get past the ridiculous concept (and Chevy Chase as the spooky maintenance man), you're in for a tub-full of yuks.
An occasional feature in which we mark the songs of our relative youth as played over public muzak systems and beyond.
Date: 14 October 2017, 8:18 p.m. Place: Lowe's hardware store Song: "See the World" Artist: Gomez Irony Matrix: 3.3 out of 10
Comment: One of my favorite albums of the new millennium is "How We Operate" by the quirky British popsters Gomez. It's a smooth collection of bittersweet songs. "See the World" is a highlight.
It was a Saturday night, and we were on our way home from a wedding. Me in a jacket and tie, her in a beautiful skirt and top. Best-dressed pair at Lowe's. Seeking out a trip light for the driveway. Bouncing along the aisles as 10-year-old British mope rock bubbled on the store speakers.
Found something that took three D batteries. How analog and retro.
Here is a live version of "See the World" from 2011:
BONUS TRACKS The best song on that album, "Girl Shaped Love Drug." It's truly addictive:
Their cover of the Beatles' "Getting Better," originally recorded for a Philips electronics commercial and included on the amazing B-side compilation "Abandoned Shopping Trolley Hotline" in 2000:
An occasional feature in which
we mark the songs of our relative youth as played over public muzak systems and
beyond.
Date: 31 August 2017, 9:50 p.m. Place: Sister Bar, before the Growlers took the stage Song: "Je Suis un Rock Star" Artist: Bill Wyman Irony Matrix: 2.2 out of 10
Comment: Had this solo nugget from the Rolling Stones bassist on 45-rpm back in the day. The butchered French (or "Cockney French"), recited mechanically, over a crude electronic beat always was a guilty pleasure of young adulthood. It's just so obscure and unheralded. I've never gotten it out of my head.
BONUS TRACKS
Oh, yeah. The Growlers show. LA's lounge lizards just might be the ultimate millennial wedding band -- trippy and hippie but with a deep groove. Labels don't stick to them. Surf rock. Pscyh rock. They host an annual Beach Goth festival, so that's probably the default tag.
Lead singer Brooks Nielsen has an irresistible charm and a loquacious delivery. In his husky twang you can hear a polished Dylan; I also get a Lee Hazelwood vibe from his and the band's raggedy '70s-era gloom. He's like a prissy nerd doing Jim Morrison. He is a sneakily magnetic frontman. Here is the band's 2013 anthem, "Someday":
The boys -- four guitars, keyboards and drums to back Nielsen -- riffle through genres, including surf, ska, and a dab of reggae. They create ear worms with catchy lyrics, like "Love Test" and "Monotonia." As they churned toward the end of the set, the cohesive players turned Sister Bar into a dance club. Here is a good taste of their live set, from KEXP in Seattle in 2014. It culminates in the extended groove "Chinese Fountain":
Oh, and we caught the final song of opening act Broncho. This is "Class Historian":
An occasional feature in which we mark the songs of our relative youth as played over public muzak systems and beyond.
Date: 29 July 2017, 9:05 a.m. Place: Walking past the Broken Arrow Tap Room, Inn of the Mountain Gods near Ruidoso, N.M. Song: "Feel Like a Number" Artist: Bob Seger Irony Matrix: 3.7 out of 10
Comment: I was big into Bob Seger as a teen. It was his potent mix of muscular Detroit rock 'n' roll and his earnest, confessional lyrics that spoke to a young male still forming an emotional self and a worldview. He was a cruder, cred'er Springsteen -- maybe it was the long hair and beard. It started with Night Moves, the album and the song, released in 1976 -- alongside the other hits, the cheesy "Rock 'n' Roll Never Forgets" and the wistful "Mainstreet," and the rougher workout "The Fire Down Below"
"Live Bullet," released the same year, allowed us to experience the band live and work backward into the catalog --- the blistering Side 3 culminating in "Katmandu," the most perfect rock song I could image at that time. There were the R&B covers, "Nutbush City Limits," the epic "Let It Rock." The howling saxophones on "Turn the Page" still pierce deep to this day.
Bob hit it big by '78 with the album "Stranger in Town," barreling out of the gates with "Hollywood Nights" and including my favorite song of his, "Still the Same," and my mom's favorite wedding reception song, "Old Time Rock 'n' Roll," not to mention the prom-theme standard "We've Got Tonight."
It's that album where you'll find "Feel Like a Number" closing out Side 1. It's a working-man song that rivals anything Springsteen or Merle Haggard could crank out on their assembly lines.
Gonna cruise out of this city
Head down to the sea
Gonna shout out to the ocean
"Hey, it's me!"
And I feel like a number ...
Fed up with being just a statistic, a "spoke in a great big wheel," just another folder in a bureaucrat's file, he implores: "Dammit, I'm a man!" When I heard it earlier today, I was taking a break from an attorneys bar conference just outside Ruidoso, N.M., at a majestic golf resort that burrows into the earth as well as puffing its chest out into nature via two-story window panels that gawk out onto a view that truly looks unreal, like a massive, meticulous painting. There's an elegantly rippling man-made lake, a sea of unnatural green, a forest that you wouldn't expect to see in a desert, its furry trees crowding hills and climbing mountains in the distance. This human-engineered spectacle was created by the Mescalero Apache Tribe on their land and dubbed, immodestly, the Inn of the Mountain Gods. Nice ring.
Bob Seger's music had a majesty to it. But by 1980, his tank was nearing empty. He was running up "Against the Wind," and his feel for middle-class angst was slowly abandoning him. The earnestness was morphing into mawkishmess. He and the Silver Bullet Band struck live gold one more time with "Nine Tonight" in 1981, but by the mid-'80s he was churning out harmless adult-contemporary fare like "You'll Accomp'ny Me" and covering John Fogerty. And what the hell does "Like a Rock" mean? Was he truly feeling like that emotionally hollow post-WWII male? And what does it mean in the context of a commercial for a Chevy pickup truck? "Yessir, she drives like a rock!" No thanks. "Like a Rock" is rote, mechanical songwriting -- the same affliction that often doomed the likes of Billy Joel and Paul McCartney in the '80s -- stone cold proficiency.
But back in the '70s, there was a raw power to Seger's music that shared DNA with the rest of the Michigan crew -- the MC5, the Stooges, even Ted Nugent ("Stranglehold"!). It must have sounded corny at the time of punk and new wave, but it never felt like a guilty pleasure, either then or now.
With "Feel Like a Number" stuck in my head, I returned to the frigid Grand Ballroom for the remainder of the plenary session covering the various pitfalls leading to legal malpractice, including Pac-Man defense-attorney insurance policies (whatever those are) and proposed changes to Rule 16-101 regarding the use of social media. I earned 1.5 professional ethics credits toward my quota of continuing legal education (CLE) credits for the calendar year. I wanted to stand before that man-made lake and shout out to the world, "Dammit, I'm not a number!"
I wrote this up during a break between sessions and then met a new acquaintance at the Gathering of Nations Buffet for lunch.
Bonus track: "Still the Same":
Go on and "Let It Rock" ("We're reCORdin' tonight!"):
An occasional feature in which we mark the songs of our relative youth as played over public muzak systems and beyond.
Date: 25 February 2017, 6:36 p.m. Place: I-10, just across New Mexico's border into Arizona, streaming randomly from my iTunes Song: "Burn Hollywood Burn" Artist: Public Enemy Irony Matrix: 1.6 out of 10
Comment: Oh, no reason ... Enjoy your Sunday evening.
An occasional feature in which we mark the songs of our
relative youth as played over public muzak systems and beyond.
Date: 11 January 2017
Place: Smith's grocery store, cat food aisle
Song:
"Love Will Tear Us Apart"
Artist: Joy Division
Irony Matrix: 6.7 out of 10
Comment: There's that jangly opening, which often makes me pause -- the Cure? No, Joy Division. Ian Curtis agonizing through a melody that could have provided the B side to the "Mary Tyler Moore Show" theme. Crooned by Perry Como. But there are the eerie dawn-of-the-'80s keyboards. And the pervasive sense of dread that has enshrouded the band's entombed music and videos ever since Curtis hanged himself on the eve of the band's debut tour of America (apparently after spending the evening watching Werner Herzog's "Stroszek"). The dreary details were dramatized in 2007's "Control," the debut motion picture by Anton Corbijn ("The American"). None of that really came flooding back to me consciously, but I noted the absurdity of standing in the store aisle and recognizing that metaphysical teenage dread which floods the zone whenever Joy Division emanates from a speaker. Marketers make sure that it will follow me wherever I go throughout my life, for as long as I consume. Is there no escape? Is my life empty or meaningless on a Wednesday night? Am I just stuffing the void with packaged goods? Should I re-evaluate the choices I've made over the years?
I went with the Purina Naturals, the big bag. It keeps.
Let's add a bonus track, "Atmosphere":
And one of my favorite guitar drones, "Shadowplay":
An occasional feature in which we mark the songs of our relative youth as played over public muzak systems and beyond.
Date: 22 November 2016 Place: "Gilmore Girls" Season 6 season finale Song: "Taking Pictures" Artist: Sam Phillips Irony Matrix: 1.9 out of 10
Comment: We sampled a few episodes from the last two seasons of "Gilmore Girls" to get ready for the reunion shows debuting on Netflix this weekend. Despite misty eyes, we flagged Sam Phillips -- along with Grant Lee Buffalo an official troubadour for the turn-of-millennium show -- uttering the line "Nostalgia isn't what it used to be." Oof. Take that, Soundtrack of Your Life! Phillips emerged in the late '80s and early '90s during the Heyday of the Planet of Sound after hooking up (romantically and musically) with T. Bone Burnett, who produced her most memorable albums, including "Cruel Inventions" in 1991 and "Martinis and Bikinis" in 1994. The cassette of the latter died out on me a while back. Nostalgic recording formats ain't what they used to be. Phillips has the voice of an angel recovering from vocal-cord surgery, and she knew how to turn a phrase in a minor key. We don't dwell on television here, so we won't go on about one of our favorite shows ever, but we are looking forward to Amy Sherman-Palladino getting the opportunity that was denied her during the seventh and final season of the series a decade ago -- giving Lorelei and Rory the ending she had envisioned all along when she created the unique world of Stars Hollow and brought my long-lost little sisters to life. Let's hope Netflix doesn't screw it up.
Here is the song, with bonus Luke-and-Lorelei footage:
(Here's a backup version, in case that first link doesn't play from the embed:)
Here's Phillips' "Love and Kisses," the opening track to her fine 1994 album "Martinis and Bikinis":
Then there's the Beatlesque "hit" from the album, "I Need Love":
And her breakthrough, "Lying," from 1991's "Cruel Inventions":
