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.)
An occasional feature in which we mark the songs of our relative
youth as played over public muzak systems.
Date: 25 March 2016, 11:15 a.m. Place: Cafe Passe, Tucson, Arizona Song: "The Safety Dance" Artist: Men Without Hats Irony Matrix: 2.5 out of 10 Comment: Just one of the peppy, irresistible tunes playing on a Friday morning at an alleyway cafe in the sunny Southwest. (It was followed by "Vogue," "Billy Jean," "Shout," "Personal Jesus," "We Got the Beat" -- you get the idea.) I listen to my share of oldies radio, and I'm fascinated by how those playlists evolve, presumably based on marketing, and how they seem to be coordinated across formats. I've heard "Safety Dance" three times in the past two weeks, on two unrelated radio stations and here at the cafe. In what corner office was it deemed that Men Without Hats was to be placed in heavy rotation? What factors were involved in the decision? Did they mention me specifically? I have the 45-rpm version of "Safety Dance." I remember hearing it for the first time and thinking, "Hey, Billy Joel is shaking things up and having a little fun." (When I first heard Squeeze's "Black Coffee in Bed," I thought that Paul McCartney had snapped out of his doldrums.) I also associate the song with a memorable event in the summer of 1983. It was one of those summer graduation parties, this one a backyard blowout at our cousins' house. I had to work till about 8 or 9 at my weekend job in the kitchen of a caterer in the city. When I pulled up to my cousins' house on 4th Avenue, "Safety Dance" bopping out of the car speakers (was it still the forest green '74 Chevy Nova?), it was chaos. People were yelling and running. The cops were there. Turns out a major brawl had erupted. A semi-pro boxer sucker-punched my brother, leaving him hideously bruised. My Italian uncle was threatening to go Cosa Nostra on the thugs who had crashed the bash. It was a panic. I can't remember whether I ever got any mostaccioli. As a scrawny college boy, I wouldn't have been much help protecting my brother or avenging the attack. I was a pogo'er, not a fighter.
My kingdom for some subtitles. We might revisit the second half of "Sunset Song," Terence Davies' ode to Scottish husbandry if we had an easier way to decipher the thick Scottish brogues of its characters. (Apparently some theatrical releases do have subtitles.) Shooting for an epic flair in between "Gone With the Wind" and a John Mellencamp Farm Aid performance, Davies' dreary, plodding family saga has the dour demeanor of "The Turin Horse" mixed with the bleakness of "Meek's Cutoff."
We get a gruff old man who treats his wife, son and daughter like cattle, just an unredeeming bastard who gets a send-off he deserves. This story hangs on the narrow shoulders of that daughter, Chris, played by Agyness Deyn, who has the angular features and the blank stare of a muppet. It takes half the film for her to finally inherit the family farm in rural Scotland in the days leading up to World War I and get this narrative chugging along. Little seems at stake, and it feels not so much retro as embarrassingly old-fashioned, an overly reverent adaptation of a beloved novel.
Davies, the master behind the whispery period pieces like "Distant Voices, Still Lives" and "The Deep Blue Sea," is the wrong fit for this project. Rather than his trademarked urban grit, he traffics in sweeping landscapes, such as glistening lakes and undulating amber waves of grain. As Ignatiy Vishnevetsky puts it succinctly for the Onion AV Club: "The result is awkward, sometimes corny, occasionally boring, but still
elegantly composed and peppered with grace notes of sensuality and
despair." And he sat through the whole thing.
Title: SUNSET SONG Running Time: 135 MIN Elapsed Time at Plug Pull: 65 MIN Portion Watched: 48% My Age at Time of Viewing: 53 YRS, 8 MOS. Average Male American Lifespan: 76.4 YRS. Watched/Did Instead: Walked home, stopping off for a slice and a beer. Odds of Re-viewing This Title: 5-1 (with subtitles)
BONUS TRACK: SOUNDTRACK OF YOUR LIFE An occasional feature in which we mark the songs of our relative
youth as played over public muzak systems.
Date: 3 July 2016, 7 p.m. Place: Central Avenue at Stanford, Albuquerque, NM Song: "Mendocino" Artist: Sir Douglas Quintet Irony Matrix: 4.6 out of 10 Comment: On the walk home from "Sunset Song," I stuck along the main drag, Route 66, and sitting at a traffic light was a dude on a chopper, lady on the back, blasting his stereo with this all-time favorite from Doug Sahm, Augie Meyers and the boys. If I hadn't left the movie early, I would have never experienced that moment in time.
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.
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.
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:
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.
Date: 9 October 2014, 11:43 a.m., EDT Place: Ciro's Mexican Restaurant, Las Cruces, New Mexico Song: "Runaround Sue" Artist: Dion and the Belmonts Irony Matrix: 0.75 out of 10 Comment: OK, so they were playing oldies during lunchtime at a strip-mall diner. No big deal. But it's an excuse to riff. It brought back the memory of my night of salvation. In that sweaty Mercury Lounge in New York in June 2009, alone in the middle of the crowd of strangers, while waiting for Dex and Sara Romweber to come out for a round of garage thrash. The club was playing a wide variety of songs as the crowd packed in. "Runaround Sue" came on. People started singing along, reflexively, with the soaring background vocals: "Whoa-oa-OA-oa-oa-oa ..." I looked around. There were 20-somethings singing, joining in with the geezers. Who taught them that song? Some geezer? Is that song just a cultural meme? Is it a vocal part that people just pick up on the spot? Part of our collective DNA? Just a big coincidence? "Runaround Sue" is before my time. Kids? In the aughts? At that moment of harmonizing (and harmony) I discovered the elusive reason for everything, a global communal connection.
On the way home from Las Cruces I saw an anti-Obama billboard that asked: "Freedom or Collectivism?"
BONUS TRACKS
Or did I mean "Runaround Shoe?"On that three-hour drive to and from Las Cruces, I rifled through the archives for my Del Fuegos best-of CD. I was reminded that of all the fantasy jobs out there, drummer for that '80s roots band (and their two perfect albums) would be near the top. I plucked out two examples of sublime pop philosophy on the subject of love:
First: "Love is like a shoe. You run around a lot And then it falls apart."
Second: "I love you baby I love your cat. I love the way you look In my fireman's hat."
An occasional feature in which we mark the songs of our relative youth as played over public muzak systems. Today, a three-pack scoring low on the irony matrix, but satisfying as a group effort:
Date: 13 April 2014, 4:00 p.m. Place: Midtown Sports and Wellness Song: "Love and Happiness" (1991) Artist: John Mellencamp Irony Matrix: 3 out of 10 Comment: The gym was in a classic rock mood, apparently, burning through the '70s and '80s with a few tired classics. Then they sneaked into the '90s, when they were still earnest about videos, for this guilty pleasure chock full of chunky riffs.
Date: 13 April 2014, 4:15 p.m. Place: Midtown Sports and Wellness Song: "20th Century Boy" (1973) Artist: T-Rex Irony Matrix: 3 out of 10 Comment: "Bang a Gong" at the gym, sure, but this one? Props. For indie cred, we present the Replacements version from the "Let It Be" sessions in the mid-'80s. Guitar swagger here is courtesy of the late, great Bob Stinson.
Date: 13 April 2014, 6:45 p.m. Place: Car, radio, Big Oldies 98.5 FM Song: "Jump Into the Fire" (1971) Artist: Harry Nilsson Irony Matrix: 2 out of 10 Comment: It's certainly not ironic at all to hear an oldie from a car stereo. This one blew me away as if it were recorded last year. (Of course, it was a track from the epic "Nilsson Schmilsson.") It sounds like proto-new-wave, totally Joe Jackson (Graham Maby bass lines and all). Doesn't it? This song played as part of a replay of the April 8, 1972, "American Top 40" countdown with Casey Kasem (airing at 6 o'clock Sundays). Nilsson came in at No. 32 that week, just two notches above T-Rex's "Bang a Gong," one behind "Precious and Few" and six behind Walter White's swan song, "Baby Blue" by Badfinger. It was chasing Nilsson's own grammy-winning "Without You," which was falling from No. 1, on its way to "dedication" purgatory. Dig the drum solo! Around 1974 and 1975, I was a dedicated 12-year-old listener of the AT40, faithfully transcribing the Top Ten each week; in the archives, I still have scraps of paper with the handwritten lists. Now, of course, they are all artfully codified online. This is a great "record," as they used to say. I probably had never heard it until last night. Everything old is new again.
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.
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 ...)
An occasional feature in which we mark the songs of our relative youth as played over public muzak systems:
Date: 19 November 2013, 6:50 p.m. Place: Trader Joe's (Uptown) Song: "She's About a Mover" (1965) Artist: Sir Douglas Quintet Irony Matrix: 4 out of 10 Comment: Sheer joy among the produce
Date: 17 November 2013, 5/15 p.m. Place: Midtown Sports & Wellness Song: "King of Pain" (1983) Artist: The Police Irony Matrix: 2 of 10 Comment: I was hit with a wave of anti-nostalgia and a keen insight: This is the poster child for overblown crap that heralded the excesses of the early MTV era and the eventual co-opting of "alternative" music.
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. 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.
Date: 26 March 2015, 2 to 3 p.m. Place: 2013 Honda Civic driving from Santa Fe to Albuquerque, N.M. Song: Entire album: "Key Lime Pie" Artist: Camper Van Beethoven Irony Matrix: 0.6 out of 10 Comment: We admit that there's virtually nothing ironic about the hero of this story buffing up the 1989 CD release from alt-freaksters Camper Van Beethoven at the height of their accessibility. I had a random hankering for "Pictures of Matchstick Men," prompted, I think, by a channel flip past a PBS pledge-driving airing of yet another '60s nostalgia-fest. As soon as the laser dropped on the first track, the Middle Eastern-tinged "Opening Theme," the music sounded both familiar and fresh. Even on factory speakers the audio was unbelievably crisp and clear. Then came the litany of songs that had started to leak from my memory, reinstated just in time. This is the second full LP by David Lowery (Cracker) and his ragtag pals. It is produced by Dennis Herring and engineered by Csaba Petocz (they would team up again two years later for another near-masterpiece from the Heyday of the Planet of Sound, Throwing Muses' "The Real Ramona"). "Sweethearts" steals a riff and mood from Bob Dylan's "Slow Train" album. Morgan Fichter's violin recalls Dylan's "Desire"/Rolling Thunder era, and it is that violin that memorably kicks off the penultimate track, "Matchstick Men," indelibly recorded pristinely with the hollow sound of the violin's body high in the mix, as if the instrument were turned inside-out, before the guitars come crashing in. (Video # 1, below.) This is what digital was invented for. Trippy psychedelia crashes to Earth with a muscular thud. On the other end of the spectrum, the shambling lyrics of "When I Win the Lottery" (#2), seguing into the hypnotic drone of "(I Was Born in a) Laundromat," celebrating the Queen of the Trailer Park. Where was I in 1989? Staying up a little late on Sundays, before the big workday watching "120 Minutes" on MTV and swooning over that "Matchstick Men" video. Midpoint: "June," hinting at an echo of the drone of "I Want You (She's So Heavy)." Then "All Her Favorite Fruit" planting the seeds for Cracker's alt-epic "Euro Trash Girl." The suspense kept building. Is "Matchstick Men" next? No? How about next? And soon the slow-building Final Four: "Flowers" ("by the drunken river, flowers growing ... out of my bones," intoned through Lowry's sinuses). And the best Guided by Voices song that Bob Pollard didn't write, with "Revolver" guitar slashes: a compact 2:46, "The Human Press of Days." (#3) The stop and start. Fichter's weepy violin. The martial drumbeat. All "to resist the dull existence of [pause] gravity!" Fiddle, crash, bang, thump, "all I ever see is them and you." Coda. "Come On Darkness." It all returns. It clicks and snaps back into place.
A new feature in which we mark the songs of our relative youth as played over public muzak systems:
Date: 5 September 2013, 3:40 p.m.
Place: First Financial Credit Union, Downtown Albuquerque
Song: "The Mayor of Simpleton" (1989)
Artist: XTC
Irony Matrix: 7 of 10
An occasional feature in which we mark the songs of our relative
youth as played over public muzak systems.
Date: 31August 2014, 12:50 p.m. Place: Sprouts market Song: "Someday Someway" Artist: Marshall Crenshaw Irony Matrix: 4 out of 10 Comment: I took note about a week ago that earlier this month both Elvis Costello and Joe Jackson turned 60. Those new-wave nerds. Those angry post-punks. They came from musical families and had higher ambitions than just selling snappy 45s. Sixty, now, with less of a sneer. It gives a man pause, especially if he went to high school in the late '70s and college in the early '80s, because he's only a life cycle or so behind.
Marshall Crenshaw (born November 1953 ... age 60) crafted pure pop for what would become the alternative music scene. His songs were sugary and infectious. He played John Lennon on Broadway. He more recently was the young buck in the reconstituted MC5. He has a killer record collection and spins songs on WFUV in New York.
His first hit played at the grocery store today. Halfway through it was interrupted by "Sabrina, please come to the front entrance. Sabrina to the front entrance." And then the song finished. Then I found coconut oil on sale. What more could I have hoped for?
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: 22 October 2016 Place: TV commercials Song: "Default" Artist: Django Django
and Song: "If You Want to Sing Out (Sing Out)" Artist: Cat Stevens Irony Matrix: 3.3 out of 10
Comment: Back in the 1990s, I was enamored of my cohorts who were crafting Target commercials, and I'll never forget my amazement at hearing Daniel Johnston's "Speeding Motorcycle" in an ad for the frisky department store. The troubled outsider artist's childlike recordings had finally gone from the mailing of handmade cassettes to the American mainstream. Sort of. Popular music gets co-opted much faster and across a wider spectrum these days. During the baseball playoffs this year, two songs have jumped out at me. The British art-rock band Django Django in 2012 released a self-titled debut album full of retro electronic pop, a tame mix of Devo and Kraftwerk, with some irresistibly catchy tunes. Their frantic song "Default" has found a home in a commercial for Google Pixel. Meantime, Jeep Grand Cherokee reached into the archives for an orphan from Cat Stevens, the gem "If You Want to Sing Out (Sing Out)," which was originally featured in many folks' favorite film, "Harold and Maude" in 1971. When ballgames last 3-and-a-half or 4 hours, it is small joys such as these songs that make the down time a bit more tolerable. Here's today's starting lineup:
An occasional feature in which we mark the songs of our relative
youth as played over public muzak systems.
Date: 27 November 2015, 2:15 p.m. Place: Ruby Tuesday, Downers Grove, Illinois Song: "The Wind Cries Mary" Artist: Jimi Hendrix Irony Matrix: 7.5 out of 10 Comment: On Black Friday, daring to go near a strip mall, and out for a bite with Mom before a late matinee, we ventured into this fine American chain restaurant for a post-lunch-crowd bite. Jenny served us salads. The crowd thinned. It was near shift-change. When I was in high school, a Hendrix revival disturbed me. It was sludgy heavy metal from a different era (so 10 years ago), stoner rock. It took me a couple of decades to embrace the masterpiece, "Are You Experienced." All of that disappeared into a purple haze of nostalgia. I snapped back to the present. "It's a shame about Uncle Ray." A cold persistent mist fell outside. And the wind. Cried. Maaarrrry.
