Music and Politics

Album: The Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy, Hypocrisy Is the Greatest Luxury, 1992

Acquired: I special-ordered this cassette from Books, Strings 'n Things in Blacksburg in April 1992. I had a gift certificate.

Best Track: "Television, the Drug of the Nation"; if you've ever heard anything by Hiphoprisy, this is what you heard.

Lasting Memory: I had a BSTnT gift certificate because I had won it in a Virginia Tech Student Government Association-sponsored stand-up competition that was held in conjunction with a set from the obviously much different than from now Diana Jordan. Odd how the site for one of Oprah's favorite comedians makes no mention of the Playboy shoot, the brief stint on Star Search, or the foul-mouthed gynocentrism of the act until very recently. Perhaps willful denail of one's past is a greater luxury than hypocrisy. The two are related, after all.

My own involvement in the stand-up competition was, if not hypocritical, certainly unfair. I had done about 100 profession (though not all paid) comedy gigs between 1989 and 1991, and the rest of the contestants were either first-timers or new enough to the stage that it didn't make much difference. In my weak defense, I hadn't performed in about 5 months, and one of my housemates sort of called me out. Tom Clark, if you ever read this, I'm mostly blaming you for my having unfairly stomped the other folks in the competition.

Ms. Jordan was suitably impressed by my three minutes of material to tell me I was really funny and that I should stick with stand-up. I haven't performed since. I suppose that gives me the right to say I went out on top of a very small hill.

Which, again, while not being hypocritical, would certainly be disingenuous. Would disingenuity be a rider to the contract entitling one to engage in the greatest luxury?

Enough speculation from me. Michael Franti, who wrote all but one of the songs on Hypocrisy Is the Greatest Luxury made it very clear what he considered hypocritical. For Franti in the early 1990s--late and soon of such interestingly named and seldom heard bands as Beatnigs and Spearhead--just about public and private thought, utterance, and action equaled hypocrisy. He must have been a ton of laughs at parties. And I'm not talking about the Communist Party. Zing!

Kidding aside and credit where its due, Franti's ideas are interesting, the music is inventive, and Franti goes as hard on himself as he does on his other topical targets of opportunity, who include the first President Bush, then-California Governor Pete Wilson, and the first Gulf War.

On the personal side, Franti derides himself as a "Socio-Genetic Experiment" gone half-right and all-angry. His grounds for this is that he is

African Native American
Irish and German
I was adopted
by parents who loved me
they were the same color
as the kids who called me nigger
on the walk home from school

Unable to define himself and his proper role in the world to himself adequately, Franti became a "Water Pistol Man" who is "squirting at fires on a woldwide mission" but who never stops to "think about the flowers in [his] own backyard."

Many of the fires Franti would like to be put out, from creeping facism (a nifty cover of The Dead Kennedy's "California Uber Alles") to America's overdependence on imported oil ("Satanic Reserves" and "The Winter of the Long Hot Summer"), are still burning. And "T.V./ is the only wet nurse/ that would create a cripple" was true for him 16 years ago, I just hope Franti has never seen or heard of most of the reality and game shows Fox is airing in 2008.

Is it ironic that there is a video for "Television"? It is certainly ironic that I used dubiously procured proceeds from comedy to purchase an album that is both of the least funny ever recorded and one that sets such a high bar for personal integrity.

I do like the sound, though, which is a mix of blues guitar and industrial banging and grinding. If only Franti could stop talking about "Music and Politics":

If ever I would stop thinking about music and politics
I would tell you that sometimes it’s easier to desire
and pursue the attention and admiration
of 100 strangers
than it is to accept the love and loyalty
of those closest to me

And I would tell you that sometimes
I prefer to look at myself
through someone else’s eyes
Eyes that aren’t clouded with the tears of knowing
what an asshole I can be, as yours are.

If ever I would stop thinking about music and politics
I might be able to listen in silence to your concerns
rather than hearing everything as an accusation
or an indictment against me

I would tell you that sometimes
I use sex to avoid communication
it’s the best escape when we’re down on our luck
But I can express more emotions than laughter, anger,
and let’s fuck

If ever I would stop thinking about music and politics
If ever I would stop thinking about music and politics
If ever I would stop thinking about music and politics
If ever I would stop thinking about music and politics

If ever I would stop thinking about music and politics
I would tell you that I pooped in my own dog dish
And sometimes I would rather face not eating
than face licking it clean
And admitting when I’m selfish
And I’d tell you that I’m suffering
from the worst type of loneliness
The loneliness of being misunderstood,
or more poignantly
the loneliness of being afraid
to allow myself to be understood

If ever I would stop thinking about music and politics
I would tell you that the personal revolution
is far more difficult
and is the first step in any revolution

If ever I would stop thinking about music and politics
If ever I would stop thinking about music and politics
If ever I would stop thinking about music and politics
If ever I would stop thinking about music and politics

I would tell you that music is the expression
of emotion
And that politics is merely the decoy of perception

Well, maybe he still wouldn't be a barrel of monkeys. Alas.

We'll have more fun next time. I promise.

Up Next: Divinyls, Tempermental, 1988

Seeing the Sounds Perfectly

Album: Dire Straits, Makin' Movies, 1980

Acquired: See below, and be forewarned that this is the just of the first of two crosslinks to my own blog within this post. Pointing to other people's sites is for the weak. I will show weakness in this post. A lot of weakness. Enjoy.

Best Track: All of them. But with a six-blade knife to my throat, I'd have to go with "Tunnel of Love" as the best song, and this bit from "Espresso Love" as the best moment on the album:

And I get trouble with my breathing
When she says boys don't know anything
But I know what I want ...
I want everything

Lasting Good Memory: Remember how before MTV really took off, local radio stations sponsored half-hour music video programs on the dingiest UHF or cable public access chanels? If you do, you'll remember that all of those shows' ramshackle charms derived from their limitation of having to play exactly what the record companies were willing to give them. For the Tidewater station that is now Bob FM but in the early 1980s was "K94, Your Southern Rock Leader," this resulted in near nightly showings of clips from the video album of Makin' Movies even though the radio station itself would never play the songs themselves. This forced programming hyprocrisy benefitted me if not the station, which has shuffled formats repeatedly over the past decades from rock to country to urban contemporary to "We Play Anything." While the station has struggled to find it's groove, I continue to love the novelistic songs and filmic videos from Makin' Movies.

Lasting Bad Memory: I came home from a long day of graduate assisting and seminar b.s.'ing sometime in late fall 1995 only to be a witness to the sonic and intellectual crimes of hearing my roommate Toby blasting the Indigo Girl's live cover of "Romeo and Juliet" and then having him spend a good deal of time defending that version as one of his all-time favorite songs. To my recollection, he wasn't even aware that the Indigo Girls were badly interpreting a Dire Straits song, which would have been excusable except for the fact that he said it didn't matter. My position was then and is now that some songs--admittedly a small earful--are perfect in their original form and should never be attempted, let alone committed to album, by other artists.

In this group, I'd put Bruce Sprigsteen's "Born to Run," Frank Sinatra's "One for My Baby (and One More for the Road)," John Hiatt's "Have a Little Faith in Me," and Billie Holiday's "Stormy Weather." There are others, but very near the top of the list is Dire Strait's "Romeo and Juliet." If you disagre, you're wrong. Also, when someone tells you that an original version of a song is infinitely better than its cover, you have an aesthetic obligation to give the original a fair listen.

So much of Makin' Movies is just exactly right. This can be partially explained by the production of Jimmy Iovine and partially by the album being the band's third, coming after the seminal
Dire Straits and the somewhat justifiably ignored Communiqué.

I'd also peg the album's success on how, for once, a band perfectly matched mood, sound, and words to the feelings they were trying to convey and evoke. Setting dour or even despairing lyrics to upbeat music can often be effective, and misery in a minor key can often be off-putting. But on Makin' Movies, Mark Knopfler and his mates nailed the pairing of muted music with wistfulness and regret on "Tunnel of Love." The repeated buildup and release (if you know what I'm saying) of a really hot romance is perfectly embodied in the music and lyrics of "Expresso Love." And for a last example, "Les Boys" does in less than three minutes what it took Joel Grey and Liza Minelli several tedious hours to do in Cabaret. (No video available, sorry.)

I love it when plans come together.

Up Next: The Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy, Hypocrisy Is the Greatest Luxury, 1992

A Day in the Life We All Led Without Writing About

Album: Dire Straits, Dire Straits, 1978

Acquired: Having earned two degrees in history, I have been well-schooled in the art of spinning completely plausible tales from the flimsiest of documentary evidence. I mention this because my copy of the "Specially Priced Two Hit Albums on one Cassette" featuring Dire Straits bears a sticker that indicates I bought it at The Music Man in Military Circle Mall during June 1987. That obviously means I bought the tape with some of the first money I earned as a warehouse laborer at the Little Creek Navy Exchange. Which in turn, obviously means, my time spent toting huge plastic crates of women's clothing, discovering whole pallets of empty VCR boxes, and being made to feel bad about myself for being a someday college graduate yielded more than unfond memories.

Best Track: "Wild West End"

Lasting Memory: Long before I ever owned Dire Straits, I loved the biggest hit off the album, "Sultans of Swing." My clearest early memory of hearing the song is just after piling into the back of the Burtt's Country Classic station wagon after a long early October day spent at Busch Gardens in what must have been 1982. The Burtts, for any nonfamily member readers, were our next-door neighbors for nearly a decade when I was a kid. That trip to Busch Gardens was great, and I've always regretted not making more effort to keep in touch with my friend Chris after the Burtts moved to New Jersey in 1983.

A lot of the songs on Dire Straits sound like the regret of lapsed friendships, which explains much of the material's lasting appeal to me. Sad songs are the best. But in truth, none of the songs on Dire Straits are really sad. Nice trick, Mark Knopfler, reversing the standard "rocking song with sad lyrics" formula. Sneaky Scotsman, ye be.

Mostly, Dire Straits presents snapshots of a bohemian's life in London at the very moment he realizes he needs to become an adult. "Down to the Waterline" is about a date that just might be getting to the interesting part of the evening. "Sultans of Swing" tells about the guys in an all-dad's blues band but is really about the all kids who come in from the rain who don't give a damn 'bout any trumpet-playing band. "In the Gallery" does speak of the disappointment that awaits most artists, but a look at the lyrics shows the song is more cynically angry than disappointed or defeated. Here's the third verse of "In the Gallery":

And then you get an artist says he doesn't want to paint at all
He takes an empty canvas and sticks it on the wall
The birds of a feather all the phonies and all of the fakes
While the dealers they get together
And they decide who gets the breaks
And who's going to be in the gallery

Knopfler wrote the perfect anthem to the subject line of this post when he penned "Wild West End":

Stepping out to Angellucci's for my coffee beans
Checking out the movies and the magazines
Waitress she watches me crossing from the Barocco Bar
I get a pickup for my steel guitar

I saw you walking out Shaftesbury Avenue
Excuse me talking I wanna marry you
This is the seventh heaven street to me
Don't you seem so proud
You're just another angel in the crowd

And I'm
Walking in the wild west end
Walking in the wild west end
Walking with your wild best friend

And now my conductress on the number nineteen, She was a honey
Pink toenails and hands all, dirty with the money
Greasy easy Greasy hair, easy smile
Made me feel nineteen for a while

And I went down to, Cha, Cha, uh, uh, Chinatown
In the backroom it's a man's world
All the money go down
Duck inside the doorway, duck to eat
Just ain't no way,
You and me, we can beat

Walking in the wild west end
Walking in the wild west end
Walking with your wild best friend

Now eh, a gogo, dancing girl, yes I saw her
The deejay, he say, here's Mandy for ya
I feel alright, saying now, Do that stuff
She's dancing high I move on by
The close ups can get rough

When you're
Walking in the wild west end
Walking in the wild west end
Walking with 'cha wild best friend

And let me add: God, I love that verse about the conductress.

Back to the point, I heard once during a Casey Kassem American Top 40 that Knopfler changed his band's name to Dire Straits shortly before recording Dire Straits because he was making so little money on music that his personal dire straits were about to cause him to quit and return to his journalism job. If that is true, then it only makes sense that this collection of songs is focused on the appeal of youthful insouciance and the inevitable surrend to adulthood.

Up Next: Dire Straits, Makin' Movies, 1980 (the real sad stuff)

P.S. If you're curious what Knopfler is doing these days, know that he is making some of his best music. Which for him is saying quite a lot. Check out his latest, Kill to Get Crimson, especially the songs "Punish the Monkey" and "Madame Geneva's." The rules I set for this blog dictate that I can't purchase KtGC, but you should pick it up.

Rock of a Very Specific Age

Album: Def Leppard, Pyromania, 1983

Acquired: I received this tape as a Christmas present in 1983. I also received my first Walkman that day. Thanks, Santa!

Best Track: "Stagefright" (And isn't this t-shirt better than just an album cover?)

Lasting Memory: Pyromania is the first album on cassette I ever owned. I listened to this tape almost continuously for the next six months.

It seems inevitable, then, that Pyromania and Def Leppard are the first album and band that I grew out of. As the years went on, I acummulated hundreds of other albums, my musical tastes changed, and lines like "Rock of Ages/ Keep rollin'" eventually lost their poetic grip on my soul. While I still do dig "Gunter glieben glauchen globen" because I can think of no better way lead Leppard Joe Elliott could have signaled he had something to say about the indominable nature of rock 'n' roll (Alright!), I have to concede that the proto-hair metal of the early 1980s couldn't survive my journey to adulthood.

How are you going to keep them in the Hampton Coliseum once they seen the cigarette-smoke-dimmed spotlights of the original 9:30 Club?

The answer is that you can't. Which is one of the reasons I was kind of reluctant to slip Pyromania into my boom box yesterday afternoon. I knew giving a good listen to "Photograph" and "Too Late for Love" "Foolin'" would take me back sharply to the much simpler time of when I was 14, my biggest adventures were weeklong trips to Boy Scout summer camp, and I still reckoned my biggest challenge in life would be spending the millions of dollars that would someday magically become mine.

At the same time, I really didn't enjoy being 14. I have no traumas to share, but didn't everyone dislike being 14 to some extent? If you didn't, dislike yourself now for ruining middle school for the rest of us.

Another reason I wasn't looking forward to revisitng Pyromania is because doing so would mean I'd be ignoring St. Paul's example of putting childish things behind me once I'd become a man. As I've made clear in dozens of posts, much of the music I collected during my teen years still speaks to me in important ways. The songs of Def Leppard stopped appealing to my ears or my conciousness as early as 1985. But what a great year or so I had burning through Pyromania and its genre kin produced by the likes of Motley Crüe, old Ozzie, The Scorpions, and Twisted Sister.

The dirty big secret, of course, is that the hard rock of all these artists stands up fairly well when judged solely by the standards of blues rock played fast and at 11. Nobody did it better than Led Zepplin, but the others serve in a pinch as por men's fist-pumpers. I'll try to remember make this point more explicitly when I get to my Crüe tapes in a few months.

For the time being, see and hear for yourself what I'm blogging about by watching the video for "Foolin'" and this concert footage of "Stagefright."

Up Next: Dire Straits, Dire Straits, 1978

Long Slide for an Out, Indeed

Album: The Del Fuegos, Stand Up, 1987

Acquired: This came from the Little Creek Navy Exchange.

Best Track: "Long Slide (For an Out)"

Lasting Memory: The Del Fuegos were one of the roots rock/Americana bands that Miller featured in a short-lived series of High Life ads in the mid-1980s. It's either this spot or the one with The Long Ryders that features the classic so-dumb-its-clever line, "I think rock 'n' roll music is folk music, 'cause it's music for folks." (Somebody tell me because the sound on my computer doesn't work.)

It also seems that The dB's and Cruzados were Miller pitchers. Was my musical taste shaped so fully by beer ads? Certainly my body has been lumpily crafted by beer over the decades. But just how deep into my psyche have the pilsner pushers sunk their hops?

We'll leave that question for a long night spent over short draughts. The real message of my only lasting memory of the Del Fuegos being that they were in a Miller commercial is that the band and its music made no other impressions on me. I've owned Stand Up for going on 21 years, and I've listened to it maybe 10 times.

The sound of every track on this album, as epitomized by this video for "Long Slide (For an Out)," is criminally overproduced bluesy country rock with slightly offkey vocals. Sort of like Bonnie Raitt. I hate the Bonnie Raitt sound. So this one's on me.

Obviously, the Del Fuegos could go more country or more blues or more rock when they wanted to, but on Stand Up, they stuck to a mish-mashy middle ground that just doesn't appeal to me. I do hope they got free beer from life for the fine folks at the Plank Road brewery, and according to the band's Wikipedia entry, all the Fuegos went on to distinguished careers, but on Stand Up, the boys from Boston took me on a long trip to nowhere.

And for those keeping score at home, Miller batted .500 on hooking me with its alterna ads. I love The dB's and The Long Ryders. The Del Fuegos and Cruzados leave me flat.

Up Next: Def Leppard, Pyromania, 1983

Smokin' Banana Peels Probably Does Sound Like This

Album: The Dead Milkmen, Beelzebubba, 1988

Acquired: I bought this either in late summer or early fall 1989. If I got it during the summer, it would have come from one of the two record stores at Pembroke Mall. (When was the last time a small mall housed two record stores?) If I bought it in the fall, I got it at the record store in New River Valley Mall. The important thing to know, as I'll soon explain, is that I picked up Beelzebubba either right before or right at the beginning of my sophomore year of college.

Best Track: "Stuart"

Lasting Memory: Despite being big MTV-created stars in 1989-1990, the Milkmen played a concert at a small Blacksburg bar called Buddy's in January (?) 1990. I got in with about 300 other folks because I was working there as the worst waiter ever and also because I was a regular at Buddy's Sunday night comedy show. The place comfortably held about 100 people.

Moshing and stagediving were inevitable in such a crowded space when a semi-punk band was playing, and the next day's Collegiate Times review of the concert began, "A large shirtless man stands on the edge of the stage ready to hurl himself into the audience. The Dead Milkmen show has begun."

I was that large shirtless man.

I can't help but feel proud about having earned this bit of anonymous and fleeting immortality, even as I now realize how sophomoric stagediving is. (Not to mention dangerous for the other concertgoers because I was running about 250 lbs. at the time.)

In my defense, everything about the Milkmen was sophomoric. Their playing was high school jazz band level. Their lyrics, while funny, derive all their humor from petulance, misogyny, condescension, and glorification of substance abuse. In the Milkmen's case, the methods and substances of choice were either chugging bleach ("Don't you want to hang out with the Bleach Boys baby/ In a land where ministers murder golf pros?") or smoking banana peels ("Smokin' banana peels, see how it feels/ Living is easy with ice cubes/ The world is swimmin' with electric eels/ Talk seriously to me brother/ Smokin' banana peels, savin' the seals").

All this still makes me laugh. Some of it, such as "Brat in the Frat" and "Bad Party," also still make me feel smug. In "Bad Party," the Milkmen threaten "I'm gonna shoot the stereo/ If they don't start playing my kind of music" and to "take the host hostage/ Oh what a clever play on words." In "Brat in the Frat," the boys from just outside Philadelphia perfectly summed up my early college opinion of fraternity brothers:

I do not like you college brat
I do not like you and your frat
I do not like you at the shore
I do not like you drunk on Coors
I do not like your average life
I hope you do not take a wife
I hope you don't decide to breed
Cause that's one thing I do not need

A sentiment I never did and never will share with the Milkmen is misogyny, but, again, when they indulge this baser instinct, it's damn funny. In a sloppy but still somehow convincing imitation of James Brown and his band, the Milkmen offer RC's Mom," which is a litany of very specific ways the Godfather of Soul is going to "beat my wife." He is, for instance, "Gonna hit her with a lead pipe/ Gonna smack her with a two-by-four." The song should be thoroughly off-putting, but it just isn't. For that, I can only say to the Milkmen, "Nicely done horrible job, guys."
The Milkmen fit into a strange subgenre of not-quite-punk Andy-Kaufmanesque musical performance art comedy that flourished briefly in the late 1980s. Other bands that worked in this what-the-fudge field are King Missile ("Detachable Penis" anyone?) and Butthole Surfers. I'll declare it a net positive for American popular culture that this kind of music surfaced for a short time and then quickly retreated to the underground. Too much of a bad thing that can sometimes be good is definitely a bad thing. Or something.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that my life is slightly more enjoyable because I get to listen to "Stuart" every now and then. If I only got to listen to "Stuart," though, I probably would decide to "hang out with the Bleach Boys in a world where midgets run for mayor."

Here's Stuart in all it's lyrical and sonic ignominy:

You know what, Stuart, I LIKE YOU. You're not like the other
people, here, in the trailer park.

Oh, don't go get me wrong. They're fine people, they're
good Americans. But they're content to sit back, maybe
watch a little Mork and Mindy on channel 57, maybe kick
back a cool, Coors 16-ouncer. They're good, fine people,
Stuart. But they don't know ... what the queers are doing
to the soil!

You know that Jonny Wurster kid, the kid that delivers papers
in the neighborhood. He's a foreign kid. Some of the neighbors
say he smokes crack, but I don't believe it.

Anyway, for his tenth birthday, all he wanted was a Burrow Owl.
Kept bugging his old man. "Dad, get me a burrow owl. I'll never
ask for anything else as long as I live." So the guy
breaks down and buys him a burrow owl.

Anyway, 10:30, the other night, I go out in my yard, and there's
the Wurster kid, looking up in the tree. I say, "What are
you looking for?" He says "I'm looking for my burrow owl."
I say, "Jumping Jesus on a Pogo Stick. Everybody knows
the burrow owl lives. In a hole. In the ground. Why the hell do you
think they call it a burrow owl, anyway?" Now Stuart, do you
think a kid like that is going to know what the queers are
doing to the soil?

I first became aware of this about ten years ago, the summer
my oldest boy, Bill Jr. died. You know that carnival comes into
town every year? Well this year they came through with a ride
called The Mixer. The man said, "Keep your head, and arms, inside
the Mixer at all times." But Bill Jr, he was a DAAAREDEVIL, just
like his old man. He was leaning out saying "Hey everybody,
Look at me! Look at me!" Pow! He was decapitated! They found
his head over by the snow cone concession.

A few days after that, I open up the mail. And there's a pamphlet
in there. From Pueblo, Colorado, and it's addressed to Bill, Jr.
And it's entitled, "Do you know what the queers are doing to our
soil?"

Now, Stuart, if you look at the soil around any large US city,
there's a big underground homosexual population. Des Moines, Iowa,
for an example. Look at the soil around Des Moines, Stuart.
You can't build on it; you can't grow anything in it. The government
says it's due to poor farming. But I know what's really going on,
Stuart. I know it's the queers. They're in it with the aliens.
They're building landing strips for gay Martians, I swear to
God.

You know what, Stuart, I like you. You're not like the other
people, here in this trailer park.

Up Next: The Del Fuegos, Stand Up, 1987

Blog Break

Channeling Jim Anchower, I know it's been a while since I rapped at ya, but things have just been a stone-ass drag lately.

I'm too busy to blog this week. I have wrestling matches to ref every night, and I have more editing and writing work than I should have agreed to do sitting on my desk. Check back next week to read my thoughts of nonrandom samplings of the music of Dead Milkmen, Del Feugos, Def Leppard (the extra "p" is for "savings"), and Dire Straits.

Happy quarterly tax day for all you self-employed folks.

Joke for a Sunday

I've done more driving in the past three months than I had in the past ten years. In honor of my trusty 95 Saturn SL and my not-all-that-missed 2000 Dodge Intrepid -- O.J. will resume looking for the real thieves once his business in Las Vegas is settled -- here's a bit of a bit from my old act.

====================

I was out on 64 today. Lot of construction. Just orange cones as far as the eye could see. No crews, or course, just a cone parade to nowhere.

Still, I get pulled over. Apparently the whole thing was not a slalom course set up for my enjoyment.

I do like driving on the interstate, though. It gives me a chance to enjoy one of my favorite experiences -- the invented coincidence. You know, like when you're on I-64, and you look down and realize you're going 64. That's cool.

And you know when I'm up around D.C., I'm trying to pul 95 on 95. Out west, 81 on 81. Man, I'm a demon on 264.

====================

Thank you. Thank you. Try the fish. Tip your waitresses and bartenders. And, yes, I do plan to keep my day job, thank you very much.

Also, totally seriously, pay attention in the early morning and early afternoon of June 7th this year. Twice that day, the time and date will be exactly 1:23.45 6/7/8.

THIS Is the Story of Mixed-Up Teen

Ablum: The dB's, The Sound of Music, 1987

Acquired: I got this from the big, stand-alone music store at Ward's Corner. That building has housed a Peaches, a Tracks, a Sound Warehouse, and, most recently, a discount DVD outlet called something like "Discount DVD Outlet."

Best Tracks: "Molly Says" and "Never Before and Never Again"

Lasting Memories: You know how every now and then you hear a song and you need to hear it again immediately? I had experiences like that with "Molly Says" and "Never Before and Never Again" for about 10 years. I would play the songs, rewind The Sound of Music, and play the songs again. CDs made indulging such obsessions easier, and mp3 players may make such indulgences even that much easier, but give me that whirr-chunk-"damn, too far" sound every time.

Over the decades, I have also had the lyrics to "Molly Says" run through my head more than any other set of lyrics besides John Wesley Harding's "Nothing I'd Rather Do." In the latter case, the lines "Nothing I'd rather do/ No place I'd rather be" slot in ironically when I'm doing anything other than what I'd rather be doing and/or in a place any other than one I'd rather be.

With "Molly Says," I just like the whole of the life situation and emotions being expressed:

I was up pacin' the floor
When the call from the station came
She was on her way out of town
And she wanted to know if I'd gone insane
Well, I might
But I doubt if that changes things
She said yeah, you're right
So I hung up the phone
'Cause I don't wanna hear what
Molly says
Molly says

She could stand at the top of the world
And still complain that she could not see
She could stand in a deep dark hole
And still look down on me
She could stand a man who was lost
But it's just not me
'Cause I just get cross when
Molly says
Molly says
Molly says

Molly says in a number of ways
I reminder of her old man
He was good, he was kind
But the family would mind
And I don't think you understand
I didn't like her old man that much to begin with

She could stand at the top of the world
And still complain that she could not see
She could stand in a deep dark hole
And still look down on me
When Molly says
Molly says
Molly says
Molly

I just love everything about the conversations recalled and the scenes described. Same goes for "Never Before and Never Again" (with vocals split between Peter Holsapple and indie pop weirdo and The Adventures of Pete & Pete recurring guest star Syd Straw):

This is the story of a mixed-up teen
What a dilemma, what a crazy dream
They had it out for the very last time
Never again, they made up their minds

She grew her hair and it changed her style
She wanted to stay that way for a while
She took a step and she didn't fall down
And that was just fine as long as he's not around

She got really small, hardly there at all
It took some days before she'd answer his call
And when she did, it just wouldn't sink in
Never before and never again

Never again and never before
Could two in love try to even the score
Never be lovers before you are friends
Never before and never again

He got a job, became immersed in books
His hair grew too, and that improved his looks
He stayed out nights, sometimes parties till four
Until he'd had enough, never again he swore

He took himself very seriously
He lost some friends and made some enemies
Still there were nights when he'd call out her name
Before he realized it was never again

Never again, she cried never again
We're too far apart and the days will not end
We're too far apart and I've taken the step
I've got a home now, not a place I've just slept

Never again and never before
Can two in love try to even the score
Never be lovers before you are friends
Never before and never again
Never again
Never again

The whole of The Sound of Music is evocative for me. "Bonneville," about always wanting to visit the famed stretch of desert where "it's very hot and very flat and that is that," has always made me want to visit Bonneville. I, of course, have not done so any of the times I've been to Utah.

"Working for Somebody Else," about how much it sucks to be "working on somebody else's time" and "working for somebody else's dime," did much to inspire me to go freelance.

"Today Could Be the Day," with its observation that "some days the phone rings off the wall" but "some days its not so bad" and "some days it does not ring at all," has served as a perhaps too-obvious and too-unnecessary but always welcome reminder that it's worth getting out bed because even when things are crazy, the bad stuff always is interesting and will eventually pass.

Unfortunately, I can't link you to any songs off The Sound of Music. The album can't even be purchased from The dB's site. The true collectors among you should ,then, click here while you can.

Up Next: The Dead Milkmen, Beelzebubba, 1988

ERATA: I wrote yesterday that Holsapple had married Susan Cowsill. That is technically true, but the couple is no longer together and Cowsill has remarried. Also, I inadventently omitted a link to a download for "Spitting in the Wind." I've fixed that.

Hook Them Early

Album: dB's, Like This, 1984

Acquired: I bought this at an Everything's a Dollar store at Pembroke Mall in 1987. Best freakin' one dollar and three cents I ever spent.

Best Track: "Spitting in the Wind"

Last Memories: This is the tape I was listening to over and over throughout the York Invitational Tournament in December 1987 and the TCIS Championship in February 1988. I won both. Thank you dB's.

** NON SEQUITIR ALERT **

The dB's are the band every southern college rock band you could name wanted to be. It is certainly no coincidence that chief dB's guitarist and songwriter Peter Holsapple eventually became the fifth member of R.E.M. A master of jangle guitar, propulsive electric organ, and a songwriter nonpareil, Holsapple should probably be the musician all kids want to grow up to be. All he lacks is looks -- think beatnik Gilligan meets Thurston Moore.

At least he married well by hooking up with fabulous after-40 Susan Cowsill of, yep, The Cowsills fame.

Also, both alone and teamed with once and future collaborator Chris Stamey, Holsapple is the best first-line writer in all of rock history. Don't argue with that hyperbolic statement until you check out this cascade of couplets from Side A of Like This:

1. "Love Is for Lovers"

Do you remember when blue was the feeling
Gray was the weather, one was the number?

2. "She Got Soul"

She is not your average girl
Every girl I know is not your average girl

3. "Spitting in the Wind"

I can understand why you'd want a better man
But why you wanna make him outta me?

4. "Lonely Is (As Lonely Does)

Where do lonely people go
You're asking me, you'd think I know
They sadly start rebuilding walls
And quickly, quietly withdraw

6. "Amplifier"

Danny went home and killed himself last night

Track 5, "Not Cool," is a change-up, with its lines of "It's too late, too late to call you/ And if I tried too/ I'd wake you." But other than that, Holsapple just never loses his fastball. Even the change-up sounds like it's delivered by a coked-up former lover. Genius.

Holsapple didn't stop right after he started, either. Any person who can say he or she doesn't recognize him or herself in both roles of the people in "Spitting in the Wind" is delusional or an outright liar:

I can understand why you'd want a better man
But why you wanna make him outta me?
Well, I just muddle along, knowing my right from wrong
Why won't you let me be?

We split apart one cold gray rainy afternoon
And I cried aloud
Now we walk along, apart but strong
Strong enough so that we don't have to stand back in the crowd

Sometimes I feel
I feel like I'm spitting into the wind
Oh I'm spitting into the wind
But I'm learning
Yes I'm learning

My hair stands on end whenever friends mention your name
In pleasant conversation
Well, I don't like to be reminded of what used to be
I don't like the association

Sometimes I feel
I feel like I'm spitting into the wind
Oh I'm spitting into the wind
But I'm learning
Yes I'm learning

I can understand why you'd want a better man
But why do you wanna take it out on me?

Sometimes I feel
Y'know, sometimes
I know I
I feel like I'm spitting into the wind
Oh I'm spitting into the wind
Well I'm spitting into the wind
Yes I'm spitting into the wind

If I appear to be slighting Side B of Like This, I'm only doing so because I don't want to try your patience. Suffice to write that the last five songs on the album can be heard as a suite that begins with a guy who can't understand exactly how he got himself into an f'ed up relationship and ends with a sad trip home on a "White Train" after a failed attempt at reconciliation/revenge.

Maybe that isn't how the second side is supposed to be heard, but it how I interpret what's going on. To change the subject and prevent myself from looking bad, here's a bonus opening from the song "New Gun in Town":

He was not pleased
What he saw made him sick

Up Next: dB's, The Sound of Music, 1987

Strolling Up to theVisitors Center of the Beige Castle

Album: Cruzados, After Dark, 1987

Acquired: I can't tell you where I got this tape, but if you want to know when and why I did, keep reading. If you don't want to know either of those things, please come back tomorrow or the next day, by which time my feelings will no longer be hurt.

Best Track: There really isn't one.

Lasting Memory: I bought this album shortly after it was released in the spring of 1987 solely because I took Spanish as my required language at Norfolk Catholic High School, Home of the Crusaders.

In Spanish, of course, "Crusaders" is "Cruzados." Every day in Senora Harrison's Spanish class, I stared at a greenboard emblazoned with the slogan "Viva Los Cruzados." It was subliminal I tell ya.

I only listened to the tape a couple of times 20 years ago, and I broke it out for the first time since then today because those are the rules for this blog. I will not duck any comers, even the mediocre ones.

And this album is screamingly mediocre. Crusaders, by definition and mythology, storm the dark tower. The Cruzados, by constrast, took a day trip to the local mall's Santa's Castle.

The Cruzados' sound rests somewhere between that of the Bodeans' and Los Lobos' -- all the members of Cruzados were L.A.-based Latinos -- but it lacks the fire of the former and the technical skill and cultural rootedness of the latter. It's almost like the songs have been seived.

I'm currently typing and listening to a Creed song on the radio. I'd wager that Cruzados would trounce Creed in a bland-off then have a punchers' chance of getting past Daughtry in the semis.

The Cruzados' stuff is so bland, it seems to have actually become immaterial. The words and notes have literally disappeared rathed than just gone out of print. For instance, you can by After Dark on Amazon and on Yahoo! Music, but you can't hear any song samples.

So its back to the tape rack to be forgotten for Cruzados. Fortunately, the next selection is one of the best roots rock records ever recorded. As a teaser, check out this video. It's one of the very few MTV ever outright banned.

Up Next: The dB's, Like This, 1984

Fortunate Are the Sons in a Travelin' Band

Album: Credence Clearwater Revival, Chronicle, 1976

Acquired: I probably picked this up at the Little Creek Exchange as one of first five tapes. I stand by having made the acquisition.

Best Track: "Down on the Corner" (But that's a pick that will probably change by the time I finish writing this post. Of the 20 songs on this greatest hits collection, any band would kill to have 17 or 18.)

Lasting Memory: As I was driving to high school in December 1987 or January 1988, "Have You Ever Seen the Rain?" was playing on the AM-only radio in the powder blue Ford Fairmont as a light, cold drizzle coated the windshield just enough to annoy but not enough to merit switching on the wipers that didn't have an intermitment setting. I remember thinking, "Somebody better start or stop this damn rain."

Or maybe that never happened. It certainly seems like it should have. Just about everything I or you has ever done has been done at some point with a CCR song playing in the background. Which has got to be a good thing except to the extent that we can hear a song so often that really stop hearing it all. Explain. Open your bluebooks. You have two hours.

When brothers John and Tom Fogerty and their friends Stu Cook and Doug Clifford formed a garage band in 1959, could they have known that they would wind up becoming one of the most important groups in rock history? A band both syncreatic and seminal? A fount of superlative adjectives for hack-y music blogkeepers everywhere?

No.

But as the undisputed but eventually resented leader of the group, John certainly understood how important it was to blend old influences with innovations and produce a sound that -- really for lack of a better description -- was the sound of America. Or at least that part of America south of a line running east fom Sacramento, Calif. Which is cool when you keep in mind that the guys in CCR grew up in El Cerrito, which is south of Sacto. QED.

After all my hemming and hawing about what to write about this band, I finally realized I can't tell you much you don't know already know about CCR's history, sound, or lyrics. Rather than bore you, I'll just throw out some interesting factoids I might be misrembering from VH-1's Behind the Music:

• Before changing their name to CCR, the boys called themselves The Golliwogs. A rose by any other name would not have rocked, after all.


• The Fogertys father didn't think much of music as a career.


• In 1969, CCR released three albums while also touring constantly. Take that, all you "exhausted" modern-day musicians and actors.


• Tom, among others, sued John for copyright infringement because some of the songs on John's Centerfield album sounded too much like songs John alone had written for CCR but credited to all members of the band. A federal court eventually ruled that an artist cannot plagiarize him- or herself.


• John, for as much as he rocks even to this day, just might qualify for induction to this ill-fated fraternity.

Up Next: Cruzados, After Dark, 1987

Editor's Note: Today's post not spell-checked or proofread for your derision.

Contest for a Sunday

I've been meaning to do my promised post about Credence Clearwater Revival's Chronicle since Thursday, but I can't figure out my angle. It's down to "Fortunate Are the Sons in a Travelin' Band," "You Stop the Rain?! Don't Make Me Laugh," or "Dropping Off the Sweet Hitch-Hiker in Lodi, Again ." I'll figure it all out by tomorrow.

Today is supposed to be Joke for a Sunday day, anyway, so check out this one I've heard many times. I heard it most recently this morning in church, since Jan. 6 is Epiphany. It's also Eastern Orthodox Christmas Eve, so you might still have time to do some last-minute shopping for stocking stuffers at GUM.

===========
If there had been three wise women instead of three wise men, the women would have asked directions directly to Nazareth, arrived on time, helped delivered the baby, brought practical gifts, cleaned the stable, and made a casserole.

===========

Pretty lame, huh? Still, it opens the intriguing question of what three gifts would be fit for the Holy Family on the occassion of the Savior's birth. Mine would be

-- A year's worth of swaddling from Yehuda b'Jeduah
-- A copy of The Cuddle Sutra
-- Gold certificates; everybody likes gold, but it's kind of hard to carry around

What would you bring if you had to play Balthasar, Gaspar, Melchior?

She WAS Right Next Door, After All

Album: Robert Cray, Strong Persuader, 1986

Acquired: I bought this cassette at the Little Creek Amphibious Base Navy Exchange. My first ever job was in the warehouse there. I may even have spent some of my first paycheck on Strong Persuader. That would make me cool. I'm cool, right? Cool.

Best Track: "Smoking Gun"

Lasting Memory: The first time I saw the video for the quasi title track for this album, "Right Next Door (Because of Me)," I thought there could never be anything cooler than what Mr. Cray was pictured doing -- sitting alone in chair and riffing on a Fender guitar.

I never learned how to do that. I made half an effort to learn how to play guitar, but that was unsuccessful. Like all half efforts are.

What Strong Persuader did teach me was that dumb excuses are the right excuses. Sure Cray regrets having broken the marriage of his MILF neighbor, but, c'mon, what did she expect being right next and all? As Cray -- the next not Hendrix from Seattle -- explained:

I can hear the couple fighting right next door
Their angry words sound clear thru these thin walls
Around midnight I hear him shout "Unfaithful woman"
And I knew right there the axe was gonna fall

It's because of me
It's because of me

So, yeah. Opportunity equals sin. Who are you to argue? Or resist?

But the cuckold will have his revenge, as Cray makes clear in "Smoking Gun":

I get a constant busy signal
When I call you on the phone
I get a strong uneasy feeling
You're not sitting there alone

I'm having nasty nasty visions
And baby you're in every one, yeah
And I'm so afraid I'm gonna find you with
A still hot, smokin' gun

Maybe you want to end it
You've had your fill of my kind of fun
But you don't know how to tell me
And you know that I'm not that dumb

I put two and one together
And you know that's not an even sum
And I know just where to find you with
A still hot, smokin gun

I'm standing here bewildered
I can't remember just what I've done
I can hear the sirens whining
My eyes blinded by the sun

I know that I should be running
My heart's beating just like a drum
Now they've knocked me down and taken it
That still hot, smokin' gun
Yeah, still hot, smokin' gun

Yes, they've taken it
Still hot, smokin' gun
Oh, they've taken it
Still hot, smokin' gun
Knocked me down
Taken it

The moral is, as always, don't cheat on a blues musician.

Up Next: Credence Clearwater Revival, Chronicle, 1976

P.S. Happy New Year! Whom ever thought there would be a 2008?