You Can Listen to Jimi, But You Can't Hear Him

Album: Jimi Hendrix, Smash Hits, 1969 (cassette re-release)

Best Track: "The Wind Cries Mary"

Lasting Memory: One of the earliest music-themed conversations I can remember having took place in the back of late-1970s Ford Econoline van that was crammed full of 12-year-olds.

I was one of them, and my fellow boy Scouts and I were on our way to a weekend camping trip. I'm sure we had no idea what we were talking about, but we certainly all agreed that Jimi Hendrix was definitely the greatest guitarist who had ever lived and, quite possibly, the coolest human being we could imagine.

I'm sure I was also sure that I would one day be Hendrix' equal or better in both regards.

That hasn't happened yet, but there may still be time if I follow these three simple steps:

• Step 1; Learn to play guitar
• Step 2: Do a lot of drugs
• Step 3: Die at age 27

Maybe it is too late for my 38-year-old ass, after all. Especially since I have failed in several attempts to learn how to play, and I just have no appetite for hard drugs. Oh well, I can still kick back with a brew and enjoy Hendrix' music.

There seems to be a problem with even that poor consolation, though, because like Wesley Snipes as Sidney Deane keenly observed in White Men Can't Jump, "You can listen to Jimi, but you can't hear him. There's a difference man. Just because you're listening to him doesn't mean you're hearing."

The point was supposed to be that Woody Harrelson's character couldn't appreciate the undertones of racial struggle and personal triumph in Hendrix' music. The truth of the matter is that everyone has heard every popular and semipopular Hendrix song so many times by now that the music has become at best enjoyable, and at worst a little stale.

What was once revolutionary and revelatory has become just more fodder for classic rock stations and parodies that are parodic simply because they are nearly note-perfect.

I'm overstating the case, but I can't shake the feeling that overfamiliarity with Hendrix' body of work has robbed the music of its power to impress and inspire.

But then I hear "The Wind Cries Mary," and I begin to understand again why I and everyone else should be so blown away by the man. What is great about this particular song and similar ones like "Red House" and "Hey Joe" is that Hendrix pulls off that trick of playing both the rhythm and the melody lines at the same time. He bends individual notes within chords. He, in short, rocks while being all bluesy and jazzy about it.

So I can still appreciate listening Hendrix still, but having to really think about why it's good to be hearing him takes a lot of the fun out of the whole thing.

Anyone know how I can get my 12-year-old ears of wonderment back?

Up Next: Petr Holsapple & Chris Stamey, Mavericks, 1991

Now I Don't Know What Not to Believe

One in five atheists currently living in the United States believe there is a God.

I should probably pray that this is a joke, but I instead find myself wondering if the other 80 percent of American atheists who, well, actually know what "atheism" means aren't correct. How can there be a God who lets people walk around not even knowing what, or rather Whom, they weren't believing in. I know my God wants everyone to get the joke when the lights inevitably go out.

Sadly, the statistic is true. It comes from the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life's U.S. Religious Landscape Survey, which involved some 36,000 American adults.

What may even be more disheartening for both God and any mortal who wants to believe most other mortals are at least intelligent enough to exercise their free will in an informed manner when making decisions regarding life, faith, and basic word choice, is that more than 50 percent of agnostics who were polled by pew reported that they believed in the existence of God.

Maybe if I do some further polling about these people's heads and shoulders, they could be convinced that if they believe in God, they can't be unsure about whether they believe in God.

I suppose there is one sliver of a silver lining to this leaden cloud of ignorance -- a nimbus to the nimbus, if you will. Only 1.6 percent of survey respondents said they were atheists, and only 2.6 said they were agnostics.

But, then again, how would they know?

Turning the Anger Into Laughs

Album: Ed Haynes, Sings Ed Haynes, 1989

Best Track: "Wrecking Crew"

Lasting Memory: George Carlin died yesterday. That is not my most indelible memory of listening to Ed Haynes' debut album, but it is fitting that I'd be able to pay my respects to Mr. Carlin in a post about Haynes singing Haynes.

While Haynes is a pop folkie instead of a genre-defining stand-up comedian, he operates very much in the tradition of Carlin in looking for -- and usually finding -- the comedic side of ordinary and ordinarily angering events.

Carlin once asked, "What's so civil about war, anyway?" Haynes opens his album with the pretty hilarious antiwar ballad "I Want to Kill Everybody."

And if you enjoy punning sarcasm, Carlin presented you with the eternal conundrum, "Why do we drive on the parkway and parkway in the driveway?" Haynes presents 'Talking Cat Blues."

Third, where would Carlin have been if he hadn't become the master of turning sputtering rage into comedy gold. List the seven words and win a prize while also enjoying Haynes' "Wrecking Crew". The song "McFarland," which is about a town in which "the kids aren't living very long" because of soil pollution is an even better example, but I can't find it online anywhere.

Last, both Carlin and Haynes seem to have had mixed relationships with for-adults-only substances. I'm don't actually know if Haynes ever had problems with alcohol, but he sure sings a lot about beer, wine, and liquor on Sings. If he isn't somewhat fondly recalling "Drinking Father's Whiskey" while in high school, he is overcoming his temporary aversion to beer after having witnessed a homeless person go "Splash!" after drinking too much Mickey's during a street fair. No telling whether all of this happened before or after Haynes enjoyed "One Brief Liaison With the Lady of the Afternoon."

Carlin's problems with cocaine, wine, and Vicodin were never anything he tried to hide. R.I.P. Mr. Carlin. Thanks for the laughs and for inspiring folks like Ed Haynes.

Up Next: Jimi Hendrix, Smash Hits, 1969 (cassette re-release)

P.S. In hunting down song links for this post, I cane across an article in which Haynes said he has always admired and tried to emulate Tom Lehrer. While I have no choice but to take Haynes at his own word, I also think he is selling himself short. Nothing against Lehrer -- who pulled off the seemingly impossible task of singing the periodic table -- but that MIT/Harvard/UC-Santa Cruz mathematics professor just didn't have Haynes' edge. Which is not to say that he couldn't be politely caustic.

The Movie of Your Life

Album: : John Wesley Harding, The Name Above the Title, 1991

Best Track: "The World (And All Its Problems)"

Lasting Memory: Over the years, I've advised several friends and family members that they needed to start living like they were the stars of the movies of their lives. It was only this past Wednesday that I realized I had stolen this truly cool bit of pop psychology from John Wesley Harding.

I have no idea whether Harding appropriated the ideas and lyrics for "The Movie of Your Life" from another source, but it is well past time that I give him credit for what I've been spouting.

Should you want to do some spouting of your own, here are the lyrics

In the movie of your life
They'll get some real jerk to be you
Edited so he can act
Cast because of his TVQ
In the movie of your life
You'll be less famous than he is
That's a strange turn of events
You'll be a cameo amongst the rushes

And you're learning all the lines
Though it was you who said them in the first place
Since then someone wrote them down
To pay for his new beach space
There's all these things you can't recall
And things you know you didn't say
But in the move of your life
The truth just flirts and runs away

[Chorus]
And it's so plain to me
You're happy with this parody
But in a glittering instant you hold the light so we can see
That your joke's become your reality

All your tricks so limp and tame
You said you were a stage magician
But it's only moths in light
Heaven burnt out in collision
You thought it was your life story
It's only seats that they're booking
The truth won't get a look-in

[Chorus]

Everyone knows that you're divine so
we await your resurrection
And they say that you'll be just fine
After you dry out on the critical clothesline

And you know it's all made up
How come your face has ceased to be you?
All your doubts and greatest fears
They will be confirmed at the preview
Celluloid has shaped the day
And put the cat amongst the coughers
Now you're waiting for the next big offer

[Chorus]

Other appropriable conceits featured on The Name Above the Title are "The People's Drug," which recounts the fruitless quest for an elixir that will make you happy just like everybody else, and "The World (And All It's Problems)," which is a blanket explanation-cum-poor excuse for why you're not happy just like everybody else.

Don't think about any of this stuff to long and too hard, though. If you do, you'll still be the star in the movie of your life, but the film will be The Lost Weekend, like it is for the protagonist of "The Person You Are" who declares

I slam my glass down on the bar
And my problems they hit the floor so gracefully
I don't know where I parked the car
But that's ok, tonight I'm on the town without me
Tonight it's just me and my evil twin
The one who slips one more drink in
The one who slips away, when I start sinking

Related to none of this, Harding and his backing band, The Good Liars, close this album with an excellent cover of one of all my all-time favorite songs. Here's the original, performed by the inimitable Tommy James and the Shondells.

Up Next: Ed Haynes, Sings Ed Haynes, 1989

This Is the Style of a Bastard Son

Album: John Wesley Harding, Here Comes the Groom, 1990

Best Track: "The Red Rose and the Briar"

Lasting Memory: As I noted a few months ago, Here Comes the Groom features the song I have sung to myself more often than any other over the past two decades. That song, "Nothing I'd Rather Do," is about how ready, willing, and able Mr. Harding is to see his girlfriend through the hardest times.

When I sing it, however, it is pure irony bordering on vituperation. With all apologies to Harding, the chorus of

There's nothing I'd rather do
Take you in and pull you through
Take you in and pull you through
There's nothing I'd rather do
There's nothing I'd rather do

just works when you have to convince yourself to finish your shift in the 140-degree Farenheit Styrofoam factory during the month of August or make the drive to your temp job at the paper goods plant during a driving ice storm in February. After all, there is nothing more personally empowering or satisfying than kneecapping a Pollyanna.

Call me a bastard if you must. Even if I am, I'd have company in the very person of singer-songwriter John Wesley Harding. The last song on Here Comes the Groom is the professional autobiography/statement of purpose "Bastard Son," which begins

Bob Dylan is my father, Joan Baez is my mother
And I'm their bastard son
Though my roots show through I'm just 22
I don't belong to anyone
When The Band was disbanded, I was disowned
I got a number you can ring me on but I ain't got no phone
Got a forwarding address, baby I ain't got no home
I got no direction home
That's the style of a bastard child
This is the song of a bastard son

While it seems a bit self-congratulatory, it is fairly accurate. And, of course, he did take his stage name from the Bob Dylan album.

I also feel justified in subverting the intent of "Nothing I'd Rather Do" because Harding does a fair bit of angry snarking himself on this album, as you'll hear by clicking here and working through samples of all the songs. The title track describes a march to the gallows of a marriage made well south of heaven and in the neighborhood of the pocketbook. In "The Devil in Me," Harding admits to being JFK's assassin, Jesus' executioner, and, oh yeah, the guy who "made you cry/ Could of made you laugh instead."

Harding isn't really evil, though. He is just easily jaded. As everyone knows, the romantic's disappointment easily turns to anger, and anger is the easiest thing to take out on other.

Harding calls his expressions of this emotional rollercoaster"gangsta folk," and he gives full voice to his tendency toward jadedness in "Same Thing Twice." Since the song is a fair approximation of one of the major reasons why I didn't pursue stand-up more diligently, I'll give the full lyrics:

He's done it all a million times
The gags, the repartee, the little crimes
Every audience is special and that goes for you
He looks into your eyes again
He never does it but he tries again
That old boy lost look could bruise you black and blue
Everybody's looking for a single row so they can be alone
Cos every time the lights go up, they'd rather be at home
I looked through all the wanted ads with a fine toothed comb
And all I came up with was another evening
Doing the same thing twice
That's what I was doing

All the drinks that he's been sinking
Never ask him what he's thinking
Every audience is unique and that goes for you
Dead or alive you're coming with me
Because everything's my cup of tea
That's why I've got a gold suit and some green Italian shoes
Everybody says they had, but we all know they didn't
It's impossible to be a little bit pregnant
Give me the whole fruit cos I'm getting just a segment
And all I end up with is another evening
Doing the same thing twice

Well it hurts so bad to get this stoned
By ugly looking bureaucrats with ears like headphones
Reading The Sun, Sunday Sport, S.Ideal Home, Woman's Own
Looks like you're on your own

Bring me on the magic sponge
My dying gasp, my final lunge
It's all over now bar the dance
Do it now but don't get caught
I've been having third thoughts (third thoughts)
They can be so clever, only when the script demands
You cluttered up the sky now so you can't follow any star
Someone's sitting next to you in an empty cinema
No-one wants to end up face down in a reservoir
And I don't wanna end up with another evening
Saying the same thing twice

Harding never completely gives into his dark side, though. "The Red Rose and the Briar" revives and redeems the romantic. It is one of those songs I always listen to twice back-to-back. Here's why

Midweek and we reached Scarlet Town
I was almost dying of thirst
We parked the car in some old schoolyard
The windscreen caked in dirt
There was no water in the engine left
No tread upon the tyres
The electrics were broke cos you went mad
You ripped out all the wires
Across the road, a small cafe
In this state of disrepair
You went for papers and a shave
So I saved you a chair
I knew it wasn't the journey's end
And that your dream was incomplete
But I just could not stand anymore
I was dead upon my feet
I was dead upon my feet

There's nothing there in the market square
But the ghost of the Scarlet Town Crier
I was dead upon my feet
I sing the red rose and the briar
I sing the red rose and the briar

The waitress told me her life story
She'd always meant to up and go
She wiped a cup on her red pinafore
As we waited for you to show
And I told her just a little of you
But left the picture incomplete
You still weren't there to paint it in person
So I skipped out on the street
I skipped out on the street
The newsagent grinned, he said
Yes you'd been in
You bought a local paper and some shades
The washroom attendant said that you'd freshened up
That you'd left but you hadn't paid
And I couldn't figure out where you were
So I went back just to look near the car
There was nothing there where it should have been
Just oil on dirt and tar
Just oil on dirt and tar

There's nothing there in the market square
But the ghost of the Scarlet Town Crier
And there was nothing there where it should have been
I sing the red rose and the briar
I sing the red rose and the briar

I saw it parked way down the street
In a garage off on the right
And a man said 'Get your hands off son'
I just traded that wreck for a motorbike
There was nothing left of mine inside
Not even the broken radio
And I couldn't figure out where that left me
So I went back to look for Rose
The Cafe Rouge was a lunchtime rush
Of regulars yelling for food
The service in there left a lot to be desired
And all the regulars were getting rude
I saw an apron thrown over a chair
A note said 'Hey John, we're gone, we're gone'
And I just smiled cos I loved you both
So I put the apron on
I put the apron on

There's nothing there in the market square
But the ghost of the Scarlet Town Crier
And I just put the apron on
I sing the red rose and the briar
I sing the red rose and the briar

Up Next: John Wesley Harding, The Name Above the Title, 1991

Losing One of Our Own

The news of Tim Russert's untimely death yesterday afternoon hit me harder than it had any right to. I never knew the man. I only watched Meet the Press a couple dozen times over the past two decades. I didn't even tune into his primary/election coverage on NBC and MSNBC. I'm more of a PBS Newshour guy.

But, man, when I flipped on the news last night during dinner and heard about Russert's passing, I teared up.

It would be facile to quote Donne and chalk my reaction up to the universal truth that "Each man's death depletes me." But the truth of that statement doesn't make it a compelling lived reality.

Just in the last month, America has lost some giants of our culture. R.I.P. Bo Diddley, Jim McKay, and Yves St. Laurent (French, but still). They'll be missed, but their passing didn't bring me down.

So I got to thinking about other celebrities' deaths that I had felt personally. There have only been a few, with the greatest impact having been made by Caroll O'Conor's passing a few years ago.

What I realized some time last night -- and I'll admit it isn't the greatest piece of cosmic insight since Archimedes discovered his principle -- was that I would mourn Russert as I had O'Connor because Russert might as well have been a member of my family.

He was working class, Irish, Catholic, charitable, intelligent, and constructively angry with the world and its workings. I know I'm on the razor's edge of turning this reflection into a misguided discussion of how awesome I am, but everything Russert and O'Connor were is what my family members are, as well. Heck, O'Connor looks enough like a Lamb that I'll say he secretly was one of our tribe.

Our tribe lost another of our own yesterday. Not just a famous member, though, but one who embodied all of our best talents and dreams.

Thanks for showing us how it's done, Mr. Russert.

+++++++++++

Now to lighten the mood, here's the real story of Archimedes discovery.

One day, while slipping into the tub, it occurred to Archimedes that the level of the bath water rose when he got in it. Knowing that the apparent increase in volume couldn't be explained by the addition of water, he reasoned that the water must be rising in proportion to the weight of the object placed in it (i.e., his body).

Extremely pleased with this deduction, Archimedes ran out into the street, yelling, "Eureka! Eureka!"

After a few minutes, a friend stopped him and said, "Hey, Arch, I don't know why you're yelling at us. You're the one needs a bath."

What Goes Flip Must Go Flop

Album: Guadalcanal Diary, Flip-Flop, 1989

Best Tracks: "Always Saturday" and "Ten Laws"

Lasting Memory: I saw Guadalcanal Diary play live at Norfolk's Boathouse on three separate occassions. The first time was in 1987, I think. I know that a band from my very neighborhood, The Velvet Paws, opened. I also know that both the Paws and the Diarists did covers of Led Zeppelin's "Immigrant Song." Why? I don't know.

The last time I saw the Diarists in concert was in 1990, when the band was touring to support what would turn out to be their final studio album. Flip-Flop spawned a minor video hit in the MTV Buzz Bin-approved "Always Saturday." The real highlight of the album and its related tour, though, was probably "... Vista." When the band played "... Vista," the lead singer, Murray Attaway, made a big deal about it being the only song in the Diarist's entire catalog that had bassist Rhett Crowe singing a lead part. For no real reason, that has always stuck with me.

Something else that is impossible to get out of one's head is the chorus to "... Vista":

Koomalada koomalada koomalada vista
Hey, na na na nahnee beesta
Eeenie meenie exameenie
Oop wanna nee
Hey diddley awp dop
Di-dop a wop bop

You're welcome. I figure I should respond now for when you thank me for getting that stuck in your head. You will thank me. Or curse me. You say "toe-may-toe," I say "salmonella."

The past two posts have gotten a lot of verbiage out of how Guadalcanal Diary's songs were at one extreme or another of spirtuality or profaness. The band must have been playing with that thematic theme when naming this album Flip-Flop. Ironically, however, the songs on Flip-Flop all fall pretty far to the spiritual side of the divide. "Always Saturday," with its damning of American suburban materialism, really isn't that much different from "Ten Laws," with its damning of folks who have "Ten laws to break/ Ten laws broken."

So the Diarrists confound me again. I guess I'll just have to go on enjoying Guadalcanal Diary's music without knowing for sure what they were up to while making it. I can live with that happy ignorance.

I will, however, find out what "koomalada" means if it kills me.

Up Next: John Wesley Harding, Here Comes the Groom, 1990

Other People's Memories, Our Superstitions

Album: Guadalcanal Diary, 2 x4, 1987

Best Track: "Where Angels Fear to Tread"

Lasting Memory: In honor of my friend Michael, who got married this past weekend to the lovely Marguerite, I'll relate Michael's most distinct memory of enjoying Guadalcanal Diary's 2 x 4.

During the fall semester of 1987, Michael and some of his classmates made a road trip from Virginia Tech to either Williamsburg or Norfolk to catch a GD show. One of the traveling companions was a young woman Michael took a fancy to during the drive down.


At some point in the return trip, the driver figured it would be enjoyable for everyone if they all listened to even more GD, who had, by all accounts, put on a great concert. Singing along, having a good time, Michael, for reasons he couldn't explain then and never will understand, decided it would impress his new lady friend if he stuck his face directly in front of hers, bugged out his eyes, and screamed this verse from "Let the Big Wheel Roll":

I got a jacked-up four-wheel drive
Big, like Mr. T
The babe that's ridin' shotgun
She's a TEENAGE SEX MACHINE
[emphasis Michael's]

Surprisingly, this failed to have the desired effect, and he never heard from the young woman again after she got out of the car back in Blacksburg. Things still worked out well for Michael, though.

As for the Diarists, they were up to their up to their usual tricks of mixing the almost scarily religious with the nearly comical profane on 2 x 4. Sure, the lyrics to "Little Birds" amount to little more than a list of easily smirked at children's superstitions, but the melody sure makes those old wive's tales sound like gospel truths. Maybe mirrors really are the gateways to another world, and maybe God really does watch us through the eyes of little birds. Best to sleep with your master bedroom's bathroom door closed and to keep you window shades down at all times.

Life can be scary, but so can efforts to escape its vagaries -- whether the refuge sought is in alcohol at "3 AM" or in old-time religion "Where Angels Fear to Tread."

But it really doesn't matter what you do, because the the "Litany" is the lesson: Life goes on. So enjoy. And know that any woman who doesn't enjoy having lyrics maniacally screamed into her face probably isn't worth spending time with anyway.

Up Next: Guadalcanal Diary, Flip-Flop, 1989

Note From Management: This post really should have been about Guadalcanal Diary's 1986 album Jamboree, but my copy of that cassette got stolen from the studio at WUVT FM. I had brought the tape in for my show, forgot it, and it was gone the next day. Never trust a college kid. The real shame of it is that I was absolutely going to slay you with my word-by-word analysis of the lyrics to "I See Moe" and convince you that the Moe of the title is actually all of us. Your loss.

As compensation, here are the words to what I consider to be the best song on 2 x 4. As reward, they are presented without further commentary.

Black clad preacher on a mountain road
Lifts his voice in tongues unknown
Barefoot dancing on burning coals
Covered by the night

Backwoods firewater jubilee
Believers dance of victory
The lame can walk, the blind can see
Step into the light

With torch aloft and eyes aglow
Gaze into the fire below
Drawn by something they don't know

Fools rush in where angels fear to tread

Rattlesnake coiled in a young girl's arms
Green eyes flashing in the dark
Spirits keep their own from harm
Faithful to the end

Blind man standing on a narrow ledge,
balanced on a knife edge
He comes to judge the quick and dead,
forever and amen

Swaying gently to and fro
The valley of death that yawns below
Call to them and want to know

Fools rush in where angels fear to tread

White clad preacher with a house of gold
Wrings his hands and bares his soul
He knows the tears go with the role
Join in the crusade

Swept away by angel choirs
Give in to their strange desires
Cast your faith into the fire

God's Gotta Laugh Sometimes, Too

Album: Guadalcanal Diary, Walking in the Shadow of the Big Man, 1985

Best Track: "Trail of Tears"

Lasting Memory: About two hours into the drive up to Virginia Tech for the beginning of my first semester of college, the batteries in my Walkman died. I had to take my Walkman and listen to tapes during the drive because there was zero chance that the U-Haul would feature anything as luxurious as an in-dash cassette-stereo. Also, how else was I supposed to spend my final six hours with my father before leaving home for (what didn't quite turn out to be) ever? Actually talking to him?

The Walkman conked out some way into the title track of Walking in the Shadow of the Big Man. The workings of the universe are of en more scrutable than we like to pretend. Good talk that day, Dad.

How to describe the band Guadalcanal Diary? Country- and gospel-tinged, but also wise-assed. I'd like to sit down for a beer with head GD'er, Murray Attaway, just to have the opportunity to find out what goes through the mind of a man who who is equally adept at writing and recording Christ-haunted songs like "Trail of Tears" and "Why Do the Heathens Rage?" as well as the sub-frat-boy joke "Watusi Rodeo."

I'll probably never get that chance, but I'm glad he was able to share his unique worldview with the, um, world.

The guy who wrote

The Sun hangs low in the Western sky
I bow my head and remember now
Someone's lips pressed close to mine
Her cool hand upon my brow

Hell burns hot for a killer 's heart
A shallow grave in an unmarked plot
Crack of gunfire in the dark
Hand in hand we'll walk at daybreak

One wore black (x3)

The trail of tears is winding on
Many pass along the road
Dusty soldiers march along
As they file one by one

One wore black (x3)

Trail of tears is winding on
Frightened soldier run no more
Arm and arm with lovers gone
No one passes on the road

Two girls wait at the railroad track
For their soldiers to come back
Knowing this will be their last
One wore blue and one wore black
One wore black . . .

just doesn't seem like the same guy who wrote

Come along with me to the Congo land
Got a zebra by the tail and a python in my hand
Once my home was a Texas plain
But now I swing a lasso on an alien terrain

Hottentons and pygmies know where to go
Everybody's heading for the Watusi Rodeo

Cowboys are putting up a big fence around
A sacred elephant burial ground
Native women stomping up a flurry in the mud
Villagers are looking for some cowboy blood (Blood!)

I guess they didn't like them hats we made 'em wear
They don't look right on the native hair
Don't they don't it's all for show
All for showing at the Watusi Rodeo

Monkeys in the trees just thumbing their nose
At the bull-riders riding on rhinos
Warriors standing with spears in the hands
Wondering what's next from a crazy white man

Natives are restless under these Stetsons
What are these cowboys doing in the Congo
Look like cows but they're water buffaloes
Ropin' and a riding in the Watusi Rodeo

Oh they look like cows but they're water buffaloes
Everybody's heading for the Watusi Rodeo

It's entirely possible that I'm not giving Attaway's bandmates -- Rhett Crowe, Joe Poe, and Jeff Walls -- enough credit, but Attaway was the guy in charge. It's also very likely that I'm intentionally ignoring some not very subtle anticolonial or anti-cultural hegemony message in "Watusi Rodeo," but that is my prerogative as a listener.

I'd settle for a Hardee's iced tea with Attaway to get this all straight if the beer option is truly off the table.

Up Next: Guadalcanal Diary, 2 x 4, 1987

Fairly Godfathers

Album: The Godfathers, More Songs About Love and Hate, 1989

Best Track: "Walking Talking Johnny Cash Blues"

Lasting Memory:

I promised in yesterday's post to rule on how successful The Godfathers were in blending pop and punk. After hearing both of the band's U.S. major-label releases a total of four times within the span of 26 hours, I can definitively state that band either just missed at bringing the two sounds together or were too good at doing so.

Whichever was the case, the result is the same: With the exception of four, possibly five, songs, The Godfathers' blend of sunny hooks and angst-cum-anger produced more mismatch than monster mash. The poppier songs err on the side of not being light enough, while the heavier songs err on the side of not having a pressure-release. Committing more fully to either the pop aesthetic, like Blink 182 did on Enema of the State, or to punk nihilism, like Green day did on Dookie, would have served The Godfathers well.

In large measure, The Godfathers' failing -- if it's even fair to call it that -- was due to ambition rather than lack of skill. After all, it's not like any pre-1988 bands I can think of had really tried to make a go of pop punk in the world of MTV and mainstream rock radio. The bands who might be named as having done so include The Ramones, The Jam, and, um, nobody. And even those associations aren't completely apt, since The Ramones owed more to garage band and Motown hitmakers than to actual punk. The Jam were Kinks meet Who. Lacking solid role models, The Godfathers couldn't easily hear where they needed to lighten up or bear down.

The Godfathers were innovators who couldn't quite remake the mold for what a rock hit could be. It would be nice to think that The Godfathers were an influence on Blink 182 and Green Day, but there is no solid evidence for that. I'll still make the connection.

At the same time, since what The Godfathers produced in the form of More Songs About Love and Hate hasn't been proven essential by the test of time, I honestly don't have a lasting memory tied to the album. But even though each of the following is still a little too washed out to be to an ideal of its kind of song, there are three standout on this album: "She Gives Me Love," "Life Has Passed Us By," and the aforementioned "Walking Talking Johnny Cash Blues."

Click the two of three and wonder what might have been. As The Jam noted, "That's Entertainment."

Up Next: Guadalcanal Diary, Walking in the Shadow of the Big Man, 1985

Why, Those Mostly Good Punks! Nobody Oughta ...

Album: The Godfathers, Birth, School, Work, Death, 1988

Best Track: "'Cause I Said So"

Lasting Memory: I will nevver forget the day I stopped wanting "Cause I Said So" to be my personal theme song simply because every single word of the song was acknowledged to be biographically true -- welcomed, even -- about me by every single other person. That regrettable day will be one day after my death.

I am kidding, of course. But there are times when anyone would want the following to be true about themselves:

I wake up in the morning and I feel like a king
Make love not work I can do anything
Can rule my own world and never have to listen
I'm living like there's no tomorrow
You know there really isn't

'Cause I said so
'Cause I said so
'Cause I said so
'Cause I said so

Every day's a thrill when you're living like me
Don't read Baudelaire's poetry
And I don't need no Ph.D.
'Cause I'm ten times smarter than you'll ever be

'Cause I said so
'Cause I said so
'Cause I said so
'Cause I said so

'Cause I said so
'Cause I said so
'Cause I said so
'Cause I said so

Now listen all you
peoples to what I have to say
Every night's a gas if you want it that way
All you need is money and a little bit of luck
I ain't greedy baby all I want is all you've got

'Cause I said so
'Cause I said so
'Cause I said so
'Cause I said so

Only two of the lines accurately describe my reality. Assuming this is a teest, how do you score?

More than a few of the songs on Birth, School. Work, Death are thematically anthemic. The title track, in particular, is a half-lament, half-call to arms against British proletarianism. The album also offers up a few ineptly romantic songs, like "Just Like You," which I can't find even a clip of to link to. Make up your tune, then, for this chorus:

It's not because I'm feeling down
That I want you around
I just want to share the good times with
Someone who looks just like you.

What The Godfathers are serving up on this album is pop punk before there was such a thing for the likes of The Offspring, Green Day, and Blink 182 to lay claim to. I'll have more to opine about the success the Godfathers achieved in mixing pop and punk without really having a commercial example to follow in my next post.

And you know that my opion will be unalterably true. 'Cause I wrote so.

Up Next: The Godfathers, More Songs About Love and Hate, 1989