The Year That Was 2008: Best Music

It should come as no surprise that my year has been marked by one simple fact: I’m getting old. Work has consumed most of my time this year, and what little was left got eaten up by my PH.D. applications: Whether I was studying (ineffectually) for the GRE, attempting to craft personal statements that struck a balance between “please take me” and “I am everything,” or trying to decide where in this great land of ours to drag my wife and kitties off to, I had little time for entertainment.

I have now successfully (I think) submitted five of my seven applications, and I can say with some surprise that I didn’t know just how much mental room this whole process has been taking up in my brain. I want this. I want this so much that the very prospect of failing to get in anywhere riddles me with doubt, fear, and a healthy dose of self-loathing.

All of which is to say that I’ve been so preoccupied that not even music has soothed this savage beast.

I say all of this, too, to explain (in part) why my list this year is a bit scatter-shot. True, every year has its challenges in regards to distilling the best sounds into a representative list, but this was the first year that I honestly share the “there wasn’t much good music” sentiment that my colleagues have begged to in previous years. This year I (halfheartedly) searched for that one album, that one new musical experience that enthralled me—the way, say, Red Devil Dawn did in 2003—but I don’t think it ever came. Sure, many of the albums on my list got heavy rotation, but not in the way Cease to Begin lodged itself in my brain last year and ever begged for one more listen.

In fact, I struggled with the number one spot this year. Last year, my top three all shared number one qualities—and the final decision came only after careful deliberation

This year, not so much. I actually flirted with the notion of forgoing a number one album altogether.

And so, this list represents what I was listening to in 2008, and it has some really excellent albums on it, but I haven’t approached this list with as much glee as I have in past years.

Since I knew this going in, the albums I’ve chosen represent a wide range of talents and moods—and the album in the top spot is one I may very well have disqualified in previous years. But I’ll get into that below.

I’ve listed down to ten, in traditional fashion, then followed up with a couple honorable mentions and other goodies. Enjoy!

Here we go.

10. Al Green – Lay It Down

Here’s the thing: I am too young to be a true Al Green fan. I fell in love with Al through a greatest hits Columbia House purchase many years ago. And, much like my love of John Lee Hooker, James Brown, Aretha Franklin, Ray Charles, Sam & Dave, and Cab Calloway, my love of Al is founded in a vague appreciation of soul. I think I get it. And I love to spin it. But I’m not sure I can say more than that.

So, here we are, in 2008, and we get a new batch of songs from Al—and they’re good. “Lay it Down” has a groove that’s anchored by a walking bass line. “Just For Me” is a classic party jam; the la la la’s of “Stay With Me (By The Sea)” are classic soul notes. “Take Your Time” is one of the best tracks on the album and really helped me slow down and relax through all the tension of the year. And so, Al makes number ten. There’s not much new ground here, but in many ways this throwback was just the thing for 2008.

9. My Brightest Diamond – A Thousand Shark’s Teeth

Okay, so Al Green was all about the groove and good soul. This one’s all about mood and the dark regions of the mind. My Brightest Diamond made my list in 2006, and so the release of this one I anticipated. It did not disappoint. Shara Worden’s voice is haunting and far reaching—from the soft lilting of “If I Were Queen,” to the soaring crescendos of “Ice And The Storm.” Just as Al Green’s “Take Your Time” reminded me to relax, Worden’s repetition of “I want to shake myself and turn my heart inside out” ran through my head like a personal mantra, a reprimand. The tinkling tempo of “Apple” is deeply reminiscent of Bjork, but where Bjork has disappointed me of late, this hit the spot.

8. The Whigs – Mission Control

My first thought: There’s nothing new here. This is all derivative. And, to some extent, this is true. The first track smacks of Brain Drain era Ramones. Track two launches straight and unabashedly into The Clash. The first chords of track three sound so much like Foo Fighters that when Parker Gispert starts singing, I have to remind myself that it’s not Dave Grohl. By track four, I can’t help but wonder who’s going to get nicked next. But that’s okay. And, not surprisingly, the trip down memory lane nets the gem that is “Right Hand On My Heart,” the best track on the album. From here on out, it is what it is—and it’s damn entertaining.

7. Sigur Rós - Med Sud I Eyrum Vid Spilum Endalaust

Mandy and I bought a few CDs before hopping on the plane to Finland this summer. This was one of them. What comes after “Gobbledigook” doesn’t matter (well, that’s not true…). Hands down one of the best songs of the year. Earlier this year, Mandy brought home Screaming Masterpiece, a documentary about Icelandic music. We watched it and it was really fascinating. This led us to watch Heima. Really, one can’t help but be mesmerized by these guys. The whole indecipherable lyrics thing is ultimately about either a pre- or post-linguistic phase—filling in the space between head and heart with raw sound. Good stuff.

6. The Hold Steady – Stay Positive

Okay, given what I’ve already written, this one should be here for the title alone. This was most definitely a year for the imperative: Stay positive. Personal trauma aside, this was a rough year for the world (or at least the world I live in; rough might be too positive for the rest of the spinning orb), and while many of us are thankful and hopeful for the coming Obama administration, we’ve still got some climbing to do.

Of course, the title doesn’t necessarily reflect the imperative that it implies. That’s the point, I’m sure, but… True, this album is not Boys and Girls. No one expected it to be. It is, however, a good follow-up. “Sequestered In Memphis” is an excellent song, reminiscent of all that is good about Springsteen and the E Street band, and The Hold Steady for that matter. Good piano, good sing-along chorus. “Both Crosses” is also an excellent track—eerie guitar and poignant lyrics, a winning combination.

5. Flight Of The Conchords – Flight Of The Conchords

While this album has songs that were clearly from last year, it transcends the HBO show. Transcends, of course, may sound too fancy for an album of silly songs, but I stand by it. The production value here is excellent. “Foux Du Fafa” is laugh-out-loud hilarious, but it’s also quite beautiful and sonically deep. Take away the riff on faux French and you have a hot dance track. And that’s what makes the album work: It’s a perfect blend of satire and honest songwriting. I’ll add that I was surprised by the overall funkiness of the album. For a show about two guys making stripped down, awkward music, this offering is well rounded and downright groovy. “Business Time” was on my list of best tracks last year—and it still stands as a great song this year, on this album. Way to go Brett Jemaine! Quincy Jones would be so proud!

4. She & Him – Volume One

This is a novelty that works. M. Ward, who made my list in 2006, teamed up with actress Zooey Deschanel and made a lovely little throwback album. Some of the songs on here are downright jarring in their jingle-jangle attempt to recall Patsy Cline, but “Why Do You Let Me Stay Here?” is another of the great tracks of the year—it harnesses a manic energy that is infectious. The song’s video offers a fitting, repetitious bloodletting that is even more frightening couched in upbeat tempo and “do do do”s. I surprised myself with the heavy rotation of this one.

3. Aimee Mann – @#%&*! Smilers

On our way out of Finland, Michael burned a copy of this one for me and Mandy. He’d asked if I had it. I said no, thinking about how disappointed I’d been with The Forgotten Arm. But hey, a free CD is a free CD. And Lost In Space was so good. Surely I’d be entertained. Turned out to be worth the nicking. Last year, Brian gave up on Iron & Wine (or at least came to a ‘one trick pony’ conclusion). I defended The Sheperd’s Dog because I’d found something in it that I’d previously found lacking. To some extent, that’s what happened here with Smilers. I didn’t expect much from it; was not terribly impressed initially (except, of course, for “Freeway”); wound up loving it.

I’ll add that while I’ve mentioned some stand out songs so far, I think “Freeway” may just take top honors this year. Much like “Man O’ War” was 2006’s best song (for me at least), “Freeway” seems to epitomize 2008. Sure there were better songs—sonically and lyrically—but “Freeway” captures the essence of the year: “You got a lot of money but you can’t afford the freeway.” In a year that saw gas above four dollars a gallon, was there really a better line? I think back to the Hummer Mandy and I saw at a Hobby Lobby—with its “0 MPG” license plate and American eagle spare tire cover—and shake my head.

2. Vampire Weekend – Vampire Weekend

The question is, who gives a fuck about an Oxford comma? Yeah, that one line sold the album for me. If this hadn’t been such a strange year, then this one would probably be number one. Truth is, though, after the honeymoon phase, I haven’t really gotten back (in)to this. There is a certain jauntiness to the album that’s refreshing. “Mansard Roof” has got to be the biggest delight of the year—its off-kilter beat just the thing for playing croquet out on the lawn. And what was that about an Oxford comma? Literate alt-pop at its best. This is a spring/summer, roll the windows down, enjoy life kind of spinner.

Problem is, I don’t feel much like dancing these days.

Plus, there’s the age thing. I think I’m a bit put off by the fact that these guys are a bunch of Columbia kids oozing with pep and youth. Depressing, really…

1. Colin Meloy – Colin Meloy Sings Live!

And then there’s this one, number one and only. An album of mostly Decemberists songs. An album of one man and a guitar. I’m reminded of Ben Folds Live, the audacity of a one man show and all it represents. Good but a bit too self-involved, a bit too myopic. But that’s the joy here. This year, which has been so consumed by my own self-discovery, my own self-consumption, seems best summed up by an album that stands as a testament to the individual.

Don’t get me wrong: I have been—am—a proponent of the group. In the past, I’ve championed the band over the individual. But this year was really about self-salvation, about the individual’s response to the yawning of apocalypse. After all, we are alone. It is our loneliness that drives us into each other’s arms—but it is also our loneliness that calls out for solitary salvation, for one savior.

That’s it, you know. This was not only my self-involved year, but it was a year defined mostly by another man.

This was the year of Barack.

I guess that’s the root of my choice: Colin Meloy’s solitary stage performance reflects the year’s overall messianic predilection. I have to admit my own surprise at where this is going, where this has gone. This was a year where we looked to a man to save us. Funny how misleading that is, given the fact that it was votes of thousands, millions that really saved us. Funny how it all turns back around on us. We strive to be individuals while we seek comfort and safety in others. We long for the one god, one savior—knowing that we need more, that we need to take part in the making of salvation—but, but, but…

All this aside, I found much to admire in this recording—from classic Decemberists tracks to Morrissey and Shirley Collins, this one man show is more than the one man. I’m also reminded of the ‘74 Tom Waits’s gem of a live show that came out as Dime Store Novels, Volume 1. True, there are better recordings (of both Tom Waits and Colin Meloy songs), but I find great comfort in this stripped down format, one that makes clear the genius at the mic.

Honorable Mentions

Ra Ra Riot – The Rhum Line

This one deserved more time from me, and probably a place in the top ten. I listened to it quite a bit, and I am convinced it’s good. But it’s also caught up with some of my GRE mental baggage and I’ve had a hard time separating the two—which means I haven’t listened to it much in the last month or so.

It’s good because it feels familiar, but I need more time.

MGMT – Oracular Spectacular

This was an early 2008 treat that unfortunately didn’t hold up. Actually, it’s more the holes in it that kept it from the top ten: There are a handful of excellent tracks here, one in particular that makes my year end mix, but these highlights are caught between some bits and pieces I could do without. “Time To Pretend” is the one great track that will find its way onto many future mixes.

Best EP of the Year - Andrew Bird – Soldier On

“Sic of Elephants” is a great song. The rest of the EP is pretty damn good, too.

The Curious Case of the Failed

Here’s the thing, I’ve already mentioned that it’s been a strange year. Below, you will find albums that didn’t quite work for me. In some cases, it’s clearly due to a flawed construction—one that I’m not the only one to have picked up on. In others, it’s more me than anything else—more my cold, indifferent turn of head to a child pleading for affection.

Crooked Fingers – Forfeit/Fortune

Clearly the biggest disappointment for me this year—though I have to admit my desire to include it in the top ten despite its flaws. “What Never Comes” gave me hope, but the sharp turn into “Luisa’s Bones” made me cringe on my first listen through. The opening of “Phony Revolutions” was promising, but didn’t pay off. And then, well, that seems to be the case for the album. I love “Run, Lieutenant, Run” and the last two tracks, but… Is this one just undercooked? I think so.

Conor Oberst – Conor Oberst

I’ve tried to like this guy. There’s a charm and appeal to his voice and songs, but I can never quite buy into it. There was a time when Ryan Adams held sway in my musical soul, but his dogmatic persistence began to grate—to the point of his pooping of his own party. I get the same vibe from Oberst. And while I enjoy “I Don’t Want To Die (In The Hospital),” I can’t help but wonder if Paul Westerberg is getting royalties every time this kid opens his mouth.

Death Cab For Cutie – Narrow Stairs

Production-wise, it’s good. “I Will Possess Your Heart” gave me pre-purchase hope. But then I stopped giving a shit. Bottom line: Ben Gibblets has jumped the shark for me.

I wanted to like this album. It was time for some more Cutie. I mean, Benny boy took two spots (a la Postal Service and Cutie) on my 2003 list. Surely Narrow Stairs should have been a much needed balm this year?

It wasn’t. Again, this could just be because I’m a bitter old fart who has become his job, but I don’t think so. Two reasons: “Your New Twin Sized Bed” and “You Can Do Better Than Me.” What was once lyrical honesty replete with real suffering and empathetic open-heart-emo now comes off as creepy and lame. I mean, really, what’s with the beds? Didn’t we get enough of that on Plans?

Coldplay – Viva La Vida

I tried to like this one, too. I was surprised to find it in Michael’s CD player (recently reclaimed from Peugeot anti-theft silence) on the way to the Helsinki airport. I had to do a double-take. You see, I’d already decided I wasn’t into it. When we got back to Greensboro, I took Aimee Mann and Mandy took Viva La Vida. A few days later, Mandy commented that she was really digging it. I decided to give it another try. Was I missing something? Much like a wealth of this year’s offerings, I just couldn’t get there… I don’t really know why I couldn’t get into this one. Maybe it’s because Chris Martin sweats so much when he performs…

Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks – Real Emotional Trash

Pitchfork recently re-reviewed the re-release of Brighten The Corners. In ten years, it went from an 8.6 to an 8.7. I would like to think this a sign of the album’s sustainability. I remember when it came out and the cries from Pavement fandom that it was no Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain—or Slanted and Enchanted. But I liked it. In fact, I still think it’s probably my favorite Pavement album. You see, I was a late-comer to the Malkmus scene and the polish and shine that often mars a band’s last album helped clarify what it was that I enjoyed about the band: Malkmus’s ability to craft wonderfully catchy off-kilter tunes.

It’s what I love about indie rock: the place where irony bridges the gap between craft and disenchantment. Good indie rock is not just sloppy and disaffected; it’s art in spite of the anxiety of influence. It’s the all the best bits of postmodernism without resorting to Simpsons yellow (whatever that means).

All of which is to say that the jammy quality of Real Emotional Trash turns me off. Yeah, there’s good solid guitar crunch here, but I can get that anywhere. I want my Malkmus mocking Yule Brynner.

I’m Too Old To Keep Up With All This Shite

Two weeks ago, I did something I never thought I would do: I cancelled my eMusic subscription. This was the thing that was keeping me plugged in, my link to fresh new music. I had a good deal. I was grandfathered in—getting my 65 downloads a month for a steal of a price.

It was becoming a waste of money, though. I just couldn’t keep up. I’ve got so much stuff downloaded that I haven’t really listened to. I couldn’t justify keeping up the subscription—even though it was a really good deal.

So here’s a list of things I downloaded but didn’t really listen to. Yeah, there’s a few Pitchfork picks that I wish I hadn’t downloaded, but no Fiery Furnaces award this year:

British Sea Power – Do You Like Rock Music?
Okkervil River – The Stand Ins
The Lovely Sparrows – Bury The Cynics
The Mae Shi – Hlllyh
The Strugglers – The Latest Rights
Tapes n Tapes – Walk It Off
Tricky – Knowle West Boy
The Week That Was – The Week That Was
My Morning Jacket – Evil Urges

The Rogue Wave Award

Mates of State – Re-Arrange Us

Last year, I completely forgot there was a new Rogue Wave album—until I read about it in Brian’s list. Same goes for Mates of State this year. I wound up really digging Asleep At Heaven’s Gate. Here’s hoping the same will be true about Re-Arrange Us.

Two, Too Late Entries

Adele – 19

She was really good on SNL. Found out shortly before cancelling my eMusic subscription that I could get it through them. Did, but haven’t really listened to it yet.

Bon Iver – For Emma, Forever Ago

Was listening to Bob Boilen’s song picks of the year and discovered the great track “Skinny Love.” Downloaded the whole album, but haven’t gotten past “Skinny Love” yet.

Shoulda Coulda Woulda

Three I wanted to buy, but didn’t: Martha Wainright, I Know You’re Married But I’ve Got Feelings Too; Kanye West, 808s & Heartbreak; The Cure, 4:13 Dream.

The 2008 Mix Tape

1. Freeway – Aimee Mann
2. Lay It Down – Al Green
3. Lights Out For Darker Skies – British Sea Power
4. I Don’t Want To Die (In The Hospital) – Conor Oberst
5. What Never Comes – Crooked Fingers
6. I Will Possess Your Heart – Death Cab For Cutie
7. Time To Pretend – MGMT
8. Sequestered In Memphis
9. Lamb And The Lion – The Mae Shi
10. Inside A Boy – My Brightest Diamond
11. I’m Amazed – My Morning Jacket
12. Singer Songwriter – Okkervil River
13. You Cheated Me – Martha Wainright
14. Each Year – Ra Ra Riot
15. Why Do You Let Me Stay Here? – She & Him
16. Gobbledigook – Sigur Ros
17. Right Hand On My Heart – The Whigs
18. Sic Of Elephants – Andrew Bird
19. Skinny Love – Bon Iver
20. Chasing Pavements - Adele

The Queen of Curves is Dead

Long Live the Queen!

The most photographed woman of the 1950’s died yesterday at the age of 85.

It’s been almost ten years since I first became (slightly) obsessed with pinup queen Bettie Page. True, the first time I saw images of her, I was “intrigued,” but I was a high school student (1992) and had plenty of other diversions to keep my starved, perverted brain occupied. It wasn’t until I was in graduate school that I “rediscovered” Page and began the critical inquiry that became what still stands as my most substantial piece of writing.

In 2001 I was—and I can say this with some certainty—one of (if not the) foremost scholars on Bettie Page. I knew everything there was to know about the pinup queen, and I had lots of educated opinions about her and her work to boot. While conducting my research, however, I became increasingly cynical about the Bettie Page subculture (mania) that began in the eighties and culminated with the release of Mary Harron’s biopic The Notorious Bettie Page. At first, I was happy to drone on about Page and her sordid life. But the more time she spent in the postmodern spotlight, the more I felt myself turning away. I stopped trolling ebay for memorabilia. I stopped searching for articles and news of Bettie’s whereabouts. I even missed the boat when Harron started production on her film.

I did get to see the film on the big screen, though, and I can say that, for an initiate, the film is a excellent place to start. It strikes a nice balance of the defining moments of Bettie’s life, though it does gloss over some of the important bits.

Anyway, all of this is to say that I cherish the time I spent with Bettie (never having met her, sadly), even though the last few years have taken me away from her. I will also say that, in this time of mourning, looking back over my writings, I am still proud of what I’ve done—and I still count Bettie as one of the great women in my life. Much will be written in the next few days, weeks, about the voluptuous, smart but ideologically trapped woman, but I doubt any of it will truly capture the enigma that was the queen of curves.

In remembrance of her passing, I’d like to share with you some excerpts from my masters’ thesis—primarily bits from my concluding chapter. My work, titled “‘The Girl Who Made Good Being Bad’: Bettie Page and American Postwar Ideology,” made a sweeping journey through Bettie’s life and matched it up with prevailing fifties cultural attitudes. I looked at Bettie’s photographs (pinups, cheesecake, and amateur camera club stills) and film loops (dancing and spanking) and connected them with postwar notions of sex and femininity.

You can find out the basics of Bettie’s life elsewhere. Simply Google “Bettie Page” and you’ll find a wealth of information that will be more or less accurate. I’ll also link you to an article by Richard Corliss that I’ve skimmed but not fully read (over on Time magazine’s website) Bondage Babe Bettie Page Dies at 85.

Time also has a nice sampling of images. The one I’ve included here, though, is my favorite. It represents everything that Bettie Page was—as artist Jim Silke has noted: curves, curves, curves…

Where It Began

I first stumbled onto fifties pin-up legend Bettie Page in the December 1992 issue of Playboy magazine. Her image stood out from the other glossy, air-brushed images; she was beautiful, with a voluptuous figure, black hair with sharp bangs and a bright, inviting smile. In the article accompanying the pictures, entitled “The Betty Boom,” comedian Buck Henry claims that Bettie’s smile “could break your heart” (122). But what intrigued me more than her looks was their ability to evoke nostalgia for an era I was born thirty years too late to experience. These images exuded a wholesomeness deeply rooted in a past American culture.

That sense of nostalgia was misleading, though.

Bettie Page was one of the most photographed models of the fifties, posing in everything from bathing suits to lingerie to nothing at all—and even bound, gagged and whipped in bondage photos. As I uncovered a wealth of images and film looks, I became somewhat obsessed with Bettie Page and how it was that 1950s culture, which I had always assumed was ultra-conservative, could produce sexually transgressive material that ranged from funny to bizarre to shocking. As I went searching for the answer to this puzzling question, I became increasingly cognizant of the inherent instabilities of postwar American culture and Bettie Page’s place in it.

The Problem With Revival

The Bettie Page revival can loosely be shuffled into the period between the early 1980s and mid- to late 1990s—over twenty years after Bettie Page disappeared, never to be photographed again. The “Betty Boom” culminated with the publication of several biographies, authorized and unauthorized, memoirs, and the recovery and reprinting of Bettie Page artifacts in The Betty Pages and Private Peeks. Her image, and subsequent style, infiltrated the pop scene not only through comics, art and written texts, but through fashion design as well. And her new fan base was not only decades younger than Miss Page, but included both men and women. Fashion photographer Ellen von Unwerth claims that Bettie’s photos are “so charming that everybody—women and men—likes them” (Essex and Swanson 270).

The revival, which was sparked first by artists like Robert Blue and Olivia, exploded with the emergence of Dave Stevens’s comic book, The Rocketeer. The comic book was a combination of “all his boyhood fantasies: nostalgia for a lost era, heroes, adventure, a man with a rocket who could fly—and a raven-haired girl named Bettie” (Essex and Swanson 249).

Stevens’s was one of the new admirers of Bettie Page—a group of loyal fans who were not old enough to remember the heyday of the model, who were either too young to purchase the men’s magazines that specialized in ‘cheesecake,’ or were not even born yet. Like all her new fans, Stevens did find something intriguing about Miss Page. In her authorized biography, Stevens’s claims that “there’s a timeless quality about her that gives her images a real currency even though they were shot some forty years ago” (250).

Stevens ordered some of Bettie’s film loops in the late seventies and began holding impromptu parties for his friends, showing his collection of loops with “a Cab Calloway soundtrack—the perfect jazz accompaniment to Bettie’s ‘wiggling.’” (249). The comic book artist’s obsession culminated with the production of a comic book devoted to Bettie Page: Bettie Page Comics. And in 1992, when Miss Page resurfaced after disappearing from the modeling scene in 1957, Stevens was one of the select few allowed into the aged queen’s presence (250-51).

Although her images have caused a certain amount of liberated dialogue about the variety of sex and redefinitions of deviance, Bettie Page was not a sexual pioneer. In fact, her appeal now is as dichotomous as it was in the fifties. On one side are men and women like Shalom Harlow, who are attracted to Bettie as a powerful, sexual liberator and dominatrix. Jim Silke suggests that “Bettie’s story is not the tale of an exploited woman. She was no victim. What you’re looking at is a proud, independent woman who went against the grain of her time, ignored the mockery and degrading rejection of polite society and remained true to herself” (51).

Or as Essex and Swanson conclude, “Bettie’s authenticity allowed her to transcend her time and make the transition from postwar pin-up girl to a modern symbol of female sexual independence. Modeling in the era of tease, she was solely an object of male desire. Her fans were exclusively men in search of a sexual fantasy—a forbidden sexual fantasy at that.” But, they further add, “today she is embraced by women as well as men” and Bettie “has become an enduring symbol of female independence and genuineness” (285). This praise of Bettie’s independence is typical of an anachronistic mindset and with the weight of my arguments here, seems if not dangerous, particularly limiting.

The other side of Bettie Page’s current appeal is far more dangerous, however.

If modern women and men find Bettie’s images liberating, neglecting the peculiar circumstances of postwar ideology, then I cannot claim that this is a bad thing. In fact, I applaud any attempts to reconstitute sexualized women in a positive, non-objectified way. But unfortunately, this is not the typical case.

The other faction of modern Bettie devotees—and I would imagine, the larger grouping—are drawn to her images in search of a nostalgic, throwback to a passive or contained femininity. Journalist Willie Morris claims that Bettie’s “body was of the Fifties, my fifties, full and opulent as the replenishing epoch itself, not the taut, slender, athletic silhouette of the Nineties models nor of today’s high-ballasted strippers with the silicone aspect” (68). Bettie Page’s voluptuous curves and wholesome smile are equated with the idyllic, wholesome quality of fifties media that David Halberstam notes (in The Fifties) as a reason for feelings of nostalgia. Bettie’s smile and curves are seductive in an era marked by post-feminist backlash. This backlash is frightening because it points to a cyclical repeating of history. Betty Friedan attributed the invention of the feminine mystique to a fear of ‘masculine’ women, women who posed a threat to puritanical views of women and their subservience to men. That fear manifested in placing a greater emphasis on female biology and sexuality—which, in turn, confined the definition of femininity and allowed for sexual objectification and the commodification of women as sex objects. Nostalgia, then, betrays similar fears and desires to return to this definition of femininity.

In the wake of feminism, American men in the late twentieth century, and into the twenty-first, have turned away from the supposed danger posed by redefining gender—a reaction that mirrors the creation of the feminine mystique. Turned off by militant feminism, career women, and even seemingly androgynous images of models, these men have found solace in postwar pinups like Bettie Page. But with a note of concern and warning, I must point to Friedan’s ironic insistence that men in the fifties got what they asked for and were not happy with it once they had it. By denying women the right to become individuals and locking them up in the home, the feminine mystique created mass sexual dysfunction. By denying the positive effects of feminism, and swimming in nostalgia, modern men are opening themselves to a similar outcome.

It is because of this repetition of history that I reserve particularly harsh criticism for Playboy. Under the guise of sexual revolution, Playboy made it possible to continue selling postwar femininity well into the latter half of the twentieth century. By using Marilyn Monroe to define the Playboy female aesthetic, Hugh Hefner solidified the type, the girl next door, and neatly packaged and set the standard for a legitimate female sex object. And in the decades that followed—with the rise of Playboy—women became subjected to that standard, even to the point of continued dysfunction. It would be impossible to count the number of women who have flipped through the pages of Hefner’s magazine—like postwar women who subscribed to the ideals in women’s magazines—and have been seduced by those images. The abundance of breast implants and plastic surgery, the scores of women searching for identity through the use of their bodies, the wannabe starlets, simply reinforce a continued preoccupation with the role of female sex object.

And while Hefner certainly did not invent the sex object, he capitalized on and successfully commodified female sex objects and helped confine women to the objectified, ‘female role’ that he proposed to destroy.

In the end, the difference between Bettie Page and the models that pack modern men’s magazines—Playboy included—is the very authenticity or ‘genuineness’ that Essex and Swanson claim is what makes her image enduring. Again, men disenchanted by the androgynous, post-feminist woman, or the overtly constructed, highly sexualized Playboy model or porn star, find a ‘genuineness’ in Bettie Page’s images that they perceive unavailable for purchase in America’s sex market. Bettie’s breasts are real, her curves are real, and her wholesome smile—abundantly documented in countless accounts—is real. While to some Bettie Page stands out as a ‘proud and independent woman,’ a beacon for powerful sexuality, to others she is a lost, true model of femininity that desperately needs to be recovered.

Both views, however, neglect to fully see Bettie Page, projecting their own needs and desires onto images that are decades old. Bettie Page was not liberated by her modeling, she was contained by it. And as a product of fifties femininity, her images do not represent a ‘true’ model of femininity, but rather the female role as defined by the feminine mystique.

The countless surviving images of Bettie Page continue to offer conflicting sexual discourse, but the real Bettie Page is gone.

And with that, I’ll end: I hope Bettie has found the peace she truly deserves.

She will be missed but not forgotten.

SOURCES

Dyer, Richard. Stars. London: BFI Publishing, 1998.

Essex, Karen and James L. Swanson. Bettie Page: The Life of a Pin-Up Legend. Los Angeles: General Publishing Group, 1998.

Foster, Richard. The Real Bettie Page: The Truth About The Queen of the Pinups. Secaucus: Citadel Press, 1999.

Friedan, Betty. The Feminine Mystique. New York: Laurel, 1983.

Friedman, David F. A Youth in Babylon : Confessions of a Trash-Film King. Buffalo: Prometheus Books, 1990.

Halberstam, David. The Fifties. New York: Fawcett Columbine, 1993.

Henry, Buck. “The Betty Boom.” Playboy December 1992: 122+.

Morris, Willie. “Women We Love: The Wild One.” Esquire August 1994: 68-9.

Schaefer, Eric. “Bold! Daring! Shocking! True!”: A History of Exploitation Films, 1919-1959. Durham: Duke University Press, 1999.

Silke, Jim. Bettie Page: Queen of Hearts. Milwaukie: Dark Horse Books, 1995.

Steinem, Gloria. Marilyn. New York: MJF Books, 1986.

Weyr, Thomas. Reaching for Paradise: The Playboy Vision of America. New York: Times Books, 1978.

Burn, Baby, Burn

For Your Preservation

Earlier this week, I was driving home from work and heard a bit on NPR about a church burning porn (Florida Church Burns X-Rated Film Reels). The organization in question had purchased an old drive-in, and they were in the process of turning the site into a worship center.

During their renovations, they uncovered a stash of film reels.

Porn reels. Or so they say. I imagine (with some delight) the good pastor, maybe his wife and a few "investors" in attendance, loading up a stray reel and discovering something rather lewd. What were their reactions, I wonder?

Well, their actions were simple: They opted to take the reels and burn them in a ritual consecration of the site. Like Forrest Gump, they were making lemonade out of lemons. Well, it was more like a ceremonial biohazard concert of cheering do-gooders.

I wasn't the only listener bothered by this story. I do think, however, that I was one of the likely few to think about film preservation first.

Yes, let's burn our history, I thought. That's a really good idea.

Okay, so porn as history is a minority position. Certainly Behind the Green Door is not The Godfather. Or a Buster Keaton yarn. But certainly anything put to celluloid—in an era when it was either revolutionary or bold to do so—deserves saving. Think of Birth of A Nation. Certainly, it is hard to (and I certainly wouldn't) defend this piece of arcane racism, but had the church found a pristine copy of it, would they have set it ablaze, or would they have handed it over to film authorities instead?

And so here I am, defending classic porn.

Craig Schaefer introduces his treatise on exploitation cinema, "Bold! Daring! Shocking! True!", with a quote from Harry Martin: "So sinister, so subversive is this type of motion picture that organized producers of Hollywood have long since outlawed its manufacture entirely." Martin, Schaefer goes on to explain, was referring to a film his family was subjected to at a drive-in. This "slice of cinematic slime"? Smashing the Vice Trust, a film far removed from the category we have come to know as porn. The year? 1937.

And this is the point that has always confounded me: Each age thinks it faces horrors unbeknownst to the primitive world. Well, guess what. That's bullshit. Among the first photographs ever taken—in the age of daguerreotypes—were nude studies. In the brothels of the late nineteenth century, patrons would find books filled with suggestive photographs, catalogs of services provided.

Sex, despite our vanity, is nothing new.

Nor is the selling, photographing, or filming of it.

So here I find myself defending those poor, lewd reels. Here I find myself wondering what goodies were lost to the brash actions of the self-righteous. "Obviously," pastor Eldredge remarked to Melissa Block, "we knew the right thing to do would be to destroy it, and not let it ever be out on the market, so to speak." The good pastor's fear was that others might profit from, or be entertained by, something he and his congregation clearly felt was immoral and worthy of destruction.

I won't be so bold as to raise concerns about censorship, invoking Nazi book burning; rather, my concerns are more mundane. I simply wonder what the good pastor burned. Without doing any research whatsoever, I can guess that it was not the hard core porn that we have come to accept as the norm (in regards to porn, of course). These were no Jenna Jameson films. In all actuality, what the good pastor probably stumbled onto was either seventies mainstays like Deep Throat and The Devil In Miss Jones, or—the horror to film historians and theorists (surely there's someone besides me who is disturbed by this)—relatively tame exploitation classics.

Here's the thing, what happened here goes beyond a simple act of consecration, or a religiously motivated crusade. See, the history that many of us have forgotten is this: Most film venues—from the old neighborhood twin (that closed under multiplex pressure) to the weed infested drive-in—existed by showing a wide variety of films. What many modern film goers might be surprised to discover is that the viewing public of the fifties, sixties, and seventies had far better access to foreign films and bizarre tidbits than we presently do. While the internet has collapsed the space between, many of us will never be able to experience a foreign film on the big screen.

And yet, in 1953, the inhabitants of a small town in western North Carolina might very well have been able to catch a viewing of Strip-O-Rama, a burlesque film featuring a brief performance by pinup queen Bettie Page. Because these theaters needed to keep seats filled, they dipped into a large catalog of films. For a small price, a film house manager might be able to show foreign films in the day at reasonable cost and make a few bucks midday—before the big shows at night.

Interestingly enough, one of my mother's friends, when he was younger, used to run the projector at a drive-in. He remembers spooling out an exploitation staple: the sex-hygiene film. The theater managers were careful to apprise him of the ritual: Play the "Doctor" tape during intermission and be sure not to interrupt it because the audience might catch wind of the ruse. (1)

Getting back to the church ritual, I'll conjecture some more. The drive-in where the films were found is in Jacksonville, Florida. Jacksonville was definitely part of the exploitation circuit. Dave Friedman writes, in Youth In Babylon, of his role in the history of exploitation cinema and I recall that much of Friedman's productions were filmed in the great state of Florida. I don't have the book on hand at the moment, but I seem to recall that he criss-crossed the state for a decade (or more), making and selling his films.

Now, what little research I've done, nets that the films were 70s and 80s era, but… how do we know this for sure? The good pastor would likely have not taken the time to view all of the reels to determine their origin and worth, right? Would the good pastor have watched all of them?

I don't care to point fingers, but I am perplexed. The big issues at stake here are ones I won't address (What is porn? Why is it so bad? Why is it that representations of sex carry such baggage? What role does sex, and representations of sex, play in our modern condition?), but I did want to at least express my anxieties and thoughts. Surely burning anything is bad, right?

The Girl Who Made Good Being Bad

Back in 2001, I wrote, defended, and published my master's thesis. Bettie Page was my subject. And, to some extent, this posting has its seed in that writing. See, I discovered Bettie Page in Playboy (I am too young to have known her elsewhere), and I discovered exploitation cinema in graduate school. Dave Friedman's book (mentioned above) was a wonderful crash course in the genre that crossed carnival and celluloid. Ever since, I've been fascinated with the culture of bad.

Don't mistake me: "The culture of bad" is not that which is wrong, but simply that which is, well, bad. Anyone who has suffered through Blood Feast, or Color Me Blood Red will understand the difference. Bad cinema is just bad—bad acting, bad scripting, very poor production. All of these are qualities of exploitation cinema. The idea was not to create art, but to make money. And "exploitation" (for those uninitiated) refers not to the actors (or participants in the filming) but to the audience stupid enough to plunk down good money to see hours of crap. (Friedman's delight at raking in the dough of the duped, as recounted in Babylon, makes for infectious reading.)

Bettie Page's performances in burlesque films—like the above mentioned Strip-O-Rama—were simply horrible. In fact, these films are horrible, through and through. But despite their poor quality, I find them utterly fascinating. There's something magical about the ingenuity of trying to capture the raw variety of vaudeville and burlesque on film. Maybe, just maybe, if these films had employed better talent (better directors and writers, better production, etc.), they might have struck a deeper artistic chord. They didn't, but they might have.

And now we are living in world without the bawdiness burlesque, without the oddities of the carnival, or the virtuosity of vaudeville. True, burlesque shows are reappearing in urban centers of America, but do they compare? Or are they simply parroted parodies a la The Brady Bunch Movie? Good but forgettable fun.

I remember being surprised, when viewing Varietease (another pinnacle of burlesque cinema), that one of the most artful performances was a striptease performed by a transvestite. Schaefer writes about burlesque that this was not only a standard part of a burlesque show, but that these shows were often attended by married couples. Flash forward to the reactions we saw at the arrival of Brokeback Mountain, or the sad, horror of Boys Don't Cry, and I am flabbergasted by the thought that we've not made progress but rather backpedalled in our tolerance of deviant behavior.

All of this on the dawn of an election where conservativism is shopped out as the "old time religion."

Huh.

(1) - A classic "Sex Hygiene" exploitation experience (at a drive-in theater) involved being lured to the show with promises of lurid, adult material-- under the guise of sex education. The ruse would include either a hired "Doctor" who would "teach" and warn the crowd. Or, in many cases, the "Doctor" would simply be a recording. During intermission these tapes would play while hawkers circulated through the audience selling "sex manuals." The denouement of the film would usually be footage of a live birth. Like Disney World the exploitation experience was all about the merchandise.

"Florida Church Burns X-Rated Film Reels." All Things Considered. 20 Oct. 2008 NPR.org. {http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=95913049}

Schaefer, Eric. "Bold! Daring! Shocking! True!": A History Of Exploitation Films, 1919-1959. Durham: Duke Univ. Press, 1999.

A Boy And His Bass

A MENAGERIE OF INSTRUMENTS

For the past couple years, I've had a not-so-secret longing. Like a guilty porn addict, I've been stealing glances at websites, lingering around the edges of eBay auctions, all the while knowing that I shouldn't.

I wanted a bass guitar.

In high school I was in a rock band (for more on that take a look at my last post), and I played bass guitar. When I went off to college, I stopped playing. For a time, I had my bass and rig in my apartment bedroom, and would occasionally plug up at low volumes and play with myself. But, as the last line implies, that wasn't enough, so I let it go.

I sold off my gear to my friend Brian (the rhythm guitarist for our band who switched to bass to play in a college punk trio), and that was the last of it.

Interestingly enough, in the intervening years (fifteen to be exact), I hadn't really longed to play again. Sure, I missed it, but I'd found lots of other things to occupy my time (mainly drinking). Then, a few years ago, I found myself on Musician's Friend dreaming about buying a really nice bass, one light-years better than my old fret-buzzing Washburn.

When I let my wife in on this re-ignited passion, I think she was at first amused. We talked about it, and out of that talk, I changed my mind. It went something like this:

Music is good.

Musical instruments are great to have.

Guitar players are sexy.

A bass guitar, while sexy when played in a band, isn't very practical.

Acoustic guitars are more practical because you don't need amps.

If I buy an acoustic guitar, I can learn to play that and be sexy.

So, my lusting after bass guitars turned to lusting after acoustic guitars. About a year and a half ago, I bought a beautiful (and beautifully priced) Takamine acoustic-electric guitar. My justification for the purchase was that it was the best of both worlds. If I got better, and needed to plug up, I could.

I went out to the Guitar Center in Greensboro and played a bunch of instruments—some clearly out of my price range, some clearly junk. I settled on the Takamine because it seduced me with its looks and electronics. It has a built-in tuner, which is nice since my ear is not perfect. It's good, mind you, but not perfect. (I can tell, "Hey, you're not in tune." But I have trouble dialing it in to perfection.)

And for about a week, I was sexy.

What I neglected to account for, though, that I couldn't really play. I knew three chords (G, C, E) and that was it. What I don't think I understood at the time was that learning to play (beyond Ramones songs), and learning to play complete songs, is hard and takes lots of practice.

See, I knew that. But I didn't let myself believe it because I wanted my toy. And, in my defense, I was a bass player. I certainly wasn't the best, but I wasn't bad. After playing in a band for several years, I'd acquired a knack for picking up songs and playing along with relative ease.

This is not the case with my acoustic. I'll say again, I've learned quite a bit in a year, but I'm still not above amateur farting around.

And amateur farting around is not that sexy.

Interestingly enough, the guitar didn't satisfy all that longing. I chalk that up to the fact that it takes real work and isn't just an easy toy. Cooking is good stress relief for me because I'm good at it, and it comes naturally. Music does not come as naturally...

It wasn't long before I was looking again.

This time?

Wait for it.

A Ukulele.

Yes, I started cruising eBay for ukuleles. I don't know why, but something about the instrument appealed to me. Maybe it was the ease it represented (only four strings!), or maybe it was the sound. Again, in my defense, it was mostly the sound. There's something very soothing about the tinkling, nylon-string sound of a ukulele.

So, for my birthday last year, I became convinced that I needed a ukulele. I bought one off of eBay. It was new and came with a little gig bag. I loved it immensely for many months. My wife even bought me a tuner for Christmas. I imagined myself sitting in my office at work, feet propped up on the desk, ukulele in hand, playing "Somewhere (Over The Rainbow)."

I still play it—and I was right, it is a bit easier to play—but like the guitar, mastering full length songs takes time and effort that I haven't invested.

And so…

I started looking at bass guitars again.

Then the wife and I went to Finland. My good friend Michael put me to work setting up band equipment for the reception. We did sound checks—wherein I got behind the drum kit and we played a few tunes. Then, at the reception proper, I "stole" the bride and ransomed her off for a performance of "Sweet Child O Mine." I jumped over on bass and Michael and I, several sheets to the wind, played what was the humorous highlight of the evening. I was congratulated by many a Fin that evening… and of course the wife saw me with bass in hand—and playing like I knew how—and I knew that a bass guitar would be in my not-too-distant-future.

But I'm a bad boy. Something else caught my eye in Finland. One of Michael's friends had a cajon—a plywood box with strings that sounds like a drum kit—and I became enamored of it.

See, I haven't mentioned the fact that I also have a drum set. Back in 1987, my parents—against their better judgment—bought me a drum set for my birthday (Ludwig Rockers that still sound good when dialed in). I've always loved playing drums—and like all musicians, fancy myself awesome on the skins. (Playing drums is the musical equivalent of kicking someone's ass. All men are quite convinced that they can kick everyone's ass, no matter size or agility. This is part of the guy code. Playing drums is the same. Every musician and/or wanna-be musician thinks he's John Bonham.)

But there's an impracticality to drumming that can't be avoided. They're too damn loud. So unless you've got a dedicated practice space where your neighbors won't call the cops, they are useless. My wife and I live in a townhouse. At one point, I had my kit set up in the garage, but since it's attached to my neighbor's garage, I never felt comfortable rocking out.

But a cajon… A cajon can be played inside the house with little fear of waking the neighbors.

So a couple months ago, I put my bass desires on hold yet again, and bought a cajon.

My wife was not happy. (Actually, she was okay with the cajon itself. It was the expensive case that pushed her over the edge!)

This lovely little toy came in handy when my friend Clark came over to jam. Several hours later, I felt invigorated by the joy of jamming. We banged out (the wife singing) a rockin' version of "Kokomo" and had a great time.

The next day my back was killing me. Hunched over on a wooden box for several hours is not good for a thirtysomething back. Actually, I was in pain for more than a week…

So here we are now. My birthday was little more than a week ago. And I wanted a bass guitar. Putting it off has only resulted in the acquiring of a menagerie of instruments. (In the back of my mind, I'm building a play room for our children, a place where they can explore music freely…)

For months now, I've been drooling over postings on eBay, drooling and hoping. Then it got worse: I started low-level bidding. You know that game, right? You bid and bid, driving prices up so someone else doesn't get a good deal-- all the while hoping that "oops!" you become the high bidder and accidentally win? Twice I did that-- and in the last minutes, I got out bid.

Well, the third time was the charm and I had to explain to the wife that I hadn't meant to, but...

THE DANGERS OF EBAY

On a Sunday night several weeks ago, my wife went to bed without me. She was too tired to stay up, and I had a loaf of bread baking in the oven. I tucked her in, kissed her forehead, and went back down stairs to wait for the bread.

Waiting for the bread just so happened to coincide with the end of an auction on a bass guitar.

Now, as I mentioned above, I'd been outbid before. And this time, as much as I wanted this particular bass, I was really hoping to be outbid again. It just wasn't the right time.

The bread finished baking, and I had about fifteen minutes to go on the auction.

Then it happened. I won.

The mixture of fear and excitement was enough to cause a spiral of events:

1. I couldn't sleep—and when I did finally fall asleep, I dreamed about bass guitars.

2. My anxiety at breaking the news to my wife spilled over into my day, and I was a nervous wreck all day.

3. Actually, that anxiety and guilt bubbled for an entire week—all heightened by the fact that my PayPal account was giving me a hard time.

4. By the time all was settled, my week was pretty much shot.

5. It just so happened that my birthday was at the end of that week.

Happy Birthday to me.

I'd gotten word on Wednesday that the bass had shipped. I didn't expect it to get here until Saturday or Monday. No big deal. The wife and I went over to my mom's Friday night for dinner and cake, and while we were there, my wife whispered to me that the bass had arrived (anything big and expensive gets shipped to her dad's shop so that the package doesn't disappear off our front stoop). I was all set to bolt ass out of my mom's to go get it.

I decided to be patient.

My wife made me blueberry pancakes for my birthday breakfast (hands down, the best part of the day!). We went out and did some shopping. All the while I was trying to be patient. I couldn't stop thinking about the bass. Oh, the bass. The bass that I'd never actually seen in person. I had no way of knowing yet if I'd gotten my money's worth. Finally, we went out to her dad's around 6:00 pm. At this point, I was freakin' bustin' at my seams.

We got over to her dad's and chatted for a bit. Then her dad went and got the package.

Now, at this point I wasn't planning on opening the package there. Because I wasn't sure if I'd gotten a lemon, I didn't want to have to smile pretty and look happy if it wasn't what I'd hoped for. But we talked a bit more. Remarked on the hack-job of packaging. I was getting impatient. Someone-- don't know who-- suggested opening it. So I thought, "All right."

My wife's father gets a knife and I start trying to open it. I didn't want to just jab into it-- didn't want to scratch anything. Anyway, I finally get the tape off and open up the bottom flaps (the guy I bought it from had "built" a box out of two separate boxes; I opened the body end first).

The first thing I see is a two-by-four.

A freakin' two-by-four with an orange spray-painted end. Then I see a little plastic guitar.

A couple boards and a plastic guitar.

I almost shat myself. As soon as I saw that two-by-four, I thought-- and said out loud-- "I've been had." I thought back to the last message the seller sent me. In it, he gave me a link to his MySpace page. I'd been there and saw an announcement that said something like "I'm off to Vegas!" I'd also checked on Friday to see if he had any other auctions going-- and he didn't. Nothing.

So there I was, on my birthday, staring at an eBay scam.

I didn't begin to suspect the truth until I looked up and saw that my wife's dad wasn't in the room.

He came back in carrying my bubble-wrapped bass with a sign hanging on it (which was actually the cut-out front of a gift-bag that read "You're a Rock Star!").

My father-in-law had opened up the package, slid out the bass and popped in the pieces of wood and the plastic toy guitar, then taped it back up. Later, he said he never would have tried it had the package not looked so slapped together-- he never would have been able to pass it off if it hadn't been so obviously "home packaged."

So I got two guitars last weekend. A bass and a little toy guitar. That puts me at four.

Man, I got punked.

An Instrumental Lesson

It was good, though. I can honestly say that I've never had that level of a prank pulled on me. The wife says this means that I am now truly part of the family. I have to admit, this is the kind of thing that my father would never have done. My father was not a gift giver or a prankster. He was the kind of guy who was funny as a result of his inherent goofiness. His laughter-- when genuine-- was amazing. I like to think I inherited that from him. Rearranging the lyrics of songs to reflect a base, scatological humor? That was my father's brand of humor. Planning and executing prank that push the boundaries of what is funny? That was not my father's style.

My father was a fan of Jon Belushi, not Andy Kaufman.

It was more than that, too. I grew up in a home where I got (pretty much) everything I ever wanted. All I had to do was justify my need (want). I got really good at doing that. Even now, I find myself devising and scheming (often subconsciously) to make what I want a reality. My justifications are like political rhetoric: Need front loaded on a network of ideas and contrivances susceptible to too much scrutiny—only that scrutiny usually comes after the fact, when the war has already started.

And so I'm a bad gift receiver. I admit that now. (I am sorry, dear.) I get what I want because I usually get things for myself (or engineer schemes of acquisition). I work hard to make it happen—regardless of the consequences. With my parents it became easy. Even now, my mother has trouble giving me gifts because of the precedents we've both set.

This makes it hard to surprise me (in giving, that is).

I'm going to have to get better at this. I don't want my kids to lose the value of gifting—both giving and receiving.

And that's what ultimately made me decide that I was thankful for the trick. I am ascribing a hint of O. Henry-ness to my father-in-law's ruse. He may not have meant to teach me a lesson (those are the best kind; surprised by knowledge), but I learned one.

There was true catharsis in that two-by-four.

I actually thought about walking over and hugging the man. I didn't, but I thought about it.

And now I'm done. I'm done with buying instruments (for awhile, at least).

Now I just need to engineer a scheme to get an amp…

Twenty-Five Albums For Twenty-Five Years #19

This morning I was reading a combined review of Replacements re-releases, and decided it was time to return to my Twenty-Five Albums For Twenty-Five Years project. My last installment, #20, was posted almost a year ago. It’s high time for another. And this time, it’s the Replacements.

(For the back story: Twenty-Five Albums For Twenty-Five Years #25-23, #22, #21, #20)

19. Don’t Tell A Soul – The Replacements

As Mark Richardson mentions in his recent Pitchfork review, “For many, Don't Tell a Soul, with its slick production-- saxophones and violins were one thing, but synths?-- and generally muted tone spelled the end of the Replacements as we knew them.” This was not the case for me. Don’t Tell a Soul was my introduction to the Replacements.

Talent Show

It goes something like this. My brother played guitar. When he was in high school, he had band—he had the ripped up, bleached out jeans and Jon Bon Jovi perm. He had a purple guitar and a big ass guitar rig. His band, our last name, played a mixture of Rush-like prog and Ozzy-like metal. And for one shiny-but-embarrassing moment (for all of us), I was the lead singer. Somewhere at my mother’s house is a rapidly deteriorating VHS tape of our performance at the city fair’s Battle of the Bands. On this tape, you can hear a pre-pubescent me wailing away Ozzy (hitting the high notes but off-tempo), and slaughtering the lyrics to “Sweet Home Alabama.”

It’s safe to say we didn’t win.

Anyway, my brother graduated and went to college. He cut his hair and pretty much stopped playing.

Recognizing that my balls dropping and my inability to keep time would be the end of my singing career, I slid over to bass guitar and got a band of my own.

We had a complicated mythology which involved in-fighting and a change in line up. I was friends with (this is code for “in the Boy Scouts with”) our original drummer, and he was casual friends with two guys who played guitar (Brian and Michael). Somehow or other, we all wound up in my garage. From this meeting of minds, Fifth Wheel was born.

We had no clear vision and, aside from our lead guitarist (Michael), no real talent. Our furtive attempts to coalesce into some identifiable, cohesive sound were the epitome of lame. Basically, our practice sessions amounted to loud, cacophonous farting around. Attempts to cover hits of the day were met with little success.

Despite our lack of talent, our furtive attempts landed us in a similar situation to my earlier Battle of the Bands fiasco: We tried out for—and made it into—our high school’s talent show.

Our pièce de résistance? Guns ‘n Roses “Rocket Queen.” Instrumental, of course.

Shortly after we tried out and got on the slate, our drummer informed us that he would be out of town for the event. Faced with no drummer, we pulled in our friend Jeff (who is now a Naval flight officer) to cover on skins.

There’s video tape of our talent show performance, too—though I don’t know where it is.

It wasn’t long after that performance that we lost our first drummer to a difference of opinion. He thought he was awesome. We disagreed. He later went on to found a rival band (which we mocked incessantly), and Jeff came on as our official drummer. Surprisingly enough, with Jeff on the throne, we managed to find some direction, and our practice sessions netted some actual results, actual gigs. Those gigs reflected the general spotty-ness of our career—from our one real gig at a local music club, to an afternoon show at a day care (there’s video tape of this one, too).

We had an occasional singer who was older, cooler, and in college. Ron was not really invested in us. He had his own aspirations—and those included playing guitar. Our rhythm guitarist, Brian, later followed Ron out to Western, picked up bass and helped found the Western Carolina trio Minus Us.

All in all, Fifth Wheel was a grand experiment in teen angst. I’m proud (if also slightly embarrassed) of that band—and I’m also eternally thankful that we “came of age” musically at the same time that Nirvana and Pearl Jam were redefining music. There’s something poetic about a bunch of teenagers who couldn’t get laid banging out “Smells Like Teen Spirit” in a garage.

I also find it deeply fascinating that Paul Westerberg managed to write some of the most authentic (at least in my experience) lines in rock music (from Don’t Tell A Soul’s “Talent Show”): "It's the biggest thing in my life, I guess/ Look at us, we're nervous wrecks/ Hey, we go on next."

I did that.

Drivn’ n’ Cryin’

This little story of a bad high school rock band does more than illustrate a high point from Don’t Tell A Soul. See, Fifth Wheel’s music may not have been all that great, but the band was the center of my social world for those two or three years before I went off to college. Up until that point, I’d been a competitive swimmer and a Boy Scout. Both of those things fell into the background when I started playing bass. They were replaced with some of the strongest friendships I’ve ever had. I would even go so far as to suggest that my ability to maintain strong friendships now is a direct result of the bonding that happened in my garage.

Not only do I still keep in touch with my former band mates, but my wife and I flew to Finland this summer to take part in our lead guitarist’s wedding.

Anyway, my junior year in high school was marked both by being in a band and taking a television production class at the Weaver Center in Greensboro. Somehow, my friend Brian caught wind of the television production class and we managed to get enrolled in it. The result was that we carpooled out to Weaver at the end of each school day. Driving back and forth to Weaver with Brian, we talked mostly about girls, but we also listened to a lot of music. Since Brian was a year older than me, he fancied himself the worldlier in regards to music.

I should probably interject: I was fattened on Rush, Ozzy, and Styx. I had inherited my musical tastes from my parents and my older brother. This was all counter to the tastes of Michael and Brian, who were big fans of The Monkees and The Beatles, and only later branched out into harder stuff. We were all enamored with Guns ‘n Roses, of course, but there was always a sense that my tastes were bad because I’d taken part in the big hair metal extravagancies of the late eighties—a travesty along the lines of being a Reagan Republican in a Clinton jazz band.

I credit Brian for introducing me to Drivn’ n’ Cryin’ and The Replacements.

This is where Don’t Tell A Soul comes in. I don’t remember where he got it—though I suspect he heard “I’ll Be You” on WUAG, UNC-G’s radio station. All I remember is that he had a tape copy of the album and he played it for me on the way to Weaver one afternoon. I didn’t like it immediately, but I was forced to borrow the tape.

I mentioned that I was a swimmer. I was no Michael Phelps (clearly), but I was still practicing regularly. And when I got my license (and my brother’s car, since he was away at college), I started driving myself the half hour to and from practice. I did a lot of driving and a lot of (cryin’) listening.

Driving back and forth from Weaver, and from swim practice, I fell in love with Don’t Tell A Soul. Later, I discovered the whole Replacements back catalog (and even found that Please To Meet Me is my favorite Replacements album), but Don’t Tell A Soul stands at the front of my list of albums where my musical tastes began to change.

ROCK 'N' ROLL GHOST

Later, much later, Michael of Fifth Wheel and Finland fame sent me a copy of Nina Persson's A Camp. It's a great little album that's never been released (I think) in the states. Anyway, near the end of the collection is a cover of "Rock 'n' Roll Ghost." It's a slow, sultry version of the already slow, melancholic track from Don't Tell A Soul. I've always been wary of covers (as much as I love Luna, I'm not a big fan of their lackadaisical version of "Sweet Child O Mine"), but this one's spot on. And it reminded me of the highlights—of what I love most about Don't Tell A Soul.

As you can probably gather from what I've already written, I was a reforming head banger who's only "slow music" likes were power ballads a la "Mama, I’m Comin' Home." Don't Tell A Soul was like nothing I'd ever really liked before. That "generally muted tone" that Mark Richardson mentions in his review was new to me. And the more I listened, the more I liked it. I would argue that Don't Tell A Soul opened me up to later enjoy Luna and The Sundays. It also allowed me to look back on the eighties and admit that I actually liked (sonically speaking) the other side of the musical spectrum—the side that my staunch head-banger youth railed vehemently against. I could allow myself to enjoy "Safety Dance" and "Come On Eileen."

But it's more than that, I guess. Otherwise, I wouldn't have found myself so enthralled with the rest of the Replacements catalog. And I guess this is what really bears mentioning: Yes, Don't Tell A Soul was a departure (from my own tastes as much as the band's storied past), but it was steeped in what made the Replacements great even from day one: great songwriting.

Richardson notes this—that "the hearts of good songs" are "beating beneath the plastic exterior" of their production. And, despite the change in line up, the heart of the Replacements is still their—because Westerberg is still there.

Now, one need only look at Paul's solo career to see that the Replacements were certainly more than him—but his greatest gift is, and always was, a knack for great songwriting—both riff-writing and lyric writing. And despite the typically professed failings of Don't Tell A Soul, the songs are damn good. I'll admit that I, too, have real problems with "I Won't" and "Anywhere's Better Than Here," but all in all the good outweighs the bad.

I used to say that three people most influenced my sense of (and love for) language: George Carlin, Tom Waits, and Paul Westerberg. That list has grown since, but those three still stand there at the front. First came Carlin (for more about Carlin: The King Is Dead) and later came Waits. But in the middle, in those teen angst years when I was fumbling toward some sense of self as a social being and as a writer, I learned from Westerberg the art of humility in humor and pain, the art of dismantling a phrase not as Carlin had for laughs but for a deeper truth, the truth that caused cliché in the first place. Where Waits painted another picture—other warped and weary worlds built of hobos and cigarette smoke—Westerberg painted an existence that was very much like my own (except for the boozing and Midwest cold, of course).

PLEASE TO MEET ME

I'll add this last bit because I'm probably not going to have room for more than one Replacements album in my twenty-five. In the end, Don't Tell A Soul means more to my musical history than Please To Meet Me does—even if it isn't the better album.

And I guess I should explain that. Looking back at my other choices so far, there is a sense of sonic resonance, of completeness and cohesiveness. On a good album, a band's or artist's expression is summed up within the confines of the chosen songs, which collectively represent a theme, an idea or ideas closely matched. While Please To Meet Me is a solid album with few missteps, it doesn't gel like Don't Tell A Soul does. Hands down, "Can't Hardly Wait" and "Alex Chilton" are my favorite Replacements songs, but the landscape that starts with "Talent Show" and ends with "Darling One" is one more completely realized. Whether by intention or accident, Don't Tell A Soul represents a specific moment in musical time—both for me and for the music world—and as such, means more to me.

One last thing (a sad note): I bought my CD copy of Please To Meet Me used at B.B.'s Compact Discs in Greensboro. B.B.'s was a classic haunt of my high school years. Kids without much to do and little money, we would drive out to B.B.'s and listen to music. The great thing about B.B.'s was that you could listen to any CD in the store. All you had to do was wait for an open player.

I discovered a lot of new sounds in that store—though, sadly, I never really bought much there. (I do have a couple of Tom Waits Bootlegs that I got there—back when you could still get those kinds of things at certain record stores…)

Earlier this year, B.B.'s closed its doors. There's a possibility that it may open again (somewhere else in town and likely at a reduced size), but having seen all my favorite music stores drop like flies in the last decade, I'm not all that hopeful.

But back in 1993, I lucked upon a used copy of Please To Meet Me (I'd already worn my copy of a copy out at that point).

I still have the receipt for it.

Dirt In The Ground

(I have not had time to finish part two of my previous blog. In the meantime, here's something else...)

I was a seventeen year old college freshman in 1992. I turned eighteen two months before the '92 election. At that time, I was, despite my protestations to the contrary, a typical college freshman. Yes, my parents embarrassed me. And yes, I was trying to be as unlike them as possible—except when it came to my political inclinations. For those, I trusted my father implicitly. My father was goofy as hell, but he was smart and paid attention to the world around him.

He was a fiscal conservative. He was one of the most liberal men I knew in his personal and spiritual ideologies, but when it came to money, he was a republican through and through.When good old Ross Perot came on the scene that year with his big money slant, my father (and by extension, my mother) was hooked. He was optimistic about the future, about the future of his money.I registered to vote as soon as I turned eighteen. I went down to the polls on Election Day and pulled those levers-- mostly at random, of course.

For the big ticket, I voted Perot.A funny thing happened later that night. As was usually the case, I had my dorm room door open. Music streamed through my hi-fi set-up (my Sony Discman running through the auxiliary input of an old Commodore 64 monitor that I was using as a television), and I was at my desk entrenched in a game of Mine Sweeper on my cobbled together computer, complete with amber screen monitor.

Then, I heard it. Shouting and whooping. I don't remember what this kid's name was, but I do remember that he was tall, had long dark hair, and was an asshole. The kind of guy that surely got a lot of action because he was semi-attractive and mean.

And there he was, stomping down the hall, yelling "Bush sucks! Clinton rules!"

Now, when I've recounted this story in the past, I've conflated my epiphanies. I usually tell people that in that moment, I realized that I had no business voting because it was little more than a football game to me—as it apparently was to those around me. I vowed never to vote again unless I was more prepared, more informed.

I came to those conclusions but not that night. That night I was simply struck by a simple revelation about the election: This is not a football game.

Later, I did begin to piece it all together. I didn't vote again until 2004. And even then, I will admit, I wasn't as informed as I should have been. I knew more than I did when I was eighteen, but only because I'd been listening to NPR (something my republican father loved and hated). I also knew that whatever I didn't know about John Kerry was balanced by what I did know about Bush.

All of this leads up to my current state of mind: Until now, I have never plastered any political stickers on my car. Until now, I'd never watched a political convention, nor listened to an entire speech given by any president, or presidential candidate.

My wife knew from the beginning that Obama was the right choice. For me, I wanted to play it safe. I wanted to make sure that I wasn't just voting like my wife. But I started to listen more attentively to Barack's words. My wife bought The Audacity of Hope and I read the first chapter (I keep meaning to read the rest of it) and thought, "Okay, this guy can write." I watched and listened. I paid more attention.

I watched Obama's acceptance speech. And you know what? You know why that whole Daily Show-Lion King bit is so funny?[1] Because it sums up how I felt, how I feel about Obama. Hope is a funny thing.

I remember being blown away by the openness of these lines, "These challenges are not all of government's making. But the failure to respond is a direct result of a broken politics in Washington and the failed policies of George W. Bush."[2]

It really was like Harry Potter saying "Voldermort." Obama named that which must not be named.

On that stage, Obama faced the darkness and confronted it.

And he didn't do it in a way that was mean-spirited, or sadly rote. What was so powerful about his speech was the fact that he faced the darkness and did not drag us down into fear as a result of it. In fact, I felt hopeful in that moment. That hope was reflected in his invocation of Dr. King: "'We cannot walk alone,' the preacher cried.' And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead. We cannot turn back.' America, we cannot turn back..."

This is optimistic realism. We're in a bad place. This is not all our fault, but we all have to work to fix it. Real work, hard work. But it can be done.

Imagine my surprise, then, when I heard about Sarah Palin the next morning. Pure pandering, pure (evil) genius. Imagine my horror listening to her speech. There was no hope in her words, only fear.[3] Only silly jokes and snide looks.

What's so bad about organizing communities?

And don't get me started about Giuliani. Here's the quote that made my ears bleed: "Because change is not a destination, just as hope is not a strategy." What does that even mean?!

Okay, so here it is: I am not passionate about politics and the world. I always just assumed that everything would work out fine around me and I could just go about my life without paying attention. That's the real moral of my little story. I'm too selfish (self-centered) to care that much about the fate of this nation.

Or at least I was.

This time around I do care. I have paid attention. And like some of my friends and colleagues, I too am being torn apart. I've been obsessed these past few weeks (after the elation of Obama's victory over Clinton, after the elation I felt from his speech was stomped on with arrogant ignorance by Sarah Palin, who delivered a speech she didn't even write)—obsessed with the possibility that we could be facing the biggest mistake this country has ever made. I hope and pray (and I don't pray much because I'm not sure exactly in what direction to pray) that the strategery clearly in-play at the moment will backfire. To some extent, it already has.

And so there it is.

I'll leave you with two quotes for those of us torn between optimism and pessimism:

"Hell's boiling over and heaven is full, / We're chained to the world and we've all got to pull."

- Tom Waits (from "Dirt In The Ground" on Bone Machine)

"This union may never be perfect, but generation after generation has shown that it can always be perfected."

- Barack Obama (from his "A More Perfect Union" speech)[4]

____

NOTES:

[1] The Daily Show put together a bio film of Obama that figured him as Simba from The Lion King. Watch it here: He Completes Us.
[2] For the full transcription of Obama's speech, go here: Barack Obama's Acceptance Speech.
[3] Palin's speech can be found here: Governor Palin at the RNC. To test my musings, simply count up the words in her speech that have negative connotations. How many times does she mention 'war,' 'fear,' etc?
[4] Full transcript of a brilliant speech: A More Perfect Union.

One more thing! Here is an excellent article about Barack Obama's economic ideology. Read it here: How Obama Reconciles Dueling Views on Economy.