Real Life Rock

by Greil Marcus

  3 Alison Krauss and Union Station, Live (Rounder) Fine, fine, but across two discs it’s the smallest sound that cuts the deepest: “Forget About It,” sung as if the singer’s walking out on a fight at 4 a.m., her tiredness indistinguishable from her contempt.

  4 Michael O’Dell, letter to the editor, City Pages, Minneapolis (Dec. 4) Among pages of letters praising City Pages editor Steve Perry’s Nov. 27 cover story “Spank the Donkey,” in which Perry argued that people of good will should abandon the Democratic Party in favor of generations of Republican rule sufficient to produce conditions conducive to the election of Ralph Nader: “You should go back to singing for Journey.”

  5 Mark Halliday, Jab (University of Chicago Press) Ken Tucker writes: “Pop and rock have inspired some of the worst poetry ever, from Patti Smith to Tom Clark to Jim Carroll to Exene to Jewel to Amiri Baraka (New Jersey could have avoided the controversy over Baraka’s anti-Semitism if they’d just gotten an advance of the Roots’ Phrenology and heard him ‘perform’). But Mark Halliday consistently makes music work for him as subject matter. In Jab he imagines a session trumpet player during the recording of Jan and Dean’s ‘Surf City’ in 1963:

  “ ‘I see this trumpet player (was there even a horn section in that song? / Say there was) / I see this one trumpet player with tie askew / or maybe he’s wearing a loose tropical foliage shirt sitting on a metal chair waiting / for the session to reach the big chorus / where Jan and Dean exult / “Two girls for every boy” / and he’s thinking / of his hundred nights on his buddy Marvin’s hairy stainy sofa / and the way hot dogs and coffee make a mud misery / and the way one girl is far too much . . . / Surfing—what life actually lets guys ride boards / on waves? / Is it all fiction? Is it a joke? / Jan and Dean and their pal Brian act like it’s a fine, good joke / Whereas the trumpet player thinks it’s actually shit / If anybody asked him, a tidal wave of shit / Nobody’s asking’.”

  6 Esperanto Cafe, Christmas night (114 MacDougal St., New York) In this place that never closes, there are many volumes of The History of Philosophy, but no evident traces of Esperanto, the language invented in the late 19th century by a man who believed that if all people spoke the same tongue—“manufacturing a Tower of Babel in reverse,” as Lester Bangs put it—there would be no more war. As snow fell heavily outside, the Rolling Stones’ 1969 “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” was playing. Then came the killingly original blues line that opens their 1964 cover of Irma Thomas’ “Time Is on My Side,” and time really did begin to slide. It was only 107 years before, to the night, that in a saloon in St. Louis a man named Billy Lyons snatched the Stetson hat off the head of a man named “Stag” Lee Shelton, and Shelton, who some called Stagolee, shot him, retrieved his hat, and walked out the door.

  7 Richard Avedon, “Portraits” (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, closed Jan. 5) Overfamiliar work, but in the room featuring pictures from Avedon’s “In the American West” series there was a stopper. Some of Avedon’s shots of highway bums are so lurid they’re unforgettable, in the worst, freak-show manner; Clarence Lippard, drifter, Interstate 80, Sparks, Nevada, August 29, 1983 was different. Instead of the lantern jaw and killer’s eyes of the other men on the walls, Lippard held himself in reserve. The countless big, dark freckles—or skin cancers—that covered his face and hands spoke for a life lived out of doors; his dark blazer and clean white shirt made it seem as if he were a gentleman farmer out for a stroll. Very handsome, in a moneyed East Coast way, with a full head of sandy hair, Lippard appeared in two photos. One—as if shot from below, showing Lippard from the waist up—softened his features, weakening his chin and turning his nose bulbous; he looked something like Kevin Kline in one of his good-guy roles. But the other picture, shot head-on and cropped at midchest, presented Lippard gazing straight out, his chin strong, his nose hard: in the way he carried himself, daring you to judge him.

  His face now suggested Gregory Peck or Robert Ryan; the disease on his skin deepened his face, until you could see Lincoln along with the movie stars. And then another movie star who is not, really, a star: Bill Pullman, in the desert in Lost Highway, and then in Igby Goes Down, in the asylum.

  8 La Bohème, directed by Baz Luhrmann (Broadway Theatre, New York, Dec. 22) The 1896 Puccini opera updated to 1957, complete with cool Marlon Brando references and “Let’s go, cats!” dialogue, but with dying heroine Mimi looking like a leftover from a World War II movie, the men not remotely convincing as either Europeans or artists and the big Rive Gauche set altogether 19th century fin de siècle. Which didn’t matter. The change from garret apartment for Act 1 to Left Bank street for Act 2 was made in half light; when the stagehands, costumed as Paris workers, had everything in place, the audience thought the action would proceed in the shadows. Then the lights were flicked on, the tableau lit up like a firecracker, and a collective “Ahhhhh!” filled the theater. There were prostitutes draped over balconies, a patriotic parade, urchins and clochards, little rich kids in fancy coats, an English millionaire in tails with not-dying heroine Musette on his arm. The scene paid off with Musette’s (Jessica Comeau, this afternoon) long, increasingly passionate “Quando e’n vò”—which in 1959 was turned into Della Reese’s great hit “Don’t You Know.” It was a pure pop spectacle, which made the shift to Act 3, from Let’s Party to Tragedy, seem a little glib.

  9 John Doe, “Employee of the Month,” from Dim Stars, Bright Sky (Im/BMG) There’s something of the feel of Randy Newman’s “Vine Street” here, and as a loser’s song it’s convincing. But it’s not half as convincing as losers John Doe plays in the movies, from Amber Waves’ ex-husband in Boogie Nights to Mr. Werther in The Good Girl: characters so depressed they can barely summon the energy to look away from the camera.

  10 Joe Strummer, Aug. 21, 1952–Dec. 22, 2002 “You know what they said? Well, some of it was true!”

  FEBRUARY 3, 2003

  1 White Stripes, Elephant (V2/Third Man) Before my turntable broke (the vinyl version was all I could find), this sounded like the Detroit guitar-and-drums combo’s Rubber Soul at least as much as Pussy Galore’s “Pretty Fuck Look.”

  2 The Murder of Emmett Till, directed by Stanley Nelson, written by Marcia A. Smith and narrated by Andre Braugher (PBS, Jan. 20) This documentary on the 1955 lynching of a black 14-year-old Chicago boy near Money, Miss., opened with a lovely shot of the meandering Tallahatchie River—where Till’s body, weighted down with a cotton gin fan, was dumped after he was killed for supposedly whistling at a white man’s wife. Later there were images of a bridge, and I couldn’t help thinking of Bobbie Gentry’s 1967 “Ode to Billy Joe.” A girl tells the story of how her boyfriend, Billie Joe McAllister, jumped to his death from the Tallahatchie Bridge, into the Tallahatchie River—and how, her family has heard, she and Billie Joe were seen throwing something from the same bridge, into the same river, just days before. What was it? Bobbie Gentry has never said, but isn’t there a memory of Emmett Till’s murder in whatever it was?

  3 Lucinda Williams, World Without Tears (Lost Highway) The first song, the modestly titled “Fruits of My Labors,” begins with a shimmering, subtle progression played on a Leslie guitar. Then comes a slurred, dragging, unbelievably affected voice to tell you how deeply its owner feels: so deeply barely a single word is actually formed. Every little touch—brushes on the snare, say—is mixed up high, to let you know how carefully everything has been done. There is irony in “American Dream”: despite the title, the song is about how bad things (poverty, drug addiction—because of Vietnam—and black lung) take place in America. But the singer will press on. “Bay swee bay ’f’s alla same,” Williams promises, “tay th’ glore en day ov’ the fame.” Not due til April, but why wait? It’s not getting any better.

  4 Robin Williams, Live 2002 (Columbia) Nowhere near the action of last year’s HBO roller coaster, but it only takes him a few minutes to hit his stride—with the tragedy of the Supreme Court’s striking down the execution of the retarded. Here and there, glimpses
of a man whose no could do more to change the country than any words from Tom Daschle, Joe Lieberman, Nancy Pelosi or John Edwards.

  5 Rolling Stones Live (HBO, Jan. 19) Mojave Sam (Howard Hampton) writes: “They’ve been worse. I thought of William Cody and his Wild West Show, fancifully reenacting Little Big Horn. Buffalo Bill preening in time-honorific Custer’d fashion, Sitting Bull on rhythm guitar (sporting traditional headdress, but what happened to his voice—is it changing back?), Annie Oakley guesting on ‘Honky Tonk Women,’ etc.; I believe ‘Can’t You Hear Me Knocking’ was their tribute to the building of the transcontinental railroad, in real time. In any case, they gave the people what they wanted, and no one was any the wiser.” Except that on “Gimmie Shelter,” backing singer Lisa Fischer, otherwise as florid as Patti LaBelle, looked Mick Jagger in the face and opened up the doors of the song.

  6 Ann Charters, editor, The Portable Sixties Reader (Penguin) At more than 600 pages, a definitively clueless anthology ending with bad poems about the deaths of the decade’s top 10 dead people. Count down! Ten! Hemingway! Nine! Marilyn Monroe! Eight! John F. Kennedy! “When I woke up they’d stole a man away,” says Eric von Schmidt—hey, who’s “they”? As Donovan used to say, “I really want to know,” but never mind, Seven! Sylvia Plath! Six! Malcolm X! Five! Martin Luther King Jr.! Four! Robert F. Kennedy! Three! Neal Cassady! Two! Janis Joplin! And topping the chart: Jack Kerouac! With a straight obit from the Harvard Crimson! Solid! But Janis died in 1970. If she can get in, why not Jimi Hendrix? Captain Beefheart played a soprano sax solo for him the day his death was announced that said more than anything here.

  7 Bonnie “Prince” Billy, Master and Everyone (Drag City) In his current incarnation as Billy, Will Oldham looks like Nietzsche on the cover of this disc, and that’s as far as it goes. What used to be Southern Gothic is now Southern hospitality—depressed, but very polite.

  8 Pretty Girls Make Graves, Pretty Girls Make Graves (Dim Mak) Hot punk from Seattle—and with every move in place, dispiritingly third-hand.

  9 “Rude Mechanicals Financial Advisors answer the most frequently asked questions of investors and patrons alike,” fund-raising letter (www.rudemechs.com) After advising “FULL DIVESTMENT” from the stock market and the bond market (“As long as Pierce Brosnan is cast as James Bond in the 007 movies WE CANNOT RECOMMEND ANY BONDS whatsoever. Madonna is doing the theme song for the new movie. Have some self-respect”) and answering “Is ART really a sound investment?” with a definite yes (“If you had given Emily Dickinson five dollars in 1864, your investment would now be worth more than ‘this new Value in the Soul—Supremest Earthly Sum’ ”), the Austin theater group concludes with a set of irrefutable graphs: “Verizon stock value over the past five years vs. Patrons of Rude Mechs Spiritual Satisfaction,” “ImClone stock value over the past five years vs. Rude Mechs Artistic Growth,” “WorldCom Market Valuation vs. Increase in Overall Artistic Fulfillment brought to Patrons of Rude Mechs,” and, bringing it all back home:

  Enron stock value over the past five years - vs. - value of a handful of dirt

  10 Helen Thomas at White House press briefing, Jan. 6 In his 1972 study The World Turned Upside Down: Radical Ideas During the English Revolution, Christopher Hill, poring through the annals of the 16th and 17th centuries, tried to reconstruct the beginnings of a heresy that by the 1650s was making itself known across England. There would be a document noting that a certain craftsperson had questioned the divinity of Jesus; 20 years later there would be a record of a woman denying the need to work. Across a page or so, a dozen examples of seemingly stray people claiming that all true spirits were God and that all authority was false took on a huge charge, less from the power of any given fragment than from one’s sense of how much was missing between the fragments. Reading the transcript of the exchange between 82-year-old Hearst News Services columnist Helen Thomas and White House spokesman Ari Fleischer, what was so shocking was not what she said, but, given the socialization produced by the news writing and even editorial writing in the likes of the New York Times, how bizarre it seemed—because in the context of contemporary political discourse Thomas spoke not as a reporter but precisely as a heretic:

  Thomas: At the earlier briefing, Ari, you said that the president deplored the taking of innocent lives. Does that apply to all innocent lives in the world? And I have a follow-up.

  Fleischer: I refer specifically to a horrible terrorist attack on Tel Aviv that killed scores and wounded hundreds. And the president, as he said in his statement yesterday, deplores in the strongest terms the taking of those lives and the wounding of those people, innocents in Israel.

  T: My follow-up is, why does he want to drop bombs on innocent Iraqis?

  F: Helen, the question is how to protect Americans, and our allies and friends—

  Thomas and Fleischer went back and forth in several more exchanges. The president is only interested in defense against Iraq, Fleischer reiterated.

  T: And he thinks they are a threat to us?

  F: There is no question that the president thinks that Iraq is a threat to the United States.

  T: The Iraqi people?

  F: The Iraqi people are represented by their government. If there was regime change, the Iraqi—

  T: So they will be vulnerable?

  F: Actually, the president has made it very clear that he has no dispute with the people of Iraq. That’s why the American policy remains a policy of regime change. There is no question the people of Iraq—

  T: That’s a decision for them to make, isn’t it? It’s their country.

  F: Helen, if you think the people of Iraq are in a position to dictate who their dictator is, I don’t think that has been what history has shown.

  T: I think many countries’ people don’t have the decision—including us.

  Thanks to Chris Walters

  City Pages 20032004

  APRIL 9, 2003

  1 A.R.E. Weapons, A.R.E. Weapons (Rough Trade) New York City, very self-mocking about their street smarts, very anguished about the street, and utterly expert in a way that hides all craft. Guys come hunching down the sidewalk in their leather jackets: “Let’s hear it for America,” says the singer, sarcastic and completely straight. As a heartfelt adolescent plea for parental forbearance, “Hey World” has the defiant lift of the Yeah Yeah Yeah’s “Our Time” and the regret of the Clash’s “This Is England”—you can imagine it coming out of Claire on Six Feet Under, and it’s stirring. “You’re either part of the problem,” you hear as the band sets you up to ignore its clichés, “or you’re part of the fucking miserable solution we call life.”

  2 The Kills, Keep on Your Mean Side (Rough Trade) The U.S./U.K. duo starring in a very hot version of their song “Fuck the People”—and very casually. And not so casually on a primitive punk rewrite of Lead Belly’s “Don’t You Leave Me Here.” There’s a cold bravado: “Don’t you leave me here/Got my name stitched on your lips so you won’t dare.” But the performance collapses now into a then. You’re back in a time and place where someone left behind might never get out—no trains, no cars, no busses, no horses, no maps.

  3 Bob Dylan for Victoria’s Secret (Fox, March 4) “Only two things in this world worth botherin’ your head about and them’s sex and death,” says a “debauched Midwestern businessman” in Michael O’Donoghue and Frank Springer’s 1968 comic serial “The Adventures of Phoebe Zeitgeist.” That’s the only explanation for the commercial that uses B.D.’s suicidal 1997 “Love Sick” to orchestrate a montage of underwear models looking dour under their hooded eyes. But it’s a better Dylan setting than the nearly four-hours-long God-blessed-the-Confederacy film Gods and Generals, which features his “Cross the Green Mountain.” I haven’t seen the picture, but I have seen the TV trailer featuring Robert Duvall sitting in a chair as Robert E. Lee and opining through a mouthful of molasses, “ ’s in Gawd’s han’s naw,” as if to say, “Hey, don’t blame me.” On the other hand, “Love Sick” is an actual song. At
more than eight dying minutes, “Cross the Green Mountain” might as well be the movie.

  4 Randy Newman for Ford (Fox, February 18) For the first time in recent memory, a Newman tune was not nominated for an Oscar, and Randy must be feeling the pinch—or decided Fuck it, once and for all. Instead of merely licensing, say, “I Love to See You Smile” to McDonald’s to rewrite and rerecord into eternity, he’s writing from the ground up and selling his own voice. “It’s right there in front of your eyes,” he sings with exuberance and shame. “If you haven’t looked at a Ford lately—look again.”

  5 David Lynch and John Neff, BlueBob (Solitude/Ryko) Lynch on words, drums, guitar, Neff on guitar, drums, vocals: Link Wray opening for Pere Ubu. “I Cannot Do That” is the musical equivalent of an outtake from Lost Highway, furiously sustained; out of the all-directions-at-once noise of “In the Pink Western Range” comes a dog, “barking like Robert Johnson.” But the hit is “Thank You, Judge,” an R&B divorce-court novelty.

  6 The Raveonettes, Whip It On (The Orchard) Forget the Danish twosome’s advertised Buddy Holly homage. In moments—“Chains,” “Cops on Our Tail,” “Beat City”—they make it into the film noir they’re watching. Gun Crazy, probably.

  7 AFI, Sing the Sorrow (Dreamworks) San Francisco goths with a cast of thousands don’t know the meaning of pretentious, but you wish they did.

  8 Eva Cassidy, “Fields of Gold,” from Songbird (Blix Street) You hear this slow cover and you want to know who it was who made the Sting song feel as if it were hundreds of years old; that the singer has been dead since 1996, the year she recorded it, has nothing to do with it at all.