EPISODE 217 – SONGS FROM THE HIGH CHAIR
POP CULTURE SPIRIT WOW
At my grade school, Fairview Elementary, we used to have music class a couple times a week. Our teacher was Mr. Rothwell, an unusual character with a head shaped like Frankenstein and severe, shoe polish hair. Mostly the class involved singing, I think, but on Fridays students got to bring in 45s of their favorite song. (Remember 45s?) And it was kind of a big deal, a moment for each kid to shine.
My childhood was the epoch of hair bands and early metal: AC/DC, Van Halen, The Who, Cheap Trick, Alice Cooper, KISS, Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, Rush preened and pranced on stage with their teased hair and make up and according to the media maybe also secret Satanic messages and honestly I just didn’t get it.
Maybe the other kids didn’t either. I’m pretty sure in part they chose the songs they did because they wanted to see if they could shock Mr. Rothwell. (And they succeeded.) But I think in many cases this was also the stuff they were listening to at home, probably with older siblings. In my house I was the oldest; the song I knew best was probably “Splish Splash”, the Bobby Darin song my dad would sometimes sing to us as a joke late at night as he drove us home from our grandma’s.
The only records I knew were ones my parents had, things like “Aquarius/Let The Sunshine In” by the Fifth Dimension (my mom’s), or comedy albums about growing up by a very young Bill Cosby (my dad’s). I spent hours and hours in the extra bedroom in our house listening to those stories and songs.
There was one hair band song that I did really love: “Come Sail Away”, by Styx.
Bangs and beards and perms, oh my!
I’m not sure where I heard it first; probably Mr. Rothwell's class. I do know once I had I used to beg my babysitter Liz Hofer to bring over her copy of “The Grand Illusion” so I could listen to it again and again.
The song is a ballad, mostly. It begins simply, with Dennis DeYoung singing at a piano about sailing away on the open sea, looking for a better tomorrow. I had never been on a boat or seen the ocean or even really imagined what that might be like, but I could see him out there, and the beautiful blue of an endless sea.
But that’s not why I was into this song. No, for me the hook was the song’s sudden (and in retrospect completely preposterous) twist: while he’s out there sailing, starting a new life, the guy meets up with what he thinks are angels who sing to him (you know, like angels do), and then – after a fantastic instrumental break that kind of sounds like whalesong mixed with the background of an 8-bit video game – he discovers they’re not angels, they’re aliens, and they want him to come with them to the stars.
This was the age of dimestore paperbacks (and major motion pictures) about crazy things like shark attacks and alien abductions, all of which I had read and most of which were going to end up permanently warping my imagination and sleep patterns. And “Come Sail Away” hit the sweet spot for all that. In my mind I created this whole explanation (that until now I had actually thought was in the song) that the guy had sailed into the Bermuda Triangle, and that’s why there were aliens there. And I’d sit there listening to the song and imagining that crazy world that he slipped into, where the skies were dark and the waters choppy, and strange descending lights glowed in the clouds.
Of course, for Styx this was not a song about alien abduction (let’s be honest, it doesn’t matter if they invite you or not, when aliens take you away you’re either going to a zoo or a surgical theater, because you’ve totally been abducted); it was DeYoung telling himself that even though their most recent albums hadn’t been the successes they wanted, that it was okay, they could carry on. DeYoung said it was “a song of guarded hope that it can be better.”
And I guess that probably resonated too. But honestly, I mostly just thought it was awesome that there was a rock song about aliens and interstellar travel. Yeah, maybe they would eventually (immediately) dissect me, but still – it’s space, yo. Gotta get me there.
If I ran the Jesuits this is what our front yard would look like
(but with Jesus standing over the alien, healing him).
++
One other song really spoke to me as a little kid: “It’s Still Rock and Roll to Me”, from Billy Joel’s “Glass Houses.” In fact, that song pretty much jump-started my interest in rock music.
The funny thing is, looking back now I see what grabbed me is really pretty minor. The song is about being criticized for the way you look, people trying to part of the in-crowd. And Joel’s kind of above the fray, answering every question of this insecure choir with the semi-non sequitur “It’s still rock and roll to me.” As if to say, you guys can worry about that if you want, I just want to play my music.
But I don’t think I understood any of that, let alone Joel’s references to things like “tab collars", “pink sidewinders” or a “Beau Brummel baby”. (In fact I looked up “Beau Brummel baby” only just now, and now I’m wondering if anyone understood this reference to early 19th century English fashion when he made it.)
No, it was just two lines really that made that song my own: “Should I try to be a straight-A student? If you are, then you think too much.” The fact was, even back then I was pretty grade-obsessed, and there was something about having this singer name that and suggest taking it easier on myself that consoled me. It was like in that song I got a big brother who was looking out for me. And while it didn’t change my behavior, looking back I see it revealed there were other ways of living a happy life. And that was important.
++
I enrolled in the BMG Record Club a few years later. How could you not, they were giving you 7 records for the price of one and you only had to buy like three over the course of the next three years. Still, I don’t know why my parents allowed it, I was forever forgetting to send back the card saying I didn’t want the latest Duran Duran album and then having it sent to me with a bill I couldn’t pay and having to send it back fearful that they weren’t going to accept it or they would throw me out and I would not be able to get the Cars album I was waiting for. (Honestly, how did those clubs ever make any money? I want to say maybe they didn’t, but then in googling the club I discovered BMG continued to do its thing until 2009! So I guess there had be some money there.)
Mostly BMG was a sampler for me. Don Henley, ZZ Top, Dire Straits – none of them really landed for me, but they were on the radio, people were talking about them, and they were free, so why not?
For me the real juice was in crazy, upbeat stuff like The Cars’ “You Might Think” (it’s fascinating to watch this video today – basically, in the 80s being a stalker and not ever accepting no was somehow funny and romantic) or pretty much anything by Oingo Boingo.
Most of the bands I followed I learned about from the movies. I liked Oingo Boingo after I saw “Weird Science”; Simple Minds after “Breakfast Club”; and Peter Gabriel after “Say Anything” (as did pretty much everyone my age who saw that film, don’t judge us, he was holding up the boom box because he loved her, it’s a film for the ages you guys).
Sometimes I gravitated towards the music without even seeing the film it was in. ”Everybody Wants to Rule the World” by Tears for Fears was in “Real Science”, a movie I’m pretty sure I never saw. But I remember that song so strongly (and love it so much even to this day) I was certain before looking it up just now that it was in “Breakfast Club”. (It wasn’t, but this was, and man does it still hold up. Dear Hollywood, Molly Ringwald should be dancing in everything.)
“Everybody Wants to Rule the World” is such an odd song. As a kid I took it as an anthem about how messed up the world is, and how we’re sort of trapped with that. The first lines for me were inherently rueful: “Welcome to your life. There’s no turning back.”
But in the song it’s us that we’re trapped with, our own basic desires for pleasure and freedom. And I’m not really sure if those are the problem or the thing we’re being invited to pursue. The sound of the song is not at all menacing or disappointed; it’s a song about living, about going for it. And I suspect down deep it’s that which keeps me coming back to the song more than the darkness.
(Although, man, there have been some incredibly wonderful dark covers of this song, most recently, this one from the TV show “Mr. Robot”, which can only be described as “sad karaoke”, and which I think deserves its own sub-genre of music videos, films and life.)
++
God I love this cover.
The real high school album for me, though, was The Joshua Tree. I had these friends from another high school, we did student debate together (actually, they debated; I sort of stumbled around and yelled at people – I didn’t really understand the rules, I thought you won by humiliating people, because America).
A bunch of those friends, ones with last names like “McBride”, “McNicholas” and “McFadden”, were all kinds of into this Irish band I had never heard of called U2. And this was pre-arena-band U2, just four guys with mysterious names singing soulful stuff, and Joshua Tree was their peak-form of that (before they started the descent into whatever the heck it is they’ve been doing pretty much since; I know billions swear by them, but to me as soon as they went full sunglasses and self-aware they somewhere misplaced the band’s soul).
“I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For”, “With or Without You” and “Running to Stand Still” are classics, haunting songs about longing, struggle and to some extent futility. It’s funny, though, when I think about those songs I always feel like something more is possible, like somehow in the fact that you’re singing that you’re standing still maybe you’re not anymore, or that there’s hope you won’t always have to be. If I’m singing that I know there’s more than this, then I guess there is.
Plus, boy do those guys know how to paint a scene. “She runs through the streets, with eyes painted red, under a black belly of cloud in the rain.” So good.
++
I’m sure if I stopped to think there’d be a ton of songs from college that bring back a million memories, too. (The oeuvre of George Michael would be a good place to start.)
But there’s one song from that era that comes back again and again for me as a source of great pleasure: House of Pain’s “Jump Around”. And the reason is very straightforward: they play it a lot at parties and weddings, and over and over during the song everybody jumps around.
It’s the simple things, people.
++
Why did my mind keep returning to these songs from my youth this week? Maybe it’s some kind of coping mechanism. It’s been kind of an exhausting time, hasn’t it? And confusing, too. The president fires the FBI director, who himself is both investigating the president and his staff and also made major mistakes during the campaign, which he then compounded last week with misleading testimony that he had to later correct.
On “The Late Show” when Stephen Colbert announced the firing the audience went crazy cheering. Colbert had no idea what to do with that, nor they with his assumption that they must all be big fans of the president. There's just no script for any of this. It’s like we're all caught in tornado; not only do we have to dodge dust and boards and cattle, we can’t even tell which way is up.
I keep telling myself I have to find some way to get involved, some issue or cause to which I volunteer my time. But I also think it’s becoming more and more important to have time away from the internet and mass media. Taking walks, hanging out with friends, listening to music. Things that help us create a space of refuge in our lives free from the insanity, where we can touch base with ourselves, see how we’re doing, what we think and what we want.
I largely resist the takedowns of mainstream media that have been offered in the last year. I think they’re mostly self-serving and dangerously inaccurate. But I will say, whether it’s FOX News or The New York Times, most media seems to be relishing the hysteria at least a little. Maybe it’s as simple as no one can help but slow down to look at a train wreck, or maybe it really is a conscious attempt to drive traffic by making us afraid (something I personally think CNN has been doing for well over a decade, but that's me).
(I will say, the one outlet that’s been my rock these days has been The Washington Post. I’m a New York Times reader by preference, but the Post has seemed to me much more solid and thoughtful in its coverage since the election. Their daily 202 Newsletter is just excellent. And I got a year’s online subscription for just $50 in one of their many deals. Highly recommend them.)
The bottom line is, no matter what the world is telling us to think or do, we should take it gently. We're all we've got.
++ LINKS ++
In 1969, a very young Mister Rogers testified before a Senate Subcommittee about his work on PBS. The interaction is pretty hilarious; the Senators had never heard of Mister Rogers, and they’re quickly fascinated by his strange combination of soft-spokenness and courage.
At one point (starting at 5:02) he reads them a song he’s written about “What Do You Do with the Mad That You Feel?”. I have to say, as weird as that concept it is, his words seemed so appropriate for the world today, I had to share them.
Vox TV critic Todd van der Werff, whose work I’ve mentioned here before, just posted this great piece about how there are so many great TV shows and yet we only talk about a handful. Worth a look.
This story of an author and what his mother did with a book he gave her is fantastic (and has many other wonderful anecdotes of prideth going before authors).
And lastly, this week a great Australian journalist named Mark Covlin died after a twenty year fight with a rare auto-immune disease. The press over there has been filled with lovely stories of his life, his work and his friendship. But maybe most telling was his final public statement, which he posted just before he died.
That seems like a good way to end (in more ways than one!). Have a good week.
(P.S. I understand there's been some trouble of late with links not going to the places they're supposed to. Sorry about that. I doubled checked this week and I think we're in better shape. But if you find anything doesn't work, let me know.)