Guilty Treasures

I cannot confirm or deny my distaste for Martin's blind love of Linda Rondstadt. I will say I have been hearing about it for nearly a decade now, and it shows no signs of letting up. The interesting thing from his previous tell-all post is that there are skeletons in the closet for everyone when it comes to taste. This is demonstrated by the story of a second grader, when he realizes that nobody shares his love of Danny Kaye, or classic studio musicals of the 1950's and 60's. He is then openly mocked... I'm not saying this happened to me. I just heard this from a friend of mine. Sounded awful.

So Linda Rondstandt got me thinking, are there any bands that despite being dated or generally dismissed by folks nowadays that I still like? Ah yes, there it is : Weezer.

I don't know where you were when you first heard the "Sweater Song" or "Buddy Holly", but if you were me, it was on a bus going to public school, and relishing the fact that Rivers Cuomo said both "god damn" in a song about a sweater, and referenced Mary Tyler Moore, another of my post-war icons. And the lead singers name was Rivers(cool!), which I timidly tried to insist was my nickname at scout camp. It never caught on.

I feel like Weezer is the band that always makes a comeback splash with small hits ("Island in the Sun", "Hashpipe") and then is sent back to the mid-nineties, where many feel like they belong. Maybe they do.

But thinking about them made me go back and give a listen to both the Blue Album and Pinkerton, and really, they are great. It is unapologetic geek rock! This is the music that I imagine math teams got pumped to in 1994. It certainly isn't Nirvana, or any of the fallout bands that came after Nirvana. Not that I didn't love "Smells Like Teen Spirit" but I only understood it on the level that my body was growing at Mach 5, and I started wearing Old Spice that year. I liked Nirvana and Nine Inch Nails to look cool at soccer camp. I crushed on girls to Weezer.

At 14, I know I related more to Weezer than the the disillusioned drug culture of the real grungers. Oh yeah, come to think of it, I still do. And who knew, but Pinkerton has become one of the best regarded albums of the nineties from critics, despite not really making a splash when it came out. The songs range from darkly comic to absurdly sweet, and there is some pop song writing in Pinkerton that I still long for when it comes to most of the stuff that I listen to now. You know the: "this guy plays theremin and sounds like he's at the bottom of a well with Brian Wilson" bands. Uncle! Sometimes you just want some candy-coated harmonies with crunchy guitars, and that's what a walk down Weezer Lane brings to the ears.

It's late at night on a Friday. The ghost of Danny Kaye and I are blasting "Across the Sea," and remembering how a good song when you're young, still feels good when you grow up.

A Review, Courtesy of Goodreads.com (or: The Lazy Man's Blog Post)

The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien

rating: 5 of 5 stars
"The Things They Carried" feels a little like a bunch of stories smushed into a novel. I may well have been biased by seeing on the title page all the various magazines which had previously published chapters of what became this book, but I like to think that I would have noticed it anyway. Some chapters were interconnected, the characters recurred, but the book as a whole didn’t feel like it built in any particular way to any particular climax. To be sure, it operated on a very high, consistent level throughout, but it didn’t necessarily peak anywhere. Regardless, if that’s the worst criticism I can level at the book, that’s pretty great. And it’s the only criticism I can level.

I really enjoyed this book, though "enjoy" might be the wrong word. I found it to be moving, wonderfully written, and enormously readable. I flew through it, as awful and heart wrenching as much of the descriptions and stories were. In fact, "heart wrenching" might be the best word to describe the entire experience. The descriptions and situations were often horrible or disgusting (or both!), yet not so horrible or disgusting that it was at any point unreadable or beyond reasonably shocking (if there's such a thing as a reasonable amount of shock). Mostly, the book was filled with elegant and elegiac stories, as well as keen insights – psychological and otherwise – into the experience of foot soldiers in Vietnam.

The lack of "shocking" material put me in two minds:
1) I thought about how hard it is in today’s day and age to be shocked about war in general, or the war in Vietnam in particular. We’ve all seen and read so much about Vietnam, and with the current war going on, it seems easy to be inured to the misery of war. Certainly that’s a sad state of affairs, but there it is. Reading this book I kept envisioning "Apocalypse Now," for better or worse. I think we have reached (I have reached?) a saturation point culturally with the Vietnam war, where so much is reducible to the film-versions; I think of Robert Duvall saying "I love the smell of Napalm in the morning" or hear the strains of "The Ride of the Valkyries" in the background as I read. I was mesmerized by "Apocalypse Now" and "Full Metal Jacket" and others but I think that that sort of shock gets worn away over time – now I have a bit of a more ho-hum attitude towards the stories and visions of insanity, as amazing as that may be. Yet Tim O’Brien did an excellent job of not just conjuring the insanity and horror, but explaining the thought-processes, the inner lives, of the poor soldiers in the midst of it all. Explaining a character’s inner life in such compelling detail is impossible for even excellent actors like Duvall or Martin Sheen or Vincent D'Onofrio.
2) I appreciated that the book – without shying away from gore and nastiness – was more about the redemptive power of writing than the actual hard, cold facts of war. In a way that’s made most explicit by the book’s closing chapter, the entire novel (if it is, in fact, a novel) is an elegy and redemption and therapy and a compulsion. The most fascinating part of this fascinating book is the glimpse into the mind of one writer struggling with this awful experience and controlling it, redeeming it, through the writing of this very book. It’s post-modern and strange to consider while also being very very interesting. Not to mention: sad and beautiful.

Along the same lines, deciphering what is true and false, what is fiction and fact, becomes a captivating (even primary) part of the book and the experience of reading it. O’Brien plays a powerful and genuinely surprising "game" with his readers; even as I have become more than familiar with the classic "unreliable narrator" convention in literature classes, and have even written many a paper on just such an idea in college, the way O’Brien explicitly and implicitly plays with the established rules and expectations was gripping, and even shocking to me in some cases.

In all, it is a powerful book: deeply sad and troubling while, at the same time, strangely hopeful. O’Brien’s belief in, and use of, writing as a personal salvation makes for about as searing a novel – or any kind of personal expression – as possible.

View all my reviews.

Critical Reconsideration: Linda Ronstadt

Greg will almost certainly disown me from my rightful half of this blog for posting this, but what’s true is true, and deserves to be spoken. I’m sure someone more famous than I said that at some point. Certainly we all have embarrassing confessions to make when it comes to culture, specifically pop culture, where oftentimes “things we like” and “things that are objectively good” are non-intersecting Venn diagram circles.

Here’s my confession, and it is one that I am proud of: Linda Ronstadt is one of my favorite artists. Of all time. For many people who know me, this is no surprise. Many people, though, are deeply embarrassed for me whenever this comes up. Typically, around people who know me, my love for Linda Ronstadt will be raised as a hilarious joke or a snarky put-down. While I can certainly enjoy the campy, kitschy humor about it in a general sense, I am no more embarrassed or able to be put-down about this love than I would be embarrassed of my dark hair, or my glasses: my Ronstadt-love has been a part of me my entire life; it is unchangeable, immutable, non-negotiable.

I can laugh at some parts of this fandom: over the summer in 1999, I started an official club for Ronstadt on Yahoo. I remember being bored and thinking, "I can’t believe nobody has started a fan group for her." (Remember the summer of ’99? It was probably Yahoo’s heyday, just as the concept of online networking was beginning to catch on, but before MySpace, Facebook, et al, spun that nascent idea of online communities into gold.) In my defense, I set the thing up, and, like the Deists’ version of God-the-clockmaker, I let well enough alone. Probably five years later, I remembered the group and checked up on it, only to find that it had exploded (in moderate terms). Today, there are...wait for it...671 members. Please feel free to join.

Geekiness aside, I love Linda Ronstadt’s music and always have. Certainly my familial music-preferences play a role here, but there is plenty of music that was played in my household growing up that I have harbored no attachment for. Not so with Linda. From my vantage point today, I can certainly rationalize and justify her place both in music history and in my heart, and as far as I'm concerned she's long overdue for a critical resurgence and reevaluation (Emmylou Harris-style). I believe that Linda paved the way for the alt-country, country-rock eclecticism that I love today. I don’t think that artists and bands running the gamut from Sheryl Crow to the aforementioned She & Him to Brandi Carlile to The Old 97s to the aforementioned Tift Merritt to Ryan Adams to all of the country/pop/rock belters of today like Trisha Yearwood and Carrie Underwood would exist or be popular without the groundwork laid by Linda Ronstadt. Certainly The Eagles, one of the most popular bands of all time, would never have existed without Linda, who put the core members of that band together as her backing group in the early 70s. And while the majority of Linda’s musical output falls into that rock/pop/country vein, I also love her reinterpretation of the classic American songbook with famed composer/arranger Nelson Riddle (long before talentless hacks like Rod Stewart and Barry Manilow tried doing the same thing to revive their sagging careers; Linda recorded her trilogy of albums at the height of her success). Not to mention her excellent Spanish-language albums, and her tour-de-force performance in the hilarious and underrated 1981 Broadway revival of The Pirates of Penzance starring Kevin Kline, among others (there's also a great The Pirates of Penzance'>film version with mostly the same cast).

If all this sounds like hagiography, it is -- I happily admit it! I think, in short, that Linda Ronstadt is one of the premier singers and musical pioneers of the 70s and 80s. It’s easy to write her off as a schmaltzy balladeer singing overproduced late-80s duets with tremulous, woman-voiced Aaron Neville (a collaboration that I nonetheless love, natch), or super-macho James Ingram from "An American Tale," but if one delves deeper into her back catalog, one finds a rich trove of eclectic, beautiful, and exciting music. She was a sex symbol who could really sing, who could easily have done the same thing over and over once she found some success, but instead challenged herself and experiemented and reinvented herself and her music constantly. She was a celebrity who could have just dated rich famous guys and flamed out (sound familiar?), but instead devoted herself to raising the profile of challenging songwriters she admired by recording their music, formally training her voice for the stage, and collaborating selflessly with all different kinds of people.

So, I can take a joke and I know that poor Linda Ronstadt has come to be not much more than a joke. I don’t really mind. But after you make fun of me for liking her so much -- which I am used to and can handle -- why not also click on one of these links and get yourself one of her classic albums. I bet you’d be really surprised. Most of this music holds up incredibly well.

My top 10 Ronstadt Albums (all Official Culturephile Endorsements™, obviously!)
10) Canciones de Mi Padre
9) Don't Cry Now
8) Heart Like a Wheel
7) Simple Dreams
6) The Pirates of Penzance
5) Prisoner in Disguise
4) Cry Like a Rainstorm, Howl Like the Wind
3) 'Round Midnight(I'm cheating and combining her three excellent Nelson Riddle albums)
2) Trio
1) Hasten Down the Wind

Pop Goes Perfection

Listening to new music is already exciting, but finding a new song that elicits a really visceral reaction is an entirely different level of excitement. Sometimes entire albums can get this reaction, but even then usually it’s one or two songs that stand head and shoulders above the rest. I’m thinking of songs like “The World Spins Madly On” from the wonderful album, Say I Am You – the first full-length effort from The Weepies that turned me onto their insanely catchy folk-pop. “Oxford Comma” from that new Vampire Weekend album counts. As does “Something to Me” off Tift Merritt’s newest, Another Country, or “Fake Empire” off The National’s Boxer...the list could go on and on. I realize that in many cases these standout songs are the singles off that particular album, or the opening (or closing) track. Or a track in some way sequenced to a clear place of importance or visibility on the album. Yet, as someone that hardly ever listens to commercial radio (as in, never ever listens to commercial radio), discovering the standout track (maybe it’s the single, maybe not) is usually a moment of total joy. It’s a track that will find its way onto playlist after playlist, pop up on countless mix CDs, and will start creeping up towards the top of the screen when you sort your iTunes library by play count. I love these songs, I crave them, and because of that aforementioned obliviousness to radio, I’m the only person that can overplay them. When I tire of them, I have only myself to blame. Some are blissfully inexhaustible.

The most recent song I can’t play enough is “Why Do You Let Me Stay Here?” – exactly two minutes, thirty seconds of absolute perfection off the new Zooey Deschanel/M. Ward collaboralbum, She & Him, Volume One.* I love this whole album. Love. Love the styles and genre-tweaking, love the different homages (can “homage” be plural?) to past pop, love the rich sounds and multitracked vocals and analog feel. So good. Anyway, back to the song.

Like many great songs (and most music/film/books/theater in general), there’s a great slow build over the 2:30 running time. The strummy acoustic guitar and simple piano chord-progression start the song simply; at 0:24 the drums kick in (pun intended) with a cymbal crash and the first appearance of the snare (the lead singer of the drum kit), filling out the sound colorfully and wonderfully. At 0:32, I am completely out of my mind with joy when a tinkling, barroom piano drops in for a brief fill and then stays in the mix, a simple, slightly jazzy, harmony line that meanders into the background after a few seconds. It is an absolutely beautiful moment, subtle, underplayed, hugely rich in the spirit and feel it evokes. At 0:38, a girl-group chorus of backup Zooey Deschanels come in. It’s like Zooey and The Zooeys, and it sounds great, slightly and pleasantly ragged around the edges. At 0:44, the sound intensifies and the full background sound is established, with the strummy guitar amped up (no pun intended) and back in the front of the mix, and the drums coming through now as well; it gives off a definite bit of a Traveling Wilburys vibe (a high compliment coming from me). From this point to 1:03 (the second verse essentially), we have the Zooey Chorus offering a classic girl-group chorus of “oohs,” the band chugging along, and the fun spirit of the song hitting on all cylinders. At 1:04, M. Ward hops in with an awesome twangy, reverb-y, stuttering guitar lick and takes the bridge (until 1:24) with a tiny solo. It’s just a great, fun lick (I know: ‘great,’ ‘fun,’ ‘awesome’ – where are my WORDS?) with a whiff of honkey-tonk about it, but with just enough distortion to throw country-haters off track. This solo cleverly modulates the song up a step in the great tradition of modulation: usually cheesy, always magnificent. Now ramped up into that slightly higher key, Zooey and her self-backups come back in at 1:24, dropping in some pure silliness in the background vocals. We get just a tiny hint of a fake ending at 1:42 – just the slightest pause before the drums kick back in with a classic fill and the chorus of Zooeys chime back in with wordless “da doo” harmonies. The multitracked choir gets a few seconds of a capella harmony – nothing complicated, but plenty catchy – until at 2:04 the drums and band start hammering away again, sticking in a few gently comic, bombastic drums fills just for shits & giggles, and the vocals fade. The twittering, twitching band fades a few seconds later, right around 2:30.

It’s total perfection – a tiny, compressed, glittering diamond of pop music. It sounds like a million different songs and genres, without sounding at all like a rip-off. As steeped and saturated as it is in pop history, it still manages to be completely sui generis. The lyrics won’t be remembered ten minutes from now, but they are like the song’s clothesline: necessary to hang all the awesome ideas from, uninteresting alone. Which I guess is how most lyrics are. Nobody will ever read the lyrics to “It’s My Party And I’ll Cry If I Want To” in a poetry class, but they get the point across, and the job done. “Why Do You Let Me Stay Here?” is more of a song about sound, mood, is a total blast, and also probably encompasses the history of pop music without even trying.

I will be taking wagers as to how many times and for how long I will drive this song into the ground until I’m completely sick of it. Or…maybe it’s one of those precious few perfect songs and I will never tire of it! Could it be??


*you know it’s coming: Official Culturephile Endorsement™!! *cymbal crash*