It was one of those weeks wherein I'd had three or four ideas that I'd wanted to post up here, but between the breakneck pace of the Job and the exhausting Bataan Death March that is minding our children, I simply haven't had the time, energy nor mental wherewithall to bring those plans to fruition. It's finally nap time on Sunday afternoon (although both of our little critters are still up and chirping, despite being put in their respective beds) so I'm seizing the temporary calm. We'll see how long it lasts.
The Clothes Make the Fan: Every morning on my walk to work, I pass this one same individual. He's invariably ambling South down Univeristy Place as I'm walking North. He looks as though he's into his mid-fifites or so, usually wearing a baseball cap a lot of denim. His most distinctive sartorial feature, however, is that -- absolutely without fail -- he sports a t-shirt emblazoned with Marilyn Monroe. And not just the same t-shirt day in and day out, the man is clearly in possession of several, if not possibly hundreds. In the last eight months alone, I don't believe I've seen him sport the same one twice. Marilyn in bed, Marilyn at the mic singing "Happy Birthday Mr. President," Marilyn with Clark Gable in "The Misfits," Marilyn on the cover of that early Playboy spread -- he's got her covered. He is clearly a big fan. And as we all know, the root of the term fan is fanatic. The man is a case study.
But don't mistake this for a critiscism. Sure, his fixation with the late Norma Jean Baker is, well, certainly kinda creepy, but y'know -- to each their own. Also, people in glass houses shouldn't throw stones. By that I'm referring to my own unwieldy obsession with the band, Killing Joke. At last count, I had somewhere in the realm of twenty-seven Killing Joke t-shirts, which is probably about twenty-six more than I really need -- and some might strenuously question why I'd even need one, but that's a whole different debate.

But, clearly, if you were to ask me (and, really, you shouldn't), I'd take great emphatic pains to assert that twenty-six Killing Joke t-shirts SIMPLY AREN'T NEARLY ENOUGH! By the same token, though, I don't wear one every day. I whip them out on days when I feel the rest of the world is suffering from a heady dose of abject lameness and needs to be vigorously schooled. This is, after all, arguably the basic function of "the band t-shirt"; a means of assserting tribal loyalty. A gauntlet thrown at the feet of those who'd dare step up and express dissent. I vividly remember a complete stranger (some moustachiod dingbat in a satin baseball jacket) coming up to me on Lexington Avenue sometime in the mid-80's and emphatically telling me, "yo, man, DEVO SUCKS!" I wasn't mad. I laughed it off and kept walking, consoled by the fact that the Devo shirt I was wearing upset him enough that he felt compelled to stop and tell me about it. Mission accomplished.
It's for this very reason that I seethe when I see pre-faded, "vintage" rock shirts being sold as ironic kitsch. I've always been of the mindset that if you're going to fly the colors, at least have the decency to have done your homework first (pardon the convoluted, mixed metaphor). If you can't name at least three songs by the band on your t-shirt, then you're a poser! I remember attending some strange cocktail soiree at Chelsea Piers sometime in the Summer of 2000 and seeing some self-styled hepcat strutting around in an old school Queensryche t-shirt (specifically the design from Queen of the Ryche). Being that I was well into my third or fourth beer, I accosted him and asked if he was sincerely a fan of the Seattle hair-farmers in question or was he making some sort've ironic statement. "Ummm," he stammered nervously, "uh....both?" I sneered and walked away. The annoying thing about this is I DON'T EVEN LIKE FUCKIN' QUEENSRYCHE!, but here I was getting all needlessly obstreporous on their undeserving behalf. I just find it so disrespectful. To quote a collegue of mine, "Keep Your Damn Hands Off My Rock!" If you're gonna wear the shirt, fuckin' mean it! I didn't catch all that shit in high school for wearing Motley Crue and Circle Jerks shirts for nothing!
I had dinner last week with my friend Tod. Once upon a time, Tod fronted a confrontational little combo called Cop Shoot Cop, until he reached a point where he felt the band's malicious catterwaul was beginning to feel too creatively confining and a little choreographed. He left C$C and formed Firewater, a band with a bold disregard for stylistic parameter and a slightly cheerier (or at least cheerily drunken) perspective on life. A decade and change after he dismantled Cop Shoot Cop, he finally seems ready to talk about it. We somehow got onto the t-shirt topic, and I was wondering how Tod felt when he saw an old Cop Shoot Cop shirt come walkin' down the street on some malnourished Emo waif. "I simply don't care," he said. "I'm not at all concerned with the opinions of teenagers any more." It was a frustratingly mature outlook. I tried to engage him on the subject further, citing my hang-ups, and he wouldn't budge. Tod, barely a year and a couple of months my senior, had let it go.
So, here I am about to cross the threshold of 39 (five short days left, shoppers!), and I'm still getting hot under the vintage, authentic collar about "disrespectful misrepresenation" of rock bands, and still needlessly adding to an unwieldy collection of t-shirts endorsing a band who eight out of ten people have never heard of -- and the two who have heard of them are shocked to hear they're still around. Why do I care? What's my hang-up? Am I going to grow up eventually too?
Well, again, at least it's not like I'm wearing one every day.
"Oh My Grace, I've Got No Hiding Place": I stepped out, last Friday morning, into the brisk October grey on my way to work and flicked on my iPod. Evidently, the song playing when I'd switched it off the night before was a live version of King Crimson's stentorian proto-metal anthem, "21st Century Schizoid Man." As much as I adore that song, its skronky, apocalyptic bluster wasn't really right for 7:45 am on damp chilly day. So I spun the wheel and settled on an album seemingly tailored to a dismally Autumnal New York City day, Bookends by Simon & Garfunkel.
I'd first heard this record in 7th grade. My homeroom teacher at the time was a gent named Mr. Imbelli. Kinda like a mellower Al Pacino in "Serpico" only with shorter hair, Mr.Imbelli was the type of teacher who liked to part with convention. He's have us arrange our desks in a big circle and encouraged a more participatory format which stopped just shy of asking us to call him by his first name. In any case, after he'd heard the class rapturously extolling the merits of Kiss, Queen, the Ramones and Pink Floyd's The Wall until he could take it no more, Mr.Imbelli decided to hip us to music that mattered to him. So, one day, he put our desks in a big circle, plugged in the record player and whipped out a copy of Bookends, dropping the needle on side one.
I'd heard Simon & Garfunkel before, courtesy of my parents' oft-played 8-track tape of Bridge Over Troubled Water, but that album (recorded a year after this one), with its feel good themes of redemption, harmony-laden proto-yuppie folk-pop seemed a million miles away from Bookends. Eerily intimate and sombre, side one of Bookends ruminates on suicide ("Save the Life of My Child"), old age ("Old Friends") and disillusionment ("Over," "America"), all tied up with a black bow of funereal melancholy. It's as close to Goth as the duo ever got. Even the cover is creepy. Paul and Art staring blankly through your hollowing soul in their austere, black turtlenecks. Hell, slap a pair of shades on each of them, and they could be in the Velvet Underground (fellow New Yorkers who were busy wallowing in seedy depravity and drugs just a few neighborhoods away). But again, it's the tunes that are so haunting -- whether it's the ominous synths and bad trip psychedelia of "Save the Life of My Child" (why hasn't anyone ever covered this?), the lilting decay of "Old Friends" or the awkward, uncomfortable coldness of "Overs". The icing on the cake is "Voices of Old People," a two minute sound collage of just that -- interviews with patients from an old age home. It's as disquieting as one's first hearing of "Revolution #9" on the White album by the Beatles. After a few spins, I had new respect for the duo.
Side two kinda ruins it, though. Perhaps worried that the despondency (more Nick Drake than Pete Seeger) would scare off the old school folksters, the second batch of songs (some culled from the soundtrack to "The Graduate") adds a bit more pep, whether in the playful "At the Zoo," the slightly cloying "Punky's Dilemma" or the urgency of "Hazy Shade of Winter" (their answer to the Mammas & the Pappas' "California Dreaming"?). It's still good stuff, but it's not as compellingly chilling as the first side.
I don't listen to it that often, but I do return to this album every now and again. Bookends isn't really right for every mood (much like, say, Pornography by the Cure), but its dour introspection and uber-New York City vibe (I always associate S&G with the pre-fabulous Manhattan depicted in films like "The French Connection" and "The Taking of Pelham One Two Three," when it was still sort've dully colored and old world) are perfect for when you have to turn your collar to the cold and damp.
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